Too much peace and quiet is too much, I guess. As soon as the current skill-set is working, I seem to need to add more complexity. Tomorrow is Ubuntu Global Jam, designed to get *buntu users together to test new software, the next release, work on bugs, clean out stale wiki pages, and other useful stuff. Seattle-area members of the Washington LoCo are gathering at the Rainier Beach Library tomorrow for Global Jam, so I thought I would try out Kubuntu Maverick, which is at the end of alpha. I figured backing up my current ~/home would be wise, so I bought a hard-drive at Costco for $99. For under a hundred dollars, I got 1.5 terrabytes!
Unfortunately, I hadn't done my research ahead of time, and it turns out that this Seagate model, the Free Agent, doesn't really like Linux, and isn't supported. Plus it was NTFS, so I figured out how to re-format it into EXT3, here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/how-to-format-a-ntfs-usb-hard-drive-to-fat32-or-ext3-621585/. Basicly, use sudo fdisk -l to figure out what you have, and then mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1 to re-format.
I asked some friends what the best Kubuntu partition manager was, and it turns out to be Partition Manager, hahaha. On the other hand, I'm not sure I got it successfully partitioned, but I decided that I could always do that later, if necessary. So after doing a bit of research, I settled on LuckyBackup to manage the backup, because it's a nice light GUI on top of rsync, which rocks. Set it up last night, and let it back up during the night. It feels GREAT to start out a day with success! I let it update ~/home this morning, and also backed up /usr.
Next step, ask the developers in #kubuntu-devel what is most useful for tomorrow. So, now downloading (very slowly) the Maverick 64-bit ISO, and investigating how to install Virtualbox for testing. Using http://www.ubuntugeek.com/create-and-manage-virtual-machines-using-virtualbox.html a guide to getting it going. It really was very easy!
I found another guide for those who are testing inside the environment, at http://www.mikesmullin.com/development/programmers-virtualbox-is-a-better-development-environment/. The seamless mode (http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/virtualboxs-seamless-mode-combine-operating-systems-desktop/ seems like it is worth trying out also.
whow! posting something like mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1 without further explanation is dangerous. what if someone copied, pasted and executed it verbatim without knowing any better? common spelling would be sdxy or something similar.
ReplyDeleteI gave the website where I got the advice, and explained how I made sure I was formatting my USB drive, and not my main one! I trust readers will do their own research, as I have done.
ReplyDeleteValorie, the Linux Grandma