Stefan Lasiewski

The Alameda County Computer Resource Center is an innovative computer recycler in Berkeley, CA. They are an environmentalists dream– all waste is reused when possible, the rest is recycled. No waste is shipped to questionable trash dumps overseas. Locally, the ACCRC provides computers to local schools and nonprofits.

During the Makers Faire in San Mateo, California, the ACCRC brought in tons of computer and electronic parts which were salvaged and reused for various projects.

Sadly, the State of California is threatening to shut down the ACCRC, mostly for failing to maintain an inventory of all of their computer equipment, and for keeping interesting/historical equipment onsite (a Computer Museum), instead of destroying the equipment.

I’ve been using ACCRC (and their predecessors) for years, and I’ve volunteered for several Linux installfest events using their hardware. I sincerely hope that State is able to work with the ACCRC and reach a compromise.

I’m studying the Subversion Version Control System and ran across this humorous quote in Chapter 3:

Merging conflicts by hand can be quite intimidating the first time you attempt it, but with a little practice, it can become as easy as falling off a bike.

You would think they actually meant “as easy as riding a bike”, but no … I think they really did mean falling. Merging conflicts in files is tradionally the bane of all version control systems. I’ve seen developers throw their hands up in the air, give up, and run to the bar for a good beer when resolving conflicts in Clearcase & CVS.

We’ll see if SVN is any better at handling conflicts.

The only truly secure computer is one which is switched off and disconnected from the network.

… and smashed with a sledgehammer, to ensure that the computer is never turned on again.

… and set on fire, to the temperature of 600F, which should be sufficient to destroy the magnetic bits in the hard drive.

… and then nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

I’m testing out SuSE 9.1 on VMware 4.5.2 on top of Windows XP.

VMware comes with the ‘vmware-tools’ package, which enhances performance and usability when running SuSE or any flavor of Linux under VMware.

Unfortunately, vmware-tools fails to build with the following error:

# ./vmware-config-tools.pl
(… snip …)

make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.1-111′
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/cpName.o
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/cpNameLinux.o
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/dev.o
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/dev.c:20:
/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/main.h:184: error: conflicting types for ‘kstrdup’
include/linux/slab.h:121: error: previous declaration of `kstrdup’
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only/dev.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config4/vmhgfs-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.1-111′
make: *** [vmhgfs.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config/vmhgfs-only’
Unable to build the vmhgfs module.

EWW! GROSS!

This is because the function ‘kstrdup’ in the vmware-tools source (in the vmhgfs module) is conflicting with the function ‘kstrdup’ in the Linux kernel source, in mm/slab.c , drivers/md/dm-ioctl.c , and a few other places.

To work around this error, you need to modify the vmware-tools source a little bit.

- Find the file vmhgfs.tar and untar it:

cd modules/source
cp vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs.tar.old
tar xvf vmhgfs.tar
cd vmhgfs-only

- in main.c main.h and driver.c , replace the string ‘kstrdup’ with something unique, like ‘vmkstrdup’.

Then tar it back up, remove your old temprary files and re-run the tool again:

cd ..
tar cf vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs-only
rm -rf vmhgfs-only

Rerun vmware-config-tools.pl and it should work!