01.06.08
Postgresql lc_collate aggravation
Implementing tearch2 on an existing postgres database : not as simple as it seems.
When trying to install tsearch2 into an existing database I stumbled upon a problem. It seems that tsearch2 takes its default locale from the lc_collate setting of the postgres cluster.
In my setup this was set to “en_US.ISO-8859-1″.
You can check your collation by sending this query to postgres :
show lc_collate;
This database was upgraded to 8.2 from an older version and the collation was set a long time ago when the database was created. Because of this setting tsearch2 refused to accept any characters outside this encoding, which was very annoying since we have our data utf-8 encoded.
The only solution was to create a new cluster with a UTF-8 collation and import all the data.
I hope postgres will support more dynamic collation settings in the future.
01.04.08
Download Hebrew X fonts
To install Hebrew fonts for use in X (KDE, GNOME), follow the instructions below.
You can either download a free TTF font or install available fonts if you use Debian (or a Debian derived distribution).
A free TTF font that includes support for Hebrew glyphs.
If you are using Debian or Ubuntu however you can just try this command in a shell:
sudo apt-get install culmus xfonts-efont-unicode xfonts-efont-unicode-ib xfonts-intl-european msttcorefonts
Swatch multiple log files
To make swatch parse multiple log files at once from a central syslog server use the following command from any bash compatible shell:
swatch -c ~/.swatchrc --tail-args '-q -f -n 0' -t "`find . -name *.20080104 | xargs`"
Of course you can substitute ~/.swatchrc with your own swatch config and *.20080103 with your own search criteria.
Good luck.
01.03.08
Linux for all?
People say Linux is for savvy people that like to take apart and put together their computer a lot. Well, not anymore. Linux can be used to do some real work. Advancing Linux and Open Source in Israel tries to bring Linux and Open Source products closer to the people. You will find information and guides.
