Ubuntu Facepalm

I did something totally stupid yesterday afternoon. For those of you that saw the Tweet about it, here’s the full story.

A year or so ago after my new x64 monster was up and running I decided to take my old XP desktop with just 512MB of RAM and have it dual boot XP and Ubuntu. I kept XP running on that computer since I’d yet to figure out how to do a bunch of things in Ubuntu that I needed the computer to do. The three main items were using my D-Link DWA-130 WiFi N USB adapter, reading from and writing to my Sony PRS-500 eBook, and run my (15 year-old but still perfectly functional) HP ScanJet 4c SCSI scanner. Eventually, I accomplished all three of these tasks via ndiswrapper, Calibre, and xSane accordingly.

Having finally accomplished this I decided to sit down yesterday and start to move from a dual-boot to a single-boot Ubuntu desktop. The plan was to take the single 40GB drive and expand it via something like GParted to overwrite the XP installation. So, I made sure to copy all my documents off the XP side of things onto a backup drive on the network. I then realized that the desktop also had a 120GB secondary drive which I’d completely forgotten about since Ubuntu never saw it. So, I backed up that data too.

I then started looking at what software was left on the XP side of things and notice that this was the only computer I owned that would still run the Sony Reader software. Now, I’d pretty much replaced this software with Calibre, but Sony’s software was the only was to access the Sony eBook store. I don’t buy much at all from them but they occasionally have free eBooks that I’m interested in so I decided that this was software was worth keeping. (All my other computers are x64 and the Sony software won’t even install on x64 platforms.)

The new plan was to uninstall just about everything from XP and strip it down to the smallest possible footprint and then shrink the partition and have Ubuntu take over the rest of that drive and the secondary drive. So, off to Add/Remove Programs I went.

DIVX, uninstalled. Office, uninstalled. Codec packages, uninstalled. Games, uninstalled. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Ubuntu… What? Oh, right. You can also install Ubuntu as a Windows application via Wubi. This allows you to boot to Ubuntu but it’s still technically a Windows app that you can uninstall without having to deal with boot loaders and partitions. Well, I must have forgotten that and it’s taking up 7 gig of my 40 gig hard drive so… uninstalled.

Empty the recycle bin. Scandisk. Defrag. All done. Reboot. Select Ubuntu from boot menu and…

Winnt_root\System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

Ok. Don’t panic. Let’s search and see if there’s something I can do about this. Well, according to Microsoft I need to repair XP. Try rebooting into XP. XP boots fine. XP isn’t the problem.

OK, let’s check the boot loader. Well, the entry for Ubuntu is pointing to c:\ubuntu\winboot\wubildr.mbr. But the ubuntu directory is now gone since I uninstalled the wubi-based Ubuntu installation. ARGH!!!

What I’d forgotten was the my Ubuntu installation was wubi-based all along. What' I’d uninstalled was the only Ubuntu installation on the computer. It was gone and it was completely my fault.

So, after feeling completely stupid through dinner I reinstalled Ubuntu off a downloaded .iso onto the secondary hard drive. Now I’ve got plenty of space and it still dual boots but with the grub boot loader instead of the Windows/wubi combination.

What did I loose? A lot of free eBooks and all the hand entered metadata that went along with them. So, nothing crucial except maybe for some of my geek pride.

Linux trials and errors

So, I'm currently in the middle of two Linux-based projects. One is going well, the other, not so much.

Project #1:

Two weekends ago my Cloudbook offered to update itself to the new version of Ubuntu (which the included gOS is based on). I ran that update and after several hours I was told I needed to reboot to finish. It was at this point that the touchpad and keyboard were unresponsive. The power button was equally unresponsive. So, I pulled the battery and turned it back on. All I got was a memory test. Seems that reboot was needed to tell the computer that there was actually an OS on the drive.

Today I finally got my hands on an external CD/DVD drive and went to install Ubuntu 8.04 from scratch totally erasing gOS. (I'd been meaning to try that anyway.) Well, the install CD runs and gets just so far then I get the amazingly colored flickering screen. Seems it doesn't like the video driver or something. So, I'm now downloading the ISO of the original gOS install and going to try restoring to factory just to get it up and running. (Really, I'm not complaining, this is a learning experience now.) Anyone want to suggest a good Linux distro other than Ubuntu?

Project #2:

For about a year now I've kept my Vista laptop hooked up in the living room connected to my HDTV. This has been great for watching TV and Video podcasts but there are some down sides. First, I'm running the laptop in dual-screen mode so as to not have to watch something on both the TV and the laptop's monitor. Unfortunately, this causes some programs to run on the laptop screen and need to be dragged to the TV. From the sofa, this isn't always an easy thing to do. Second, the laptop's drive is quite full so I can't put much on it at one time. Third, networking between XP (my base machine in the basement running BitTorrent) and Vista (the laptop) isn't as reliable as I'd like so transferring from one machine to the other usually involved sneakernet. In the end, I've been meaning to buy a box just to hook to the TV. Last night, I hit on an idea.

I've got an old beige box from 2000. For years it ran Windows NT4 very reliably but I didn't hook it back up when I moved to Nebraska a little over a year ago. Hmm. I keep telling people that Linux will run well on old hardware, let me prove it. Install Ubuntu 8.04 I did. It runs, but a smidge slowly on this box. The specs? 233MHz, 96MB RAM, 10GB hard drive. Yep, top of the line eight years ago.

So, Ubuntu runs and Web surfing is fine but video's going to need a little more behind it. I've ordered a 200GB hard drive, another 256MB RAM (the motherboard will only handle 3x128 max) and a wireless card for the networking. Grand total, just under $100.

Once the parts arrive the plan is to install them, get it to talk to my Windows workgroup, and install the USB Bluetooth dongle for my wireless keyboard. Assuming all goes well, I should have a Linux-based media box in my living room within a week or two.

I'll keep you posted on both projects as events warrant.

Open Office 2007 Documents in OpenOffice

I don't use OpenOffice much but it comes installed on the Cloudbook so I think I'm going to start. (Though I also plan on using Google Docs a lot more too.) Anyway, since most of my current files are in Office 2007 format I was concerned about moving between the two programs. Well, a solution is now available: the Open XML Translator.

Expand OpenOffice.org's document opening, saving, and conversion powers to Office 2007 documents with the Open XML Translator, a free plug-in intended for Ubuntu systems.

lifehacker also says that "conversion from Microsoft Office-authored files remains hit-and-miss, but it's a nice step forward for the free and open-source office suite." I'll have to give it a test when I get my Cloudbook.

(Oh, and I'm officially declaring this my blog post for Thing #7: Blog about anything dealing with technology.)

I'm gettin' me a Cloudbook

Yesterday I broke down and decided to use a small portion of my recent larger-than-expected royalty check and ordered a Cloudbook. This UMPC is only available online at ZaReason and, get this, WalMart. (Yes, you'll be able to purchase these off the shelf in WalMart. I ordered mine from ZaReason.) Here's what you get for just $399:

• 1.2 GHz
• VIA C7-M Processor ULV
• 512 MB DDR 533MHz
  (expandable to 1GB)
• SDRAM
• 30 GB Hard Disk Drive
• 7" WVGA TFT Display (800x480)
• VIA UniChrome Pro IGP Graphics
• VIA High-Definition Audio
• WiFi 802.11 b/g
• (1) 10/100 Ethernet Port
• (1) DVI-I Port
• (2) USB 2.0 Ports
• (1) 4-in-1 Media Card Reader
• (1) 1.3 Megapixel Webcam
  (commonly misreported as "0.3")
• (1) Headphone / Line-Out Port
• (1) Microphone / Line-In Port
• (1) Set of Stereo Speakers
• (1) Touchpad
• (1) 4-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery
• Software: gOS, Mozilla Firefox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Wikipedia, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xing Movie Player, RythemBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3 (includes WRITER, IMPRESS, DRAW, CALC, BASE)

Yes, I know that some of that "software" isn't software. The point is that there's one-click access to those services via the Mac-esque dock at the bottom of the screen.

I also considered an EeePC but decided that for the same price I'd rather have a 30GB hard drive rather than a 4GB solid state drive, a 5-hour battery instead of a 3-hour one and an adult-sized beyboard. I've been playing with the Ubuntu-based gOS and I've got to say I'm liking it so my intention is to keep it running Linux and soo how it goes. (It will run Vista should a user choose to install it.) Having no optical drive will be interesting but there are other ways to get movies onto it which then saves me from having to bring discs on a trip. (I could always plug in an external USB opti-drive if I get desperate.)

Oh, and they've already sold out. Of course, complete unboxing photos will be posted when it arrives sometime around the 18th. (It comes out on the 15th but I only paid for UPS ground shipping.) I will be bringing it with me to CiL so those there can corner me for a demo.

Librarians, Ubuntu and Digg

Typically I would bypass Digg and link you directly to the story but in this situation, Digg is part of the story. Turns out that one library has decided to switch to Linux now that support for Windows98 is gone and had heard about Ubuntu Linux on Digg. What suprises some Digg users is that librarians read digg. Check out both the story (assuming you can get the link to work due to the Digg effect,) but also check out the Digg comments. (On person even linked to Jessamyn's video on YouTube.) Let's all defend ourselves.

Jessamyn insalls Ubuntu

I've blogged about my Ubuntu experiences previously and if I wasn't so tied to MS software for work, I'd be running it myself. However, if you're still wondering how easy it is to install and use, check out Jessamyn's fun video on installing Ubuntu in a rural Vermont library.

HTML-Kit in Ubuntu

HTML-Kit in Ubuntu
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.

Woo hoo! I got my first piece of Windows-only software to run under Linux using Wine. I'm very proud of myself right now. Though there are those hours of my life I'll never get back...