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Week of September 17th, 2001
Last Updated: September 26, 2001 21:19
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Daynotes.com
Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
Greetings. Apologies to my reader faithful. I fully intended to put up a post yesterday, but it was Leah's birthday, the weather was sunny and warm, and we ended up shifting priorities to accommodate the day. A BBQ was in order -- four of the finest T-bones I could muster. The finest dead cow I've had in a very long time. Mind you, for what those four steaks cost they should have brought pleasure to more than just my taste buds... Oh well. Birthdays are special days around Syroid Manor.
Our weekend was quiet. Mostly we cleaned. Bathrooms, cleaned cupboards, vacuuming, sort the week's accumulation of paperwork... I don't know about you, but I frequently organize internally vicariously -- by organizing my office, or our junk drawer, or whatever happens to be handy.
Yes, it's a new week and a new world. Even Canadians, renowned for being passive and reflective about world affairs, are visibly shaken by the events of last Tuesday. Newspaper headlines declare that we too are at war; that we will stand "shoulder to shoulder" with our American neighbors and assist however we can. Ottawa is re-examining immigration policies and tightening vigilance at key points of entry to our country (primarily Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal). Fighters at Cold Lake, Alberta are on 15 minute alert. Yesterday I noticed a Canadian flag flying from a neighbor's porch. As a nation, we're not known for such overt displays of patriotism. We love and respect our country, but we just don't "do" flag waving. Or at least we didn't used to. Apparently things are different this week.
-oOo-
I've spent some time over the last few days re-addressing the issue of getting a workable/useable Linux distribution on my notebook. I tried everything I could think of to get X running under Slackware 8.0 to no avail. The latest Nvidia driver (1521, I believe) simply would not initialize. I tried several kernels, and a 1001 different XF86Config parameters. Nada. So Saturday I downloaded Red Hat's latest beta (dubbed, "Roswell"), burned it to CD (2, actually), and installed it. New to RH 7.2 (?) is the option of formatting for a JFS. I assumed the JFS would be ReiserFS; I was a bit surprised to see RH have chosen EXT3. I ended up doing 4 or 10 installs, testing different options and scenarios each time around -- so far so good. EXT3 appears to be as robust and reliable as Reiser.
The installation/setup process for Roswell works as advertised. Configuration and hardware detection under Linux has refined dramatically over the last two years -- providing you're using mainstream components and installing to a desktop system. Laptop installations -- especially with new chipsets like the Nvidia GeForce Go -- can still present considerable challenges to both the newbie and the guru alike. For example, as noted I could not for the life of me get X working under Slack. Under Roswell I did a standard laptop install (with KDE, Gnome, and developer tools), copied over XF86Config file I created and tested under SuSE 7.2 two weeks ago, and typed startx. Presto and pocus. Up came Gnome (which, incidentally, I'm very impressed with -- I have looked at Gnome since 1.2) in 24 bit color at 1600x1200. On the other hand, I couldn't get wireless working under Roswell; under Slack it's simply a matter of configuring things in the right order, and voila -- wireless connectivity.
I finally got wireless working under RH this morning. Turns out I was looking under the wrong rock. With Slack you configure your main 10/100 interface during installation, install the latest PCMCIA-CS source, plug your wireless IP information into /etc/pcmcia/network.opts, and reboot. I did all the same under RH -- no joy. Turns out it was a routing issue. I have two gateways here at Syroid Manor. 192.168.1.1 is my 8-port Linksys; 192.168.1.2 is my 4-port wireless access point (each on a separate IP). Under Slack I set the 10/100 NIC to use the 192.168.1.1 GW and the wireless card to 192.168.1.2. Under RH I have to have them both set to 192.168.1.1. Mmm. Dunno. I'm simply pleased to have everything (wireless, wire, X, and the new Nvidia drivers) working as they should.
Our fair hamlet is currently being pummeled by a lightening storm. Spectacular. No rain yet, but the strikes are getting brighter, and the thunder has started, so I suspect it's not far off. We've been remarkably untouched by storms this summer -- I remember last summer; we had a storm almost every night between 8 and 10, and frequently lost power in the process. This year I can only remember once when the lights went out. I'm actually feeling pretty smug. Hydras and Phoenix are both attached to UPS's, and my notebook battery is sitting at almost 75%, which is good for about two hours of hard work. And in two hours, I'll be sleeping soundly <grin>...
A busy and relatively productive day. I spent a lot of time on the phone, and when I wasn't playing telephone tag or catching up with authors, I was on Phaedrus trying to keep ahead of mail. I also note that for the last 24+ hours I've been working almost exclusively in Linux (save for this post). I'm running Gnome, Mulberry for mail, and the two or three times I had to review a Word document I used OpenOffice [build 638]. I haven't got OpenOffice tweaked the way I want it yet, but it is certainly useable in it's present incarnation. As a matter of fact, now that I've got some of the quirks worked out, Linux on my Inspiron is more than a little useable. With the refinements to Gnome 1.4, wireless connectivity, a decent email client, the ability to read/write Word documents, and a decent browser (I'm using Mozilla), it's very easy to sit down and be productive with the system as I've configured it. Far cry from the frustrations I experienced just six months ago trying to use Linux on a daily basis...
Ahhh. The rain has come. In buckets. The grass will be happy.
The routing issue I mentioned yesterday is still unresolved. I'm 80% there, though. I set the built-in 10/100 NIC to use the 192.168.1.1 GW and via the /etc/pcmcia/network.opts file, the Linksys wireless card to use the 192.168.1.2 GW (shouldn't really matter as both hubs are connected by an uplink cable, but what they heck... it works, sorta). This is all well and good, and everything boots and initializes as it should, but when I try to access an external IP (external to my 192.168.1. subnet, this is), I get a route not found error. Turns out that the system is trying to use the 10/100 NIC, which is not connected. The reason it's trying to use the 10/100 NIC is because the routing table is telling it to. The 'metric' for the 10/100 card is '0'; the metric for the wireless card is '1'. So the system will always try the 10/100 route first, and the interface is not down -- it's just not plugged it. So it fails. I can fix the problem by manually deleting the default --> 192.168.1.2 --> eth1 routing entry, and re-entering it as:
route add default gw 192.168.1.2 metric 0 dev eth1
With both interfaces set for a metric of 0, the system tries one, gets no response, and tries the other. Success, and Ta-Da. Question is, how do I get eth1 to come up with a metric of 0 automatically. So far I'm at a loss... So I continue to do it O-Manuel until I finger things out. Certainly not a show stopper.
Today is our 9th wedding anniversary (Happy Anniversary, Honey Buns!). We're spending a quiet evening at home and planning a nice (sans children) dinner together on Saturday. My how time flies when you're having fun...
I watched President Bush's speech tonight. Masterful. And I think, eventually, historic.
Yes, freedom and fear are indeed at war.
God bless America. May you find the justice you seek.
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Last modified:
September 26,
2001