2011-09-28

Fixing the DropBox Client for GNU/Linux

I had experienced an issue with the DropBox client for Ubuntu 10.04 where PSD files over 1MB were not consistently syncing. Here is a solution which seems to have fixed the problem.

Keep in mind that this involves making changes to /etc/fstab, which if not done properly, could cause loss of data or other disasters. First, be sure to backup your /etc/fstab file, and read up on some fstab documentation.

In /etc/fstab find the root mount point which should have a forward slash as the 2nd field. Fields are separated by spaces or tabs on a line. Mine looks like this:

/dev/sda3 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1

The 4th field is the options field. You will want to append the user_xattr option to these options. Options are separated by commas, with no space between them. So, in my case, it would look like this:

/dev/sda3 / ext3 errors=remount-ro,user_xattr 0 1

After saving this file, restart your computer and DropBox should work correctly.

2011-09-12

Installing Erlang and Agner Package Manager from Source on Ubuntu 10.04

I have had many problems using the default erlang package on ubuntu, so I have found it best to install from source. I also use the Agner package manager which simplifies Erlang package management. You will need to run most of these commands as sudo.
> apt-get purge erlang
> apt-get build-dep erlang
> apt-get install curl
> apt-get install libc6-dev
> apt-get install libncurses5-dev
> apt-get install m4
> apt-get install libssl-dev
> apt-get install erlang-mode
> apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk
> cd /usr/local/src/
> git clone --recursive git://github.com/erlang/otp.git erlang-otp
> cd erlang-otp
> ## Replace this with newer version if you wish
> git checkout OTP_R14B01
> ./otp_build autoconf
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
> make
> make install
> curl https://raw.github.com/agner/agner/master/scripts/oneliner | sh
> export ERL_LIBS="/usr/local/agner/packages"
> echo >> /etc/environment
> echo 'ERL_LIBS="/usr/local/agner/packages"' >> /etc/environment