Tales from the Engine Shed

I ran in to a problem recently where I had installed Subversion from source and then wanted to remove it again. As I hadn’t specified a target when I ran configure the files were installed in /usr/local and the developers helpfully do not support an uninstall target to make (and defend this position which to me made them look close-minded and unable to understand that they are writing software for other people to use and not themselves, but never mind).

With the help of someone on a mailing list finally being helpful and not arrogant towards someone else in my predicament a fairly foolproof way was devised:

cd /path/to/source/tree
make install DESTDIR=/tmp/qqq
cd /tmp/qqq
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -i -0 echo "{}" | cut -c 2- | less
This list can then be reviewed, found to be clean, and the software removed with:
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -i -0 echo "{}" | cut -c 2- | xargs -i rm "{}"
TaDa!

I realise this will not get the system back how it was, but it might mean I can get on with trying to build a Debian backport

Originally published 2008/11/14

Now I have Ubuntu-eee on my EeePC I have been experimenting with encryption in case I leave it lying around. Apart from having to manually sync all my .dotfiles and .dotdirectories because the instructions failed to account for that it appears to have been easy and painless.

Instructions for setting up transparent encryption of your home directory

Several weeks on and I am still happy with it - I have noticed no problems with corruption or performance.

It has been a while, but I have decided to try and blog on here more.

One of the reasons behind this is the fact the company for whom I work has rolled out internal blogging systems for employees to use freely and I have to say it is proving quite useful for sharing snippets and providing an outlet for people’s thoughts.

It has certainly prompted me to write a few posts from the inane and obtuse to the technical, and I may share a few of them here.