ten.ynottony.net » Ubuntu

Testing with Python 2.4 on Ubuntu 10.10

Anthony Batchelor — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:30:49 +0000

Recently I needed to test a Django app under Python 2.4. I’m using Ubuntu 10.10 and the lowest packaged version of Python in the repositories is 2.6. I decided to compile Python 2.4 myself and use it in a virtualenv environment to test the app. There were a couple of little gotchas that caught me when I was doing this, so I thought I’d write-up the process.

Step 1: Install the Build Dependencies

Python 2.6 is close enough to 2.4 that the dependencies haven’t changed much (if at all).
sudo apt-get build-dep python2.6

Step 2: Download Python 2.4 Final

wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4/Python-2.4.tgz tar -zxvf Python-2.4.tgz

Step 3: Configure and Install Python 2.4

My first attempt at building Python 2.4 failed with a buffer overflow. I found a Japanese forum post that had solved the issue by setting BASECFLAGS=-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE during the configure stage.
./configure BASECFLAGS=-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE make sudo make install

Step 4: Fix the Default Python Version

The make install step sets Python 2.4 as the default version of Python. I wanted to keep that at 2.6. So…
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/python sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/local/bin/python

Step 5: Install into Virtualenv

I wanted to set up a virtualenv environment to test the app. Here I specify which version of python I want to use for the interpreter and activate it.
virtualenv env -p python2.4 --no-site-packages source env/bin/activate

Netbooks

Anthony Batchelor — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 15:23:47 +0000

I’ve been thinking about buying a laptop or a netbook recently. I like the idea of a netbook but was a bit worried that it would be too small, crappy and underpowered.

Today I got to play with David’s Samsung N130 running Ubuntu 10.10.

It’s nice. It’s no slower for doing the day to day things I need to do than the laptop I use at work (although that’s not saying much).

I think my mind is made up now… I’ll see if I can find a nice refurbished netbook.

Speeding up Liferea

Anthony Batchelor — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:46:38 +0000

Liferea was taking a couple of minutes to open for me, so I thought I’d look for a solution to that. I have >100 feeds, but I’m not about to cut the amount down (not addicted, honest).

Liferea stores a lot of information in an sqlite database. If sqlite databases aren’t vacuumed every now and then, they bloat and slow down.

Most people know about speeding up Firefox by vacuuming the sqlite databases every now and then. Well, the same can be done with Liferea.
Close Liferea and paste the following in a bash terminal.

sqlite3 ~/.liferea_1.4/liferea.db "VACUUM;"

Open up Liferea and you should notice it load much faster. Unless of course, it was fast to begin with.