My Computer Issues

Here is something that has baffled me extremely. Why is it so hard to (un)mount a cdrom in linux? In windows (and I'm sure MacOSX) you put it in, it's mounted, and pop it out and it's unmounted. (Or throw it in the trashcan, or has that changed now? :o)

In linux however, you push it in... and hopefully it's mounted... and when you pop it out... it's often unmounted... but then again... sometimes you have to do it manually... does forcing help? nope:

umount -f /mnt/cdrom

wont do the trick, however being lazy...

umount -l /mnt/cdrom

Does the trick... in most cases... okay I can understand forcing per default is a bad thing... but being lazy per default surely can't? or trying normal unmount first and when that fails trying lazy?

Okay. You cannot unmount a cdrom when someone is standing in that directory... WHY? because they might read from or try to write to an unmounted unit? How about a setting somewhere:

EXTREMELY_SAFE_AND_NICE_MULTIUSER_SYSTEM_SOMETHING_DESKTOP_LINUX_USERS_WONT_UNDERSTAND=true

That way we can have the don't-unmount-if-someone-is-standing-in-the-dir for the people that wants that and the rest of us can use our cdrom like we're used to: pop it in, ready to go, pop it out... not ready to go...

Or maybe ...

If cdrom tray open and user in cdrom dir then cd ..

That's a little like windows explorer behavior when you open the tray but it's not really that good. However it may be one viable option, along with a message: "the cdrom has been unmounted, we're now kindly moving you to the first dir that still exists ... cd /mnt/cdrom" .. however i'd go mad if i had that message popping up in konqueror for instance... it will do fine in a terminal though...

But I don't know... there may be things way beyond my horizon going on here....

This one's a great one. Sound in Linux... kinda works. I can listen to music, watch movies, heck Linux knows more codecs than windows does after putting it through a Codec-pack-marathon. (which is a good thing since codec packs basically are a hodgepodge of all the codecs you ever wanted and the codecs to go with them and collide and incpacitate them... that's one minus point to windows and one plus to linux but hey! who's countin?)

the only problem with linux is the resulting hearing impairment...

WHAT? Oh you want to know why?

See... linux sound-server doesn't play two simultaneous sounds simultaneously... instead linux sound-server, in a geniously conceivied plan so horrendously cunning normal (just a little mentally challenged) people has no chance in a life time to figure it out, plays them in sequence...

So what happens to all the nifty app sounds when you for instance play a 2 hours movie?

You guessed it, I'm sure, 5 minutes of app-sounds after the movie (I'm sure there's a setting somewhere in some config file some place below or in the "/etc" -- think it's short for: "eeeehhh that's confusing?" or maybe "eek that's confusing?")

This... app-sounds queuing... would only be cute and annoying if it wasn't for one other sound-thing going on with linux... sounds in movies are so VERY FUCKING LOW, I have to turn all volumes up to even hear anything... Now on the other hand volumes on app-sounds are normal... however, once you're turned all volumes up to ARE-YOU-FUCKING-NUTS-level... once you stop the movie and the app-sounds starts playing (very rapidly after each other's... remember volume is WAY UP AT THE TOP?) your hearing goes to COCKSUCKING CUNTWOOD FUCKSYLVANIA! (Yeah I wish I could hear myself too... but right now I hear the sound of a SPLURB ring tone that somehow was invented by some synthesiser-operator jerkoff that thought it was having a fresh and clean sound no doubt... or maybe his boss thought that and Jerkoff just wanted to earn his living... notice how dogs in pain bite anyone near them? I'm trying to illustrate pain here...)

I've always wished I had some never failing server standing in a corner making no fuss and always delivering what it is supposed to, no questions asked. On it I would place, among other things an IMAP server where I could keep all my mail. Why? Because my mail clients always fail on me. Either that or something else forces me to change client.

On windows I was perfectly satisfied with using Outlook, on linux I was perfectly satisfied with using Kmail. However, after the Mandrake 1o.1 install Kmail mysteriously and uncompromislingly failed. It would stand around for maybe a minute before it had consumed 50% of the system memory (some 760 mb) and then it simply died. (I haven't even started to begin to understand where error messages in Linux disappear. They certainly don't pop up in your face, I mean, okay when windows bring you a nasty looking "something" that contains incomprehensible numbers and letters that's not so much better ... just marginally... but still... when there isn't even a pop up telling us the application programmer was to lazy to handle that exception, I for one start to suspect even the error handling system is burning.)

Back to mailing. Okay, so I'm wishing for an IMAP server since I always end up having to change clients. Well, I said to myself, I can run the IMAP server on the same computer, no need for that server in the corner. Said and done, I got hold of courier-imap, seems very nice, or at least it seemed very nice before the restart from hell... well I installed courier, pretty easy under mandrake:

$ urpmi courier-imap

Even better, courier is set up with the same username password as the users on the box, and the mails are stored in your home catalogue so backing them up is also easy. You even get SSL connection with the install (no clue how long the certificate lasts, apache had a 1 year license with mdk 10.0, no clue how that's set up now).

Okay, so far so go. I'm able to log in with my user name and password (server is localhost, if you use SSL make sure your client connects on IMAP SSL port 993, took me some time to figure that one out! Some clients have a special port field, others may be set up with the server somehost:993 and you'll get the same result, some clients are not worthy of IMAP SSL connections...)

Well... I restarted my computer after a couple of days and now... well logging in is not working anymore. As far as I've been able to judge it's not due to the client (both evolution and thunderbird fails) and it doesn't work with or without SSL, it is possible to reach the server with telnet (on port 993, and on port 143, normal IMAP, the server identifies and would probably, if I knew IMAP protocol, talk to me perfectly nice... until i gave it the wrong password...)

I think I managed to fuck the imap up with the same etc/hosts hack as I described before... question is, how do i get back on track? #:-S

BTW the mouse pointer... previously... it looked like a "corner" a | and a _ (but it was on the upper edge not lower) and a "+" in between the two...

I had to restart my system... well cold boot + restart actually...

That was the second restart in 4 hours... cheers! The other restart was due to me trying to edit the eleventh image in gimp... or maybe it was the news aggreagation starting to read RSS feeds? Regardless... you should know what I think about that by now...

This is something i've just gotta tell you about... my mouse pointer just died...

No, no, there's no dust on the ball (i've got a camera mouse and it's working perfectly) no this is something FAR worse.

My very friendly and usable Mandrake Linux 10.1 just decided my mouse pointer (the thing that usually looks like a white or black arrow) shall now cease to function and whereever I click, what ever I do, the mouse pointer is... kinda out of order... nothing happens... As you may have guessed the keyboard has not yet been involved in this latest most intriguing development.

Don't tell me a computer is a tool... it's a toy.

Okay, this will be interesting. I'm now gonna try Gaim-Blogger-1.0.0... just to try and mess this blog up as well... hey it's me... :D

It's blogger XML-RPC interface for blogger.com via Gaim ... will be interesting to see how this ends..

The download is either a windows exe (blah) or a source tarball. And it's not zipped as a folder so when you untar it you get all the files in a heap among your other tarballs... CUTE... NOT! (can i do angry smileys with blogger?)

Well, that turns out to be symptomatic of this install... There is no info on HOW to install this crap in the tar. And if you try make...:

blogger.c:1994: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer
blogger.c:1994: warning: (near initialization for `info')
blogger.c:1995: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer
blogger.c:1995: warning: (near initialization for `info')
blogger.c:1997: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer
blogger.c:1997: warning: (near initialization for `info')
blogger.c:1997: warning: data definition has no type or storage class
blogger.c:2000: error: syntax error before '*' token
blogger.c: In function `init_plugin':
blogger.c:2002: error: `GaimAccountOption' undeclared (first use in this function)
blogger.c:2002: error: `option' undeclared (first use in this function)
blogger.c:2004: warning: implicit declaration of function `gaim_account_option_string_new'
blogger.c:2007: error: request for member `protocol_options' in something not a structure or union
blogger.c:2007: error: request for member `protocol_options' in something not a structure or union
blogger.c:2009: warning: implicit declaration of function `gaim_account_option_int_new'
blogger.c:2012: error: request for member `protocol_options' in something not a structure or union
blogger.c:2012: error: request for member `protocol_options' in something not a structure or union
blogger.c:2014: error: `plugin' undeclared (first use in this function)
blogger.c: At top level:
blogger.c:2019: warning: type defaults to `int' in declaration of `GAIM_INIT_PLUGIN'
blogger.c:2019: warning: parameter names (without types) in function declaration
blogger.c:2019: warning: data definition has no type or storage class
blogger.c: In function `show_post_selector':
blogger.c:624: warning: statement with no effect
blogger.c: At top level:
blogger.c:1543: warning: 'blogger_callback' defined but not used
blogger.c:124: warning: 'blogger_delete_post' declared `static' but never defined
blogger.c:413: warning: 'show_generic_editor' defined but not used
blogger.c:476: warning: 'window_close_cb' defined but not used
blogger.c:482: warning: 'edit_post_destroy_cb' defined but not used
blogger.c:489: warning: 'edit_post_send_cb' defined but not used
blogger.c:566: warning: 'show_post_contents' defined but not used
blogger.c:1026: warning: 'blogger_delete_post' defined but not used
blogger.c:2001: warning: 'init_plugin' defined but not used

etc. etc. etc. I'M wondering if I managed to download the development version... or the crap or trash version... regardless... I don't think a person like me should continue this... it will just hurt more in the end... the reason I'm doing this is because Firefox stopped working ... now it's just behaving erratically (could have been FF that got us the corner-plus cursor/mouse pointer before... it was involved in restart # 1 for the day as well...) oh and Konqueror is not compatible the least with blogger.

Nah, there's gotta be a better way to do this!

Well, this is a neat trick I'd like to share with you all (okay I'm printing it here in order to make it less possible I fuck up again...)

This is what I did to make it impossible to log on to MySql with anything else than the:

$ mysql -u .... -p

thingy. I went to the /etc/hosts file and changed the

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain

to

127.0.0.1 somename localhost

that made MySql go postal on every single login attempt I made. It said, it couldn't logon root@somename.

Did I know what I was doing when I did this change? Not the least. It was actually part of another attempt to make some software work. The problem was that no change at all appeared until I restarted the system, that was when all hell broke lose. (Well not litterally, all that really happened was that MySql broke, then ofcourse an already existing problem with the fonts -- i'll make a post sooner or later -- became really nasty when OpenOffice.org became unreadable... I mean the silly app used dingbats or whatever for system font... but more about that elsewhere!)

So, anyway, don't do that one at home, kids!

The iptables firewall doesn't start up as it should after it is stopped:

[root@c-803070d5 root]# /etc/init.d/iptables stop
Resetting built-in chains to the default ACCEPT policy:         [  OK  ]
[root@c-803070d5 root]# /etc/init.d/iptables start

Further more the firewall is not represented as being up and running in the services list (Star > System > Config > Configure your system, system > services) in mandrake control panel.

However. The firewall DOES work unless it is stopped. Strrraange...

This is another problem I have. My webcam doesn't work under Linux (Mandrake 10.0). It does under Windows.

Somewhere I picked up I had a Philip's chip in the cam and then I got to this URL giving me really alerting news: http://www.smcc.demon.nl/webcam/

It turns out, however, not only Linux developers are to blame here, since a take at the problem from the Mac OSX people give at the hand, Philips also has a part in the problem. (Why do hardware developer hide their spec.? Shouldn't it be desirable to produce products that work in as many situations as possible?)

I've also managed to determine that the chipset for the pd1000 (a webcam 5 camera) is SAA8116HL from Philips.

I'll examine this further!

The first time I installed Mandrake 10.0 linux it got my printing (on a Samsung ML-1710P) up and running (with a few irritating nags in the system; if I print before the printer is really up and running -- stops making sounds -- the printing crashes and I have to go into the printing setup -- see below -- and go through the config wizard to get it up and running again). Then, when I had to change my motherboard (and processor) due to some problems (I may describe these later on... if I get agitated enough) the printing was no more.

Windows managed to get the printing up and running (but that was only after I had to reinstall the whole OS, something I didn't have to do in Linux everytime I change motherboard or processor).

Long story short. I tried to reinstall the printer (next time I'll do it I'll edit and put info on how, here -- try the setup described here) and I tried to set it up in the Mandrake control panel (Star > System > Configuration > Configure your computer, then select hardware > printers for the printing wizard), I even tried to setup what little could be set up in CUPS.

Nothing resulted in any change, so in a throw of my usual, "what the hell, nothing can get worse, right?" I shut the system down, put in the original Mandrake 10.0 install discs and performed an update (note: that's update, not install).

After rebooting -- so far -- the printing works again! However the update does create some other annoyances, such that your RPM media has been reset to use CDs (I had it set to use an ftp site for core RPM packages), but part from that it seems that printing is up and running.

Update 2005-03-04:
This is how I've solved this issue for now: When I start the printer I always let it warm up, all the way until it goes silent, before I start printing. I cannot stop a printout in the middle or printing will stop working again. If it does, at least under Mandrake 10.1 I'm able to restart the whole system and get printing back up and running. Is this crappy? Yeah it is.... but I get my printouts and that's always something.