..Effing sucks
Up all night caughing because the anti caughing medicine dehydrated you, then going to bed and having work call you a few hours later because some stupid thing couldnt wait for someone else to be in the office.
Fun times.
Bronchitis
November 21st, 2008VMware Dual booting?
November 16th, 2008So, there is this interesting youtube video which explains how to use VMware Workstation to boot a Dual boot system into a virtual machine.
For those who are unaware, Dual booting allows you to boot either Windows or Linux. You have to choose one or the other when you turn the system on.
With this setup, you can boot linux (my preferred OS) and use VMware, software used to emulate hardware of a computer, to run your Windows install just like you booted it normally.
Though you don’t get full functionality out of it, you get the basics, which allows me to do what I would normally do in windows (download and play games).
Also, while working with this, I ran into a problem with the current kernel in Fedora 9 (2.6.27.5-37.fc9.i686) and VMware Server 1.0.8. I had to use the vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz file from this post to get the drivers to compile. Though I did not get the Perl API libraries installed (I think its related to the drivers update, I did not look into it further yet), everything seems to be working fine.
Gentoo, sys-libs/com_err, sys-libs/ss, and e2fsprogs blockings
November 15th, 2008This is a repost of a new common topic, but its an important one. There have been a few blocked packages in the gentoo portage tree recently which causes problems. You all know what I mean…
[ebuild U ] sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.2 [1.40.9] USE="nls (-static%)" 4,263 kB
[ebuild N ] sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.2 USE="nls" 479 kB
[ebuild U ] app-crypt/mit-krb5-1.6.3-r4 [1.6.3-r1] USE="-doc -krb4 (-ipv6%*) (-tcl%)" 11,636 kB
[blocks B ] sys-libs/ss (is blocking sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.2)
[blocks B ] <sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41 (is blocking sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.2)
[blocks B ] sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs (is blocking sys-libs/ss-1.40.9, sys-libs/com_err-1.40.9)
[blocks B ] sys-libs/com_err (is blocking sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.2)
The problem lies in if you remove sys-libs/ss or sys-libs/com_err, you have a HUGE problem. You cant do anything online, you cant download new updates, and if you reboot, you cant mount filesystems. Sounds like a huge bug, and I am supprised it hasnt been fixed via portage yet.
Anyways, there is a workaround for it (not that we should have to use it), and here it is.
# First, grab the files with the fetch command
emerge -DufvN system
# Next, Make a backup of com_err and ss
quickpkg com_err ss e2fsprogs
# Remove offending packages
emerge -aC com_err ss e2fsprogs
# Compile the correct and updated packages
emerge -DuavN system
# And check for broken packages
revdep-rebuild
# Alternatively if you do not wish to use system, you can use:
emerge -avf =sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.2 =sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.2
quickpkg com_err ss e2fsprogs
emerge -aC com_err ss e2fsprogs
emerge -av sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs sys-fs/e2fsprogs
revdep-rebuild
NOTE: If you dont have revdep-rebuild, then install app-portage/gentoolkit
NOTE: If you have to re-install your previous com_err and ss, then use:
emerge -av /usr/portage/packages/All/com_err-1.40.9.tbz2 /usr/portage/packages/All/ss-1.40.9.tbz2 /usr/portage/packages/All/e2fsprogs-1.40.9.tbz2 && revdep-rebuild
Making sure to match your version if not the same, and running revdep-rebuild afterwards.
Zelda!
November 12th, 2008I got a new kitty today. Ive been wanting one for a while now, and finally had time to go get one and such.
So here is Adorabell, who I got from Animal House Shelter, in Huntley, IL.
I have decided to call her Zelda (Based on the legend of zelda video games) and not keep her shelter name.
Here is a link to pics for everyone to enjoy!
Super powered caffine enabled melatonin dream
September 28th, 2008So the last few weeks I’ve been having a hella time sleeping, not entirely sure why, so after a weeking gaming at Sydeshow’s, I decided to pop a melatonin tab to help me sleep (which it did wonders so far). One of the “side effects” of melatonin is that it creates more vivid dreams, so that on top of a caffine pumped DrD, created one weird ass but interesting dream.
I remember being in my dads house with my brother, and he lets someone downstairs to me and has them talk to me. I see a paper with an email that starts with “Ranson-08-??” and I for some reason think he is going to rob us, so I jokingly tell him “If your going to steal stuff, at least spell ransom right. He smiles and fixes it and walks away. As I think its odd, I get up to catch him driving away in a grey unmarked van, writing down the license plate number, but I miss the last digit. I see my brother and he recites the plate number but backwards, it confuses me and I forget what I think the last digit was, and he forgets the whole thing (we are both known for having short term memories).
So as I am about to call the police, I see my dad and tell him what happened, he starts walking out the front door thinking he sees the people when it really was someone else, as he does that, I see 2 turtle wax cars pull up (weird i know, green cars with the turtle wax logo). Out of one car comes a down syndromed kid and either his sister or caretaker (whoever, she was still cute) and they both walk up to our house not saying anything. The kid keeps trying to walk into the house while I push him back, the girl finally says “so…we were told to just walk in the house and sidetract you guys,” so I freak and immediately run downstairs to my room, and see my window open and my TV missing.
This is where i wake up in a confused, angry and pumped state.
Its amazing what extra caffine (thanks BAWLS Guarana) and a sleep aid (melatonin tabs) can do. At the end of it all, I woke up refreshed and rejuvenated, which I haven’t felt in so long.
Ganon fails
September 19th, 2008So just recently, my server “Ganon” died. He was a good server and did his job well. But like all good things, he had to die. The server would power on, but not even POST (Power On Self Test). I think it happened after he took a nice electric hit from a customer blowing the fuse on the power panel he was plugged into.
But in all good Zelda sense, Ganon fails, so he grows bigger and stronger and becomes Ganondorf. The new machine is bigger, stronger and badder. For anyone interested, pictures are listed in the Image Gallery
Patching DNS
August 13th, 2008So yea, the dreaded day came and went. That stupid DNS bug sucked. I think we got hit by it at work before the patch, though nothing major changed and we had no concrete evidance.
So on top of everything else, I found a way to patch our 4 years out of date server…..by upgrading it.
Because OpenBSD has to be upgraded one version at a time, I litterally did 5 OS upgrades in one night…on 3 different severs!
Here is some boredom pics from when I was upgrading in Chicago
Trixbox on VMWare? Sure!
July 7th, 2008So some of my friends may know that in the past ive tried to run trixbox on vmware, and know I had to make a hack to get it to work “correctly,” IE the timing issue, and how i fixed it. (I had a post about it here).
So its been working fine, but when I moved, It took me some time to get my trixbox back up, just from different things going on. So when I did, everything worked fine…except I had no audio being sent from my ata. DOH!
So instead of trying to work with it, i tried something else. Trixbox has a VMWare pre-made image, which I wanted to try.
download the 2.6.1 VMWare version, unzip, insert into vmware server (1.0.5.andchange)….what? it was made with a version with newer features?
Looking around, I start editing the files, and see config.version and virtualHW.version. These look like I should be changing them! Lets check another working vm…Yup, so I change the version, and next problem, same thing, but it referances the hard drive image. Doh!.
so i asked google (or my new favorite variant: Goosh)
And I find this page, sweet! I do what they say, and followed the comment about changing the hard drive (the dd command) and this worked.
Next problem, it doesnt know what kind of system “rhel5″ is. So I edit the config from the gui, and tell it that its type “Other”. Boot, and it works out of the box.
Now thats sweet!
Its done…
May 24th, 2008So, I finally moved! With the help of friends and family, I was able to get most of my stuff (minus a few things left behind which I still need to pick up and clean/whatnot).
It didn’t very long, and now, Im posting this from my new home!
Heres some pics of the new place from erlier today!
Its coming up…
May 17th, 2008Well, in 1 week from this post, I should be in my new apartment, getting used to living alone.
I still have some cleaning and packing to do, but I should be ready in time.
Ive never ever seen my room this “clean” and am surprised at how much crap actually was in here.
