Mar 03
Ok I have a computer it generally stays on 24/7. it does important work like download files during off-peak download periods. It also is my svn server. samba etc…
It is also used by my family to surf the web since it’s always on and they don’t need to wait for computers to boot.
Ok so the short of the story is my computer got reformatted.
Distributing the blame
- Me – should of know better than to leave a mandriva install disk in the drive, (virtualbox install is why it was there) and when I finished my linux install I SHOULD of changed the BIOS setting to disable boot from CD.
- Dad – shouldn’t of turned off the computer he knows is always on.
- Mum – shouldn’t of continued to click yes through the mandrivia install, by the time i found the computer it was asking for a username and password for the new mandriva install. so it already had FORMATED and INSTALLED mandriva.
Coming soon !! more blog entries on the success or failure of data recovery tools in linux. If you have any pointers please tell me.
Aside welcome planet.linux.org.au readers !
Feb 22
By default you can not browse samba shares in Linpus being based of XFCE there is no XFCE file browser that support samba, you can still doing it using a hack and fuse smb. ok so everything is done in command line so start with Alt+ F2 then type in xterm to get our command line.
sudo yum install fuse-smb
We then need to add our linpus user “user” to the fuse group
sudo usermod -a -G fuse user
We can check that this command worked with “id user”
Create a new folder in our home directory
mkdir samba
Mount fuse to our new directory you will also need to run this code every time you reboot.
fuse /home/user/samba
cd into the samba folder or open up thunar and navigate to the /home/user/samba folder and there should be your samba network.
Feb 17
Last night we had a another successful Linux Owners Group In Newcastle meeting
I gave a talk on the OLPC XO and sugar. Main point is that sugar is now available on Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora after my talk William talked to the group about bidding for the open source developers conference (OSDC) to take place in Newcastle.
Sugar on Toshiba and XO
Useful links:
Stuff on OSDC
I did struggle at the end of the meeting to explain to a linux newbie that he doesn’t really want to install a program from source… as he told me linux isn’t as easy as they say it is… I also no nothing about Mandrivia. We also discussed the Linux.conf.au inner circle and that too many of the LCA talks are repeats!
Jan 19
The guys at Kuki Linux, have released a deb package of a slightly more custom kernel (latest wireless added etc..) than the vanilla ubuntu and debian kernel.
You can view the Tutorial on Kuki website:
http://www.kuki.me/tutorial/installing-kuki-linux-kernel-on-ubuntu-810
Hopefully it means that it will be easier to install ubuntu and debian on to a Acer Aspire One.
Jan 17
Marching South
HyKim ready to March
Flight leaves tomorrow 6 AM
Jan 13
Ok it’s been an odd morning.
This morning i got a phone call on my home line from some old man wanting help with his ubuntu install, well more to the point is that he wanted to format ubuntu and start again. After asking a couple of questions about what he wanted, I told to format the drive and do a fix MBR in windows is probably abit more complex than he wants, and since he was dual booting that he should just continue to launch windows instead.
His orginal problem was he couldn’t get on the internet at the time, It didn’t click at the time when he said he was with optus that the reason he couldn’t get on the net is the weird way that optus modems are setup.
After talking to him for a while i finally got around to asking how he got my number because it was becoming more clear i didn’t know the guy.
Apparently he found my ubuntu wiki page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Gabz and assume I could help him looked up my phone number in the address book since my last name isn’t very common my home (parents house) is the only listed number.
So this was the first time i’ve been rung by a 85 year old man wanting to know how to fix ubuntu. It was an odd experiance.
If how it all ended, was well I got over the slightly weird feeling told him to keep ubuntu there, since he mentioned he lived in Toronto (NSW) we exchanged email address and I sent him the link to Westlakes Linux Learners
Anyone else recieved random phone calls asking for linux help ???
Jan 10
Lots of mini-news so time for dot points
- I Checked my site visit statistics and noticed that I’m now on the Linux.conf.au planet, I don’t normally put my blog up for planets but it was part of the registration and was easy. so hello my extra blog readers from http://planet.linux.org.au/lca2009/
- Linux.conf.au, I have tickets to for the conf. Tiger airways are now on my list of banned airlines, In 1 year they’ve gone from alright to horrible. Basically they canceled our flights from Melbourne to Hobart. and put us on other ones but then we can’t get the Jetstar flights we have to connect us to the Newcastle to Melbourne Part. So more money had to be spent Tiger gave a less than expected refund.
- Related on the 18th January we fly into Melbourne from Newcastle at 7:40 am our next flight to Hobart doesn’t leave until 17:55 so we have 8 hours in Melbourne to kill, please leave suggestions in comments if you have some ideas of what to do.
- Kym and Linux.conf.au. Not so good she is trialling her talk out at work the week before, but the robot isn’t ready yet… it was meant to be ready for her last year but the processor still isn’t inside the bear yet. As for the talk well the OO.o sliders aren’t finished yet either.
- Still looking for a new OS for my Acer Aspire looked at Kuki.me but it’s still not near production stage yet.
Anyway welcome to the new Planet readers 
Jan 01
Christmas was very good to Gabz, he scored Wii controllers, remote control helicopters and of course what this post is about, a new netbook, namely a Acer Aspire One, Linpus 512 Mb Ram 8 Gb SSD.
Impressive Parts
- Size, Weight and Keyboard.
It’s small like you would expect but the keyboard is easier to type on that the XO olpc which is the only other netbook sort of thing I’ve gotten to play with. It’s really light weight and the battery is giving me 2.5 hours.
- Boot time – Linpus got one thing right 14 second boot time from cold boot it also does hibernate but that isn’t really any slower than a cold boot.
- 3G Modem support. If your 3G modem is made by Huawei (Optus, Vodafone or 3 ) then your in luck once you download the software from the acer site the Huawei modems work great. They even use the same software as you would under windows so you can still send those SMS messages. only extra step is making a new profile for your modem.
Mobile Partner
- If the 8 Gb SSD Isn’t enough for you, you can expand with a SD Card they even merge the 2 drives together to appear as a single drive.
- Also the webcam is builtin, the Mic is placed well and once you download Skype from the acer website it works great.
- If you brought the extra USB DVD-RW like I was given you be pleased to know that under Linux you have DVD playback out of the box. Also the DVD-RW DL powers just from the USB port so no extra cables needed.
Unimpressive Parts
- LINPUS ! – For starters it’s based on Red Hat (Fedora) being a Debian guy I find this to be a negative.
Limited Range of Software, Acer isn’t supporting much they have an Acer game installed which is trial ware. Not really impressed that the full range of linux software isn’t easily available on this distro.
- Security ok when you start linpus for the first time, you set the root password. Ok fair enough but there is no User password. Which is ok by it self. But guess what the user has no password but has Full SUDO rights ?! So if you ever want to change the root password on any linpus Acer try “sudo passwd”
Root Password changing
Basically I’m very happy with this Netbook, and most of my problems will be solved in the coming weeks when I get Ubuntu on to this netbook. Though I would love a way to decrease the Ubuntu boot to the 15 second range.
Nov 17
Last weekend I heard a talk by a missionary priest Father John who had to stop his work in Africa due to a heart condition and is how living a very relaxed life with the nuns out in Bolwarra.
During his talk he mentions intolerances towards other religions, and I suppose he thought as he was talking to a group of people from Maitland he’ll give us some Maitland History, and proceeded to tell us about a riot in the 1960 due to a Presbyterian minister giving a series of sermons said to be anti-catholic which upset the Irish Catholics at the time. I spent some time googling these riots and apparently it’s not just my neighbours who had no idea of Maitland past but the Internet as well. With the only reference I could find being from this website.
In 1860 he advertised a lecture on ‘The Heathenism of Popery, Proved and Illustrated’, which upset Irish Catholics and led to the famous Maitland riots, said to have involved over 1000 people. McIntyre was injured and seventeen prosecutions followed. [ http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050190b.htm ]
It was an interesting story hard to believe in this day and age first being that there is 1000 pissed off catholic still in Maitland. Though I’m sure there are still some Anti-Catholic sermons out there still. but all church’s these days seem to at least refrain from publicly criticising each other.
If anyone else finds something else be sure to leave a comment.
