Linux

Linux configuration notes

I store all phone numbers and email addresses in the Address Book or Contacts app of the devices I use.

• On Apple Mac OS X it’s the Address Book app
• On IOS it’s the Contacts app
• On Android it’s Contacts
• On my webmail it’s Google’s Contacts

I also add spouse and child names where I know them. For members of my extended family, I have cards for the spouses, parents, and children. That way I get birthday reminders automatically in my calendar.

None of these apps have the smarts to make it easy to link a spouse card with a contact without a lot of repeat data entry. Well, the IOS app lets me select another card, but that’s it.

Tags: Android, Cross-platform software, Gmail, Google Contacts, IOS, Web 2.0, Webmail

My main workhorse is an eMachines eM250 10.1″ netbook. All my email, calendar and important software works via the cloud so I can use any machine with a web-browser. I learned that lesson in the Great London Laptop Crash of 2008.

However there are some items I use local storage for:

• genealogy research
• music, video, podcasts and other media
• ebooks, PDF’s, and reference material
• film and TV project producer files (budgets, head shots, contracts)
• software development and scripting (especially for iPad apps)
• GPG signing and encryption keys

Maybe the NBN will give me the speed to store all that stuff on the cloud, but for now it is a lot of data that represents a significant part of my work and home life.

Tags: Apple, Netbook, Technology/Internet

As part of the hosting migration, I had some text files that had an extra empty line in them. This was caused by a newline followed by another newline.

On my pc I can search and replace for these using a good text editor. But it’s a bit harder to do on a linux command line.

The fix if it is just an empty new line is to use sed

sed '/^$/d'

as in

sed '/^$/d' < textfile.txt > newtextfile.txt

If the new lines have whitespace (a space or a tab) then use

sed '/^[ \t]*$/d'

You can also get information about the file with the file command

file textfile.txt
textfile.txt: ASCII English text

Beware if the output is

Tags: howto, Linux, linux_terminal

In working with LTSP and K12LTSP I use some old hardware as dumb terminals. Some of this old gear presents problems in determining the correct NIC driver or graphics driver to use.

If the old machine still has windows on it I use Craig’s PCI Programs to determine the Vendor ID and Device ID. I then go to PCI Database and look up the vendor ID/device ID pair. This works best for video drivers.
Alternatively I look up the Etherboot database to determine the best network driver.

Tags: drivers, howto, Linux, linux_terminal_server, terminal_server

My Linux Terminal Server Project is going well, however one of the painful support problems in branches is people removing the Rom-O-Matic boot CD’s we use to boot old PC’s on the terminal server. A lot of the old PC’s have hard drives and staff tinker with the BIOS to get to whatever version of windows is sitting on these old drives. Once they lose the boot CD we have to burn a new one and send it out.

I got frustrated today when I went to a customer service PC and discovered it sitting at a windows 98 logon prompt and the boot CD missing. Now this machine will never work on the network from Win98.

Tags: boot_cd, cd, howto, Linux, linux_terminal, linux_terminal_server

This is for K12 Linux Terminal Server Project K12LTSP 4.4.1 running on Fedora Core 4. I downloded the CD images and burned them to 5 CD’s.

Boot from Disc 1 (of 5)

Hit enter to boot into Anaconda, Fedora’s graphical installer. You can cancel out of the installation at any point up to Required Install Media. Nothing is written to the drive until after that step, so if you get lost (or need to check something) just reboot and start again.

Welcome to Fedora Core Next

Language Selection: English (English) Next

Keyboard Configuration: U.S. English Next

Installation Type: Linux Terminal Server Next

Disk Partitioning Setup: Automatic partition Next

Tags: howto, Linux, linux_terminal, linux_terminal_server, Technology, terminal_server

I’m doing a proof of concept project using LTSP: Linux Terminal Server Project. After a few fits and starts I’ve decided to use the K12ltsp.org 4.4.1 distribution. Don’t let the K12 fool you. It isn’t just for schools, but they have packaged Fedora Core and LTSP for a fairly straightforward build process. I’ll post my build notes shortly.

Tags: linux_terminal, linux_terminal_server, terminal_server