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Journal CleverNickName's Journal: Computers Are Fun 30

Journal by CleverNickName

Hey this will be cool, I think.

I've been using Mandrake 8.2 for a copuple of months, and I've really enjoyed the experience. Everything has worked beautifully...until recently, when suddenly without warning, my printer got possessed.

It went from printing only the first page of a job followed by a blank page, to printing the whole job...in 'landscape' mode, cutting off the tops and bottoms of the page.

Kinda made it hard for my kids to do their homework on the computer.

I wasn't too worried, though, I'd just upgrade to 9.0.

So I downloaded ISO images, and burned them myself, and prepared to do the upgrade. I was really excited about this, because flying the Enterprise notwithstanding, I am a total techology lamer. If you don't believe me, ask any of my smarter-than-me friends about the panicked late night phone calls.

So I power down, bidding a tearful farewell to my uptime (which would have been 14 days if my wife hadn't decided to turn the machine off "because I couldn't print and it pissed me off" the day before).

I put the 1st Cd in the drive, and literally hop with joy when I get the install screen...I choose "Upgrade" and an hour later, it's done.

Sort of.

See, it can't find my NIC, and I am too much of a lamer to know how to use modprobe, or insmod, or "please tell me how to make this fucking work" or whatever the spiffy command is...so I have this cool pretty looking Mandrake 9.0, which has found my USB devices, which was cool, but still doesn't print correctly, and now won't connect to the Internet.

The original Out Of Towners is on TV, so I decide to do a new install, leaving my /home partition alone, so I don't lose any pr0n^H^H^H^Himportant data. I am certain that this will work. I'll let it do the new install, which will take about 90 minutes, while I watch Jack Lemmon put everyone in New York on his list.

90 minutes later it's done...and it still won't print, and it still won't find the NIC. I decide that if I ever see "modprobe: could not locate module eth0" again, I will most likely kick something.

So a few hours later, my toes really hurt, and I decide to "downgrade" to 8.2, so I can at least get online.

As soon as I get back online, I send a desperate plea to Chris DiBona, who has graciously helped me in the past. He offers many solutions, none of which work, and now I think I've broken a toe.

So fast forward to last night: Chris is coming to LA, and offered to come over and help me fix my computer. He's gonna put Red Hat on it, leaving /home alone (ha! Home Alone! That kills me)

My local LUG is also doing a "Linux for lame asses who don't know how to load modules into their kernels or set their refresh correctly" class this month, so between the two, I hope to not be kicking anything anytime soon.

I feel sort of guilty about looking at Red Hat, because the guys from Mandrake have really welcomed me with open arms, and offered all sorts of help and advice...but nobody seems to know how to solve this problem over there, and I gotta go with what works.

Speaking of what works..an intresting thing happened yesterday...this VAIO that I've had forever which has never booted was going to get XP removed, and Red Hat installed. As soon as I put the CD in the drive, and I'm not making this up, it started up! Like it was saying, "No! No! I'll be good!"

So I have it here, on the other side of a KVM, running Knoppix right now, and I'm seriously thinking about taking XP off, like I'd originally planned, and loading either 9.0 or Red Hat 7.3 on it...I also have Debian ISOs for when I'm feeling particularly flagellant. I know that it's got TONS of RAM and a massive HD, so it should be able to handle WineX without any difficulty...so maybe that's another computer project.

Thinking about all these ISOs I have got me interested in buying a couple of beige boxes, and just hooking up different Linux installs in the house, eventually building a network, so I can play with the various distros and learn and stuff, so I think a trip to Fry's may be in my future... ...but don't tell my wife...she thinks I'm going there to get a new vaccuum.

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Computers Are Fun More

Computers Are Fun

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  • the only distro I've ever used that actually upgraded correctly was debian. and that was too old. I managed a redhat upgrade from 7.1 to 7.2 that wasn't too painful, but I ended up wiping clean and starting fresh anyway. back up /home, and some of your changes to /etc, and nuke it from orbit. it's the only way to be sure.

    oh, and you rock, Wil.
    --
    • Both FreeBSD and OpenBSD upgrade without problems...

      In fact, I had one hard drive with OpenBSD 2.6 on it. That hard drive went from one machine to another until it had been in about a dozen entirely diffferent systems... all without having to make single configuration change.

      In that time, I upgraded from 2.6 to 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, then 3.1. Every time, everything worked perfectly, with no config changes needed, and all my programs still working perfectly.

      No Linux-bashing intended, just wanted to pass along that story.
      • Yeah, *BSD seems to have the upgrade path down. that's why I'm switching to Gentoo sometime next week when I have the time. Gentoo basically adds the concept of ports from bsd into linux with the emerge system. plus, it's VERY fast, because it compiles everything, same as ports.
        --
        • I never liked the ports system too much... The problem is that it tries too hard to work out the dependencies itself.

          So, perhaps you compile a GTK progran from the ports, even if you've compiled and installed GTK from source, the ports will compile and install GTK, because it's only way to know if GTK has been installed is if the port or package has been registered by the packaging system.

          What's more fun, is when a lib that is a major dependency (let's say gettext) does not compile correctly in the ports... Even after you've compiled it from source by hand, you still need to go through every package you want to install, and every package it depends on, and remove that program as a dependency. Otherwise, every app that depends on that program directly or indirectly, will not realize it is installed, try to compile the broken package, and the whole process will fail miserably.

          I think a Slackware style system would work much better. Instead of trying to be smart enough to work out all the dependencies, it should just tell the user which packages are needed, and just let the user decide how to work it out.
    • I had to do a wipe and reinstall when I went from Redhat 4.2 to 5.0, because I had one small, poorly partitioned hard drive at the time. Since then, I've upgraded through every Red Hat minor release and a couple of their beta releases (and gone through three or four motherboard upgrades, and moved filesystems from hard drive to hard drive four or five times) without any problems serious enough that reinstalling would have been faster than fixing things. In 1997 I decided that as soon as I had to reinstall Linux from scratch I was going to try out Debian, which based on my experience with Windows 3.1 I expected to take about 6 months. That's still the plan, but I'm not holding my breath.

  • FedHat maybe? ;) (Score:3, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) on Friday October 04, 2002 @01:22PM (#4387990) Homepage
    I was really excited about this, because flying the Enterprise notwithstanding, I am a total techology lamer.

    Damn, imagine "upgrading" the Enterprise's OS in order to, ah, make the malfunctioning holodecks work, and then losing subspace communications.

    (with apologies)

    Computer: "Could not locate module subspaceArray."

    Picard: "Install FedHat immediately."

    Wes: "Aye aye, initiating manual override."

    Computer: "Could not locate module subspaceArray."

    Wes: "Manual override not working, Captain!"

    Geordi: "Bridge, this is Engineering. What are you doing up there? The warp corp just changed frequencies and we've lost contact with the deflector dish!"

    Computer: "Could not locate module subspaceArray."
  • When you shop for a beige box, go to PC Club (now a chain but started as a local shop) or Alpha Computer (in Granada Hills), or talk to M.A.Micro or PC2000 at a computer show... ...ANYTHING but Fry's!!

    Go to Forbes.com and hunt down their writeup on how Fry's does business, and you'll see why they're right up there with TigerDirect when it comes to getting the =least= for your money in clone components.

    Snag a ComputerUser from LASFS or various electronics stores and give the ads a good study, too.

    When I started building my own, I was astonished to learn that the main key is being able to put the square peg into the square hole. :)

    • Well, I for one go to PC Club [pcclub.com] but it's not as if I have a choice. I live in Oklahoma City, and the closest Fry's around is down in Dallas, which makes getting parts from them an all day affair. Besides, on the other hand, I used to work for the local PC Club for awhile a year ago, and I'm still known around there.

      Fry's on the other hand did have the largest selection I've ever seen.
      • Interesting...I didn't know that Fry's was so Best Buy, you know? That will factor in to where and how I spend my money.

        I'm looking at PC Club right now...looks like I can get a spiffy box for about 400 bucks...that's really cool!

        See? Computers are fun.

        • I'd much sooner trust Best Buy. At least I haven't caught 'em selling refurbs as new, Fry's style!! I'd never touch anything from Fry's unless it was a well-known name brand with a solid direct-from-manufacturer warranty.

          I remember when PC Club was one hole in the wall shop :) But they impressed me by bying honest about what they could or couldn't do at a given price. (Tho most clone dealers are pretty good about that.)

          Sent a friend/client to PCClub for a new box last fall, and was quite favourably impressed with what they sold him. Mind you he doesn't know ANYTHING about computers and had to rely on their judgment. Came home with a nice P4 (at what was then a fair price) with all the usual trimmings, in one of those wonderful Antec cases. Plus or minus a couple minor brand differences, just about what I would have specified if I'd been along.

          Computers also enhance one's fantasy life: I just dragged home 9 junkers of the 486 and early Pentium era, and am in the process of dismangling 'em for useful parts (one proved perfectly good as is). Here's a scary thought.. the big box of RAM that came with 'em was worth $16,000 in 1995. Current value: "Please make this go away." (Well, actually about $340, if one has systems of that era.) Where did I leave my time machine?? :)

      • Yeah, that's a problem in the midwest -- you're kinda stuck with whatever and whoever you can get. Especially since I gather computer shows (aka swap meets) haven't caught on there.

        I'm only an hour away from Los Angeles, and from what the few local shops charge for outdated parts, you'd think computers were made of solid gold. Makes it well worth the drive into L.A. on a swap meet weekend. Unfortunately, swaps failed miserably out here, probably because as yet the Antelope Valley is not a computerized area. (I'd guess that hereabouts, maybe one household in 10 owns one, vs. more like 3 computers per economically-comparable household in L.A.)

        If you're looking for last-year's parts with a warranty, check out compgeeks.com. If you have a problem, a real human will respond!!

        • Quote from Reziac:
          Makes it well worth the drive into L.A. on a swap meet weekend. Unfortunately, swaps failed miserably out here, probably because as yet the Antelope Valley is not a computerized area.
          • Oklahoma City - 4th Saturday Sale [saturdaysale.com] - This sale is a local knock-off of the 1st Saturday sale in Dallas and takes up one room. A good place to meet some local vendors.
          • Dallas - 1st Saturday Sale [firstsaturday.com] - Sale in downtown Dallas that has shrunk in size and greatness the last years, IMHO. In fact, the last time I went, we ended up going to the Dallas Fry's afterwards and got better deals. (This was in fact, the first time I ever when to Fry's)
          This roughly sums up my experience with local swap meets for computer parts, what others out there are there? The ones around here while fun, just aren't offering good deals anymore.
          • Well, I don't know what else might be in your neighbourhood, but in L.A. we have two different outfits that regularly put on these computer swap meets. Info at lacomputerfair.com (theirs are now the good ones) and ... um, it's probably something like megashows.com (American Megashows -- used to be much better, went bankrupt, new owner hasn't got all the vendors or good locations back yet). Prices are typically 25% below the clone shops' own advertised prices, which are usually pretty good to start with.

            Majority of merchandise is name-brand and usually mid-range to high-end (tho there are a few specialists in outdated parts or old junk, a couple of outright snow jobs, and a bunch of dealers in last-year's software). Some merchandise is retail box; some is OEM or grey market sold on commission. They are generally good about replacing DOAs, since their target market are multiple repeat buyers. (It's really sad when all the clone dealers know your wallet by sight. :) The best/most honest dealers are all Orientals, who have family on the other end of the pipeline thus access to the best deals.

            Also there is the ACP swap meet, which I've never been to since it's too far away, but I gather it's both a zoo and a great place to pick up genuine bargains.

            Fry's sometimes beats the clone dealers but that will usually involve a rebate or says refurb in tiny print (if they've lately been caught selling refurbs as new, anyway). And if you don't know the brand, beware.

            I already knew (from others' bitter experiences) not to buy motherboards and such from Fry's, but you'd think more-general parts would be okay, yes?

            1) Epson laser printer, refurb ($300 back when a new laser was still over $1200). First one was missing the imaging mechanism. They didn't want to take it back -- "it's a refurb, you can't expect it to be like new". (Excuse me, "refurb" is a legal definition and it is indeed supposed to be like new.) I made something of a scene in the neighbourhood of the returns desk (where service is VERY SLOW on purpose, to discourage returns) and they gave in. At least the replacement was all there (I made them open it and checked), and works. Tho the manual was missing, but Epson kindly supplied a replacement.

            2) Printer cable, house branded. Causes most printers to produce garble. (The only one that tolerates it is the above laser printer. If I'd tried it on the inkjet sooner, it woulda gone back. Well, if they'da took it back..)

            3) The nasty no-good modem in my 286, which someday I will give to someone I really dislike (yes, that's all one word) -- proved to be a winmodem type with zero support (back before there WERE "WinModems"!!) -- seems some guy in the Bay area was making 'em in his garage, I am not kidding. It works, but not up to even its own spec. Supposedly 14.4, in fact maxes out at 12.0.

            4) Cordless phone. They wouldn't take it back, because it worked, if very poorly. Manufacturer confirmed my suspicion that it was a refurb (but NOT so labeled, which is illegal) and volunteered the info that it was also SIX YEARS OLD!!

            By this point I am cured of Fry's :) After reading the Forbes article, I knew WHY. Fry's isn't actually a store. It's a sort of group cash register for a slew of independent dealers all hawking whatever they care to sell, of whatever quality they care to offer (which is why you can't get anyone to help you at a counter out of their territory, let alone intelligent advice or tech support). A sort of general-purpose swap meet, but without any real vendor accountability.

            By contrast, my first contact with Star Components (my regular memory dealer), some 6 or 7 years ago: this guy walks up to their table at the swap, plunks down $700 in *cash*, says "I'll be in to get my order tomorrow" and leaves without even getting a receipt. Hmm, I guess *someone* trusts 'em... turns out it was well-earned. They're totally up-front.

  • you can use it to roll your own distro (check out the Linux From Scratch (LFS) [linuxfromscratch.org] project). Load up Knoppix, download the sources needed for LFS, and compile all the components from the source code. A word of caution, though, this can turn you into a complete geek.

    The process of building your own system is really easy--you just cut-n-paste the commands they give you, and while the packages compile you can read about what each package does. Plus when you go to compile your own kernel, you can tell it to put the drivers for your NIC into the kernel, so you know it'll work nicely. This is a great way to learn about how Linux works, and only requires about a weekend, and when it's done you have a completely new, fast (built from sources) OS.

  • ...but don't tell my wife...she thinks I'm going there to get a new vaccuum.

    I'd rather buy a vacuum from Sharper Image [sharperimage.com] right now. :-)
  • Honestly, I don't think a change of distro's is really the answer here...

    What kinda NIC do you have?
    • What kinda NIC do you have?

      That's the thing...because the computer I'm using right now was a very generous gift from some friends, it's one of those Microtel's that came with Lindows. So pretty much the whole thing is generic "Silicon Integrated Systems"- the NIC, the video device, the sound device...the whole thing...when I fire up the Mandrake Control Center, here's what it says:

      DEVICE VENDOR="Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd." MODEL="RTL-8139" TYPE="ethernet" BUS="PCI" MODULE="rtl8139" POS="0" ID="10ec8139"

      There's a whole lot of "UNKNOWN" going on there, too. :/

      Hey, if you have an idea, I'd love to hear it. Feels like I'm *this* close to groking lots of this stuff. :)
      • I agree that changing distros is not the solution here. It might be a workaround (or it might not), but this is a relatively minor issue, regardless of how devastating it seems.

        Realtek RTL8139 is a very standard chipset, and the module is simply called "rtl8139", so you should be able to type "modprobe rtl8139" and have it magically load (if you get no errors, it found your NIC and loaded successfully).

        However, it should have auto-detected it too.

        Type "lsmod"; it should give you a list of all modules that are currently loaded. If rtl8139 is listed, then it should be working, and you just need to set up your eth0 interface (I have no idea how Mandrake does that, I'm a Slackware guy myself). If rtl8139 is not listed, try modprobe.
        • Er, no. the module is called "8139too".
          (In Linux 2.4 that is. 2.2 had "rtl8139" also, but now you can only get that one from Donald Becker's home page.)
      • You might find this a helpful command for debugging problems like this in the future, CleverNickName. It's 'lspci', and hopefully, it's already installed on your box.

        Here's an example of what's reported via 'lspci -v' for my NIC:

        00:0f.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 0c)

        Subsystem: Intel Corp. EtherExpress PRO/100 S Desktop Adapter
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        Memory at d8020000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        I/O ports at e800 [size=64]
        Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
        Expansion ROM at [disabled] [size=64K]
        Capabilities:
        It looks like the module is loading, since Mandrake's CC says 'MODULE="rtl8139"', but I am wondering if something is going wrong with the driver initialization. Have you checked your logs? (FYI, if you don't know where your logs are, check either /var/log or /var/adm -- Most likely they are in /var/log. The files messages, debug, syslog, and kern.log could be helpful in diagnosing this problem).

        Hope this helps, and if ya have other questions on this or other Linux issues, drop me a line.

      • I bought a PC from Fry's (300$) which is similar to the Microtels. I actually got an SiS 900 ethernet card, but bought an additional realtek 8139 because I use it to rought. When I compiled my kernel, the resulting module was called '8139too.o', not rtl8139 as others have said. If you can't get it to work, try compiling your own kernel with the 8139 chipset support built-in.
  • From what I've been reading on the Mandrake Forums to prepare for my own upgrade (also running 8.2 and watching everyone's upgrade stories)the most reliable upgrade is to just do a package upgrade first, and then do a full upgrade after that's done.

  • Off-Topic: Will /. journal compete with blog? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pbryan ( 83482 ) <email@pbryan.net> on Saturday October 05, 2002 @01:44PM (#4393769) Homepage
    Dear CleverNickName:

    I was just wondering in what way your Slashdot journal will begin to compete with your other [wilwheaton.net] blog. I must say, to some extent I prefer the journal, because, as I consider you a "friend", I receive notifications whenever you jot something down. This allows me to promptly read, meditate on, and create daily affirmations from your random thoughts.

    Yours truly,

    A Stalk^H^H^H^H^HFan
    • LMAO

      I'm not sure, freak^H^H^H^H^H^Hmy most loyal fan.

      =]

      I'll use this journal to record thoughts that are ./.-oriented, you know? Computer junk and other stuff.
  • As soon as I put the CD in the drive, and I'm not making this up, it started up! Like it was saying, "No! No! I'll be good!"

    I believe you. One of the managers in the manufacturing area called me the other day to "come see what this crazy monitor is doing." I go out there and it's trying to switch modes or something about every 5-10 minutes. It will click and go blank for a few seconds like it does when you change the refresh rate or resolution. I grabbed a spare and took it out, but he was on the phone and looking up something when I got back so it sat it on a table across from his desk. He called me back later that day and said it had stopped. I removed the replacement monitor, and it hasn't done it since.

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