To get Tweetdeck running on 64-bit, you’ll need to get the 32-bit compatibility libraries. The easiest way to do that is to do the following:

Download the getlibs-all.deb package. (This seems to move around a bit. If the link is broken, best to search it on Google.) Install it by running:

sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb

If you get a corrupted package (which I did a few times), try another download location. The one I linked to above worked for me.

Next, put these commands in a bash script:

sudo getlibs -l libnss3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libnssutil3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libsmime3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libssl3.so.1d;
sudo getlibs -l libnspr4.so.0d;
sudo getlibs -l libplc4.so.0d;
sudo getlibs -l libplds4.so.0d;
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so;
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0;
sudo getlibs -l libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1

Make it executable, then run it:

chmod +x getlibs.sh; sudo sh getlibs.sh;


Update all the library links¹:

sudo ldconfig

If you don’t already have Adobe AIR installed, go download the file, then execute it:

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin; sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Finally, go to the Tweetdeck site and click to install Tweetdeck.

Sources: http://blog.ddiction.com/?p=3023, , http://linux.die.net/man/8/ldconfig

1. ldconfig creates the necessary links and cache (for use by the run-time linker, ld.so) to the most recent shared libraries found in the directories specified on the command line, in the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and in the trusted directories (/usr/lib and /lib). ldconfig checks the header and file names of the libraries it encounters when determining which versions should have their links updated. [back]

I decided to tweak the theme of my G1 using DxTop and a Steampunk theme/icon set. Combining this with the Abney Park song “Herr Drosselmeyer’s Doll” as my ringtone, it makes for a nice change of pace.

My team has been using the excellent lori plugin in tandem with Firebug to determine our time to first byte (TTFB) when testing our websites. Yesterday, we ran into a situation that made it impossible to do this in a browser. Never fear…curl to the rescue!


curl -o /dev/null -w "Connect: %{time_connect} TTFB: %{time_starttransfer} Total time: %{time_total} \n" http://your.url.here


This will get you the time to connect, the time to first byte for your site, and the total time to pull down the code.

If you like, use the -s switch to remove the progress bar.

Props go to Merlin, for being the wizard he is while we worked this out.

A good friend has been having an issue setting up their podcast for premium content using the podPress plugin for Wordpress. After a bit of digging, I’ve found a couple of interesting things which point to why it’s failing.

podPress depends on PHP being installed as an Apache module, rather than running as a CGI, because it uses the HTTP authentication headers to log users in to Wordpress before generating the premium feed.¹  Unfortunately for my friend, her host (Dreamhost) is running all PHP instances as CGI for security reasons. Once upon a time, they would let users turn this off and just run as a module, but those days appear to be long gone.

Podpress is looking for the HTTP_AUTHORIZATION header in the request headers for the premium feed. I found this odd, and am now wondering how old this code is. The docs list the proper $_SERVER variables as PHP_AUTH_USER and PHP_AUTH_PW. I cannot find another reference for the HTTP_AUTHORIZATION headers except for use in IIS:

Another limitation is if you’re using the IIS module (ISAPI) and PHP 4, you may not use the PHP_AUTH_* variables but instead, the variable HTTP_AUTHORIZATION is available. For example, consider the following code: list($user, $pw) = explode(’:', base64_decode(substr($_SERVER['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'], 6)));

Why is the code in podPress IIS specific? That’s a little weird.

Anyway…in the current state, it seems impossible to use podPress’s support for premium content on Dreamhost. If you;’re planning on launching a poscast with premium content, be sure to test this on your host. YMMV.

1. See the docs: http://us3.php.net/features.http-auth[back]

Thomas Gideon, host of The Command Line Podcast,  has posted an interview he did with me as I reviewed SCaLE7x, the Southern California Linux Expo. I’ll apologize for the audio quality now…this was during the height of the attacks against Time Warner’s DNS servers, and Skype took a big hit.  Still…we talk about some interesting things…I hope you enjoy it.

In other news, I’ve switched to OpenDNS. Which fixes everything, of course.