September 11th

Today is September 11th 2007. Six years ago I was working in downtown Boston when the first word sprang up that something was wrong in NY. It was hard for me to believe that over 3000 of my fellow countrymen died in the space of a few hours.
Nothing my wife and I have experienced in our lives can compare to the loss the families of 9/11 experience each day since this tragedy. We just wanted to take a moment and say that our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who lost friends and family on September 11th.
We also wanted say thanks to the brave members of our armed forces whose dedication and service allows us to continue to have the freedom and quality of life we enjoy as Americans. We salute you.

Printer Ink

I found out why my HP 882 C was not being seen on the network by my Windows and Linux clients. It was because it was out of ink! Hello, basic A+ stuff here, once I put new ink cartridges in the printer it came online and I was able to have all my systems use it. So I can now print to the printer over my network with Ubuntu. Whoo hoo

Now for the real reason for this post.

The solution to this problem, cost me $50.00. That is how much it cost for printer ink on sale at Staples. $50.00 for a six year old printer. Brothers and Sisters unite! We should be able to get cheap printer ink whenever we want. Someone please tell me there is a better way. It is cool that everything works now, I just can't believe that it cost as much as my Ubuntu machine to get it working. If someone shows me a better way, I will name my Fedora Core box after him or her.

I will show you next time how I got the printer going with Ubuntu. In the meantime we should all demand cheaper printer ink. No wonder they give away the printers for free.

Stuff and Windows Networking

Stuff

Last time

*.png stands for Portable or Public Network Graphics - An open source file format that is or was supposed to replace the *.gif format. Wikipedia has a good article on it too.

http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG/


We have a Linux god at work. He works on MS systems only because he has to in order to keep us running. So it was with interest when I told him that I was working with the Ubuntu flavor of Linux. "It sucks"! That was his first comment. To tell you the truth, I was not surprised. If it is not the Fedora Core (Red Hat) flavor of Linux, LG (Linux god) is not impressed. Lg told me several reasons why I should not be using this version and I should be using Fedora Core. Honestly, I did not understand all the reasons, but in my mind I am meeting my goals with this project.

Goals

1. To build a Linux PC that would work for under $100.00. I did it for about $65.00
2. The Linux flavor had to be able to recognize all my onboard hardware.
3. I had to be motivated to learn it. As I said before, my experience with Red 6.1 and 7.1 and 7.2 did not go well and I am comfortable with this kind of stuff.
4. It had to be stable. Ubuntu has not crashed once. It does not run fast, but on the other hand it is stable and I am picking something up every time I fire the PC up.

As of right now I am meeting my goals. I enjoy coming down here in the bunker and getting some work done. This is how I started out with DOS 2.1 on the IBM PCjr. and years later it paid off. I told Lg, that if it were not for Ubuntu that I would not have even tried to learn the OS. I will say for the record that I do plan to work with Fedora Core when I get PC that can run it. I can assure that the $50.00 box I bought would not be able to run it. The ultimate goal is to be able to use Fedora Core for a web server, but I have to learn to walk before I run. Is Fedora Core better than Ubuntu? Yes, Ubuntu does not come with all the tools and software that Fedora Core installs on its build. Ubuntu fits on one CD, FC takes FOUR CDs and can be downloaded on one DVD iso image. Ubuntu is allowing me to explore Linux for the price of an XBOX 360 game. I love my XBOX 360 by the way. Now for tonight's work.

Windows Networking and Tonight

I started up the system and downloaded and installed 27.9 MB of updates. After I updated, I restarted the system and started looking around. I wanted to see how Ubuntu treated things on my Windows network without downloading and installing Samba. So I started looking around and this is what I found.

From the GNOME desktop, select Places\Network Servers. Lo and behold what do I see? Everything on my Windows Network. My HPLAPTOP, my gateway, and my Buffalo NAS were all listed. I was able to copy files to and from my desktop once I browsed to my Buffalo system. On my windows network the Buffalo is listed as \\lsbuffalo\sharename. On Ubuntu it is listed as smb://LSBUFFALO/. I have to find out what smb is and how it works. This certainly makes saving files I have created with the Ubuntu box much easier. I would like to see how Open Office treats MS Word files and vice versa. So now I have more questions, how did the OS find my windows stuff and setup it all up automatically? Can my windows network see the Ubuntu box and can I copy files to it? If I build a network ghost boot disc will I be able to ghost to my NAS? Last but not least, can my network printer (HP 882C that I hooked to my NAS print server) be seen my Ubuntu and can I print to that printer there? So many questions, so little time. It is early morning, from the bunker firebat2k3

Screenshot of /dev/hda1

It has been a busy week. I am quite pleased by how well the Ubuntu OS has been running on this old CTX machine. I wanted to show you how much space was on the hard drive or rather /dev/hda1/. I was able to use the graphic editor called The GIMP 2.2 that came installed on the OS to save the image as a *.jpg. I don't know what the extension is right now but Ubuntu was saving it as a *.png. I wanted a *.jpg so everyone could view the file. The path for this file is /home/username/Desktop/Screenshot-1.jpg. In Windows it would be C:\user\documents and settings\desktop\filename I think. Even though the OS fit on one CD, it expanded to 1.8 GB. I have not installed any software on this machine. Keep in mind that the OS comes with Open Office, a fully capable office suite.

Note: The Man wanted to know about CD/DVD recording software. Under Applications\Sound & Video there
is a CD ripper called Sound Juicer but no software with any CD/DVD recording capabilities.

Printing to a network printer is a little ways down the road I think. I have to install and configure a program that will allow me to see things on my Windows network. Think of it as an emulator for networking. Later Firebat2k3

Up and running

I doubled the RAM in the machine to 256 MB. The machine runs faster, not much but faster is good.

I am writing this post on the Ubuntu Linux PC. The cheap network card that I ordered from geeks.com was not detected by the OS. I used a Linksys 10/100 card and it found it no problem. Keep in mind that more the any other OS Linux, regardless of flavor, needs to have an open connection to the internet to really work properly. If you are planning on using this OS on a home built box or store bought PC, I would suggest that you use name brand components build the machine. Unless of course you like coding your own device drivers for each hardware component. Good luck, I am not that good yet.

NOTE: Make sure you keep track of the username and password you setup during the install. If you forget like I did, get ready to do a CAPRAS (Close all Programs, Reload all Software) because you can't get in to Ubuntu unless you authenticate. So I wasted an hour and half tonight doing a reinstall all because I forgot my password.

Right now I am downloading the software updates for the OS. It will take about 10 minutes and it is 63 MB big with 56 files that need to be installed. It is almost done.

My next step is to get IRC working on this box so I can access the Ubuntu community. You can get the IRC channel from the ubuntu website. I will post that info later. I want to be able to do screen captures and post them on the blog. I think I am ready to go with this now.

When "The Man" calls

The Man called tonight. When the Man calls you want to make sure you hear what he has to say. It sounds like he did not have a test box so he wanted to get the live CD. He wanted to know where you could download the *.iso image. So in case you were wondering here is the URL for Ubuntu and the download site.

Website URL - http://www.ubuntu.com

Download URL - http://www.ubuntu.com/download

Note: When you get to the site you will see several download locations with mirrored sites. Each image is around 600 MB so it will be real fast on a T1 line. I have a free FTP site I am going to try out for downloads. If I get that up this week, you can download it from there.

From the bunker, firebat2k3

Going to rebuild

I did not have a NIC card or sound card for this machine. I ordered both from http://www.geeks.com for $16.00. I want to try acessing my Buffalo NAS and networked printer. In addition, it will make updates a breeze. I have some old PC133 RAM so I am going to try finding what the max RAM is that the MOBO can support. Last, I found a larger IBM HD I had laying around so if it works I will put it in the machine. I will compare install times and provide a detailed listing of all componets as soon as I receive my order.

From the bunker, firebat2k3