Posts Tagged ‘ubuntu’
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
Debian and its derived distributions have a policy about packages not being able to modify the configuration of other packages. While this might generally seem like a good idea, for the TIMTOWTDI world of Perl, this causes problems.
The problem arises if you have installed Perl XML modules from both CPAN and the Debian (or Ubuntu, or whatever) repositories. Debian’s modifications subtly break the XML::SAX module, on which most Perl XML modules (including the brilliant XML::Simple) depend. If you’ve been naughty and used a module from CPAN, Debian gets its knickers in a knot, and won’t configure or run anything remotely related to libxml-sax-perl.
If you get the error Can’t locate object method “save_parsers_debian” via package “XML::SAX” at /usr/bin/update-perl-sax-parsers line 90, your system is affected. You might get the clue that any of your Perl XML handlers freak out and fail in weird ways.
Here’s a method (there’s always more than one, of course) to fix it. This was combined from a couple of sources, each of which was on the right track but didn’t entirely work. Actually, the first might’ve been right on the money, but my hiragana’s a bit ropey …
- make sure you’ve got your system up to date with
apt-get or aptitude.
sudo cpan CPANPLUS (this will ask you lots of questions, to which you should almost always answer with the default)sudo cpanp -u XML::SAX (this takes quite a while, and produces no output for most of it)LC_ALL=C sudo apt-get install --reinstall libxml-sax-perl (the LC_ALL=C might not be strictly necessary, but it worked for me)
You must remember never to pretend to be smarter than the Debian maintainers, and suitably chastened, may now return to your normal OpenSSH patching activities …
Tags: bug, debian, libxml, perl, sax, snark, ubuntu, xml
Posted in computers suck | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
I did just upgrade my server from the previous version of Ubuntu LTS to 8.04 LTS, and it went without a glitch. I had to edit one config file, and it’s all running smoothly.
Tags: server, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | No Comments »
Saturday, May 10th, 2008
I’m quite happy with Ubuntu. If a user didn’t have to be tied into specific, Windows-only applications, I’d recommend it. It’s stable, fast, intuitive and pretty.
My one annoyance is what the latest release has done to CD/DVD drive naming. In the past, my machine’s first DVD drive was hda. For no reason whatsoever, Ubuntu decide to call it sr0. Similarly, the drive’s name for command-line tools now has a different specification.So all my applications need to be told where the drives are; a pain.
Maybe I’ve been at this too long - I still like to use applications that I can see what’s running in the background, so I use grip over gstreamer (mainly because, unless you’re using lame, I’m not listening to your mp3s), cdrdao over (whatever the young kids are using today to burn gapless audio). At the very least, I would have liked to get a summary of changes when I upgraded Ubuntu. Better still, I’d have liked a list of reasons for the changes. Unless my CD/DVD drive is now faster and more secure, why change?
Tags: cdrom, linux, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | No Comments »
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
If you are finding your Ubuntu upgrade slow, I found it worth changing my default download server. Under System -> Administration -> Software Sources you can choose a new server. It has a Choose Best Server test, which pings all 185 Ubuntu download servers and picks the best one for you.
The default Canadian server is swamped at the moment, but the good people at Rochester Institute of Technology are the fastest for me.
Tags: download, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck, o canada | No Comments »
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
Tags: linux, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | No Comments »
Friday, October 26th, 2007
We got our smart meter installed today. Unfortunately, Catherine didn’t quite understand why there was a knock on the door, then her computer went beeeeyyooooww … then all our clocks caught the <blink> tag.
While I like smart meters, this one isn’t quite as smart as it could be. To me, a smart meter needs to have a big display of your current demand, and needs to be inscribed with a suitable message like “Quit using so much juice, you cretin!” It also needs to hook into local time-of-use pricing, which me being green and a Bullfrog customer and all, I don’t get to take part in. Boo.
But what could have really gone sideways was my own desktop, which was quietly chugging away installing Ubuntu 7.10. Since I started using Linux in 1995, I don’t think I’ve ever had a system upgrade go totally smoothly. This time, though, I was lucky - the system must have fully initialised before we lost power.
I can’t honestly say I see any difference between Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon; they both are fairly pretty, and just work.
Tags: linux, smart_meter, toronto, ubuntu
Posted in Wind Things, computers suck | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
While I said quite early on that I had Ubuntu Feisty running in 64-bit, it wasn’t until today I got things really how I liked it. My earlier Perl problem was due to a broken gcc setup; all is happy now, and all the modules I’ve ever used are built and running as expected.
The one thing I’ll probably never get going is Citrix Metaframe presentation client. There’s no AMD64 package for it. I’m hardly heartbroken, as I still have two machines on which it runs just fine.
Tags: amd64, citrix, feisty, gcc, perl, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | No Comments »
Sunday, April 22nd, 2007
I reinstalled Ubuntu completely last night, and took the opportunity to go to AMD64 mode. I had to sacrifice the cheapo ndiswrapper wireless card, so am now running a switch off the wireless bridge. So it works now!
It looks like Perl really doesn’t like 64-bit. CPAN’s having difficulty building.
Tags: 64_bit, amd64, linux, ndiswrapper, perl, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 19th, 2007
Ubuntu’s servers are currently failing to cope with the demand for everyone trying to upgrade to 7.04 “Feisty Fawn” all at once.
Tags: feisty, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
Upgraded Ubuntu from Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft last night … and it was surprisingly painless. Sure, it took all night to download, and it did require me to fiddle about using the wireless access point as an ersatz eth0 to get ndiswrapper happy, but I’m not complaining.
I’m still not running in 64 bit though, as I don’t know if there are drivers for some of my cards in AMD64. It’s not a priority, though — everything’s adequately fast as is.
Tags: drake, eft, linux, painless, ubuntu, upgrade
Posted in computers suck | No Comments »
Sunday, April 1st, 2007
I’ve finally re-resuscitated the Thinkpad T21 into a basement server. Quiet it isn’t (its fan cooler and hard drive are loud), but it just works. It used to run OpenBSD, but now it’s running Ubuntu Server. I really tried to like OpenBSD, but it was a bit too spartan for my tastes.
Tags: openbsd, t21, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | No Comments »
Thursday, June 30th, 2005
So my mini-ITX box arrived yesterday. Catherine was out this evening, so I set to building it. Can’t be too hard, I thought …
That was at about 19:30. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to fit all the gubbins a computer needs into a box about half the size of a shoebox. It didn’t help that the Travla C138’s case fan cable is too short to reach the SP 13000’s fan connector. It also didn’t help that the DVD adaptor’s audio cable doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen (or have to hand). And it really, really doesn’t help that the volume of internal cables in the box is only very slightly less than the total volume of the case itself; judicious squtcha, squtcha‘ing on the ATA cables was required to get everything in. I can tell you, there’s not an earthly chance of getting a PCI card in there, unless it’s a very tiny one that doesn’t mind getting bent out of shape.
With much apprehension, I turned the system on, and stuck the Ubuntu liveCD in. Wouldn’t you know, it all booted fine:
Sure, the resolution wasn’t great, and the timezone’s wrong, but I was expecting horrible POST feeping at best. All the hardware was found correctly, and the screenshot was transferred by USB key, which automounted to the desktop. Phew!
Thanks to Davey Laporte for the Ubuntu CD. It certainly saved my soy-bacon.
Tags: mini_itx, squtcha, ubuntu
Posted in computers suck | 2 Comments »