- Seriously? This is outside of best buy today. http://t.co/KyJyAkli #
- Check out this Bears article:
http://t.co/LpkQFbsr That is a very Chicago billboard. I love it! #
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BigCat’s Blog of DOOM
My name is Ben Catlin, and this is where I rock out on topics like my life, technology and faith.
Browsing Posts published by BigCat
- Bzr annoys me – I'm totally switching my project to Git (probably re-locating from launchpad to github too) once I commit the 1.0 files. #
- Scored a sampler for me, and one for @lafrinier. Awesome! http://t.co/AwoRvc4d #
- Waiting in line for the Cities Sampler. Why, oh why do they do this in Nov every year? http://t.co/JD1SIQbE #
- It isn't fair that my house appraises for $ less, but my taxes are $150 more for next year. I hate this housing market. #Stupid2006 #
- http://t.co/XdcQ32rw set up your iPhone for googles products. I answer this question a lot. This is absolutelythe best way to do it. #
- Simultaneously watching "My Name is Earl" on netflix, and going through Step 8 (Amends) is a really surreal experience. #
- Just got an email asking about creating a branded version of ModbusDroid (my first android app). Lots of inquiries about it lately. #MeLikey #
- Want to win a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Jambox Speaker and $25? Check out @droid_life and @NVIDIATegra – http://t.co/5KtnToWQ #android #
- I'm right now syncing the entire android repository. I have this vain idea that I can compile from source and install ICS on my phone. #
- I'm to the point in reading "Game of Thrones" that I would now rather be reading it than doing almost anything else. #
- http://t.co/lAYfhWpj I'm really excited about this conference. If you want to come, and need a place to stay, let me know, cuz I can host. #
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- New water heater, $1400 – ouch! Goodbye emergency fund, it was nice to have you for the short visit you paid us. At least I fixed the dryer. #
- While the dryer was easily defeated, level 2, attack of the leaking water heater, hit me w/ a blue shell. #GameOver #PlumerHeroCalled4Backup #
- And now to try to fix the hot water heater – hopefully the hardware store has a replacement T&P valve for my model! #
- I hope replacing the T/P release valve on my hot water heater fixes it cuz I hate cold showers. Bit it is leaking at the base/threads.
# - I'm not exactly sure why, but for me, the McRib is comfort food. #
- The appliances are all revolting! Now the hot water heater has decided to start leaking. #
- The Twin Cities is a great place to hav a baby. So many excellent options all a short distance from eachother. #
- Survived my first round of layoffs in my lifetime. Should be an interesting ride for a while around here. #
- Thinking about switching one of my projects from http://t.co/DIk6qO5x to github, just because I don't want to install bzr again. #Lazy #
- Important meeting w/ high-level managers to discuss important customers issues + public speaking engagement this evening = Stressed Ben. #
- Another FREE tablet is up for grabs, brought to you by @droid_life and @NVIDIATegra – http://t.co/g20MVAmS #android #
- Step 5 complete! Now I'm sipping scotch & writing a talk entitled "Does God go Miracles Today" 4 church tomorrow. #ProductiveWkend #NotInAA #
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- Rocking some box seats at the Xcel center for a wild game. (@ Xcel Energy Center for STL vs MIN w/ 128 others) [pic]: http://t.co/81P7twH8 #
- In a dual of wits, I defeated the household appliance gangs evil broken dryer. I'm the greatest ever.
# - There are days when I should post little, and not respond to anything on the internet. For some reason, I sense today is one of those days. #
- Who doesn’t love to win free tablets from @droid_life and @NVIDIATegra? http://t.co/n3kA3drE #android #
- Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is both the movie analog and the pinnacle of the literary magical realism form. #RippingMoviesToMyTablet #
- I'm just gonna say this – flash-based church websites *COUGH*Clover*Cough* kinda suck. My scroll wheel should always just work. #HTML5FTW #
- "Is the gentlemen with the Bro-Stash invited to this party?" #
- I'm changing the way wireless works with @republicwrless. Sign up for a launch day offer on November 8. http://t.co/wC2e1XrE #
- Often our best traits are our worst traits. Though so are our worst traits also our worst traits. But the former is much harder to correct. #
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- Not to self: don't take 2nd trimester pregnant cancer lady to excellent but sad cancer movie. Water-works will ensue. #50 50 #GreatMovies #
- I think either my Wii is broken, or the power adapter for it is. Anyone have a power adapter I can borrow for a test? #BummedOnMySabath #
- Dear subway employees, stop being lazy and spread out the meat and toppings. Aspire to crest am even bite every bite. #RealSandwichArtist #
- Win a Logitech Revue from @droid_life! – http://t.co/ibBglYsy #android #
- Why when I export data from SAP to excel does it hold open the handle to the file even after I exit SAP? #SAPFail #ReNamingShouldBeEasy #
- http://t.co/61cBTqin Holy crap is this depressing. This is one of the big reasons Android as a brand is weak compared to iOS. #stopsucking #
- Speakerdeck is becoming my new time-waster site. *Must resist learning interesting things from others not related to my job!* #
- http://t.co/9cDXvYNc This is absolutely ridiculous. Software patents need to go away for the future good of our economy. #
- Step 4 fearless & searching moral and spiritual inventory = completed! Worst thing so far about it is a hand cramp. 8 more steps to go! #
- K, I forgot about the hangout, but I just started my second half G+ Hangout if any bears fans want to join in. #
- I was thinking a Google+ hangout might be a fun way to watch Da Bears game with my friends all over the world today. Thoughts? #
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- WTF Verizon – these phones cost more than the iPhone off contract, so why are are you charging more on contract? #EndCarrierMonopolies #
- If @googlenexus releases a tablet dock along w/ the next Nexus device, & AT&T-capable radio, I might be in a state of tech-nerdgasm on Tues. #
- I really wish my @Dell work laptop would stop crashing every time I put it to sleep. This puts a damper on my ability to do my job well. #
- This is super interesting: "5 ways to keep your rockstar employees happy."
http://t.co/zw7LLrlp # - Getting pretty excited for Google to announce the next version of Android (named Ice Cream Sandwich). Hope the new Nexus Phone is awesome! #
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- I thought it was really cool that I upgraded my server over SSH, until I remembered that my computer needs a hard reboot after updates. #
- OMG! Dropbox Pro FOR LIFE! I need to win this and it's the LAST DAY to enter! http://t.co/J9EfIMSh via @appsumo #
- By the way, if you didn't catch it on my wife's Twitter/Facebook – we found out we are having a girl. #
- Dear #LazyWeb YNAB, MoneyDance or iBank? Any thoughts, recommendations, pros/cons, etc. #
- My cousin is considering Macalester's Global Health program & I was hoping some of my friends had opinions about the school worth sharing. #
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- http://t.co/FKyw218l RIP Steve Jobs – great comic from XKCD today. If we could build that memorial, it would be awesome. #
- Steve Jobs is dead! Holy crap, that is crazy – he was like way young and awesome. Rule of Badasses I suppose The best ones die first. #
- And, next week we will find out if the competition from Google stacks up well or not. #Android4Life #ButIphonesAreCoolToo #
- This 'Siri' feature for the iphone 4s looks like a pretty impressive evolution of what Google did w/ the voice search on android. #
- BoYah! Bears win today, and I get my models dynamically loading into my openGL program after exporting them from Blender. Nice! #
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- I think I'm starting to figure this silly program out – Definitely pointing me away from a career in digital 3d modeling. #
- Trying to learn Blender so I can export some stuff from Solidworks into OpenGL vertex data. This is annoying. #
- I've got nothing to do tonight since the wife is out of town. Who wants to do something? #
- Hennepin County Libraries are now doing Kindle Lending. I think I might have a special someone's B-day present picked out #
- I chewed out a teenager tonight for being a jerk to an 8yo. I remember being on the other side of that once. The circle will be unbroken. #
- Dear LazyWeb, What is your opinion on Mac personal finance software. I use quicken on windows, and only use budgeting and savings goals. #
- Done w/ CR Homework 3 out of 4. This CR bootcamp thing is gonna be pretty brutal if this is the pace we go! #
- http://t.co/eObIysXo This tutorial magically fixed my trig problem from! Yay smarter & more educated people than me! #
- http://t.co/3i7NChSg this article on fixing bad work habits is interesting, & pretty helpful on a day when i'm digging into a new project. #
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- Also, I'm starting to feel optimistic and believe my own hype, so I might as well say this: GO BEARS! Suck it Packers! #
- Lawn mowed, car re-aligned, linux box set up as a time-machine backup server, & now I'm solving problems at work. Yay productivity! #
- I have forgotten how to do math. Particularly Trig. I might crowdsource this problem later today so smart ppl in math can help me out. #
- If you really hater the new Facebook so much, feel free to jump on over to google plus. http://t.co/TW1v9FRR #
- I just got a $2 credit for Android apps from the @amazonappstore. Click http://t.co/NioQn5H0 to get yours. #get2 #
- This last tweet-story is brought to you by the imagination of Chad Glader while reading chucknorrisfacts.com. #
- He saw a jerk parking his unhitched rig across multiple parking spots, and decides to pee in his gas tank. And thus, Optimus Prime is born. #
- Chuck Norris was drunk once at a bar outside of a truck stop, looking for a place to relieve himself. (cont…) #
- http://t.co/oEf5OD8f 'Nuff said. #
- Google+ is superior to facebook, you now have no excuse for not being there – switch now and join the revolution! http://t.co/TW1v9FRR #
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Despite the ranting title, I actually have a technical description of my problem, and then what went on. This is half for posterity so when I go to upgrade again later I won’t have to curse at my computer and the ubuntu forums, I will just be able to read my own blog.
Upgrading to 11.04
Ubuntu Linux upgrades every 6 months. A few months ago I read that 11.04 was buggy, and I shouldn’t bother upgrading until that settled out. So I waited until last month. Then I upgraded my server in the basement. My server holds media files and backups (now with super TimeMachine powers for backing up Macs), acts as my side-project web development server/code repository host, and records TV for me using MythTV.
Then I have a smaller, lower-powered, but able to play video at 1080p computer hooked to the TV upstairs, that streams TV from the basement server, or from hulu or whatever (except Netflix, but don’t get me started on how stupid it is that they don’t support linux).
So the server upgrade went flawelessly despite running on pretty outdated hardware – I built that machine in 2002, and haven’t done much to it since then.
Then another month goes by, and I decide to upgrade the front-end computer connected to the TV. This is a DISASTER.
As soon as I install the latest NVIDIA driver to be able to watch the video at 1080p and reboot, I get a blank screen. I try tons of stuff – tutorials, troubleshooting guides (this is apparently a pretty common problem), I even upgrade to the beta release of the upcoming version in October – Nothing.
So after days and days of spending time on this, and not being able to watch SYTCD or Dr. Who for a couple weeks, I give up and re-install ubuntu 10.10, which works flawlessly.
What do I think is going on from a technical standpoint: In the 2.6.38 and later kernels the bootloader can pass a parameter to the kernel to set the graphics mode (i.e. color depth and resolution), and that way the kernel can throw up a nice boot animation or graphic that is in the resolution you ultimately are going to run on the desktop. This avoids the black flash that happens on older windows and linux when the driver finally gets loaded and switches to the resolution – also called flicker-free booting. The program that does this nice hand-off or whatever is called Plymouth, which when I read about it over on http://www.phoronix.com and about how it would do all this wonderful stuff I thought it was great. But, it appears that it is pretty broken – especially with the proprietary NVidia linux drivers – which are the drivers that do all the neat stuff that I bought the NVidia motherboard to do (i.e. decode video super awesome w/ almost no CPU usage).
So, as I understand things it works like this when you boot Ubuntu:
Grub 2 loads and lets you select an operating system if you have multiples installed (I don’t), or lets you select failsafe modes or older kernels.
In the entry for the Kernel / OS it has some stuff about passing mode info – also there is some default that tells grub what mode to be in during this (so even your bootloader can looks less ugly).
When you start booting the kernel it loads your video driver and passes it off to plymouth to draw the pretty screen so it doesn’t flicker.
Then once that is all fine and dandy Xorg server (which is previously what set your video mode and caused the flicker at this point in older linux booting) gets a hand-off of control of the video driver and shows your shiny desktop. Except on my system it takes a giant crap, doesn’t leave any log messages or errors that can be deciphered, and shows you a blank screen while it hangs – silently crashed waiting in the background doing nothing but driving you insane – like a super zombie ninja with psychic powers of doom.
Anyway, I digress. I spent like a million hours trying to get this to work before downgrading back to 10.10 (and then having to re-fix my NVidia motherboards lack of audio out over HDMI – could we get this kind of crap fixed in linux please – audio and video are a giant fat mess – like 100 times worse than the switch to windows Vista, only it works way shittier and never gets fixed even after 5 years of running linux – Lame!). And, after all that, all I have to show for it is frustration, and a fear of upgrading.
Next time I will do two things differently:
1 – Just create a new partition, and install the newer one to that, and dual-boot – so I can watch Dr. Who or recorded TV on mythTV (new season of Glee! – AWESOME-Sauce!) – and still try out the new stuff to see if it is broken.
2 – back up my config files I change to my server. In general I’m starting to work up a real backup plan – and one of those things needs to be getting config files that I’ve changed or setup identified, and then backed up to a seperate folder which is backed up to the cloud. I’ve got a lot of hours into configing my server (in particular) and it is just built up over the last couple of years of just screwing around and making stuff work. Does anyone know a good way to go about that? Particularly, I don’t want to back up binaries, or version-specific files – but I do want to be able to upgrade and not have my stuff break (I’m looking at you ejabberd). And I want a good way to automate that backup (and I’m really getting annoyed w/ rsync, so unless you have a magic way to set it up easily, don’t suggest it – plus, in the world of dropbox, why can’t we get more seamless backup solutions for linux that monitor file system changes instead of backing up on a schedule?). And then a way to easily know where to put those files when I want to restore them on a new install or something.
Anyway, that is rambling now – but point is – on number 2, suggestions for things that have worked well for you are much appreciated.
To recap – Ubuntu – horribly broken on my Nvidia system (zotac micro-atx motherboard w/ 9300 graphics/chipset), need to be smarter about how I approach upgrades on critical and appliance devices (i.e. servers and single-function computers like my mythtv frontend) – Suggestions about backup strategies welcome.
- I upgraded mythbuntu to 11.04, & it hosed my box. Spent weekend rebuilding & updating to 11.10 – ended up going back to 10.10 :/ #UbuntuFail #
- Da BEARS! – I am ready for some football. #
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- Prayer training class is getting started – SUPER excited to see what the Holy Spirit is going to do. #
- If you see Lauren's show tomorrow, you will experience the ballet version of enter the ninja. http://t.co/GUEca4I #
- Lauren has a show tonight 8pm – if you are around you should go – talk to me ahead of time for $8 tickets, or get them at the door for $10! #
- Someday MN people will learn to merge like a zipper when the lane ends instead of stopping traffic a mile back & honking when I pass them. #
- Also, Ubuntu 11.04 is horribly, horribly broken for people w/ Nvidia cards who want to use the drivers that give awesome features. #
- I somehow accidentally removed my user from the sudo group – this is going to be fun to fix. #
- One lucky person will win a DROID BIONIC from @AndroidPolice Sept 10th. I hope it will be me. http://t.co/IhVM5Xa B/c I'm awesome. #
- Is it me, or is $300 a little ridiculous for a phone on contract. I'm looking at you #DroidBionic #
- I'm learning how to build & install android from source code right now. This makes me #NerdHappy I might try to do this when I get home. #
- It was a good weekend – Got a macbook air, new shoes, and got to spend some time w/ a friend I don't get to hang w/ enough. #
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