The Linux Distro Thread (maybe)

[ej-solutions]

Thought I'd start this one off, rather than continue on another thread.

As a quick catch up for others:

Have a look at Unetbootin, as a means to try out different versions of Linux, without producing numerous coasters (unwanted CDs).
I haven't tried the method of installing to hard drive, only the USB flash drive method (so far).

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Just skimming the surface

Opinions/guidance expressed are intended to benefit the reader (mostly) but no responsibility should be assumed for the accuracy and no warranty is implied/expressed or given - so eBay may pull this post

[otherego]

Oh, rats - should have included this in the last one to save a post. No matter.

A slightly worrying article in El Reg:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/03/24/novell_cptn_germany/

I honestly don't understand all the ramifications, nor how much damage could be done to Linux - but I don't much like the looks of this lot getting its hands on all those Novell patents.

Of course, it could prove a blessing in disguise if it finally makes it harder for the world's regulators to stop overlooking monopolistic behaviour by certain large companies, or cartel-like behaviour by groups of such - but again, I can't pretend to be able to analyse this.

I do sometimes fear that the bigger and more powerful large corporations become, the more likely they are to be able to make little inconveniences like the regulations affecting other people go away.

[otherego]

It has taken me over two and a half hours to update a pair of Windows computers which haven't been used in three months. Needless to say, the longer a Windows computer sits unused, the more reluctant I become to start it up.

It's not so much the Windows updates as all the third party stuff. Avira wants updating to a new version. Comodo wants updating to a new version. Java and Flash are, inevitably, out of date. Flash needs updating separately for Firefox and IE. I still can't persuade Java to stop running its infuriating updater on one of the machines. And so on and so on and so on.

It took me less time the other evening to install PCLinuxOS on a laptop, install LibreOffice and fully update the system. Which simply took care of all that Flash, Java, Firefox and the rest.

Mint simply mentions that updates are available - and takes care of all that nonsense.

Hardly a restart needed, and very few glitches compared to those involved in updating all the stuff on the Windows boxes.

I'm increasingly convinced that modern, mainstream Linux distros really are easier to use than Windows.

Linux is pretty sturdy no matter what, but I'm sure it enjoys a small measure of security simply due to its rarity.

Let's hope everybody else doesn't find out about it.

(Er - joke ... sort of...)

[otherego]

1. Does anyone have any links to really simple write-ups about networking Linux computers?

Networking is one of the things I've not yet attempted.

Lots available through Google, but although my head is now spinning, I've taken little in.

Specifically, I'm running Mint 9 on two desktops. I've made no attempt to link them yet. One is an elderly Dell Optiplex GX620, the other a Jurassic Dell Optiplex GX260 (and still my favourite computer, goodness knows why.)

They connect to the internet through a Netgear wireless router - I think it's a DG 834G; have temporarily misplaced its packaging.

The router also has four ethernet ports.

I have a long enough ethernet cable to connect the two machines; I have no crossover cable, whatever that may be.

I'm sure I could buy one locally easily enough.

So if anyone knows a really simple guide that'll enable me to use those resources to get two computers talking to each other, I'd be greatly obliged.

2. One more question before bed, if I might.

I rarely back up. (I am a hypocrite, yes.) It's taken over an hour to copy documents and pictures from one of the desktops to an external hard drive. I'll now delete the previous backup (from some months ago, ahem), to clear space on the external HDD to back up this machine.

This is all unbelievably boring, and I am losing the will to live. Most of the stuff is duplicated on the two computers.

Is there any way to merge the data from the two computers - to merge the two home directories - to an external hard drive?

That would save a huge amount of space. A cursory look has revealed little relevant stuff on the internet - I'll search again when the head is clearer - but again, if anyone knows an easy way of merging the data from two Mint computers in one backup, I'd be most obliged.

And if I could network the computers (bearing in mind they are rarely turned on at the same time - it would be on an occasional basis) and occasionally merge their home directories incrementally, then that would mean  a) each backs up the other  b) I only need to copy an occasional external backup from one of them, not both.

Hope some of that makes sense - as I say, the mind is thoroughly addled.

(By researching networking  rather than by booze. On a Saturday night. I need to get a life...)

[grumpy-cook]

OE, there are several ways to network two linux machines - amongst them NFS and Samba. However, probably the simplest is SSH. Have a look at this -

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=13695&start=0

Note that you may have to open ports or the SSH service through Firestarter (or whatever you use for IPTables access)

[grumpy-cook]

And this takes it a little bit further -

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/119744/

[grumpy-cook]

It's a pity you cannot edit posts on this system.

Regarding connecting the two machines, crossover cables etc. Forget it OE, as long as they are both connected to your router, then they have a connection through the router's built-in switch, you do not need to do anything else.

You may find things easier though if you give your PCs static IP addresses, rather than use DHCP from the router. As you are using a Netgear router, then the IPs will be in the range 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.255. I would suggest you set yours at something like 192.168.0.200 & 201 or something similar outside the range other PCs will be allocated by DHCP.

[otherego]

Interesting articles, g-c - thanks for those.

That'll keep me cussing happily occupied for a couple of days - I'll doubtless be back with further queries.

Perhaps a good idea to finish backing up the second machine before I start playing too enthusiastically, though...

[grumpy-cook]

A useful link to bookmark along with Distrowatch -

http://www.tuxmachines.org/

It's just a general Linux news site which links to articles and howtos all over the place, but I've found it quite useful and informative and take it's RSS feed.

[otherego]

Interesting site, g-c - thanks for that link. Bookmarked...

As for the wonders of GNOME 3, what can I say but, "Bah!"?

I realise the OE computer collection is more ancient than most. But Linux usually copes with older machines. Indeed, every one of the machines I tried the GNOME 3 samples mentioned a couple of posts ago is running a current Linux distro - I tried GNOME 3 (via the modified OpenSUSE and Fedora live CDs) on a Dell Optiplex GX260, a Thinkpad T23 and a Toshiba L30.

And it worked on ... none of them.

All I managed was a "comical" (ha b****y ha) message along the lines of, "Oh no! Something has gone wrong .... please log out and try again," which produced something like, "Unfortunately GNOME 3 failed to start properly and started in the fallback mode. This most likely means your system (graphics, hardware or driver) is not capable of delivering the full GNOME 3 experience."

Yippee, skip.

A Linux "development" that can't cope with older equipment? Depressing.

Linux's Vista, perhaps!

[otherego]

A couple of things which might be of use to someone, sometime...

Among my collection of eBay computing antiques, I have a Toshiba L30 and L100. Among Toshiba's less exciting ideas, but they seem to offer the durability that sometimes accompanies a lack of sophistication and performance. I hope. (Hey, I'm still here...)

A friend needs a spare computer, so I thought I'd dual boot the L100 - its own Windows XP and, as she's used Ubuntu and seems to like it, I thought I'd try that. She lives a long way from here, too, and I thought she stands a better chance, statisitically, of finding local assistance for Ubuntu than anything else. (She seems keen on the security of Linux - hence not simply reinstalling Windows and wishing her luck.)

The live CD suggested that Ubuntu and the L100 were not, perhaps, natural allies. Slower than a slow thing in treacle, and crashier than a stock-car race.

PCLInuxOS 2010 GNOME, on the other hand, positively flew. So - confuse the friend by presenting her with a new distro, or persevere with Ubuntu?

I bunged in an old and iffy 40GB hard drive, and installed first Ubuntu, then PCLOS.

Ubuntu remained painfully slow, even installed. I vaguely suspect a graphics driver problem or something. Opening menus took an age, for instance - anything that necessitated waiting for sub-menus to open, or for scrolling to happen, was slower than a typical live CD on a slowish computer. An initial update did nothing to help; the only non-free driver offered was for the modem. Yippee. (And yes, I had enabled medibuntu - much googling - forgot that it's a little bit of a performance until one finds the relevant commands.)

PCLOS installed easily and was very happy - but oddly, didn't include Ubuntu in the GRUB menu. SuperGrubDisc2 found and booted Ubuntu, so it was still there. Trying sudo update-grub in PCLOS merely caused irritating messages about this user not being a member of the sudoers group and this incident will be reported, and su-ing to root and trying update-grub just led to whinges about non-existent commands.

I was surprised to find that menu.lst existed (thought that had disappeared with GRUB2?) - but couldn't open it.

Grrrrrrr.

The eventual solution was to use PCLOS's facility to restore the MBR. During the course of this, it seems to say, "Oh look - another distro" - and offers to add it to the GRUB menu.

Problem solved. Bit of a mystery, as in the past, I've had GRUB update itself to include an initially missing OS during the course of the first routine updates post-installation. But it worked - so if PCLOS won't let you do anything about adding a distro/OS to GRUB, try restoring MBR - and hopefully it will wake up to the existence of a neighbour.

The Ubuntu slowness proved more annoying to correct.

As a last resort, I ran the update manager again - and this time, the update included Linux kernel firmware drivers. Pure luck; nothing I'd done.

No immediate change, so I restarted (logging out and back in would probably have done the trick) - and now it's speeding along quite happily.

Ubuntu's not my favourite. I admire its ethics and its contribution enormously, but the fanatical adherence to free drivers etc is as irritating as a totally virtuous and morally irreproachable friend...

Hardware detection/driver installation just ain't as good as some of the others - Mint is hugely better, but I've even had problems with that, trying to find  a graphics driver for the SiS 672 chipset. Mandriva and PCLOS coped fine.

So - I'll probably end up with XP and Ubuntu, and hope that Ubuntu finds the necessary drivers again.

But increasingly, I'm wondering whether PCLOS isn't less of a gamble on differing hardware. Stange. It took several attempts before I got PCLOS working - but have subsequently installed it and reinstalled it umpteen times with great success.

And as I find that I can install and update a Linux distro in literally less than a quarter of the time it takes me to install Windows, update it and add the minimum necessary programs, at least it's feasible to experiment.

So I'm a happy chappy with Linux again, even if GNOME 3 still considers all my computers unworthy of it.

[*scyllabub*]

CANONICAL UBUNTU 11.04 review from Expert Reviews:

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/software/1284457/canonical-ubuntu-11-04?CMP=NLC-Newsletters

I'm wondering whether to install it on Samsung X120 11.6" net-notebook, so that I can use a USB HDD formatted to Ext3.

(1) Windows7 won't be able to read anything on an Ext3 drive, right?

I want to export recordings from a PVR onto this USB drive and plug it back into said PVR to play back.  I've already tried formatting it FAT32 and it's not working.

(2) The last time I did this on another netbook, Ubuntu was prioritised in the boot sequence, so if I was inattentive it would boot straight into Ubuntu instead of W7.  Could I install so that W7 is the default OS?

(3) What was the name of the downloader prog, please?

[grumpy-cook]

Hi Scylla, for what you want to do wouldn't it make more sense to just use a Linux livecd? No messing about installing and playing with boot managers.

[otherego]

The live CD makes sense to me, too.

If it's one of the netbooks that lacks an optical drive, then it's easy to use a "live flash-drive" instead.

Download the .iso of your desired distro, then use Unetbootin to transfer it to your flash drive - makes it bootable at the same time:

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Easy to use - I use it all the time. (Not sure whether I've tried it on a Windows machine, but it would be the same thing, I'd guess.)

[*scyllabub*]

Thank you both!  Unetbootin is the name I was looking for 🙂

That's got me thinking - what if I install Ubuntu on the 500GB USB drive that I'm trying to export to?  Would it take up much space?  Then I'd only have to plug one thing into netbook.  It's a Western Digital AV-25 drive, specially for AV stuff and the same as the 320GB version in my Smartbox PVR.

I'll see if I can do it anyway cos I can always format it off 🙂

I've forgotten everything about "it" 😞

[otherego]

I know nothing of video recorders, but it's unusual for something to need an extended file system to write to in this microsoft-dominated world. Presumably the PVR has the ability to write direct to an external hard drive.

Sorry if I've misunderstood that.

I take it that at the moment you download stuff from the PVR to the netbook, and that you're trying to transfer those downloads from the netbook to the 500GB drive - and that that ain't working, with the drive formatted as F32.

And of course, Windows will have a battle with ext3 - although I have an idea there are drivers to allow it to read ext2 - not sure about writing to it - might be worth a google.

If you're ending up with enormous files, might you simply be up against a Fat 32 limit? As far as I know, you can't write single files larger than 4GB to a F32 drive.

If you are trying to write files of over 4GB (DVD-size - Scylla is entering the movie business...), then simply formatting your external hard drive to NTFS might allow W7 to transfer your files to it, and save complicated intermediate steps.

Hopefully g-c will be back later or in the morning - I'd hang on for his comments about all this.

If the external drive specifically needs an extended file system (such as ext3) for your data, then yes, it could be simpler to incorporate a Linux distro into the equation.

If it's only going to be used to transfer stuff, then an 8GB partition would suffice for Ubuntu. Again, I'd await comments from g-c (or e-j, if he's around - one of the aces, anyway.)

What I would  try if simply formatting the external drive to NTFS won't solve your exporting/importing files problems is this:

Make a live Ubuntu flash drive (easy with Unetbootin)

If it's out of warranty, or if you're confident, remove the netbook's own hard drive for the moment. This will prevent annoyances with GRUB ending up installed on its MBR - which will make booting a mission impossible with the Ubuntu drive disconnected. (I think repairing Vista/W7's boot process is a bit more of a mission than XP's under those circumstances - might be possible with the Neosmart repair disc.)

Plug in both the live flash drive and the 500GB drive. The netbook's own hard drive remains safely elsewhere until we're all done.

Boot the netbook from the live flash drive.

Use GParted on the live flash drive to prepare an 8GB or so partition (ext3 or 4; I'd use the latter) for Ubuntu on the 500 GB drive - no real need for a separate /home partition.

I don't know how much RAM you have. With heavyweight files/graphic work in mind, I'd also be inclined to create a swap partition. I'd guess about 2GB would be sufficient - someone else might have a clearer suggestion.

I'd place the Ubuntu ext4 (or 3 or whatever) partition and its associated swap partition at the beginning of the drive, to speed it up a little. Probably not that important just where you put it, though.

Install Ubuntu to the 8GB partition. (It'll find the swap itself.) The partitioner incorporated in the installation process allows you to tell it where to install - simply select the 8 GB partition (I think you have to select the partition, press a "Change" button, which opens another window, tell it to use the 8 GB partition as ext4 files system, and mark it / - the / tells it that that's where to install everything - all simple drop-down choices - something like all that, and mostly self-explanatory)

Check it's working, update, tweak as required. Remove the 500 GB drive 'til it's needed.

Reinstall the netbook's own hard drive.Use normally.

When you want to use the external drive, start the netbook with it plugged in. Either tap whichever key gives you a choice of boot options (F12 on one of mine, Esc on another - dunno why they can't agree and standardise); tell it to boot from the USB drive.

Alternatively, reset your BIOS to look for an external drive before the built in drive - if you start the netbook with the external drive plugged in, it should boot from that.

When you run Ubuntu on the 500 GB drive, you'll be able to navigate to and mount both the netbook's own drive, and the storage partition of the 500 GB drive, in order to shift files from one to the other.

Hope all that makes sense. And for goodness sake wait until one of the experts OKs it.

Apologies if I've completely misunderstood what you need, and feel free to ignore my ramblings...

[*scyllabub*]

Choosing cluster size ?:|

EaseUS says:

Smaller cluster size makes less wasting of disk space. The smaller cluster size is, the bigger file allocation table (FAT) will be. The bigger the FAT is, the slower the operation system works with the disk.

Options are: (KB) 8, 16, 32, 64.

But my disk will not have FAT, it will be Ext3 ?:|

I do think it's a bad show, you ladz not being here for me when I want to bite the bullet :_| 😉

[otherego]

Dunno about all that clever cluster size stuff.

If you're installing Ubuntu to the external drive, I'd be inclined to use GParted, anyway.

As far as I can see, you should be able to avoid installing Ubuntu to the netbook itself. I think my rather lengthy suggestion will work - and with less risk to your W7 installation.

Just make sure the netbook's own hard drive is removed while you install Ubuntu to the external drive.

(By the by, if you plan to use the external drive with more than one computer, then we can use a cunning alternative plan - essentially creating a live/persistent Ubuntu installation to the external drive instead of a conventional installation, which tends to tie itself to one specific chunk of hardware. Would need to look that one up, though...)

Bet we cross-post again - apologies if I disappear; I'm never sure how close to the magic 10 posts I am.

[*scyllabub*]

I know nothing of video recorders, but it's unusual for something to need an extended file system to write to in this microsoft-dominated world. Presumably the PVR has the ability to write direct to an external hard drive.

Sorry if I've misunderstood that.

I take it that at the moment you download stuff from the PVR to the netbook, and that you're trying to transfer those downloads from the netbook to the 500GB drive - and that that ain't working, with the drive formatted as F32.

Typical!  I missed your post, OE - I'll just clarify this.

The PVR records Freeview HD, and it only has a 320GB hard drive so it quickly fills up.  I'd like to keep quite a lot of programmes for future re-watching (like David Attenborough stuff and some movies).  There is an Export function so I should be able to export recordings to an external drive and free up space on the built-in drive, that's why I bought a 500GB version of the drive installed in the (Technika Smartbox) PVR.

I believe that the Smartbox uses Linux but have been told that it should export to either Fat32 or Ext3.  It hasn't worked with the drive @ Fat32, so I intend to try Ext3 but am worried that Windows7 won't be able to read the drive if I do that, hence thinking about Ubuntu, either on a partition on netbook HDD, or flash drive (as you have suggested) or on the 500GB drive which will be storing the exported recordings.

High def TV programmes can only be played back on the Smartbox on which they were recorded - it's to do with copyright - so I'd be plugging the 500GB into the Smartbox's USB socket...

[*scyllabub*]

And I should have said that the only reason my W7 netbook might come into the picture is if I want to read the drive for any reason.  Exporting from the PVR to the drive involved plugging the drive into the Smartbox's USB socket, entering the Smartbox's library of recordings, highlighting a programme and hitting Export.  Playing recordings on the USB drive just requires it to be plugged in.

It all sounds very simple but I haven't been able to get the Export to work X-(

[otherego]

Strange that it won't simply transfer stuff straight to your external drive. I really know nothing about these clever machines, so had to do a spot of googling - seems to have happened to other people, too.

I suspect you've read these, and more, but they might give some more ideas:

http://8320hd.blogspot.com/p/hints-tips.html

http://www.avforums.com/forums/pvrs-vcrs/1296688-technika-smartbox-8320hd.html

http://www.avforums.com/forums/pvrs-vcrs/1446576-any-freeview-hd-pvr-network-file-backup.html

There could be a problem with some copyright protection software misbehaving - can't see it being a problem if it's only used on your own machine - I'd have thought it would recognise that no matter where it was actually stored.

But it does look as if ext3 should do the trick, doesn't it? I take it you've actually reformatted the drive as ext3? If I'm getting confused and you haven't, then it's easily done with Gparted.

If the "Export" function still plays up, it might then be worth installing Ubuntu on the external drive as discussed earlier, taking a deep breath, removing the PVR's drive, popping it into another external hard drive enclosure and using Ubuntu to copy its stuff onto the 500GB drive.

But I'd be inclined to hang one for someone with (a lot!) more knowledge to comment. Hopefully g-c or even e-j (has been spotted a couple of times recently!) might comment. I know Stevie Blunder's tried most things video, too. Kath's around - might have some ideas. Not seen r-e in a while - hope he's a )OK  b) not given up on the board...

Sorry I can't be more helpful - but let us know what happens.