Experiment 3 - Introduction

I received my 4 thin clients, since they are ebay equipment, I start off by simply testing each of them in turn to make sure that they aren't DOA (dead on arrival). The first one informs me that there is no mouse during bootup (ok, I didn't plug it in because I didn't expect much).

Box A:

Model: 8363-EXX IBM Netvista
Video Mem: 7 mb
NS Boot Vers: B4011201 (01/12/01) [OLD]
Processor: 233
Memory: 64mb

Box B:
Model: 8363-EXX IBM Netvista
Video Mem: 3 mb
NS Boot Vers: B4071601 (07/16/01) [OLD]
Processor: 233
Memory: 64mb
(did a load factory default and reboot)
Also noted that this one has a higher range of display settings, possibly good for an attempt at a windows terminal.

Box C:
Model: 8363-EXX IBM Netvista
Video Mem: 3 mb
NS Boot Vers: B4011201 (01/12/01) [OLD]
Processor: 233
Memory: 64mb
This one has a different MB configuration

Box D:
Model: 8363-EXX IBM Netvista
Video Mem: 3 mb
NS Boot Vers: B4011201 (01/12/01) [OLD]
Processor: 233
Memory: 64mb
Broken face plate - nothing that a little superglue won't fix

Experiment 2 - Day 7

I did a bunch of online forms, during most of them, the keyboard froze and wouldn't all me to do anything, I don't know what is the problem, monitoring situation, and if it continues, I will do some online research.

Experiment 2 - Day 6

I gave the linux system to a fairly technical user, he was able to crash it within 5 minutes... well, more accurately he crashed the mozilla browser by launching Pandora, Netflix videos and MyTube. Hitting Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, we reset the window and was running again.
One initial comment was the airplane effect was shocking, he did appreciate the usage of multiple desktops. All in all, I would give it a 7 out of 10... system crashed relatively easily and quickly, he wasn't able to do everything he wanted to do (one of the steps was to try and install a windows app, such as Google Chrome, while he went to get it, it wouldn't allow him to access it).

Experiment 2 - Day 5

Well, I just handed the OS to a non-technical user, trying to observe how the user handles the new system. Starting up, there was confusion with the login screen, user didn't associate the screen as a login window and also didn't sense that he would also need a password. it took a few seconds for the realization to sink in. He was impreshed with the simplisity of the system, however when he went to run his practice test program, we had a minor issue. First he started his entry program, this program gives the user three choices and launches the appropriate program based upon choice. When he made his choice, the application did not launch, I had tested this prior on my administrative account, but then again, he isn't administrative. After a few minutes, we had another glitch, the system shrunk the window and gave a permissions denied error, took a minute for the system to start responding to that window again. Now we will observer the continuation of this test. I know this isn't the best for the user, having him practice a test on a system that isn't 100% certified, but it is the easiest way for me to ascertain if the linux system is end-user friendly.

Experiment 2 - Day 4

Ok, after a bit of searching, I found a couple of backup programs that I wanted to try from the repositories. the first one, simple backup, was useless, it only wanted to backup what I had access to, I am trying to play like this is a company so this wouldn't work, the other one, file manager, also was the same... Internet time...

After spending some time on the internet, I found that the only "official" method of backup up required a few commands and being run manually (at least from the perspective I read). here is the command tar cpvzf destination --exclude="/proc/*" --exclude="/lost+found/*" --exclude="/dev/*" --exclude="/mnt/*" --exclude="/media/*" --exclude="/sys/*" --exclude="/tmp/*" --exclude="/varcache/apt/*" --exclude="/var/run/*" source
now, this sounds complicated but let me go through it once....
Tar application to run, cpvzf (create-permissions-verbose-gzip-file), unfortunately, the first time I ran it, I had an stdio error because of the number of files I had displayed, so I removed the v and turned it into tar cpzf. About 1 hour later and 8 gigs, I had a complete backup of my drive.

I also added a PDF Printer, by following directions from http://www.arsgeek.com/2007/05/17/5-steps-to-create-a-pdf-printer-print-to-pdf-in-ubuntu/ and then learned how to play the 3dc chess game for linux. it is the 3x8x8 3d chess game that has almost no known documentation. I literally spent an hour searching online, then had a brainstorm... I opened a terminal, typed in man 3dc and boom, there was my answer. A statement to look at the rules under /usr/share/doc/3dchess/3Dc-rules.html.

Well, that is enough of the fun for today... I will play again tomorrow. Until then... Good luck out there.

Experiment 2 - Day 3

After the nightmare I had yesterday, I was reluctant to continue on in this endeavour, if I hadn't have made the breakthrough I had, then yes, I would have immediately declared Windows the winner and walked on stating that linux was for those who had time to waste.

At this point, I have tweaked, twirled, twisted and touched ever setting I can find to make the desktop look kewl, and it does! I have an semi-transparent cube running on my desktop, a set of gears in the middle, when I minimize a screen, it turns into a paper airplane and goes down, and several other fun little animations. I did turn my attention over to my previous failed experiment, and using my laptop (and a wee bit of luck) was able to connect over to it without having to hook up a monitor and keyboard to it using the XWindows session. (which I thought was ultimately kewl!) I spent most of today, ensuring that it was up to date (had to upgrade it through a couple different versions to the present LTS version of 8.04), and then I started really playing around with programs (I did try several of the linux blog programs, none of them was satisfactory) and several games (haven't tried them yet, but give me time). unfortunately, these processes took up most of the day, and I really didn't get into anything else so far.

I still need...

1. my wired lan working (I don't think this one is going to work out so well, but will see)
2. a Virtual PC so I can install other OSes
3. gotta get my LAMP stuff working,

Things that I want to pursue...

1. After playing with that XConnection (and yes before but didn't have a clue as to how kewl it would be) I decided I wanted to push for a thin client enviroment (this will take some work and some moolah). I have already purchased the thin clients (4 IBM Netvistas 8363 cheaply off of ebay), and yes, I will do a complete run down of how and what I do... when I get them and finish my current experiment.
2. I really want to get into the policy concepts... I.E. granularly stipulate what people can and can not do on these machines.
3. Setup some sort of LDAP database and implement them into the system. I would like to get a couple of linux machines running on a virtual enviroment and kinda revamp my home network a bit... This one will take a long time to do, considering that I have a lot of prep work and don't want to tear down what I currently have going.
4. Backups... I need to figure out a straight forward and fool proof plan on backup procedures for this new endeavour. I probably will do that a little bit after this post. I might just use Vembu and get a External Drive going, but that I don't know yet. - solved in Experiment 2 - Day 4 temporarily.

Experiment 2 - Day 2

ok, I am rested and less frustrated by this, I went to sleep last night thinking, "If this was a Windows box, what would I do? well, I would use the CD with the drivers, nope. no driver disk for this project." So, I started with the next thought process... lets see if the world out there is having the same problem. I googled the following keywords, Lenovo 3000 C100 Ubuntu Wireless, and came across this article, http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-203783.html, which took me to this article, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=274987&highlight=lenovo+c100, which told me to try and blacklist the ndisWrapper, and install a driver via some interesting statements,

i finally set up the wireless broadcom wireless chipset on a lenovo 3000
c100what i did wrong before it worked was using ndiswrapper and then fwcutter
with the wrong windows drivers so i reccomend people using this laptop not to use
ndiswrapper or to put it in the blacklist by doing in a terminal:
sudo gedit
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
and writing in the last line
"blacklist
ndiswrapper"
then just download and install bmc43xx-fwcutter with
synaptic
then download on the desktop also this firmware "wl_apsta.o" from
this link
http://drinus.net/airport/wl_apsta.o
after that move it to
/lib/firmware by writing in terminal
sudo mv
/home/YOURNAME/Desktop/wl_apsta.o /lib/firmware/so
now we can set the driver
by writing in terminal
sudo bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/wl_aspta.othen
also
sudo modprobe bcm43xxnow
reboot
after this i was able to choose
wireless networks and to set connections with pppoeconfif you have problems due
by eth1 instead of wlan0 look this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=259355

Ok, I will give that a go. Guess what... the website is nothing more then a Domain For Sale site now... this post about the fix was made in 2005, hmmm, now lets try and search for airport wl_apsta.o. All the searches seem to point to drinus.net. At this point, I think that a mere computer user would be throwing the computer out the window and heading back to windows... I haven't even begun to fight yet, I keep searching till I find another blogger (http://howto.aumitahmed.com/2008/11/how-to-make-broadcom-wireless-cards.html) who happens to have a listing for other things (that was a wasted 30 minutes) onto my little flash drive the tarball goes from http://www.omattos.com/broadcom/ with the instructions to plop them into /lib/firmware/ so, I try it, "No permission" b#st#rd... ok, I drag them onto my desktop and using a terminal command go to my desktop and try to move them.

1. cd Desktop
2. sudo mv b43 /lib/firmware/
3. enter my password
4. sudo mv b43legacy /lib/firmware

now to reboot and hope it works. OOk, I now have a new interesting error... 34.852175 YSB 5-6 device descriptor read/64 error, -110 and counting... then it states unable to enumerate usb device on port 6... hmmm, it doesn't like one of my flash drives that are currently plugged in... have to pull them and reboot. after another 2 minutes thinking my system had crashed waiting for the swapfile, it works... and it is finding a wireless network (HURAY!), now to test my flash drives... one worked... then I plugged in the USB External drive, that one did not start so readily... oh well. figure that out later... now to check the system being up2date. after starting the update manager and hitting the check button, I get confronted with the password again (in windows vista, this was considered an irratating nusance, in ubuntu and mac, it is considered a security feature). after it finds 224 updates (jes, I just downloaded the image three days ago), I wait for the 225 mb download to finish. it starts with 15 minutes to download, then jumps to 19, then 13, and following 12 (don't think so, my internet isn't that good...) After it was done (yep, 30 minute download) it installed, and I rebooted. Unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to catch the switch to windows, and instead of letting it finish booting, I just killed it and tried to start Ubuntu, not a smart idea, it couldn't mount the NTFS partition and then crashed, I rebooted into windows fully, rebooted into ubuntu. at this point, I can safely say that it went in. after I had gotten in, the Hardware Drivers dialog box appeared and wanted me to activate new drivers for my b43 wireless device, I did so and it went back online. I tried the physical connection, still no joy, not terribly worried. Now to try and repartition the entire thing to linux. well, my first thought is that the live cd actually has a shortcut, if I can find out the command line from that, I might be in business... to start with, I need my external HD back...., I use windows to load it, then click the "Safely remove" button and presto, I am back in business. this looks more sensitive then windows when it comes to NTFS, so I have to be careful.

At the same time I do a windows search for the command line, I run a internet search and find this article, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromLinux, which sounds exactly like what I want to do. so I use the synaptic package manager to find GPart, and I have to enable the third party repositories, still no luck, I ensure that the multiverse, universe, and all other repositories are checked, do the reload, still nothing... hmm, over to add/remove applications? AHA, there it is. download and install it baby... if things work, I will have a partition for Linux, and a partition for the CD-Rom of about 750 mb. Finished installing partition editor, went to System - Administration - Partition Editor, typed in my password (God this is getting old), and... DOH, the system won't let me mess with the main partition. Thank God that the Lenovo System has some free space, I steal all of the free space from that (about 729 mb) and move it so that the lenovo is at the end, the freespace is in the middle, and then follow the directions from the website. After a second look, I figured out that the partition editor wouldn't work with an NTFS file system (hohum, yet another disappointment). And then away we go, the system started going on its merry way. I then followed the step by step commands from the website but since it was sda3, I changed it from sda1.

mkdir /tmp/install_cd
sudo mount ubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64.iso -o loop /tmp/install_cd
sudo mkdir /mnt/installer
sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/installer
sudo cp -r /tmp/install_cd/* /mnt/installer
sudo cp -r /tmp/install_cd/.disk /mnt/installer
sudo umount /tmp/install_cd

Then I edited the menu.lst located in the /boot/grub directory. Well, time to reboot and see if hell is here, or if it is going to work.

Well, it almost worked... started nicely, had to hit the escape key in order to access the grub menu, but... I tried to stick a 64 bit OS onto a 32 bit OS, not so good, so I am going back to redo the copy from the 32 bit OS, same steps, except I am using ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso.

I did delete everything there first using sudo rm -r /mnt/installer and then recopied everything over. Rebooted, and so far, it looks good. after a few minutes of booting, I see my new Temp ubuntu screen, with my install Icon! Alas, it doesn't see any of my partitions (CRAP!). I use the gpart, delete my existing partition (no going back easily now) and then try it agian, nope... notihing in the partition to choose from. I choose the GPart again, and create a primary partition using ext3 to see if it will work. nope, how about fat32... FRACK! still nothing... maybe I had to reboot after blowing the partition, but then how am I going to get back in...

As expected, rebooted computer, computer gave me an invalid partition error, but I messed in the bios enough to find that Lenovo thinks of USB as hard drives, not removable media, changed the boot order, and up I went to my USB Ubuntu... here we go again!

1. Boot up
2. Click Install Icon
3. Choose English
4. Choose Location
5. Choose Keyboard
6. and partitioner is STILL BLANK!!!!!!! F*CK!

well, lets try and get internet. I move the data for my wireless card into the firmware, (thank you this is flashdrive not CD, and then try it, then I reboot... wait, I have another idea, I could use try the command line of the system, instead of demo and install, how about just install? hmmm... as it is booting up, my frustration level is increasing. anybody who is reading this should see why. I get to the ubunto screen, choose the same steps, and.... WAHOO, it is working.... I see the whole thing, or do I... upon closer inspection, all I see is the f*cking USB flash drive... apparently, it doesn't know about my hard drive!

Well, this is interesting, I have been booting to the "CDRom" that I created on my hard drive, but I still don't know why it won't install. I have to recreate the Live USB drive, using my infamous Virtual Computer. Ok, after killing my hard drive CD-Rom from what I did earlier, it caused some of the headache of the day. Apparently the USB launcher would pull the data from the data stored on the hard drive. I burned the on-drive partition, and then was FINALLY able to install the system. This process only took from 10 am to 9 pm, minus 2 hours for lunch and desteaming, now I can get the driver for my wireless, get the system up-todate, and then go forward from there. after I do that, I am calling it a night, so this is where I say good night... To Be Continued

Experiment 2 - Day 1

Computer is a model c100 of the 3000 series of lenovo thinkpad, pretty standard stuff, nothing overly out of the ordinary here...

Well, a little bit more about the process,

1. Started late due to car troubles (yes, car comes first... computer second... barely)
2. CD Rom on Laptop not useable (Died at the motherboard not willing to through my new laptop at this endevour... yet).
3. Laptop doesn't boot up to USB Stick, (CRAP!)
4. Installed an In-Filesystem version (took forever to install but oh well - we are seeing some light, I hope to remedy this by partitioning off the drives and finishing the process into a fresh install)

Steps taken so far (please note, as steps happen I write them down, some commentary is basically entered as it happens and I think it).

1. Backed up system (yeah, if this fails, windows needs to get back as is... of course I am not entirely certain how I am going to do that, but will figure it out as we go).


2. freed up some disk space on my 70 gig drive, had less then 8 gigs free (so I am hard on my computers, doesn't make me a bad guy, does it?).


3. Installed Ubuntu 8.10 onto system using In-Filesystem, rebooted into Ubuntu OS. (screen blanked out and freaked me out to start with, thank God it was only the screen saver). System literally took about 2 hours to install and configure itself (tick, tock, tick, tock). The process basically downloaded itself from the internet (regardless that I had a complete version in a virtual CD-Rom drive), a 700 mb file and then took approximately 15 - 20 minutes to configure itself. This doesn't seem like a bad situation, but what if the computer didn't have a reliable internet connection, it should have used the CD as its "guide" saving a little over 1 1/2 hours. At this point, I am hoping that I will be able to f*ck with it and try to delete the NTFS partition and then create the full installation using the entire hard drive, not just 8 gigs.
4. Rebooted again, choosing Ubuntu one more time, it seems to get stuck for a few minutes trying to boot up, yes, it is making me concerned, but I can wait it out for a little bit.
5. Activating Swapfile swap took literally 2 minutes, now that is slow...
6. Thank you, Ubuntu Logon Screen is now here, and I seem to be in.
7. sound works nicely, and my usb drives show up and my battery capacity pops up stating 30% which means, yeah I know, ITS OLD! remember kids, I am cheap on experiments.
8. Lets see, no network off the top, it doesn't seem to see my network (which is secured) or my neighbors network that isn't secured... time to invesitigate. --- Aha, the wireless card isn't found... Wahoo, now I gotta get that going... good thing I took that quick course to explain what to do next... thank goodness it did find my wired network card or else I would be screwed... I plug in my network cable and.... Nothing... wired is not showing an IP Address, nor do I have a connection to the internet. But I do have a kewler desktop with a fine wiggle...
9. I do a hardware testing to see if there is something wrong, first thing it wants to do is connect to the launchpad via the internet, then it starts to work, some preliminary screen tests, then a mouse test, now a video test, so on and so on... I find my network controller... it sounds right, (Realtek Semiconductor, PCI Express Transceiver and a broadcom corp BCM4311) so I say Yes, this is right. then it asks if I am connected to the internet... hmm, three choices, yes, no and skip, it sees that I am not connected, and yet asks this question.... I don't know, I say yes, no or skip, it asks me to type something on the keyboard... no help there. finish the "wizard" and then it wants to send my report to Launchpad via the internet that it couldn't find... wow, real intuitive. Exit that program.
10. ok, I think I screwed with it, I deleted something that had a MAC address, and then tried to add it again, unfortunately, it didn't want to re-add easily, so being a windows guy, time to reboot and hope it finds it again while rebooting, perhaps it won't take 2 minutes on the swapfile. (no such luck... Activating swapfile swap... 2 minutes later....)
11. login, and check the network again. (hey, the sound raise and lower shortcuts work as well as the mute button, exciting.) And the network is still dead... the Auto etho0 did come back (thank God for small favors) but I still have no IP address on the Wired, and the wireless is counter-intuitive.
12. Time to relax for a minute... Applications - Games - Tetravex, yeah, I have a high score of a minute thirty... Hit new Game, now I have an exactly same high score... new game, new game, new game. seems that hitting the new game button doesn't actually clear the old game before seeing if I won. hmmm, I think I found a bit of a bug. if I had internet connection on that computer, I would report it... maybe tomorrow, I am done for now.

One More Time!

Ok, it has litterally been a year and a half since my last post... (sounds like a confession doesn't it?) I still have that old computer sitting with linux, still giving me grief, however the sitution has changed yet again! I WILL NOT GO DOWN WITH OUT A FIGHT! I just am going to go about it slightly differently. That last experement died... now for a new one. I will not let this get the best of me. I am even taking a cheezy online class made by canonical (http://training.canonical.com) to get this solved.

Requirements for a successful transfer:

1. Able to access network files (back and forth) from my existing windows server (I hope they have what windows called Offline Access, otherwise when I leave for work I have 0 files)
2. Able to access Wireless Networks easily and effeciently
3. Able to do FREE virtualization of computer OSes (gotta still have windows for some things)
4. Able to run some windows applications (misc stuff like a training program and testing applications mostly flash executables)
5. Able to use without wanting to go back to windows (yes, now I have windows vista and has a powerful pull)
6. Able to do my custom programming (ok, I know that VS 2007 won't be there, but I atleast need databases and LAMP to work correctly the first time.
7. Able to access an NTFS file system safely (for when I have to do a bare-metal harddrive connection to a screwed windows box I will need to access it via the Linux OS).
8. Able to see 3d desktops (yes, I do want the KEWL factor here)

I will be adapting a Windows XP modified Lenovo 3000 series laptop (specs to arrive later) that I use for training others in different areas. I am still debating if I will be using Ubuntu or OpenSUSE, but am leaning towards Ubuntu for simplicity. Here goes the next generation of death.... I will first be making a complete backup of the computer prior to creating the new system. I will not be upgrading it, it will be a fresh install. Everyone, wish me luck... Disks up.... tomorrow starts L-Day... the day I convert to linux!