Random photos (2)

The street lights besides Callaway building.

Two young Aggies were busy putting up a board on the green grass field. I walked there and asked what's that for. They explained a lot but I could not understand much -_-|| Seemed that was a campaign for student president election.

A red VW Beetle on the empty car park besides Reed Arena. It was spring break and a peaceful, bright afternoon.

Python-C software installation

I've been trying to install xMAN software, named for "extreme mapping of oligonucleotides". This software is a new kind to me: C-extended Python. And its installation tends to be different.

First install prerequisite:

sudo yum install swig.x86_64
sudo yum install python-numarray.x86_64

The package comes along with a setup.py, run as suggested:

sudo python setup.py install

Got error:

error: Python.h: No such file or directory

Looked through Google, saw that python-dev needs to be installled:

sudo yum install python-devel.x86_64

Then the installation worked just fine!

Make friend with SAMBA

I'm doing a system admin's business, where I'm totally a dummy.

Following is trials I use to make friend with Samba (or hoax it to work for me...)

Start/stop service:
# /etc/init.d/smb start
# /etc/init.d/smb stop


Configuration file: /etc/samba/smb.conf
Content:
[global]
workgroup = MYGROUP
netbios name = HOBBIT
security = SHARE
[data]
comment = Data
path = xxxx
force user = xx
force group = xx
read only = No
guest ok = Yes

To properly use it, set seLinux to log warnings instead of blocking. I did this via GUI. And here's a method to modify its config file:

http://www.revsys.com/writings/quicktips/turn-off-selinux.html

The net location thus can be viewed on my laptop via:
smb://location/dir

The location can be viewed on windows machine via:
\\location\dir

To map it as a network drive for windows application, use following command in CMD:

net use X: \\location\dir

Compiling R on CentOS

What's the problem with the CentOS I'm working with... seems so many necessary components are missing from regular Linux distro I have been working with>_<

During configuration, following errors tell that F77 compiler is missing, and I installed following:
# yum install compat-gcc-34-g77.x86_64

And re-config, again error complains that readline utility is missing.
After yum search readline, I chose to install this:

yum install readline.x86_64

but did not work. then I installed this:

yum install readline-devel.x86_64

and it worked!

Go on to install bioconductor:

> source("http://bioconductor.org/biocLite.R")
> biocLite()

Everything OK.

A walk around Texas A&M

These photos are taken on March 2, 2009, around southern campus, where I usually jog in the afternoon.

The clouds in that afternoon attracted me so I hastened to go back home and fetch the camera. When I got out however, the beautiful patterns of the clouds were basically wiped out by wind... anyway, I still took some pics while jogging.

And here shows a few.


This is the research park. Dozens of ducks are enjoying life there in the pond.


A plane was about to land in the nearby small airport.

Mount NTFS device on CentOS

This morning, I inserted an external hard drive to my dear server, and got an angry message: Unsupported file system type (ntfs)!

I consulted contents on this centos wiki page:

http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFS?highlight=(ntfs)

and followed all the instructions, including install rpmforge repository, yum update, install those weird stuff (fuse fuse-ntfs-3g dkms dkms-fuse), and tried but failed again:

# mount /dev/sdf1 /mnt/test/ -t ntfs-3g
FATAL: Module fuse not found.
ntfs-3g-mount: fuse device is missing, try 'modprobe fuse' as root


Two hours later when I was almost despair, I searched on google again, and got a top-hit link:

http://www.wains.be/index.php/2007/02/28/mount-ntfs-disks-under-centos/

I immediately went to rpmfind.org to search the RPM package, with the kernel name of the machine. and I got it.

# rpm -ivh kernel-module-ntfs-2.6.18-92.1.10.el5-2.1.27-0.rr.10.11.x86_64.rpm
# /sbin/modprobe ntfs


This just works!