The only part I had difficulty with was getting cron to work properly. Instead of using the directions from the Automation section of the HOWTO, I did a different simple step.

On a Linux Mint 5 system (based on Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04) I ran the following from a terminal:

gksudo gedit /etc/cron.d/rsnapshot

Then I simply uncommented the lines for the schedule I wanted for the backups. It worked with no other hassles.

I found that it is really difficult to live without CheckGmail. This little tray application is magnificent. It relies on the Atom feeds from Gmail to present almost the full functionality of the inbox right in the system tray. One can see the list of new messages and previews, open, mark as read, archive, report spam, and delete—right from the floating window it displays.

I also use GnuCash to track my finances, which I needed to install.

Other first pass installations include Unison for file synchronization, Quod Libet for music and tag editing, and VLC for video.

Anyone have any other essential apps?

Next on my list is VirtualBox.

My setup is this:

• Primary IDE
  • first partition: Windows XP
  • second partition: /home
  • third partition: Linux Mint
• Secondary IDE (linux swap)
• SATA 1 (data)
• SATA 2 (data)
• eSATA (data)
• USB IDE (data)

On the last screen of the install utility the “Advanced…” button gave the default for the bootloader installation as (hd0), which I thought would be acceptable. It wasn’t. GRUB would never start and the system would boot directly into Windows every time. I could boot into Linux with the Super Grub Disk, but that was not an ideal solution.

It turns out, the BIOS or the system or whatever sees the IDE drives first and the SATA drives second. Once any part of Linux Mint loads, its GRUB sees the SATA drives first and the IDE drives second. Therefore, (hd0) probably was /dev/sda during installation, which turned out to be the eSATA drive. I wanted the bootloader on the primary IDE drive.

I determined all of this with hours of going back and forth tweaking my /boot/grub/menu.lst file and trying to restore or install GRUB with Super Grub Disk. Using Super Grub Disk is how I found out the system sees the drives differently before Linux Mint starts. The GRUB command find /boot/grub/stage1 using SGD returned (hd0,2), while the same command from a terminal within the Linux Mint install or LiveCD returned (hd3,2).

I decided to redo the reinstall. This time I chose a different option from the “Advanced…” button on that last screen of the install utility. Instead of leaving it at (hd0) as is the default, I chose the drive from the list that I knew had the Windows partition on it. Although I thought it should be the first drive, it was listed as /dev/sdd. I deliberately chose the drive and not one of the partitions (/dev/sdd1, etc.).

The problems weren’t completely fixed there. The /boot/grub/menu.lst file had to be altered slightly. By changing references to (hd3,2) into (hd0,2) in the Linux section, GRUB would be able to boot into Linux properly.

The Windows section needed a little more tweaking. I found a few options on some forums. I removed all the map references and changed the Windows section to this:

title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

After that change, everything booted like it was supposed to. I was amazed. GRUB loaded and I could choose Linux or Windows and each would come up with no problems at all. I was quite happy, finally.

Fresh like Mint.

I decided to check out Linux Mint after a recommendation. What sold me on it was a screenshot showing that it only had one taskbar/menubar. There was no top and bottom bar business like Ubuntu has that wastes valuable screen real estate.

The process wasn’t painless, though. Apparently a new version of some part of the OS decides not to distinguish between IDE and SATA drives anymore when naming devices. My primary IDE drive became /dev/sdd and so it was listed after my e-SATA and SATA drives when it came time to install GRUB.

Since I have a Windows partition on the same IDE drive as the Linux partition, this caused all kinds of problems and I couldn’t boot into any OS.

After trying a few things I stumbled across a forum posting that made something a bit more clear. I needed to change the numbering for GRUB back to (hd0,2) instead of (hd3,2) in the menu.lst file without changing the device reference from /dev/sdd3 to /dev/hdd3. I was able to boot into the LiveCD and edit that file that was on the drive.

I restarted from there and it actually worked. It only took a few extra hours and some frustration over one little part. The rest of the installation was very easy and straightforward.

Instead, I wanted to make VLC the player of choice. It wasn’t a preference I could set using the Firefox GUI. So, I searched.

I’m using Feisty, but using modified instructions for Edgy worked. I simply replaced the call for the RealPlayer application with one for VLC.

• Read #How to install VLC Multimedia Player with plug-in for Mozilla Firefox
• Open your firefox.
• Type as url: about:config

Now just right click somewhere into the main window. A little box with options to choose will appear. Choose “new”, then “string”. Then copy the following line into the appearing text field:

network.protocol-handler.app.rtsp

Into the next text field copy this:

/usr/bin/X11/vlc

Now you do the same thing again, but this time you do not choose “string” but “boolean”, and the line to copy is:

network.protocol-handler.external.rtsp

Then set

true

I hope this helps someone.

I want to start fresh. A clean install on a formatted partition. It is the recommended procedure on many forums, and I want to rid myself of Automatix. The problem is, I need to figure out all that I will have to reinstall when I actually do it. A short list so far:

• Opera
• Unison
• whatever I did for scheduling backups

Not the best thing when I start to not remember every little tweak I have made.

Maybe that is a good reason to update it here for myself.

First I must go back and look into separating my /home directory again to its own partition.

The last time I did something with GParted, it screwed up the partition. I had to use TestDisk to recover my partition that got lost. This time I plan on backing up my partition first. I’m going to run

sudo rsync -avx --progress --numeric-ids / /media/EXTERNAL/BACKUP/Ubuntu_20070728/

The -x, --progress, and --numeric-ids options I learned more about from http://www.sanitarium.net/golug/rsync_backups.html.

Wow, Beagle has a lot of files. I did not realize. My ~/.beagle directory has 79,832 files in it, taking up 552.3 MB of space. Next task will be to move that directory to another volume and symlink to it!

Anyway, after running rsync I booted into my trusty Puppy Linux because I knew that GParted won’t allow me to work on mounted partitions.

Honestly, I was surprised when the resize went off without a hitch.

I then booted back into Ubuntu and my partition is now doubled in size.

Amarok keyboard shortcuts

One of the biggest reasons that I decided to give Kubuntu a shot was that I used many KDE apps regularly, including Amarok. I’ve always found it sluggish in GNOME and thought maybe running it in its native KDE would help. It didn’t really. Even when I switched to a MySQL database instead of SQLite there was still choking and freezing.

One of the biggest surprises to me was that they keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + V in Amarok was overridden by Klipper, some sort of smart clipboard application. After a little tinkering, I was able to make it function in my preferred way, but the whole process just rubbed me the wrong way.

USB drive mount settings

Had I not been able to find a workaround for the following default behavoir, I would never consider using KDE again.

The setting for automounting USB drives when they are plugged into the machine automatically assigns "shortname=lower" to the drive. (I apologize for not having any clearer information or references, I’m writing this out of memory and don’t want to dig anything up.) This might only affect FAT32 filesystems, but that is what most USB flash drives are.

What this causes to happen is that one cannot create all UPPERCASE directory names on the drive. They are forced lowercase. Mixed case names are fine, it is only UPPERCASE that has a problem.

Well, I have a few directories that I want to be named in all uppercase, UCLA for example. The problem arose when I was using Unison, a file synchronization utility, between my hard disk and a flash drive. Through no fault of the program, my directories were being duplicated: one copy in all lowercase, and another copy in all uppercase, completely messing up my synchronization.

The only fix for this that I found was to call the GNOME automounter at startup so that it would recognize when I plugged in a USB drive and give it the right settings. I think when I did this though, it caused duplicate windows that presented options for the newly detected medium to appear instead of the normal single window.

So, in the end, after only a week of using Kubuntu I was longing for the simplicity of GNOME that I had grown used to without all the quirks that interrupted my daily routines. To be sure, there are still quite a few bumps in the road when using GNOME, but generally they do not seem to stop me in my tracks. Plus, we all appreciate familiarity, and that is what I’ve grown to have with GNOME on Ubuntu.

While I may not be any kind of power-user, I get along fine. I enjoy myself doing it as well.

I’ve got a couple of draft posts that I’ll put up soon. Check back for discussions about why I gave up on Kubuntu/KDE within a week and mini reviews of Linux Music Players.

Cheers.

This seems to be the common knowledge among users as well. KDE and its native applications are more feature-packed than Gnome and its native applications, but therefore they are more complicated and not necessarily recommended for beginners.

Upon startup of my KDE session I was a bit wary because I had grown accustomed to the nice, clean, simple design of the default Gnome desktop in Ubuntu. I’m sure that wariness will fade in time.

More later, when I have had a chance to play around a bit.