Full package name: app-admin/blockhosts

Ok, this isn't really new; I decided to extract the ebuild from the HowTo.
So here is the blockhosts ebuild.

Some information about the package:
Blockhosts is a python script which records how many times a system service has been probed, using configurable pattern matching to recognize failed accesses (such as for "sshd" or "proftpd" or any service), and when a particular IP address exceeds a certain number of failed attempts that IP address is blocked by using one of the following techniques, e.g.:

• using TCP_WRAPPERS (writes to /etc/hosts.allow)
• using "ip route" commands to setup null-routing for attackers
• using IPtables to setup packet filtering for attackers

See also
* HOWTO Secure SSHd with BlockHosts
* http://www.aczoom.com/cms/blockhosts/

Frequently updated ebuild
This package is in the sunrise overlay. Please check out this link if you want up2date ebuilds.
http://overlays.gentoo.org/svn/proj/sunrise/reviewed/app-admin/blockhosts/

* 2007-06-05, +blockhosts-2.0.3.ebuild
* 2007-06-09, +blockhosts-2.0.4.ebuild
* 2007-08-01, +blockhosts-2.0.5.ebuild
* 2007-09-21, +blockhosts-2.0.6.ebuild, prune
* 2007-10-01, +blockhosts-2.1.0.ebuild

Site theme changes:
* 2007-07-30, layout done, fixing some minor issues now
* 2007-07-31, minor fixes, site optimized for Konqueror-3.5.* and Firefox-2.*
* 2007-08-01, main site is now valid XHTML 1.0 transitional, added some icons, added search field in header, fixed drupal bug 85667, 111719 and 121283 to pass XHTML validation
* 2007-08-06, passed CSS validation
* 2007-08-07, added zoom support (should work fine up to a specific zoom level), added support of IE5 and IE6 (added some tables to have a clean 3 column layout); lynx, Opera and Netscape work fine, too; added anybrowser logo.
* 2007-08-10, fixed another bug to pass XHTML validation, site is now fully XHTML 1.0 Strict, added Pathauto module which aliases URLs (a wonderful tool!)
* 2007-08-19, fixed some bugs in the style sheet concerning the comment layout style
* 2007-08-20, page layout redesign: used the idea from http://drupal.org/node/163534 (only one vocabulary with hierarchical terms structure)
* 2007-09, done so far

Full package name: kde-misc/kio-sysinfo

Hey, here is a new ebuild. I performed some updates (translations, etc.) on the original package. This is a testing version.

Note
You have to download both files (.ebuild and .patch file)! Put the patch into your files/ directory. Refer to the Gentoo wiki for more information: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Installing_3rd_Party_Ebuilds

See also
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=58704

Frequently updated ebuild
This package is now in the sunrise overlay. Please check out this link if you want updated ebuilds.
http://overlays.gentoo.org/svn/proj/sunrise/reviewed/kde-misc/kio-sysinfo/

* 2007-09-17, added kio-sysinfo-1.8.2 ebuild + patch

Full package name: kde-misc/kicker-compiz

From the kde-apps.org project page:
"This is a modified pager applet for kicker to make it work with compiz. More generally, it is intended to work with window managers that use the concept of "large desktops" instead of "multiple virtual desktops" as kwin does exclusively."

I quite like the fork because it provides boarderless transparent snippets of your desks.

See also:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=46021

I've just found a nice article about enabling DNS-Cache for Konqueror at fedorawiki.de. It's very useful, because Konqueror doesn't provide this feature. If you take e.g. the german freemail provider http://gmx.net, Konqueror sends a huge amount of dns queries to load all the pictures and stuff. You really notice the performance gain if you cache these queries with a local DNS server, for example dnsmasq.

Here are the steps to install and configure dnsmasq:

Install dnsmasq
# emerge -av dnsmasq

Then insert 'nameserver 127.0.0.1' into the first (important!) line in /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 127.0.0.1
...

Then start dnsmasq
# /etc/init.d/dnsmasq start

You can test your local DNS cache by typing
dig google.de

Have a look at the query time (must be something higher than 50ms in most cases). Query google again.
Now that's amazing, isn't it? 0msec!

Let dnsmasq start at boot (otherwise you can't resolve any DNS names because you've edited the /etc/resolv.conf)
# rc-update add dnsmasq default

Further reading
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/local-dns-cache-for-faster-browsing/

I recently had enough of all the "*** GMX Antispam ***" lines in my kmail junk folder and tried to get rid off it. (It also marked false positivies in my incoming folder which also annoyed me).

Here's a small guide to strip the "*** GMX Antispam ***" string from your mail's subject (notice: this won't sort your mails in your junk folder, it only strips the subject line):

• Fire up kontact/kmail
• Go to Settings -> Configure Filters...
• Add a new filter
• Move it to the top of the list
• Rename it to something like "Rewrite-GMX-Antispam-Header"
• Now have a look at the general tab, add "X-GMX-Antispam" to the first field
• Then choose "matches reg. exp." in the drop down box
• Enter "^[2345]" in the following field (kmail will now match all mails which have been marked by the GMX Antispam service)
• In "Filter actions" choose "Rewrite header" and choose "Subject" in the next field
• In "Replace" enter "\*\*\* GMX Spamverdacht \*\*\*\ "
• The last edit field must be blank.

If you don't know how to sort mails marked as GMX Antispam into your junk mail folder:

• Add a new filter (Filter must be listed below the above filter rule)
• Rename it to something like "GMX-Antispam"
• Now have a look at the general tab, add "X-GMX-Antispam" to the first field
• Then choose "matches reg. exp." in the drop down box
• Enter "^[2345]" in the following field (kmail will now match all mails which have been marked by the GMX Antispam service)
• In "Filter actions" choose "Move into folder" and select your junk folder in the next field.
• If you like, you can also mark the mails as read immediately

An Amarok script which provides basic support for streaming your ALSA card output to Icecast (version 2 or later). It also features metadata update of the current playing track in Amarok.
Suggestions are welcome!

READ THE DOCUMENTATION FOR REQUIREMENTS, ETC.

Thank you.

I just fell in love with vim ("the editor") after working for a very long time with nano. I love the way it highlights syntax, indents and copies/cuts/pastes visual blocks and stuff. But I don't like that it takes four+ key presses to save and quit a file. That has been the reason for not switching to it for me.
Now I added some key mapping to reflect nano's behaviour. If someone likes it, feel free to use it, too.

Put this in your /etc/vim/vimrc or ~/.vimrc:

" Make vim act like nano
map <C-O> <Esc>:w<CR>
imap <C-O> <Esc>:w<CR>
map <C-X> <Esc>:q<CR>
imap <C-X> <Esc>:q<CR>
map <C-X><C-X> <Esc>:q!<CR>
imap <C-X><C-X> <Esc>:q!<CR>
map <C-K> <Esc>dd
imap <C-K> <Esc>dd<Esc>i
map <C-U> <Esc>p
imap <C-U> <Esc>p<Esc>i

Save the file with ^O, leave it with ^X (leave it with ^X^X if you modified the file) and some other nice key mappings (^K for cut, ^U for uncut). Works quite well for me.
Have fun!

Just as a side note: I had to escape the HTML tags to show you this code block. http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/developer-tools/quick-escape/... is a nice choice for this.

A plugin for supybot that displays various information about a LastFM ID in IRC.

Hosted on Gitorious.org: http://gitorious.org/supybot-lastfm

Download per HTTP: http://gitorious.org/supybot-lastfm/mainline/archive-tarball/master

Hello World!

This is my very first *Amarok* specific blog post. Yay!

(Okay, admittedly I did not really blog at all since now. This will change now, of course!)

As you may know, I've been a rather semi-active Amarok contributer until now, hacking Amarok's codebase to improve the User Experience. My major *feature* contribution is the KNotify backend in Amarok (which of course is not the most crucial part of Amarok). Other than that I was mostly fixing bugs noone cared about or exceeded the patience of the average Amarok developer when trying to be solved. I think there's going to be more activity on this blog now, since I seem to get involved in Amarok more and more these days (which is exciting).

The past week I've been at Randa, the most important KDE Sprint this year, I guess.  To work on Amarok and KDE Multimedia in general. See http://community.kde.org/Sprints/Randa/2011 for hints an information about this event. The most important aspect of the meeting was the Platform 11 meeting of course, where the future of KDE with regards to Qt's Open Governance Process was discussed. This however, is not part of this blog, as I was not really involved in that discussion.

Let's talk about the work spent in Amarok land during the spring in Randa. We (mainly Mamarok and me) managed to close about 92 bugs according to her statistics. Of course most of them were duplicates or already fixed bugs by other commits. However, with a rough estimate: I think I managed to *fix* (as in: fix by committing something) about 10 more or less severe bugs and quite some other annoyances/glitches. Currently, our bug count in bugzilla (bugs.kde.org) is down to 210, an impressive good rate per LOC in open source software with a huge code base like Amarok has. This number refers to the currently open "malfunctions", e.g. no wishes or bugs marked with WAITINGFORINFO (see: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?cmdtype=dorem&remaction=run&namedcmd=al...).

The Randa sprint has been an adventure this time which involved meeting new friends and meeting old ones. During the event Bart and me managed to work quite focussed on some issues regarding Amarok without being too distracted by other stuff. That was a really nice opportunity.

The list of commits that went into Amarok by me during the Randa sprint is listed here (42 commits during ~7days):

* e7666c2 - Minor: Fix typo in ChangeLog (2 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* a4f56ea - Minor: Reduce header dependencies (4 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* f716da8 - ChangeLog++ (Browser backgrounds) (4 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 7a39afb - Apply background images to the various browsers (4 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 3df0c45 - Minor: Collections: s/Counting/Counting.../ (4 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 83533cb - Add scripting interface for KNotify (4 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* e43a711 - Use warning() for DEBUG_ASSERT (4 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 9320d5f - Pushing an example use of DEBUG_ASSERT (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 8737ace - Add another debug helper: DEBUG_ASSERT(cond, stmt) (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* c8ef564 - Reset playlist error counter after match (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* c4cceaf - Possible fix for crash in CV (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* df9ec60 - Minor: Reformat code (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 01ed71d - Fix possible crash in VideoClipEngine (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* fbbb47f - LyricsApplet: Disable scrolling when editing (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* dfbf424 - Minor: Simplify some API in Albums applet (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 9aa81ce - Fix invokeMethod call to non-existent slot (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* ed5448b - Minor: Remove annoying debug output (SqlRegistry) (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* d21bab5 - Fix playlist tooltip getting too tall (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* cb86a84 - Make equalizer keywords (dB, kHz, ..) translatable (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* fbb54ff - Remove unused (+useless) PNGs from src/data (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 8098b22 - Unbreak Equalizer presets API a bit (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 471f0ac - Minor: Prettify ChangeLog (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 1170062 - Fix regression introduced by 34163f8 (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* bb5c2f9 - Remove some outdated documents from docs/ (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 34163f8 - Make preset names translatable (5 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 66ef047 - Add script error reporting at runtime (6 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 34bbda9 - Minor: Improve debug output (6 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 82d102b - Fix "Happy" moodbar theme (6 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* fcc420c - Fix crash by invalid scripts during stop phase (6 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 3157057 - Minor: Header/include cleanup (6 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 0406303 - Remove leftovers from a5628ac (6 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 6d93167 - Fix collection context menu items ordering (7 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* f6799cd - Header cleanup starting from CollectionTreeView (7 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* e902c44 - Minor: Rename hintlineedit(cpp|h) to HintLineEdit (7 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 76e9be8 - Fix strings in status bar (7 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 5eb2862 - Move the playlist length info into the playlist (7 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* cae9d5a - Minor: Rearrange some code (8 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 8879afd - Remove outdated handbook/ directory (8 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 36ca680 - Remove stale OXYGEN file (8 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* 48023de - Remove unused class ExpandingControlsWidget (8 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* f524292 - Replace some other "LastFM" strings (8 days ago) <Kevin Funk>
* b72b933 - Fix crash when accessing The::statusBar() (9 days ago) <Kevin Funk>

PS: We (Team Amarok) also managed to win the Randa foosball cup 2011, by rocking all the other teams. Team Amarok consisted of Bart and me. Evidence can be found in the picture attached picture!

PPS: A nice picture collection of the event in Randa can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/valorie.zimmerman/RandaSwitzerlandKDESprint - Thanks to valorie for sharing and commenting all the pictures!