alias ga=’git add’
alias gp=’git push’
alias gl=’git log’
alias gs=’git status’
alias gd=’git diff’
alias gdc=’git diff –cached’
alias g=’git’

git config –global alias.lg “log –graph –pretty=format:’%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset’ –abbrev-commit –date=relative”

Add all changes or all changes to existing files

$ git add -A

Adds all files and file deletes, so you don’t need to enter them manually.

$ git add -u

Same, but doesn’t add files that didn’t exist before.

Differences between the staged files and the last commit

$ git diff –cached

.. is something I use a lot just before committing the changes to check what my commit changed.

Log-fu

$ git log -p

Show the patches alongside the log

$ git log –stat

Show the changed files only.

$ git log –author=foo

Only commits by author foo.

$ git log –stat subdirectory

Show the commits affecting only “./subdirectory”, with a summary of the files (–stat).

Diff-fu

$ git diff my_branch master

What’s different between my branch and some other branch, e.g. master.

$ git diff HEAD^3

What changed in the last three commits.

Remember, git diff outputs an applicable patch:

$ git diff > my.patch

$ git apply < my.patch

Creating a feature branch and merging it back

Checkout the branch you want to base your work on:

$ git checkout master

Then create a branch and check it out:

$ git checkout -b local_name

Later on, merge it:

$ git checkout master

$ git merge local_name

Stashing changes

$ git stash

$ git stash list

$ git stash apply

Blaming

$ git blame path/to/file

See who changed what.

$ git blame abce1234^ path/to/file

See the blame, starting one commit before abce1234. E.g. when you need to trace back a particular line of code in history.

Keeping the number of merges lower on small commits

For small commits made on top of a frequently changing branch like master, you might want to rebase your local changes on top of the current remote before you merge a feature branch (more in depth):

$ git pull –rebase

$ git push

Resetting the current branch

When you want to reset to the current HEAD.

$ git reset –hard HEAD

When a branch tracking a remote has become outdated (e.g. you are on staging now but your commits have diverged):

$ git reset –hard origin/staging

Cherry-picking a commit

$ git cherry-pick sha1_of_commit

Total number of remote branches

First, remove local branches that do not exist on origin (–dry-run if you want to preview):

$ git remote prune origin

$ git branch -r | wc -l
123

Get the latest commit of all remote branches

#/bin/bash
git branch -r | while read line ;
do
  echo 
  echo "************" ${line#origin/}
  echo
  git log -1 $line
done

Get the latest commit of all remote branches, and summary, ordered by age

Use this Node script:

https://gist.github.com/91ba46dee32b221b3a84

# delete a local branch
git branch -d some_branch_name

# really delete a local branch even if git complains about it in the previous command
git branch -D some_branch_name

# delete a remote branch
git push origin :some_branch_name

The reason for that syntax is that you can do `git push origin local_branch_name:remote_branch_name` so what that line above is doing is essentially pushing NULL to the remote branch, thereby killing it off.

Well, there is whole world of keyboards that are even better, namely: buckling spring keyboards (e.g. the IBM Model M), Cherry MX switch keyboards and Topre switch keyboards.

I got this one for my place – Cherry MX brown switches, which are less noisy (though definitely they could be even more silent):

The major difference between a mechanical keyboard and a regular one is in the feel of the keys. Mechanical keyboards have metallic springs, while cheaper keyboards just have some flexible plastic.  After a short while typing on the MS Ergonomic keyboard started feeling like typing on a mushy piece of plastic compared to the mechanical keyboard. I do kind of miss the more ergonomic split layout, but typing is just a lot nicer overall on a mechanical keyboard.

I ended up buying two keyboards, both with Cherry MX switches (~110 USD from here). I didn’t get a buckling spring keyboard, because they are more noisy and there aren’t any space-saving tenkeyless models available. The third alternative – keyboards with Topre switches – are more expensive (~300+ USD) and have been described as less tactile. I’ll probably get a Topre keyboard eventually anyway, just so I can try it out.

Here is the new keyboard I use at work, which has Cherry MX blue switches (a bit more noisy than my other keyboard, but definitely one I prefer):

Best purchase in a long time!

1. Edit /etc/rc.conf. Add thinkpad_acpi to MODULES=() in the hardware section.

2. Create a new file enabling fan control as /etc/modprobe.d/thinkfan.conf:

options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1

3. Reload the thinkpad_acpi module:

sudo modprobe -r thinkpad_acpi && sudo modprobe thinkpad_acpi

To view the current fan speed:

[~]$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
status: enabled
speed: 2887
level: 4
commands: level ( is 0-7, auto, disengaged, full-speed)
commands: enable, disable
commands: watchdog ( is 0 (off), 1-120 (seconds))

To control fan speed:

# echo level 0 | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan (fan off)
# echo level 2 | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan (low speed)
# echo level 4 | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan (medium speed)
# echo level 7 | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan (maximum speed)
# echo level auto | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan (automatic - default)

For easy control from the command line:

function fan() {
  sensors
  echo level $@ | sudo tee /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
}

Now you can run fan 2 to set the fan level to 2 and so on.

To view fan speed, install lm_sensors following the instructions on the Arch wiki. Example output:

[~]$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +37.0°C  (crit = +99.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1:        2904 RPM

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +39.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:         +37.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:         +37.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:         +35.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:         +39.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

I wrote a benchmarking suite (siobench). The benchmark is rather simple. Clients connect one at a time, and a new client is only allowed to connect when the previous one is connected. When the server has used up 5000 milliseconds of CPU time, the benchmark is stopped. Every second, every connected client sends a single message which is echoed back by the server (more details).

This workload is geared towards a situation where Socket.io is used to notify people of things as part of a larger application: e.g. most of the load is assumed to be idling connections rather than real-time messaging like in, say, a multiplayer game.

The “end of test” condition is 5000 ms of CPU time, because this seemed to be a easy way to give all implementations the same amount of time. CPU usage % is not accurate, since it is dependent on how much CPU time the process gets over a particular amount of wallclock time. In the graphs the CPU usage % calculated over a 100ms interval, while usertime and systime are the actual numbers reported at that particular time.

Summary

Remember, this is just one server on one core, with 5000 ms of CPU time on that core. The rest of the cores are used to generate sufficient load. The full graphs are at the end of the post.

Note that the absolute numbers are mostly unimportant – I ran this on the following 15″ Macbook Pro running Arch with the 3.1.04 Linux kernel in Virtualbox with 4096 Mb of RAM, a SSD and four cores (Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2635QM CPU @ 2.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux). You can get numbers that are more representative of your system by getting siobench and running it:

Usage: node siobench.js [env]
A tool for benchmarking your Socket.io server.

Available environments:
	0.6.17
	0.6.17_poll
	0.7.11
	0.8.7
	0.8.7_poll
	tcp

Socket.io 0.6.17 – Websockets – CPU usage and time

Socket.io 0.6.17 – Websockets – resident set size

Socket.io 0.7.11 – Websockets – CPU usage and time

Socket.io 0.7.11 – Websockets – resident set size

Socket.io 0.8.7 – Websockets – CPU usage and time

Socket.io 0.8.7 – Websockets – resident set size

Node 0.4.12 – TCP – CPU usage and time

Node 0.4.12 – TCP – resident set size

First steps

• do the basic arch setup first (or VMware, or Virtualbox)

Update the system (and install/setup sudo)

dhcpcd eth0 #if you did not add "interface=eth0" in rc.conf during setup
pacman -Syu

Fixes:

http://www.archlinux.org/news/initscripts-update-manual-intervention-required/

rm /etc/profile.d/locale.sh

http://www.archlinux.org/news/filesystem-upgrade-manual-intervention-required/

pacman -S filesystem --force

pacman -S sudo
vim /etc/sudoers # add yourself to sudoers
sudo vim /etc/pacman.conf # set SigLevel = Never TrustAll
sudo shutdown-r now

Install X11:

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-utils xorg-server-utils xterm

If virtualized in VirtualBox, make copy-paste work first:

pacman -S virtualbox-archlinux-additions

Details

Create a new user

pacman -S zsh
useradd -m -g users -G audio,lp,optical,storage,video,games,power,scanner -s /bin/zsh USERNAME
su USERNAME
passwd

Add x11

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-utils xorg-server-utils

Copy ssh keys over from old machine
Useful packages

pacman -S base-devel sudo python2 git libev mlocate mercurial nitrogen \
sakura wicd-gtk pcmanfm gnome-icon-theme htop unzip \
openssl chromium flashplugin bash-completion xterm \
epdfview mysql ruby tilda tmux wget redis xcursor-vanilla-dmz \
xarchiver gzip bzip2 zip unzip unrar p7zip \
meld ttf-ubuntu-font-family mpg123 alsa-utils redis mysql ruby libxslt

• base-devel and python2 for compiling node
• libev for nwm
• mlocate for locate command
• nitrogen is better than feh for multiple screens
• sakura is a nice terminal
• wicd-gtk is a simple wifi network gui
• pcmanfm gnome-icon-theme are for pcmanfm, a Nautilus alternative

Remember to visudo and remove the password requirement from wheel. And add dbus and wicd to /etc/rc.conf just like pacman tells you to.
Configuring X11

Add ~/.Xresources:

Xcursor.theme: vanilla-dmz
Xcursor.size:  16       !  32, 48 or 64 may also be good values

Configuring git

git config --global color.ui true

Configuring sakura

I want to use ctrl + Page_Up / Page_Down to switch tabs, so edit ~/.config/sakura/sakura.conf:

switch_tab_accelerator=4 # since GDK_CONTROL_MASK is 1 << 2, e.g. 4.
prev_tab_key=Page_Down
next_tab_key=Page_Up

Some basic niceties: whatprovides, service and chkconfig

pacman -S pkgtools

• pkgtools provides the pkgfile tool. It works like yum whatprovides (e.g. allows you to search for a particular command or dependency in all the pacman packages)
• “sudo pkgfile -u” to update the db
• “pgkfile zipinfo” to search for zipinfo

Arch don’t have a service and chkconfig, but we can make the new things curve a bit less steep by adding some functions to .bashrc:

function service() {
  sudo /etc/rc.d/$1 $2
}

alias chkconfig='cat /etc/rc.conf | grep DAEMONS && echo "cat + grep /etc/rc.conf"'

This makes service an alias for /etc/rc.d/ and prints out the enabled services from /etc/rc.conf. While we’re editing .bashrc, might as well add:

PS1="[\W]\$ " # my preferred bash prompt (e.g. only the current dirname).
ulimit -s 16400 # higher stack limit
# ssh-agent
SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh/environment"
function start_agent {
     echo "Initialising new SSH agent..."
     /usr/bin/ssh-agent | sed 's/^echo/#echo/' > "${SSH_ENV}"
     echo succeeded
     chmod 600 "${SSH_ENV}"
     . "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
     /usr/bin/ssh-add;
}
# Source SSH settings, if applicable
if [ -f "${SSH_ENV}" ]; then
     . "${SSH_ENV}" > /dev/null
     #ps ${SSH_AGENT_PID} doesn't work under cywgin
     ps -ef | grep ${SSH_AGENT_PID} | grep ssh-agent$ > /dev/null || {
         start_agent;
     }
else
     start_agent;
fi

Installing Node and NPM

You can just do:

pacman -S nodejs

If you’re OK with that version, which seems to track the Node releases pretty well.

Arch uses python3 as python. You need to change python to python2 (thanks Rob Searles!)

# node.js fix for arch (use python2) 
mkdir /tmp/bin
ln -s /usr/bin/python2 /tmp/bin/python
export PATH=/tmp/bin:$PATH

You can then do a regular node install:

git clone git://github.com/joyent/node.git

git checkout v0.4.12

./configure

make

sudo make install

Remember to install npm as well:

curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh

Installing my window manager and personal config

git clone git://github.com/mixu/nwm.git
cd nwm
node-waf clean || true && node-waf configure build
sudo npm link # add a global npm symlink to this repository - so nwm-user can find it (man npm link)
cd ..
git clone git://github.com/mixu/nwm-user.git
cd nwm-user
npm link nwm # now make a symlink to the nwm installation

Add it to ~/.xinitrc (change paths!!):

exec /usr/local/bin/node ~/mnt/nwm-user/nwm-user.js 2>~/nwm.err.log 1>~/nwm.log

And while we’re at it, lets add some other stuff:

VBoxClient-all &
export PATH=/tmp/bin:$PATH # for node-waf, too lazy to work on a better solution
xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/local
xset fp rehash

Run “startx” to start X11 with nwm.

Installing my mp3 player

First, we need to configure alsa (included by default):

pacman -S mpg123 alsa-utils

Run:

alsamixer

and turn on Master and PCM channels (by pressing m) as they are muted by default.

sudo alsactl store

Then continue:

git clone git://github.com/mixu/nplay.git

Run nplay with

node nplay.js

TODO: fix directory in source code and change backend from mpg321 to mpg123.

Switching the keyboard language in X11

I sometimes need to write emails in Finnish, so here is how to switch the layout:

setxkbmap -layout fi # revert back setxkbmap -layout us 

Install yaourt

Install dependencies

yaourt libpng12 gtk2-theme-dust

Install Sublime Text 2

Sublime Text needs libpng12, which you have to install from AUR:

wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/li/libpng12/libpng12.tar.gz
tar -xzvf libpng12.tar.gz
cd libpng12
makepkg
pacman -U ./libpng12-1.2.46-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Then download and run Sublime Text 2.

Also, you might want to ger http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gt/gtk2-theme-dust/gtk2-theme-dust.tar.gz.

Configuring Sublime Text 2

locate Packages # returns ~/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages
cd ~/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages
git clone https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ "Theme - Soda"
cd User
wget http://blog.mixu.net/files/2010/05/my_themes.zip # Install my themes
unzip my_themes
rm my_themes.zip

Base File settings

{
  // FONTS and COLORS
  "color_scheme": "Packages/User/Mixu Espresso.tmTheme",
  "font_size": 11,
  "tab_size": 2,
  // WHITESPACE
    // Set to true to insert spaces when tab is pressed
    "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
    "trim_automatic_white_space": true,
    "trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
    // Set to false to disable detection of tabs vs. spaces on load
    "detect_indentation": false,
  "shift_tab_unindent": true,
  // Set to false to disable highlighting any line with a caret
  "highlight_line": true,
  // Set to "none" to turn off drawing white space, "selection" to draw only the
  // white space within the selection, and "all" to draw all white space
  "draw_white_space": "selection",
  // Set to true to ensure the last line of the file ends in a newline
  // character when saving
  "ensure_newline_at_eof_on_save": true,
  "fold_buttons": false
}

Global Settings

{
  "theme": "Soda Light.sublime-theme"
}

Other tweaks

I put these in my usual “startup” command, nwm-setup.sh and run it manually:

xrandr --output VBOX0 --auto --left-of VBOX1 # Virtualbox displays
chromium & # start chromium
export PS1="[\W]\$ "
xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr # Set pointer
nitrogen --restore & # Restore desktop background using nitrogen

Other dependencies

pacman -S redis mysql ruby libxslt

Setting up ree:

cd
bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)
echo '[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM function' >> ~/.bashrc
source .bashrc
rvm install ree-1.8.7-2011.03

Installing REE will fail. You need torun the installer from /home/m/.rvm/src/ree-1.8.7-2011.03/installer manually:

./installer -no-tcmalloc

Then continue on:

rvm ree-1.8.7-2011.03 --default

The goal here is to:

1. Expose Socket.io and your main application from a single port — avoiding cross-domain communication
2. Support HTTPS for both connections — enabling secure messaging
3. Support the Websockets and Flashsockets transports from Socket.io — for performance
4. Perform load balancing for both the backends somewhere — for performance

Socket.io’s various transports

Socket.io supports multiple different transports:

Starting point: Nginx and Websockets

Nginx is generally the first recommendation for Node.js deployments. It’s a high-performance server and even includes support for proxying requests via the HttpProxyModule.

However, — and this should be made much obvious to people starting with Socket.io — the problem is that while Nginx can talk HTTP/1.1 to the client (browser), it talks HTTP/1.0 to the server. Nginx’s default HttpProxyModule does not support HTTP/1.1, which is needed for Websockets.

Websockets 76 requires support for HTTP/1.1 as the handshake mechanism is not compatible with HTTP/1.0. What this means is that if Nginx is used to reverse proxy a Websockets server (like Socket.io), then the WS connections will fail. So no Websockets for you if you’re behind Nginx.

There is a workaround, but I don’t see the benefit: use a TCP proxy (there is a custom module for this by Weibin Yao, see here ). However, you cannot run another service on the same port (e.g. your main app and Socket.io on port 80) as the TCP proxy does not support routing based on the URL (e.g. /socket.io/ to Socket.io and the rest to the main app), only simple load balancing.

So the benefit gained from doing this is quite marginal: sure, you can use Nginx for load balancing, but you will still be working with alternative ports for your main app and Socket.io.

Alternatives to Nginx

Since you can’t use Nginx and support Websockets,  you’ll need to deal with two separate problems:

1. How to terminate SSL connections and
2. How to route HTTP traffic to the right backend based on the URL / load balance

If you want to run two services on the same port, then you will have to terminate SSL connections before doing anything else. There are several alternatives for SSL termination:

• Stunnel. Supports multiple SSL certificates per process, does simple SSL termination to another port.
• Stud. Only supports one SSL certificate per invocation, does simple SSL termination to another port.
• Pound. An SSL-termination-capable reverse proxy and load balancer.
• Node’s https. Can be made to do anything, but you’ll have to write it yourself.

If you choose Stunnel or Stud, then you need a load balancer as well if you plan on having more than one Node instance in the backend.

HAProxy is not generally compatible with Websockets, but Socket.IO contains code which works around this issue and allows you to use HAProxy. This means that the alternatives are:

• Stunnel for SSL termination + HAProxy for routing/load balancing
• Stud for SSL termination + HAProxy for routing/load balancing
• Pound (SSL and routing/load balancing)

I haven’t looked into Pound more – mainly as I could not find info on it’s TCP reverse proxying capabilities (see the section on Flash sockets below), but it seems to work for these guys.

Setting up Stunnel

The Stunnel part is quite simple:

cert = /path/to/certfile.pem
; Service-level configuration
[https]
accept  = 443
connect = 8443

If you only have one Node instance, you can skip setting up HAProxy, since you don’t need load balancing.

Setting up HAProxy

Would you like Flash Sockets with that?

Note that we need TCP mode in order to support Flash sockets, which do not speak HTTP.

Flash sockets are just plain and simple TCP sockets, which will start by sending the following payload: ‘<policy-file-request/>\0′. They expect to receive a Flash cross domain policy as a response.

Since Flash sockets don’t use HTTP, we need a load balancer which is capable of detecting the protocol of the request, and of forwarding non-HTTP requests to Socket.io.

HAProxy can do that, as it has two different modes of operation:

• HTTP mode – which allows you to specify the backend based on the URI
• TCP mode – which can be used to load balance non-HTTP transports.

Main frontend

We accept connections on two ports: 80 (HTTP) and 8443 (Stunnel-terminated HTTPS connections).

By default, everything goes to the backend app at port 3000. Some HTTP paths are selectively routed to socket.io

TCP mode is needed so that Flash socket connections can be passed through, and all non HTTP connections are sent to the TCP mode socket.io backend.

Source code

# Main frontend
frontend app
  bind 0.0.0.0:80
  bind 0.0.0.0:8443
  # Mode is TCP
  mode tcp
  # allow for many connections, with long timeout
  maxconn 200000
  timeout client 86400000

  # default to webapp backend
  default_backend webapp

  # two URLs need to go to the node pubsub backend
  acl is_socket_io path_beg /node
  acl is_socket_io path_beg /socket.io
     use_backend socket_io if is_socket_io

   tcp-request inspect-delay 500ms
   tcp-request content accept if HTTP
   use_backend sio_tcp if !HTTP

Port 843: Flash policy

Flash policy should be made available on 843.

Source code

# Flash policy frontend
frontend flashpolicy 0.0.0.0:843
   mode tcp
   default_backend sio_tcp

Default backend

This is just for your main application.

Source code

backend webapp
   mode http
   option httplog
   option httpclose
   server nginx1s localhost:3000 check

Socket.io backend

Here, we have a bunch of settings in order to allow Websockets connections through HAProxy.

Source code

backend socket_io
  mode http
  option                  httplog
  # long timeout
  timeout server 86400000
  # check frequently to allow restarting
  # the node backend
  timeout check 1s
  # add X-Forwarded-For
   option forwardfor
  # Do not use httpclose (= client and server
  # connections get closed), since it will close
  # Websockets connections
  no   option httpclose
  # Use "option http-server-close" to preserve
  # client persistent connections while handling
  # every incoming request individually, dispatching
  # them one after another to servers, in HTTP close mode
  option http-server-close
  option forceclose
  # just one node server at :8000
  server node1 localhost:8000 maxconn 2000 check

Socket.io backend in TCP mode

This is the same server as above, but accessed in TCP mode.

Source code

backend sio_tcp
  mode tcp
  server node2 localhost:8000 maxconn 2000 check

Conclusion

The configs above allow you to serve Websockets, Flash and polling from a single port.

However, I am dissatisfied by the complexity of this configuration. In particular, Flash sockets’ TCP requirements are rather painful since they require protocol detection in order to work from a single port.

The alternative is of course to run Socket.io on a different port than your main app. This would mean that you configure HAProxy to just do TCP mode load balancing at that port, with SSL termination in front of HAProxy.

If you do that, you might want to configure a fallback from Nginx at port 80 to Socket.io for those clients who are behind draconian corporate firewalls which disallow ports other than 80 and 443. The fallback will only support long polling and I don’t think Socket.io itself supports automatically switching ports during transport negotiation, but you can detect a failure in Socket.io and re-initialize manually with a different port and polling-only transport.

Do you have a better way? How do you deploy Socket.io? Let me know in the comments below.

Checkout a remote branch

# list branches first
git branch -a
# * master
# remotes/origin/branch_name
git checkout -b local_name remotes/origin/branch_name

Merging

# switch to master
git checkout master
# merge with experimental branch
git merge experimental

Create a tag

# list tags
git tag
# add a tag
git tag tagname
# push to remote
git push origin master --tags

So I decided to move to an alternative window manager. DWM (dynamic window manager, http://dwm.suckless.org/) is an extremely lightweight tiling window manager written in C which saves screen space and works pretty well as long as you don’t need to connect to wireless networks.

I’ve been pretty happy with it. The main drawback is that connecting to wireless networks is a pain in the ass as there are no proper GUI tools to do this. Check out these tips to get started with dwm

0. Installing dwm on Fedora, keyboard shortcuts

To install DWM, run yum install dwm. You can then choose to use dwm or Gnome or Kde in the login screen.

The default keyboard shortcuts are listed at man dwm or at http://man.suckless.org/dwm/1/dwm.

1. Customizing dwm

Customizing dwm can be done by making changes to config.h and recompiling the window manager.

Fedora has a really nice package called dwm-user, which automates this process! Here is the package description:

dwm-start is a helper script for running and reconfiguring dwm if neccessarry. It’s the preferred way of starting dwm in Fedora.
Running  dwm-start starts Fedora build by default. If you wish to customize your configuration, put the dwm config header file to $HOME/.dwm/config.h and adjust it according to your needs. Every time the user configuration file has changed, dwm-start will rebuild the user dwm binary prior to its execution.

All you need to do is:

sudo yum install dwm-user

mkdir ~/.dwm

cp /usr/src/dwm-user-5.8.2-6.fc14/config.def.h ~/.dwm/config.h

E.g. install via yum, then make a ~/.dwm folder, then copy the config.h file and edit it. When you restart, you can choose dwm-user as your window manager which uses you custom version of dwm. For example, I remapped Meta (Cmd/Windows key) + h and meta + l to meta + pg up / pg down and meta + shift + q to meta + shift + end since I’m currently running Fedora on an OSX host.

You will probably make changes to the keyboard shortcuts. To find the keymap:

sudo updatedb

locate keysymdef.h

Keysymdef.h lists the names of the keys in X11.

2. Tip: Guake is just as awesome on dwm

By default, dwm launches xterm. I prefer to use guake, since that allows me to get the tabbed terminal window on any workspace when I need them. Just launch guake& to run it in the background.

UPDATE: I moved to F15 (deciding simply to ignore Gnome 3) and noticed that guake has problems starting. To fix those:

sudo yum install xfce4-notifyd

Basically you need a notify daemon to allow Guake to print that pretty message “Guake is running”, and xfce4-notifyd provides an alternative notifications daemon.

3. Launch netbeans and other Java programs with font smoothing and GTK look and feel

You need to specify a couple of extra switches to get the GTK look and feel in Java programs, for example:

/home/username/netbeans-7.0/bin/netbeans -J-Dswing.aatext=true -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on –laf com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel

4. Launch nautilus without the desktop

nautilus --no-desktop

5. Use dwm with a dual screen setup

If dwm starts with mirroring output to your secondary screen, then you need to run xrandr to get the names your screens. E.g. VBOX0 and VBOX1.

Then configure the screen layout:

xrandr --output VBOX1 --auto --right-of VBOX0

dwm will now let you have your own workspaces for each screen.

6. Change your desktop background

Use feh to change your desktop background:

feh --bg-tile /path/to/background/image

7. xterm config

For a usable xterm, create the following ~/.Xresources and run

xrdb -merge .Xresources

Source code

xterm*faceName:           monospace:pixelsize=14
xterm*saveLines:          9999
xterm*scrollBar:          false
xterm*background:  #000000
xterm*foreground:  #dfdfdf
xterm*color0:      #000000
xterm*color1:      #9e1828
xterm*color2:      #aece92
xterm*color3:      #968a38
xterm*color4:      #414171
xterm*color5:      #963c59
xterm*color6:      #418179
xterm*color7:      #bebebe
xterm*color8:      #666666
xterm*color9:      #cf6171
xterm*color10:     #c5f779
xterm*color11:     #fff796
xterm*color12:     #4186be
xterm*color13:     #cf9ebe
xterm*color14:     #71bebe
xterm*color15:     #ffffff

8. Add a clock using xsetroot

You can do something like this in a bash script to show the time in dwm on the top right corner.

while true; do
   xsetroot -name "$( date +"%F %R" )"
   sleep 1m    # Update time every minute
done

iwlist scan

9.1 WEP wifi

> > #wep connect to a wep wifi
> > #! /bin/sh
> >
> > key="`grep $1 /home/pmarin/wep | cut -d' ' -f2`"
> > sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
> > sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid $1
> > sudo iwconfig wlan0 key s:$key
> > sudo dhclient wlan0
> > #end

> > The wep is a plain file with to columms
> >
> > essid  key

9.2 WPA wifi

> >
> > #wpa connect to a wpa wifi
> > #! /bin/sh
> >
> > sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
> > sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid $1
> > sudo wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c/home/pmarin/wpa -B
> > sudo dhclient wlan0
> > #end
> >
> > the wpa file is similar than /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

To create the wpa file:

wpa_passphrase your_ssid_of_network your_network_password

Create the file:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
#ap_scan=2

network={
       ssid="your_ssid"
       scan_ssid=1
       proto=WPA RSN
       key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
       pairwise=CCMP TKIP
       group=CCMP TKIP
       psk=your_psk_from_wpa_passphrase
}


sudo wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dwext -i eth0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

9.3 Wifi troubleshooting:

1) CHECK THAT YOU DON’T have the NetworkManager service or wpa_supplicant running already!!!

You can run wpa_supplicant with -dd flag for a detailed debug output.1) If you don’t manage to connect to the AccessPoint, try to uncomment line 2 in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.

2) If that doesn’t help, try change its value to 0 or 1.

3) If you get troubles while authenticating, try removing “RSN” and/or”CCMP” strings from /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.

Sources for Wifi stuff:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=263136

http://www.mail-archive.com/dwm@suckless.org/msg06800.html

My new years resolution was to ship more, but I never expected to ship my own ass over to San Francisco! It’ll be awesome.

I flew in on June 3rd, and have been here for two days. So far, everything has been pretty awesome, though I still need to find an apartment rental and get the final paperwork done on this side!

Since I’ll be able to concentrate more on code instead of living the triple life of a doctoral student, individual entrepreneur and open source programmer, I hope to start building a solid streak of open source/fun coding while I’m here. I read something on HN recently which I think will be good to keep in mind:

“I have a rule: I refuse to go to sleep if I haven’t read and written some code on a given day (this doesn’t include the code I write for work, of course). So far, this rule has had a positive impact on my ability to code.”

I’ll try to apply that rule, perhaps using 42goals.com or the Calendar About Nothing…

Check out Ahmed Abdo’s post on Flash audio stutter for the details. Works perfectly for me!

Details: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477

The bug is triggered by a change in glibc. Who proposed the fix? Linus Torvalds. So I guess the following isn’t quite true?

I love the pragmatism from his part:

So in the kernel we have a pretty strict “no regressions” rule, and that if people depend on interfaces we exported having side effects that weren’t intentional, we try to fix things so that they still work unless there is a major reason not to.

So I’m disappointed glibc just closes this as NOTABUG. There’s no real reason to do the copy backwards that I can see, so doing it that way is just stupid.

But whatever. You can do a LD_PRELOAD trick to get a sane memcpy(), and it does indeed fix the sound for me.
[...]
The fact that the glibc people don’t do that, and that this hasn’t been elevated despite clearly being a big usability problem (normal users SHOULD NOT HAVE TO google bugzillas and play with LD_PRELOAD to have a working system), is just sad.

Although overall, as an end user it the conversation around this bug and its persistence makes me sad. I know it’s selfish not to care about the technical superiority of a solution or about who is to blame here – but I’d just like to have my smooth Flash playback…