Computers

I hate word processing

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Hmm, a small dilemma unfolds itself.

To view files in .doc, .odt, .rtf, et. al. formats I need a word processor that supports them.

To create one, I would generally use Google Docs — normally I use TeX /w LaTeX or XHTML+CSS instead though and skip WYSIWYG word processor crap 🙂

And I’m not about to upload every flib’n file I have to look at to Google Docs either… Nore do I want to bother with programs like anti-word.

But which do I install?

Microsoft Word is arguably the word processor by which all others are judged, much like GNU Emacs is when looking at emacsen.

But when you combine that it is closed source, only supports WinNT, and costs an arm & a leg it is just not worth the extra features unless you need them enough to run Windows for them lol.

Abiword is apart of Gnome Office and light & fast while keeping to a MS Word (pre 2k7) style. The only problems I’ve had with it is it forced me into using MS Word .doc files as the lowest common denominator between word processors! The choice was either .rtf or .doc because Word wouldn’t take any of the other files each of the others could handle.

The only problem is that Abiword couldn’t (and still couldn’t last I looked at it’s dev version) lay out our pages right like the other programs did. So we had to use .doc which worked fine in Abiword 🙁

OpenOffice.org has a good enough word processor, swriter — not as feature full as MS Word but heavier then Abiword. It’s a great program and I’ve used it often in the past for School but for my laptops 512MB of RAM it is a little *to heavy* for my tastes. To be honest, I don’t want to wait forever for a word processor to startup — because it reminds me if some idiot didn’t send me {.rtf,.doc,.odt,.abw,} files I would be using a pager to read the text instead.

KWord is actually quite nice even if it is probably not the best word processor out there. I like very much that despite the similarity in name that KWord tries to be it’s *own* program rather then another imitator.

The problem is like swriter, kword comes with an entire office suite :. I don’t need a Office Gfx app, I use GIMP and a few others when needed. Don’t need a presentation system — I wouldn’t touch one without a pay check! Don’t need a database client because I’d probably use some thing like mysql’s client. And I rarely use either word processors or spreadsheets beyond viewing files.

Hmm… well there’s 17gb of disk space to spare just for installing software so no harm in having both KOffice and most of Gnome Office I suppose.

Now if only they could lift even a finger nail to TeX !

A moment for truth

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I’ve got the PC-BSD 1.4.x->1.5 patch pbi downloading, from the best (for me) US Mirror available at a snails pace (20-30kb/sec), so that means it is either time to power cycle ye’ol modem+router or things must be pretty busy. A nice power-cycle and spit upon the hardware and we’re back up to a more acceptable 75-150+ kb/sec according to kget but it still blows. I’ve noticed whenever it rains the internet connection gets even less stable here :

I’m not sure what state the update will leave my laptop in but I know that the *IMPORTANT* stuff is backed up. I trust FreeBSD and OpenBSDs update procedures waaayyy more then PC-BSDs… Today I give them one on trust.

Normally my test machine is patched first and examined for errors, this time I will skip that phase and we will see the results. I have stuff backed up to $VECTRA:/srv/smb/Backups/ which I use as a sort of cache, stuff goes here and gets gradually removed but it stays on one of SAL1600s cold storage partitions much longer.

Dixie-backup-2008-02-28.tar.gz          code-stuff.tar
Lexmark-Z12-lxm3200-tweaked.ppd         docs-stuff.tar
MaxSec4E.tar.bz2                        etc.tar
boot.tar

the *stuff.tar files hold the only things I’ve changed (and care if are lost) since my last backup, the boot and etc tarballs hold the only critical system files that may be changed since my last backup as well. So honestly the only casualties will be few if the upgrade goes badly — having to reinstall crap.

If the PC-BSD upgrade goes badly, there is a three disk set of FreeBSD 7.0-Release sitting on my desk and a list of programs I have been keeping which will soon be scp’d to my VECTRA for safe keeping hehe. The only things missing from the list are language bindings, namely that I need Python bindings for Qt3 for work on NPM.

# languages
gcc-4.3
# manual install needed for JDK/JRE
perl
python
ruby && rubygem-rtags && rubygem-rake
guile
scheme48

# libraries
qt4
gtk-2

# development tools
gmake
ctags
cscope && kscope
webcpp
subversion

# games
kdegames
xgalaga
prboom
doom-data
wesnoth

# graphics software
gimp
inkscape
xv
kdegraphics

# browsers
linux-flock
lynx

# e-mail and news
thunderbird && thunderbird-i18n
mutt

# kontact and related
kdepim


# chat
konversation
pidgin && pidgin-hotkeys
pidgin-guifications || pidgin-libnotify
pidgin-otr && pidgin-encryption
teamspeak_client


xemacs || emacs
mg
terminus-font

# multimedia
libdvdread
libdvdplay
libdvdnav
libdvdcss
cdrtools
mplayer   # install codecs manually, more reliable
linux-mplayerplug-in
smplayer-qt4 && smplayer-themes
mencoder # not sure if there is a pkg
xmms
k3b

# documents
latex
gnumeric || koffice

# personal
zsh
windowmaker
docker
wmclock
rxvt-unicode || aterm

Vim is not on the list, because ever since one day I was setting up a FreeBSD install and the port was broken. I learned to install it from the sources on vim.org, so I continue to do so even now.

If all goes FUBAR with the 1.5 patch, well FreeBSD 7 here I come. It should only take a few hours to get the necessary software installed, a package add on xorg-7.3 alone should take awhile <_<. And a couple minutes to decide if I want XDM, KDM, or GDM (Xs, KDEs, or Gnomes) login manager while I’m waiting. I can also use the 7.0-Release kernel from my test machine hehe.

I expect as long as the 1.4 -> 1.5 update leaves my laptop in a bootable state that I shouldn’t have any problems. There is a limit to how much I’ll be willing to stand fixing myself of course. The last time I let it do any major upgrades it was so kind as to delete all files in /usr/local/* so I’m prepared to reinstall my software if necessary but not PC-BSD 😉

Let’s see the outcome.

I’m now a GMail Convert

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I’ve now mostly completed my transition to Google Mail, the issues I’ve been having with POP3 Fetch mail on Ippimail seem to be a bit derailing of late… So I’ve got every thing set up to the GMail account now including my primary address (ippimail). If it ever can be fixed I can always transition back over.

I rather like the Squirrel Mail software that is used at Ippimail because I’ve worked with it before and they have a very nice theme. But I’ve got to admit, GMail is quite nice… I do however miss the ease of opening like 3 or 4 E-Mails in different tabs simultaneously with Ippimail though but I love the labels system in GMails software.

The spam folder is also about 5 to 8 orders of magnitude more full then Ippimails!!! But so far the filtering system works excellently just like googles search engine. I’ve had nothing put there that wasn’t spam yet and I’ve yet to see any thing penetrate the standard filters. I remember years ago I once tried Hotmail and felt like it was being placed on the world wide spam r us list :. I guess that’s impossible to avoid with any common services (hotmail, aol, yahoo, gmail, mail.com, etc) but hotmail back then at least was totally ridicules. At least GMail is doing a good job with the filters hehe.

Now that my Webmail problem is sorted out I guess it’s just the instant messengering one to fix. It would be so awesome if I could get a decent multi-protocol instant messenger that I didn’t dislike; I consider Pidgin and Kopte both cases of “foo sucks less”.

I have an XFire, an M$N, an AIM, an YIM, an ICQ, and even LiveJournals Jabber/GTalk features but I’m usually unreachable via XFire on my laptop and normally only on the others on my laptop. It would be awesome to be able to use each ! All the better without having to run Windows XP in the process or hack up FreeBSD’s Linux ABI to much to run the software.

Kopete and Pidgin both suck horribly for IRC (Internet Relay Chat) as well and I’m usually on several channels off irc.freenode.net. Which is why I’ve got Konversation on my laptop and X-Chat on my XP machine… Most of my friends use either AIM, MSN, or both. Still running 2-3 programs (xfire, irc, rest) is a total pain in the butt. I suppose it beats the 7 I would need if it wasn’t for applications like Kopete….

Oh wellz, back to the code.

The authoritative software list

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With PC-BSD 1.5 on the horizon, think 1.5RC2 is out last I checked the mailing lists.

I’ve been working on compiling a list of software. Largley because I can remember an update some time in the past that essentially removed /usr/local/*, it said it would remove all the ports but not the entire directory tree!!!

So needless to say, just in case I prep before hand hehe.

Here is my list so far


Development
 /bin/sh and friends
 C Compiler
 C++ Compiler
 Java Compiler+JRE
 Perl
 Python
 Ruby
 Scheme
 Qt (as many bindings as possible)
 GTK+ (as many bindings as possible)
Games
 solitaire (kpat)
 battle for wesnoth
 xgalaga or chromium b.s.u.
 doom / quake
Graphics
 GIMP
 Inkscape
 xv or kview # i.e. any thing light and fast for many formats
Internet
 Flock
 Lynx
 Thunderbird or KMail or Sylpheed
 Mutt (optional)
 KNode
 Konversation
 Kopete or Pigen or *better* program of same genre.
 Download manager, command line + gui (kget/wxdfast?)
 ftp (command line client)
 TeamSpeak (client)
Misc
 Vim
 Emacs
 MicroEMACS
Multimedia
 MPlayer
 Mencoder
 cdrtools + k3b
Office
 Omni-Purpose file viewer would be nice! -- Okular (and a few more fmts)
 Full LaTeX suite of tools and outputs utilities
 Spreadsheet (no preference other then xls/ods support + fair speed)
Personal
 zsh
 Window Maker (currently) + Docker + WMClock
 Decent terminal emulator that supports transparency on any WM.

My laptop is really the one computer that I have that is special to me. My darling Dixie has arguably been a live saver without it I’d never get any work done in this place :

It’s bad enough I’m usually awake until 0400-0500 local, at least work doesn’t start until the afternoon on Mondays…

The list is fairly short considering that my laptop functions as my central system. Just programs for working with data really, text processing, images, etc. A few programs for audio/video and a couple of games to kill time. Most of the stuff filed under Internet is communications based, konvi for IRC and a decent multi-protocol instant messenger so I can be on AIM & M$N simultaneously, not to mention the YIM and ICQ accounts I have should I ever find a use for it.

I’m 100% Webmail based so I don’t really need a local MUA but I like to have one handy for the sake of emegency. After the flash drive snapped in two I gave up on Netscape mail based stuff (like Thunderbird) and had to switch to webmail. The only other decent alternative is to run it off my file server and I tried that. It kind of sucks to deal with multimedia attachments and html e-mail via ssh !

Hmm, time to see what work needs to be done for the night.

Thank GOD work doesn’t start at the crack of dawn… hehe

Flocking great !!!

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The other day I sent the port maintainer of linux-flock an e-mail reminding them that flock 1.1 had been released and thanking’em for maintaining the port.

Did a csup of ports and updated flock *my way*:

dixie# fastest_cvsup -c us -q
dixie# vi /root/ports-supfile   # make sure the server is set correct
dixie# cd /usr/ports/www/linux-flock ; ls
Makefile        distinfo        files           pkg-descr       pkg-plist
dixie# less Makefile      # confirm it's 1.1 in ports
dixie# pkg_delete linux-flock-1.0.3
dixie# make install distclean
    ...

Fired up flock from another aterm logged into my regular user account so I could see any messages that popped up on stdout/stderr, all good and even got the “Successfully updated flock” page.

Checklist:

Settings unchanged — yes
(Linux) Flash player plugin v7 — works
(Linux) Mozilla MPlayer plugin — works, using FreeBSD MPlayer build 😉

And I can see that Flock has finally implemented the one feature I really wanted from them, the ability to customize the ‘My World’ page. I removed the new friend activity widget and put back the favorites sites window, popped off the multimedia panel too. Because I don’t really use it, got my RSS feeds there.

The RSS|Friends|Multimedia layout I got on first start of 1.1 added a scroll bar at my typical window size (~1240×500 or so I’d guess by eye), which losing was one of the nice things of the style changes from flock 0.9 to 1.0. I’m really looking forward to more advancements in the My World page concept and to be honest it is an improvement over Operas “Speed Dial” feature which I used and abused back when I used Opera regularly.

I remember when I installed flock the flashplayer setup from PC-BSD worked out of the box, not very important to me but good to have. My great dislike for every thing Adobe remains but I lifted my ‘ban’ on them after Flashplayer 9 was released for Linux. I had installed the linux-mplayerplug-in port some time ago but it never worked and crashed flock with an error about loading files, I figured it was an issue of using a linux browser plugin but only having MPlayer compiled for FreeBSD installed. So I removed the stuff from my profile and solved the problem.

Earlier today I was surfing the web and saw the MPlayer plugin load up and I was like what the heck !? It works!!! So now I can listen to my favorite radio station without having to open a konqueror window for it ;-), I’m used to keeping flock loaded 24/7 on my laptop any way because its still a heavy weight program even if it runs faster then firefox 3 alpha and 2.x, seamonkey 1.x, and (Linux) netscape 9 did on here. I actually prefer the mozilla plugin to the KMPlayer plugin in konqueror which IMHO is not even as good as the Kaffeine plugin. This is actually a good thing for me, I don’t have to swap to konqueror to multimedia files — which is why I tried installing the linux-mplayerplug-in port in the first place xD

I think I will take a the new GMail / Yahoo! Mail integration features 🙂

Flock N Roll

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Finally a good day of sort.

slept in till 1400, nice considering the rest of the weekdays I have/will be getting up early :

Been toying around with Getopt::Long in Perl for a little ‘toy’ that I’ve had on the brain, worked on it a bit in my spare time. I’m used to working with tar, even gzip/bzip2 directly but occasionally have to work with zip/rar files and I find that I always need to look up the switches to use. So I was thinking about a script that would apply a uniform usage-style accross a varied set of such programs (tar inspired of course). I thought about using pax as a standard program, because for most stuff that I use I’ll generally leave it at TApe aRchives and skip the compression but I find generally speaking that using the pax utility is *annoying compared to the alternatives (when they work of course). KDE has an archiver program called Ark but I find it works poorly with /large/ archive files several hundred megs thick and there is no command line utility that I know of that has built in support for every format and runs both on NT and *Nix, the best I found in a short look require the Bourne Again Shell.

Enjoyed a few rounds on TG#1 with Jonsi and Rct Spawn. It’s good to get back into action again, I havn’t really played or trained much this week because of work. And I’m really looking forward to doing a training session on observation and marksmanship skills this weekend. I also managed to pop in to TG#3 and join Duke, Dallers, Chester, and the gang for a few before the DSL dropped out as usual.

I really wish I could tell Bellsouth to go suck an egg.

I think if I can find a day to do it and some time to print out the Gez Admin Mods command reference I might be able to setup a quick live op. I remember we have a hunt missing MI5 Programmer and a Russian Terrorist Cell on our Live Operations board that are still waiting for the green light. You know, the government should pay me for ideas lol, some of the live ops I concoct for our training are first rate !

For tonight, hmm on the basis of what hits me first. I need to get some stuff done that I told Gerard I’d take care of him on the documentation front. There’s the Perl script I’ve been toying with, and the age old issue of organizing my music collection +S

Every time I organize the damn thing I break my playlists, every time I update my playlists I usually spend more time either rebuilding them or s/search/replace/’in’g the entries instead of listing. What I really think would be best is if I just find or write a quick tag editor, use that to organize stuff. Then combine a script and a library to organize files according to the tags and regenerate my playlists when ever it is run.

I’m also thinking about switching to either MPlayer or VLC as a dedicated omni-purpose media player. The advantage of course being that they both run on any OS I’m likely to need them and can play darn near any thing ;-).

The only problem is I am used to Amaroks collection browser and playlist interface lol. I don’t really need much more then the basic features but aside from a handful (xmms/winamp, mplayer, vlc, amarok, kaffine) I’ve never really found a single Media Player that I am universally happy with but I suppose that is just the natural. One thing that I do like very much about MPlayer is there is a command line interface (very powerful one at that) and you can basically choose from any of several GUI Frontends, which I do really prefer to use for video operations but to be honest I’ve generally had better luck with VLC for DVD playback.

Hopefully work will get done before I loose concentration…

Egg on my face

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Oh this is a shocker!

I noticed I had one of my quick bookmarks in konqueror that I never finished reading, some thing on command line arguments — a very poor name for a bookmark generally speaking.

So I opened it in another tab and parsed it at my usual rapid pace. Gradually I started lookinf around at other stuff on the site, intrigued by some of the other things I found, even things noted about the design of termcap/terminfo, fetchmail, gcc, etc and decisions involved with the problems the developers had to solve. About a half an hour and almost 3 chapters later and figuring it was probably some (good) book gifted to the WWW by a universities CS department I finally clicked the ‘home’ button and felt like popping myself in the head when I realized what I had been reading a mirror of:

The Art of Unix Programming

I remember I was reading it last year but I never had time to finish it. Hmm, I wonder where I left off? It is a very fine book but unfortunately not one I was able to inhale in my spare time :. I might be a strange person but when I find a good book, it usually makes a transition from eye to brain at a rate of 50-120 pages a day xD, time and energy permitting of course.

It’s a book I’d fully recommend for any one interested in problem solving or engineering’ish thinking.

Manually upgrading PC-BSD v1.4 to using FreeBSD 7 underneath

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It can be done although I don’t actually recommend it lol, I did this solely for fun. Here is what I recored in the ~/fun-log file on my Samba server. A copy of my kernel configuration and a screen shot of the first GUI enabled boot is at the end of the post:

——————————————————————
Enabled SSH login to my test machine, since I don’t use the default port 22 for SSH I had to open ssh_config and sshd_config in /etc/ssh/ and uncomment the ‘Port’ line and change the port number.

A quick restart of the SSH Daemon from a root shell:

/etc/rc.d/sshd restart

I also disabled the firewall (pf) since I was in no mood to sort it out or port my laptops pf.config over.

and from my own shell

ssh Terry@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx # s/xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/server ip/g

I accepted the finger print and logged in, then ssh’d to this machine from that ssh connection doing like wise.

I’d recommend taking back ups of the system before proceeding, since this is a test machine I can skip it. I would suggest using either tar or dump in conjunction with a mounted recovery partition (or other storage device) or SSH if you have another system to use for storing the backups. Some people prefer Optical disks (cd/dvd) but I only use these for perm. backups.

rebooted with the FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE install cd in the drive and chose the upgrade option from sysinstall. I chose to upgrade ‘custom’ and selected all sets except the profiled libraries and source code: every thing worked perfect except that X.Org failed to upgrade due to already installed packages, unexpected yes but no problem as I was not planning on using X until after KDE was upgraded.

Completed the upgrade and chose the ‘Fixit’ option in the main menu dropping to a shell on ttyv4 which I used to edit /etc/ttys and disable the start of X.Org on boot up.

Located the ttyv4 line that starts /PCBSD/bin/pdm on an xterm and change the ‘on’ to an ‘off’. Saved the file and gave a ‘reboot’.

I forgot that FreeBSD’s GENERIC kernels detect my hard drives wrong because the kernel uses the ATA_STATIC_ID option. I have a SATA drive for ad0 and with ATA_STATIC_ID in the kenrel config it detects ad0 as ad4, PC-BSD’s kernel builds have the ‘right’ option commented out to fix that so I had to manually select a root disk at boot:

ufs:ad4s3

While I could easily fix this with changing the lines in /etc/fstab that would defeat the point of merging PC-BSD’s SMP Kernel configuration with FreeBSD’s GENERIC kernel. Which I could have done before rebooting any way.

I Inserted my install disk and ran /usr/sbin/sysinstall, using the ‘Configure’ option I chose to install the source code for every thing through the distribution sets. As far as I know you need the full system source to build a kernel.

I set PACKAGEROOT and did a pkg_add of lynx so I could view the installed version of the FreeBSD handbook without reading HTML source code. I like to have access to the handbook when building a kernel so that I can check if any new notes have been made in the section on the kernel configuration file. I also did a pkg_add of the mg editor, much smaller then vim but easier for me to work with then FreeBSDs /usr/bin/vi when I wish to view two files at once.

mkdir ~/kernel-config; cd ~/kernel-config
cp /PCBSD/conf/PCBSD-SMP.i386 ./
cp /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC ./
pkg_add -r mg
 ...
vi ~/.mg # set a few options I like for emacs

Then I used MicroGNUEmacs (mg) to merge PCBSD-SMP.i386 into GENERIC saving it as mykernel with the ^x^w command, the basics of using mgh you can find in the man page; if you choose to use mg but don’t know emacs. In point of fact, I have not used emacs regularly to edit files in over 2 years!

touch ./mykernel; ln -s /root/kerne-config/mykernel /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/mykernel; mg ./mykernel
cd /usr/src
make buildkernel KERNCONF=mykernel

You know, I wish I remembered to use the -j 8 option to make… Because last time I did that on my Pentium D it only took ~45 minutes to compile a kernel on 6.1-RELEASE or so.

Build started at: Sun Mar 2 21:19:14 UTC 2008
Build finished at: Sun Mar 2 21:40:51 UTC 2008

And to top it off, when I got up to do a few chores when I got back the console ‘screen saver’ kicked in. Which just happened to be the PC-BSD splash screen that comes up when ever the system boots kicked in during my kernel compile. This appears to have been some thing I broke with the upgrade, unless there is a difference because my laptop uses a Beastie image for the console screen saver.

I’m standing here like WTF? Did I crash or are they joking. Sure enough the system was playing a mean joke on me haha. And I know the system shouldn’t go down during a buildkernel even with what I’ve been ‘doing’ to the system without some serious problems. Right now it looks like the NIC drivers are compiling so it shouldn’t take to much longer.

While I wait, I’ll start merging the configuration files in /etc with those in /etc/upgrade.

A quick look to see if there are any config files from PC-BSD with pcbsd mentioned in them:

find /etc/ -type f -exec grep -ni ‘pcbsd|pc-bsd’ ‘{}’ ;

Of course they are *never* so nice as to denote what files are explicitly changed from the base FreeBSD installs 8=). Used lynx to browse PC-BSD’s SVN Repository online, looking at the system overlay in the 1.4 branch. I don’t see any any thing here that should effect me seriously — if any one tries this after me, check PC-BSDs SVN -> pcbsd/branches/1.4/system-overlay/etc (some thing like that) and look at the commit messages, if you see some thing that might effect you. Carefully compare the relevant files in /etc/ and /etc/upgrade unless like me, there is nothing you can seriously break that you will ever want to fix later.

There are two ways of doing this part, manual and mergemaster. If you have never done a buildworld/installworld before read the manual page for mergemaster and run it in a more user friendly mode. I usually do this any way because I use mergemaster only a few times a year at the most.

Some switches to mergemaster you might want to look up are: -a, -i, -v, -U

If you are going manually, I suggest you move the files from /etc/upgrade to /etc/ but pay special attention to files such as group and rc.local -> You don’t want to be unable to login as any thing but root on your reboot now do you? Hehe.

mv /etc/upgrade /root/etc-upgrade
mergemaster -viU
 ...

I installed most files but merged several others, among them:

ssh_conf and sshd_conf I merged to keep my port settings

group I merged to keep the various groups PC-BSD has setup for HAL’d and friends as well as having my user in wheel, operator, and its own group 😉

login.conf because I use ‘blf’ for the pass word format rather then the default md5. At the end of my mergemaster’ing I was happy to see that mergemaster was already a step ahead of me and promped for the login.conf database to be rebuilt for fool proof safeties sake:

*** You installed a login.conf file, so make sure that you run
    '/usr/bin/cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf'
     to rebuild your login.conf database

    Would you like to run it now? y or n [n] y
    Running /usr/bin/cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf

Some files that I chose to delete, the extra rc scripts which may have broken one of the Intel Wifi drivers. Also I decided not to install the *new* printcap file -> which if I had installed would have overwritten any printer setup I have done on my test machine.

One nice advantage is I have PC-BSD’s kernel stored in /boot/kernel.prev from the FreeBSD upgrade proceedure and the GENERIC FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE kernel in /boot/kernel.old after installing my newly compiled custom kernel.

For extra safety, I’ll archive these in roots home directory with more normal names in case I need them later:

tar -cf - /boot/kernel.old | bzip2 -9 > /root/kernel-FreeBSD7.0-RELEASE.g
eneric.tar.bz2
tar -cf - /boot/kernel.prev | bzip2 -9 > /root/kernel-PCBSD1.4.2.smp.tar.
bz

I don’t know how to get BSD tar to adjust the compression level for gzip/bzip2 (-z,-j), assuming there is a switch for it. So I redirected tar’s output to bzip2 directly to enable maximum compression.

Sadly, on reboot my system would lock up when ever the kernel tried to probe /dev/da3. No matter how many times I try to boot it, it locks up on this. I booted the Windows XP installation on the machine, rebooted into PC-BSD again and it boots perfectly — This is a *standing* issue with this test machine.

Often FreeBSD will lock up during boot while probing my (internal) USB Card Reader when it gets to the memory stick slot and refuse to boot until I have booted another operating system on the machine. I have had this problem since FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE, never tried any earlier ones.

Yes I hate this computer.

But otherwise my system however works bloody perfect 🙂

pcbsd# uname -ai
FreeBSD pcbsd 7.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE #0: Sun Mar 2 16:27:13 EST 2008
root@pcbsd:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/mykernel i386 TERRYP

Now to get X.Org and KDE back online, installed the ports tree from the FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE CD-ROM, new enough for my needs. While that goes, lets back up a few things of interest:

tar -czf /root/old-ports.tgz /usr/local/etc /usr/local/share/{icons,config,config.kcfg,apps,applnk}
tar -cjf /root/linux-fc4.tar.bz2  /compat

These files are essentially our KDE icons and a few directories we might want to keep handy for later. Also I chose to backup the /compat directory that houses the linux files.

Now for the portupgrade business:

After telling the pkgdb what to do with it self, I checked the help and gave this a go after I got tired of the interactive:

pkgdb -fFi

The one thing I hate about dealing with portupgrade and friends on FreeBSD is the packages database — it’s a royal pain in the arse to deal with when you are not in the mood! After sorting out all of the crap that pkgdb had to shout at including the mother ****ing **** load of fonts mentioned in the sale dependencies I know I will __never__ do this again.

In fact, if I ever go back to maintaining a standard FreeBSD system for my workstation I’ll do this my way — use a list of programs needed, and do upgrades with out mucking with pkgdb and it’s friends lol -> less trouble I think to do it by hand the way my mind is thinking of it now hehe.

Now to fetch every thing needed before we start and prefer binary packages where possible to save on some compile time. -> Warning!!! Not my reccomendation, done here out of my lack of concern for breaking the test machine.

portupgrade -FDParR

Now to upgrade every thing preferring packages, go to splitsvile and read the log later.

portupgrade –batch -faPrR –results-file /root/portupgrade.log

Whether -a impiles -rR or not I don’t know, never really read the source code that much but I’m used to using all three switches at once for this. Portupgrade also crashed about 3 times during the installation, mostly from upgrading ruby and missing stuff in /tmp. It also fragged /var/db/pkg/pkgdb.db once or twice and shouted at /usr/ports/INDEX-7.db’s format. So I had to run the command several times taking about a day and a half to complete the entire operation as described here.

Now I remember why I don’t use portupgrade or mass software upgrades a lot on my stable machines.

I had to create a new xorg.conf so I did an

X -configure
X -config /root/xorg.conf.new

and it worked, a reboot and I was soon greated by KDE 3.5.8 running on X.Org 7.3 😉

I know I broke the PBReg program so I would expect most other custom programs that PC-BSD has needs a recompile from the source code. I also used as many packages as possible during the upgrade procedure to save time, not what I normally do on FreeBSD but it actually worked well enough. Tomorrow after work I’ll test out a few of the PC-BSD programs and the Firefox PBI I have installed on the test machine, and installing a PBI to see if any thing survived without a recompile needed. I also want to test the Linux ABI’s new abilities and see what happens when installing linux-flock binaries.

——————————————

Screen shot:

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Here is a copy of my kernel configuration:

# My PC-BSD v1.4.2 + FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE kernel configuration

cpu  I686_CPU
ident  TERRYP

# To statically compile in device wiring instead of /boot/device.hints
#hints  "GENERIC.hints"  # Default places to look for devices.

makeoptions DEBUG=-g  # Build kernel with gdb(1) debug symbols

#options  SCHED_4BSD  # 4BSD scheduler
options  SCHED_ULE  # ULE scheduler instead ;-)

# options from PC-BSD that I'll keep handy
options  LIBICONV
options  LIBMCHAIN
options  CD9660_ICONV
options  MSDOSFS_ICONV
options  NTFS
options  NTFS_ICONV
options  UDF
options  UDF_ICONV
options  GEOM_UZIP
options  DEVICE_POLLING
device  iwi  # intel wireless adapters
device  ipw  # intel wireless adapters

#### I want to use PF.
device  pf
device  pflog
device  pfsync

options  ALTQ
options  ALTQ_CBQ
options  ALTQ_RED
options  ALTQ_RIO
options  ALTQ_HFSC
options  ALTQ_CDNR
options  ALTQ_PRIQ
options  ALTQ_NOPCC

# Memory card drivers I want to test:
device  mmc
device  mmcsd

# options in GENERIC
options  INET   # InterNETworking
options  INET6   # IPv6 communications protocols
options  SCTP   # Stream Control Transmission Protocol
options  FFS   # Berkeley Fast Filesystem
options  SOFTUPDATES  # Enable FFS soft updates support
options  UFS_ACL   # Support for access control lists
options  UFS_DIRHASH  # Improve performance on big directories
options  UFS_GJOURNAL  # Enable gjournal-based UFS journaling
options  MD_ROOT   # MD is a potential root device
options  NFSCLIENT  # Network Filesystem Client
options  NFSSERVER  # Network Filesystem Server
options  NFS_ROOT  # NFS usable as /, requires NFSCLIENT
options  MSDOSFS   # MSDOS Filesystem
options  CD9660   # ISO 9660 Filesystem
options  PROCFS   # Process filesystem (requires PSEUDOFS)
options  PSEUDOFS  # Pseudo-filesystem framework
options  GEOM_PART_GPT  # GUID Partition Tables.
options  GEOM_LABEL  # Provides labelization
options  COMPAT_43TTY  # BSD 4.3 TTY compat [KEEP THIS!]
options  COMPAT_FREEBSD4  # Compatible with FreeBSD4
options  COMPAT_FREEBSD5  # Compatible with FreeBSD5
options  COMPAT_FREEBSD6  # Compatible with FreeBSD6
options  SCSI_DELAY=5000  # Delay (in ms) before probing SCSI
options  KTRACE   # ktrace(1) support
options  SYSVSHM   # SYSV-style shared memory
options  SYSVMSG   # SYSV-style message queues
options  SYSVSEM   # SYSV-style semaphores
options  _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING # POSIX P1003_1B real-time extensions
options  KBD_INSTALL_CDEV # install a CDEV entry in /dev
options  ADAPTIVE_GIANT  # Giant mutex is adaptive.
options  STOP_NMI  # Stop CPUS using NMI instead of IPI
options  AUDIT   # Security event auditing

# To make an SMP kernel, the next two lines are needed
options  SMP   # Symmetric MultiProcessor Kernel
device  apic   # I/O APIC

# CPU frequency control
device  cpufreq

# Bus support.
device  eisa
device  pci

# Floppy drives
device  fdc

# ATA and ATAPI devices
device  ata
device  atadisk  # ATA disk drives
device  ataraid  # ATA RAID drives
device  atapicd  # ATAPI CDROM drives
device  atapifd  # ATAPI floppy drives
device  atapist  # ATAPI tape drives
#### XXX:
####       This option must be commented out for SATA drives to be
####       detected properly, e.g. ad0 not ad4 on boot up!
#options  ATA_STATIC_ID # Static device numbering

# SCSI Controllers
device  ahb  # EISA AHA1742 family
device  ahc  # AHA2940 and onboard AIC7xxx devices
options  AHC_REG_PRETTY_PRINT # Print register bitfields in debug
     # output.  Adds ~128k to driver.
device  ahd  # AHA39320/29320 and onboard AIC79xx devices
options  AHD_REG_PRETTY_PRINT # Print register bitfields in debug
     # output.  Adds ~215k to driver.
device  amd  # AMD 53C974 (Tekram DC-390(T))
device  hptiop  # Highpoint RocketRaid 3xxx series
device  isp  # Qlogic family
#device  ispfw  # Firmware for QLogic HBAs- normally a module
device  mpt  # LSI-Logic MPT-Fusion
#device  ncr  # NCR/Symbios Logic
device  sym  # NCR/Symbios Logic (newer chipsets + those of `ncr')
device  trm  # Tekram DC395U/UW/F DC315U adapters

device  adv  # Advansys SCSI adapters
device  adw  # Advansys wide SCSI adapters
device  aha  # Adaptec 154x SCSI adapters
device  aic  # Adaptec 15[012]x SCSI adapters, AIC-6[23]60.
device  bt  # Buslogic/Mylex MultiMaster SCSI adapters

device  ncv  # NCR 53C500
device  nsp  # Workbit Ninja SCSI-3
device  stg  # TMC 18C30/18C50

# SCSI peripherals
device  scbus  # SCSI bus (required for SCSI)
device  ch  # SCSI media changers
device  da  # Direct Access (disks)
device  sa  # Sequential Access (tape etc)
device  cd  # CD
device  pass  # Passthrough device (direct SCSI access)
device  ses  # SCSI Environmental Services (and SAF-TE)

# RAID controllers interfaced to the SCSI subsystem
device  amr  # AMI MegaRAID
device  arcmsr  # Areca SATA II RAID
device  asr  # DPT SmartRAID V, VI and Adaptec SCSI RAID
device  ciss  # Compaq Smart RAID 5*
device  dpt  # DPT Smartcache III, IV - See NOTES for options
device  hptmv  # Highpoint RocketRAID 182x
device  hptrr  # Highpoint RocketRAID 17xx, 22xx, 23xx, 25xx
device  iir  # Intel Integrated RAID
device  ips  # IBM (Adaptec) ServeRAID
device  mly  # Mylex AcceleRAID/eXtremeRAID
device  twa  # 3ware 9000 series PATA/SATA RAID

# RAID controllers
device  aac  # Adaptec FSA RAID
device  aacp  # SCSI passthrough for aac (requires CAM)
device  ida  # Compaq Smart RAID
device  mfi  # LSI MegaRAID SAS
device  mlx  # Mylex DAC960 family
device  pst  # Promise Supertrak SX6000
device  twe  # 3ware ATA RAID

# atkbdc0 controls both the keyboard and the PS/2 mouse
device  atkbdc  # AT keyboard controller
device  atkbd  # AT keyboard
device  psm  # PS/2 mouse

device  kbdmux  # keyboard multiplexer

device  vga  # VGA video card driver

device  splash  # Splash screen and screen saver support

# syscons is the default console driver, resembling an SCO console
device  sc

device  agp  # support several AGP chipsets

# Power management support (see NOTES for more options)
#device  apm
# Add suspend/resume support for the i8254.
device  pmtimer

# PCCARD (PCMCIA) support
# PCMCIA and cardbus bridge support
device  cbb  # cardbus (yenta) bridge
device  pccard  # PC Card (16-bit) bus
device  cardbus  # CardBus (32-bit) bus

# Serial (COM) ports
device  sio  # 8250, 16[45]50 based serial ports
device  uart  # Generic UART driver

# Parallel port
device  ppc
device  ppbus  # Parallel port bus (required)
device  lpt  # Printer
device  plip  # TCP/IP over parallel
device  ppi  # Parallel port interface device
#device  vpo  # Requires scbus and da

# If you've got a "dumb" serial or parallel PCI card that is
# supported by the puc(4) glue driver, uncomment the following
# line to enable it (connects to sio, uart and/or ppc drivers):
#device  puc

# PCI Ethernet NICs.
device  de  # DEC/Intel DC21x4x (``Tulip'')
device  em  # Intel PRO/1000 adapter Gigabit Ethernet Card
device  ixgb  # Intel PRO/10GbE Ethernet Card
device  le  # AMD Am7900 LANCE and Am79C9xx PCnet
device  txp  # 3Com 3cR990 (``Typhoon'')
device  vx  # 3Com 3c590, 3c595 (``Vortex'')

# PCI Ethernet NICs that use the common MII bus controller code.
# NOTE: Be sure to keep the 'device miibus' line in order to use these NICs!
device  miibus  # MII bus support
device  bce  # Broadcom BCM5706/BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet
device  bfe  # Broadcom BCM440x 10/100 Ethernet
device  bge  # Broadcom BCM570xx Gigabit Ethernet
device  dc  # DEC/Intel 21143 and various workalikes
device  fxp  # Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B (82557, 82558)
device  lge  # Level 1 LXT1001 gigabit Ethernet
device  msk  # Marvell/SysKonnect Yukon II Gigabit Ethernet
device  nfe  # nVidia nForce MCP on-board Ethernet
device  nge  # NatSemi DP83820 gigabit Ethernet
#device  nve  # nVidia nForce MCP on-board Ethernet Networking
device  pcn  # AMD Am79C97x PCI 10/100 (precedence over 'le')
device  re  # RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S
device  rl  # RealTek 8129/8139
device  sf  # Adaptec AIC-6915 (``Starfire'')
device  sis  # Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900/SiS 7016
device  sk  # SysKonnect SK-984x & SK-982x gigabit Ethernet
device  ste  # Sundance ST201 (D-Link DFE-550TX)
device  stge  # Sundance/Tamarack TC9021 gigabit Ethernet
device  ti  # Alteon Networks Tigon I/II gigabit Ethernet
device  tl  # Texas Instruments ThunderLAN
device  tx  # SMC EtherPower II (83c170 ``EPIC'')
device  vge  # VIA VT612x gigabit Ethernet
device  vr  # VIA Rhine, Rhine II
device  wb  # Winbond W89C840F
device  xl  # 3Com 3c90x (``Boomerang'', ``Cyclone'')

# ISA Ethernet NICs.  pccard NICs included.
device  cs  # Crystal Semiconductor CS89x0 NIC
# 'device ed' requires 'device miibus'
device  ed  # NE[12]000, SMC Ultra, 3c503, DS8390 cards
device  ex  # Intel EtherExpress Pro/10 and Pro/10+
device  ep  # Etherlink III based cards
device  fe  # Fujitsu MB8696x based cards
device  ie  # EtherExpress 8/16, 3C507, StarLAN 10 etc.
device  sn  # SMC's 9000 series of Ethernet chips
device  xe  # Xircom pccard Ethernet

# Wireless NIC cards
device  wlan  # 802.11 support
device  wlan_wep # 802.11 WEP support
device  wlan_ccmp # 802.11 CCMP support
device  wlan_tkip # 802.11 TKIP support
device  wlan_amrr # AMRR transmit rate control algorithm
device  wlan_scan_ap # 802.11 AP mode scanning
device  wlan_scan_sta # 802.11 STA mode scanning
device  an  # Aironet 4500/4800 802.11 wireless NICs.
device  ath  # Atheros pci/cardbus NIC's
device  ath_hal  # Atheros HAL (Hardware Access Layer)
device  ath_rate_sample # SampleRate tx rate control for ath
device  awi  # BayStack 660 and others
device  ral  # Ralink Technology RT2500 wireless NICs.
device  wi  # WaveLAN/Intersil/Symbol 802.11 wireless NICs.
#device  wl  # Older non 802.11 Wavelan wireless NIC.

# Pseudo devices.
device  loop  # Network loopback
device  random  # Entropy device
device  ether  # Ethernet support
device  sl  # Kernel SLIP
device  ppp  # Kernel PPP
device  tun  # Packet tunnel.
device  pty  # Pseudo-ttys (telnet etc)
device  md  # Memory "disks"
device  gif  # IPv6 and IPv4 tunneling
device  faith  # IPv6-to-IPv4 relaying (translation)
device  firmware # firmware assist module

# The `bpf' device enables the Berkeley Packet Filter.
# Be aware of the administrative consequences of enabling this!
# Note that 'bpf' is required for DHCP.
device  bpf  # Berkeley packet filter

# USB support
device  uhci  # UHCI PCI->USB interface
device  ohci  # OHCI PCI->USB interface
device  ehci  # EHCI PCI->USB interface (USB 2.0)
device  usb  # USB Bus (required)
#device  udbp  # USB Double Bulk Pipe devices
device  ugen  # Generic
device  uhid  # "Human Interface Devices"
device  ukbd  # Keyboard
device  ulpt  # Printer
device  umass  # Disks/Mass storage - Requires scbus and da
device  ums  # Mouse
device  ural  # Ralink Technology RT2500USB wireless NICs
device  rum  # Ralink Technology RT2501USB wireless NICs
device  urio  # Diamond Rio 500 MP3 player
device  uscanner # Scanners

# USB Ethernet, requires miibus
device  aue  # ADMtek USB Ethernet
device  axe  # ASIX Electronics USB Ethernet
device  cdce  # Generic USB over Ethernet
device  cue  # CATC USB Ethernet
device  kue  # Kawasaki LSI USB Ethernet
device  rue  # RealTek RTL8150 USB Ethernet

# FireWire support
device  firewire # FireWire bus code
device  sbp  # SCSI over FireWire (Requires scbus and da)
device  fwe  # Ethernet over FireWire (non-standard!)
device  fwip  # IP over FireWire (RFC 2734,3146)
device  dcons  # Dumb console driver
device  dcons_crom # Configuration ROM for dcons
by

I figure for today, I can probably work on updating my PC-BSD test machine to using FreeBSD 7, for updating the ports that will likely have to wait for later. With luck I can leave it running over night.

I want to spend some time working on the user-interface for NPM, I know what I want but I am not sure what value it will have. Essentially my idea is for the user to select from several implementations of the main window including the ability to use custom made modules for it.

I also want to implement an option by which each module is checked against a given list of checksums, if the module fails the checksum it won’t be allowed to load. With this method one could theroectically restrict any non-NPM supplied window layouts from being loaded but it’s probably a useless feature but one I’d like to tinker with just for the fun of it lol.

I also know if I don’t get a few things out of my head I’m going to pop.. Maybe coding will help :.

Whistling FreeBSD 7

by

Hehe, as a friend requested a screen shot of when I got FreeBSD 7 up:

[click to enlarge]
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Well actually it is about an hour and a half to two hours after but I dunno how to take a screen shot of FreeBSDs system console without image magic, then again I could’ve always used the camera… But no one wants to stare at the command prompt but me <_<.

FreeBSD 7.0 booted incredibly fast for my exptation, even off the install CD I think it out paced PC-BSD 1.4 (which uses FreeBSD 6.3-stuff). As always I set a few of the install options before hand, low output while installing packages, debugging console on etc. Normally when I setup a FreeBSD box I do a custom installation and exact maximum control over what goes in. For this, I just chose to use the canned X-Kern-Developer installation set which is essentially FreeBSD + Kernel Sources + Xorg which is what I wanted, I’m not expecting to need any sources other then the kernels.

For the optional packages I picked out a bare minimal to get me started, zsh for my user account -> I can use any of the standard shells easy enough but I ‘like’ the zsh hehe. Also portupgrade to ease any installation issues and a desktop environment, I chose to go the gnome2 meta-route.

The install went very fast as usual and the whole time was basically spent installing X and associated crap. It did however bomb out on LibIDL not being found on disk 2 fragging the gnome install so it would seem and barfing at the ruby package on the disk set. I think this is rather /strange/ for having downloaded all 3 ISO’s to avoid things like that… But hey, I don’t mind. Usually when I install FreeBSD I only take off the CD-ROM’s what I’ll need to get the machine connected to the internet, usually nothing as far as whats in ports goes.

However despite the lack of a desktop and portupgrade utility I booted into an other wise fully functional system. Mounted my existing install on /mnt and merged my network config into the FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE one and copied over the xorg.conf file, volia we have working internet and X.Org ! No need to even load kernel modules, although sound didn’t work because I never added the line to /boot/loader.conf for it: no problem on a test install. Whether or not sysinstall has gained the ability to handle WPA Encryption over the years I didn’t bother because setting up my well supported PCMCIA card is a breeze as long as you can use a text editor.

I then set the gdm_enable variable in /etc/rc.conf then I had to change the site to fetch packages from because ftp.FreeBSD.org was still shouting about to many connected users so I set PACKAGEROOT to ftp://ftp13.us.FreeBSD.org/ in roots .login file, logged in & out and proceeded to pkg_add portupgrade and gnome2.

That took about an hour !!!! A little toying with pkg_info and wc, and I would say that gnome depends on about 365+ things… Glad I got a working X.Org install off the CD-ROM… It took ****for freaking ever**** to download all of the packages for gnome but one console command and a single line added to the config file and it just /works/ out of the box after a reboot, although of course I already had the xorg.conf file hehe.

I’m a KDE user by taste not a Gnome one but I decided to install Gnome and while I don’t care much for Gnome I am glad to see that aside from the long wait that installing and setting up Gnome on FreeBSD is as painless as it gets thanks to the hard work of those maintaining the port. Now, customizing Gnome to do your evil bidding is some times problematic hehe. I only like two things about Gnome, that it looks nice (usually) and that it gets well the **** out of your way.

If that is worth the horrendous inefficient user interface they have for file open/save dialogs I dunno… But KDE is the best in that regard that I’ve ever seen.

There was just one small problem, since the FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE install was going into a partition previously housing a linux distro I was testing a few months ago, it also took with it the GRUB configuration as was planned. So I had my GAG install CD ready before I started with FreeBSD because I knew I was going to be removing the boot loader I was using for PC-BSD (GRUB).

The problem, 2 OSes setup for booting in GAG but only the first would boot (FreeBSD 7). I even used the install disk to overwrite GAG with BSDs normal boot manager but no luck, it wouldn’t boot ad0s2a ! When ever I chose to boot off the second partition in GAG it would boot off the first, FreeBSDs boot manager would just beep at the second partition.

There is always more then one way to screw with a boot procedure, man I love thinking ^_^. Loaded up my trusty never wanta leave home without it Knoppix Linux LiveCD and used QTParted to unmark ad0s1a (FreeBSD 7) as active and to make extra sure I did the same to ad0s2a (PC-BSD 1.4) and set ad0s2a active again before commiting my changes.

Reboot and reinstall of GAG, PC-BSD boots fine and so does FreeBSD !

I know you’re only supposed to have one partition marked active and GOD and IBM only know what could happen if more then one ended up set active :. I figured that either GAG had to be goofing it up or there was some thing slagged. Sure enough QTParted told me both partitions were marked active..

I ain’t gonna ask how, not even if it is possible, so long as nothing explodes and my laptop works fully I am a happy spider hehe.

In my personal opinion, aside from my booting mixup I think any one able to read & understand English (I’ve never tried installing in another language) could get a working desktop in less then 2 hours if they sought after the suitable level of knowledge to configure there systems internet connection, for most wired users that is a cake walk during the install. And to setup an X.Org config file which is not a very hard task, when the proper values work that is lol.

PC-BSD on the other hand, 30-45 minutes time spent installing (mostly installing the files while you relax) and you have a fully functional KDE Desktop. That’s why I have PC-BSD on my laptop, because other wise I would have to install KDE manually… in which case I would probably skip it and just install amarok and friends 😉

With the increased performance in FreeBSD 7, I can’t wait to see PC-BSD 2.0 when they finally switch over. It should sure as heck boot faster for them then Ubuntu on a first date 😉

One thing I personally find weird, when I do have a problem 90% of the time if it makes sense I can figure out the problem eventually. The other 10% of the time, what makes sense doesn’t work 8=) so the only solution is to ‘fsck with it a bit.