If there’s a graphical equivalent to xtail I would be very interested in learning about it. If there isn’t I hope that somebody writes on. I find xtail to be so valuable that I consider it nearly indispensible to any system administrator. And that seems odd when what it does is so simple: it watches multiple files (presumably) logs and prints their changes. But as simple as it sounds its value as a diagnostic tool is significant.

I’m a fan of Gnu/Linux software RAID. I think it makes sense as an option for anyone who wants cheap RAID. Inexpensive RAID cards or the RAID options found on many motherboards do not offer performance or manageability benefits over software RAID. One benefit about GNU/Linux software RAID is that it is far more portable than hardware RAID solutions. That is, you can actually move the disks to another machine without migrating a RAID card or worrying about RAID compatibility.

I’ve been reading good things about the newest versions of NetBeans as an IDE for Ruby on Rails development. I decided to try it out and see if it worked well for me. the current NetBeans packages in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) are version 5.5. So to try out the new version I had to download it and install it manually.

The game monsterz is a fun distraction, much better then games that come with other operating systems in my opinion. Unfortunately I noticed that the amd64 version was broken in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). I decided to check to see if it had been fixed in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) but found that it had not. However I was able to find a quick fix that allows the game to be played. Here’s what I did.

The great thing about a user community that is both large and involved is that these days almost all of the bugs I find in Ubuntu already have bug reports filed. I usually read them, contribute if necessary, and then monitor their progress. Many of the bugs I was watching in the Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) release have been resolved but I’ve decided to try and keep track of bugs of interest (to me anyway) for Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). I plan to update this list with additions and removals as necessary.