Tom at 16

Week of March 25th, 2002

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Thursday March 28, 2002

Remarkable. Here I am, posting three days in a row. Perhaps I'm coming down with something (heh-heh)...

It's late, so this will be brief. Phaedrus is home with a shiny new keyboard and a new motherboard (or at least that's what the repair order says). I'm a happy camper again. Now that I'm used to the freedom of wireless and the sharp clarity of this 15" LCD, it's really hard to sit at a desk and stare at a tube-type monitor. Yes, I know. Spoiled rotten. But someone has to do it.

Spring has sprung in Saskatoon. That's not to say the cherry blossoms are blooming, but the temp did climb to +4C today, and there's water running in the streets. Yippee! It's snowing like crazy as I type this, but it's one of those freak storms, with big huge snowflakes blowing in all directions; it'll probably be gone by morning.

I plan to put Gentoo on my notebook this weekend -- I'm just not sure yet how I'll go about it. I currently have about 12 of 18GB in use (one big NTFS/XP partition), but I want to set things up to dual boot with 9GB each for Linux and WinXP. So I'll need to either remove a bunch of programs, or kill everything and start fresh. Haven't decided which path to take.

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Wednesday March 27, 2002

How sad. How terribly sad. My deepest condolences to the people of Israel. I do not always agree with the Israeli government's tone, rhetoric, or approach at times, but I certainly sympathize with their current situation. I mean, really... how the heck does one guard against suicide bombers? Errect fences? Rockets and gernades can be lobbed over fences.

And perhaps somewhat off-topic -- why is Bush not recalling Zinni after this recent round of violence? What I do not "grok" is how a President can stand on a podium and denounce terrorism in the strongest of terms (and back it up, nee Afganistan), and yet continually push toward a peaceful resolution in the Middle East. It ain't gonna happen folks. Not as long as Arafat refuses to denounce terrorism. Which in my book is not a whole lot different than overtly supporting it... Oh well. I'm sure somebody will come along and set me straight...

Heh. See Roland? Syroid posted two days in a row. Don't get used to it now. ;-)

Tuesday March 26, 2002

Sunday night I fell asleep on the couch shortly after 8pm, hence the reason for the lack of my promised "link-day". Yesterday I worked from 8am to 10pm laying out a new tutorial for IBM (Samba Authentication using LDAP). In short, long day.

This morning I got up, checked email, and proceeded to reply to a message. I glanced down at the screen. The first line was perfect. The second read:

... f t's stll pertnent by all means post t ...

Sigh. A quick check of my keyboard showed the "8", "i", "k", and "," keys all deader than a nit (Note: all in a vertical row). Bother.

Roland thinks I'm hard on equipment ;-) Now I don't really consider myself a road warrior, but I do use my Inspiron all day, [mostly] every day. But I don't pound the keys and when I move it around, I do so carefully. It's been jostled a few times by both myself and the kids, but certainly nothing serious enough to do any damage. I -use- it, but I don't abuse it. So I was a tad miffed, especially due to the fact I just got the damn thing back from the shop last week (when the LCD bit the dust).

I phoned my friendly Dell rep, and she dug into the database looking for something that might explain the problem. Turns out it has to do with the connection between the MB and the KB -- one set of pins doesn't make proper contact, resulting in the one row of dead keys. I was kinda hoping I could pull the keyboard, blow out the contacts, and be on my merry way. Nope. Negative. The fix is to replace the MB (!!!). Like I said, bother.

So the URLs I've been meaning to post for a week or so are currently winging their way to Southern Ontario. I do promise, though, when it returns...

-oOo-

I've rec'd and responded to numerous queries over the course of the last three weeks regarding Gentoo. Rather than typing the same answers to the same common questions over and over, let me offer some general comments/advice:

Yes, IMHO Gentoo is mature enough to be used on a production server despite the fact it is currently advertised as an RC. Gentoo 1.0 is due out at the EOM.
If you intend to implement Gentoo, go to the Web site (above), download/print out (I prefer the later; read them as you're installing), and carefully read three docs: The installation guide; the FAQ; and the Portage guide. They contain enough to get you up and running; the rest is a hands-on thing.
I also recommend you 'emerge' the gentoolkit package. It contains some excellent Gentoo-specific administration tools. In particular, check out 'qpkg' and 'ect-update'.
It takes about 8 hours (on my systems) to go from boot image to ready-for-business product -- allocate accordingly. YMMV, of course. And when you're done, DO A BACKUP (or make a CD image) so you don't have to start from scratch if you muck something up.
Join the Gentoo users mailing list -- it is an excellent source of knowledge about Gentoo, and about Linux in general. It's high-traffic, but populated by some very intelligent and knowledgeable users (most unusual for high-traffic lists). It's one of the few lists I've joined that I find myself reading each and every message.
Be VERY carefully when updating your baselayout-xxx package. There's been several key updates over the last few days in prep for V 1.0, and each update changes a slew of config files in /etc. Use the etc-package from ... app-admin/gentoolkit and read each and every diff displayed. I got in a hurry the other day and accepted some changes that I shouldn't have. The end result is I've got some bunged up config files, and my fstab is not loading automatically. I'm current working around it by manually mounting my partitions should I need to reboot, and it's fixable, but it's going to be a pain and it's going to be time-consuming. Just a word of caution...

Be good. If you can't be good, be careful.

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