I have a Ubuntu Jaunty VM on Slicehost where I wanted to install MongoDB. Unfortunately Jaunty reached EOL on October, 2010. Since I didn’t want to upgrade my Jaunty installation I found a way to install Mongo DB from source as described in this article:

http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Building+for+Linux#BuildingforLinux-Ubuntu9.04and9.10

To make this work you need to install several dependencies as described in the article above. You need to update your /etc/apt/source.list from:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe

to:

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe

Note the old-releases which tells Ubuntu to pull packages from the old repos. After making this update you need to run:

sudo apt-get update

and then you should be able to follow the MongoDB installation process above.

I just purchased a new MacBook Pro and ran into a small hiccup with my user home directory in OS X Lion. When I setup my new account and used the same shortname as I had on my previous MBP. Using Migration Assistant I was not allowed to migrate my old user account since it had an identical name. In my case the path to the user’s home directory was /Users/db. So for Migration Assistant to properly migrate my data via Time Machine I had to give the new account a short name of db_old. Now I do a lot of work from the command line and seeing /Users/db_old in my path was a little disconcerting.

Initially I used Terminal to mv /Users/db_old to /Users/db but this called all sorts of problems with my apps not loading not to mention other hassles. After doing a bit of Googling I found out this was possible by following these steps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428

The Caveat was that the link to “Enable Root User” in this article was not applicable for my setup. I’m not sure that will be your case, but if it is then be sure to reference this article:

http://www.macosliontips.com/tips/enable-root-account-in-mac-os-x-lion.html

After enabling the root user I was able to proceed with the steps in the Apple knowledge base article above. I created a new account with a short name of db (my original short name) and then deleted my old account with short name of db_old. When I rebooted and logged into the db account I verified that everything was working properly.

I’m spending a lot of time with the SVN command line right now because we’re trying to get a product release out the door. One thing that I’ve found handy is the ability to get the comments and list of files changed for a certain revision number. This is fairly commonplace for SVN GUI tools, but it took me a bit to find out how to do this via command line. Here’s how you do it:

svn log -v -r 7447 https://yoursvnurl.com

You can remove the URL if you’re running this command from your local copy.

If you’re running an older version of Ubuntu that has been EOL’ed (End of Lifed) then you’ll at some point need to install a new package using apt-get. When trying to do this you’ll likely get a 404 erros saying the package isn’t found. Your choice is to either upgrade Ubuntu to a new version or modify /etc/apt/sources.list to point to an older release archive. In my case I took the path of release resistance and modified /etc/apt/sources.list. The original version had these lines:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted universe multiverse

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted universe multiverse

And I simply modified them to look like:

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted universe multiverse

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted universe multiverse

After saving your sources.list file you should be able to do a sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get install [your-package-name] to install whatever package you need. Thanks to @austinmills for helping me with this.

I’m getting more and more follows from “Twitter Whores”. Generally I can tell they’re spam follows before I even click on the link because they’re username will be something like Username1975. Anyway, this is a completely useless post, but on the up-side it’s good to know that Twitter is taking action and suspending their accounts.

I’ve decided to consolidate my different blogs about technology and skateboarding into techskater.com. I’ve migrated a majority of my content to this blog, but need to update all my pages in Google (> 300) to redirect to techskater. You’ll notice that this link about GoDaddy on Rails @ db75.com (my old blog) will redirect you to the appropriate article on techskater. Only 299 more pages to go

This will be an ongoing process so I decided not to wait until the full transition is done. My plans are to post about the entire process as I think there are some useful tips I can share for those moving their blogs to a new server/url. In the meantime, if you’re interested in Ruby on Rails, skateboarding, entrepreneurship, or just want to keep up with me then please feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed or check back every now and then. Thanks.