i summon one kim

I noticed that tcsh 6.22.02 has a broken configure script:

./configure: gl_HOST_CPU_C_ABI_32BIT: not found

This looked like an unexpanded m4 macro to me. I was unable to reproduce the error if I ran autoreconf under Debian buster, so I switched to a NetBSD host and tried there. Indeed, running autoreconf resulted in the same broken configure script.

Upon closer inspection, it turns out that devel/gettext-m4 had been updated to a new version in pkgsrc without noticing that generated configure scripts now throw an error. The cause was a missing file (host-cpu-c-abi.m4).

For some reason the package Makefile has a hardcoded list of files to install from gettext-tools/gnulib-m4 (as opposed to calling the install target via make). The reason is probably to avoid unnecessary or irrelevant files. However, this means that any relevant changes to gettext-tools/gnulib-m4/Makefile can easily go unnoticed.

I’ve added the missing file to the list, but I worry that this approach is prone to errors. Perhaps some easy check could be added and noted in the package Makefile to detect problems, e.g. generating a sample configure script before committing a version update.

By default many Linux network interface card drivers set their SMP affinity mask to either all zeroes or all ones (“ff” — the length of the mask depends on the number of CPUs on the system). The former results in all queues and interfaces running on CPU ID 0, which can become a performance bottleneck due to insufficient computing power. The latter results in all queues and interfaces being scheduled on multiple CPUs, which can become a performance bottleneck due to increased CPU memory cache misses. (more…)

For whatever reason my Windows desktop profile is not reflected to my Citrix apps. So I get to figure out the settings that I’ve changed over the years all over again.

In Skype for Business I want a fixed width font and no emoji.

• Click the Settings menu in the main Skype window (the cog icon).
• Select IM on the left.
• Uncheck the box for Show emoticons in messages.
• Click the Change Font button and choose Consolas.

This morning Alexa was an hour behind — she hadn’t moved to DST. A quick search on Google showed that last year DST switching had worked.

The top hit, however, was a fresh Reddit thread with Alexa users reporting the same issue. After keeping an eye on it, I saw a user come up with the solution that worked for me (and it is the only solution on the thread so far).

Launch the Alex app and go to Settings, select a device, and change the timezone

• from America/Eastern Standard Time
• to US/Eastern Standard Time

The fix takes immediately: just ask “Alexa, what time is it?” — no power cycling needed.

Since switching to the iCloud Photo Library, the Photos app on my laptop has kept telling me that

• 1 Item on This Mac Only
• Unable to Upload 9 Items

To identify the oddball photos, I created the following smart folders respectively:

• [Photo] [is] [referenced]
• [Photo] [is] [unable to upload to iCloud Photo Library]

Referenced photos can be consolidated into the library and would then be uploaded to iCloud — mine was a duplicate, so I just deleted it. The photos that could not be uploaded were photos that had been deleted, but somehow a reference had been kept or imported.

References:

• Items on This Mac Only
• Photos for Mac says “Unable to upload 222 items”