Archives for January, 2005
VAIO and XP Service Pack 2
Apparently there are some issues with VAIOs and Service Pack 2. In fact, unless you download the Service Pack after you’ve installed the necessary drivers, you won’t be able to install them. This was the case when I tried to install a retail copy, the real deal, Windows XP Professional with SP2 included. Everything installed fine until it came time to install my VAIO drivers to give me a normal screen instead of the 640 x 480 default install screen. The drivers kept erroring and telling me they weren’t designed for that version of Windows. The only thing I found on Sony’s site were updates they required prior to installing SP2. Those were no help to me because my Windows came with it.
I decided to try another (non-SP2) version of Windows XP Pro and all went smoothly. I got everything installed and now, my wife can have her computer back. 
SuSE got nowhere
For some reason, my system didn’t like SuSE as it halted almost 2 minutes into the install at the same point as many other people. While initializing it halted at int.14.
I’ve given up on SuSE since no one has replied to the other people having this same issue.
I’ll try this again later. Perhaps by then I’ll have a different notebook as well.
SuSE on VAIO
I downloaded the boot.iso to make the boot disk for my notebook and everything went as planned. When I booted into the boot disk, things were definitely different than Fedora. In fact, the options are as intuitive as I expected and sometimes you just don’t know what to do next. Luckily I located a guide on the web outlining the steps for SuSE net install. The only thing out of the ordinary was that I had to load the network module myself. I’m glad I wrote down that information before starting any of this. I tried this and figured it would be a while, so I went and grabbed a bite to eat. When I came back, the only thing on the screen was a clock with the hands spinning. I figured this meant progress, but the guide mentioned nothing of it. After about 10 minutes of this, I noticed there had been no HDD activity, so I rebooted and tried the process again. This time I don’t think it got that far before it stopped.
Now, I downloading the DVD iso in hopes that perhaps it is a networking issue I am having here. Fortunately, the iso is available at ops.tamu.edu, about 80 miles from my house, which makes for a speedy download.
Fedora Core 3 Wifi - no go.
After playing with the card and configurations for about 2 hours, I gave up. I know. I’m not supposed to do that, but it was very frustrating. I decided that perhaps Fedora isn’t the way to go. I’ll try some other distros to see how they do.
Linux installed
Linux installed easily on my VAIO notebook, but I have found it very difficult to configure my Wifi card to use WEP. The network config has labeled 3 devices: eth0, eth1, and wifi0. Technically, this notebook does have an ethernet port on the dock and the computer itself, plus the PCMCIA wifi card. However, I cannot figure out why in some configuration screens, it lists the Aironet 350 Series (my wifi card) as eth1, with no wifi0 to be found. I’m doing a large RH update so I’ll pick up on this later.
Installing Fedora Core 3 over HTTP
After a disappointing Windows install process, I decided to give installing Fedora Core 3 over HTTP a try. First of all, I’ll explain my scenario. I have a Sony VAIO notebook with a docking station that holds the CDRW/DVD drive. The notebook interfaces with the dock via IEEE1394. Most linux distributions don’t load these drivers until further into the install process, so installing via CD seemed a bust. I’ve just started this process, so it make take a while. Here are three things I have just learned so far:
Using a Linux Boot ISO (necessary for network install) also loaded necessary drivers for possible CD/DVD install first thing. This makes me wonder if I have been this close all of this time.
Installing over HTTP requires a ton of downloading right up front. (approx. 8 minutes before Anaconda started up)
Wifi support has come along way. My wifi card was detected immediately.
mod_mono rpm for Apache
This welcomed module for Apache completes the .NET circle for Linux. Installing Mono, the compiler and runtime for .NET is presumed to be the hard part, but once that is done, install this rpm for apache and shazamm! You are running ASP.NET through Apache. Here is a reference article discussing the install of this module as well as connecting ASP.NET to MySQL and some handy information about XSP, a little webserver (ASP.NET capable) that mod_mono installs for itself.
Netflix, what happened?
Is it me or is Netflix dragging arse lately? They typically get a new movie to you within three days of mailing off the last one. Now I’m lucky to get the movie by their estimated arrival time. This is not good since the only reason I chose them over Blockbuster was turn around time. If this continues, Blockbuster could be back in the running for my business.
Adding Search Engines to Firefox
Some of you may have noticed the little search box in the upper right side of Firefox. By default this is set to Google and has the little G icon. If you click on the arrow, you’ll notice several other search engines listed and at the very bottom, Add Engines… Clicking on Add Engines will take you to a mozilla page with many choices to add. Unlike other preferences for firefox, search engines are not stored in a file called user.js or prefs.js. The javascript addEngine() function stores them in the program directory for Firefox.
Fedora: /usr/lib/firefox/searchplugins/ Windows: C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxsearchplugins
In order to add search engines, you’ll need to have write access to this searchplugins directory on your system. In most cases, Windows users will have no difficulty doing this, but Linux users will find that by default, root is the only user with write access to this directory. There are three basic options at this point, each varying by security preference. Most secure would be to have root add any search engines for you. Next you could have yourself added to the root group and have root chmod -R 775 /usr/lib/firefox/searchplugins. Last and least secure, you could have root give everyone write access to that directory using chmod -R 777 /usr/lib/firefox/searchplugins. Since this is not something you’ll need to do often, I recommend having root add all search engines and leave your directory permissions as they are.
Hopefully, this will be something they change in future updates of Firefox because it is never good to have your filesystem writeable by client-side javascript. These leaves the browser open to any malicious code dumping files into this directory. I guess, we’ll see if they decide to adjust this to store the values in the Firefox profile directory.
Cybershot DSC-F1 and Linux
After having issues with my DSC-F1 digital camera, which uses a serial cable for transfer, and Windows, I decided to try my luck with Linux. I was beginning to think my camera was a goner since it stopped working under Windows, but much to my surprise, I located a small program called stillgrab. Stillgrab is a very simple command line application for grabbing photos from the DSC-F1 in PMP format and dumping them onto the hard drive in JPG format. Once I figured out which COM port my digicam was on, the program was off and running. It pulled 9 photos from the camera before failing. While searching for some answers, I ran across another application called chotplay, a japanese photo retrieval program. I haven’t tried this program yet, but I’ll be looking into it today.
On another note, tired of dealing with the serial connection, I decided to order a USB-to-Serial cable to see how well the camera will behave going through the different BUS. Of course, this is all assuming that the issue is more a communication problem through the COM port and not a problem with the camera. I’ll post more detail later.
Rio Mp3 Players and Linux
I played with this in the past, but was unsuccessful. This time however, with a newer version and more Linux experience under my belt, I was able to get this working. Using an application called rioutil, a sourceforge project, I was able to interact with my Rio Chiba portable Mp3 player. By interact, I mean I was able to list the songs currently on my player and successfully upload 5 more songs. Though this application uses a command line interface, it doesn’t require that many options. Since it is a fairly simple program, creating a webbased front-end shouldn’t be that difficult. I could also get more guts and attempt to write something in GTK or something. We’ll see. Screenshot of song list.
DVD Authoring for Linux
DVD Authoring in Linux is nowhere near as far as most Windows Apps. I think this is just because these are mainly written by small groups and individuals. So far the best tool (by appearance alone) appears to be dvdauthor. This application is a backend app used for creating DVDs in Linux. There are several front-end available for this app and they all look promising. Find out more about dvdauthor.