Remove duplicate RPMs

I just started an upgrade on one machine from F-7 to F-8. I logged in over another hop -- I logged in to machine A, from there to machine B which got upgraded. Then machine A was rebooted to load the newest kernel to guard against the vmsplice local root exploit, bang, I forgot to start the upgrade in a screen and thus it was aborted.

Now the upgrade was half-done and many packages where installed twice, old and new version. Doh!

So here is a short snippet how to get rid of the double packages:

for p in `rpm -qa --qf "%{name}\n" | sort | uniq -d`; do
  rpm -q $p | sort | head -n1;
  echo Removing `rpm -q $p | sort | head -n1`;
  rpm -e `rpm -q $p | sort | head -n1`;
done

You may have to run this several times and then do some cleaning by hand. To find out if there are still any double packages do

rpm -qa --qf "%{name}\n" | sort | uniq -d

Some packages remained until after I restarted and finished the upgrade. This was hand work you should try to avoid...

Got waves?

There is a reason why I use Emacs... ;-)

Image is linked from xkcd.com. It's licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

24C3: Hacking the genome

Today was the first day of 24C3 with many interesting talks. The most interesting part today from my point was the Programming DNA talk. It gave pointers to various projects currently working on modifying the genome in any thinkable way. What Endy was especially up to was the idea to create some kind of high-level language of genetic programming. For this they sequenced a virus's genome and determined the functional parts. These parts do overlap. What they then did was to stretch it such that every functional block is separated. Although the virus lost 40% of its efficiency it was still viable - and now easier to understand... The question was raised if it was a good idea to have a hacker community working on these genetic algorithms, some kind of grass roots genetic development. Do we want that? What really can be frightening is the fact that he expects genetic synthesizers to be available for < 10000$ within a decade - keep in mind that you can download the sequence of the Ebola on the internet with not too much of a headache.

Another big topic today were voting computers in the Netherlands and in Germany. It's really hair-raising what the cities that do have these voting computers actually think how "safe" these machines are - while they are not and it has been chown. I should really think about becoming a canvasser...

In general I'd really like to get my hands on one of the quadcopters that are flying here virtually everywhere. Let's see...

24C3: Volldampf voraus!

We (Medha, Tob, Helgar, Phil and myself) are back in Berlin for this year's 24th Chaos Communication Congress. We had a good start yesterday and already bought our ticket. Now we are going to have some breakfast and then attend the opening ceremony. Four days of fun and ideas ahead!

Ella and the robot

Today Ella had first contact with a moving robot. At the beginning she watched interested what this spooky machine would gonna do. After it just moved around slowly in the lab she just slept. The robot even got close to here but she didn't care.

Let's see what happens if she sees the robot playing with a ball for the first time - she loves balls...