the boredom of ramfree17

I have a 4gb TDK usb drive and i want to try running a full-blown linux on it. I am using this guide from pendrivelinux to install xubuntu on the flash drive.

The instruction is for creating two partitions: the first one is a fat16 partition that will hold the main system while the second partition is a small ext2 partition for the persistent data (settings?). I modified it a bit with this setup:

• sdb1 – 3GB FAT32 – for sharing data
• sdb2 – 1GB – fat16 for the main system. I tried using ext2 but the instruction was really for a fat16 partition for the syslinux step
• sdb3 – 115MB – persistent partition that is labeled casper-rw

The partitions were created using cfdisk on my archlinux system. I opted to put the 3GB partition at the start because I am from the old school thinking that when dealing with stupid OSes always put the partitions it can read first. All of the partitions are physical partitions but i marked the second one as the active/bootable partition.

Everything else in the tutorial went smoothly except when it was time to boot the machine using the usb drive. The booting stopped with the message that the boot sector was invalid or damaged. I tried googling around for the fix which basically suggests installing the boot loader on the flash drive’s boot sector (/dev/sdb) but these did not work.

I finally gave in and restarted the installation process, only this time I placed the 3GB partition at the end so that I will be mostly compliant with the pendrive linux guide. There is really something to be said for following instructions especially if those instructions do not contain any discussion on the rationale. My tux in a stick works although it takes quite a while to boot my laptop. I have been able to use it in the office so I can copy a big file (RTC linux client) that I need to bring home from the office since I cannot complete the download at home.

I am happy since I have a portable Linux system in case I need it. As for the question on whether Windows was able to recognize the data space at the end of the drive, I honestly don’t know. I haven’t booted into Windows yet here at home, and the USB ports are locked by the domain server at work. I guess I will eventually know the answer but I am not in a hurry to find out.

ciao!

Tags: FLOSS by Erin
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After a few failed attempts in getting my ArchLinux desktop system go into hibernation, my boot-up shows an error during the mounting of the swap file. Issuing the “free” command validates that I don’t have any swap space running. My desktop system has 2GB of physical RAM but I wouldn’t want to wait for something to fail before fixing the swap space.

The fix is to format the swap partition (/dev/sda8) again before activating it using this command sequence:

# mkswap /dev/sda8
# swapon -a

mount -a would also work in place of the swapon command.

NOTE: mkswap will happily format the device or file you pass on as parameter so make sure you are passing the correct partition or you will be sorry.

ciao!

Tags: FLOSS by Erin
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Since the start of this week I have been struggling with the installation of the latest Mandriva release which I have just finished downloading via torrent. I even posted a passing comment about it in the unofficial Mandriva Users board. Since I have already gone through two succeeding installations that failed, I stated that if the third time didnt push through then I would really consider looking at another distro for Lala (my laptop).

The first failed installation has something to do with a recurring error in the wifi prism54 loading that made it impossible to login. I don’t have the exact error with me but it has something to do with the eth0 not being in a final state, and the IRQ channels might be too busy. The second attempt wherein I tried to only install the bare minimum of X package borked the whole X installation. I installed Mdv again yesterday and this time just selected the KDE installation. If this one is also going to fail then I wouldn’t waste my time manually choosing the packages to be installed. I left the installation running while we had our dinner. When I came back the installation was already showing the root account and user configuration window.

At the final configuration screen, I opted to just configure the ethernet connection and setting it to start at boot but not at that specific point. I just want Lala to boot up and then I would configure the wireless card using ndiswrapper since I already have the Fujitsu provided drivers in a CDRW. Taking the installation DVD out of the drive bay, I crossed my fingers for the first reboot.

For the remainder of the boot sequence, I was pretty much holding my breath until I got to the KDM screen. I entered my user account and waited for KDE to kick in. The good news is that everything seems to be ok but it was taking quite long for the KDE startup sequence to complete. I think I waited around 5 minutes which is not good. I noticed that KDE has started by default a lot of daemons that starts in the taskbar How very MS-like so the first task was to remove them one by one until only the clock and the network applet remained in the status bar area. I don’t really understand why I did that since I plan on replacing KDE with XFCE4, my new favorite desktop that replaced fluxbox.

I put in the CDRW disc and copied wireless card Windows driver in /tmp. Weird thing is that ark is not able to extract the file so I ended up doing a manual unzip operation in the command line. This is not a good start but I can live with it. I proceeded to configure the wireless card using the network applet. The package manager asked for the DVD installation media since it needs to fetch the ndiswrapper package so I swapped in the DVD+RW in the drive and let the urpmi front-end do its thing. After a minute I was asked to locate the Windows driver’s INF file so I navigated to the /tmp directory. After a few default choices, I was shown the Wifi access points in my area which listed only my wireless router ( I live in a pretty low-tech neighborhood. ). After a few test, I was greeted with a message that my network has been properly configured.

Hurray! But still I have no connection. A quick ifconfig command later and I saw that I have a wlan0 device but it doesnt have an IP. I just issued a quick dhclient wlan0 and voila: a wlan0 device with an attached IP address! I took advantage of the situation and downloaded the latest packages in the Internet as well as Krusader and XFCE4. Everything finished at around 12AM so I made sure everything was finished and halted the machine.

Tonight I booted up Lala and pressed the escape key to see the bootup messages in the background. In the network start phase, there was an error in the “Set Encode” portion of the wifi loading so I was pretty disappointed. I logged in using the XFCE4 session and was inside my desktop in less than a minute after I entered my username and password. My biggest prize was waiting inside: the top XFCE4 panel has the network applet and it is showing 3 out of 4 bars. My laptop is connected automatically to my wireless router! SUCCESS!

I am now writing this post using my spanking new Mdv installation. I am still amazed that Mandriva is consistent in getting the middle trackpad buttons working while I am struggling to do it in Windows. I just need a NAS server and everything should be set for the file coordination between Lala and Leo (my desktop Archlinux installation).

I am happy even if I am already sleepy due to lack of enough rest. Anybody who wants a copy of the latest Mandrake DVD (Free Edition), let me know but you will have to meet me in Robinson’s Pioneer during office days.

ciao!

Tags: FLOSS by Erin
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The Philippine Linux User Group (PLUG) mailing list currently has a thread that (according to the archives.free.net.ph) is 44 replies strong. The thread started about a query on how to increase one’s technical portfolio (I assume for job interviews, but it is still too early to trust my memory) but, in typical internet forum style, morphed into opinions and lamentations that the PLUG lists are getting boring and losing the old hands.

Various comments were put forward but the reasons that stuck with me were that (1) the usability state of Linux has evolved that solutions to majority of technical issues are just a Google away, and (2) the old posters have moved on to the pressing need of their real life.

I don’t see myself much of a contributor but I have been a member of the list for more than five years and I am not posting as much as did. I don’t even police the lists anymore but I have always attributed that to the reduction of the number of PLUG mailing lists, the members sharing the policing responsibility, and the members actually knowing better than to post off-topic questions. The last two signifies that the PLUG mailing list members have grown up and the new members are savvy enough to respect proper list netiquette or they are afraid to post, whichever you want to believe in.

People might not grow up proportionally to the rate they are growing old but they will grow up nonetheless even if they don’t realize it. The PLUG thread sparked an eureka moment, I am growing up. I just noticed that I now often sign my blog comments using my nickname instead of just “ramfree17″, and if left unchecked I am using proper capitalization on those comments which is a far cry from the “all low-caps” rule that I was imposing when I was younger . The downside if it can be called that is that I am losing some of my idealism in favor of pragmatism. I was always in favor of pragmatism since childhood but I guess right now the pragmatic part of me is consuming more of the idealistic share.

An email reply jokingly contributed that the “golden years” of PLUG might have already passed but it is time for the new blood to step up. Whenever I hear the term “golden years” I remember this snippet from Mary Schmich’s essay “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” (made popular as Baz Luhrman’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”):


Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.


ciao!

Tags: FLOSS, Rubbish by Erin
2 Comments »

Last night was my first night of putting interoperability of Linux to a personal test. I work for a Microsoft-centric company so every time I need to do active meeting sessions with counterparts then I have to boot into Windows to ensure that nothing goes off in the middle of the meeting. This is because meetings like those entail a lot of opening of project office documents, searching mails for references, and other stuff. The project documents are also a work of their own since I think the person creating the base templates are certified MS Office template designers (if there is such a thing).

My new project requires me to handle late Tuesday night calls since we are conferencing three very distributed time zones (Manila, Madrid, California). Conference calls are done using Skype since I don’t have IDD capability at home nor am I willing to do the call on my prepaid SIM. Since I already have Skype installed yesterday on Archer, I tested a conference call using Skype’s echo123 service. I was able to hear my recorded message so that portion is not a problem. My headset has a small static sound but I think it has something to do with the connection between the headset and the speaker audio out port. The only possible stumbling block would be the mail searching portion and the documents that needs to be referenced in the call.

An hour before I have already downloaded all reference materials off the web mail interface of the company’s Exchange server. That reminds me that I have the Exchange server because it keeps on kicking my Firefox connection whenever I open a message. The sidebar is OK but the main area gets a “Connection is lost” message. IE doesn’t have this problem when I am in Windows but I wouldn’t install ie4linux just for this now that Metrobank already supports non-IE browser. If anybody knows how to make Thunderbird connect to an Exchange server then let me know although the configuration might also be painful. I couldn’t even configure Outlook in my desktop to connect to the Exchange server *even* after using the company supplied configuration utility. I might even try using Evolution during the weekend.

Anyway, I just created a new Firefox Windows and opened all possible mails that may be referenced in the call so I wouldn’t search for it. I then tried opening all Excel, Word and PowerPoint attachments using OpenOffice.org (2.4). OOo was able to open them all which is admirable enough but I have the following nitpicks:

• For MS Word document some of the formatting especially on tables are misaligned.
• The OO.o Writer is showing too many artifacts like ruler margins and such that could be done without.
• Default rendering size for the spreadsheets were too tiny.
• The comments on the Excel spreadsheet are showing far from the cell they are attached to. I have to scroll just to see them.
• Default rendering size for the presentations are also tiny. I had to play with the zoom control for a bit until I finally hit the “Optimal” option. Why wouldn’t the Optimal option be selected as the default?

Understandably, the nitpicks above are minor and there might be some preferences that could be set to remedy them but I am not using OO.o that frequently aside from a view-only app. The resulting documents from OO.o saves require too much effort to correct to make it my mainstream application for work documentation.

Back on the topic of the call, everything went relatively smoothly although my Skype cannot connect nor message the contact from Madrid. I can see his status is online but for some reason our Skypes just couldn’t communicate. The conference call had to be initiated by the contact from California.

This whole blog post might be seen as petty since there isn’t any groundbreaking achievement but I don’t care as this is a personal achievement about Linux and Windows interoperability. While Linux cannot fully replace Windows right now, Windows’ share of the home computing time is getting smaller.

ciao!

Tags: FLOSS, Work by Erin
4 Comments »