Home Linux For The Rest Of Us Linux For The Rest Of Us #139 – Emails and Voicemails

Linux For The Rest Of Us #139 – Emails and Voicemails

Jul 26, 2013Linux For The Rest Of UsComments Off on Linux For The Rest Of Us #139 – Emails and Voicemails

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A Linux podcast for anyone even remotely interested in Linux!

With the DoorToDoorGeek aka Steve McLaughlin and Cody Cooper

Episode 139 Show Notes

E-Mails

Matthew Gardiner writes:

Every single Linux podcast I listen to has had email, or callers baffled by dual booting, managing partitions, and every solution I have heard has been overly complicated. I seem to remember Cody saying he actually moves the SATA cable to the drive he wants to boot from. While that works, there is an easier way to accomplish this, and the end result is much less pet hair on your motherboard…

The first thing to do on a new install is replace grub2 with grub legacy. Remember Grub Legacy? It was simple, configurable, and did the job. Grub 2 is like Gnome 3 – it solves a problem that never existed…but I digress…

Grub legacy, along with the SuperGrub Boot disc, allows you to not only chose your default boot partition, but have grub on ALL partitions in case one goes south. When you boot from the SuperGrub Boot disc, you can change the default boot partition on the fly, and the change sticks until you change it. If you have Windows as well, you never have to worry about breaking the ever so fragile MBR if you use these two tools. I PENTA-boot, running Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Puppy Linux, Windows 7, and “Linux Flavor of the month”. I have been doing this since 2006, and through countless upgrades, reinstalls, and trying distros on my 3rd hard drive, the bootloader has never been lost nor broken. I even changed computers back in March of last year, and kept all my distros in tact on my desktop. This March I got a new laptop, and did the same thing.

Creating partitions is a cakewalk using a single tool that you already have: gparted. For a fresh install, simply partition the disk from the live CD before you begin the install, and set the bootloader to run from the root partition of the distro you are installing. Then use the super grub boot CD to boot from the new install. Then remove grub2, and reinstall grub legacy. Boot again from the older super grub CD (the one made for grub legacy), and you can change the boot partition to default to the new distro’s location. If Windows is on the system, it leaves the MBR untouched, and Windows will be in the grub menu as well, chainloading to the Windows loader.

If you need to change the drive or partition location of Windows or Linux, or move either to a larger or smaller drive or partition, there is an INFINITELY easier way to do it than fiddling with the DD command or Clonezilla, both of which can lead to disaster if you are not careful or familiar with them. Again, gparted to the rescue! Simply click the partition you are going to move, then either right click or select from the menu button the option “copy”. Then navigate to the new drive/partition and select “paste”. This will byte-copy the entire drive to the new drive or partition, and you can even resize it before you apply! It EVEN gives it the same UUID, so grub will work without error, assuming you are using UUID in lieu of sda1, etc. to identify your partitions. If you are then inclined to keep both installs, you can use tune2fs to assign a new UUID to the old partition, then copy/paste it into the grub menu so you can boot off of either. I have used this so I can have 2 identical installs of Ubuntu, then beat the snot out of one of them, testing all kinds of crazy things until I break it, and I have also used it to make a backup copy of a perfectly tweaked system to a fresh hard drive. The possibilities are endless. I have attached the commands to revert to grub legacy from a post I found when Grub2 came out several years ago.

Sorry this took so long to send to you.

Keep up the awesome work!

Matthew

Reverting to GRUB Legacy

If a user chooses to return to GRUB legacy (0.97), these steps will remove GRUB 2 and install GRUB.

The command line produces a cleaner uninstall and reinstallation. While adding and removing the packages can be accomplished with Synaptic, certain steps must be accomplished in a terminal.

1. Open a terminal: Applications, Accessories, Terminal.

2. Make backup copies of the main GRUB 2 folders & files. (Optional)

* sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.old

* sudo cp -R /etc/grub.d /etc/grub.d.old

* sudo cp -R /boot/grub /boot/grub.old

3. Remove GRUB 2

* sudo apt-get purge grub2 grub-pc

* The system will be unbootable until another bootloader is installed.

* Once the packages are removed, many files will still remain in ‘/boot/grub’

4. Install GRUB 0.97

* sudo apt-get install grub

5. With grub installed, the user must still create the menu.lst and stage1/stage2 files by running the following two commands.

1. sudo grub-install /dev/sdX

* Choose the correct device (sda, sdb, etc), normally the one on which Ubuntu is installed.

* Creates the stage1 & stage2 files in /boot/grub and writes to the MBR.

2. sudo update-grub

* Generates menu.lst

o Tab to “Yes” when prompted.

Run this command to keep it from upgrading automatically:

echo “grub hold” | sudo dpkg –set-selections

# Reboot

^^^^ Gag – http ://gag .sourceforge .net /

thank you sir

Ray Woods writes:

Hi Guys,

I know you don’t get paid for this service you provide to the Linux World but, were you referring to any specific Friday? The last edition was published on June 26th and today is July 10th!

Hey Guys, I’m starting to twitch; I’ve got withdrawal symptoms BAD man!

My fingers twitch every time I click on to the Linux For The Rest Of Us short cut.

I know its hard work Guys but we’re suffering out here.

Hope to hear you all again soon. Hope everything is okay.

Ray

Ken Westby writes:

Hi Door and Cody,

I have a Lexmark printer, my friend has a Brother. One of the major frustrations with Linux Mint is getting our printers to actually print something. My Lexmark driver will install properly, but it will not actually print anything. It says “printing cancelled” after I send something to the printer. My friends printer driver acts like it installed, but then you can’t find it afterwards. Can you give us some hints as to how in the world to get printers to actually work in Linux Mint? Not being able to print is keeping both of us from throwing away Windows altogether. Very frustrating!

Love listening to the show! Keep up the good work,

Ken Westby

Sequim, Washington (pronounced skwim)

OpenSuse – http ://software .opensuse .org /123/en

OpenSuse Auto Printer Configuration – http ://en .opensuse .org /YaST _Printer #Automated _Printer _Configuration

Open Printing Database – http ://www .openprinting .org /printers

Ric Crouch writes:

Lately I’ve gotten my 10-yr-old daughter interested in programming by having her learn Scratch (which I discovered on my Raspberry Pi when I set it up). She has been using my wife’s Windows Vista (ugh!) laptop and a 10-yr-old XP laptop.

Today I set her up on Linux Mint on a 5-yr old Athlon64 desktop that was gathering dust. She loves it! She said, “It’s so FAST!” And it is. I was really surprised by the performance of this dinosaur of a desktop.

Rock on, Linux….

Ric

PS: Next challenge–try Mint on the ancient laptop and see if IT can be brought back from the trash heap!

Jackson Wright writes:

Hey Cody and Door,

I’ve been distro hopping a bit lately, but I’ve ran into a snag. When I’m using an independent distro or even some debian based distros, I am having trouble finding packages. There are some go to packages that I used to use on Ubuntu, but I can’t find them on debian or independent based distros. I’ve tried installing the ubuntu software center, but there is no install button on a lot of the programs I find.

When I try to use apt-get, I get an error message saying there is no installation candidate. The way I understand it, I need to add the ubuntu repositories in order to have access to all the software. How do I go about doing that?

I appreciate the help and love the show,

Jackson

Ashley Anderson writes:

Hey guys, its been a while since I sent you guys some mail. Things are going well down here in the Atlanta area. Hope all is well in your corners of the USofA. I caught the in show reference about 5 shows back, where you said my name, cool cool, I appreciate it; makes me feel a part of the community.

I saw on G+ that Door went to Disney. I was there about 2 weeks after he was. Door, I gota say if you walked around that hot place all day, all week, then you are a better man than I! I did one full day from 8 am until 12 am, and it was HOT, with a capital H!!!! I was doing it for the kids, but I have never been so happy to buy those expensive bottles of water, in my life. Not sure I could have gone as much as door, so for that Sir I salute you.

Okay on to my linux stuff now. So I wanted to see what you guys thought about some linux distros. I have a Gateway/Acer Netbook with 2GB RAM (MAX), Intel Atom N2600, and 30GB SSD. I currently had ubuntu 12.04 64bit installed, and it was pretty good. It booted in 14 seconds, and shut down in 3 seconds. In my interest in finding something that was leaner that Ubuntu, I have embarked on a new distro quest.

My needs are really something that is stable, fast, large number of aval apps. I will NOT be using this for work, but rather when around the house. I use this toy for when I need to look something up, or just playing on my netbook, I wanted something that has a big enough community that I could find the support I need, but light enough to be fast on this netbook. While I like niche distros such as puppylinux, its harder that I like to find the software I want (Been there done that). So, I wanted to go with something I figured had a larger user base.

I have been courting Crunchbang (#!), Linux Mint, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu. #! just does not offer the experience I like, to minimalist.

I’m testing out the later 3 now. Hoping to find a balance that suits my needs. I wanted to try to stay away from any distro that is downstream from ubuntu due to all the significant system changes that are on going in that distro ATM. Was thinking of going to a Debian based distro…. (Funny the 3 distros I just mentioned I am testing are all buntu based, SMH ….)

So finally I will get to the point, what do you guys think would be a good distro to use on the netbook? I know there is no 100% answer to my question, however I did want to see what you guys as well as the community thought. It seems that a lot of good distros are going more towards the full desktop (or Tablet editions), and not so much the netbook platforms (IE: Ubuntu dropping netbook edition after 10.10).

Okay gents, I appreciate your time, love the show more than ever. Keep up the great work @ podnutz.

This is “2012 Mother of the year” Ashley signing off

LOL sorry I could not resist.

Later dudes

Ashley

Debian Minimal – http ://www .debian .org /CD /netinst /

Ubuntu Minimal – https ://help .ubuntu .com /community /Installation /MinimalCD

Manjaro – http ://manjaro .org /

Voicemail – Paul

WineDoors – http ://sourceforge .net /projects /winedoors /

WineHQ – http ://www .winehq .org /

PlayOnLinux – http ://www .playonlinux .com /en /

Piotr Bukeweicz writes:

Hiya Door & SuperCoop! What’s shakin’?

It is I, your favorite unpronouncably-named Polak!

So recently my aging Acer Aspire laptop got crippled (again) when the trackpad buttons seemed to go haywire. I noticed some bugginess when navigation chrough chromium as if buttons were being clicked that I wasn’t clicking. Using xev from the a terminal window i discovered one of the buttons was acting as if it was being mashed, i.e. constant input.

I disasembled it and after finding what looked like corrosion from previous owner’s liquid spill damage, I just pulled the trackpad cable from the motherboard and booted her up again. Suffice to say I got no more problems (and incientally I’m not seeing the overheating issue I was having before) but I got no mouse.

I could spend $30 on replacing the trackpad or just plug in a USB mouse but well then I’d lose out on a challenge: going mousless!

I’ve always loved the customizability and ease of use of keyboard shortcuts, but I find this an interesting way to force me to learn how to use Linux in a bit of a different way than I would by default.

I was wondering if you guys would share your favorite habits for using keyboard shortcuts to get stuff done in Linux and If you could ask your audience for their tips as well.

It hasn’e been all that much of a burden yet, unless I’m trying to tab through webpage links to get the right one to click. Hopefully someone’s got a tip or an application to help out in that regard.

Great show again! Thanks for responding to my earlier feedback and again I raise a glass of Sam Adams Summer Ale for the two of you and your excellent podcast!

Best,

-Piotr-

aka: Spaceman Pete

(*Tip for listeners, unclutter is a great and customizable little application to make the mouse transparent)

VOICEMAILS

Knightwise

Paul Griesbaum

PLUGS

The Server Show – (http://podnutz.com/tss)

Podnutz Daily Plug – (http://podnutz.com/podnutzdaily)

SHOUTOUT of the Week goes to:

(www.theacf.co) – The Accessible Computing Foundation