using GRUB to catch Little Foot

Ha, Ha, you didn't see the orange cones when you came by did you? Good, I hoped you hadn't noticed! I was sitting here musing at the latest upgrade version of Xubuntu. I had installed version 9.04 on an empty partition. It's not a big upgrade just by looking at it, so I was in no hurry to have it. This morning before I went out on a call, I got the usual "you have program upgrades available" notice, but added to that was chance to upgrade the whole Xubuntu 8.10 to 9.04. I said why not and pushed the button. An hour and 20 minutes later the files were downloaded and installed. Some of the artwork is nicer, the performance a little snappier and when the 512MB of extra memory I ordered comes we will see more improvements. Boot-up and shutdown times seems a little faster. I am more thrilled to be up to date than having extra flash.

This latest iteration of Ubuntu is called Jaunty Jackalope. Yeah, Ubuntu names!?! A Jackalope is a legendary creature the likes of Big Foot, but more of a "little foot" in this case, not as illusive as the following picture attests. If you do see one, approach with caution or you'll be the endangered species, Ha Ha!
It was not a smooth a transition as I would have liked. Why? There is this thing called a boot loader (GRUB). And like all boot loaders, is wonderful if it is installed in the correct place. Then when you install a second OS, supposedly the software will recognize that you have or have not installed Grub. If Grub is there, it should say, Hey do you want me to up-date your already installed Grub config-file!?! Can I hear a "Yes, Please!!" You usually can have Grub installed in the MBR (Master Boot Record) or in a boot folder of your OS. Some OS's do not handle this well at all. In my case, Grub was installed in the MBR but when I installed a second OS, a second Grub was put in the new OS's boot folder and designated the place to boot from superseding Grub in the MBR. You just can't edit Grub number two and expect Grub number one to spring back into action. Sooooooooooo, I slid in the Xubuntu 9.04 live-CD and got into the CD session. From there I got into the Grub config file and tweaked until it worked. Another way is to invoke in the terminal or command line "sudo update-grub".

Remember when you had to manually mount drives? That was until someone wrote a script, then a little program to do the job. Now all Linux has auto-mount standard built-in. The same should be done for Grub. The Linux install software should have a Grub locator in it. Find Grub, fix it if it's broke, tweak the config according to what's installed. Grub tools should be on the CD so that if thats all that needs to be fixed, you can fix it. Install or find it, fix it, tweak it!

OR put a boot loader in the bios with a switch for single or multiple OS's. Then require every OS (MS, Linux or Mac) to have a boot file that the bios can see. We do this with bootable devices already (boot order). Wow, all my problems seems to have gone away!

Why would anyone want or need more than one Linux OS on his/her computer, you ask????
Except for curiosity, I can't answer that. Normally you shouldn't encounter this unless you insist on dual-booting. Just remember to install WIN before LIN and if you are installing LIN and LIN, opt out of installing Grub a second time if you can.

Oh and my 512 MB did come and things are snappier yet. I'll tell you in a week if things of the normal use are truly better.

Only in Linuxville

As you guessed Linuxville is a virtual place and virtually anything can happen. I already talked about looking into setting up an artist website and like pulling Indiana Jones out of retirement, the Linux exploration will continue.

The latest thing to happen is the GRUB bootloader was giving me hassles. So to all you wonder workers and especially to Gparted developers, if it would not put you out too much, put some GRUB utilities along side of Gparted. When you install another operating system on your hard drive GRUB does not always update itself, the added OS does not always recognize previously installed GRUB. And to top it all off, when GRUB is installed you only get 10 seconds to choose your OS before the default one boots itself. Or you GRUB developers could build-in better GRUB tools, make us all happy. Gparted is a very handy hard disc management application that is actually a mini-live Linux CD. It does all the partition and format stuff, even for Microsoft formats. The Gparted ISO is free folks!! Download it, burn it, boot it!!!!!

So, what brought up all this fixin and tweaking? Wolvix!! What's Wolvix? Wolvix is a smallish Linux, based on Slackware. It's 483 MB is one half the size of mainstream distros, yet you get all the standard applications. It even comes with ISO tools so you can make an even smaller live-CD if you'd like. The desktop of choice is XFCE which is light weight and fast (a relative term). You could install it onto a large bootable jump drive and really have a portable office or art studio. Yes, it has both GIMP and Inkscape. Ya want ta see.............?
This is just after adding some color to the standard grey desktop, hey, the howling wolf silhouette is missing. All the standard wallpapers are grey.
I downloaded sky/clouds wallpaper, the icon bar automatically disappears, of course.
Here, Abiword, GIMP and GQview is open. I think the screenshot app crops out edge details.

What's a Ubuntu guy doing installing Wolvix? Well a couple of things. If you are using the live-CD it does not make much difference, however installing a full size distro onto a small partition is problem. A smallish Linux distro allows you some room to add only what you need. Wolvix is pretty complete, it even has Open Office.org along with Abiword. Why, I don't know. And what's Slackware compared to Ubuntu? Slackware, which is the base for Wolvix is one of the oldest Linux distros there is. It has a rep for stability and for being command line driven. Slackware is up to date and it has the modern GUI desktops, but still is slow with modern conveniences. It just recently acquired Slack-apt to resolve software dependencies. Ubuntu is Debian based. Debian is almost as old as Slackware but is more popular and development has flourished. The Slackware/Wolvix software repositories are not as flushed as the Ubuntu ones. You have to realize though, there is no difference except packaging format for the same application running on either. Linux is Linux is Linux and opinions and mileage may vary.

Our Linux class is taking to exploring some of the various live-CD Linuxes. As you guessed Wolvix is my choice. This version is called Hunter 1.1.0 with 2.0 coming soon. My view of Linux? The many versions of distros have wrappers, arrangements, utilities, and tweaks to attract many different audiences. But in all, the same applications can be had on most any distribution. This means you can find one that best fits your hardware and experience and/or purpose and be assured the same applications are there. Then after all the OS smoke and mirror shows are over, you can settle down to the everyday life in Linuxville.

The life and times of a Linux Learner

Been really busy these days with my pending graduation from college and all. I finished an externship at Lake Ridge Academy and am looking forward to finding full time employment. I was starting to make some noise about PCLinuxOS because the live CD looked so promising. I had some problems with PCLinuxOS and the boot loader Grub. PCLinuxOS does not give you the option of not installing Grub nor does it recognize a previous Grub installation. I fiddled with Grub until I got it to work. Then booting into PCLinuxOS I found that it wasn't saving my settings, having to re-setup internet connections and re-tweak the desktop with each startup is not good. Needless to say I am not having a good day with PCLinuxOS on my machine. So................

Here I am having downloaded a very attractive looking Red Hat Fedora 7. Now I had at one time used Fedora Core 2 which had I think 3 CDs. This Fedora 7 is now a LiveCD but to get the version that is right for my machine, the 64-bit one, the iso file is TOO BIG to fit on a single CD. It is meant for a DVD weighing in at about 833MB, a CD only holds 700MB. I guess their thought is that everybody has a DVD burner. Well, maybe a DVD player (to watch movies?) but not a burner. No Fedora folks I watch DVDs on my player that's hooked up to my television set. Hummm....... that was very Microsoftish of you to force me to upgrade my equipment or hunt down somebody to burn a DVD for me. This has lead to a the question, is it possible to run an iso file from a hard drive as if it were on a DVD/CD? You'd be surprised at all the methods and techniques posted on the internet. Not one of them is clear enough for the likes of me. The smoothest way seems to be to work from a MS Windows partition and use a boot loader that recognizes iso images. But I think you have to explode the iso image into a directory and tell the boot loader what to boot. I tried several ways from a Linux partition but it is too complex for me. I guess that puts me in the market for a DVD/CD burner.

My thought is to have one Debian based Linux version and one Red Hat type version so I can gain experience with them. Fedora 7 is closer to the commercial Red Hat used in business but is cutting edge. Debian (Kubuntu is Debian) uses .deb files and Fedora uses .rpm files. Both systems have improved over the years. It is said that the .deb system resolves the dependency problem better than the .rpm system. Dependency is when one file or program needs another to operate. This is why when one program is installed, companion files are installed with it. Microsoft does the same with .dlls. You gotta love computers. So far this cyber adventure has taken me far, far past point and click computing. Although you can be quite happy with point and click computing, you also miss out on the power to do things the GUI just can't do. On a Linux system it is very useful to get over command line fears. You will become a powerful Jedi.

Further adventures in Arno's Linux world

I really, really hate eating my own words but, maybe I was a bit hasty proclaiming PCLinuxOS as equal to a little better than Kubuntu. At least considering how I multi-boot several operating systems. Something a normal computer user would probably not do. So, PCLinuxOS might still fit the bill for single boot machines, but for multi-boot it sucks because it loads GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) in a place that causes problems. It does not give you the option to not install it nor recognize that GRUB might already be on the machine. Needless to say my system was non-functioning for a while, forcing me to look deeper into the mysteries of GRUB and multi-booting. If you are at all familiar with boot loaders, first there was LILO and then there is GRUB. GRUB is more flexible of course than LILO but still a bit of a tweak to manage. There are programs to manage GRUB called Grubed and Start UP Manager (SUM) but you still might have to learn to edit from the GRUB menu screen or the config file. If you want a sweet explanation see the article entitled "Guru Guidance, A better way of booting" in Linux Magazine, April 2002. It gives a quick but through run down of GRUB and how to edit/understand the menus and config files. So, armed with new knowledge I will attempt to tweak GRUB to make it work for me. Yeah, it is probably too much for most computer users but, I'm "learnin linux" folks. I am hoping one day a single boot/multi-boot option would be put right in the system rom on the motherboard and be quite automatic once selected.
Well, does this deter me from using PCLinuxOS? Not yet, but it is quite a let down, the LiveCD was so inviting. But why on earth would anyone want to have more than one operating system on one computer? For me it is looking first-hand at the fresh ideas that drive folks to put together different Linux distributions. Linux is really a "Kit"of lots of pieces that fit in various ways. Some distributions are for different purposes. General use, desktop style Linux has been fully reviewed and experienced by their many users and documented on many web sites. It is all waiting for you to look into it.

It's been at least a half an hour since I typed the above story. I have edited my GRUB config file, deleting a couple of old entries and adding a new one for PCLinuxOS. I am now triple-booting MS Windows XP, Kubuntu, and PCLinuxOS. It is not rocket science to learn about Linux, we'll leave that to the programmers. But users can benefit from learnin a little linux.