First off, this will be meaningless to folks who do not use linux.

I spent almost a week getting a clean torrent of the DVD iso of Fedora Core 9. With my new iso burned, I upgraded my FC6 server. Well, I tried to. I had to redo /etc/fstab so it used "LABEL=" syntax. Had to google around to find this out, as I wasn't familiar with this syntax.

So, I go and let the system reboot, and it dies. Reboot. Die. Reboot. Die. reboot. die. The problem this time? I had to append "selinux=0" to grub (/boot/grub/grub.conf), the 2nd line I think. Okay, now I can boot the system. I go to log in at the prompt (the gui prompt, I should say), and after logging in, the system is dead. I see a background, and can roll the mouse, and that's it. Not much of a gui.

I google more and find I'm not alone, and there isn't an easy fix either. I did find Ctrl-Alt-F1 will bounce me to a command line, which was very useful. From there I found out I had no networking running either. Reboot, reboot, reboot, no network on boot. I ended up having to turn off something called "NetworkManager" with "chkconfig NetworkManager off". What is "NetworkManager"? I don't know but I do know if it's running, I get no networking. Sounds like Vista? Oh yeah.

So, I modded /etc/inittab so that the system would boot up runlevel 3 instead of 5, so I could at least get a command-line boot that works.

So after many hours of problem solving, I have a system that is new, improved, and worse than the one I had a decade ago. I think Windows Vista has met it's match. Fedora Core 9 is my nomination for most disappointing OS experience. Ugh.

My trusty home server has been running Fedora Core 2 for years now. I recently picked up a few differet OSes on DVD from frozentech.com, since they offer fantastic prices, and it's just plain less hassle than downloading and burning my own ISOs. They do nice labeling on thei discs, too.

Anyhow, one of the DVDs I picked up was a Fedora Core 6 install DVD. I have never done a Fedora upgrade before, having always done a clean install instead. Yesterday, I decided to see how easy an upgrade was. Well, it's pretty easy. I booted from the DVD, and eventually got hit with something like "Upgrade existing Fedora Core install?". I answered "Yes", and oh, what, an hour later, the computer was ready for the reboot after completion.

I reboot, and ka-bam, get a kernel panic. Fine. I reboot again. Kernel panic. I reboot and pick the original kernel. Kernel panic. Now I'm the guy starting to panic. I wasn't worried about losing data, but I didn't relish having to hassle with rebuilding my server's settings after an unwanted clean install.

Well, I googled around, and found the answer. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=554637 which although not dealing with an upgrade, did answer the problem. SELinux, or Security Enhanced Linux, is apparently activated during the upgrade process. Unfortunately, I wasn't using SELinux prior to the upgrade. So, in a way that seems very Microsoft, the good Fedora folks decided they would do me a favor and activate SELinux. I couldn't boot the server up anymore, so I suppose it was indeed hack-proof and totally secure.

So I get in, fix /boot/grub/grub.conf so it has selinux=0 at the end, and take a look around at FC6. Well, I forgot what they call it, but the "launcher" button to get to your apps, etc. is gone! There isn't any way, apparently, to launch anything. You gotta click on an empty portion of toolbar, pick "New Toolbar item" (something like that), and choose "Program Launcher" (something like that) and add it back on. Whacky.

So far, I'm thinking "Next time, just do a clean install..."

Recently I acquired a decent workstation PC that my workplace excessed off in a lottery. My desire is to turn this workstation into a simple audio recording and cd burning box, for the purpose of recording live sermons at church, and burning audio CDs of the sermons for folks to take home and give out to friends. Simple enough.

I purchased a few Linux distros from http://www.frozentech.com and received them quickly. I'll be using them for now if I need to buy any more distros. I found the process to be much easer than doing a torrent to pull down the distros, as the DVDs I ordered came nicely labeled, and when one of the didn't work right, they shipped out a replacement right away.

So, here is what I want out of the box: It needs to be easy enough to use so that a volunteer trained in a few minutes can record decent audio and burn the results to CD.

I chose Audacity for the audio recording tool. Audacity is the best straightforward audio recording app I've seen for linux. While not nearly as comprehensive as Ardour, Audacity offers just the right features.\

The one feature Audacity does not have built-in is a "Burn to CD" feature. For that, I turn to K3b.

K3b is a tool that resembles Nero or maybe Adaptec CD Creator; users can start an Audio CD project, and drag files in there to make the CD. Easy enough.

So here goes!

Debian 3.1 r1, aka "Sarge"
The installation was a breeze.
Audacity installed flawlessly.
I had to manually install the LAME encoder for mp3 playback, but that was easy enough to do.
K3b installed simple enough.
Now for the bad part - K3b refuses to recognize my CD-RW drive.
I follow the docs, and tell the bootloader to treat it as ide-scsi (hdd=ide-scsi).
And now, K3b doesn't recognize the drive at all!
I google it up, and loads of people are complaining about K3b not seeing their CD-RW, and Debian "sarge" not doing cd burning.

So, in goes the Fedora Core 4 DVD!

Fedora Core 4
Installation was a snap.
Audacity is not offered, so I go to sourceforge to download it.
Audacity is not available as an .rpm, so I look at the requirements to build it from source.
I remember doing this before! It was a horrid nightmare, requirements that had requirements that had requirments.
Forget that, in goes the Kubuntu 5.10 DVD!

Kubuntu 5.10
I'm installing it now
1 hour later
and I'm giving up on Kubuntu.
Can't get Audicity to install, even though I downloaded the 'Ubuntu Linux' version from sourceforge.
Can't get LAME to install.
Forget it.

Back to Debian, it was the closest one yet. If I can either get Kb3 to work, or find an alternative, I'll be happy with that.

 I have an old Fujitsu laptop running Windows 98. It has a whopping 48 megs of RAM and a massive 1.2 gb hard disk. Back in what, 1996 or 1997, that was state of the art. Now, however, well, you get the idea. So, I figure, I've got a nice ol Linux server downstairs; if I run VNC on the server, I can run the VNC client on my Windows 98 laptop, and I'll be good to go.

And so begins the strange tale of VNC on Linux.

From my crusty laptop, I ran puTTY and logged into the linux box.

I downloaded the latest VNC and tried to install it. I got slammed with a bunch of missing dependencies. Lame. I googled for solutions, and it seemd that yum is a good tool to use when you have dependency issues. Yum it is.

From there, it was a case of getting yum to install the VNC server for me

# yum install vnc-server

And after a few moments, there it was. But how to run it?

# vncserver

That was hard. Okay, so from my laptop, I fire up the VNC client and try to attach to the server. Pretend my server is named "pig". So, when the VNC client asks for a server, I put in "pig". What do I get? Denied. Great. Well, it turns out that when connecting to Linux, you gotta state which instance you want to connect to.

Instead of "pig", I put in "pig:1".

Success!

No, not really.

Do I get a graphical display just like doing a Windows remote control session? NoOoOoOo. Instead I get a lame command-line shell! Oh, well, it has colors, but, it's a command line! Why bother with that? I could simply do puTTY and get a command line.

I figure I can launch Firefox. Somehow. Well, here is how to fire up Firefox from a Linux VNC session:

Locate firefox-installer on your Linux box. From within the firefox-installer directory, you run firefox. In my case, it looks like this:

# cd /home/myaccount/mozilla/firefox-installer
# ./firefox

and I see this skeleton frame form, and after about 45 seconds, there is Firefox! Yeah!

I google up some pages, and it works nice. I go over to my own website, this very one, and try to log in. And the screen just sits there. Nothing. I'm thinking it is a popup blocker setting or something else, so I go to check the preferences, and, well, it becomes real obvious what the problem is.

Firefox just doesn't do multiple windows well in X. That's all there is to it. The behavior was just weird. So, although it does work, it does not work well.

And that is the strange tale of  VNC on Linux.

 A couple years back I tried installing Gentoo Linux with little success. Recently I got a server back that was begging to be used and abused. Here on my desk sits an old 450mhz AMD with a whopping 384mb of ram (is it 384? what is 128+256?) and a 10gb disk.

So the first step is to get the latest gentoo. On my fc2 box, I get the latest gentoo torrent.

I already have bittorrent installed on the fc2 box, so I fire up a terminal window and put in the magic phrase:

btdownloadcurses.py --max_upload_rate 350 \
--url http://torrents.gentoo.org/torrents/install-x86-universal-2005.0.iso.torrent

And it looks like the download will be done by the afternoon. Nice.

While the torrent is downloading, I found the Gentoo Installation Handbook, which is good. Once the torrent is complete, I'll have half a clue on what to do with it!

Well, let's see. It's May 2nd, 2005. I just listened to the Alaska Aces defeat the Trenton Titans 6 to 0, giving Peter Aubry his first post-season shutout of the year. Yeah.

Anyhow, hocky news aside, I burned the iso to CD. I don't know why, but on my server, I have to change the cdrecord command around a bit, instead of going dev=1,0,0 , I just put -tao and it's good to go. But whatever. It's burned, and I toss it into my dusty old tower.

The CD boots up, and it sez I need to pick a boot, whatever. I type in gentoo and it lights up. It's a good thing I found that Installation Handbook, cuz apparently I now gotta read it to determine what to do next.

DAY 2:
I start by booting up and doing the net-whatever eth0 to get networking up. btw, I am looking at the Gentoo Installation Handbook and going along with what they say. Time to create paritions. I go along with the suggested partitions in the book.

And when I go to activate the swap partition with

swapon /dev/hda2

guess what I get?

swapon: /dev/hda2 Device or resource is busy

Great. This is going down just like my previous Gentoo attempt did.
I google and come up with similar cries for mercy over at the Gentoo forum.

Fine, I try out something a bit different

swapoff
swapon -a

And what do I get in reply? Nothing. I don't know if that is good or bad, but it beats the "Device busy..." so I figure it must be good.

Okay, I am now at 4e. Mounting. I go along with what it says

mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo

and the result?

mount: /dev/hda3 already mounted or /mnt/gentoo busy

Okay, I reread the docs, and see a blab about if it's ext3, well, that didn't work either.

Figures. Well, I give a crack at unmounting it. Hey, if it's mounted, I should be able to unmount it, right?

umount /dev/hda3
umount: /dev/hda3 not mounted

That's it. I'm not going to waste another day. I am going to find another Linux distro to try out. This is the second time that Gentoo Linux has failed. I'm a fairly competent person, so I'm not feeling like I've missed the obvious or failed to read the docs. I'm systematically going through the install step by step. And it's going just as badly as it did before.

Out comes the CD. Maybe I'll try Gentoo in another two years, but for now, if it can't be installed, well, that's that, ain't it?

[p]Like many, I have a lot of spam in my e-mail inbox. Typically, I receive about 5500+ messages weekly, nearly 100% spam. [/p][p] I used to run McAfee Spamkiller on an old NT box, so I installed it again on a new box and gave it a shot. After a day it stopped. I reinstalled it. After a day it stopped. [/p][p] I chatted with a McAfee tech, who told me I had to renew my subscription. Nothing indicated to me I had to renew anything. [/p][p] I don't feel like paying McAfee a dime. [/p][p] So, I am going to embark on figuring out how to configure some sort of Linux solution that will scrub out the garbage from my Inbox on multiple pop3 email accounts. [/p][p] I have zero experience with e-mail anything on Linux. [/p][p] I looked at SpamAssassin, but could not figure it out at all. Even the 'Newbie' stuff was impossible to decipher. [/p][p] I am going to look at the [a href="http://crm114.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank"]CRM114 Discriminator[/a], mainly because I love the movie [a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000055Y0X/qid=1082558458/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6056456-6642511?v=glance&s=dvd" target="_blank"]Dr. Strangelove[/a]. [/p]

Okay, now I have a clean RedHat 9 installed on my soon-to-be server.

The probelm? I want to print to my old LaserJet 2.

The solution? CUPS. (Common Unix Printing System)

The problem? Hah, like most things Linux, it doesn't install easily.

Out of the box, CUPS printing to a LJ2 does not work. I get bizarre scrawls on the page. Googling for info on this reveals that this is indeed the case.

The solution? Some say "Install the gimp-print" driver.

Easy? NO!

So I go to install gimp-print. Install dies, says I need to install foomatic. I thought it was there, but the system doesn't believe it is. Whatever. Foomatic has four parts to it. I install them in the recommended order. During the install of foomatic-db-engine-3.0.0 errors kick up indicating xmllib cannot be found I google for a solution, and get... ./configure --disable-xmltest I rerun the configure, make, make install It kicks up a ton of bad messages, but they do not say "Error (2)" so I figure it is good and continue. back to installing gimp-print. ./configure fails. I try autoconf. okay. I try make Make says I do not have GTK. But I know I have GTK! Whatever. Make dies. error 2. fine. lets try this. ./configure --with-cups --with-ghostscript --with-foomatic And it dies. configure: error: Cannot find ijs-config; please ensure Ghostscript 6.53 or above is installed I have already installed Ghostscript! Stupid thing... I've done this before, so I will do it again. rpm -F ghostscript-7.07.1-0.i386.rpm (that should Freshen (the -F) the ghostscript package up to the version in the .rpm I downloaded. That goes fine. To verify, I run rpm -U ghostscript-7.07.1-0.i386.rpm and it says ghostscript 7.07.1-0 is installed already. Good.

oh yeah, I got that gentoo box up, at least to a command promt.

Now for something I learned the hard way.

If you wanna burn CDs from a command prompt in Linux, you gotta use a command called mkisofs. Unfortunately, it is not obvious how to go about it. On top of that, the default filenames burned to cd get clipped to 8.3 format, as if you are running DOS 3.0!

So here is what worked for me. No promises it will work for you.

mkisofs -allow-multidot -allow-lowercase -l -relaxed-filenames -o {target.iso} {source dir}

Example: You wanna burn the /home/fred directory to a fred.iso image for burning.

mkisofs -allow-multidot -allow-lowercase -l -relaxed-filenames -o fred.iso /home/fred

Then after that, you gotta burn that .iso to CD. On my box (your will probably have a different value for the dev=), it is:

cdrecord -eject dev=0,0,0 fred.iso

That would burn the fred.iso to a blank CD, and eject it when done. That CD, when loaded up in another linux box, would have the proper long filenames. At least it does for me.

Got me a nice mini-ITX board an' case for my birthday. My plan is to install Linux on it, and use the box for video capture from my S-VHS recorder, and in turn, write the video out to DV tape, using my camcorder.

I shoehorned my old Buz card into the case, plugged all the junk together, and lit it up.

3 weeks later, about 20 kernel recompiles, probably an equal number of patches, and maybe 4 full reinstall-from-CD sessions with RedHat 9.0, I threw in the towel.

Yeah, it installs fine. Except one thing. Sound recording does not work. Can't do much video work without sound.

Now I'm installing Gentoo Linux 1.4.