blog.nixadmins.net

I recently updated our EMC Networker server and today after our tapes ran out of storage. The system wouldn’t start moving data to tapes. Looking for the problem I noticed nsrlcpd didn’t start. Taking a closer look showed it couldn’t find libsmci.so. I started my hunting by checking yum whatprovides and found it was installed on the server, installed by nsr. Next I hit Powelink like any good administrator and found someone solved this by linking with ln.

How come I didn’t think of that. Well I blame it on how much time I’ve been spending in the Windows server/client environment lately. So I think I’ll have to play with my SPARC linux server at home again.

I had a need to get my system up fast so I set up Ubuntu. It’s a nice system and really popular but my favorite distribution is still Gentoo. So after I had the stuff I needed to get some work done while installing Gentoo up and running I started the installation process. I assume you know your way around the command prompt and are familiar with the Gentoo installation process. Otherwise don’t even try this, and if you do, don’t blame me for any possible data loss.

So here is the process in it’s simplicity

1. Install the needed tools in Ubuntu. by running sudo apt-get install dchroot debootstrap
2. If you haven’t alread, partition and format the hard drive you are using for Gentoo.
3. Make a starting point for the gentoo install. sudo mkdir /mnt/gentoo
4. Start mounting the partitions
5. Follow the Gentoo handbook from chapter 5.  Download stages and get installing.

This worked out fine in Ubuntu 7.10 and I’m now back in my favorite distribution.

I’m not sure if there is any harm to it but I also merged xorg-x11 and gnome-light via Ubuntu. This way I had a full graphical desktop as soon as I rebooted.

I just got myself a new desktop to the office. We buy HP so this desktop is a DC5700 MT, it’s a middle range desktop with integrated graphics card. Specs are as follows:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 running at 2GHz
Graphics: Intel i915 chipset
RAM: 4Gb DDR2

Eager to get it up and running I put my favorite distribution cd, Gentoo, in the drive and started the install. I’ve been using Gnome for a long time now and as Gentoo was installing I was checking out the latest Linux Journal and saw a preview of KDE 4. I thought, well I just have to try that one out. So after the basic installation was done I started merging KDE 4.

Left the computer compiling overnight and returned to the office this morning eager to see what KDE had to offer. I fired up KDE and I have to say it was a huge disappointment. The system was really unresponsive, everything looked huge on the display, I couldn’t fit anything in my 1680×1050 display. I know this is still new software and there are for sure enhancements on the way, but still this was too much.

The feeling of checking out KDE 4 was really close to the feeling when I first installed Windows Vista, thinking WTF have they been up to. A few hours later and KDE 4 and all it’s dependencies are gone, Gnome is back and I feel at home.

Eventually I will probably give KDE 4 another go but right now it just doesn’t seem mature enough to use.