The Dropbox Dropquest

I have recently converted to using Dropbox for all of my important files. If you are not using Dropbox, you should sign up here. We'll both get extra space if you sign up using my link. Dropbox is a great system to use for backing up your files because it gives you automatic backing up and file versioning. The best two things about it are that it is free and easy to use. When using it, you're covered if your hard drive crashes, you lose your laptop, or you didn't realize you erased half of that paper you were working on and saved it. I haven't been able to find a backup solution that I'm happy with until now. I plan to write more about how I use Dropbox later.

The reason I'm mentioning Dropbox today is that I just completed their Dropquest. Completing the quest gave me an extra 1GB of space with which to sync my files. Also, it was fun. You can start your Dropquest after signing up. There are some basic hints available if you get stuck. There are also hints that are a little more revealing. And, since this is the internet, you can cheat your way through. What fun would that be though? The quest must be completed before 2011-01-29 to get the bonus space in your account.

Configure, Build, and Install Gnucash 2.4 on Ubuntu Lucid

I have been anticipating the release of Gnucash 2.4. With this release, the option has been added to use a database as the repository for your financial information. This will allow me to query my financial transactions through a standard database and make nice budgets and reports. Naturally, I cannot wait until Ubuntu releases this new version packaged nicely in a deb. I need it now. This leads me back to the old days of compiling and installing software on Linux. It's slightly less painful today, but definitely not intuitive.

First, from the Gnucash website, grab the new version of the source code tarball and 'tar -xvf' it to a temporary folder. You want the source code so you can compile the program with the database option.

Next, even if you have gnucash installed from your Ubuntu repository (I suggest that you do this first as it likely resolves a lot of dependencies) there are some packages you should install. Try this command:

sudo aptitude install guile-1.8-dev intltool libwebkit-dev \
libdbi0-dev libdbi0 libgconf2-dev guile-gnome2-gconf \
libgnomeui-dev libgoffice-0.8-dev libdbd-{sqlite3,pgsql,mysql}

After installing all of this software, you must correct a small error with slib. Perform the following commands to do this:

cd /usr/share/guile
sudo ln -s /usr/share/slib

Test that this worked with this command (does nothing if successful, returns an error otherwise):

sudo guile -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'printf)"

The next step is to configure the build. I used this command from the folder where I untarred the source code:

./configure --enable-dbi --with-html-engine=webkit \
--prefix /opt/gnucash 

Next run 'make'. Wait a couple of minutes or so for this to complete and then issue the 'sudo make install' command. This will take another minute or so. Change the link by editing the Ubuntu menu item for gnucash. Point it to the new version's location (/opt/gnucash/bin/gnucash).

Now you can save your financial information in a standard database instead of Gnucash's xml format. I am excited.

Here's another useful resource.