I just tried to change the permalink in wordpress so it looks nicer and the links are more like “http://ansi.23-5.eu/2011/12/29/apache-rewrite-for-wordpress/” instead of “http://ansi.23-5.eu/?id=blubber/”. Normally this is done in 2 steps. But I had some error in my virtual host configuration file. But please let me first explain the 2 normal steps. Just for the sake of completeness.

1. Inside WordPress under /Settings/Permalinks change it to some nice looking.
2. As root execute “a2enmod rewrite” and a nice “/etc/init.d/apache2 restart”

Normally thats all. But it turns out that I had a mistake in my virtual host config file.

It looked like

    <Directory /var/www/ansi.23-5.eu/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride none
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>

But with this setting it disables the rewrite for this virtual server. The right config should

look like this:

    <Directory /var/www/ansi.23-5.eu/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride all 
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>

With this change and a "/etc/init.d/apache2 restart" everything works fine and I have the nice permalinks.

I set up and ntp Server (Network Time Server) at ntp.23-5.eu. In case you want to keep your system up to date feel free to use this ntp server. Beside the fun setting up some cool technology I added my server to the pool.ntp.org project. I case you do not know it have a look here. Its a public pool of ntp servers free to use. Just add pool.ntp.org as ntp server or if you like to have a closer (network point of view) server use eu.pool.ntp.org or de.pool.ntp.org or some other countrycode. Beside the good feeling contributing to a cool project you also get some nice statistic. For example here is my time offset history.

More Info on my server here.

After the old server died and killed my blog there was a long time without a blog. In the last days I set up a new blog. I reposted some old blog posts mainly from the howto topic. More and this time new blog posts will follow when its time. Although I made a redirect from ansi.interblc.com to ansi.23-5.eu please update your bookmarks.

#!/bin/bash
 rm a.csv
 rm a.kml
 rm a.gpx
 for i in *.loc
 do
 gpsbabel -i geo -f $i -o csv,prefer_shortnames -F $i.csv
 cat  $i.csv >> a.csv
 rm  $i.csv
 done
 gpsbabel -i csv -f a.csv -o kml -F a.kml
 gpsbabel -i csv -f a.csv -o gpx -F a.gpx

sudo gpsbabel -i gpx -f a.gpx -o garmin -F usb:0
 sudo gpsbabel -i garmin,power_off -f usb:0

This script converts all the *.loc files in one folder into one GPX and one KML file. the KML file can be placed on a webserver and then fiewed with google maps or via google earth. Here are some usefull commands:

Upload route:

sudo gpsbabel -r -i garmin -f usb:0 -o kml -F u.kml

Tracks downloaden from Garmin:

sudo gpsbabel -t -i garmin -f usb:0 -o gpx -F tracks.gpx

Switch the Garmin off:sudo gpsbabel -i garmin,power_off -f usb:0

Best Webpage I found for creating routes for bike tours is Marengo

And now have fun.

1. ssh -X server #as normal user
2. xterm #for testing if export display as normal user works
3. echo $DISPLAY #write it down
4. xauth #enters the shell of xauth
   1. list # find the line with the display number from step 3 for me it was “wpsvm054/unix:12 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 071df2e12cfff0ed75fd0af5869665f7″ remember the first part of it
   2. quit #to leave the shell
5. xauth extract filename system/unix:12 # the line from step 4.1
6. sudo su – # to become root
7. xauth merge filename # filename from step 5
8. export DISPLAY=:nummer.0 #Displaynumber from step 3 resp. 4.1
9. xterm #for testing

Hope it works on other systems too.

I love Peters Bikemap.net page. Using this service to plan all my bike tours. Unfortunately my Garmin (GPSmap 60) does not understand the gpx file from Bikemap export. I wrote this little script to modify and split the route into smaller routes. GPSmap 60 only handle 250 points per route. Therefore the script splits the route into smaller pieces, renames the note names into “rtept” resp. “rte” and uploads the route via USB to the connected garmin.

What you need to run this script are gpsbabel and the unix commands: sed, split,cut and head .

Here it is, as usually no guarantee.

#!/bin/bash
filename=$1

gpsbabel -i gpx -f ${filename} -o csv -F out.csv
split -l 200 out.csv splits
rm out.csv

for i in `ls splits*`
do
 gpsbabel -i csv -f ${i} -o gpx -F ${i}.gpx
 sed 's/wpt/rtept/' ${i}.gpx > out
 rm ${i}.gpx
 mv out ${i}.gpx
 rm ${i}

 linenumber=`wc -l ${i}.gpx | cut -d " " -f 1`
 let linenumber-=1

 sed -n 10,${linenumber}p ${i}.gpx >a.gpx

 rm ${i}.gpx

 cat ${filename} | head -n 9  >${i}.gpx
 echo "<rte>"                >>${i}.gpx
 cat a.gpx                   >>${i}.gpx
 echo "</rte>"               >>${i}.gpx
 echo "</gpx>"               >>${i}.gpx
 rm a.gpx

 sudo gpsbabel -r -i gpx -f ${i}.gpx -o garmin -F usb:0
 rm ${i}.gpx
done

I am using Ubuntu “Daily builds” for some time inside Suns VirtualBox. Unfortunately the daily builds are not longer booting inside VirtualBox for more then 2 weeks now. Christian told me about a new feature of Grub2. You can boot ISO images directly from your hard disk without burning them on CD or USB. Awesome feature and I had to try it today. Here is the description on how to do it with Ubuntu 9.10.

First I am using this tiny script to update all daily builds with the zsync tool. It transfers only the changed parts of the ISO so you and the Ubuntu teams save a lot of traffic.

zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/lucid-desktop-i386.iso.zsync
cd kubuntu
zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/current/lucid-desktop-i386.iso.zsync
cd ../netbook
zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-netbook/daily-live/current/lucid-netbook-i386.iso.zsync
cd ../xubunutu
zsync http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/daily-live/current/lucid-desktop-i386.iso.zsync
cd ..
rm `find ./ -name "*.zs-old" `

This script keeps all my daily builds up to date.

Next Step is to enable the grub menu. In Ubuntu it can be done in “/etc/default/grub“. Change the following lines

GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false

With this change you will see a 10 seconds count down when booting up. With the shift-key you get access to the grub boot menu. Next is to add the ISO images to the grub menu. Change to the “/etc/grub.d” dir.

Here you can find the grub menu entries and configuration files. Add your ISO images starting with 50 here. For example my entry for the normal Ubuntu ISO image (50_ubuntu) looks like this:

echo "Adding $(egrep menu[e]ntry $0 | cut -d'"' -f2)" >&2
 cat << EOF
menuentry "Ubuntu 10.04 Daily Build" {
       loopback loop (hd0,3)/ansi/software_and_config/ISOs/ubuntu/lucid-desktop-i386.iso
       linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ansi/software_and_config/ISOs/ubuntu/lucid-desktop-i386.iso file=(loop)/preseed/ubuntu.seed quiet splash bootkbd=sg --
       initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

My ISO files are stored on sda3 under /ansi/software_and_config/ISOs/ubuntu/. In order to change it for your needs there are 3 elements to change. The loopback line contains your hard disk in grub style (hdx,y x=0->sda x=1->sdb aso) and the path. The third element to change is in the linux line. Store this file as “50_ubuntu” in “/etc/grub.d“, make it executable with “chmod a+x 50_ubuntu” and activate the changes with “ubdate-grub“. After a reboot you should be able to activate the grub menu with the shift-key and select the new entry. Have fun.

I found some pages on this topic but the description there was not working for me so I changed it. But take a look on your own:

• http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/lucid-lynx-ohne-cd-brennen-auf-realem-system-/#post-2326751
• http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/GRUB_2/Konfiguration