Month: July 2009

1000 posts

I just checked my WordPress dashboard, and it says:

  • 1,000 Posts
  • 1,847 Comments

First entry was posted on 13th of May 2006 – 1166 days ago.

During this time I had 2 breakdowns when I said that I close the blog, switched language, and moved from “everything that interests me" to “99% PostgreSQL only".

Blog helped me get new contacts, contracts and job.

So, thanks go to all of you who read and comment here – I can only try to keep you interested 🙂

In case you're interested – according to FeedBurner I have around 500 subscribers.

Slow vim startup

I had today a very weird situation.

From my laptop, I ssh to another system, and from there to yet another.

On this final system I noticed that vim starts relatively slow. i.e. this command:

time vim -u /dev/null -c “:q"

returned time in around 3.5 seconds, while on my laptop (which is much less powerful) it is:

=> time vim -u /dev/null -c ":q"
 
real    0m0.073s
user    0m0.056s
sys     0m0.016s

I tried to debug the situation, and it got weirder. If I did “su – another_user" (on the final system) – it became fast. What's more: if I did su – depesz (my account) back – vim was still fast!

After some debugging it occurred to me: I have automatic X11 forwarding turned on. I checked – and yes, in the shell that vim starts slowly, i had “DISPLAY" variable, set to localhost:10.0!

Quick unset DISPLAY, and suddenly vim starts 0.027s!

Lesson for future – do not use automatic X11 forwarding for long-distance ssh connections, or make sure you run vim with “-X" option.

Later I learned why it tries X11 connection – to get access to X copy/paste buffer (available as * register). Nice feature, but with quite problematic side effects.

bf hacking for “fun” and definitely no profit

#!/usr/bin/bf
+++++[>++[>>++++>+++++++>+++>+<<<<<-]>>+>+<<<<-]+++++[>+++++[>>>>>>++++>
++++>++++>++++<<<<<<<<<-]>>>>>>>+>++>+++<<<<<<<<<<-]>>>>-.>>>>>>++.--.+.
<<<<<++.>>---.>>.+.>.<<-.<++++.>>>--.<<<<<.>>---.>>>.<<<-.>+.>-.<<+++++.
>>>+++.<<<---.>++.<<<.>>>---.<--.++.>+++.<++.>>>---.<<<<<<<+.>>>.<<<<[-]

If you can read it, then something is definitely wrong with you ;-P

Waiting for 8.5 – Add log_line_prefix placeholder %e to contain the current SQL state

Also yesterday, and also Peter Eisentraut, committed patch by Guillaume Smet, which:

Add log_line_prefix placeholder %e to contain the current SQL state
 
Author: Guillaume Smet

Continue reading Waiting for 8.5 – Add log_line_prefix placeholder %e to contain the current SQL state

Waiting for 8.5 – Have \d show child tables that inherit from the specified parent

Yesterday Peter Eisentraut committed a patch, written by Damien Clochard, that modifies \d output in psql:

Have \d show child tables that inherit from the specified parent
 
As per discussion, \d shows only the number of child tables, because that
could be hundreds, when used for partitioning.  \d+ shows the actual list.
 
Author: Damien Clochard <damien@dalibo.info>

Continue reading Waiting for 8.5 – Have \d show child tables that inherit from the specified parent

Waiting for 8.5 – let’s start

Everybody wrote that 8.4 was released, so it's not a news now.

But. Starting from yesterday, my own PostgreSQL reports it's version like this:

# SELECT version();
                                                  version
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 8.5devel ON i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled BY GCC gcc (GCC) 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu4), 32-bit
(1 ROW)

Which means: I can start new blog posts series.

Continue reading Waiting for 8.5 – let's start