8thString

Work in progress!!! I have been pretty intrigued with Arch Linux for sometime. I have read numerous times in Distrowatch forum that this distribution can easily replace Ubuntu and that Ubuntu actually makes the name of Linux bad. It is touted by most that it is one of those real Linux, in the same ranks as Debian or Gentoo. My recent experience with Ubuntu 11.10 and Linux Mint 12 on VirtualBox were not good to put it mildly. Now I am in quest for the best Linux distro that can be installed on VirtualBox. By the way, Ubuntu 11.10 works like charm on VMware ESXi 5.0. Should I just dump VirtualBox? Maybe not just yet. With VirtualBox, I can run it on Windows and Linux and still be productive. With VMware ESXi, I need to dedicate a machine for that. I do have 5 boxes running VMware ESXi for software testing but I do need access to Windows on my work laptop. I can also move to VMware Workstation but I have higher hopes for VirtualBox as it is developed at a much faster pace. Plu...

Is it just me or GNOME 3 based distributions are getting buggy? I have tried Ubuntu 11.10, Linux Mint 12, Fedora 15 (I should update to Fedora 16 soon), but I can't help but complain about the performance of this latest distributions virtualized using VirtualBox. Or is VirtualBox that's getting really buggy??? :( Ubuntu 11.10 feels really slow, clicking on an application using Unity takes forever to bring up the applications main GUI (even gedit is slow). Linux Mint 12 while looks nice but also is problematic. Clicking on Mint Menu shows blank items ... and it only shows up the entries once I wiggle the mouse around. Picture speaks a thousand words, so see below. Figure 1. Mint Menu shows blank on the left side :( Another issue I have observed with Linux Mint 12 is that the menu gets out of sync. So like if select Internet it does not move focus to it. But the items to the right gets updated. Again, see below for a screen capture. Figure 2. Menus are out of syn...

Linux Mint 11 (Katya) was released 2011-05-26. As usual it comes with all the goodies but this time user can download an ISO without all the codecs. Below shows version numbers of the major packages. Release: Linux Mint 11 Code name: Katya Linux: 2.6.38-8-generic GNOME: 2.32.1 X.Org X Server 1.10.1 So here goes how the installation looks like. Figure 1. Boot screen, looks really nice and clean Figure 2. Linux Mint 11 Live CD desktop Figure 3. Install to hard drive, select English as language Figure 4. Preparing for installation Figure 5. Allocate drive space Figure 6. Erase disk and install Mint Figure 7. Select time zone Figure 8. Select keyboard layout Figure 9. Create user Figure 10. Install complete, ready to reboot Figure 11. Login screen Figure 12. Linux Mint 11 desktop

To get X Org servers version from command line, do: Xorg -version Sample output from the command above looks like this: X.Org X Server 1.7.7 Release Date: 2010-05-04 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.32.29-dsa-ia32 i686 Debian Current Operating System: Linux deb6 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Mon Jun 13 04:13:06 UTC 2011 i686 Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686 root=UUID=6df69de5-fdf6-4729-a83b-c56fb0d8af3f ro quiet Build Date: 19 February 2011  02:37:36PM xorg-server 2:1.7.7-13 (Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org>) Current version of pixman: 0.16.4 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. Tags: X Server, X Window, version, command line, console, cli

With Ubuntu 11.10 Unity requiring lots of resources both in CPU and memory, I embarked on installing a trimmed down version of it using alternate install. This used to be straight forward, follow the text based wizard and you are ready to go. The problem is that after installation, on reboot it shows a blank screen. Just nothing... (except for the blinking cursor). This might be specific to VirtualBox guest machines but I can't verify this. Anyway, it took me a while to figure this one out (of course with the help of Google). The following, from  Ubuntu's bug repository Launchpad, shows the problem: Ubuntu 11.10 Command line only installation fails over and over again http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1873069 grub2 configuration has vt.handoff=7 even when X11 is not installed https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/695658 Command-line Install on Minimal CD tries to boot graphically https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/831752 ...

Linux is moving in such a fast pace that I can't keep up playing around with the latest and greatest. Ubuntu 11.04 was released long time ago (in internet time) but I am keeping installation screen capture here for posterity. Release: Ubuntu 11.04 Code name: Natty Narwhal Kernel: 2.6.38-10 GNOME: 2.32.1 So here goes the screen captures. Figure 1. Select language Figure 2. Preparing to install Ubuntu Figure 3. Allocate drive space Figure 4. Erase disk and install Ubuntu Figure 5. Timezone Figure 6. Keyboard layout Figure 7. Set user Figure 8. Installation complete, reboot Figure 9. Login screen Figure 10. DASH 

This is a log of free anti-virus that I have used that failed to protect Windows computers so far. Do note that non-free "expensive" ones can also fail. I have witnessed this firsthand in the office where a zero day exploit rendered our network almost useless. Anyway, this does not necessarily mean that below are lackluster products, it is just that it did fail me one time or another. List is listed based on chronological order, oldest listed first: 1) AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition - this was my all time favorite but failed me way back in 2010. 2) Microsoft Security Essentials - last week (second week of Nov 2011), one of our home computers was infected by a virus. Got to recover the entire system. Experimenting with the following for now, see if it does protect a Windows XP PC: - Avast Free Anti-virus (Program version: 6.0.1289)

We have a pretty much old, by today's standard, Sony VAIO VGN-N110G running on Windows XP. This machine was hit hard by a virus and MS Security Essentials was not doing its job. Not sure if Security Essentials is a good anti-virus but I am using it anyway (hey it is free). The virus was pretty smart and distructive. Though the data files were not deleted but it did  delete the menu entries in Windows leaving it almost unsable. Initial impression of the virus was that it hides all files making you believe that everything was gone. It even offers a solution, like buy an anti-virus. Anyway, as I mentioned above, I did try to do full scan using MS Security Essentials, it was able to identify several and it did mention that the virus was removed. But the system was still unusable after the anti-virus cleanup exercise. So I tried to fire-up VAIO recovery to no avail. It says it cannot find the restore drive. It was really getting so bad. Rebooting into safe mode does not help. So t...

I have been trying to keep a log of the *nix distribution I am using. Mostly I take screen captures and post them as blog post. I have been slacking lately due to personal commitments. Anyway, so here goes Fedora 15 (released May 24, 2011). Boot screen GNOME 3 failed to load on VirtualBox Install to Hard Drive Keyboard selection Type of store device Confirm to wipe disk Set computer hostname Set time zone info Set root account password Storage allocation, use all space Install complete Welcome to Fedora License agreement Create user Set date and time Hardware profile Login screen Class GNOME menu Fedora 15 major software versions kernel: 2.6.40 GNOME: 3.0.1 Firefox: 6.0

I have been using VirtualBox for awhile now but I mostly use Windows as the host machine. I just had setup few Linux boxes as VirtualBox host and found a need to save files in the host as I normally do snapshots and clean 'em up. Mounting a shared folder is easy, what caught me was that I can't change ownership of the folder created under the shared folders. So my regular user account can't create files. I realized that mount actually accepts options as to who would have access to the mounted folder, so to mount with read/write access to a user, do: sudo mount -t vboxsf -o rw,uid=1000 userdat /mnt/userdat Where: uid=1000 is the user ID of the user. For example, I have a user named timus, to get the ID, you can do: timus@ubu1110:~$ cat /etc/passwd | grep timus timus:x: 1000:1000 :timus,,,:/home/timus:/bin/bash As can be seen, timus uid is 1000 and group ID is 1000 as well. userdat is the VirtualBox shared folder name. /mnt/userdat is the mount point Key...