I’ve made a few additions to the original post about hacking your Hardy Heron to accept Java as it stands. Check it out and read the comments too. Jazz has added a lot to what I’ve said. Don’t forget to visit the forum thread that started this all.
Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category
I sure hope so!
I’ve just noticed that on the Gentoo home page, which has been pretty much stagnant, as far as news or activity is concerned, seems to have had a burst of activity. Since January 12, there have been 9 posts on the home page. This is more than in the previous 5 months. The news is encouraging. I’m happy with what I see. Awesome!
NOTE: this tip may be specific to Ubuntu, as far as the command goes…
One thing that I’ve noticed is that many distros are starting to change their partition references in /etc/fstab to a UUID from the more familiar (but no friendlier) reference to the volume in /dev (such as /dev/hdc3, for example). This might be a sign of things to come, since any distro based on the 2.6 Linux kernel has pretty much dropped the /dev for udev (hot plugging for cold plugging, etc). After looking into things, its good for situations where drives are being moved or removed now and then (as in when you plug in your USB hard drive).
However, if you’re a constant alpha/beta tester at heart, like I am, you are probably using a main Linux partition or drive to work from and have either a spare drive or partition that you frequently blow away and replace what’s on it with the latest fun toy, as I do. I don’t know how many distros are doing this with the UUID so far, but I suspect that Fedora does and I know that Ubuntu and Mandriva are now doing it. So, what happens if you are tired of what you’ve been testing and you want to install something new? As soon as you format the drive, the UUID will change. How do you reference the drive in your /etc/fstab, so that you can either find it when you want to mount it, or when you want to boot from the new distro? The first “U” is for “unique”, and they are! Here’s what’s currently in my /boot/grub/menu.lst for the Mandrake alpha 2 that I’m playing with: root=UUID=b414e306-0582-4572-926d-a8c113bf34bb.
That’s not exactly the stuff of memorization, and, in a few hours, it’ll be different, as I’m going to hose it and reinstall it with a totally different configuration (I wanna try KDE 4!!!). So, how do I get the new volume ID to put in /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst? With Ubuntu, you have a command called vol_id that you can run as root to determine various things about the volumes that are accessible to your computer.
The command is vol_id. So, the command to find a volume ID is:
sudo vol_id -u device
where device is the /dev entry for the partition you want to know about. for example,
sudo vol_id -u /dev/hdc3
would yield the long scary output that you need to enter into your files.
I hope that this helps all you distro hoppers out there as much as it has me.
Have you done the nutso and “upgraded” or tried out the development release of Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron? I did. I decided to use the command “update-manager -d” to run Gutsy Gibbon’s Update Manager with the flag to update the distribution to the next release. Currently Hardy is at 8.04 alpha 3. For those Debianites, this would be like changing your /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to the “testing” sources and doing the “apt-get dist-upgrade” command after “apt-get update”.
The upgrade went reasonably well with only one temporary show stopper. Java GUI apps stopped working when I upgraded. It seems that there’s a bit of a bug in Sun’s Java 6 that doesn’t agree with the new x.org server (from what I gather). They will fix it in Java 7, which will be a while yet. Thankfully, I found this ubuntu forum post, that helped me solve the problem. I used the sed line:
$ sudo sed -i ’s/XINERAMA/FAKEEXTN/g’ /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so
I hope that this will help you too!
ADDENDUM:
- One thing that you will find is that after every Java update and many X.org updates, your java will stop working again. Adding the “replacement” string “FAKEEXTN” again should fix the behavior.
- As noted by jazz in the comments (Please read the comments on this post), there are different paths for x86 and x64.
- You may or may not require the additional hacks to the /usr/bin/<java application> script to make it work. I didn’t for Azureus or Frostwire.
- Any time someone says to “paste” or write a command with the SUDO command or to do “as root“, think before you copy
- Read the MAN PAGE for SED (and AWK) before using it. Its a powerful command.
Addendum 2: (this is a short one)
Don’t expect anything big with Firefox for this one, at the moment, as Firefox 3 is the designated upgrade from the 2 branch (whether I approve or not - I’m testing and submitting bug reports) ad there seems to be a problem with java and FF3. If you know how to get it working, let me know. There are a few little things about FF3 that are great, but, mostly, I hate FF3. It sucks the biggest moose appendage at the moment. I yearn for the simple days of Phoenix 0.1…
Run, Skye!
I’ve not quite done this before, so I wasn’t sure if the rules were the same or not. There have been times that I’ve relied on chroot to fix a dual-booted machine, but not to install an OS from a booted Operating System.
So, what I did was install Gentoo on a spare hard drive from my existing OS, Ubuntu. I used the same method that I would have had I used the minimal installer, which seems to be the only method that works, despite the graphical installer on the 2007.0 CD.
What prompted me to do this? I’ve missed the snappiness that I had with my Gentoo system before (this system, actually) and i wanted to try Gnome on Gentoo, as I’ve never done so. I did try the CD installer but it really messed things up big time, and the screen was nearly unusable on that super slow frame buffer driver that the Live CD used. So, surfing the net, etc, was unbearable while doing the install. Once installed, X was not working (apparently the video drivers aren’t even on the CD) and the system was full of unneeded packages. The only way that I’ve been able to quickly get a Gentoo system up and running was to do it from the command prompt, which was fine with me.
After finding a little tidbit in the Gentoo Alternate Install Doc regarding installing from another operating system. It turns out that if you have the normal toolchain required to compile code and the chroot tool, you’re in business.
This is a basic install so far, just to see if I remembered the right modules to compile into my kernel. I could have used Genkernel, but I wanted to go leaner than that. My old P-III doesn’t have SATA or SCSI, for example. So, I didn’t compile them in. I know that there’s still more to yank out, but I wanted to get it up and running first.
I chose to use the bootloader that I had installed already (which was actually on the drive I installed Gentoo to), so I added a stanza to my /boot/grub/menu.lst to include Gentoo and I was off.
Perhaps, I’ll update the news when I have more installed. I’m curious as to how much I can do in the chroot.
In July, I wrote about reading a Wired article on Hans Reiser and the sensation around his arrest for murdering his estranged wife (who is quite possibly alive). The trial is going on now. It appears that only the San Francisco Chronicle seems to be interested at this point. I wonder whether it will again become world news if Nina Reiser is found to be alive.
Look out, Skye, this is a geeky post! :lol: I thought that I’d share a few nice things that have happened to me regarding my experience with Linux.
First, as many know, I have been using a Creative Muvo V100 as my MP3 player lately. I still really like this player. It does what its supposed to without any really amount of effort on my part. This is a good thing. Since my hard drive dies on the Windows machine, I’ve not installed the software that came with my MP3 player on it. That’s because I have been using it with my Linux machine.
At first, it was just a drag and drop experience, but now its a bit more interactive. I’ve found a way to ensure that I can at least “see” my player in Rhythmbox, and am downloading Amarok and Exail as I write this. So, I may have more good news as far as this player goes.
The secret is to put a small hidden file, known as a “dot” file under *nix, on the player itself. The dot-fil0 is empty. as the name is the only important descriptor. So, if you have a Creative Muvo V100 1GB MP3 player and its not recognized by your favorite music manager, try placing a file on the player itself called .is_audio_player and you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it is then recognized as a device when you plug it in!
Also, I have to advise that I have been successful in printing to my Epson CX1500 from my Linux machine to the printer hosted by a Windows XP machine. To ensure that you have this type of success, ensure that you have enabled unix printing support on your XP box and configured your /etc/samba/smb.conf file to use “share” under “security” so that you can print to your printer without having to enter a silly password.
