I’ve made the change from Fedora 8 (which was very disappointing for the reasons I’ve expounded in the previous post) to Ubuntu, specifically Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon“. I must say that the installation was painless and very quick - the whole thing only took 30 minutes - though the upgrades took somewhat longer. I’m delighted to report that everything is working as it should including the scanner, sound, and Internet. I’ve even managed to get Komodo Edit 4.3 up and running without too much aggravation (this proved impossible under F8) though it crashed initially. I’ve decided that a memory upgrade from 512Mb to 2GB is in order, and that should make the system super fast and efficient.

I’m disappointed in Fedora 8. It has really not done the job that the Fedora Core 4 install did all of 3 years ago. Specifically the Fedora 8 installer (Anaconda) did not pick up on the following:

1. My CD-RW drive (which was automatically recognized by FC4)
2. My DVD drive (which was automatically recognized by FC4)
3. My Floppy drive (which was automatically recognized by FC4)
4. My zip drive (which was automatically recognized by FC4)
5. I still can’t play my music CDs which I could under FC4
6. In fact I can’t even listen to Internet Radio which I could under FC4
7. I can’t get my AGFA SnapScan 1212U to work - it was automatically picked up and configured by FC4!

To access my CD-RW and DVD drives I’ve had to manually edit the /etc/fstab file. This is “no big deal” (as our United-statesian cousins would say) but I didn’t have to do this when I installed FC4 3 and half years ago, so why should I have to now, especially as time is really precious to me and I expect any good Linux install to do the basics for me.
I still can’t listen to my music CDs or Internet Radio. The end result is I’m seriously pissed off with Fedora 8 - in fact I think Fedora 8 is a load of SHITE for all the reasons above - and I’m definitely switching to Ubuntu.

Reinstalling the /boot and / partitions on Fedora 8 has changed the /etc/fstab file, omitting the /home, /var and /usr partitions altogether. Instead these have been mounted as /media/-home, /media/-var and /media/-usr. The result is that I appear to have two home partitions now, and the users I set up in the original install are no longer recognised - they are missing from the /etc/passwd file (and presumably from /etc/shadow also) even though the relevant directories are intact in /media/-home.

Adding the appropriate lines for /home, /var, and /usr to /etc/fstab and rebooting has sorted the first problem. Now to sort the user problem: add a line for each user to the end of /etc/passwd as root. Next run /usr/sbin/pwconv as root to add new users to the /etc/shadow file. less /etc/shadow confirms that they’ve been added but they don’t have passwords. Finally give them a password by typing passwd username as root where username is the login name of the user. less /etc/shadow shows that they now have passwords.

That’s it. All is now working normally.

Now that I’ve got Fedora 8 up and running, it’s time to install Windows XP in the space I left for it at the front of the drive. First though, I’ve reformatted the 3.98Gb left for XP to NTFS using GParted within Fedora.

On booting up with the Windows XP boot disk, I am relieved to not to see the blank screen I did before. After agreeing to the multi-page legal bullshit that passes for a contract, I’m taken to the XP Partitioning tool. It sees the NTFS partition and assigns it the letter C. Interestingly it also sees the other partitions assigning them letters G to L (I have a DVD, CD-RW, and Zip drive also), but says they are of unknown type. I hit enter to install on Partition1.

Next XP setup warns me that the computer contains another operating system, and that to successfully complete installation, setup must mark this partition inactive. So far so good.

Now it offers me 4 options regarding formatting the NTFS partition. I choose the first which is a Format to NTFS (quick) as I read somewhere that when partitioning a disk it is always better to use the partitioning tool for the particular OS you’re installing on it.
This will overwrite my grub boot loader on the MBR but I can replace that by booting in on the Fedora 8 live disk, or even by editing the Windows Boot Manager once XP is installed.

Once XP Setup has finished formatting the C: drive, it reboots and tells me that setup will complete in approximately 39 minutes. I wonder how many reboots there will be in the meantime.

There’s been just one reboot and that was right at the end. I must say this has been pretty painless. Before sorting out the dual-boot with Fedora, I’m going to install XP Service Pack 2 to beef up the security. I may as well before I install any software (i.e. my TAS Books 2). Installing Service Pack 2 has took 25 minutes to complete.

Now to fix the boot-loader so Fedora 8 is booted by default, with an option to boot XP if I want. I reboot from the Fedora 8 live CD. Once in Fedora, Open GParted (Applications > System Tools > GParted). Right-clicking on the NTFS partition (sda1 in my case) and selecting Manage Flags from the pop-up menu does not allow me to change the boot option on sda1.

I double click on the Computer icon on the desktop. In the Computer window there is an item with the label “4.0 GB Volume” which must be the XP partition given its size. Double-clicking on that mounts the partition. GParted still won’t allow me to change the boot flag on it, but tells me the mount point is /media/disk. I can’t do anything even in a terminal window. I think my problem is that I’m in Fedora 8 live disk loaded into RAM and not the Fedora 8 on the HD. I wasn’t given a Rescue Installed System option on boot. I’ll try with Knoppix instead.

Booting from the Knoppix Live CD automatically mounts all the partitions on the hd. Knoppix has QTParted instead of GParted. It allows me to change the “active” label from /dev/hda1 which is the NTFS partition to /dev/hda2 which is the Fedora /boot partition. I first need to make sure that /mnt/hda2 is unmounted with sudo umount /mnt/hda2. After setting /dev/hda2 to be active I reboot the system and get an “error loading operating system” message. Great! I’ll boot from the Fedora 8 Live cd and see if I can fix it. Looks like I’ll have to reinstall the /boot and / partitions leaving the others intact. That way grub will be reinstalled and the Windows XP image will be detected which is what I want.
[to be continued …]

I’ve noticed the following error on booting Fedora 8:
“ACPI: Invalid PBLK length [5]”

It doesn’t seem to affect the machine or OS but still…
A google for same shows that it’s quite common. Not knowing what ACPI is or does, I decided to investigate further and quickly learned that it stands for Advanced Configuration & Power Interface and replaces the older APM (Advanced Power Management) which was used to save power on laptops. ACPI is now being used on desktops too - more information on Linux ACPI

Well, it appears that the SELinux firewall on my shiny new Fedora 8 installation is stopping all sorts of stuff from happening which means that I can’t access the network or go online. I’m loathe to disable the firewall for obvious reasons, so I’ll have to work my way through a solution to the problem.

Specifically, SELinux is throwing errors of the type “error while loading shared libraries: libidn.so.11: cannot open shared object file: Permission denied“. Apparently libidn.so.11 is the Internationalized Domain Name support library.
rpm -q libidn.so.11 reports that the package is not installed. The same for libsysfs.so.2.
I won’t be able to install them until I sort out the network connection.

After fiddling about with the SELinux Management graphical config tool for a while, and a reboot, I’ve got networking going. A few seconds later and a popup informs me that there are 215 updates available for download using PUP. I’ve now told PUP to apply the updates which I presume will take a while. So I’m off to cook dinner in the meantime.

[to be continued …]

So, I’ve finally backed up all the relevant files from the FC4 system which include relevant directories from .evolution, .thunderbird, .mozilla as well as personal documents and downloaded stuff, all of which amounts to somewhere between 3 and 4 Gigs when tarred and zipped.

I log out of FC4 for the last time, or so I think, insert the Windows XP installation DVD in the dvd drive before rebooting the machine. On rebooting I indicate that yes I do want to boot from CD and a message appears telling me that it is checking the hardware configuration. And then nothing followed by more nothing. Upon reflection I realize that there is no partition for Windows to install to which explains why nothing has happened.

So to make room for a windows partition I boot from a Knoppix Live cd, fire up QTParted and delete the first and second partitions. When I try to add a new partition for Windows it won’t let me - apparently it’s because Knoppix uses the /dev/sda nomenclature whereas FC4’s partitions are named /dev/hda. I reboot the machine again into Knoppix Live and check that the changes I made have been applied. They have - I now have a free 4 Gigs of space at the start of the drive.

Another attempt at installing windows from the Windows DVD fails. Obviously I will need to add a fat32 partition before Windows will install. But how?
Only one thing for it and that’s go ahead with the installation of Fedora 8 from the .iso image I burned to CD earlier. This proceeds well and I repartition the drive the way I want as follows:

• Device - Label - Type - Size - Start - End
• /dev/sda1 - /win - vfat - 4079Mb - 1 - 520
• /dev/sda2 - /boot - ext3 - 102Mb - 521 - 533
• /dev/sda3 - /home - ext3 - 20003Mb - 534 - 3083
• /dev/sda 4 extended
  • /dev/sda5 - /usr - ext3 - 6001Mb -3084 - 3848
  • /dev/sda6 - /var - ext3 - 4001Mb - 3849 - 4358
  • /dev/sda7 - / - ext3 - 4001Mb - 4359 - 4868
  • /dev/sda8 - SWAP - 894Mb - 4868 - 4982

Interestingly Fedora 8 uses the /dev/sda nomenclature instead of /dev/hda - I wonder when they changed?

The installation has been a success. Now to configure it.

[to be continued …]

Last Friday evening my 6 year old Iqon laptop bit the dust for the final time while I was visiting the Glór web site which I’m sure had nothing to do with it. In the normal scheme of things this would constitute nothing more than a minor headache. The fact that it was the only machine I have running Windows (the others run Fedora Core 4, Fluxbuntu, and OSx10.4) and the only one that will run the accounts package for the business meant a much more serious problem. Fortunately I have all my files backed up on CD and USB stick so that is not an issue.

I was left with the dilemma of how to run my accounts package (TAS Books 2) which I absolutely have to do to run my business. TAS will only run on Windows, and even if I had the wherewithal in my budget (which right now I do not) to go out and purchase a new (or second-hand) Windows PC, I would not on principle do so for reasons I won’t go into here.

I had heard recently that OSx 10.x could run a Windows emulator which, if true, might allow me to access the accounts that way). When I asked a friend knowledgeable in the affairs of MAC, I was told that there was a package that would run windows programs under OSx on the PowerPC chip but that it was slow. Not very encouraging!

Perhaps I could install a VM (virtual machine) on my FC4 machine and run windows on that? As a matter of fact I’ve been wanting to upgrade the FC4 machine for the last three years now to a later and greater Fedora version, but time always mitigated against me doing so. Moreover the machine has been crashing a lot of late, and the /home partition is 98% full. So here was my chance.

To be continued …

I took up the Vodafone 3G broadband 2 week trial offer a couple of weeks ago. As I spend several hours a week sitting in my car in Ennis (waiting for my children to come out of school) I could do with broadband access since I do a lot of programming directly on the server. I also thought it might act as a back-up for the odd time when my office broadband goes awol (which has happened 3 times since November last).
I’m sorry to report that the trial has been a failure for the following reasons:

1. The damn thing wouldn’t connect a lot of the time even in Ennis where supposedly there is 3G availability.
2. When it did connect, the speed was very slow - certainly no where near broadband speeds. Yes, it was faster than dial-up, but then anything is faster than dial-up!
3. It would not connect at all outside Ennis.

So, I took it back and got a full refund under the terms of the 2 week trial. I only wish it had worked for me. But I’m glad I got the chance to try it out. I would hate to have signed up to a 12 month contract and then found I’d been “sold a pup”.

The whole broadband situation in Ireland is absolutely ludicrous, and completely the fault of the Fianna Fáil-led Government, with one Mary O’Rourke being particularly to blame for what happened to the landlines after Eircom was first privatised and then thrown to the wolves in the persons of Tony O’Reilly and his associates to asset-strip as they pleased.

And, what about Ennis being Ireland’s first “Information Age Town” (as what turned out to be the official bullshit put it at the time)? What does Ennis have to show for it? Sweet Fanny Adams - that’s what! If the Information Age Town lark had been anything other than a money-making scam for a select few and a propaganda tool for FF, then we would now have free wireless internet access at broadband speeds throughout the town. Here endeth my rant of the week!

I must say that I quite like Debian’s (and therefore, Ubuntu’s and all its variations’) way of upgrading, removing and getting new software using apt. I find it is easier to deal with than Red Hat’s rpm system. But I should qualify this by saying that I’ve only had occasion to use apt once - to choose, locate and download the software I wanted on the new Fluxbuntu install - so there may be hidden snags I have yet to come across.