Darryl E. Clarke

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Archive for the ‘linux’

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Replacing a Live System RAID On The Fly

Published June 26th, 2009 in linux, ubuntu | 2 Comments »

Well, this is one of those crazy fun things that I had to attempt. My old system drive consisted of two 80 GB IDE drives in a mirror configuration. Pretty standard, but they were getting sluggish and I happen to have a few 320GB SATA drives doing nothing.

This is not a tutorial. This is a step by step account of a process I took to replace my disks; This is to be taken only as a suggestion as your configuration and mileage may vary. There may also be a better way of doing this.

So, lo and behold, I plugged them in to my eSATA ports and started rolling over!  For the sake of this exercise the original drives will be sda, sdb. The new drives will be sdc and sdd. The raid device is md0. (more…)

Ubuntu 9.04 on a Dell Latitude D610, Success.

Published May 9th, 2009 in linux, ubuntu | 1 Comment »

I had the joy of recovering data from a busted-ass Windows XP installation.  You know, the one where it blue screens no matter what boot process you try with an error about “kernl32.dll” being screwed? Yeah, one of those.  So, I fired up an Ubuntu live CD to test the hardware and figure out if anything was actually wrong with the laptop – and much to my surprise – everything just worked.

I’ve watched Ubuntu grow over the years and I’ve used it on many machines.  The trickiest has always been cheap laptops.

The specs on this machine are fairly simplistic:

  • Intel Pentium M 1.6Ghz
  • 1255MB of ram (strange, eh?)
  • 40 GB hard disk
  • cheap-o-dell-branded cd-rw/dvd-rom (modular, though)
  • broadcom gigabit ethernet
  • intel wireless
  • bluetooth (dell branded, onboard usb device)
  • standard ac’97 modem, ac’97 audio
  • and a bunch of other fluff.

I’m just really impressed that everything works.  I didn’t have to find any windows drivers, or do anything goofy to get things rolling.  All the function keys (standby, hybernate, wireless, battery status…) work as expected.

Kudos to Ubuntu.

Happy Ubuntu Day (9.04 Released!)

Published April 23rd, 2009 in linux, ubuntu | No Comments »

Today, like clockwork, is the day in which Ubuntu issues another release.

Get your copy via the always legal BitTorrent here.

Happy Ubuntu Day!

Wanda the Fish is Dead

Published April 1st, 2009 in linux, ubuntu | 2 Comments »

dead-wandaLooks like I neglected her too much.

Ubuntu 8.10 (Alpha 6) on my Mac Book Pro

Published September 30th, 2008 in linux, ubuntu | No Comments »

I installed Ubuntu 8.10, Alpha 6 on my Mac Book Pro  (2nd generation) last night to give it a whirl.  I didn’t do anything with bootcamp, just a straight install.  The installer was fine, it went it’s normal route.  When I rebooted it took a while – I guess this is expected when booting an alternate OS.

The fun started when I logged in. What appeared to be a fully working install – wasn’t.  The touchpad was slow and almost non responsive. I boosted the acceleration and  other settings, but to no avail.  It was unusable.

Audio worked, but not the audio out on the side. It didn’t switch over to optical output like it does with Leopard installed.

Dual monitors would only go into mirror mode. Even after I fiddled around with the settings I couldn’t get my desktop spanned across the second display.

It’s sad, but I had to go back to Leopard on the same night because I just don’t have the time to fool around with Ubuntu on my Mac to make it work the way I want it to.

Given that this is still only an Alpha release of Ubuntu I won’t count it out yet for being on my Mac.  Once the proper release comes out, I’ll give it another try.  But until then, Fail.

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