The primary job done by the touch command in UNIX or Linux is to update the time stamps on files. However, it also has another function: creating an empty text file where you are "touching" a file that doesn’t exist. This has its uses, particularly when you want to reduce the amount of pointing and clicking that you need to do or you want to generate a series of empty files in a shell script. Whatever you do with it is up to you.

In a world where write access to a folder or directory is controlled by permission settings at the operating system level, a ready answer for when you get the above message in your log when creating a SAS data set would be to check your access. However, if you are working in Windows and your access seems fine, then SAS’ generation of an access error message seems all the more perplexing. However, unlike the more black and white world of UNIX and Linux, Windows has other ways to change access that could throw things off from the straight and narrow. One of them, it would appear, is to right click on the file listing pane in Windows Explorer and select "Customize this folder…" to change how it appears. The strange upshot of this that a perpetual read-only flag is set for the folder in question and that flag triggers SAS authorisation errors; it’s all very strange and unexpected when you find it and deleting the folder and creating a new one, of course saving anything that you want to retain, is the quickest and easiest solution. In fact, it begs the question as why Microsoft are re-appropriating a flag used for access purposes to be used to determine whether the HTML components of a folder display have been changed or not. This is very strange stuff and does not look like good software design at all. With all the other problems the Microsoft create for themselves, I am not holding my breath until it’s fixed either. There seem to other things like this waiting to catch you out when using Windows SAS and good place to start is with SAS’ own description of the problem that I have just shared.

Keeping an eye on disk space on a Solaris server is important for me at work while keeping the same top level overview is good for my use of Linux at home too. Luckily, there’s a simple command that delivers the goods:

df -h 2>/dev/null

The "df -h" piece is what delivers the statistics while the "2>/dev/null" rids the terminal of any error messages; ones stating that access has been denied are common and can cloud the picture.

Yesterday, this blog got a bumpy ride from its hosting provider, Fasthosts. For several hours, it was down and there have been occasional errors returned since then. I’ll be keeping an eye on this but I hope that things stabilise sooner rather than later. There’s no question of moving things lock, stock and barrel at this time; patience is a very important virtue when it comes to these things…

With the record attempt due today for Firefox 3 downloads, I thought that it would be a good time for me to update my advice for getting BBC’s iPlayer going in Firefox running on Ubuntu. First, you need RealPlayer 11 for Linux. Once downloaded, the file RealPlayer11GOLD.bin needs to be made executable before running it with administrative privileges. The following command do this:

chmod +x RealPlayer11GOLD.bin

sudo ./RealPlayer11GOLD.bin

There is a catch though and it is that while the RealPlayer 11 installation is seamless for Firefox 2, the same cannot be said for Firefox 3 because directory locations have been changed such plugins are now found in /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins. The result that copies of or symbolic links to nphelix.xpt and nphelix.so are needed in that location. The following commands do the trick:

sudo ln -s /opt/real/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.xpt /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/nphelix.xpt

sudo ln -s /opt/real/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/nphelix.so

To cap all of this, I have seen advice that libtotem-complex-plugin.so needs to be removed from the Firefox plugins directory as well. I am not sure about this but I did that and all is working well for me. Let’s hope that continues to be the case.

Following my move to Firefox 3, the BBC’s iPlayer became problematical again. I eventually sorted it after a fashion but I am noting an option for the frustrated before talking more about that. Finding the links to the ram files for the BBC’s Listen Again service can be a nightmare because of the Beeb’s reliance on JavaScript to cloak things up so it’s useful to find somewhere where things have been deconvoluted for us. That’s The Beebotron. It’s really meant for users of the mobile internet but it serves well for those times when a mismatch between Firefox and RealPlayer on Linux derails the more usual way to do things.