its random

relaunch our lewis family

i have relaunched ourlewisfamily.org. this site is for lewis family members to stay in touch and up to date with family happenings and each other.

this is another display of a silverstripe site. i will be including some customizations as the site gets more use and am thinking of a new look for the homepage.

Tags · sites · silverstripe · lewis

Comments (0) October 04, 2009 8:40 pm

reinstall ubuntu 8.10

after some issues with Ubuntu9.04, i finally did a complete reinstall. nice and fresh and vanilla version of Ubuntu8.10. in my mind the latest stable release. they need to work on 9.04 some more before calling it a stable release like they did.

some steps for anyone that wants to know how to do a reinstall of linux without losing your data.

1. make sure you system is using multiple partitions on the tree
   i never suggest doing a single partition install of any operating system including linux.
   i have 11 partitions for my single harddrive to maintain mount point sanitation.
2. backup all data in "/home", "/root" and any other custom mount points you may have created.
   if you have a webserver like apache installed you will want to backup "/var/www" aswell.
   you may also want to make a backup of "/usr/local/src" if you have downloaded and built any program sources.
3. backup services/servers datas. if you use mysql do a dump of you databases.
4. BACKUP "/etc/"
   you may need some old configuration files, especially if you have altered any of them yourself in the past
5. make sure you have copies of any modules you will need.
6. double check "/usr/share/" to see if you have any plugins, extensions, themes, icons, fonts that you need to have for applications you will be reinstalling.
7. *record your partition schema on paper so you can reference it later*

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8. after backing up everything
   you may start the install
9. download, if you haven't, the ubuntu8.10 livecd Desktop edition.
10. when finished burn this image to disc or create a usb autoboot drive
11. reboot your computer and set to boot from cd or usb
12. go through the whole setup and when asked for the partitions delete everything but your "/home" partition and the partition you backup your data too.
13. install will format drives and start installation.

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14. after installation reboot and you should be set
15. copy data back into the folders you want
16. reisntall your server softwares
17. import your mysql backup

for the most part when using linux if you remember to segregate your data into different partitions you will be much safer and faster. smaller drives are easier to clean and you can unmount a partition and not worry about damaging any of the data.

my schema
/dev/sda1   /boot
/dev/sda2   swap
/dev/sda3   /
/dev/sda5   /usr
/dev/sda7   /tmp
/dev/sda8   /home
/dev/sda9   /data
/dev/sda10  /var
/dev/sda11  /extra

Tags · reinstall · ubuntu · howto

Comments (0) October 04, 2009 8:34 pm

issues ubuntu 9.04

after upgrading from 8.04->8.10->9.04 in less than a month i was stuck with a system that wasn't good enough. which as a linux lover was upsetting.

i have been a linux user for a decade and a ubuntu user for half of that time. i haven't seen such issues with upgrading since the old days.
current issues with 9.04 for me:

• Xorg version doesn't support older FGLRX driver
• USB problems

system specs:

• AMD Turion64 1.8gz Mobile
• 2 GB DDR PC2700
• ATI Radeon Xpress 200M - mobile
• HP Pavilion DV5000z - laptop

the new Xorg server doesn't support the previous versions of the fglrx drivers and you have to use the community driver ATI or Radeon. this would be great on 8.04/8.10, when i was running them previously i stopped using the proprietary fglrx driver and used the ATI with much better performance and a better desktop experience. though in 8.10 reinstall the ATI/Radeon drivers are working just as bad as when I had 9.04 running. this also bothers me because i shouldn't have such issues and should have the correct open source ATI driver like the last install. funny how things work.

ultimately to get this version of Ubuntu running at the moment you need to hack your system a little bit. on 9.04 i pretty much completely downgraded the Xorg server to the one from 8.10 which is a little hacky for my liking. but it allowed correct fglrx driver performance.

USB issues are still there. long delay on autodetect and mounting. often times not having access to my wireless trackball and complications with touchpad.
i am thinking maybe the wireless being on the usb_core system might be messing up the enumeration. not sure though.

conclusion i reinstalled 8.10 ... which i will describe some details of in a later post.

Tags · linux · ubuntu · issues

Comments (1) October 04, 2009 8:16 pm

time ... past, future and how to get there

this is a holder entry for my section on time, theory and social theory.