Category: Tech

Windows batch files arguments

Since Windows happen to be the platform of choice of my clients for business needs I tend to write also scripts for Windows. Many times I just create small batch files to mimic Unix commands like ls and ll as I forget to type dir instead. Anyway, many times I just want to pass any parameters provided to a batch file to the callee, and I used to have something like

@dir %1 %2 %3

Well, there should be a better way, and there is

@dir %*

and just in case you wander what other options are supported (and there are surprisingly many!), check out

call /?

in Windows command prompt, aka cme.exe.

Enjoy!

Moving to a new server: Call to undefined function: stripos() in /home/WP-LC/wp-lc.php on line 2

Moving to a new server is always a challenge. This time I wanted to have a proper version of Python for backend, but the current server only had version 2.4(!). As somebody put it "Wow, that’s ancient!". Anyway, as I wanted to have Django running my application I needed something at least 2.6’ish. I have asked for a new server and after some attempts my hosting provider (Lunarpages) provided me with one. OK, PHP and MySQL seem to be also OK (think of WordPress, etc), so I am settled. Right…

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Syntax highlight in vim

Although not being addicted to vim I do happen to use it on a regular basis as it is available on virtually all environments I do meaningful work with :). To get it a bit fancier you can add the following to your ~/.vimrc.

vim python coloring

syntax enable
set background=dark
colorscheme solarized 
set tabstop=4 
set shiftwidth=4 
set expandtab

Download and copy corresponding theme like solarized.vim to ~/.vim/colors

:wq

Small update
If you get annoying A/B/C/D characters when pressing arrow buttons either change .vimrc to get 

set nocp

or type it in the vim prompt

:set nocp

Enjoy!

Upgrade Ubuntu server with boot partition full

At certain point my small silent server needed an extra package, but running apt-get only gave me errors. Digging further I found that my /boot partition (default Ubuntu server setup) was running out of disk space. After manually deleting old versions of images I finally got space, but that didn’t fix broken packages, e.g.:

$ sudo apt-get -f install
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-server:
linux-server depends on linux-image-server (= 3.2.0.53.63); however:
Version of linux-image-server on system is 3.2.0.58.69.
linux-server depends on linux-headers-server (= 3.2.0.53.63); however:
Version of linux-headers-server on system is 3.2.0.58.69.
dpkg: error processing linux-server (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-server
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The only fix I have found was downloading and installing the missing package manually:

$ wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/linux-server_3.2.0.58.69_amd64.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i linux-server_3.2.0.58.69_amd64.deb

Enjoy!

C++11 vs Python – not quite there yet

Although not exactly fair, while reading the C++ Primer book to refresh my C++11 knowledge during Christmas break (OK, after kids went asleep), I came across the example given for the new C++11 features (lambdas), strings and STL usage in chapter 16, which does nothing more than counting words in a text file. This is a rather classical example and I happen to have it as a part of the Python course I give to my colleagues. Of course I couldn’t hold myself from comparing C++11 and Python as C++11 actually tries to get higher level and closer to languages like Python. Here is what I’ve got.
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