K5 FW 5.x ScreenSavers Hack

[GoSharks]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@knc1: That'd been a good way to handle a quick hotfix, yeah , but I took the opportunity to update some stuff while I was at it, so, full rebuild ;p.

EDIT: There, snapshots updated, everything should be alright now .

That did it..all fixed!! Thanks!

[NiLuJe]

@GoSharks: Yay! Thanks again for your tests and logs, I wasn't expecting something like that, went looking in all the wrong directions until then .

[Milbert]

@knc1: all the books have a cover - all worked fine until update to FW 5.6.1.1

@NiLuJe: I installed latest snapshots too - it seems to work again now!

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Milbert

@knc1: all the books have a cover - all worked find until update to FW 5.6.1.1

@NiLuJe: I installed latest snapshots too - it seems to work again now!

Yes, I missed that point (that this was a working installation at one time).

But sometimes, it helps to question the obvious.
Not everything here is "Engineered" - sometimes we just get lucky.

[Milbert]

Originally Posted by knc1

Yes, I missed that point (that this was a working installation at one time).

haha, ok - my fault... it seems I wrote this info in my mind only into my initial post ... ;-)

[Calleja]

Hi, the first post seems to mention new versions uploaded a few days ago, but the attached files are old ones(21 and 11), where can we get ScreenSavers v0.23.N and Python v0.13.N?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Calleja

Hi, the first post seems to mention new versions uploaded a few days ago, but the attached files are old ones(21 and 11), where can we get ScreenSavers v0.23.N and Python v0.13.N?

On this forum's index page:

Prefix filter drop-down: Tools
Click 'show threads'
Scroll to: NiLuJe's snapshot thread, click that, enjoy.

And be quick about it, there is a new OTA update in the air for the PW2 which may break everything if you let it install.

[Calleja]

Originally Posted by knc1

On this forum's index page:

Prefix filter drop-down: Tools
Click 'show threads'
Scroll to: NiLuJe's snapshot thread, click that, enjoy.

And be quick about it, there is a new OTA update in the air for the PW2 which may break everything if you let it install.

Thanks! Now this will probably be a stupid question but the filetypes there are .xz, haven't seen those before, how do I unpack/convert them to rar?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Calleja

Thanks! Now this will probably be a stupid question but the filetypes there are .xz, haven't seen those before, how do I unpack/convert them to rar?

7-zip if your using Windoze (you failed to say).

Why in the world do you want to store anything using a propritary archiving utility (.rar)?
Because Bill Gates told you to? (so it must be true)
You read it on the Internet? (it really, really must be true in that case)

(7-zip will also unrar your collection rar archives.)
http://www.7-zip.org/

[Calleja]

Originally Posted by knc1

Why in the world do you want to store anything using a propritary archiving utility (.rar)?
Because Bill Gates told you to? (so it must be true)
You read it on the Internet? (it really, really must be true in that case)

It's the format NiLuJe uses in the files in the first post which I've been using for a while now, no need to get snippy and disrespectful.

Thanks for your (sarcastic) help.

[shamanNS]

Originally Posted by knc1

7-zip if your using Windoze (you failed to say).

Why in the world do you want to store anything using a propritary archiving utility (.rar)?
Because Bill Gates told you to? (so it must be true)
You read it on the Internet? (it really, really must be true in that case)

(7-zip will also unrar your collection rar archives.)
http://www.7-zip.org/

Just curious, is plain old zip format propritary?? So as to be reason for not using it instead of tar.xz...

[knc1]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

Just curious, is plain old zip format propritary?? So as to be reason for not using it instead of tar.xz...

No (It was at one time, but no longer).

And NiLuJe chooses to use xz to conserve bandwidth.
It is a common trend now among those who host files for that reason.

There is a big world outside of (the) Windows.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

On a sidenote, most of these are distributed as xz compressed tarballs (because it's much, much more efficient) so you'll need GNU tar/bsdtar + xz-utils on Linux/BSD/OS X, and something that can handle those files on Windows (f.g., 7-zip or WinRAR 5). On Windows, be extremely wary of unarchiving software providing a 'smart' CR/LF handling [i.e., WinZip]: do NOT let it affect the line endings of these files, because that would break things in fun and interesting ways.

(emphasis mine)

If someone feels that wasn't (already) clear enough, please tell NiLuje how he can clarify it further.





Aside: Why exactly would one decompress and recompress a one-time-use file for long-term storage -- just to make an arbitrary switch in compression formats?
I can understand saving an offline copy I guess -- personally I like reinstalling only from the latest snapshots Just In Case. But you *could* just leave it alone, since it is already compressed...

[NiLuJe]

FWIW, I have to resort to split archives and the RAR format to get under MR's 20MB attachment limit on (some) release packages, it's not really by choice .

Hence the freedom of using something more efficient for the snapshots, since those, I host myself .

[knc1]

Both gnu and bsd tar do multi-volume sets, with or without ("tape") labels.
A file can even span multiple volumes (and you can set the volume size in "tape blocks" for each volume).

It may seem strange to have an IBM format tape label in the header of an archive file, but that is what you get.
(It was the most widely supported label format back when tar was being developed.)

At least with an archive file (instead of a physical reel) you don't have problems with someone putting the wrong (or a blank) seal ring on the reel, nor having the glue dry up on the external reel label and you have to guess which of the dried up labels in the bottom of the tape cabinet belong on the reel in your hand.

Ah, what fun it was, 20th. century computing.