Although I was away for a week, I managed to get a few things accomplished over the weekend. I’ll go ahead and relist my list of things to do now and then add some comments about them below…
- install VirtualBox (done but not running/needs configuration)
- install VMWare Workstation (I have a license for either 6.0 or 6.5 on ebay for linux x64 a while back for $5, I was the only one who bid. I have the iso somewhere on one of my drives)
- mount all my ntfs drives and setup nfs support (all done before I started writing this except for 2 folders I want mounted in specific places)
- test my remote and local network ssh login (should be setup already, except forwarding the port on the router)
- get Google Chrome working
- test audio and video playback (can I watch hulu?)
- get my VM’s to launch and successfully run programs (should be easy after installing the correct apps and configuring them, worried about the ATI drivers)
- install Firefox (my backup browser for when web pages don’t work in chrome)
- test remote access to FreeBSD for my mounted ntfs drives (I have a friend in Korea that is willing to help)
- begin converting my ntfs drives to a better FS
- convert my drives from MBR to GPT to utilize GUID’s
- find a port/package manager GUI interface for KDE
- eliminate all traces of Gnome from my computer (several packages I have installed have dependencies that have Gnome in the name, need to find out if they are necessary and nuke em if not!!)
- build my first kernel
- get wine installed and working (in case I have something that will refuses to run in a VM)
- either install some older DOS games (<—two different links there) or find something newer out there install and get them working (VM or wine, just for fun and to say “oh yeah I love that game, I still it installed on my system…”)
- get Xorg port forwarding to work with cygwin.
- setup a respectable backup system (currently my backup drive turned into emergency storage when I had a few HDD’s all fail within weeks of each other last year, now I have new drives and enough storage space, I even copied the data off the external backup, but have not yet done a backup of FreeBSD. Might make this item number one!!)
- get java working (part of getting hulu to run)
- get flash working (part of getting hulu to run)
I guess I’ll start at the top.
1. 75% in progress, troubleshooting and more testing needed. I have gotten my user added the the “VirtualBox” user group, but I get this error when I try to execute VirtualBox from the command line ”VirtualBox: supR3HardenedExecDir: couldn’t read “”, errno=2 cchLink=-1“ I tried loading VirtualBox from KDE and it was loading for about 12 seconds then nothing happend, also it did not install a manual page. I’ll have to do some forum surfing to figure this one out. this exact error is referrenced in the FreeBSD handbook noting that it should only occur if you are using an older version on VirtualBox.
2. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.
3. 100% complete. everything is automounting at bootup and it is doing it where I want it to.
4. 100% complete. I am working almost exclusively via ssh now and can connect to it remotely as tested via an Android cell phone ssh client (props to connectbot)
5. 10% in progress, researched only. Chrome can be installed as a Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, or Fedora package, I just need to set my system up to handle RPMs and I might be able to get it to install, hopefully the newest version will work easier than last august when everyone was trying to hack the install to make it work, especially since every forum I went to never had a successful complete port available and there were no posts from 2010.
6. duplicate issue. going to delete this one, as #19 and #20 pretty much sum it up.
7. 30% in progress, trouble shooting and additional testing required. as noteded else where VirtualBox is installed but not able to run, and I have not started on VMWare.
8. 90% complete. Firefox 3.0.14 is installed and running. this appears to be the newest version available for FreeBSD according to the ports tree, as FreeBSD does not get listed on the Mozilla Download Page. Ha HA the jokes on me, when 3.6 came out they moved it to /usr/ports/www/firefox and left 3.0 in the /usr/ports/firefox3 folder, so I apparently have installed the older version… now I have to uninstall it and install the newer one…
9. 90% in progress, trouble shooting and more testing needed. self testing shows that a user is able to ssh in and access the drives, but is not able to ftp in and access the drives. I used “sudo ln -s /mnt/<directory> /home/<user>/<directory>” I haven’t used links much and need to see if the -s (symbolic) is what is preventing the user from accessing the data via ftp.
10. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.
11. 20% in progress, 1 out of 5 drives is currently running with GPT. the new 1.5TB drive was setup with GPT when installed into the system. the new 500GB drive (FreeBSD boot drive) is still MBR as the FreeBSD fdisk application did not have an option for setting the drive boot record to GPT, although I have found documentation on converting the FreeBSD boot drive to GPT.
12. 0% in progress, initial research turned up nothing useful.
13. -30% not started, situation worsening, additional packages labeled as “gnome-xxxx” or “xxxxx-gnome” have been added as dependencies during other package installations. 
14. 10% in progress, initial research has turned up useful information; however I am not currently in a possition to proceed.
15. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.
16. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, will require at least one of #’s 1, 2, 7, or 15 to be complete before work can begin.
17. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, not a priority and very near the bottom of the list of things to do.
18. 20% in progress. I know it is not recommended for backups, but I have rsync installed and am looking into using it. I will continue to look for alternatives; however I like the this setup. I would like to have the system fully setup before I start making backups, but I will probably get this completed in the next 48-72 hours, even if just running it with rsync.
19. 60% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to the test if you have java installed page of www.java.com it failed to test my java installation (might need to add the plugin for firefox, will check); however the java download page only lists “Windows, Mac OS, and Linux” as OS choices, so I will have to do more research.
20. 40% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to hulu it told me I need java 10.0.22, also amd.com told me I need the flash plugin installed; however again there is no FreeBSD listing on the download page as a supported OS, so I will have to do more research.
21. 100% complete. (I know I added this one) get Yakuake working in KDE, well I did a “sudo pkg_add -r yakuake” and it started downloading, it has about 6 dependencies and those had about 150 dependencies, most of which I already had installed. the problem I saw was it force downloaded KDE 3.5 and all of it’s dependencies, I hope that doesn’t screw anything up. If I remember correctly from when KDE 4.0 first came out they specifically named the port KDE4 instead of just KDE so that there would not be conflicts on systems that had both versions installed. after it finished I ran a “sudo pkgdb -F” it found a lot of stale dependencies and fixed them, one thing I noticed fly by was firefox 3.0.## which tells me I need to check my firefox and see if it is 3.0 or 3.6…
22. 10% researched only. Get Picasa installed and working, this will be just like chrome and will require using RPM packages.
Ok, so my FreeBSD box boots, I have the beastie to welcome me to my system, KDE launches when I type startx, my mouse and KB both work from the console and in KDE, and my system is nearly completely up to date. All looking good so far, now I need to get some things working in KDE, I am not sure if I want to install the ATI drivers… it always leads me back to the dreaded “blank black screen” so I may hold out on doing that, as the last time I installed them I had to do a reinstall of the system to get booted again. Although I may not have to worry about that since I have KDE setup to load only when I tell it to.
The first thing I noticed is there is no GUI package management system, I do not mind running it from the console, in fact I may just prefer it; however I do not like not having the option to do so. so here is a list of things I need to do to get everything where I want it… (not in any particular order)
- install VirtualBox (done but not running/needs configuration)
- install VMWare Workstation (I have a license for either 6.0 or 6.5 on ebay for linux x64 a while back for $5, I was the only one who bid. I have the iso somewhere on one of my drives)
- mount all my ntfs drives and setup nfs support (all done before I started writing this except for 2 folders I want mounted in specific places)
- test my remote and local network ssh login (should be setup already, except forwarding the port on the router)
- get Google Chrome working
- test audio and video playback (can I watch hulu?)
- get my VM‘s to launch and successfully run programs (should be easy after installing the correct apps and configuring them, worried about the ATI drivers)
- install firefox (my backup browser for when web pages don’t work in chrome)
- test remote access to FreeBSD for my mounted ntfs drives (I have a friend in Korea that is willing to help)
- begin converting my ntfs drives to a better FS
- convert my drives from MBR to GPT to utilize GUID‘s
- find a port/package manager GUI interface for KDE
- eliminate all traces of Gnome from my computer (several packages I have installed have dependencies that have Gnome in the name, need to find out if they are necessary and nuke em if not!!)
- build my first kernel
- get wine installed and working (in case I have something that will refuses to run in a VM)
- either install some older DOS games (<—two different links there) or find something newer out there install and get them working (VM or wine, just for fun and to say “oh yeah I love that game, I still it installed on my system…”)
- get Xorg port forwarding to work with cygwin.
- setup a respectable backup system (currently my backup drive turned into emergency storage when I had a few HDD’s all fail within weeks of each other last year, now I have new drives and enough storage space, I even copied the data off the external backup, but have not yet done a backup of FreeBSD. Might make this item number one!!)
- get java working (part of getting hulu to run)
- get flash working (part of getting hulu to run)
Sorry about not getting this up sooner, I thought I posted it before I went out of town last week, but I found it today sitting here the drafts section still needing some work…
Ok, so first, sorry I have not posted in a while. First I was out of the continental united states for a couple of weeks in December, then had some pet problems in early January, followed up with breaking the crap out of my leg January 16th. I cracked my Tibia clean through about 3 inches above my ankle and then the tibia split up the bone about 6 inches, followed by cracking my fibula clean through just above the split in my tibia. I have a lovely 8″ metal plate in my leg with 15 screws now. so I do actually have a couple of good reasons for not posting. I just started feeling somewhat better, I got my appetite back this past Saturday and my pain is mostly manageable even though I rarely find a comfortable position to sit/lay. in
Happier news…
Sprint is finally getting an Android phone with the new 1GHz SnapDragon processor by Qualcomm (extra cool it is capable of going up to 1.5 GHz if I remember correctly). The HTC Super-sonic. Hopefully late March, early April!! finally! I’ve been waiting since October…
Next up, back to my lovely PC, most everything seems to be working just fine now, I am running with the default BIOS settings and it works at least; however the PC sits on the BIOS POST image for almost 2 minutes before it actually starts POSTing. Not sure what to do about that, I think I need to wait for the next BIOS update to fix that, but for now… it works.
So, I used a bootable CD with Paragon Defrag on it to Defrag my Windows 7 boot HDD and then used the Fedora 12 KDE x64 Live CD to install Fedora on the HDD by shrinking my Win7 partition by 100Gigs and then installed Fedora on it.
Now, the next time I booted into Windows 7 I got a message that my copy of Windows was not Genuine. Not sure what’s up with that, but I haven’t done anything about it, and I have not gotten the message again.
Now back to Fedora… I added the proprietary drivers for my Motherboard’s ATI Radeon 3300HD in an attempt to try to use wine to play Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and a couple of other things, mostly some older games… after rebooting, I no longer get a GUI, just a blank black screen and about 8 lines down a blinking cursor. I can type, I can hit enter, but it does not respond. This has been going on since January 5th or so. Today I found out that Fedora has Virtual terminals just like FreeBSD, so very cool, I can at least get to a prompt today. Now I cannot find any assistance online for configuring the ATI drivers so I can get them to work. I know that a couple of versions ago they changed the command to configure the drivers, but I can’t find any helpful, current, information for this. I am lucky I found the aticonfig command again. I think I can figure it out from here though. It just bugs me that the only info I could find said not to use the drivers, then if you go to Wine‘s website they tell you if you don’t use the proprietary drivers that you can expect your games not to run well. What a pain. (not as big of a pain as my leg though) after searching for “aticonfig linux” I found some more info…
Will try and update again this week on how things are going, I am also working on my taxes so who knows… right now I am doing it on TurboTax.com but I think I will try a couple of others before I submit, even though I have used Turbo Tax for 15 years or so.
After this post I should catch up to the here and now pretty quick…
right, so I had (finally) Ubuntu running with all the hardware working, and started messing with wine and trying to get World of Warcraft and DDO to run. no good that was. both were requiring the newest video drivers from AMD (I think that was what was wrong, never quite figured it out…) the games would both load but would fail at some point, and have other issues… including not allowing me to login or play… 
Well the video driver issue ended up being that (yes it did install fine) the on-board video on the laptop had just (and I do mean within a couple of weeks/a month or two) been taken out of the newest updates, and had been placed in the “legacy drivers” list. mean while, before I actually figured this out, was installing dot net (nearly every version) into wine, and flash, and java, and all kinds of stuff. I Was getting really excited, the laptop was working great, even if not with the OS I really wanted. especially since I could not find this model on the inet anywhere as being functional in linux. (the wireless and audio is what normally fails to function, and I had both working in more than one flavor of linux)
then one day at work a co-worker was looking into selling an old IBM T40 laptop and we were shocked to see people paying $150 or more for them. so I decided what the heck… I put my laptop on Craig’s list one after noon about 3pm. I had 4 emails and 3 phone calls before 8pm that night. decided to sell it to the first caller, they wanted win XP, so I wiped it (oh well, good learning experience) and set it up for them, then they had to postpone coming to get it, because of a dinner party they had forgotten about, then they were not sure if they could get it, and told me to not hold it for them anymore. well I did not get it sold, and now had win XP barebonez’d on it and login ID’s setup for people who would never see it, let alone use it.
oh well, not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I started having some wierd HDD errors on my semi-new desktop PC. failed writes, ticking noises while the drives were spinning, drives disappearing, then coming back after rebooting… it looks like I may have 2 or 3 bad HDDs. I get all the data moved off the Seagate that was reporting bad sectors and I get an RMA setup, quick and painless… now I just need to find a box, or “original shipping packaging” anyone who has not had this on hand and has had to look for it will know. it’s not real easy to find a custom fitted HDD packaging that perfectly fits the box you plan on sticking it in, and has a minimum of 2″ of foam on all sides. So I decided to ask around at work… I also submitted a tech help request with ECS, the manufacturer of my motherboard, as I was having both video problems AND HDD issues at this point.
on to the next issue that was going on…
so I had to go to Pittsburgh for training for work, 1 week, 2 semi-high level virtual server training courses taught by an IBM instructor (AU72 AU78 and AU73 the AIX Virtual I/O Server training. I’ll check at work tomorrow and will update if wrong on those –updated). had an awesome time in Pittsburgh, got to meet the team I was working with virtually, and learned a tonne of stuff. (I prefer the metric tonne to the American ton, so much more useful, and a conversation piece when used in writing… 
pictures are available on picasaweb there are not a whole lot of images (50 something), I was working (and no I did not take any images of where I was working, but there is a hint about for whom I do work. sorry folks I might slip somewhere, but company policy severely “suggests” that I do not disclose anything about my employment that is not necessary…) most of the time (working that is, I got distracted and used one of my parenthetical explanations that I am overly fond of and are truly not necessary, nor wanted by most. HOWEVER, and this is the good part, I am writing this, not you, and you are not paying me to do so!! SO!! I will use excessively long descriptions/mental overture if you will, at my discretion. I sure hope WordPress has a good spell checker, cuz I make up words all the time) umm… now where was I?
oh yeah, I was working most of the time, and so only took a few pictures, now that I no longer have a semi-pro DSLR (Canon 20D) I am stuck taking pic’s with a semi-crummy Kodak 6mp point-and-shoot. Back to the point.. The weekend I got back from Pittsburgh, and I had to move, across the hall from a nice 1150-ish sq ft 2 BR apt to a kinda cramped 950-ish sq ft 1 BR apt. Things got switched around, and now my Sheeva Plug fails 80% of the system checkpoints during bootup (not that I blame the move, just that I had no problems with it before this). it still functions (ie. turns on and I can log in via the console), except the network port interface is kaput… (defined as “ka·put also ka·putt (kä-p t, -p t, k-) adj. Informal. Incapacitated or destroyed.” at www.thefreedictionary.com/kaput ) (fyi I still have not gotten around to reflashing the ROM on it, which I learned back in early june, is necessary to allow the usage of SD Media Cards.)
HA! not sure what I talked about in this one, was a little distracted (doing some things on my desktop in preparation to RMA the MB…) but I’ll go ahead and post it as I hit 1k words.
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