par2unpack and the problem with copying code from my blog

I’ve just discovered that using copy/past to grab a copy of the par2unpack.sh script I posted will render the script NON-EXECUTABLE!

Very annoying indeed. I suspect it’s probably a problem with the character encoding used by wordpress, which prevents correct interpretation by the shell. The fix is quite clumsy, as usual, but should work; I have converted the script to pdf.
All you need to do is open it and then use copy/paste to copy the code into your text editor. Then save it under whatever filename you like (although I personally think par2unpack is a logical choice). The reason for this mess? Well, it seems wordpress will not allow me to upload text files, so I fear there is simply nothing else for it :-(

Maybe soon I will start making the script a bit more userfriendly, add recursive unpacking, etc. If I have time for it.
In the mean time, this is an example of how you use it:
$:> par2unpack.sh /my/dir/with/lots/of/different/files/to/unpack

Have fun!

Here is the pdf:
par2unpack.pdf

[EDIT]
I have fixed a dumb mistake in the script, which prevented it from correctly moving into directories with spaces in their names, such as “/home/myname/usenet/return\ of\ the\ incredible\ spidermonkeys/” for example. I hope there are no more stupid mistakes like that, but for now it seems to work as intended.
I have also taken the liberty of omitting the extension “.sh” from the name. I’m probably being very naughty, but I don’t care: it looks better that way ;)
[/EDIT]

Installed openSUSE with beryl

I’ve decided that I like the openSUSE KDE interface too much to wait for Fedora core 7 to arrive. There have been problems, again. Small problems with repositories. Big problems with beryl. But now it’s all working, and let me tell you right now that the effects Beryl provides are spectacular! Let me also tell you right now that the instructions on the openSUSE wiki are total crap slightly inaccurate for my hardware configuration. I got the same dreaded white screen, that so many other people before me have experienced and submitted bugreports for.
I’ve since accidentally discovered that on my system (AMD Athlon XP 2600, 512MB RAM, nvidia GeForce FX5700), I sortof need to combine the instructions of all three setup methods on the openSUSE wiki. You need to have the packages installed as instructed in the Xgl section, you need to configure your graphics card as instructed in the nVidia/AIGLX section, and then you need to disable Xgl as instructed in the Xorg/AIGLX section. I also needed to correct the editing mistakes made by the nvidia-xconfig utility, as it wrote the driver options to the screen section, instead of the device section!!! Whew!
By the way, the page I’m talking about can be found HERE.

But after that, it works. And did I mention it looks spectacular? It really does!

Not installing openSUSE…

I have concluded my testing of openSUSE 10.2:

– Wireless support still not good enough. The connection was fine, but NTP did not work with NetworkManager. Plus the non-oss CD does not contain a madwifi module; not a big minus, but a minus all the same.

– YaST is not quite as good as some other software/system administration tools I’ve used. Installing the fuse module, for example, should also configure the system so that the module is loaded automatically. Ubuntu 6.10 does this correctly, openSUSE 10.2 does not. YaST also seems quite slow and inefficient compared to many other systems I have used.

– There is still not enough support for accessing Windows shared files, even though in my test it works flawlessly with fusesmb. There is also still not enough support for NTFS. I want to plug in an external harddrive formatted with ntfs, have it automatically mounted and have read and write access. Does that happen? No. Can it be done? Yes. I know it can be done, because I did it in Ubuntu 6.10

– Other small problems occured, such as minor update errors and crashing kde components.

All in all, openSUSE 10.2 is a nice system, but it is not yet good enough. I’ll wait for the release of Fedora core 7, and then start playing/testing again.