Well, since the crash of my MythBox, I’ve been playing with recovering the hard drive. My first choice (i.e. easiest) was to simply install a new distro and keep the original data from the /home and /var partitions. That didn’t work so well (boot fails after GRUB finishes). So, I’ve spent the day playing with the data. Here’s the damage: many inconsistencies on the partitions (no bad blocks, however) and a bad partition table. The table was fixed by running fdisk and removing some partitions. Once that was done, I was able to run fsck (and some variations of) on the two partitions I want to keep (one is in ReiserFS 3, the other in JFS).
Then, I moved everything on my normal box onto a spare hard drive. Then, I moved everything from the /var partition onto that spare as well. Finally, I copied what I could from the /home partition and split it (basically) over the spare hard drive and the space I had on my normal drive.
Now, it is time to reinstall everything and start from there. If I can get to a point where I could shell into the computer, I’ll be happy (because I could then finish setting up MythTV remotely if needed).
Archive for June, 2007
Well, my MythBox, which has been running Ubuntu Feisty has failed me. It seems to have been a bug in the 2.16.20 kernel. The main thrust of the bug was that it screwed with the I/O (read/write) to the hard disk. The first noticeable problem was at three weeks after the upgrade from Edgy because my /home partition (JFS for the very large video files) crashed. I was able to recover the log, but I thought the problem was in the JFS package. After ten days of research, I discovered that it wasn’t JFS (which hasn’t had any major upgrades for quite a while) but the kernel package. So, I contemplated my two options: upgrade to the 2.16.21 kernel (which was in gutsy) or downgrade back to Edgy. It’s nearly impossible to manually downgrade Ubuntu without having a lot of headache, so I chose the upgrade path (after all, my main computer runs Debian unstable with a few experimental packages). During the upgrade, apt-get choked on a disk I/O and the system is no longer bootable. Joy.
Since I now have to reinstall the system (and hopefully recover the pertinent data from my /var and /home partitions), I did some more research. My first priority was remain in the Debian-based system. Second was having a very stable system with less frequent updates (this was, for all intents and purposes, a server environment in which cutting edge is unnecessary). Some things I would need on this box: MySQL server, Apache, PHP, MythTV (of course), Subversion, an FTP daemon, and a SSH daemon. Right off, most MythTV-specific distros were out because they make it somewhat difficult to install other programs/packages. Ubuntu was out because this was the second time I’ve had some major problems with it. So, I settled on Debian stable. It has all the packages I want/need, and it’s super-stable. I’ve not have a bad experience with Debian stable (Debian testing, on the other hand…). SO, during whatever free time I may have this week, I will be re-installing old faithful.
Technorati Tags: debian, Feisty, kernel, UbuntuIf you’re in Germany and a Flickr user, you should know that Flickr has made it so that “sensitive” content is not accessible by users in Germany. This is so that Flickr complies with German censorship law (which requires age verification for the content in question). Now, here’s the ironic part: German users of Flickr are campaigning against Flickr! They’ve set up a group against censorship (link). But, their main target of criticism is Flickr, not the German law. It seems that the more proper thing to do would be to criticize the law that Flickr is adhering to (so that they, nor their owner Yahoo, gets fined in Germany). This seems to be yet another reactionary movement that isn’t thinking critically on the issue.
No TagsFirst, look at this clip from a conference last year with Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion:
Now, does anything strike you as odd about Dawkins’s response? Let me point it out: he did not answer the question at all. In fact, Dawkins deflected the question back to the questioner. Why is it so difficult for Dawkins to answer a relatively simple question. What if Dawkins is wrong? Sure, he does have a point that the faith practices of parents are typically passed along to their children, but that doesn’t make the question invalid, especially since his project is an attack on all religious traditions, not just American Christianity. Dr. Dawkins, if he is seriously engaging in anything to do with religious faith, especially from a “scientific” standpoint should know that one should be trying to disprove one’s own theory. In this case, honestly evaluating the question “what if you’re wrong?” is a prerequisite to the dialog in question. Deflecting that question is more a sign of fundamentalism than it is of academic study.
Technorati Tags: Richard Dawkins, The God DelusionMy Vespa look-a-like came in today. It was heavy and had some assembly required. I took it for a spin around the block to get used to the feeling of riding a scooter. Very fun. It came with a bunch of stuff: a cover, a tire lock, and an alarm with remote start. Its 1.5 gal tank gives me 70 mpg, so I can go about 100 miles on a full tank.
This is what it looks like:
A few updates before running off to the mountains for the weekend (again):
- I am staying at DU for a while longer.
- I am staying in Colorado.
- My comps went well.
- I’m burnt out from school.
- I’m getting a Vespa look-a-like scooter.
- Yes, there is a difference between scooters and mopeds.
- I actually have nothing I need to read at the moment.
Talk
thainamu
Chris Martin
Wilson, Rick, brad, christopher, brad, christopher, brad, christopher, brad
christopher, Jeffrey Rodriguez
pfunked, christopher, pfunked
Jasen