Installing Cisco VPN on Mandriva 2008

As you are following the standard procedure to install the Cisco VPN client you will come to an instruction which says you must run

./vpn_install

Stop

Have you tried that already and seen errors like

• when you start the vpn service

  cisco_ipsec.ko -1 Invalid module format

• dmesg shows errors like

  $dmesg | grep cisco
  cisco_ipsec: version magic '2.6.22.9-1mdvcustom SMP mod_unload 686 ' should be '2.6.22.9-laptop-1mdv SMP mod_unload 686 '

?

Then you should check that your kernel source version agrees with your kernel version. For example, my kernel version was

$ uname -a
Linux localhost 2.6.22.9-laptop-1mdv #1 SMP Thu Sep 27 04:17:10 CEST 2007 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1600MHz GNU/Linux

And my kernel source showed:

$ grep "EXTRAVERSION =" /usr/src/linux/Makefile
EXTRAVERSION = .9-1mdvcustom

• 2.6.22.9-laptop-1mdv
• 2.6.22.9-1mdvcustom

This must be fixed before proceeding with vpn installation

$ cd /usr/src/linux
$ sed -i -e"s/EXTRAVERSION = .9-1mdvcustom/EXTRAVERSION = .9-laptop-1mdv/" Makefile
$ make oldconfig
$ make modules_prepare
$ make prepare
$ cd /usr/local/src/vpnclient

We now return you to the main procedure

$ ./vpn_install

Why rule it all at all?

Some rules for programming

1. If I were you I wouldn't start from 1 at all, at all
   
2. No non-programmers in the environment.
   
3. No less than one failing test to start
4. No more than one change between commits
   
5. No less than one fix per run
   
6. No more than one idea at a time
   
7. Never less than one more bug to be found, ...
   
8. No more than 2 whiskeys for prototyping
   
9. Never drink alcohol before hitting "Send"
   
10. As simple as required. No more, no less.

And one law to rule them all.

Why go boing ?

In the canon of coders' religious wars tab-vs-spaces is one of the greats. Up there with brace-style as an enduring indicator of what coders like to do when there's no code to be written.

So it might be good to see an actual advance in the debate: "elastic tabstops" as proposed by Nick Gravgaard.

Of course this is a guarded welcome, becuase tabs-vs-spaces is a great ol' time-waster, and braces aren't half as interesting (especially since I changed to belts).

Unfortunately Nick reminds me of Arthur Koestler who, in the end of an epic analysis of human pyschology, suggested dumping brain-altering chemicals into drinking water, to fix it. Similarly Nick's solution needs new editors and "code written in this style may be slightly misaligned in older text editors". (Slightly ?)

So - forget about using vi, emacs, Eclipse, ... for code-editing then. But, ar an lámh eile, maybe it is time we did stop using text-editors for code anyway. because "forcing programs into text form causes lots of problems that you might not even be aware of".