CentOS rpmbuild-ing vim for Ruby support

Recently I switched from Ubuntu 11.04 to CentOS 5.7, only to find out that CentOS’s version of vim was build sans Ruby support: vim --version | grep ruby -ruby as in Ruby support is unavailable. This was undesirable, as I’ve become a Command-T user. This is an excellent plugin (for vim) requiring Ruby support. There are a couple of blog posts about it, but required consolidation, so here is my (mostly) repost on the solution.

PHP 4.3.9 $_SESSION values not being retained

Problem: After calling session_start() and assigning key-value pairs to the $_SESSION array, calling print_r($_SESSION) subsequently don’t work. Solution: Assuming your php.ini session save_handler, save_path variables are set correctly, also check for free disk space. I spent 90 minutes trying to resolve the problem thinking it was a PHP-related issue, but in the end, nullifying the 5+ gigabytes of Apache error logs promptly resolved the problem. Doh!

The mystery of the disappearing laptop screen brightness slider

Updated for Windows 10. I noticed that with the power turned off at boot time, I’d be unable to adjust my screen brightness. Instead of the usual 3 options (Turn off the display, Put the computer to sleep, and Adjust plan brightness), just 2 were available; i.e. Adjust plan brightness" had disappeared! This is probably due to a bad driver (e.g., TeamViewer). The workaround is to restart Windows with the power plugged in, but this takes too long.

Preventing VAIO Care recovery on boot

I bought a Sony VAIO Y Series laptop and it’s been working great thus far, except this one thing: it boots into a recovery mode called VAIO Care every time. What? I’ve copy-pasted the text wholesale, in case the site goes down one day (and mine doesn’t): Click the Start button and then click All Programs. In the All Programs menu, click the Accessories folder and then click the System Tools folder.

Copying your SSH key

I frequently try new OSes courtesy of VirtualBox, and I keep forgetting about xclip so I’m reposting snippets of this article here: sudo apt-get install xclip xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub