copyleft

 [This is a crosspost from my phlog post (gopher blog) from Saturday Mar  7  9:30:28 2026]

If you've ever visited my website 'chalsattack.com' you might have

noticed that I have a copyright sign on it. Make no mistake, I am more

the kind of copyleft guy than any other thing you can think of. But I

think I need to explain you one thing first.

In the first place, I put the copyright symbol several years ago only

because I thougt it was super cool having it on a website. I never

gave it any more importance.

Now that I am moving to a different hosting plan (same hoster,

different plan) I revised the text and thought that the copyright

should go away and enter the copyleft one. But much to my surprise I

learnt that copyleft is a mirroed copyright sign and well, I copied

and pasted the code I found on the internet but the sign refused to be

properly displayed.

Too bad. I will try again, no doubt, and I will eventually manage to

display it. I am too stubborn to give up. But I think the copyleft

symbol should have a better/easier way to be displayed.

UPDATE:

(Adding a copyright sign is as easy as typing "©" I just found

out there is "🄯" for copyleft. Let me try...)

What the heck! It works! I am a bit happier now

UPDATE 2:

"🄯" works too in html. "🄯" is hex. "U+1F12F" is unicode

pharc v.7.0 released

 I am proud to announce that today I released pharc v.7.0. It only includes some minor changes as you can read in the changelog:

* pharc v.7.0

* Updating permissions for gophernicus.

The thing is, when we had bucktooth as gopher server, it was ok to have permissions 750 for directories and 640 for files. This is not the case anymore with gophernicus. It needs 755 and 644 permissions.

 This is not a great deal, it was pretty easy to run these lines I found on sdf's gopher tutorial:

 

$ find ~/gopher/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
$ find ~/gopher/ -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755

But it had to be done manually and after that you had to chmod +x your 

moles again to work. 

Like I said, this was not a huge problem but I had to do something about it. 

So now the problem seems to be fixed for good.

One more important change is that since I had to update the wiki for version 7. 

I added the wiki to the gopherhole. So from now on you can find both resources 

(the source code and the wiki) on the web and on gopherspace.

On the web:

https://gitlab.com/pharc

https://gitlab.com/pharc/pharc/-/wikis/home

On gopherspace:

 gopher://sdfeu.org:70/1/users/chals/downloads/software

gopher://sdfeu.org:70/0/users/chals/wiki 

pharc v.6.0 released

Well, this is certainly unusual in 2017...

I used to release pharc once a year, so:
v.1.0 --> 2011
v.2.0 --> 2012
v.3.0 --> 2013
v.4.0 --> 2014
v.5.0 --> 2015

But like the wiki says:

Is pharc still actively developed?
pharc has now all the features and options I envisioned through all these years of development. From now on I only intend to make bug fixes and minor changes.

Well, this year one of the visitors said that the sorting of the archives was upside down, so I decided to change it to order archives in a more logical way.

Added to the changelog:

pharc (6.0-1)
v.6.0
Sort Archives in reverse mode.

You can read more in detail in the phlog post at: gopher://sdf-eu.org:70/1/users/chals/phlog
And get the software (all available versions) at: gopher://sdf-eu.org:70/1/users/chals/downloads/software

Have fun!

pharc v.5.0 released

Today I released pharc v.5.0. You can find it in the usual places:

The downloads page (Includes the raw script and the .deb package):

gopher://sdf-eu.org:70/1/users/chals/downloads

The git repo, now hosted at gitlab, since gitorious closed down:

https://gitlab.com/pharc/pharc

LINKS TO FILES:

deb package 5.0.1

raw script pharc5

And the wiki:

https://gitlab.com/pharc/pharc/wikis/home

pharc has now all the features and options I envisioned through all these years of development. From now on I only intend to make bug fixes and minor changes.

Thanks for using pharc!

CHANGELOG

pharc (5.0-1)

• v.5.0
  • Add '-A|--all' option to archive all years at once.
• v.4.0
  • Changed shebang to #!/bin/sh to make script more portable.
  • Improved if[...]else statements to make script more robust.
  • Added functionality to choose year of archive.
  • Added functionality to specify several years in one go.
  • Added '-l|--list' option to list unarchived phlog posts.
  • Logging by default to "$HOME/pharc.log"
  • Split code into functions.
  • Added option '-d|--delete to delete the log file.
• v.3.0
  • Added option -a to specify year of archive (Redundant).
  • Added -v (version information option).
  • Added -h (help menu).
  • Added -y (year of the archive).
  • Help function (usage).
  • Improve coding style.
  • Leave a backup of gophermap -> gophermap~ (in case things break).
  • Test before echoing "You're done now. Thanks for using pharc."
• v.2.0
  • Updating for mkphlog v.0.2
  • Adding version number 2.0
  • Adding license (2012)
• Initial release.

pharc v.4.0 released

Today, even though I experienced some connectivity problems I managed to release pharc v.4.0. pharc is a very simple script that archives phlog posts on a yearly basis. The nice thing about it is that since a new version is released every year, it grows bigger, with more options, and hopefully, also better. Needless to say that the next release, unless there is a big bug to fix, is scheduled for 2015.

This year in particular, I did a lot of testing because there were many new options. And even so, I had to make a last minute change to make it work on NetBSD 6.1.2. I changed one echo call which contained a backlash escape character to printf because NetBSD's version of echo renders the backlash characters literally. So:

echo "1Archive $DIR\t$DIR" >> gophermap

Had to be re-written as:

printf "1Archive $DIR\t$DIR\n" >> gophermap

Not a big deal really, but last minute changes are sometimes annoying because you have to re-test and make sure that it remains posix compliant and that it works. Remember that I use two different platforms to test it: NetBSD + ksh and debian + bash

Below are some links that will lead you to more detailed information about pharc

The official release announcement, of course in my own phlog (which is archived by pharc):

gopher://sdf-eu.org:70/1/users/chals/phlog/./06-07-14

The downloads page (Includes the raw script and the .deb package):

gopher://sdf-eu.org:70/1/users/chals/downloads

The git repository, hosted at gitorious:

https://gitorious.org/pharc

and the wiki (important to consult, since in includes almost all possible use cases):

https://gitorious.org/pharc/pages/Home

I hope you like it and have fun with it! Happy phlogging :D

pharc flowchart

This it the flowchart for pharc, my 'phlog archiver'. It is my first flowchart. I started drawing it with dia but I ended up using google docs. You can see an up-to-date version here

pharc v.3.0 released

I have been procrastinating a bit about publishing version 3.0 because I wanted to do two things:

1.- Add functionality to choose the year of the archive, this would only be useful for people who are new to pharc but still, it would be a nice feature.

2.- Rewrite it in python, but unfortunately I'm still not proficient enough with python to do it (even though this is a simple script).

These things will have to wait for a later release someday :)

My initial idea was to publish one new release each year, i.e pharc1 saw the light in 2011, pharc2 in 2012, pharc3 in 2013 and so on and so forth, but to tell you the truth, gopher stuff is rather stagnant so I do not anticipate to see many changes in how things work form now on.

Anyway, the changelog for v.3.0 is:

 - Added option -a to specify current year of archive (redundant).

 - Added -v (version information option).

 - Added -h (help menu).

 - Added -y (year of the archive).

 - Help function (usage).

 - Improve coding style.

 - Leave a backup of gophermap > gophermap~ (in case things break).

 - Test before echoing "You're done now. Thanks for using pharc."

You can find all pharc versions here (gopher link):

gopher://sdf-eu.org:70/1/users/chals/downloads

There is also a .deb package available here:

pharc 3.0-1 all.deb

And as usual, the git repository is hosted at gitorious:

pharc git repo

The wiki is located here:

pharc wiki

'pharc wiki' and 'pharc in action' screenshots

This afternoon I have finished pharc's wiki. It is a work in progress but for the time being it is ready for publishing. You can find it here:

Pharc wiki

Perhaps the only thing that is missing there is a series of screenshots showing how pharc works. I'll upload them here first.

First pharc checks to make sure that the working directory exists, otherwise it exits.

Second if the Archive already exists pharc quits to avoid overwriting files.

If there are no posts to archive, it exits.

And finally if successful:

After it's done, if pharc suspects that something didn't go as expected it will print:

~$ Maybe unsuccessful. Please check it out. If things broke badly there is a backup of your gophermap --> gophermap~


You can see the results of pharc in my gopher hole:

gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/chals/phlog

or browse it on the web through a proxy:

http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw.litegopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/chals/phlog

pharc v 2.0 released.

Today I released pharc 2.0. pharc is a script that organizes your phlog posts on a yearly basis.

pharc is based on mkphlog written by octotep. The reason for releasing v 2.0 is that mkphlog has been updated to v.0.2 so I needed to adapt my script to the changes.

You can read my phlog post on the release of mkphlog v.0.2 in my phlog here (gopher link)

You can read my phlog post on the release of pharc v.2.0 in my phlog here (gopher link)

pharc is version controlled using git. You can find the script v.2.0 here

If you're interested in the .deb package it is available in two places:

a. In my gopher hole (gopher link)
b. here: pharc 2.0-1 all.deb


The changelog is:

• Updating for mkphlog v.0.2
• Adding version number 2.0
• Adding license (2012)

Enjoy!!!

My first .deb

\o/ Today I built my first debian package or .deb

I wrote the source code of the package myself. You can find the main script here. It is a simple script to archive phlog (gopher blog) posts on a yearly basis. I called it pharc which stands for phlog archiver. It is based on the mkphlog script, written by octotep, that I use to build my own phlog

It takes a little bit of work, then

    $ debuild -us -uc

And voilà! you can find the package here:

pharc 1.0-1 all.deb

Important: This package was built for learning purposes only. It has some limitations I am perfectly aware of. Just to name a few:

• The script assumes that you have a link in your $HOME/gopher to your gopher server. And that all your posts are in directories named $(date +%m-%d-%y)
  
• The makefile is ridiculous. It only has seven lines! I wrote it in 25 seconds just to experience quick success. Now if you're really curious I can paste it here or somewhere else.
  
• The complete list of files is not available online. They are stored on my server but if you want them you can ask for them. Here is the list:
  
  pharc_1.0.orig.tar.gz
  pharc_1.0-1_i386.changes
  pharc_1.0-1_i386.build
  pharc_1.0-1_all.deb
  pharc_1.0-1.dsc
  pharc_1.0-1.diff.gz
  
• Who uses gopher or keeps a phlog anyway?

'pharc' a phlog archiver.

I write my phlog using a script called mkphlog. It creates each phlog post in the form of a directory using the following variable: entrydate=date +%m-%d-%y
I started my phlog in October so there were not many posts. However, reaching the end of the year made me realize that I had to devise a way to archive all the posts on a yearly basis. Doing it by hand took me approximately 10 minutes. It basically means copying a bunch of directories into a single directory and editing the gophermaps so that the servers know where to look for files once the links are clicked.
But as you can imagine I am a busy person and I just can't add any more thing to my todo. So I decided to write a script to do the work for me automatically every year. Isn't that fantastic? Well it didn't take long to write a first functional version of the script. However, like all scripts, it was open for improvement.
This afternoon I have improved it a bit and I have committed what I imagine is the final version as of now. You can see it here
By the way, the title of this post is self explanatory enough. I called it pharc which stands for "phlog archiver". It would be very nice that someone tested it and found it useful.