Placeholder title

I'm installing an Ubuntu 10.04 server at work. Because of proxy and internet configurations I'm installing packages from the CD instead of using the online repo's. No problem, I've done this before on virtual test machines without internet connectivity, it worked flawlessly. 

Only those machines were 8.04. Not 10.04.

First problem: apt-cdrom add. For some reason it insists that the cd-rom can be found on /dev/sr1. Why it ignores /dev/sr0, which is where the cd-rom actually lives, is beyond me. The solution to this one is to configure a mountpoint in /etc/fstab (to /mnt/cdrom or so), and use 

apt-cdrom -d /mnt/cdrom add

If you're lucky, apt will mount the cd-rom in /media/apt. If not, try a few more times until it works. If it's going to ignore the mountpoint anyway, shouldn't I be able to just tell apt-cdrom what device to use instead of what mountpoint?

Of course, after commenting out the online repos in /etc/apt/sources.list and running apt-get update, installing packages still doesn't work. No sirree, that would be too easy.

Failed to fetch cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 10.04.2 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64(20110211.1)]/pool/main/p/patchutils/patchutils_0.3.1-2build1_amd64.deb File not found

And so on and so forth... not a single file can be cound, even though they do exist under /media/apt/pool/main/blablablablabla. You know, the point where apt actually mounted the cd-rom while ignoring my mountpoint?

The solution turns out to be really simple:

ln -s /media/apt /cdrom

Yes, you need a /cdrom directory or symlink in which the files on the cd-rom can be found, because the configured mountpoint in /etc/fstab and the one apt chose all by itself aren't enough.

User-friendly distro my ass...

I'm experiencing some issues with my apache server at the moment... the blog seems unaffected for now - I hope it'll stay that way.

Update: upgrading to python-2.6.6-r1 seems to have solved the issues. w00t!

 On my work laptop, I dual-boot Windows Vista Enterprise (in case it's necessary at a customer site) and Gentoo (if I get to do things my way ;-) ). I recently decided to upgrade Vista to Windows 7, which worked just fine (after installing a meeljon updates - it had been a while).

As expected, Windows 7 obliterated my MBR. Bye-bye GRUB, Gentoo LiveCD to the rescue!

In the livecd I mounted my / (on /dev/sda3), /proc and /dev to /mnt/gentoo and chrooted in:

# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo

# mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc

# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

# chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash

Now run grub, let it re-write itself to the MBR and everything's happyhappy-joyjoy again, right?

# grub

grub> root (hd0,2)

grub> setup (hd0)

grub> quit

# reboot

Right after POST, I get greeted by a blinking cursor, and that's it. No GRUB, no message, nothing. Just that blinking cursor, mocking me. Back to the livecd, and chrooting into my gentoo installation once again. I used to use grub-install, so I decided to try that again (important: after chrooting - it's not necessary but the command is different!)

# grub-install /dev/sda

/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive

Apparently GRUB doesn't have a proper device map. Time to refresh it:

# grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

/dev/root: not found or not a block device

This one is new ... df -h reveals that / is mounted as /dev/root, instead of the expected /dev/sda3 and that /dev/root does not exist (of course - that bind command I used right before chrooting? /dev/root didn't exist in the livecd environment). A symlink ought to fix this:

# ln -s /dev/sda3 /dev/root

# grub-install /dev/sda

One reboot later my grub is back where it's always been, offering me the choice between Gentoo and Windows 7.

After seeing it in action I wanted to give TweetDeck a try so, optimist that I am, I tried their installer. It didn't work, complaining about a corrupt .air file. So I figured I'd install the AIR framework first and then see where that would get me. All the way to this error message : 

Adobe AIR could not be installed because this is not a supported Linux distribution. Only RPM- and Debian-based Linux distributions are supported.

Gentoo? Source-based distros? Get lost! Fortunately, flashman already ran into the problem and figured out a way to get AIR applications running on his distro and documented it.

One more problem : I don't use Gnome. I don't use KDE. I'm an Awesome fan. AIR doesn't like it when people don't use Gnome or KDE on linux. It requires gnome-keyring or KWallet and it gets confused rather easily. According to the Adobe troubleshooting page, you can set it straight by exporting a variable.

For gnome-keyring:

$ export GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=1

For KWallet:

$ export KDE_FULL_SESSION=1

If you've got a KDE4 based KWallet, you also want to do:

$ export KDE_SESSION_VERSION=4

Ka-boom! TweetDeck on Awesome on Gentoo. And I can start it with Winkey-F10 as well, like so : 

awful.key({ modkey }, "F10",
    function ()
        awful.util.spawn_with_shell("export GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=1; 
        /opt/air-sdk/bin/adl -nodebug \
        /opt/air-apps/TweetDeck/META-INF/AIR/application.xml \
        /opt/air-apps/TweetDeck")
    end),

To connect to your gtalk account via bitlbee, add the account in the usual way :

account add jabber <username> <password

Then set the server :

account set <account nr>/server talk.google.com:5223:ssl

If you get the error "jabber - Couldn't log in: Short write() to server", this means that bitlbee was not compiled with gnutls support. How to fix this depends on your distro :-)

In my case (Gentoo), remerge Bitlbee with the gnutls USE flag.

Happy chatting