Sad to see this post on Google Plus tonight:

Rob Pike  -  10:02 PM  -  Public

I just heard that, after a long illness, Dennis Ritchie (dmr) died at home this weekend.
I have no more information. I trust there are people here who will appreciate the reach
of his contributions and mourn his passing appropriately. He was a quiet and mostly
private man, but he was also my friend, colleague, and collaborator, and the world has
lost a truly great mind.

For anyone unsure of who this great man was, you really should check out his wikipedia entry but the main part is:

Ritchie is best known as the creator of the C programming language and a key developer of the Unix operating system, and as co-author of the definitive book on C, The C Programming Language, commonly referred to as K&R (in reference to the authors Kernighan and Ritchie). Ritchie's invention of C and his role in the development of Unix alongside Ken Thompson have placed him as an important pioneer of modern computing. The C language is still widely used today in application and operating system development, and its influence is seen in most modern programming languages. Unix has also been influential, establishing concepts and principles that are now well-established precepts of computing.

A serious loss for any programmer or unix geek and anyone else that knows where many modern things like linux, bsd, osx, etc started

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Rest In Peace Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie\n");
    printf("Thank You for so much\n");
    return 0;
}

Also relevant: this post was typed on an Archlinux laptop and hosted on a Debian vps. Thanks again dmr!

This guide came about from a post on the Linode forum (http://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?t=7454) and I thought it might be useful to have on file for myself and anyone else that might find this blog. The below are steps needed to change a CENTOS 6 server over to a Scientific Linux 6 server as they are both based on RHEL sources but SL is updated more often and seems to be gaining traction as CENTOS loses it with slow updates & releases. I did make a minor change from the initial post (changing distroverpkg) and then the formatting but otherwise the steps were laid out by tolle.

First, Install the yum repository

rpm -ivh http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/i386/os/Packages/yum-conf-sl6x-1-1.noarch.rpm

Then install the signing keys for a 32bit installation

rpm -ivh --force http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/i386/os/Packages/sl-release-6.1-2.i686.rpm

For a 64bit installation run

rpm -ivh --force http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/x86_64/os/Packages/sl-release-6.1-2.x86_64.rpm

Edit /etc/yum.conf and change

distroverpkg=centos-release

to

distroverpkg=sl-release

Have your CentOS installation pull all the updated packages from the SL repositories

yum erase centos-release
yum clean all
yum distro-sync

Run this to update all centos packages to SL

yum reinstall \`rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME} %{VENDOR}\n"|grep CentOS|awk \'{print $1}\'\`

And you are done. I reboot after all of this just to ensure everything was working properly. I would also probably recommend this be done on a clean install of CENTOS if at all possible (ie: you use Linode which only has CENTOS or some other provider) just to reduce your problems but it should be possible on a previously deployed server as well, just be sure to get backups done first.

If you use Chrome / Chromium and Google+ but hate the stream being cluttered and hard to follow, there is an extension that should make your life much easier.

Plus Minus allows you to collapse posts in your stream down to just a few lines making it easier to follow and see what you have already read and what is new. Additionally, it allows you to expand the width of the stream to take advantage of your resolution rather than just taking up the middle of the screen. You can also shrink the entire stream at once as well as other options like selecting which circles to show or hide.

Get Plus Minus for Chrome / Chromium

I had this issue the other day and wanted to write it down both as a reminder to myself and a hint for anyone that might be suffering from it.

Basically, some programs (I had it with Broderbund Print Shop which seems to be the most commonly found option) that burn things to disc mess with settings that hose the pagefile, making the computer running badly and having the window to change it popup after every boot.

The fix is actually very easy and quite painless. Just drop to a command prompt and type:

sc config afs start= disabled

Reboot the computer and that should solve the issue, it did for me.

When a computer is in safe mode, the Windows Installer Service isn't started. This can cause some issues as some malware can be removed easier through safe mode or maybe other issues in uninstalling a program force you to use an alternate method. However, if you just try to start the service in safe mode, it fails with an error message (Could not start the Windows Installer service on Local Computer. Error 1084: This service cannot be started in Safe Mode).

Enter SafeMSI.exe, a tiny (and portable) free app that starts up the Windows Installer Service for you. In reality, it's simply running a registry tweak and starting the service but this makes it a lot easier than editing the registry & starting the service on your own.

You can download the program here