Why My Life Sucks

Well, I got a new battery.  Actually, I got two.  Let me explain.  I go into $CarPartStore across the street from where Darling Wife works and next to where Redheaded Girl used to work. At $CarPartStore, I speak with Clerk Dude about my need for a battery.  Clerk Dude does some computer fu and comes up with a type of battery I need and said that if I bought a 1 dollar “mounting kit” (two felt thingies that go under the cables and some sort of portected goo/lub stuff) he could install the battery.  Sounds good to me, not dealing with heavy toxic acidic crap inside a car is worth a buck, plus I get the little felt thingies under the cables, score all the way around.  He even yumps the battery out to the car for me.   He undoes the battery, puts in new one, plus mounting kit and tells me to start it up.

Nothing.  Not even tick-tick-tick etc.   He putzes about with the cables.  Tells me to try again.  “tick-tick-tick-tick”  Really weeny tick-tick-tick, I might add.

“Oh, that’s your starter.” sayth Clerk dude.

“No, It’s not.  If I hook up the Jump Buddy to it, the car will start.” sayth me.

“I don’t think so, but let’s try it.“  At least he was willing to listen to the customer, unlike the last “expert” I had to deal with (see rant about Vonage VoIP provider below)

Hook up “Jump Buddy”.  Car starts, as expected and predicted.  Clerk dude, to his credit, shrugs and takes my old battery into the store and puts it on on the battery tester.  It’s dead Jim.  Highest value, 6 or so volts, at any sort of amps.

He takes the portable tester out and hooks it up the “new” battery.   It’s even more dead, Jim.  Highest value, 4 volts, and dropped to under 2 under load.  It wouldn’t even power the clock whose display at least, is a 7400 TTL based system, which means 5 volts or it’s dead. (It bothers me some times that I know things like that, but don’t remember what the syntax of a SQL insert statement is.  It’s not like I’ve done any IC works since, oh, 1978 or so.)

He takes the portable test in to the store, takes battery number 3 off the shelf and test it.  Good to go.   Replaces battery number 2 (i.e the one I just bought) and has me do a “turn in” paper work thing.  (zero days on a 3 year pro-rated warranty, comes to, oh, full price….)  While he’s doing that, the store manager type (aka PHB for you Dilbert fans out there) wanders over and asks what’s going on. Clerk dude explains.  PHB looks amazed that a product that is known to have a life span is dead.  Shocked and appalled even.  Really appalled, at one point he was standing with his arms out at 45 degree angle over his head [heralds don't pun, they cant] {rim-shot} Thanks, be here all week. Try the fish...)  PHB doesn’t think clerk dude knows how to run the tester correctly.  (It’s not hard.  I can do now.  Hook up battery like you were jumping it, i.e. red clamp on the positive terminal, black on the negative. Push test.  Enter the Amps of the battery.  Watch LCD. Wait 45 seconds. Read result.  I could train Velifer to do it, if he had the thumbs to hook up the battery.)  PHB putzes with cables.  Pushes Test etc. Still dead.  Reads, if any thing, lower than it did out side attached to the car.

I sign the papers and leave, while PHB and Clerk dude start talking about checking lot numbers and who gets to do what with this issue etc.  That sounds like a load of fun and games. But Not My Problem.

Got the new D&D group’s first game tonight, I’m all sorts of happy about that.

Let’s start with my car.  Well, the battery.  It’s dead.  Need to get that fixed ASAP.  dur.  Should have done it this weekend.

Which brings us to “I feel like shit.”  More or less literally, given that I’m taking a crap about once every 45 minutes or so.  For the last 3 days.  “Lots of that virus going around” the doctor says.  My crapping eating habits, due to the various anti-freak out meds I take may also have something to do with it.

Then there is my VoIP provider.  I’ve got 2 routers, and two number, one one each router.  Each router has two phone ports.  I wanted to add a 3rd number to the second phone port of the first router.  This should be simple.  It wasn’t.  6 (six) calls, average time 40 minutes each, and 2 (two) supervisor level personages.  This did not make me a happy camper.  There service if first rate, assuming you don’t have to change any thing.

The Craptop’s hard drive died.  However, I have a cunning plan, and the fact that I know what to do with Gentoo now should make it an faster rebuild.  Bonus, the cunning plan will make the hard drive bigger.  Score all around!

Got a Doctor’s appointment later this week.  Need to tweak my Cymalta I think.  Current load doesn’t seem to be working quite right.

$WeSellUsedMacs is becoming more and more surreal.  Average life span of a tech working there seems to be about 3 weeks. When I’m the most knowledgeable person about Mac hardware/Software in the building they have problems.

Google.  Go back to the way iGoogle was before you fucked it up.  It fails to read RSS titles about 70% of the time and each freaking tab has it’s own settings.  This does not make me a happy camper.  Actually, just fix the RSS feed issue and give and option to apply setting and theams to all tabs and that would fix it.   I may need to go look at my Google Lab stuff, this might be a side effect of those.  More later.

Spammers.  “Comment Spammers” in particular.  Please use software to comment spam that at least tries to make it look like a real comment. The “comment” on the top of the Spam Karma reject pile is ‘22gy2zo5g0a0f8lg paucyh yhtrg’. This, of course, is really a link to really random web sites, but, come on, what happened to “This is very interesting web site. I will be back later” comment spam?

Well, off to see if the Jump Buddy has enough juice yet.

No, not that damn, this is a Craptop damn. First time I’ve need to recompile the kernel since day 1 of the Gentoo era. Seems sound wasn’t enabled. grrr…

Well, the machine isn’t dead.     I did figure out why it went into thermal shutdown however.   The speaker grills on the front of the machine are also the inbound air intakes.   Closing the lid, with the machine running isn’t a good idea.     Of course, NOT closing the lid when it’s running something in back ground isn’t a good idea with as many cats as I have.

Solution:   Don’t let it run in background mode unless I’m in the room so I can keep Pip and/or Velifer off of it.

The Craptop project may have just hit a freaking wall. I finished the current emerge, and issued a ’shutdown now -h’ command, then moved the machine from the living room to my desk in the bed room. Machine will not turn on now. Turns on, does a memory count, detects the hard drive and DVD drive, then turns it’s self off. I’m hoping that it’s an over heat situation and letting it cool down will fix it (it has been running full bore for several days now), but just in case, I’m installing the rest of the LAMP stack on the andLinux part of the DellBookâ„¢

Finished fixing the fucked install dumbass attack, plus got PHP/MySQL/Apache2 and the like playing nice with each other.   Now attempting to get XFCE4/The Gimp/Firefox/DigiKam running.     The emerge to do that results in 119 items to install.   Off we go!

After that, I’ll re-run the update the world, and declare victory.

I’ve just spent an hour or so of quality, quality I tell you, time dealing with the “USE” option in /etc/make.conf   After dealing with all that, it needs to either rebuild or install 150+ items.   I launched a ’screen’ session and fired that puppy up.   I’ll come back in a hour or so an check on it.

First off, why am I doing this instead of installing Umbutu or even debian Linux

Well, there are 2 reasons.

1. The machine really is rather limited, so a kitchen sink “it just works” install, while an option, is sub-optimal.
2. It’s A Project.   I need projects.   It’s been far to long and I can feel my brain getting better as we speak.

So, that being said, on with the live blogging

It’s 11:27 in morning.   It looks like X, MySQL, Apache2 and PHP5 all emerged while I slept.     I’ve configured X, which was more or less painless and now I need to install a window manager that doens’t make your eyes bleed.   I’m going to use XFCE4, which is a 69 part project.   That’s running on the tuxbook (the craptop hostname) proper.   While that is going on, I’m going to attempt to get the servers up and running.

MySql first, I think.  
[11:37] Odd.   I thought I emerged MySql last night.   Seems I didn’t.   Doing that now.

[12:10]   Apache2 is set up and configured to work as a basic HTTP server.   Working on getting it to server PHP pages now

[12:45]   Just made an important discovery.   Don’t emerge via multiple logins.   Doesn’t do what you think it’s going to do.   I think what I need to do is do something like emerge phpmyadmin and let it deal with all the backdrop, after I run a
“emerge –verbose –update –ask –newuse world” to deal with the mangled install(s)

OK, this is going to take some time.   More later.

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 WinBook J¹. 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)

And the big dump:(chroot) livecd / # lsmod            
Module                                   Size   Used by
ipv6                                   236260   12
dock                                     18448   0
fan                                       12804   0
pcmcia                                 45100   0
pegasus                               33424   0
mii                                       13312   1 pegasus
yenta_socket                     32908   1
rsrc_nonstatic                 20480   1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core                       45076   3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
video                                   26640   0
backlight                           13188   1 video
output                                 11776   1 video
thermal                               24092   0
battery                               16640   0
ac                                         12544   0
processor                           39656   2 thermal
button                                 16528   0
rtc                                       20768   0
tg3                                     111748   0
e1000                                 119616   0
jfs                                     169836   0
raid10                                 30080   0
raid456                             129296   0
async_memcpy                     10880   1 raid456
async_xor                           12160   1 raid456
xor                                       21896   2 raid456,async_xor
async_tx                             15948   3 raid456,async_memcpy,async_xor
raid1                                   30080   0
raid0                                   15872   0
dm_bbr                                 20128   0
dm_snapshot                       24996   0
dm_mirror                           29440   0
dm_mod                                 63428   3 dm_bbr,dm_snapshot,dm_mirror
sbp2                                     29960   0
ohci1394                             38192   0
ieee1394                             92600   2 sbp2,ohci1394
sl811_hcd                           19968   0
usbhid                                 35712   0
ohci_hcd                             29700   0
uhci_hcd                             30988   0
usb_storage                     120608   0
ehci_hcd                             39948   0
usbcore                             133484   8 pegasus,sl811_hcd,usbhid,ohci_hcd,uhci_hcd,usb_storage,ehci_hcd
lpfc                                   216016   0
qla2xxx                             168548   0
firmware_class                 17408   2 pcmcia,qla2xxx
megaraid_sas                     35504   0
megaraid_mbox                   38160   0
megaraid_mm                       18464   1 megaraid_mbox
megaraid                             44360   0
aacraid                               68996   0
sx8                                       25484   0
DAC960                                 73032   0
cciss                                   41220   0
cpqarray                             28004   0
3w_9xxx                               39300   0
3w_xxxx                               32928   0
mptsas                                 43144   0
scsi_transport_sas         37120   1 mptsas
mptfc                                   25988   0
scsi_transport_fc           49028   3 lpfc,qla2xxx,mptfc
scsi_tgt                             22344   1 scsi_transport_fc
mptspi                                 28296   0
mptscsih                             41344   3 mptsas,mptfc,mptspi
mptbase                               78308   4 mptsas,mptfc,mptspi,mptscsih
atp870u                               36352   0
dc395x                                 39052   0
sim710                                 13188   0
53c700                                 33444   1 sim710
qla1280                             123660   0
dmx3191d                             20096   0
sym53c8xx                           77588   0
qlogicfas408                     15104   0
aha152x                               42512   0
aha1740                               15872   0
advansys                             85248   0
initio                                 24900   0
BusLogic                             72948   0
arcmsr                                 29952   0
aic7xxx                             168760   0
aic79xx                             241624   0
scsi_transport_spi         30848   7 mptspi,53c700,dmx3191d,sym53c8xx,aha152x,aic7xxx,aic79xx
sg                                         41360   0
pdc_adma                             17668   0
sata_inic162x                   20228   0
sata_mv                               28936   0
ata_piix                             26372   0
ahci                                     34180   0
sata_qstor                         17924   0
sata_vsc                             16516   0
sata_uli                             15620   0
sata_sis                             16772   0
sata_sx4                             20484   0
sata_nv                               33160   0
sata_via                             19588   0
sata_svw                             15748   0
sata_sil24                         24068   0
sata_sil                             19080   0
sata_promise                     20996   0
scsi_wait_scan                   9472   0
pata_sis                             21892   1 sata_sis
libata                               152248   17 pdc_adma,sata_inic162x,sata_mv,ata_piix,ahci,sata_qstor,sata_vsc,sata_uli,sata_sis,sata_sx4,sata_nv,sata_via,sata_svw,sata_sil24,sata_sil,sata_promise,pata_sis

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!