Andy Kopciuch's Blog
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Dapper, PCMCIA, Crazy People & Bad Back
That's right! I'm breaking the system and having 4 topics this post. Take that conformity! ;-)
I got a new laptop last week. I won't go into the details but the 15.4" screen is uber nice. I installed Breezy and immediately did a dist-upgrade to the dapper release of kubuntu. It went so smooth I was pumped to give it a whirl on my PC. Well that did not turn out as well. I did the dist-upgrade to find out my X would not start. I had a module that would not load so I just removed the GLCore from the xorg.conf. So now I have X starting. Too bad there is no flashy kubuntu KDM. Whatever ... least of my worries.
I really do like the applications in KDE 3.5.2 better, but some of the packages seem to have changed, or been separated, and the dist-upgrade didn't pick them up properly. My first problem was there was no sound in my KDE apps. It took me a while to figure it out, but the cause was the akode was installed, but the akode-mpeg package was not. Voila I get to listen to the new Chili Peppers single again. Sweet. The next issue was with Konqueror having a black background in filebrowsing mode. I changed the background, but it did not carry over to sub directories. I had save directory settings separate turned on, but a quick on off of that seemed to fix the problem.
My next issue was when I decided to get smart and switch my primary email account to IMAP instead of POP3. I have another Kolab account, and I am happy to say that KMail seems to support a groupware account with other IMAP accounts much before. Last time I tried this it completely messed up my email. So I transferred everything to try it out. I am current transferring everything back. The filters (which I make great use of) do not seem to work very well with a regular IMAP account. The server connection is just too slow for my liking, and I got fed up with manually running filters. Not to mention the server runs dovecot for the imap dameon, and it does not support subfolders (well it can, but messages can apparently only be stored in leaf folders). Back to POP3.
The whole reason I got onto this upgrade was because my work got stalled. I am working on an automated PDC setup with Samba & LDAP + phpLDAPadmin. I have it about 80% complete. Run the script, everything is installed and configured, default groups, default admin user, wrote some hooks to create user home directories, which is also expandable to whatever else can be done by default. I can find the server, and login authenticated against LDAP. The last trick is to setup the automatic adding of machines to the domain.
I was about to get going on this, when I started to have problems with my other laptop running windows 2000. PII 400. It's an ancient Toshiba that does not even have an onboard NIC. The PCMCIA card finally seemed to get toasted. I got another card from Ray, but I can't seem to get it to work. I installed the drivers ... fucked around with it ... I just gave up and will wait for a new machine from Gregg.
I had been working on the PDC thing over the weekend, mostly for my own interest, and also to just escape from the regular work week. Last week I just got dumped on continually at work. I had emails giving me shit for things not being done which were out of my control, I got dumped on for being late to a meeting (I did phone saying I would be late), but I got dumped on all the same ... it was just stressful crap that I'd rather not think about. I hope everything is just whatever now, and I can get back to doing work that matters.
And for the last couple of months I have had a killer hurtin back. I twinged it getting laundry one day, and I haven't been the same since. Lower back pain. Usually worse in the morning. And I suppose sitting all day long doesn't help. I have tylenol ... I'll be alright. ;-) ΒΆ 12:55:00 AM 0 comments
I got a new laptop last week. I won't go into the details but the 15.4" screen is uber nice. I installed Breezy and immediately did a dist-upgrade to the dapper release of kubuntu. It went so smooth I was pumped to give it a whirl on my PC. Well that did not turn out as well. I did the dist-upgrade to find out my X would not start. I had a module that would not load so I just removed the GLCore from the xorg.conf. So now I have X starting. Too bad there is no flashy kubuntu KDM. Whatever ... least of my worries.
I really do like the applications in KDE 3.5.2 better, but some of the packages seem to have changed, or been separated, and the dist-upgrade didn't pick them up properly. My first problem was there was no sound in my KDE apps. It took me a while to figure it out, but the cause was the akode was installed, but the akode-mpeg package was not. Voila I get to listen to the new Chili Peppers single again. Sweet. The next issue was with Konqueror having a black background in filebrowsing mode. I changed the background, but it did not carry over to sub directories. I had save directory settings separate turned on, but a quick on off of that seemed to fix the problem.
My next issue was when I decided to get smart and switch my primary email account to IMAP instead of POP3. I have another Kolab account, and I am happy to say that KMail seems to support a groupware account with other IMAP accounts much before. Last time I tried this it completely messed up my email. So I transferred everything to try it out. I am current transferring everything back. The filters (which I make great use of) do not seem to work very well with a regular IMAP account. The server connection is just too slow for my liking, and I got fed up with manually running filters. Not to mention the server runs dovecot for the imap dameon, and it does not support subfolders (well it can, but messages can apparently only be stored in leaf folders). Back to POP3.
The whole reason I got onto this upgrade was because my work got stalled. I am working on an automated PDC setup with Samba & LDAP + phpLDAPadmin. I have it about 80% complete. Run the script, everything is installed and configured, default groups, default admin user, wrote some hooks to create user home directories, which is also expandable to whatever else can be done by default. I can find the server, and login authenticated against LDAP. The last trick is to setup the automatic adding of machines to the domain.
I was about to get going on this, when I started to have problems with my other laptop running windows 2000. PII 400. It's an ancient Toshiba that does not even have an onboard NIC. The PCMCIA card finally seemed to get toasted. I got another card from Ray, but I can't seem to get it to work. I installed the drivers ... fucked around with it ... I just gave up and will wait for a new machine from Gregg.
I had been working on the PDC thing over the weekend, mostly for my own interest, and also to just escape from the regular work week. Last week I just got dumped on continually at work. I had emails giving me shit for things not being done which were out of my control, I got dumped on for being late to a meeting (I did phone saying I would be late), but I got dumped on all the same ... it was just stressful crap that I'd rather not think about. I hope everything is just whatever now, and I can get back to doing work that matters.
And for the last couple of months I have had a killer hurtin back. I twinged it getting laundry one day, and I haven't been the same since. Lower back pain. Usually worse in the morning. And I suppose sitting all day long doesn't help. I have tylenol ... I'll be alright. ;-) ΒΆ 12:55:00 AM 0 comments
