I'm happy to announce that Kubuntu Artful beta 1 milestone released today, having passed all the mandatory testing, thanks to lots of testers! Thanks so much to each of you.
If possible, we'll also be participating in Beta 2 with the next round of KDE bug-fix releases for the last testing milestone before release of Kubuntu 17.10 on 19 October 2017.
Release notes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ArtfulAardvark/Beta1/Kubuntu
If you would like to help us seed the torrents, go to http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/. To quickly find all the betas: control f and type beta.
Join us in freenode IRC: #kubuntu-devel with praise, help, or bug reports.
Showing posts with label IRC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IRC. Show all posts
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Recently a user asked about getting Samba working in the Kubuntu IRC channel #kubuntu. The excellent Darin Miller (DarinMiller in irc) helped:
DarinMiller: This website has a good samba overview: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba
Do the following: `sudo apt install samba samba-common system-config-samba python-glade2`
After installing, the user still could not get Samba working, even after creating shared folders and setting up smdb.conf.
DarinMiller: Add a smb group: `sudo addgroup smb`, then add yourself to the group: `sudo adduser $USER smb`. Then add yourself as a samba user: `sudo smbpasswd -a $USER`
Enable the user: `sudo smbpasswd -e $USER`
For the next part, either use the GUI: sudo system-config-samba or, manually edit the smb.conf file: kdesudo kate /etc/samba/smb.conf, and change: workgroup = workgroup to workgroup =.
Also, change the resolve order as follows:
name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins. Order is very important!
The user asks, "do I have to change the network group name?"
DarinMiller: No, you can leave it as work group.
User:do I have to add that to the config?
DarinMiller:Also, ensure the "name resolve order" is under the [global] section
k, let me check my smb.conf
DarinMiller:Yes, typically "name resolve order" must be manually added to the file. T o enable anonymous access to windows machines: remove the ";" (semi-colon) from beginning of line "security = user" and below the "security = user" line add a new line:
map to guest = Bad User
Specific Folder share example (add at the end of the file): i.e. [Downloads] path = /home//Downloads
comment = "Some comment"
User:can I pastebin my config file? [ed. Good for User! always pastebin rather than flooding the chan]
DarinMiller: writeable = yes
DarinMiller:valid users = name1, name2, ....
browseable = yes
When the you finish editing the smb.conf file, restart samba: sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
Ensure to add: name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins in the [global] section...
And, do you have a /samba/anonymous directory on your box (that's not a default folder)
Checklist:
Success!
DarinMiller: A couple other good links: http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed/?p=2941
http://www.unixmen.com/howto-install-and-configure-samba-share-in-ubuntu/
My personal notes I keep here for a community Ed class I occasionally teach: https://sites.google.com/site/bcelinux/classroom-news/basicsambaconfigurationfilesharingincludingwindowspcs
Folks, this is the awesome support people get in #kubuntu and elsewhere in IRC when they ask their question and wait for an answer.
DarinMiller: This website has a good samba overview: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba
Do the following: `sudo apt install samba samba-common system-config-samba python-glade2`
After installing, the user still could not get Samba working, even after creating shared folders and setting up smdb.conf.
DarinMiller: Add a smb group: `sudo addgroup smb`, then add yourself to the group: `sudo adduser $USER smb`. Then add yourself as a samba user: `sudo smbpasswd -a $USER`
Enable the user: `sudo smbpasswd -e $USER`
For the next part, either use the GUI: sudo system-config-samba or, manually edit the smb.conf file: kdesudo kate /etc/samba/smb.conf, and change: workgroup = workgroup to workgroup =
name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins. Order is very important!
The user asks, "do I have to change the network group name?"
DarinMiller: No, you can leave it as work group.
User:
DarinMiller:
DarinMiller:
User:
DarinMiller:
- added the smb user group and your username to the group.
Added and enabled your username to the samba group using smbpasswd: ` sudo smbpasswd -a` `sudo smbpasswd -e`- Then, restart samba: `sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart`
Folks, this is the awesome support people get in #kubuntu and elsewhere in IRC when they ask their question and wait for an answer.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Accessible KDE, Kubuntu
KDE is community. We welcome everyone, and make our software work for everyone. So, accessibility is central to all our work, in the community, in testing, coding, documentation. Frederik has been working to make this true in Qt and in KDE for many years, Peter has done valuable work with Simon and Jose is doing testing and some patches to fix stuff.
However, now that KF5 is rolling out, we're finding a few problems with our KDE software such as widgets, KDE configuration modules (kcm) and even websites. However, the a11y team is too small to handle all this! Obviously, we need to grow the team.
So we've decided to make heavier use of the forums, where we might find new testers and folks to fix the problems, and perhaps even people to fix up the https://accessibility.kde.org/ website to be as
awesome as the KDE-Edu site. The Visual Design Group are the leaders here, and they are awesome!
Please drop by #kde-accessibility on Freenode or the Forum https://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=216 to read up on what needs doing, and learn how to test. People stepping up to learn forum
moderation are also welcome. Frederik has recently posted about the BoF: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=216&t=122808
A11y was a topic in the Kubuntu BoF today, and we're going to make a new push to make sure our accessibility options work well out of the box, i.e. from first boot. This will involve working with the Ubuntu a11y team, yeah!
More information is available at
https://community.kde.org/Accessibility and
https://userbase.kde.org/Applications/Accessibility
However, now that KF5 is rolling out, we're finding a few problems with our KDE software such as widgets, KDE configuration modules (kcm) and even websites. However, the a11y team is too small to handle all this! Obviously, we need to grow the team.
So we've decided to make heavier use of the forums, where we might find new testers and folks to fix the problems, and perhaps even people to fix up the https://accessibility.kde.org/ website to be as
awesome as the KDE-Edu site. The Visual Design Group are the leaders here, and they are awesome!
Please drop by #kde-accessibility on Freenode or the Forum https://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=216 to read up on what needs doing, and learn how to test. People stepping up to learn forum
moderation are also welcome. Frederik has recently posted about the BoF: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=216&t=122808
A11y was a topic in the Kubuntu BoF today, and we're going to make a new push to make sure our accessibility options work well out of the box, i.e. from first boot. This will involve working with the Ubuntu a11y team, yeah!
More information is available at
https://community.kde.org/Accessibility and
https://userbase.kde.org/Applications/Accessibility
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Prospective GSoC Students: Now is the time to submit proposals
Greetings to all you students we've been talking with in IRC (#kde-soc and your chosen team's channel(s)) and on the mailing lists. By now, hopefully you have met and talked with your teams, and begun formulating your plan for GSoC, with advice from your prospective mentor(s).
I hope you have followed Myriam's advice and done your homework. If you have worked on some junior jobs, have your KDE developer credentials, joined the necessary lists *including KDE-soc*, you have a good foundation built.
Pro-tip: always check out the links in the /topic of your IRC channels. The #kde-soc channel topic is particularly rich.
Many prospective mentors hang out in that channel, but not all. Us admins are there as often as possible as well. I'm always willing to help edit a proposal for grammar, spelling, organization, formatting, etc. And I can be brutally honest, so if you ask my opinion, be aware that I won't waste your time with anything but the truth.
Now is the time to log into melange, and submit your proposals. If you have not yet had a team member vet your plan, give them the link to your melange proposal and ask. Don't waste their time with mere ideas; you need a clear plan of action, and a realistic timeline.
Go, go, go!
I hope you have followed Myriam's advice and done your homework. If you have worked on some junior jobs, have your KDE developer credentials, joined the necessary lists *including KDE-soc*, you have a good foundation built.
Pro-tip: always check out the links in the /topic of your IRC channels. The #kde-soc channel topic is particularly rich.
Many prospective mentors hang out in that channel, but not all. Us admins are there as often as possible as well. I'm always willing to help edit a proposal for grammar, spelling, organization, formatting, etc. And I can be brutally honest, so if you ask my opinion, be aware that I won't waste your time with anything but the truth.
Now is the time to log into melange, and submit your proposals. If you have not yet had a team member vet your plan, give them the link to your melange proposal and ask. Don't waste their time with mere ideas; you need a clear plan of action, and a realistic timeline.
Go, go, go!
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Does your volume keep resetting to zero?
I see this question occasionally in #kde, #kubuntu, and #amarok. Tonight I saw the first answer that seems to shed light on it.
Cousin_luigi said in #kde tonight: "I expect the volume to be at the same level I left it." Which is perfectly reasonable! And yet, we often find something else. Axtroz had the answer:
I don't have this problem, so I didn't test the solution. However, here it is as a public service. Thanks to Cousin_luigi for asking, and Axtroz for answering.
Cousin_luigi said in #kde tonight: "I expect the volume to be at the same level I left it." Which is perfectly reasonable! And yet, we often find something else. Axtroz had the answer:
Cousin_luigi, because some systems run "alsactl restore" on startup which restores the volume state saved with "alsactl store" and that tunes the volume for a particular soundcard. Since Pulseaudio and Alsa are working together via plugins, pulse follows. Check your init scripts, or raise the volume to an apropriate level and run alsactl store as root.
I don't have this problem, so I didn't test the solution. However, here it is as a public service. Thanks to Cousin_luigi for asking, and Axtroz for answering.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Intentional community
This blog is generally seen in the planets for Ubuntu, KDE, and Linuxchix. These are all FOSS intentional communities, by which I mean that the founders and members form a community to in which they can create. I found Linuxchix first (thanks, Megan!), and I loved how welcomed I was, although I was still at the time using Windows. How many linux channels welcome an mIRC user? The longer I hung out there, the more I learned, and the more I was impressed by all the different work the community members were doing out in the greater FOSS world. I also loved that it was women and men working together to make FOSS a better place for women.
When I ended up using Kubuntu (after trying Mandrake and then Gentoo, and GNOME/Ubuntu), some of the Ubuntu Women members welcomed me onto Freenode. When I found that that freenode was where the Amarok team hung out as well, I added the server to my Konversation server list. Members of both of those teams made me welcome, taught me some of the Freenode quirks, and I learned a bit more about how Linux is made. Lots of teams, loads of projects, each with their own culture and ways of working. Because Ubuntu and KDE both have a Code of Conduct, I felt somewhat safe, although I had heard lots of horror stories about linux channels on freenode and elsewhere. After experiencing some quite frightening attacks in the Linuxchix channels, I learned how resilient a community can be, and how creative security can be -- even fun.
So, codes of conduct. In the wake of the recent controversy following PyCon, one of my friends said that they imply that all men are assholes. This surprised me. Linuxchix has two rules: Be polite. Be helpful. All people are expected to follow them; I see the rules as intentional community. We want polite and helpful resources, so those are the rules for everyone. The Ubuntu CoC has grown a bit through the years, but is still phrased positively: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/conduct. I prefer the old shorter one, but both are focused on creating a helpful, respectful community.
I like the KDE CoC a lot. Once I found it, I felt much better about becoming involved. It reminded me very much of the simple Linuxchix rules.
So I ask each of my readers, what do you want? Is your behavior creating what you want? This is not aimed at men, by the way. All of us create our culture together, intentionally or not. I hope we will more consciously make our community the most pleasant, welcoming and creative in all of FOSS.
[Note on PyCon: The entire controversy has left me feeling sick. Congratulations are in order to the conference staff and leadership, who conducted themselves well. Yet they now have this mess connected to their fine conference, rather than good memories. There are no winners here, from what I can see. Since I didn't attend, and am not part of that community, no comments on PyCon itself or the controversy will be published here.]
When I ended up using Kubuntu (after trying Mandrake and then Gentoo, and GNOME/Ubuntu), some of the Ubuntu Women members welcomed me onto Freenode. When I found that that freenode was where the Amarok team hung out as well, I added the server to my Konversation server list. Members of both of those teams made me welcome, taught me some of the Freenode quirks, and I learned a bit more about how Linux is made. Lots of teams, loads of projects, each with their own culture and ways of working. Because Ubuntu and KDE both have a Code of Conduct, I felt somewhat safe, although I had heard lots of horror stories about linux channels on freenode and elsewhere. After experiencing some quite frightening attacks in the Linuxchix channels, I learned how resilient a community can be, and how creative security can be -- even fun.
So, codes of conduct. In the wake of the recent controversy following PyCon, one of my friends said that they imply that all men are assholes. This surprised me. Linuxchix has two rules: Be polite. Be helpful. All people are expected to follow them; I see the rules as intentional community. We want polite and helpful resources, so those are the rules for everyone. The Ubuntu CoC has grown a bit through the years, but is still phrased positively: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/conduct. I prefer the old shorter one, but both are focused on creating a helpful, respectful community.
I like the KDE CoC a lot. Once I found it, I felt much better about becoming involved. It reminded me very much of the simple Linuxchix rules.
This Code of Conduct presents a summary of the shared values and “common sense” thinking in our community. The basic social ingredients that hold our project together include:In my opinion, there is nothing in any of these codes or rules that blames men, or is negative. They paint a picture of a place where we want to work, and hang out with friends afterwards. I'm an older woman as the name of this blog implies, and I don't want to pretend to be a guy to collaborate without hassle. I want to be myself, and be welcomed for the skills and passion I bring. I also want more women and other minorities to feel welcome. A boy's club is not welcoming, and linux has that reputation. Too often well deserved.
- Be considerate
- Be respectful
- Be collaborative
- Be pragmatic
- Support others in the community
- Get support from others in the community -- quoted from http://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/
So I ask each of my readers, what do you want? Is your behavior creating what you want? This is not aimed at men, by the way. All of us create our culture together, intentionally or not. I hope we will more consciously make our community the most pleasant, welcoming and creative in all of FOSS.
[Note on PyCon: The entire controversy has left me feeling sick. Congratulations are in order to the conference staff and leadership, who conducted themselves well. Yet they now have this mess connected to their fine conference, rather than good memories. There are no winners here, from what I can see. Since I didn't attend, and am not part of that community, no comments on PyCon itself or the controversy will be published here.]
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Sound of Silence, Solved by a New User; Skype Not So Easy
Skype can be useful, I admit. But I haven't been able to get it to work in Maverick, at all. First I could hear callers, but they couldn't hear me. Then their sound got intermittent, and then, no sound at all. Then the other day I was messing with sound settings trying to get it working again for a meeting, but while the pulse tools registered sound, Skype didn't.
The next day, the laptop was silent. No sound in any application, the sample wave didn't work, nothing. I found a helpful page here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting, and with some extra help from Himanshu, was able to restore sound. Here is how I did it.
From the page: "Can you play a known-good sound?
aplay is part of the alsaplayer package, and Front_Center.wav is part of the alsa-utils package, so both are pretty standard. So try to run
"Can someone else play a known-good sound?
Login with another user account. If this user has sound try the following.
Rename the .pulse directory of the user that has no sound to .pulse_bad. You need to do this with sudo and the user with problems must be logged out. [emphasis mine]
Sounds very straight-forward, but I was not for the life of me able to log in as another user. To solve that problem, a different page was somewhat helpful: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AddUsersHowto. When I added a new user from the gui, or from the krunner, I simply was not able to log in. I was prompted immediately for a new password, which the gui seemed never to see.
Finally Himanshu suggested, in a console:
Update: In another attempt to get skype working, I again hosed my sound. Thanks to an anonymous comment below, I decided to try the advice delete the .pulse folder which is quite a bit simpler than the above folderol. And it works! I'm still glad I learned how to create a new user successfully, and how to administer that user.
Now, in order to participate in my GSoC administrator meeting tomorrow, I still have to get Skype going, if possible. Wish me luck! (I had sound to me working, and they had access to IRC, so it was a partial success.)
Hint: I got these helpful pages from ubottu, the bot in #kubuntu. To access these links, type !sound and !user in the channel. It is always worthwhile asking ubottu for help, either for yourself or others in the channel.
The next day, the laptop was silent. No sound in any application, the sample wave didn't work, nothing. I found a helpful page here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting, and with some extra help from Himanshu, was able to restore sound. Here is how I did it.
From the page: "Can you play a known-good sound?
aplay is part of the alsaplayer package, and Front_Center.wav is part of the alsa-utils package, so both are pretty standard. So try to run
aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav." No, it would not play. Next step:
"Can someone else play a known-good sound?
Login with another user account. If this user has sound try the following.
Rename the .pulse directory of the user that has no sound to .pulse_bad. You need to do this with sudo and the user with problems must be logged out. [emphasis mine]
sudo mv /home/problem_user/.pulse /home/problem_user/.pulse_bad." [note that problem_user needs to be replaced by your actual troubled username]
Sounds very straight-forward, but I was not for the life of me able to log in as another user. To solve that problem, a different page was somewhat helpful: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AddUsersHowto. When I added a new user from the gui, or from the krunner, I simply was not able to log in. I was prompted immediately for a new password, which the gui seemed never to see.
Finally Himanshu suggested, in a console:
sudo passwd problem_userFinally I was able to type in a new password, and then log into "problem_user" today. Problem_user had sound! When I was setting up Problem_user's account, I made sure it was part of the sudo group, so than I could paste into a console:
sudo mv /home/valorie/.pulse /home/valorie/.pulse_badRemember, my troubled user was myself! Problem_user didn't have any problems. :-)
Update: In another attempt to get skype working, I again hosed my sound. Thanks to an anonymous comment below, I decided to try the advice delete the .pulse folder which is quite a bit simpler than the above folderol. And it works! I'm still glad I learned how to create a new user successfully, and how to administer that user.
Now, in order to participate in my GSoC administrator meeting tomorrow, I still have to get Skype going, if possible. Wish me luck! (I had sound to me working, and they had access to IRC, so it was a partial success.)
Hint: I got these helpful pages from ubottu, the bot in #kubuntu. To access these links, type !sound and !user in the channel. It is always worthwhile asking ubottu for help, either for yourself or others in the channel.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Pastebin, and pastebinit
Another helpful snippet tonight in #kubuntu (all the cool stuff is in there!):
Have you ever run into a problem, where you have a long error message or something that you need to show someone in IRC? The answer is to use a pastebin which is a service where you can paste that text (or image, in an imagebin) and give the link. This keeps help channels readable; long pastes are called flooding, and will usually get you automatically disconnected. The best one, in my opinion, is http://paste.kde.org.
But what happens when you are working in a console on one computer, and using another for IRC? If the text terminal is connected to the Internet, my wise friend Daskreech says:
[22:46] Daskreech: apt-get install pastebinit
[22:46] Daskreech: lsmod | pastebinit
[22:46] Daskreech: it will upload it to pastebin for you
Lsmod, (list loaded modules) by the way, is a useful Unix command to use when you need to figure out which modules might be messing with your display or sound. The | is called a pipe, and is used to tell some commands where to output; in this case the pastebin.
Thanks for another useful tip, Daskreech! You rock.
PS to beginners, or those in stress: the apt-get command always needs to be proceeded by sudo, to give you root power. So the whole command will be: sudo apt-get install pastebinit. Now the apt has been updated in Debian distros, you can instead just do sudo apt install pastebinit.
Have you ever run into a problem, where you have a long error message or something that you need to show someone in IRC? The answer is to use a pastebin which is a service where you can paste that text (or image, in an imagebin) and give the link. This keeps help channels readable; long pastes are called flooding, and will usually get you automatically disconnected. The best one, in my opinion, is http://paste.kde.org.
But what happens when you are working in a console on one computer, and using another for IRC? If the text terminal is connected to the Internet, my wise friend Daskreech says:
[22:46] Daskreech: apt-get install pastebinit
[22:46] Daskreech: lsmod | pastebinit
[22:46] Daskreech: it will upload it to pastebin for you
Lsmod, (list loaded modules) by the way, is a useful Unix command to use when you need to figure out which modules might be messing with your display or sound. The | is called a pipe, and is used to tell some commands where to output; in this case the pastebin.
Thanks for another useful tip, Daskreech! You rock.
PS to beginners, or those in stress: the apt-get command always needs to be proceeded by sudo, to give you root power. So the whole command will be: sudo apt-get install pastebinit. Now the apt has been updated in Debian distros, you can instead just do sudo apt install pastebinit.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Finding missing packages - three methods
Sometimes, when compiling applications, rather than installing them from packages, one comes up against a problem like this one recently posed in #kubuntu (IRC channel on Freenode):
Hi, I have an error then I'm compiling an app. It doesn't find /usr/lib/libGL.so. How can I install it?
Here is one answer:
[01:45] you want to install libgl1-mesa-dev
[01:46] you also want to install apt-file, 'apt-file find /usr/lib/libGL.so' will tell you that you need libgl1-mesa-dev for it
Here is the second way:
[01:54] you know, packages.ubuntu.com has the same function
[01:54] sadly doesn't work with PPAs though since the LP folks didn't implement the Contents.gz it needs yet
And the easiest way if you are in #ubuntu or #kubuntu (or any channel with ubottu). Notice there are two ways to ask:
[01:54] as does ubottu :)
[01:55] !find libGL.so
[01:55] File libGL.so found in fglrx, ia32-libs, libgl1-mesa-dev, libgl1-mesa-glx, libgl1-mesa-glx-dbg, libgl1-mesa-swx11, libgl1-mesa-swx11-dbg, libgl1-mesa-swx11-dev, lsb-build-base3, nvidia-173 (and 2 others) http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=contents&keywords=libGL.so&mode=&suite=maverick&arch=any
[01:56] !find usr/lib/libGL.so
[01:56] File usr/lib/libGL.so found in libgl1-mesa-dev
Slick! Thanks to yofel and tsimpson for their help.
Hi, I have an error then I'm compiling an app. It doesn't find /usr/lib/libGL.so. How can I install it?
Here is one answer:
[01:45]
[01:46]
Here is the second way:
[01:54]
[01:54]
And the easiest way if you are in #ubuntu or #kubuntu (or any channel with ubottu). Notice there are two ways to ask:
[01:54]
[01:55]
[01:55]
[01:56]
[01:56]
Slick! Thanks to yofel and tsimpson for their help.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
LoCo Teams in the Natty Cycle
Still trying to organize my thoughts after the UDS in Orlando. While the election results are distracting, I think it's important to analyze what lies ahead, and get moving before the holidays hit.
Washington Team
1. We need to hold leadership elections, and transfer power over the Launchpad team to the leadership.
2. We need to begin scheduling and hold regular meetings, even if they are only in IRC.
3. We need to get the official logbot in our #ubuntu-us-wa channel on Freenode. Linda is requesting that, so I hope it will happen soon.
4. We need to look at the calendar and plan some Team events, so advance planning can take place.
5. We need to figure out how to get monthly reports done monthly, so that we can get approval!
In the discussion about increasing diversity in the Ubuntu Community, Pici posted a great link, which might be helpful in how we conduct our LoCo team: http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml
Ubuntu Community Local Teams
There are some exciting plans ahead. Some of them (from Ubuntu LoCo Council Items for the Natty Cycle):
* Community leaders to sign the Leadership Code of Conduct in Launchpad
* Team Re-approvals from the LoCo Directory instead of wiki pages
* Move content from the wiki to the LoCo Directory
* Standard Team Re-approval form
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoGettingApproved
* Standards for teams, a set of guidelines: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Standards
* Update the standard Application to include Team reports and give more details
* Enforce the team naming standards [this can't happen soon enough, IMO]
PS: May 9-13 UDS-O, Budapest! Lay your plans now. :-)
Washington Team
1. We need to hold leadership elections, and transfer power over the Launchpad team to the leadership.
2. We need to begin scheduling and hold regular meetings, even if they are only in IRC.
3. We need to get the official logbot in our #ubuntu-us-wa channel on Freenode. Linda is requesting that, so I hope it will happen soon.
4. We need to look at the calendar and plan some Team events, so advance planning can take place.
5. We need to figure out how to get monthly reports done monthly, so that we can get approval!
In the discussion about increasing diversity in the Ubuntu Community, Pici posted a great link, which might be helpful in how we conduct our LoCo team: http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml
Ubuntu Community Local Teams
There are some exciting plans ahead. Some of them (from Ubuntu LoCo Council Items for the Natty Cycle):
* Community leaders to sign the Leadership Code of Conduct in Launchpad
* Team Re-approvals from the LoCo Directory instead of wiki pages
* Move content from the wiki to the LoCo Directory
* Standard Team Re-approval form
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoGettingApproved
* Standards for teams, a set of guidelines: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Standards
* Update the standard Application to include Team reports and give more details
* Enforce the team naming standards [this can't happen soon enough, IMO]
PS: May 9-13 UDS-O, Budapest! Lay your plans now. :-)
Thursday, October 21, 2010
UDS and You, Wherever You Are
I was fortunate to get sponsorship to the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida, but most of the participants did not! Many if not most folks will be in IRC and listening to the streams, and we on-site participants will be in IRC also, and be responding real-time to those of you who are remote.
Laura Czajkowski has written a great guide to doing this, http://www.lczajkowski.com/2010/10/19/how-to-remote-participate-at-uds-n-and-get-the-most-of-the-sessions/ and I hope you will try it out. Look at the sessions, and pick a couple of them, and BE THERE!
Apachelogger has updated his Icecast script so you can listen right from Amarok. Use the script search to find it, and then select your sessions from the Internet session.
I look forward to "seeing" you there -- especially you Kubuntu folks!
Laura Czajkowski has written a great guide to doing this, http://www.lczajkowski.com/2010/10/19/how-to-remote-participate-at-uds-n-and-get-the-most-of-the-sessions/ and I hope you will try it out. Look at the sessions, and pick a couple of them, and BE THERE!
Apachelogger has updated his Icecast script so you can listen right from Amarok. Use the script search to find it, and then select your sessions from the Internet session.
I look forward to "seeing" you there -- especially you Kubuntu folks!
Friday, April 23, 2010
Locked out of my own website!
I tried to ssh into our server, now hosted at linode.net. I got a notice, all scary-like:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
The RSA host key for zimres.net has changed,
and the key for the corresponding IP address 74.207.247.190
is unchanged. This could either mean that
DNS SPOOFING is happening or the IP address for the host
and its host key have changed at the same time.
Offending key for IP in /home/valorie/.ssh/known_hosts:4
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
Of course, that last bit is the important part. The host key has been changed. How to fix that at my end? My son said to edit out the line in my ~/.ssh/known_hosts file. However, when I opened Kate to edit it, I saw:
|1|2ZZc4RXTORIrgsDBWb2zqWRRw8s=|ZJCjvrfPLAEPwVQ6lGdYtVhoAK0= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAqp3hNrWz5ZWwogg1In70rBynezwkleYbOAgtDdbR7dfrcGJC/deLeprn+bXgfeO058EeHqAeU0be5tn1siui+GWm9rQ1PEfrT46fZCgSWeZVYVcQ5vRQItN/a6XFe00WPWrYEhXwgmM6la2gm8kOa5kCTSDOIN8v5XcqA85Pbnd57zmAcVWejaYndk1SkO9V1ctrxz8yGM6NuN+ThawQaLa1tWuj4aKFNWj2DBc3Dyx1IztUFdN0GcIRRg47qwU7KQGqv/2g77gsRmSvVILrRy1CR82lrsxpo5SdvMkqFJQSz/jyTN1x/6FbGJjAwkhIBQXkpQyxmQwzFb/Hf/pgMw==
|1|qZ+nY7U1kgMnDp26n6sdtbh+lmQ=|KGnxdNek7Rs137p3NgH3ZaLijdI= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAqp3hNrWz5ZWwogg1In70rBynezwkleYbOAgtDdbR7dfrcGJC/deLeprn+bXgfeO058EeHqAeU0be5tn1siui+GWm9rQ1PEfrT46fZCgSWeZVYVcQ5vRQItN/a6XFe00WPWrYEhXwgmM6la2gm8kOa5kCTSDOIN8v5XcqA85Pbnd57zmAcVWejaYndk1SkO9V1ctrxz8yGM6NuN+ThawQaLa1tWuj4aKFNWj2DBc3Dyx1IztUFdN0GcIRRg47qwU7KQGqv/2g77gsRmSvVILrRy1CR82lrsxpo5SdvMkqFJQSz/jyTN1x/6FbGJjAwkhIBQXkpQyxmQwzFb/Hf/pgMw==
|1|U+ZwcJShMD52Hxfk+BnxgfDnH4o=|QepSzrHlsR1vchO12+soBb1mAwo= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAysa2byLN+E1SeM8Wo7kMGLE+BPAg3nkKg5OhKmssRj945kKuqCBy3wvwVcrfe4zSvVMfotN06tAvmdflFokNXv9ANZJ9qu42HeFxNwkIz04w5E9YeHEG4rTtUW0dSsp13kcaU5Jp3z60C4QNUfZuNOGQmV+yYlOCiLXgR6eYmtkC+/hKZhPkO4GbxwLlEzW5Rzd8vy5czN87Pnr4Z1a/g+T+xKil8B2K41160+GQQNIPfYUCGnA9ccw1kRmWIYV+omJieXiigawUvhnQoHmWRllUhOq6y5jhvQVseO7S+EVFobMFxZ/P2+SzOlg2KaZu/8M0YZtxcrSM8NHnZLq+iw==
|1|b6NemVdIE2FvkU5/cH5FXaDbUks=|Hr4ppmN0hOhCb5ey2NS1yaeuits= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAysa2byLN+E1SeM8Wo7kMGLE+BPAg3nkKg5OhKmssRj945kKuqCBy3wvwVcrfe4zSvVMfotN06tAvmdflFokNXv9ANZJ9qu42HeFxNwkIz04w5E9YeHEG4rTtUW0dSsp13kcaU5Jp3z60C4QNUfZuNOGQmV+yYlOCiLXgR6eYmtkC+/hKZhPkO4GbxwLlEzW5Rzd8vy5czN87Pnr4Z1a/g+T+xKil8B2K41160+GQQNIPfYUCGnA9ccw1kRmWIYV+omJieXiigawUvhnQoHmWRllUhOq6y5jhvQVseO7S+EVFobMFxZ/P2+SzOlg2KaZu/8M0YZtxcrSM8NHnZLq+iw==
What the heck? I went to #linuxchix to seek counsel, and rik was around to tell me that that's a hash of the hostnames. He said, "the idea of hashing the hostnames was to stop an exploit [of someone who] got in as one user then using your keys (if you had then in an agent) to ssh in to every other host in your known_hosts file." Which would be a bad thing!
So in the console, I ran ssh-keygen -R zimres.net
and got back: /home/valorie/.ssh/known_hosts updated.
Original contents retained as /home/valorie/.ssh/known_hosts.old
and wooooohooooooooooo I'm in!
Thank you Thomas, rik and the linuxchix!
Thanks to all my commenters, too. Once I knew what was going on, the error message made more sense to me. That's the problem with error messages the first time you see them; you don't know enough to make sense of them. Often I google the error feedback in quotes, and sometimes that gets me the answer I need. Perhaps I should have tried that this time, but whining in IRC worked faster. :-)
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
The RSA host key for zimres.net has changed,
and the key for the corresponding IP address 74.207.247.190
is unchanged. This could either mean that
DNS SPOOFING is happening or the IP address for the host
and its host key have changed at the same time.
Offending key for IP in /home/valorie/.ssh/known_hosts:4
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
Of course, that last bit is the important part. The host key has been changed. How to fix that at my end? My son said to edit out the line in my ~/.ssh/known_hosts file. However, when I opened Kate to edit it, I saw:
|1|2ZZc4RXTORIrgsDBWb2zqWRRw8s=|ZJCjvrfPLAEPwVQ6lGdYtVhoAK0= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAqp3hNrWz5ZWwogg1In70rBynezwkleYbOAgtDdbR7dfrcGJC/deLeprn+bXgfeO058EeHqAeU0be5tn1siui+GWm9rQ1PEfrT46fZCgSWeZVYVcQ5vRQItN/a6XFe00WPWrYEhXwgmM6la2gm8kOa5kCTSDOIN8v5XcqA85Pbnd57zmAcVWejaYndk1SkO9V1ctrxz8yGM6NuN+ThawQaLa1tWuj4aKFNWj2DBc3Dyx1IztUFdN0GcIRRg47qwU7KQGqv/2g77gsRmSvVILrRy1CR82lrsxpo5SdvMkqFJQSz/jyTN1x/6FbGJjAwkhIBQXkpQyxmQwzFb/Hf/pgMw==
|1|qZ+nY7U1kgMnDp26n6sdtbh+lmQ=|KGnxdNek7Rs137p3NgH3ZaLijdI= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAqp3hNrWz5ZWwogg1In70rBynezwkleYbOAgtDdbR7dfrcGJC/deLeprn+bXgfeO058EeHqAeU0be5tn1siui+GWm9rQ1PEfrT46fZCgSWeZVYVcQ5vRQItN/a6XFe00WPWrYEhXwgmM6la2gm8kOa5kCTSDOIN8v5XcqA85Pbnd57zmAcVWejaYndk1SkO9V1ctrxz8yGM6NuN+ThawQaLa1tWuj4aKFNWj2DBc3Dyx1IztUFdN0GcIRRg47qwU7KQGqv/2g77gsRmSvVILrRy1CR82lrsxpo5SdvMkqFJQSz/jyTN1x/6FbGJjAwkhIBQXkpQyxmQwzFb/Hf/pgMw==
|1|U+ZwcJShMD52Hxfk+BnxgfDnH4o=|QepSzrHlsR1vchO12+soBb1mAwo= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAysa2byLN+E1SeM8Wo7kMGLE+BPAg3nkKg5OhKmssRj945kKuqCBy3wvwVcrfe4zSvVMfotN06tAvmdflFokNXv9ANZJ9qu42HeFxNwkIz04w5E9YeHEG4rTtUW0dSsp13kcaU5Jp3z60C4QNUfZuNOGQmV+yYlOCiLXgR6eYmtkC+/hKZhPkO4GbxwLlEzW5Rzd8vy5czN87Pnr4Z1a/g+T+xKil8B2K41160+GQQNIPfYUCGnA9ccw1kRmWIYV+omJieXiigawUvhnQoHmWRllUhOq6y5jhvQVseO7S+EVFobMFxZ/P2+SzOlg2KaZu/8M0YZtxcrSM8NHnZLq+iw==
|1|b6NemVdIE2FvkU5/cH5FXaDbUks=|Hr4ppmN0hOhCb5ey2NS1yaeuits= ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAysa2byLN+E1SeM8Wo7kMGLE+BPAg3nkKg5OhKmssRj945kKuqCBy3wvwVcrfe4zSvVMfotN06tAvmdflFokNXv9ANZJ9qu42HeFxNwkIz04w5E9YeHEG4rTtUW0dSsp13kcaU5Jp3z60C4QNUfZuNOGQmV+yYlOCiLXgR6eYmtkC+/hKZhPkO4GbxwLlEzW5Rzd8vy5czN87Pnr4Z1a/g+T+xKil8B2K41160+GQQNIPfYUCGnA9ccw1kRmWIYV+omJieXiigawUvhnQoHmWRllUhOq6y5jhvQVseO7S+EVFobMFxZ/P2+SzOlg2KaZu/8M0YZtxcrSM8NHnZLq+iw==
What the heck? I went to #linuxchix to seek counsel, and rik was around to tell me that that's a hash of the hostnames. He said, "the idea of hashing the hostnames was to stop an exploit [of someone who] got in as one user then using your keys (if you had then in an agent) to ssh in to every other host in your known_hosts file." Which would be a bad thing!
So in the console, I ran ssh-keygen -R zimres.net
and got back: /home/valorie/.ssh/known_hosts updated.
Original contents retained as /home/valorie/.ssh/known_hosts.old
and wooooohooooooooooo I'm in!
Thank you Thomas, rik and the linuxchix!
Thanks to all my commenters, too. Once I knew what was going on, the error message made more sense to me. That's the problem with error messages the first time you see them; you don't know enough to make sense of them. Often I google the error feedback in quotes, and sometimes that gets me the answer I need. Perhaps I should have tried that this time, but whining in IRC worked faster. :-)
Friday, April 16, 2010
Lucid beta, bugs, and Alsamixer
The ongoing saga of running a beta release, I guess. Everything was pretty cool for 10 days or so, but then......
A few days ago, my laptop lost its voice. After doing some update or another, there was NO sound, except an occasional odd clicking noise when instead it should have been playing a music track. In KDE, one can test various sound devices and services in System Settings > Multimedia. This is also, by the way, where you see what backends are available to you, such as Gstreamer, Xine or VLC. This same window is used in Amarok to configure Playback > Phonon. Once sound disappeared, this configuration window in System Settings started crashing, so I filed a bug about that. Actually, it's still crashing, even now that I have sound back.
The nice part about filing that bug is that the crash handler AKA Dr. Konqui now asks you, if certain debugging packages would help display a more helpful backtrace, if you would like to install them. Then it searches the database, fetches the packages and installs them for you. Be sure to reload your report after the installations, of course!
Finally, I went over to Launchpad and filed a bug there about the sound issue, since my tests have revealed that this was a general problem, not a KDE one. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/558910 if you are interested in this issue.
Salient points: aplay -l displays your sound equipment.
Of course first, I always checked Kmix. Often some channels were muted, but unmuting made no difference. I must have done that 20 times or so. I uninstalled Pulseaudio, which made no difference. I tried booting into next older kernel, still no sound. I used the TTY to run a sound file from Music123, which runs below X. It gave no error message; but appeared to be playing the file. No sound.
I also removed the phonon config in ~/.kde/share/config - no change. Rebooting into my original Kubuntu Lucid beta LiveCD, I heard sound again! After days. More updates, but still no sound.
In desperation, I asked in #unbuntu+1 (Freenode). The kindly folks there commiserated, and one person asked about Alsamixer. I remembered using it in opensuse, so I consulted my blog post here, and opened alsamixer in the console, and then used Ksnapshot to take a screenshot of it.
See where it says Speaker, and MM? Jordan_U kindly pointed out that that meant MUTE, and that I could change that by using the arrow keys to highlight the speaker column, and then use the M key to change to unmuted, which is 00 -- none of which makes any sense to me. However, sound now works! I updated my bug with the new information, because while my problem is solved, there is still a venomous bug, crawling around and biting random people!
Now I can get back to work in Amarok. Wonderful IRC people to the rescue once more! Thanks to Jordan_U and the rest of the helpful folks in #ubuntu+1.
A few days ago, my laptop lost its voice. After doing some update or another, there was NO sound, except an occasional odd clicking noise when instead it should have been playing a music track. In KDE, one can test various sound devices and services in System Settings > Multimedia. This is also, by the way, where you see what backends are available to you, such as Gstreamer, Xine or VLC. This same window is used in Amarok to configure Playback > Phonon. Once sound disappeared, this configuration window in System Settings started crashing, so I filed a bug about that. Actually, it's still crashing, even now that I have sound back.
The nice part about filing that bug is that the crash handler AKA Dr. Konqui now asks you, if certain debugging packages would help display a more helpful backtrace, if you would like to install them. Then it searches the database, fetches the packages and installs them for you. Be sure to reload your report after the installations, of course!
Finally, I went over to Launchpad and filed a bug there about the sound issue, since my tests have revealed that this was a general problem, not a KDE one. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/558910 if you are interested in this issue.
Salient points: aplay -l displays your sound equipment.
Of course first, I always checked Kmix. Often some channels were muted, but unmuting made no difference. I must have done that 20 times or so. I uninstalled Pulseaudio, which made no difference. I tried booting into next older kernel, still no sound. I used the TTY to run a sound file from Music123, which runs below X. It gave no error message; but appeared to be playing the file. No sound.
I also removed the phonon config in ~/.kde/share/config - no change. Rebooting into my original Kubuntu Lucid beta LiveCD, I heard sound again! After days. More updates, but still no sound.
In desperation, I asked in #unbuntu+1 (Freenode). The kindly folks there commiserated, and one person asked about Alsamixer. I remembered using it in opensuse, so I consulted my blog post here, and opened alsamixer in the console, and then used Ksnapshot to take a screenshot of it.
See where it says Speaker, and MM? Jordan_U kindly pointed out that that meant MUTE, and that I could change that by using the arrow keys to highlight the speaker column, and then use the M key to change to unmuted, which is 00 -- none of which makes any sense to me. However, sound now works! I updated my bug with the new information, because while my problem is solved, there is still a venomous bug, crawling around and biting random people!
Now I can get back to work in Amarok. Wonderful IRC people to the rescue once more! Thanks to Jordan_U and the rest of the helpful folks in #ubuntu+1.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Installing Lucid beta -- Adventure Story or Buddy Movie?
It seemed so simple. I went to Kubuntu.org and downloaded and installed the update yesterday afternoon, no problem! This morning, KpackageKit informed me that I had over 1000 updates, and since I was busy with Alsachat, I decided to just let it go, although I was a bit apprehensive about the power situation. We had a wind advisory going on, and I know that disconnecting during updates is a very bad idea. With about 30 minutes to go, however, KpackageKit crashed! When I tried to use the console (as I should have in the first place), I couldn't because KpackageKit had crashed, and not cleanly quit. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have used the command killall kpackagekit, but I thought it was named "kpackageit" -- and didn't look it up. So I restarted, and got a kernel panic!
I didn't panic, though -- I attempted to start in safe mode, without success. Then I selected the next oldest kernel, and dropped down to the command level. However, I was unable to successfully use apt-get update, even there. And I still couldn't boot into kubuntu. I decided that a fresh install of Lucid beta was the best idea, so I decided to write the disk on Anne's old laptop, which now runs opensuse. The problem I ran into there was that the CD drive wouldn't stay closed with a CD in it! I had to tape it closed to successfully write the CD. And my laptop booted with the LiveCD. But when I got to the place in the install where one must decide where to install it, I really was stymied, and scared to wreck my computer. I don't know the last time I backed up my home directory -- I know, bad Valorie! And I knew it was it was on its own partition, but.....well, I poured out my story in IRC, so here is the rest of the story.... [scroll to the bottom if you don't want to read the gory details!]
valorie: I'm so discouraged
valorie: my laptop is borked
valorie: I downloaded and installed lucid beta yesterday and everything was cool
valorie: today, there were over 1000 updates, and stupidly I told kpackagekit to go ahead and download them
valorie: part way through, it crashed
valorie: but anyway, I tried to re-do them with apt-get
valorie: but I couldn't because of the kpackagekit crash
valorie: now I can't get the computer to boot at all
valorie: tried an older kernel, and apt-get update there
valorie: but it kept throwing error messages
valorie: :(
valorie: I dl'ed and burned the lucid beta CD on this old laptop of my daughter's
valorie: but I'm afraid to bork up my computer even worse
valorie: it does look like my son made a separate partition for /home
valorie: but how do I know which one it is?
valorie: I did an fdisk -l /dev/sda
valorie: and can see how big each of the partitions are
valorie: and I know which one is swap, because it says
valorie: but that leaves 3 other possibilities
maco: blkid helps there
valorie: I don't know what that means
valorie: I see the IDs
valorie: 83, 83, 82, 83
valorie: for /dev/sda5, 6, 7, 8
valorie: this SUCKS
valorie: lucid worked just fine last night
valorie: as an upgrade
crimsun: well, sda5 is your extended partition, and sda7 is your swap
crimsun: so either sda6 or sda8 is /home
maco: valorie: 83, 82, etc... sounds like filesystem types. UUIDs are those loooooooooooong strings that identify the partition itself
maco: try "blkid /dev/sda5" for example
valorie: do I have to run that as root?
valorie: it gave me nothing
maco: i was just explaining what they were because of the confusion above
maco: you can type it without the /dev/.. stuff to just get a list of partitons and UUIDs
maco: do what as root?
maco: what gave nothing?
maco: (blkid does not need to be done as root)
nigelb: apparently yes
nigelb: gives me nothing here too
maco: iiiinteresting. i can run plain old "blkid" as not-root and have it be happy
crimsun: as well it should. access to a block device requires elevated privileges.
valorie: as root, it says 5 has uid=0caf054f-9d98-453d-9ab0-d2baf34bcld0 sectype=ext2 type=ext3
valorie: or pretty close to that
valorie: hard to copy from one screen to the other
maco: apparently i'm in a group i shouldnt be in
crimsun: maco: you upgraded; that makes sense
maco: oh
valorie: 6 & 8 are both ext4
valorie: anyway folks, do you think trying to install over top of my previous install would be the best idea?
valorie: I can't recall how old my most recent backup is
valorie: so I really do not want to wipe out /home!
maco: thats what i always do
nigelb: now, thats better :)
valorie: if people will be here to hold my hand
nigelb: valorie, there always will be :)
valorie: ok, I'm to the scary place
valorie: it advocates shrinking /sda1 from 178.5 GB to 105.2 GB
valorie: Kubuntu in 73.3 GB
valorie: sda5 to 235.3 MB!
valorie: I think that was swap, and I had problems when it was too small before
valorie: gads, I don't know if I have the courage
valorie: does it know which one is /home?
valorie: is it preserving it?
valorie: it leaves 6 unchanged in size
valorie: and 7
IdleOne: valorie: use gparted to display your partitions to you and take a screen shot of it. Make notes on paper in "real words" of which partition is what.
valorie: eliminates 8, which used to be 160 GB
maco: valorie_: are you in manual partition mode?
valorie: abort the install and do that?
maco: if you want to reuse the same / partition, you have to choose "manual partitioning" at the partition step instead of one of the guided ones
valorie: Prepare disk space is where I am
valorie: ok
maco: did you figure out which one is currently / and which is /home ?
valorie: no, I have no clue
valorie: I know 1 is windows
valorie: 7 is swap
valorie: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
valorie: the manual bit expects me to know
valorie: and I know nothing.....
maco: you can mount them and look
valorie: how?
valorie: abort the install?
maco: do you have a desktop right now?
valorie: what do you mean?
maco: or did you do the "just install and don't give me a desktop to use during it" mode?
maco: you're on a live cd right?
valorie: yes
maco: are you able to get to a terminal?
valorie: no, I think I should quit
valorie: this is too scary
maco: no no its ok!
maco: i'll walk you through
maco: let me quickly read back through what you did before
IdleOne: valorie: relax :) remember before you click anything ask yourself this " Did I triple check my double checking?"
valorie: each click so far has been easy
maco: valorie: try sudo mount /dev/sda5 /media ; ls /media and see if that looks like /home or /
valorie: speak english, etc
valorie: maco, there is no way to do that
maco: valorie_: ctrl+alt+f1?
valorie: just the install window
valorie: ah, ok
valorie: ok, no -- it is all abi, config, initrd, system.map, vmcoreinfo, vmlinux
valorie: etc.
valorie: so that must be /, correct?
maco: do you have a separate /boot ?
maco: that looks like /boot
valorie: grub is in there, so maybe
maco: those are the files i see in /boot
maco: ok so we know 5 = boot
valorie: and memtest
valorie: yeah
valorie: ok
maco: now sudo umount /media ; sudo mount /dev/sda6 /media ; ls /media and see what 6 is
maco: if you see root, bin, sbin, var, lib, etc, etc... thats /
maco: if you see your name.... /home
maco: and once you know what that is, since we know 7 is swap, then you can guess what 8 is
valorie: ok, bin, cdrom, etc, home, initrd., etc
valorie: so maybe that's home?
valorie: or perhaps /
maco: thats /
valorie: gotta be root
maco: ls on home in there though
maco: make sure your data isn't really hiding in there
maco: as that'd be bad
valorie: just ls home?
maco: ls /media/home
valorie: k
valorie: nada
maco: ok good
valorie: cool
maco: so then 8 is home
maco: alright back to the installer
valorie: this is making me feel so much better
maco: click on sda5, hit the edit button, and tell it use as /boot, and go ahead and let it format
valorie: control alt which?
maco: probably f7
valorie: nope
maco: try different f#'s til you find it?
maco: (this is what i do)
valorie: 8 did it
maco: ok
maco: click on sda6, hit the edit button, tell it to use as /, and format as ext3 or ext4, as you prefer
maco: click on sda7, hit edit, swap, no mountpoint for swap
maco: click on sda8, hit edit, mountpoint /home, use as ext3 (since thats its current format), and make sure you do NOT have it set to format that partition
valorie: when I click on 5, it brings up a edit partition screen
valorie: new size
valorie: use as
maco: leave the size alone if you want
valorie: format
valorie: mount point
valorie: but use as doesn't have root as a choice
maco: sda5 should be /boot
maco: and thats the mountpoint
maco: sorry, i mixed up when the dialog says "use as" blah. "use as" means "what format do you want?"
valorie: right
valorie: one of the choices is swap
maco: you have ext3 now. you can stick to that or go to ext4 or reiserfs or whatever
valorie: perhaps I was wrong and that was swap?
maco: no, it'll offer all possible filesystems one every partition
maco: since its a new install, if you *wanted* you could make that partition be swap, so it's offering that
valorie: so ext3 journaling file system?
maco: yep
valorie: ok
maco: but i'm assuming you're sticking to the same disk layout you had before
maco: this making sense?
valorie: yes
maco: good :)
valorie: should ANY of them be set "format this partition?
maco: i don't think its necessary, but maybe for /boot might be a good idea since i don't know if it'll actually clear out the old kernels if you dont
valorie: weird, because it shows a check under format for /home and /
valorie: ok
maco: thats because you haven't gotten there yet
valorie: I'll re-look
maco: you'll remove that checkmark when you edit them
valorie: it's grayed out
valorie: the only one that's got a black check is /boot now
maco: you're looking at the table of all the partitions right now, right?
maco: that's read only
valorie: right
maco: you have to click on those partitions and hit "edit"
valorie: so do I do anything to those ntfs partitions?
maco: nah, leave your windows alone
valorie: so click change?
maco: valorie: well i'm not looking at the screen right now, but if the edit button is now the "change" button...sure!
valorie: no, i think forward is the way to do
valorie: otherwise it will create a new partition
valorie: and I don't want that
valorie: correct?
maco: valorie: there's a "new" button and a "edit" one, right?
maco: valorie: you want to use "edit" on each existing linux partition and not use "new" at all
akk: I think I right-clicked on the partition and chose Edit from the context menu.
valorie: right, I edited each
valorie: no new
maco: oh ok
maco: and you got rid of the "format me!" on /home right?
maco: (thats sda8)
valorie: well, it's still got a grayed check mark
valorie: as does 3
maco: but 5 has a black checkmark?
maco: ugh i dont like this UI. it should have *NO* checkmark if it's unchecked. grr.
maco: not a but-look-we-greyed-it-out checkmark to mean unchecked
valorie: 5 has a black checkmark
valorie: yeah, it's confusing
akk: Yeah, having a checkmark at all sounds scary.
maco: ok then i think you're good to hit "next"--just make sure when you get to the end you read the confirmation screen
valorie: but I've tried 3 times ad I can't get rid of it
maco: this is a kubuntu lucid install disk?
valorie: yes, kubuntu lucid beta
valorie: it says that 5, 6, 7 and 8 will be formatted
maco: O_O
valorie: yeah
maco: go back
maco: did you set them to a different filesystem than what they were before? (all ext3)??
valorie: ah, I left a mounted system
valorie: grrr
maco: oooh
maco: sorry. sudo umount /media
maco: then maybe it'll let you edit things properly?
valorie: it will umount, I think
valorie: but I have to go back and redo it
valorie: bleah
maco: sorry :( i should've told you to umount before switching back to the installer
valorie: I'll scroll up -- it will be faster this time
valorie: damn, it's the same
valorie: says all 4 will be formatted
valorie: still with the grayed checkmarks
maco: valorie_: hmm you might need an alternate cd. sounds like a bug.
valorie: yeah, I can't allow that
valorie: :(
valorie: too much there on /home
valorie: gads, burning another damn CD on this machine -- if there is a cd in it, the cd tray keeps coming open
valorie: I had to tape the damned thing shut to get it to burn
valorie: lol
maco: hahaha
valorie: I wonder if my thumb drive is big enough
valorie: rats, I don't have it right now
valorie: :(
valorie: all right, I'll try to burn the alternate CD
maco: valorie: bug filing time too it seems
valorie: I guess as a good netizen, I had better
valorie: searching for liveCD bugs....
maco: ubiquity is the installer package
valorie: bug filed
valorie: now to write another CD
valorie: ok, alternate cd booting
valorie: the autoconfig for network fails, probably because I can't get the wireless to turn on
valorie: can I use the IP address from this machine to manually config?
maco: you can just tell it to skip
valorie: ok
valorie: actually, it is insisting
maco: what?
maco: it doesn't need net to do an install
maco: so it should let you just skip configuration of the interface
valorie: there we go
valorie: ok, i'm to partitioning
valorie: and again chose manual
valorie: then....configure the logical volume manager?
maco: eek!
maco: no lvm necessary
maco: pick the manual-not-lvm one
maco: i've only ever used lvm once, and that was because i *had* to for my system administration class
valorie: guided partitioning
valorie: configure software RAID
valorie: configure lvm
maco: then go to guided partitioning
valorie: configure encrypted
valorie: ok
maco: sounds the most reasonable
valorie: that takes me back to these choices:
valorie: guided:resize /dev/sda1 & use freed space
valorie: use entire disk
valorie: entire disk/lvm
valorie: entire and encrypted
valorie: and manual
valorie: and you already saw the manual choices
maco: and manual is where it brought up the raid stuff?
maco: what the...this is weird
valorie: yes
valorie: maybe guided and use entire disk
maco: no that'd delete everything
maco: hmm i think i need to try this in a vm
valorie: no, not that one
valorie: that just erases the entire disk
valorie: gaaahhh
valorie: oh, duh
valorie: in the manual, I can choose the partitions
valorie: geez
valorie: fear and stress makes me stupid
maco: chamomile tea?
valorie: water, right now
maco: chamomile tea good for getting rid of the stress part
valorie: ok, gonna scroll up and do this
maco: ok
valorie: mount options? label?
valorie: reserved blocks
maco: ignore that
valorie: bootable flag
maco: you don't need to worry about it
valorie: ok,
valorie: for boot -- erase data on this partition
maco: bootable flag goes on your windows i think. iirc, windows won't boot if its not marked bootable, while linux will go "what? grub told me to!"
valorie: hmmm, it makes it sound like I shouldn't erase it
valorie: it can no longer be recovered, etc.
valorie: choices: resize, copy data from another partition
valorie: erase data on this partition
valorie: delete the partition
valorie: done setting up partition
valorie: I assume don't resize
valorie: but erase?
rww: In debian-installer (and Ubuntu alternate CD) speak, delete deletes the partition, erase writes over all the data on it (a la DBAN) and then deletes it, I think.
valorie: the thing is, the header makes it sound like it is going to be erased *anyway*
valorie: "You are editing partition #5 of /dev/sda. This partition is formatted with the ext3 journaling file system. ALL DATA IN IT WILL BE DESTROYED.
valorie: in caps, the last bit
valorie: so I'm thinking my goof in the last go around was telling it I wanted them formatted
valorie: no formatting is probably what I wanted
valorie: ::sigh::
maco: i think this installer makes it slightly clearer than the gui one whether data will be kept. gui one says "format? yes/no" this says "format or keep?" which is a bit clearer IMO
maco: when it shows the list of partitions it puts F if its formatting and K if its keeping, i believe
valorie: so I guess I'm done with 5
maco: ok. now on to the others!
valorie: BUT - if you don't change "use as" --it is "do not use"
valorie: so....
maco: for use as you set what the current partition is
maco: then below that it has a format or keep option
maco: er, what the current filesystem is
valorie: no, it has all the file systems, swap, physical volume for encryption, RAID, LVM, do not use
valorie: and then go back
valorie: I don't see a place to tell it to use 6 as /
valorie: blah
maco: set the filesystem there
maco: for each partition there's a list of things you have to set
maco: "use as" is the filesystem
maco: you also have to set the mountpoint
valorie: right, but it warns above it will be destroyed
valorie: gah
maco: did you not change the "format/keep" part yet?
valorie: which is fine for everything but /home!
valorie: so 8, I think I just don't edit, right?
valorie: do not use
valorie: done setting up this partition
valorie: that seems reasonable to me
valorie: it will want to re-write boot, / and swap
valorie: to re-write
valorie: and don't touch /home
valorie: correctomundo?
valorie: finish partitioning and write changes to disk.....
valorie: there is no K, by the way
valorie: F or nothing
maco: if you do not use 8 it wont know to mount it as /home
maco: but then again, you can always edit /etc/fstab to TELL it to use that as /home after installation's done anyway
valorie: but if I format it, it's dead
maco: I'm pretty sure you can inform it of what format to use AND tell it to keep the data
maco: it should be one of the other questions on the partition edit screen
valorie: no, it isn't
maco: got a camera on-hand? i gotta see this
valorie: it has all thefile systems, swap, physical volume for encryption, RAID, LVM, do not use
valorie: and then go back
maco: yes but those are the options for "use as:" right?
valorie: yes
maco: there are more questions than just "use as"
maco: one of them should be asking whether to format or keep the data
valorie: Partition settings:
valorie: use as: do not use
valorie: blank
valorie: bootable flag: off
valorie: blank
maco: if you change do not use to the filesystem, that blank line might change to "format/keep"
valorie: resize
valorie: copy data
valorie: no, then it changes the menu
valorie: use as: ext3
valorie: mount point
valorie: mount options
valorie: label
valorie: etc.
maco: ok chck out mount options then
valorie: right above it says: All data in it WILL BE DESTROYED
maco: because it hasnt been set to "keep" mode yet
maco: just have to figure out where that mode is hidden
valorie: ok, noatime
valorie: relatime
valorie: nodev
valorie: nosuid
* maco shakes fist at screen
valorie: noexec
valorie: ro
valorie: sync
valorie: usrquota
valorie: rgpquota
maco: ok thats not sounding like it
maco: what's after "etc."
valorie: reserved blocks
valorie: typical usage
valorie: bootable flag
valorie: resize
valorie: copy data
valorie: erase data
valorie: delete
valorie: done
maco: if you go to "erase data" what does it say?
valorie: that's the one that warns that it will overwrite with random chars
maco: hrmph
valorie: I don't see a way to do it except do not use
maco: did you go to "mount point" yet?
maco: does it maybe offer it in there?
valorie: no
valorie: no choice of home
maco: i mean does it offer the dont format thing in there?
valorie: oh, I'm wrong, it does offer home
valorie: but still warns that it will be destroyed
valorie: even if I choose home, then go back and remove the formatting option
valorie: the /home bit disappears
valorie: so I'm guessing the editing is the only way
valorie: oh, I could send the pic to your email
valorie: duh
maco: hmm ok. i *know* pre-lucid had a way to set the filesystem AND keep the data
maco: i used it a bunch during installfests
valorie: gosh, brain is dead
valorie: so, finish partitioning and write changes to disk?
maco: hang on i wanna see this picture...
maco: can you take a pic of the page before that? the one that lists "use as" and "mountpoint" and such?
valorie: ok, I'll go back to that
valorie: sending
maco: valorie: ooooh i see a reason!
maco: valorie: that one is currently ext4
maco: so picking ext3 would mean changing its format
maco: try picking ext4 in the "use as:" and see if suddenly you're allowed to not-format
valorie: voila!
valorie: you are right
valorie: so should I go back and change any of the others?
maco: /home is the only one you care about saving
valorie: ok
valorie: yay!
valorie: I guess my question better would have been
valorie: is there a use to have them all formatted the same?
valorie: ext3 or ext4
valorie: etc.
maco: ext4 for /boot and / tends to mean faster boot
valorie: ok, I'll go back and change 'em
valorie: good grief
valorie: so they are all ext4
valorie: now finish and start partitioning?
valorie: right, maco?
maco: yep
valorie: soooo scary
valorie: it's happening....
valorie: booting......
valorie: gonna unhook here and see...
valorie: btw, /home seems to be fine
valorie: you rock, maco
valorie: and I owe you big-time
maco: yay!
valorie: next, install konvi and uninstall amarok
maco: uninstall amarok???
valorie: I build it from git
valorie: has to be uninstalled first, though
valorie: what the hell
valorie: even though Knetworkmanager can see my wireless
valorie: it will NOT connect
valorie: no matter how many times I tell it to
valorie: grrrrrrrrr
valorie: finally!
valorie: had to restart
Thus endeth the lesson. One bug filed, two CDs burnt, one laptop restored to workability. All in only FIVE HOURS! I certainly wish I had filed a bug when KpackageKit crashed, but I've filed a few from a crash, and without all the -debug and -devel packages installed, they aren't much use. AND I wish I'd thought to look at the spelling of KpackageKIT. On the upside, I installed a new distro version without using Thomas' time. I do owe Maco for 5 hours of work, for sure! I would like to thank crimsun, nigelb, rww, and akk for their help also. #ubuntu-women, you rock!
While preparing this blog post, I needed to remove a bunch of IRC cruft like time stamps, such as [22:53:43] and [03:49:53]. It seemed like a good time to use regular expressions (regex) to remove them in my favorite text editor, Kate. Thanks so much to Afuna on #ubuntu-women who helped me learn a bit. By the way, the magic regex was: \[[0-2][0-3]:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}\] . And I understand *why*! Thanks again, Afuna!
I didn't panic, though -- I attempted to start in safe mode, without success. Then I selected the next oldest kernel, and dropped down to the command level. However, I was unable to successfully use apt-get update, even there. And I still couldn't boot into kubuntu. I decided that a fresh install of Lucid beta was the best idea, so I decided to write the disk on Anne's old laptop, which now runs opensuse. The problem I ran into there was that the CD drive wouldn't stay closed with a CD in it! I had to tape it closed to successfully write the CD. And my laptop booted with the LiveCD. But when I got to the place in the install where one must decide where to install it, I really was stymied, and scared to wreck my computer. I don't know the last time I backed up my home directory -- I know, bad Valorie! And I knew it was it was on its own partition, but.....well, I poured out my story in IRC, so here is the rest of the story.... [scroll to the bottom if you don't want to read the gory details!]
valorie: I'm so discouraged
valorie: my laptop is borked
valorie: I downloaded and installed lucid beta yesterday and everything was cool
valorie: today, there were over 1000 updates, and stupidly I told kpackagekit to go ahead and download them
valorie: part way through, it crashed
valorie: but anyway, I tried to re-do them with apt-get
valorie: but I couldn't because of the kpackagekit crash
valorie: now I can't get the computer to boot at all
valorie: tried an older kernel, and apt-get update there
valorie: but it kept throwing error messages
valorie: :(
valorie: I dl'ed and burned the lucid beta CD on this old laptop of my daughter's
valorie: but I'm afraid to bork up my computer even worse
valorie: it does look like my son made a separate partition for /home
valorie: but how do I know which one it is?
valorie: I did an fdisk -l /dev/sda
valorie: and can see how big each of the partitions are
valorie: and I know which one is swap, because it says
valorie: but that leaves 3 other possibilities
maco: blkid helps there
valorie: I don't know what that means
valorie: I see the IDs
valorie: 83, 83, 82, 83
valorie: for /dev/sda5, 6, 7, 8
valorie: this SUCKS
valorie: lucid worked just fine last night
valorie: as an upgrade
crimsun: well, sda5 is your extended partition, and sda7 is your swap
crimsun: so either sda6 or sda8 is /home
maco: valorie: 83, 82, etc... sounds like filesystem types. UUIDs are those loooooooooooong strings that identify the partition itself
maco: try "blkid /dev/sda5" for example
valorie: do I have to run that as root?
valorie: it gave me nothing
maco: i was just explaining what they were because of the confusion above
maco: you can type it without the /dev/.. stuff to just get a list of partitons and UUIDs
maco: do what as root?
maco: what gave nothing?
maco: (blkid does not need to be done as root)
nigelb: apparently yes
nigelb: gives me nothing here too
maco: iiiinteresting. i can run plain old "blkid" as not-root and have it be happy
crimsun: as well it should. access to a block device requires elevated privileges.
valorie: as root, it says 5 has uid=0caf054f-9d98-453d-9ab0-d2baf34bcld0 sectype=ext2 type=ext3
valorie: or pretty close to that
valorie: hard to copy from one screen to the other
maco: apparently i'm in a group i shouldnt be in
crimsun: maco: you upgraded; that makes sense
maco: oh
valorie: 6 & 8 are both ext4
valorie: anyway folks, do you think trying to install over top of my previous install would be the best idea?
valorie: I can't recall how old my most recent backup is
valorie: so I really do not want to wipe out /home!
maco: thats what i always do
nigelb: now, thats better :)
valorie: if people will be here to hold my hand
nigelb: valorie, there always will be :)
valorie: ok, I'm to the scary place
valorie: it advocates shrinking /sda1 from 178.5 GB to 105.2 GB
valorie: Kubuntu in 73.3 GB
valorie: sda5 to 235.3 MB!
valorie: I think that was swap, and I had problems when it was too small before
valorie: gads, I don't know if I have the courage
valorie: does it know which one is /home?
valorie: is it preserving it?
valorie: it leaves 6 unchanged in size
valorie: and 7
IdleOne: valorie: use gparted to display your partitions to you and take a screen shot of it. Make notes on paper in "real words" of which partition is what.
valorie: eliminates 8, which used to be 160 GB
maco: valorie_: are you in manual partition mode?
valorie: abort the install and do that?
maco: if you want to reuse the same / partition, you have to choose "manual partitioning" at the partition step instead of one of the guided ones
valorie: Prepare disk space is where I am
valorie: ok
maco: did you figure out which one is currently / and which is /home ?
valorie: no, I have no clue
valorie: I know 1 is windows
valorie: 7 is swap
valorie: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
valorie: the manual bit expects me to know
valorie: and I know nothing.....
maco: you can mount them and look
valorie: how?
valorie: abort the install?
maco: do you have a desktop right now?
valorie: what do you mean?
maco: or did you do the "just install and don't give me a desktop to use during it" mode?
maco: you're on a live cd right?
valorie: yes
maco: are you able to get to a terminal?
valorie: no, I think I should quit
valorie: this is too scary
maco: no no its ok!
maco: i'll walk you through
maco: let me quickly read back through what you did before
IdleOne: valorie: relax :) remember before you click anything ask yourself this " Did I triple check my double checking?"
valorie: each click so far has been easy
maco: valorie: try sudo mount /dev/sda5 /media ; ls /media and see if that looks like /home or /
valorie: speak english, etc
valorie: maco, there is no way to do that
maco: valorie_: ctrl+alt+f1?
valorie: just the install window
valorie: ah, ok
valorie: ok, no -- it is all abi, config, initrd, system.map, vmcoreinfo, vmlinux
valorie: etc.
valorie: so that must be /, correct?
maco: do you have a separate /boot ?
maco: that looks like /boot
valorie: grub is in there, so maybe
maco: those are the files i see in /boot
maco: ok so we know 5 = boot
valorie: and memtest
valorie: yeah
valorie: ok
maco: now sudo umount /media ; sudo mount /dev/sda6 /media ; ls /media and see what 6 is
maco: if you see root, bin, sbin, var, lib, etc, etc... thats /
maco: if you see your name.... /home
maco: and once you know what that is, since we know 7 is swap, then you can guess what 8 is
valorie: ok, bin, cdrom, etc, home, initrd., etc
valorie: so maybe that's home?
valorie: or perhaps /
maco: thats /
valorie: gotta be root
maco: ls on home in there though
maco: make sure your data isn't really hiding in there
maco: as that'd be bad
valorie: just ls home?
maco: ls /media/home
valorie: k
valorie: nada
maco: ok good
valorie: cool
maco: so then 8 is home
maco: alright back to the installer
valorie: this is making me feel so much better
maco: click on sda5, hit the edit button, and tell it use as /boot, and go ahead and let it format
valorie: control alt which?
maco: probably f7
valorie: nope
maco: try different f#'s til you find it?
maco: (this is what i do)
valorie: 8 did it
maco: ok
maco: click on sda6, hit the edit button, tell it to use as /, and format as ext3 or ext4, as you prefer
maco: click on sda7, hit edit, swap, no mountpoint for swap
maco: click on sda8, hit edit, mountpoint /home, use as ext3 (since thats its current format), and make sure you do NOT have it set to format that partition
valorie: when I click on 5, it brings up a edit partition screen
valorie: new size
valorie: use as
maco: leave the size alone if you want
valorie: format
valorie: mount point
valorie: but use as doesn't have root as a choice
maco: sda5 should be /boot
maco: and thats the mountpoint
maco: sorry, i mixed up when the dialog says "use as" blah. "use as" means "what format do you want?"
valorie: right
valorie: one of the choices is swap
maco: you have ext3 now. you can stick to that or go to ext4 or reiserfs or whatever
valorie: perhaps I was wrong and that was swap?
maco: no, it'll offer all possible filesystems one every partition
maco: since its a new install, if you *wanted* you could make that partition be swap, so it's offering that
valorie: so ext3 journaling file system?
maco: yep
valorie: ok
maco: but i'm assuming you're sticking to the same disk layout you had before
maco: this making sense?
valorie: yes
maco: good :)
valorie: should ANY of them be set "format this partition?
maco: i don't think its necessary, but maybe for /boot might be a good idea since i don't know if it'll actually clear out the old kernels if you dont
valorie: weird, because it shows a check under format for /home and /
valorie: ok
maco: thats because you haven't gotten there yet
valorie: I'll re-look
maco: you'll remove that checkmark when you edit them
valorie: it's grayed out
valorie: the only one that's got a black check is /boot now
maco: you're looking at the table of all the partitions right now, right?
maco: that's read only
valorie: right
maco: you have to click on those partitions and hit "edit"
valorie: so do I do anything to those ntfs partitions?
maco: nah, leave your windows alone
valorie: so click change?
maco: valorie: well i'm not looking at the screen right now, but if the edit button is now the "change" button...sure!
valorie: no, i think forward is the way to do
valorie: otherwise it will create a new partition
valorie: and I don't want that
valorie: correct?
maco: valorie: there's a "new" button and a "edit" one, right?
maco: valorie: you want to use "edit" on each existing linux partition and not use "new" at all
akk: I think I right-clicked on the partition and chose Edit from the context menu.
valorie: right, I edited each
valorie: no new
maco: oh ok
maco: and you got rid of the "format me!" on /home right?
maco: (thats sda8)
valorie: well, it's still got a grayed check mark
valorie: as does 3
maco: but 5 has a black checkmark?
maco: ugh i dont like this UI. it should have *NO* checkmark if it's unchecked. grr.
maco: not a but-look-we-greyed-it-out checkmark to mean unchecked
valorie: 5 has a black checkmark
valorie: yeah, it's confusing
akk: Yeah, having a checkmark at all sounds scary.
maco: ok then i think you're good to hit "next"--just make sure when you get to the end you read the confirmation screen
valorie: but I've tried 3 times ad I can't get rid of it
maco: this is a kubuntu lucid install disk?
valorie: yes, kubuntu lucid beta
valorie: it says that 5, 6, 7 and 8 will be formatted
maco: O_O
valorie: yeah
maco: go back
maco: did you set them to a different filesystem than what they were before? (all ext3)??
valorie: ah, I left a mounted system
valorie: grrr
maco: oooh
maco: sorry. sudo umount /media
maco: then maybe it'll let you edit things properly?
valorie: it will umount, I think
valorie: but I have to go back and redo it
valorie: bleah
maco: sorry :( i should've told you to umount before switching back to the installer
valorie: I'll scroll up -- it will be faster this time
valorie: damn, it's the same
valorie: says all 4 will be formatted
valorie: still with the grayed checkmarks
maco: valorie_: hmm you might need an alternate cd. sounds like a bug.
valorie: yeah, I can't allow that
valorie: :(
valorie: too much there on /home
valorie: gads, burning another damn CD on this machine -- if there is a cd in it, the cd tray keeps coming open
valorie: I had to tape the damned thing shut to get it to burn
valorie: lol
maco: hahaha
valorie: I wonder if my thumb drive is big enough
valorie: rats, I don't have it right now
valorie: :(
valorie: all right, I'll try to burn the alternate CD
maco: valorie: bug filing time too it seems
valorie: I guess as a good netizen, I had better
valorie: searching for liveCD bugs....
maco: ubiquity is the installer package
valorie: bug filed
valorie: now to write another CD
valorie: ok, alternate cd booting
valorie: the autoconfig for network fails, probably because I can't get the wireless to turn on
valorie: can I use the IP address from this machine to manually config?
maco: you can just tell it to skip
valorie: ok
valorie: actually, it is insisting
maco: what?
maco: it doesn't need net to do an install
maco: so it should let you just skip configuration of the interface
valorie: there we go
valorie: ok, i'm to partitioning
valorie: and again chose manual
valorie: then....configure the logical volume manager?
maco: eek!
maco: no lvm necessary
maco: pick the manual-not-lvm one
maco: i've only ever used lvm once, and that was because i *had* to for my system administration class
valorie: guided partitioning
valorie: configure software RAID
valorie: configure lvm
maco: then go to guided partitioning
valorie: configure encrypted
valorie: ok
maco: sounds the most reasonable
valorie: that takes me back to these choices:
valorie: guided:resize /dev/sda1 & use freed space
valorie: use entire disk
valorie: entire disk/lvm
valorie: entire and encrypted
valorie: and manual
valorie: and you already saw the manual choices
maco: and manual is where it brought up the raid stuff?
maco: what the...this is weird
valorie: yes
valorie: maybe guided and use entire disk
maco: no that'd delete everything
maco: hmm i think i need to try this in a vm
valorie: no, not that one
valorie: that just erases the entire disk
valorie: gaaahhh
valorie: oh, duh
valorie: in the manual, I can choose the partitions
valorie: geez
valorie: fear and stress makes me stupid
maco: chamomile tea?
valorie: water, right now
maco: chamomile tea good for getting rid of the stress part
valorie: ok, gonna scroll up and do this
maco: ok
valorie: mount options? label?
valorie: reserved blocks
maco: ignore that
valorie: bootable flag
maco: you don't need to worry about it
valorie: ok,
valorie: for boot -- erase data on this partition
maco: bootable flag goes on your windows i think. iirc, windows won't boot if its not marked bootable, while linux will go "what? grub told me to!"
valorie: hmmm, it makes it sound like I shouldn't erase it
valorie: it can no longer be recovered, etc.
valorie: choices: resize, copy data from another partition
valorie: erase data on this partition
valorie: delete the partition
valorie: done setting up partition
valorie: I assume don't resize
valorie: but erase?
rww: In debian-installer (and Ubuntu alternate CD) speak, delete deletes the partition, erase writes over all the data on it (a la DBAN) and then deletes it, I think.
valorie: the thing is, the header makes it sound like it is going to be erased *anyway*
valorie: "You are editing partition #5 of /dev/sda. This partition is formatted with the ext3 journaling file system. ALL DATA IN IT WILL BE DESTROYED.
valorie: in caps, the last bit
valorie: so I'm thinking my goof in the last go around was telling it I wanted them formatted
valorie: no formatting is probably what I wanted
valorie: ::sigh::
maco: i think this installer makes it slightly clearer than the gui one whether data will be kept. gui one says "format? yes/no" this says "format or keep?" which is a bit clearer IMO
maco: when it shows the list of partitions it puts F if its formatting and K if its keeping, i believe
valorie: so I guess I'm done with 5
maco: ok. now on to the others!
valorie: BUT - if you don't change "use as" --it is "do not use"
valorie: so....
maco: for use as you set what the current partition is
maco: then below that it has a format or keep option
maco: er, what the current filesystem is
valorie: no, it has all the file systems, swap, physical volume for encryption, RAID, LVM, do not use
valorie: and then go back
valorie: I don't see a place to tell it to use 6 as /
valorie: blah
maco: set the filesystem there
maco: for each partition there's a list of things you have to set
maco: "use as" is the filesystem
maco: you also have to set the mountpoint
valorie: right, but it warns above it will be destroyed
valorie: gah
maco: did you not change the "format/keep" part yet?
valorie: which is fine for everything but /home!
valorie: so 8, I think I just don't edit, right?
valorie: do not use
valorie: done setting up this partition
valorie: that seems reasonable to me
valorie: it will want to re-write boot, / and swap
valorie: to re-write
valorie: and don't touch /home
valorie: correctomundo?
valorie: finish partitioning and write changes to disk.....
valorie: there is no K, by the way
valorie: F or nothing
maco: if you do not use 8 it wont know to mount it as /home
maco: but then again, you can always edit /etc/fstab to TELL it to use that as /home after installation's done anyway
valorie: but if I format it, it's dead
maco: I'm pretty sure you can inform it of what format to use AND tell it to keep the data
maco: it should be one of the other questions on the partition edit screen
valorie: no, it isn't
maco: got a camera on-hand? i gotta see this
valorie: it has all thefile systems, swap, physical volume for encryption, RAID, LVM, do not use
valorie: and then go back
maco: yes but those are the options for "use as:" right?
valorie: yes
maco: there are more questions than just "use as"
maco: one of them should be asking whether to format or keep the data
valorie: Partition settings:
valorie: use as: do not use
valorie: blank
valorie: bootable flag: off
valorie: blank
maco: if you change do not use to the filesystem, that blank line might change to "format/keep"
valorie: resize
valorie: copy data
valorie: no, then it changes the menu
valorie: use as: ext3
valorie: mount point
valorie: mount options
valorie: label
valorie: etc.
maco: ok chck out mount options then
valorie: right above it says: All data in it WILL BE DESTROYED
maco: because it hasnt been set to "keep" mode yet
maco: just have to figure out where that mode is hidden
valorie: ok, noatime
valorie: relatime
valorie: nodev
valorie: nosuid
* maco shakes fist at screen
valorie: noexec
valorie: ro
valorie: sync
valorie: usrquota
valorie: rgpquota
maco: ok thats not sounding like it
maco: what's after "etc."
valorie: reserved blocks
valorie: typical usage
valorie: bootable flag
valorie: resize
valorie: copy data
valorie: erase data
valorie: delete
valorie: done
maco: if you go to "erase data" what does it say?
valorie: that's the one that warns that it will overwrite with random chars
maco: hrmph
valorie: I don't see a way to do it except do not use
maco: did you go to "mount point" yet?
maco: does it maybe offer it in there?
valorie: no
valorie: no choice of home
maco: i mean does it offer the dont format thing in there?
valorie: oh, I'm wrong, it does offer home
valorie: but still warns that it will be destroyed
valorie: even if I choose home, then go back and remove the formatting option
valorie: the /home bit disappears
valorie: so I'm guessing the editing is the only way
valorie: oh, I could send the pic to your email
valorie: duh
maco: hmm ok. i *know* pre-lucid had a way to set the filesystem AND keep the data
maco: i used it a bunch during installfests
valorie: gosh, brain is dead
valorie: so, finish partitioning and write changes to disk?
maco: hang on i wanna see this picture...
maco: can you take a pic of the page before that? the one that lists "use as" and "mountpoint" and such?
valorie: ok, I'll go back to that
valorie: sending
maco: valorie: ooooh i see a reason!
maco: valorie: that one is currently ext4
maco: so picking ext3 would mean changing its format
maco: try picking ext4 in the "use as:" and see if suddenly you're allowed to not-format
valorie: voila!
valorie: you are right
valorie: so should I go back and change any of the others?
maco: /home is the only one you care about saving
valorie: ok
valorie: yay!
valorie: I guess my question better would have been
valorie: is there a use to have them all formatted the same?
valorie: ext3 or ext4
valorie: etc.
maco: ext4 for /boot and / tends to mean faster boot
valorie: ok, I'll go back and change 'em
valorie: good grief
valorie: so they are all ext4
valorie: now finish and start partitioning?
valorie: right, maco?
maco: yep
valorie: soooo scary
valorie: it's happening....
valorie: booting......
valorie: gonna unhook here and see...
valorie: btw, /home seems to be fine
valorie: you rock, maco
valorie: and I owe you big-time
maco: yay!
valorie: next, install konvi and uninstall amarok
maco: uninstall amarok???
valorie: I build it from git
valorie: has to be uninstalled first, though
valorie: what the hell
valorie: even though Knetworkmanager can see my wireless
valorie: it will NOT connect
valorie: no matter how many times I tell it to
valorie: grrrrrrrrr
valorie: finally!
valorie: had to restart
Thus endeth the lesson. One bug filed, two CDs burnt, one laptop restored to workability. All in only FIVE HOURS! I certainly wish I had filed a bug when KpackageKit crashed, but I've filed a few from a crash, and without all the -debug and -devel packages installed, they aren't much use. AND I wish I'd thought to look at the spelling of KpackageKIT. On the upside, I installed a new distro version without using Thomas' time. I do owe Maco for 5 hours of work, for sure! I would like to thank crimsun, nigelb, rww, and akk for their help also. #ubuntu-women, you rock!
While preparing this blog post, I needed to remove a bunch of IRC cruft like time stamps, such as [22:53:43] and [03:49:53]. It seemed like a good time to use regular expressions (regex) to remove them in my favorite text editor, Kate. Thanks so much to Afuna on #ubuntu-women who helped me learn a bit. By the way, the magic regex was: \[[0-2][0-3]:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}\] . And I understand *why*! Thanks again, Afuna!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
I love geeks! on IRC
Happy April Fools! I shared a link I got in #amarok, with the #linuxchix channel, and got the most fun command suggestions! All commands are in italic., interspersed with a few comments which might help you make sense of them. Add more commands in comments! Click http://xkcd.com and try date
apt-get moo (add "-v", "-vv" and even more "v")
man cat
find kitten (a game)
man next
man last
vim
nano
ed
bash
top
echo
pwd
make me a sandwich
rm
mkdir
more
wget
xyzzy*
curl (as an alias of wget)
who
whoami
su
sudo
*chf: "xyzzy" is the magic word of a text adventure game. Used in the right place as a command, it does something, everywhere else it outputs "nothing happens."
kill
cat
ping
joh6nn: if you type "display" for today's, type next
more
maria: apparently it likes finger, but I feel strangely cheated that it doesn't know what touch is
sudo reboot
xkcd
sudo make me a sandwich
cheat
locate
look
go west
thykier: mmm, it responds to CTRL + L (although it is a little weird to trigger CTRL in the terminal)
thykier: you can actually play that game
thykier: nice song though (and stay clear of "south")
maria: thykier: it's easy to go south if you know how to avoid the obvious :)
go
go down
asl
ssh
light lamp
goto
apt-get moo (add "-v", "-vv" and even more "v")
man cat
find kitten (a game)
man next
man last
vim
nano
ed
bash
top
echo
pwd
make me a sandwich
rm
mkdir
more
wget
xyzzy*
curl (as an alias of wget)
who
whoami
su
sudo
*chf: "xyzzy" is the magic word of a text adventure game. Used in the right place as a command, it does something, everywhere else it outputs "nothing happens."
kill
cat
ping
joh6nn: if you type "display" for today's, type next
more
maria: apparently it likes finger, but I feel strangely cheated that it doesn't know what touch is
sudo reboot
xkcd
sudo make me a sandwich
cheat
locate
look
go west
thykier: mmm, it responds to CTRL + L (although it is a little weird to trigger CTRL in the terminal)
thykier: you can actually play that game
thykier: nice song though (and stay clear of "south")
maria: thykier: it's easy to go south if you know how to avoid the obvious :)
go
go down
asl
ssh
light lamp
goto
Friday, March 26, 2010
IRC - Timewaster or Productive?
Tonight has proven to me that IRC is productive. First the fine folks at #linuxchix helped me get sound working on Anne's old laptop. Then the people in #opensuse-kde helped me prune my somewhat warty repository list, even writing out the commands I would need to remove the extras, such as zypper rr home:wstephenson:branches:KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:Desktop.
I had a duplicate, too -- the same repository from two different mirrors. I thought I hadn't gotten anything from it after all that, but yaloki said, "to see whether you have a package from the packman repository installed on your system: rpm -qa --qf='%{NAME}-%{VERSION} %{VENDOR}\n'|grep -i packman." I did, and so removed one but not both. Finally, remur_030 suggested that "afterwards 'zypper dup' so everything has a proper install backed by repositories." That is working away right now in the little laptop next to me.
In short, if you need some technical help, hop on IRC, and ask! Googling is good, thinking is good, and it's also good to hang out and answer questions too. It was a productive night, as I got help in those two channels, and also the suggestion in #amarok that I aggregate this blog on Planet KDE, which I did.
I had a duplicate, too -- the same repository from two different mirrors. I thought I hadn't gotten anything from it after all that, but yaloki said, "to see whether you have a package from the packman repository installed on your system: rpm -qa --qf='%{NAME}-%{VERSION} %{VENDOR}\n'|grep -i packman." I did, and so removed one but not both. Finally, remur_030 suggested that "afterwards 'zypper dup' so everything has a proper install backed by repositories." That is working away right now in the little laptop next to me.
In short, if you need some technical help, hop on IRC, and ask! Googling is good, thinking is good, and it's also good to hang out and answer questions too. It was a productive night, as I got help in those two channels, and also the suggestion in #amarok that I aggregate this blog on Planet KDE, which I did.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Adventure Begins!
Linux now has its own blog, and I'll begin with the latest. My daughter Anne contributed her old laptop, in which son Thomas installed OpenSuSE. I thought it might be fun to install Amarok and see how a new user sees it, but to my surprise, it's part of the standard install. However, the version was ancient, so an upgrade was in the works. To my delight, Konversation was also installed, so I could hop right onto IRC and ask a few questions in #suse. Unfortunately, they were hating on KDE4 and Amarok2 in there, so not very helpful!
The #opensuse-kde channel (on Freenode IRC) was much more helpful and friendly. This is an old Compaq Windows XP machine, so it was a bit of a challenge to get current software up and running. One of helpful websites was http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=openSUSE:11.2&p=1&q=amarok+2.3, where you can search for any package name, and see what is available in all repositories, even private ones. I was able to find Amarok 2.3 in "unstable," but I'm happy to report that now that all parts are installed, it seems *very* stable. Just getting everything installed took quite awhile, as Open Office decided it wanted updating as well. Plus the Yast/Zypper system is enough like the apt-get system of K/ubuntu to cause me quite a bit of confusion. I tried to copy/paste as much as possible, so as not to mess up command structure.
I guess Kubuntu packagers have spoiled me, though. I found that the backend, which is the part of Amarok that allows the sound to come through the speakers, wasn't included in the base install! When I tried to configure Phonon and make sure the sound card was working, Amarok instantly crashed. So I located the newest Phonon I could find, and phonon-backend-xine, and installed them. What kind of laggard packaging system is this!
Now I could configure my sound system at last, but the sound card test gave no sound, and I recalled that I'd seen a notification on each startup that the sound card was giving up.
So, no sound. Install drivers? I checked the Nvidia website, but they don't have a driver for such an old sound card. The website explained that such drivers are part of the linux kernel, so I don't have to worry about it! OK -- helpful people in Linuxchix (irc://irc.linuxchix.org/linuxchix) helped me test Alsa. sudo alsamixer showed me the channels, and I unmuted the few channels which were muted, such as line, line jac, mic and mic boost. That seemed to make no difference, so the next thing to check was Alsaplayer (not installed) or aplay, but aplay never started.
Next, cat /etc/group. The only group I'm a member of is video, so I had to add myself, sudo vi /etc/group. I usually use Kate, but it wasn't installed, so vi it was. i to insert, arrow keys to move about, escape to return to command mode, :x to write (save) and exit.
Why wasn't I automatically added to these groups when I installed Pulseaudio? Good question. I've never had to edit groups before, and I've been using Linux for ..... over 10 years, I guess. Anyway.
To add myself to the necessary groups, I made the line audio:x:17:pulse into audio:x:17:pulse,valorie, and the same with pulse-access, then escape and :wq to write and quit. Finally, I closed all running programs and restarted the computer. Upon starting up Amarok, and testing Pulsaudio (the sound card no longer shows up as an entry), it worked! SOUND!
Since I've not transferred any of my music tracks to the laptop yet, I used Magnatune, and listened to some beautiful classical music, courtesy of the band Asteria. Thank you to Anne, to Thomas, to OpenSuSE and the fine folks in #opensuse-kde, Christoph Franzen (chf) and the rest of #linuxchix, and the fine developers of Amarok. Finally, thanks to Mackenzie Morgan (maco) for helping me make this entry vi-correct. Vi manpage online: http://ss64.com/bash/vi.html
Ultimately, this old laptop will be available for my grandson Oscar to play Qimo on. I'll put on some of my favorite music too, so if we lug it up to the cabin, Amarok will be useful for more than learning and testing!
The #opensuse-kde channel (on Freenode IRC) was much more helpful and friendly. This is an old Compaq Windows XP machine, so it was a bit of a challenge to get current software up and running. One of helpful websites was http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=openSUSE:11.2&p=1&q=amarok+2.3, where you can search for any package name, and see what is available in all repositories, even private ones. I was able to find Amarok 2.3 in "unstable," but I'm happy to report that now that all parts are installed, it seems *very* stable. Just getting everything installed took quite awhile, as Open Office decided it wanted updating as well. Plus the Yast/Zypper system is enough like the apt-get system of K/ubuntu to cause me quite a bit of confusion. I tried to copy/paste as much as possible, so as not to mess up command structure.
I guess Kubuntu packagers have spoiled me, though. I found that the backend, which is the part of Amarok that allows the sound to come through the speakers, wasn't included in the base install! When I tried to configure Phonon and make sure the sound card was working, Amarok instantly crashed. So I located the newest Phonon I could find, and phonon-backend-xine, and installed them. What kind of laggard packaging system is this!
Now I could configure my sound system at last, but the sound card test gave no sound, and I recalled that I'd seen a notification on each startup that the sound card was giving up.
So, no sound. Install drivers? I checked the Nvidia website, but they don't have a driver for such an old sound card. The website explained that such drivers are part of the linux kernel, so I don't have to worry about it! OK -- helpful people in Linuxchix (irc://irc.linuxchix.org/linuxchix) helped me test Alsa. sudo alsamixer showed me the channels, and I unmuted the few channels which were muted, such as line, line jac, mic and mic boost. That seemed to make no difference, so the next thing to check was Alsaplayer (not installed) or aplay, but aplay never started.
Next, cat /etc/group. The only group I'm a member of is video, so I had to add myself, sudo vi /etc/group. I usually use Kate, but it wasn't installed, so vi it was. i to insert, arrow keys to move about, escape to return to command mode, :x to write (save) and exit.
Why wasn't I automatically added to these groups when I installed Pulseaudio? Good question. I've never had to edit groups before, and I've been using Linux for ..... over 10 years, I guess. Anyway.
To add myself to the necessary groups, I made the line audio:x:17:pulse into audio:x:17:pulse,valorie, and the same with pulse-access, then escape and :wq to write and quit. Finally, I closed all running programs and restarted the computer. Upon starting up Amarok, and testing Pulsaudio (the sound card no longer shows up as an entry), it worked! SOUND!
Since I've not transferred any of my music tracks to the laptop yet, I used Magnatune, and listened to some beautiful classical music, courtesy of the band Asteria. Thank you to Anne, to Thomas, to OpenSuSE and the fine folks in #opensuse-kde, Christoph Franzen (chf) and the rest of #linuxchix, and the fine developers of Amarok. Finally, thanks to Mackenzie Morgan (maco) for helping me make this entry vi-correct. Vi manpage online: http://ss64.com/bash/vi.html
Ultimately, this old laptop will be available for my grandson Oscar to play Qimo on. I'll put on some of my favorite music too, so if we lug it up to the cabin, Amarok will be useful for more than learning and testing!
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