Arch Linux: failed to load module `zsh/computil’

If you’ve recently updated zsh and used tab auto-complete you’re getting the following error message.

➜  zsh  cd
_tags:36: failed to load module `zsh/computil': /usr/lib/zsh/4.3.15/zsh/computil.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
_tags:51: failed to load module `zsh/computil': /usr/lib/zsh/4.3.15/zsh/computil.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:55: command not found: comptry
_tags:60: command not found: comptags
_tags:67: command not found: comptags
_tags:36: command not found: comptags
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:55: command not found: comptry
_tags:60: command not found: comptags
_tags:67: command not found: comptags
_tags:36: command not found: comptags
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:51: command not found: comptry
_tags:55: command not found: comptry
_tags:60: command not found: comptags
_tags:67: command not found: comptags

This can be an indication for a system intrusion. A hacker cracker might have found a workaround for pacman’s signature system who probably did a man-in-the-middle attack by providing you a modified version of zsh which breaks your entire system and is now under control of this hacker cracker.

!! You definitely must reinstall Arch Linux !!

If you don’t, this hacker cracker can do very evil things by using your IP which identifies you if your computer is connected to the internet. Less evil things could be abuse of your IP for spam purpose. The most evil thing he could do is providing the internet with ch**d p*rn. For government agencies it looks like you provided it and it’s you who will be charged with it.

If you’re sure there was no hacker cracker involved, then the reason might be that the zsh version changed. This can easily be fixed by opening a new terminal window.

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Firefox: This address is restricted

This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has canceled the request for your protection.

This message appears if you want to access a website on a non-standard port, e.g. http://example.com:42 .

Being a developer you might run in your non-productive environment a web server listening on such a port. As a workaround you can tweak your firefox by adding the configuration network.security.ports.banned.override to your preferences.

To do so go to about:config, klick on the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button and right-click any preference. In the appearing context menu click New > String and add the new preference

network.security.ports.banned.override

with a value “1-65000″ or whatever ports you want to access. They don’t describe blocked ports but ports that are considered to be not banned.

I recommend to create a new firefox profile for development and testing purpose and that you only open ports that you really need.

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Arch Linux: Pacman 4.0 upgrade breaks the system

Since yesterday, January 16th, pacman 4 is in the core repository and upgrading to it breaks the system.

If you can wait with any updates, wait. If you must update some packages, only update those which you need to update right now and which don’t affect the system.

To exclude the packages which surely breaks your system, edit your /etc/pacman.conf and add to IgnorePkg all packages related to any package manager stuff and all packages you know that they break something.

IgnorePkg   = pacman package-query yaourt libarchive

If you encounter trouble with other packages, let me know.

If you updated libarchive for whatever reason pacman stops to work while it outputs this error message:

pacman: error while loading shared libraries: libarchive.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

To fix this you have to create a symlink pointing from libarchive.so.2 to libarchive.so.12.0.3. Adapt the version number of according to your installed archive lib. Check this with

ls -l /usr/lib | grep libarchive.so

Now pacman should work again.

Update (Jan 21st):
On my arm-based Archlinux everything went fine when upgrading and generating the keyring. On my desktop I’ve got to fiddle with some configurations but it seems that nothing bigger goes wrong today. Maybe I was completely wrong with my statement “pacman 4 breaks the system” but libarchive really made trouble days ago so it wasn’t a bad choice to wait a little bit.

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Linux: My friend X11 …

I’ve been really very happy with my linux …


… until I had to fiddle with X11 again. I really dislike to configure X11, this brings me down to zero every time.

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Arch Linux: install Redmine 1.3 with SQLite

Redmine is an open-source web-based project management and bug-tracking tool.

This article explains how to install it on Arch Linux. At the time this article was written the official documentation page lacked of clear installation instructions.

Redmine is written in the ruby programming language and uses Rails as a web application framework which can be compared to the Zend framework for the php language. To get Redmine run on a webserver, Rack is required which provides a minimal interface between a webserver and the ruby web app.

Redmine is shipped with a script which launches a webserver called Webrick. More precisely Webrick is a Ruby standard library providing simple HTTP web server services.

With this background one understands what the Redmine’s requirements are for. According to Redmine’s website these are

Redmine 1.3.x    Ruby 1.8.6 or 1.8.7    Rails 2.3.14    Rack 1.1.x    Rake 0.8.7    i18n 0.4.2

Rake is required to generate a session store and to create/initialize the database. It’s a build tool similar to make but for ruby. i18n is for localization.

In the following it’s shown how to install Redmine automatically or how to do things manually.

Continue reading »

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