Well, bonus points are awarded! At least the first compile is done when I got back. On to configuration!
Just did the standard /etc/fstab and network files, and now I get to do my next emerge. Need to make those PCMCIA slots work!
OK, did that, now setting up passwords and such like.
Installing the “must have” tools now. Syslog etc.
Watching compiles is mind numbing. I’ve been working with scripting languages to long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like.
Completely unrelated note. The Darling Wife made Cherry tarts. Very nummy (and, so far) I’m keeping them down. More than a bit messy however.
As expected, networking failed. Off to do the genkernel thing now.
[approx 7:30PM]The only thing more brain numbing than watching a compile go zipping by is watching one that doesn’t puke to the screen as you do it. I don’t like that sort of compile…
[Approx 8:50PM] It’s still going. It’s been doing modules for the last 30 or so minutes. I’m not going to do this very often, once I get it up and running, at least I hope I don’t have to.
[9:15] OK. We have penguin-lust which means I’m up and have a booting system that has a network. I’m hyper!
Starting to install vi/vim now. That’s a 7 step operation, it seems. At least it’s a puke to the screen type of compile so I know it’s not dead.
[9:28] I’ve got vi installed and I’m got the frame buffer working. Woot! Screen looks good. Added my day to day user account. Starting to add mc, ssh and ncftp, which will make it a functioning work machine, less web-browser.
[10:13] got outbound ssh working, need to find the magic tweak for inbound. Dur. Need to start the server…
[10:38] I’ve been poking about a bit, I’ve got what I think are the bare mininamum text based things installed and I’m trying to clean up the install just a hair.
119 items to install X11? I’ll be back in a while. Going to go else where for a while. See y’all later.
AKA a WinBookJ1. This machine is needs to do two wildly separate things. One is to be my work machine, which basically means I need an SSH client, an FTP client and web browser, ideally Firefox 3.x The other is to act as my GM machine in the upcoming Traveller game I’m going to be running. That needs a web server that can support PHP5 and MySQL, plus I need the ability to read a modern PDF file. Printing would be nice, plus the ability to make either an PDF or RTF file, but this is not a requirement. I also need, in general, an editor (vi is my editor of choice) and Midnight Commander (aka mc) installed. Running GIMP would also be nice.
This isn’t that big of a deal, except that the machine has only 256 Megs of memory and “only” a 10 Gig hard drive. After much dinking around I’ve decided that I’m going to go whole geek on this project and use Gentoo. I know that Damn Small Linux will more or less work, as will etch debian, but both of those have weird dependency issues, hence the Gentoo experiment.
This is sort of a live blog of this. And just to make things fun, I’ve got a stomake bug, which means I have to run to the bathroom and talk to Ralph on the BWP ever so often. The anti Ralph stuff I’ve taken, on top of my normal meds is making me very freaking dizzy.
So far, I’ve followed the steps in the Gentoo manual up to step 6. So far, so good, the basic mini-install CD has “just worked”. I suspect that is going to end when soon, because my “network card” is a USB thing, which may or may not be directly supported right out of the box. To make things more fun, the next step will be making this work with a USB wireless thing, but that’s for later.
General comment. Why did they provide “Nano” not VI? I’ve put way to many :wq at the end of files today. Plus random x’s where I wanted a character to go away, etc. To add to the fun, the CTRL key is in the wrong place on this machine.
Standard issue with living in the middle of the country. CST isn’t a default time zone in the “easy to get to” spot. It’s there, but you have to go looking for it. Oddly Mountain time is. In fact all 3 of the timezones other than central are in the basic zoneinfo directory, but CST is in the US sub directory.
Opps. Need to “emerge portage” first. Why would there be a new version when I downloaded the “current” version 30 minutes ago? Got to love cutting edge retro-computing.
I’m now watching it patch the kernel source. It’s as much fun as it sounds like. After this, I’ve got to find out what modules I need, which, if I understand the manual means I need to emerge pciutils and run lsmod
Just a personal note, the OTC anti-nausea pills are working, however I’m wired and feel more than a little dizzy. I can feel my fingernails, which is a strange feeling. Lots of rushing sounds in my ears as well. Not driving today!
lspci reports I have <long list of stuff>
Well, shit. Need to start the SSH server at the start, other wise you have issues, and it fucking reboots. Damn. I hope I can just start the SSH server up, then skip ahead.
(I’ve got the SSH server up, changed root’s password and have attached to if via smallbox).
Looks like I don’t have to redo the longer steps I’ve already taken. Will see in a few here.
OK, we’re back. I’m dumping out the results of those test just so I’ll have a record if and when I need to redo something.
lsmod
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia] (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia AGP]
00:05.0 Modem: PCTel Inc HSP MicroModem 56 (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.4 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 20)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade i1 (rev 6a)
OK. That was fun. I don’t think that configuring a Linux kernel while on medication that makes you dizzy is a good idea. If this machine boots and has networking on the first pass I’m going to to be surprised. If it doesn’t well, they supply the auto-detect genkernel tool as well, which is what I’ll do if this fails, and to be honest about it, what I should have done from the start, but I’m going for geek points here.
I’ve just launched the compile a kernel stage. This is going to take a while, so I’m going to publish this post and go take a bath. Bonus points if it finishes before I get out!
It’s really a craptop. 1Ghz PIII with 256meg of memory. To make it worse, the video card eats some of that memory, and it doesn’t seem like I can add more memory.
So, a Linux box it is. But which flavor? Damn Small linux and Puppy Linux both seem like a good idea, but I want to have a fighting chance at getting WiFi on the machine, so Debian Etch ended up being my target install. Important safety note. Don’t go in and change the /etc/apt/sources.list file to ‘testing’ until you get X11 working, unless you just feel like doing another install. I’m sure I could have beaten on the various X11 config files and gotten it running on this box with out doing that, but I would rather not. X11 config files make me break out in hives. Plus even a net install isn’t all that long of process.
Well, it might not be, based on what I have to do to the xserve down town, but in general, yeah, those 3 of you that reading about this can rest assured that no more posts about how much OS X 10.5 blows goats. Something that blows goat is only a good thing if your a goat. I’m not, so, well, there you go.
Due to several factors some what beyond my control, it took a little longer than I thought to get my iMac G5 upgraded to 10.4.11 server from 10.5.5 server. However, as of this morning, it’s up and running fully the way I want it, which is to say with KDE 3.5 desktop and the Apple dock at the same time. I’m currently moving via FireWire ® the current layout etc over to the G4 laptop (yeah, that one Art Dude). I’m going to need to do a bit of tweaking once it’s moved over (like, for example, changing the IP address etc.) I suspect I’m going to need to nuke and reinstall the whole fink tree (given that it compiled for a G5 and that might, just might, have issues on a G4, duh). If it does, well, I’ve got my traveling AppleBox ®
Any rate, I “won” the WinBook on eBay as well, which mean I have another Intel based crap top. Going to be a Linux box, and it’s primary function in life is going to be my Mongoose Traveller Game master box. Happy Happy!
Migraines. They are the suck. Had one yesterday. It responded well to my standard drugs, but those make me much like a lizard with out a hot rock to lay on. I spent most of yesterday in a dark room with minimal contact with the outside world.
Depending on your status as a normal this may or may not be scary.
You go to a mainstream church if the words in your head start with “What Child is this”.
You’re in or were in the SCA if the phrase “is all you know” goes through your head while you listen to this.
I keep planning on renting Henry V (Kenneth Branaugh version) and watching it on St. Crispins day, but, as per normal, I missed it.
Quite a few important (and in their each way, one sided) battles took place on this day. Battle of Agincourt, Battle of Balaklava, Battle of Leyte Gulf. While the Light Brigade didn’t do as well as Henry’s troops, one can not but marvel at their moral. On the other hand the ‘Taffy’ task forces are unquestionably the spiritual heirs of the English at Agincourt. Having light destroyers and escort carriers charge battleships in surface melee and winning defines “Warriors of the working day”.
Why do I say that? Because I know that this is a Textron Marine and Land Systems Division [formerly Cadillac Gage] “Stingray” light tank, being delivered to it’s only user, Thailand. It weights about a third of what a M1A1 tank weighs (22 vs 67 tons, depending on the breaks). And I knew this before I started using Google. Yeah, pretty much “geek with no life”, that would be me.
I heard this tune as I was driving into $WeSellUsedMacs. Of my cow-orkers , well, crap, none of them were alive when this was taped.
I need all of you punks to get the hell off my lawn!
AC/DC – It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll – .
Even allowing for Mà ¶tley Crà ¼e’s suckage, the rock (vs the pop music) of the late 70’s to mid 80’s did, in fact rule. Heh, I suspect I’ve lost enough weight in the last 6 months that my old high school ear “Disco Sucks” tee shirt would fit again. Of course it should say “Disco Still Sucks”.
Found out the hard way that skipping my Temazpam is a really bad idea. Intermittent restless sleep is not good. Makes for a cranky webmaster when he comes into work after refilling his meds.
Finding out that we have to redo our “Email Blast” and dinking with old eBay stuff really makes me cranky.
Steve, it’s OK if I call you that right? It’s better than what I want to call you right now, just by the way. I want to talk to you about OS 10.5 and how much it blows goats as a server. I’m not really sure that’s totally fair, I mean if it really blew goats it would be at least liked by the goats. I don’t think they do.
Any rate, turd face, if some one makes changes to his or her /etc/services file AND makes the changes to his or her related plist file, they most likely did it for a fucking reason. If your spiffy little Leopard update is going to change them, at least make a fucking back up. It’s not like the Leopard version of /etc/services is all that special, I mean look at all the NOT APPLE.COM email address in it. It’s just the generic BSD file.
So, any rate, fuck head, I just wanted you to know that I’ve found yet another reason why OS X 10.5 sucks large amounts of shit. You had a damn near perfect server with 10.4, why the fuck did you have to fuck it up so God Damn badly?
So, I find my self driving back from the shrink, playing XM 41 as normal. A song comes on. I turn it up and start singing along.
Yeah, so, why the going to hell?
The song was “Every Rose has it’s thorn” by Poison. I can’t believe I
1) know that song well enough to sing along with it and
2) I thought that singing along with Poison would be a good idea.
Poison, for crying out loud. Back in the day they were the band we called “Poser”. The shame of it all.
On the medical front, the shrink changed my Cymalta dose to 40mg a day, vs the 60mg I have been taking for the last 4 weeks, in an attempt to get my falling over dizzy spells to stop.
I use Servage.net as my hosting service. Nice enough, if some what odd. It’s a German company, which means that the actual location of the server is some where on the North German coastal plain. They offer MySQL, PHP5 and all the normal toys, other than an SSH login that you would expect a full service hosting company to offer. Of course they assume you know what you are doing, so they are geek hosting company, not a general use company like say MySpace or FaceBook. That’s OK, I’m a geek.
The only major problem I have with them is that their copy of phpMyAdmin runs like a pig. I’m about to install my own copy to see if runs any faster. It’s not like it’s all that hard, I just hate to have to have a “duplicate” copy for all the databases I have to deal with.
I still feel like crap, and The Darling Wife has an URI. We have a 10:45 doctor’s appointment, then I get to go deal with $WeSellUsedMacs for a day or so. There is no end of my joy and happiness.
The only thing useful I’ve done in the last 48 hours is to ‘Topspot’ all the critters. Well, not all the critters the squirrels out side I didn’t bother with, but I did do all the dogs and cats.
We, as Americans tend to think we elect military men to the presidency. Looking over the elections of my life, this really doesn’t seem to be the case.
1964. Barry Goldwater had served as a pilot in Burma, among other places, and remained a member of the Air Force reserve after the war. LBJ served in the navy for a total of 7 months (Dec 10, 1941 to July 16th, 1942) He got the Silver star for being in a plane (as an observer, not the pilot) that had engine trouble and had to turn back when attacked by 8 fighters. Note that the plane was not hit. Also note he was, in addition to being a naval officer, still a member of congress at this time. This may have had something to do with the Silver Star. Any rate, winner of the election, not the real war hero.
1968 Richard Nixon served in the US Navy, as a logistical officer in Ottumwa, Iowa, (Navy. Iowa. Ok, what ever). Then went on to be a logistical officer in the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command, part of the Guadalcanal campaign. He won vs Herbert Humphrey, who never served. While not exactly a war hero, he was the vet.
1972 Nixon vs McGovern. McGovern, of course was a real war hero, being a bomber pilot. The war hero lost. Granted he was running as as the peace candidate.
1976 Gerald Ford vs Jimmy Carter. Both served (well, Carter was in the USNA during the war, which means he get’s a * by his name for war time service) Gerald Ford served on the carrier USS Monterey which one of the ships hit by the Typhoon Cobra. His action in leading fire fighting teams was credited was the saving of the USS Monterey. So, he war hero lost again.
1980 Reagan vs Carter. Wash. Both were “under arms” in WWII, but Carter was a cadet at USNA and Reagan was making movies for the Army. First post war election where neither could be called a war hero, by any terms. For what it’s worth, Reagan was not medically fit for combat duty, Carter was. If the war had gone on for another year, it’s a near sure thing Carter, as submarine officer, would have seen combat. Reagan, not so much.
1984 Reagan vs Mondale. Mondale served in the US army during the Korean war, to earn GI Bill money to go to law school. He spent his tour of duty in Fort Knox. His claim to fame, so to speak is that he was the first post war candidate that was not an officer. He made E-4 in two years. Just for what it’s worth I made E-5 in 18 months and E-5 in two years. Just saying. Another wash on the war hero thing. At least the both did serve, and Mondale did serve during the time of shooting war. Not his fault he was sent to Ft. Knox
1988 GHW Bush vs Dukakis. Dukakis spent 2 years drafted in the Army, after the end of the Korean war. He did spend 16 months on the DMZ. Bush, of course, was a real war hero, being the youngest naval pilot at one point. In this case, yeah, the war hero won.
1992. Let’s not even start about Bill Clinton and the military. Let’s just say he didn’t not serve and beat the war hero, GHW Bush. Of course if the Texas Gnome has stayed out, he would not have, but that’s neither here nor there.
1996 Robert Dole vs Bill Clinton. Rear honest by God wounded in action infantry platoon leader and decorated war hero vs a draft dodger. Dodger wins.
2000 GW Bush vs Gore. Gore was a SP/4 news reporter for the The Castle Courier (the news paper of the 20th Engineer Brigade) in Viet Nam. Members of his paper staff were in fact killed in action. Personal side note. One of my sections chiefs in my first tour in German was in the 20th Brigade during the same time frame as Gore. (SSG later SFC Panfile. aka the Skinny Ginny He was the highest decorated member of the battery when I was here, having a Silver Star, 2 Bronze Stars a 3 awards of the Purple Heart. He also had 4 Arcoms. Some of the Arcoms were post his moving to ADA I’ll grant ) GW Bush was a F-106 Delta Dart driver. I’ll let my Nike back ground show here, but the Delta Dart isn’t a fighter, it’s a missile that in theory lands after it’s mission. It was steered by controllers on the ground using the SAGE system, which, BTW is exactly what the Nike Herc did as well, with out risking a pilot. Bad system, inflicted on the US by Robert McNamara and the Wiz Kids, but I digress. Again, the one that came closest to seeing the elephant lost.
2004 Say what you will about Kerry, he was over there. Bush was not. Of course Kerry’s actions after he returned and the fact that his awards were of the classic Viet Nam Cracker Jack box type awards doesn’t help, but again, Bush’s MOS, with out even raising the issue of him actually doing it, could have been done by roughly 15 vacuum tubes and large oil filled resister element. Let’s just say the one closer to hero status lost.
That brings us to Obama vs McCain. War hero vs some one that hasn’t served. Doesn’t look good. Only time the Vet won was Nixon and Bush 41, and Dukakis at least served on the Korean DMZ, back when that was 100 percent safe. 11 election. One war hero wining and one vet vs non vet winning, but when the supply officer went up against a bomber pilot, the REMF won. Aside from GHW Bush, we haven’t elected a warrior since I have be aware of the concept of the presidency.
My brother, Random Dafyyd, will point out that that I’m not mentioning JFK vs Nixon. Why? while I was alive in 1960, I was less than a year old. Doesn’t register on me at all. Even including that we have two serving officers, and the winner’s claim to fame was he got his PT 109 boat run over by a IJN destroyer. His action after being t-boned might have been heroic, but it was his bad seamanship that got him there to start with.
As I said a day or so ago, I listen to XM Radio a lot. Channel 41 aka “The Boneyard” in particular. I’ve been pretty smug about how much better “my” music is than most current stuff.
Well, that stopped this morning. Two words for you Motley Crew. I forgot how much they sucked. Large object through small straws. They pull mega-lovelaces of suck.
Well, sort of. I “upgraded” my work machine to 10.4.11 server this morning. X11 and kde 3.5 will be acting normal again. Server info is action right again. I still need to set up mail.app on this box, but all in all I’m a happy camper.
Leopard is not for geeks. It’s the Vista of OS X versions. It’s pretty, it’s got cool things, and it doesn’t fucking work for shit for a Unix geek who wants to do any thing other than what Apple thinks they should do.
No, this is not a political rant. I’ve given up on those for a while.
It’s a tech rant.
Let’s start with Apple. OS X 10.4.11 rocked my world. Great OS, pretty user interface, access to a real geek command line and with fairly minimal work could be made to run an X11 interface, like say KDE.
OS X 10.5.5, on the other hand blow goats. I keep finding more and more problems with features that have been removed from Leopard, adn I’m not a happy camper. Getting XFCE4, KDE or Gnome to work, at least with either fink or MacPorts is non trivial. This is starting to chap my buns. More about this once I do get it working. I suspect that there is going to be some special build hand-waving going on.
Next, we have iGoogle. Why? What happened that we needed to move the tabs from across the top to down the side? Why? There isn’t an option to change back to the “old” style, which, to quote my self, also blows goats. The set number of column options isn’t worth this, at least in my arrogant opinion.
I’m coming up on a birthday. A fairly important one, most likely my last prime square, but not a LRN just yet.
So, Yeah, I’m an old fart. What music station do I find my self using most? XM radio 41. “The Boneyard”.
It’s for classic metal, things that sound like classic metal, and prog-rock. It’s target audience is high school class of , ‘76 through ‘86, more or less. It’s old music, or at least an old style. It’s mainly listened to by old farts. You would not know this if you listened to the self promo spots they run. You would think it’s for class of 2015.
Adults, as a general rule, don’t really have to make a semi-sexual pun on “bone me” several times an hour. That’s a twelve year old thing.
Let’s talk about Apple OS X Leopard. The server version. Upgrading from “Tiger” or 10.4.11 to “Leopard” or 10.5.5 has a couple of issues.
If your a old school Unix person, and keep your stuff, for what ever reason, in the /home vs /Users (where the Apple folk you should keep them, fascists that they are) please be aware that the upgrade is going to make the /home directory appear to be empty. Don’t panic. It really didn’t nuke it, despite what some web pages may tell you. You need to go into the /etc directory and edit the auto_master file. Either delete or comment out (# as first character) the line that has /home listed. Once you do this, reboot the box and your old /home directory will come back. You may unclench your ass now…
Next, play close attention to your mail.log file. The upgrade doesn’t tweak your postfix main.cf file, which may or may not be good thing, because it DOES upgrade the version of postfix. Depending on what you have set, it might need to add a few lines to reflect the new options that postfix has.
The one thing you do want to do is turn on the spam filters. It kicks of the ass. I created a special mail box to redirect the mail marked as spam to. So far, in the last week, it’s taken in 23,303 pieces of email. Oddly enough, Thunderbird marked all of those as junk mail when it connected to the server. Funny thing that.
As major server upgrades go, it’s fairly pain free. I don’t want to talk about desktops right now, I’m still fighting to get X11/KDE3.5 up and doing the right thing. More about that once I do know what it going on with that.
My doctor seems to think that the meltdown I had during the middle of the week was due to migraine interfering with the anti-depressants, and that I’m on a rather low dose. He doubled the dose, with a follow up in a few weeks. He also suggested that I get out more, so I am going to try real hard to restart my mid week D&D game and start up a Mongoose Traveller game. More about those as they happen.
Actually, the badness started some time Friday afternoon. I got a migraine, which responded, more or less, to my Midrin, however it didn’t go away, so I ended up take several doses over the weekend. This is first time since I started on my current “don’t freak the fuck out” drugs that I have had to do that.
I’m not going to again.
There seems to be something about the Midrin/Adderall/Diclofenac/Temazepan/Cymbalta combination that, well, doesn’t freaking work.
Let me explain. Saturday, The Darling Wife noticed that Pressa wasn’t feeling well. I made a vet appointment for her on Monday. Short version, she had some sort of liver disease and on Tuesday, we had to have her put to sleep. Run with Bast, my lesbian love kitty.
Due to some work related issues, I was already fairly well stressed out. When the vet told me over the phone that we needed to come in and say good by to Pressa, well, I totally lost it. Complete and total break down.
Which I just found out isn’t over. I just lost it at my wife, who I love more than life itself over where to put a bunch of broccoli in the fridge.
Oh, God, please, make it better, I don’t want to live like this any more.
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