* * * * *
People today kept telling me I should take deep breaths
For the past two days I've been fighting software. Yesterday was Bit Torrent
[1], one of those peer-to-peer file sharing programs. Wlofie asked me if I
could burn a copy of Slackware 10 [2]. A cursory glace at the website showed
that the only way to get CD (Compact Disc)-ROM (Read Only Media) images (so-
called “isos” due to their file extention .iso) was through this thing called
Bit Torrent.
I think I made the mistake of using the clients listed [3], and a second
mistake by using the GUI (Graphical User Interface) client provided. I'm
pretty minimal when it comes to GUIs, and I absolutely refuse to use the
Gnome [4] or KDE (K Desktop Environment) [5] desktops (they tend to make a
1GHz (gigahertz) machine feel sluggish).
I was much displeased when, by mistake, a stray click on the graphical Bit
Torrent client launched this … monstrosity … of a desktop that took over the
system (more or less). My background changed, thousands of extraneous
programs started up, the beeping, the buzzing, the sluggishness of a Windows
system … just horrible.
I ended up pulling the power cable in self defense.
Well, that was yesterday.
Today … today was worse.
There was the fight with Twiki [6] (which we use as a company wide knowledge
base)—who would have thought updating some graphics would be so XXXXXXX
difficult? (all I wanted was to update the network maps, but … no … must stop
before my head explodes on that problem)
Then Firefox [7]. Granted, it was version 1.0 so most of the annoyances are
fixed in a later version. Getting that later version? Leads us to the next
piece of software I was fighting—yum—the RedHat [8] package manager (as if
RPM (RedHat Package Manager)s weren't bad enough). I could never get yum to
work on my system here at The Company because it complained about PGP (Pretty
Good Privacy) keys not being configured or something like that. It took P
about ten minutes to untable that mess, then it was off to install all
137,000 megabytes of webbrowser and email client.
Meanwhile, I've been fighting to get this webcam installed in the datacenter.
It's one of those stand-alone units that plugs right into the network, with a
controlpanel (cough cough) and it can be configured to upload images to
another computer either by FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or SMTP (Simple Mail
Transport Protocol).
It's been a huge mess—networking issues, apt-get (Debian's [9] package
manager) problems (to say that the MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked
Piped Stages) based RaQs are a niche market is a bit of an understatement),
FTP problems (the webcam apparently supports FTP in name only), cabling
issues (the network cable I crimped for the webcam was marginal and I had to
recrimp it) and DNS (Domain Name Service) issues (which involved some other
Cobalt RaQs and the Cobalt RaQ's wonderful controlpanels (cough cough) and
parsing of e-mail (since the webcam's FTP is obviously borked, have to use
SMTP to send the images—lovely—but that, unlike FTP, works).
But (**thankfully**) is now working, and managed to catch this joker trying
to sneak off with some computer equipment:
[Hey! Where do you think you're going?] [10] [11]
So that's one thing off the to-do list.
And I'm finally calming down.
The one thing that did go right today? Burning CD-ROMs. As long as I finally
got the Slackware .iso images, I might as well tempt fate and burn some CDs
[12]. Oddly enough, with an external DVD (Digital Video Disc) burner hooked
up via USB (Universal Serial Bus) to my Linux workstation, I managed to make
a bootable Slackware CD with one command:
> cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=4 slackware-10.1-install-d1.iso
>
(okay, there were three more CDs to burn, and yes, it wasn't the fastest of
operations, but I wasn't looking for fast, I was looking for it works! And
yes, it works)
So I am happy that worked.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a bit better …
[1]
http://www.bittorrent.com/
[2]
http://www.slackware.org/
[3]
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=33044&package_id=25125
[4]
http://www.gnome.org/
[5]
http://www.kde.org/
[6]
http://www.twiki.org/
[7]
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
[8]
http://www.redhat.com/
[9]
http://www.debian.org/
[10]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2005/05/25/thumb.joker.jpg
[11]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2005/05/25/joker.jpg
[12]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2005/04/27.3
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