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Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
I'm wearing socks tonight. That's not a good sign. The wind's been howling for two day now, and the temperature's currently in the low 40's. The forecast for tonight is calling for a 30% chance of rain or wet snow. Mmmm.
I wrapped up the CVS tutorial a few minutes ago save for a couple paragraphs and a summary which I'll get to tomorrow morning. All in all, it's been a very long weekend.
I'd like to write something intelligent or witty to close the week, but I just don't have the energy. Hopefully I can start a new week tomorrow on a somewhat more positive note. Cheers.
Some days I really HATE computers -- and this just happens to be one of those days.
I was within an hour of finishing up a tutorial yesterday afternoon when I stumbled across an Uh-Oh. The piece is on secure chrooted CVS accessed by a tunnelled SSH connection. As I say, I thought I had it in the bag when I ran across something that didn't work as advertised. So I started digging. I tried something else and it appeared to work, so I rewrote the affected material to bring it in line with the proper amount of "correctness". I was in the process of updating the repository late last night when my house of cards again tumbled down. I quit at 11:30pm following Rumsfeld's Rule for holes: When you find yourself in one, stop digging ;-)
This morning I took a detour and set about getting a Linux distribution that worked back on my notebook. I can tolerate working in Windows for a half-a-day or so when it's necessary, but the amount of mousing I have to do frustrates me no end. I've become pretty adept at keeping my fingers on the keyboard when I work, and for the most part, Linux accomodates my habits. Windows does not.
So I dug out my Red Hat 9 disks -- as I don't have the three days it takes to get Gentoo up and fully installed to my liking -- and set to work. I had the BOS up and configured in under an hour, and to my amazment, I managed to get wireless working within 20 minutes. Cool. I turned my attention back to the tutorial.
I'm hacking away on the CVS respository over on Kronk via an SSH tunnel, when CVS locks up. WTF? I try the command again. Nada. I restart the tunnel and I get a screen full of errors about not being able to bind to the request port. Bleh. Turns out my wireless connection had simply quit. Unplug the card, plug it back in, restart the networking services, and Bob's my Uncle. Twenty minutes later, wireless quits again. I reset everything, and 30 minutes later it dies again. STUPID PIECE OF SHIT! I eject the card (er, across the room), plug in my handy-dandy CAT cable, and I'm off to the races.
I have no idea why wireless under Linux has to be so bloody difficult. It's obviously a driver problem because the card works just swell under Windows. I wouldn't think it's a configuration problem; if I yell at the card the right way, it works... for awhile.
I can tell you one thing -- my next system's probably going to be a Mac. Unless something better comes along in the meantime.
I think I finally got my CVS issues sorted out. Most of it was a lack of "product knowledge" on my part. Unfortunately it took about 18 hours of trial and error to course correct (in case you don't already know, documentation on CVS runs from abysmal to archaic). A few more tests (hopefully without any more surprises), and I can go back and re-write everything again. Simply marvelous. So much for a relaxing weekend sitting by the pool drinking Mai Tai's.
TGIF. It's been a crazy and chaotic week around here, and I'm going to be VERY happy when it's over.
Tuesday afternoon my notebook started showing signs of melt-down. Under XP my wireless connectivity would fad in and out at random intervals. I tried every setting possible, but the problem persisted. So I booted into Gentoo thinking I'd finish the document I was working on in OpenOffice, save it as a Word file, then jump back into XP/Office and apply the finishing touches. Working under Gentoo turned out to be just as frustrating as XP. Something was out of sorts with the /dev filesystem. The problem manifested about two weeks ago and was growing worse by the day. I tried all the obvious -- backing off one version of devfsd, re-emerging baselayout, etc. etc. Nada worked, so I lived with it in the hopes a updated ebuild would supply a fix.
After four or five hours of courageous battle, I ran out of fight and resigned myself to what was quickly becoming self-evident -- time to rebuild everything from scratch. Actually, I've been somewhat amazed at how long my Gentoo installation has remained relatively stable and functional, especially given the fact I run the "unstable" tree on this system.
So late Tuesday I dug out my XP disc and began the process. I had XP up and operational, plus all the key utilities I routinely use, before I hit the pillow.
Wednesday morning I went to work on the Gentoo end of the process. I decided to do one thing different this time around. I've had several readers ask me why I use EXT3 on my systems instead of XFS. Apparently, XFS is distinctly faster than EXT3. One of the reasons I use EXT3, at least on my Red Hat systems, is because XFS is not supported during installation. Yes, I could hack and patch things, but usually when I install Red Hat I typcially want a BOS up and functional as soon as possible, and with the minimum of muss and fuss. But Gentoo has an XFS kernel available, and judging from comments on the mailing list, it's been well-recieved by those that use it. So I formatted my Linux partitions XFS and set about building my new Gentoo installation.
To make a long story short, two days later and I still don't have a bootable Gentoo installation. The bootstrap process failed and I had to intervene with a different version of gawk. Then emerge system crapped out due to connectivity issues. Last night the storms hit and connectivity on my end sucked. This morning I finally completed the base installation but on first boot I got an error message telling me that line 15 in my /etc/fstab file is incorrect. There's nothing I can find wrong with fstab. It appears to be an XFS issue -- /var and /home are unable to mount for some reason, and it stops the boot process dead in its tracks. Right now I'm asking mysel Why-oh-why did I deviate from my norm. I have no more time for this; I've got work to get through so I can end this week of insanity.
In other words, I'd better get 'atter...
10:40 hrs: Our local paper carried a story this morning announcing that the first mosquito population of the year had hatched and was thirstily sucking the blood of the local populace [as he pauses to scratch the mosquito bite on his arm]. Bloody hell. So much for graceful seasonal transitions. Six weeks ago we had snow on the ground; today we're busy battling mosquitos.
I've got some final edits on a piece to complete, so I'll post this now and drop back later with some further ruminations.
20:05 hrs: I have what might be best described as a love-hate relationship with Windows XP. I love the way it correctly detects and installs all the hardward present on my system. I think it's very cool how XP finds and configures any shared printers on my local network for me. With ClearType enabled, my desktop is sharp, clear, and crisp -- highly important for someone like myself who spends many hours a day staring a words on a screen. What I really hate are the presumptions XP makes. I've been fighting all day with connectivity on my notebook. For no apparent reason, my connection will simply stop working -- I get a DNS error. I know it's not a DNS issue, though, as all the other machines in the house work just fine with the same settings. If I set my built-in 10/100 connection to use a static IP and specificy the DNS servers, it won't connect to squat. If I set it to use DHCP, all is well and good -- for a time. Then the connection dies. If I reboot the machine, everything comes up hunky-dory. Also, XP has decided I need an "Internet Gateway" configured on my machine. I never had one configured before, and everything worked just swell. So why now? I'm spoiled my Linux I guess. It might take me a day or six to get everything configured and working as it should, but once things are set, they stay set -- unless, of course, I take a notion to change something. Me change something. Not the OS.
I've been working under XP for the day out of necessity. I think it's about time to dig my Gentoo disc out and install GRUB so I can boot back into Linux and enjoy a bit of peace and tranquility. Night all.
Svenson straightened me out on the "BAP" error I experienced last week: Bloody Ass@$#! Programmers. I knew I had seen that acronym somewhere...
'Twas a grand weekend. Landon's party on Saturday was a smash hit. He requested (and received) an Astro Jump and a Bob the Builder cake. The Astro Jump is was a rental thing; kinda hard to describe. It inflates via a blower unit and the kids jump around inside. It was a perfect gift. The kids had a blast and blew off copious amounts of energy, which in turn pleased the adults no end -- both Danielle and Landon were toast by 8pm.
I put XP back on the front of my laptop this morning. SuSE wasn't adding much value to my life, and I already have Gentoo on the back end of the drive. I also need to get familiar with StarOffice for a potential project next month.
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