Another Opinion Among Many

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.

In addition to the list of podcasts that I’ve gotten used to listening to, I have discovered The Jak Attack, with “Jon Watson and Kelly Penguin Girl coming atcha!”  Its got a bit of tech, linux, and Nova Scotia all mixed in a serious but goofy-enough package.  I like it!

Here I go reinstalling Windows XP on my other computer for the second time in as many months. I don’t think that this “upgrade” is going to work, but I have to try to get it to pull out of super slug mode and accept the drivers for my printer that had been working fine up until last week. What a pain!

And, its not like an install of Mepis or Linspire, where you have about a 10-15 minute install and your hard drive’s full of goodies. My well-known components will require drivers installed to work properly because the support won’t be there “out of the box”. Oh well. At least its not ‘98 or BeOS.

Update

I’ve not been successful in doing an “upgrade” so a chkdsk and a few corrupted file later, I think that I might have something that’s workable. We’ll see. At least I got the printer/scanner working. That’s a start.

Update

Rebooting causes changes to the video driver to be lost.  Since there’s no easy configuration file to edit, it sure looks like a reinstall of the OS.  Lovely.

Actually, I’m referring to this site. I see with Internet Explorer, here at work (the browser that Macbros blatantly insists that I upgrade from on every visit to his site from work), that the header and body of the page seem to be squished together a bit, showing only the top half of the links between. Is this happening for anyone else? This only happened since we upgraded the center’s computers with the latest patched version of Windows.

At home, the page renders as intended (except that my monitor is getting old and everything is getting darker and darker) on IE6, Firefox2.2, and Opera10 on Windows and also fine in Konqueror, Firefox, and Opera on PCLinuxOS, Gentoo (no Opera), Debian, and Kubuntu.

If you see this behavior and you know how to fix it, I’d like to know. I know its gotta be an IE hack, but I’m not to well versed on them (I barely can code to standard, let alone to non-standard, oppressive, restricted proprietary code).

fixed.  see comments for details. kludgy.  blech

From My Inbox

To my friends with Children: Why parents drink

A boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, he dialed the employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a child’s whisper. ” Hello ? “

“Is your daddy home?” he asked.

” Yes ,” whispered the small voice. May I talk with him?” The child whispered, ” No .” Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is your Mommy there?” ” Yes .”

“May I talk with her?” Again the small voice whispered, ” No .”

Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, “Is anybody else there?”

” Yes ,” whispered the child, ” a policeman “.

Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss asked, “May I speak with the policeman?”

” No, he’s busy “, whispered the child.

“Busy doing what?”

” Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman ,” came the whispered answer.

Growing more worried as he heard a loud noise in the background through t he earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, “What is that noise?”

” A helicopter ” answered the whispering voice.

“What is going on there?” demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive. Again, whispering, the child answered, ” The search team just landed a helicopter .”

Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, “What are they searching for?”

Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle… ” ME .”

I’m using a new router (not mine, but on my connection). Its a d-Link DI-524. This router has a wireless connection, as well as the 4 wired ports that I’ve been used to. We’ll see if its any better at routing traffic between the 4 (yep, 4 now - reason for the wireless router) computers on my litle workgroup. A preliminary speed test shows the wireless connection is about 1/2 as fast down as my connection is supposed to be (that’s supposed to double soon, thanks to Rogers wanting to claim to be the fastest ISP in Canada - they’ve gotta be able to claim “best at” something, after all). Uploads are still showing at the correct speed for all comupters. If this works, I can suggest that its a good deal. It was had for around $50CDN, after a rebate at the till. Now, how do I afford a new laptop to take advantage of the wireless connection.

update

Initially, it seems, this router seems to get a bit clogged at times but I don’t know what type of traffic is causing the problem.  It can be solved by logging into the admin screen with your browser and rebooting it that way.  I think that its a good idea to check some forums about this issue.

As I’ve been reminded lately, online conversations aren’t quite the same as ones that you carry on in person. Like playing chess through the mail, you have a chance to contemplate a response, and read hidden (and unreal, usually) meanings into what has been written for the world to see. I find that quite often, people read, and thus assume, the opposite of what you want to convey.

Why is this? Bad writing, I think. There’s a reason that everyone is not a best selling writer. Its simply because we’re not all good enough. Like me. I write (quite a bit and quite often at times, as this blog can attest), but I’m not a good writer. If I was, there’d be no question as to what I mean when I scratch down my thoughts.

Like a wound that doesn’t get attention, the results of your words can be a growing infection, which if not stopped, can cause greater problems. This seems to be true of the online writing subculture now. With tools such as Blogger and Wordpress, which can help you post your literary genious to the world with a few words and the press of a button, it becomes easy (perhaps because it appeals to our laziness) to write things and publish them without nary a thought. You can write the most affecting and ingenious masterpiece, or you can write the most putrid and abominably substandard tripe (which I hope that this post doesn’t turn into - I’m posting it anyway).

One thing that online publishing has done for civilized society (at least the extremely small percentage that have access to computers) is to help introduce total strangers. Due to the feeling of relative anonymity that writing on the internet affords, people are more willing to comment on a stranger’s thoughts. As time goes on, the parties involved gain a small insight into what the other is thinking at times. The problem is that we don’t learn nearly as much as we assume (ass u me) and this can cause issues later, when we feel that we are in a comfortable place. We slip up and think that we’re carrying on a conversation as if in person. The dynamics are all different, though. In person, you can quicly elaborate on what you mean, when someone misunderstands you. Online, you can’t in real time, and, thus the wound festers. This is where the quality of your writing comes in. If you don’t write well, you’ll create conflicts where the opposite was intended. I admit that I am sometimes guilty of that, as are many people. Its natural. Writing online has become like writing in a diary. Who gets their diary proofread by an editor? When left to ourselves, we don’t proof our work as well as it could be and it comes out ending up substandard (look at the works of Karl Marx and Stephen King’s later works - too much literary freedom and not enough editing, producing verbose effluent, obscuring any genious that may lie underneath).

I’m going to try to break this habit of mental laziness, so that when you read my writings, you may understand the point I tried to make. I will try to do this for you. I hope that I succeed consistantly.