Filling my Technological Void|Learning to Adapt to new Technology…… The Hard Way.

Recently I had to reinstall my Windows box so I decided to reinstall my Archlinux box as well. So I started taking backups which I must say that backing up data is starting to hurt the wallet since I have about 20-35 GB of data I need to save. So continued on and backed up everything and reinstalled Windows first since I wanted a dual boot configuration on this system. My system has a IDE and SATA hard disk which tends to cause problems when I configure it for dual booting. Usually I end up with having to use the BIOS boot options to go to either Linux or Windows. Well with the help of a friend on IRC (Thanks Qwerty) I created a /boot partition on the IDE drive which Windows was installed and then the rest of the Linux partitions on the SATA drive and then installed the GRUB to sda instead of the boot partition like I was doing previously and now I have a perfectly configured Dual boot.

Now if you are wondering what does this have to do with Symlink errors, hold your horses I’m getting there. After continuing with the install I did a pacman -Syu and made sure I upgraded all base packages but after downloading the updates it just wouldn’t get upgraded but rather gave me the following error.


checking package integrity...
checking for file conflicts...
error: could not prepare transaction
klibc: /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/Kbuild exists in filesystem
klibc: /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/a.out-core.h exists in filesystem
klibc: /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/a.out.h exists in filesystem
klibc: /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/acpi.h exists in filesystem
klibc: /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/agp.h exists in filesystem
............  (Couple 100 of errors deleted) ................
klibc: /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/xor_32.h exists in filesystem
klibc: /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm/xor_64.h exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Checked around and found that without performing the following command would result in the above error.

rm /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm

Running this command fixed the problem and I was able to upgrade the packages with no problem. The reason for this is shown below as quoted per www.archlinux.com

Due to a limitation in pacman’s conflict checking and symbolic link resolution, the upgrade to klibc-1.5.14-1 requires manual removal of a symbolic link before updating. Please run the command “rm /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm” as root to remove the symbolic link that will otherwise cause a few hundred false file conflicts.

Source

Over time I’ve always enjoyed idling time off in IRC channels but now over time I think the good times have passed. Not only does it consume way too much time but it sometimes leads to unnecessary aggravation also. Sure I mean I have a sense of humor but that doesn’t always work especially when you just got from work after a tiring day. An example.

<Person X> Hey guys,
<Person Y> Hi!
<Person X> Hey is it possible to <insert random question here> .
<Person A> Learn to fcking spell it.
<Person B> STFU
<Person C> GTFO
<Person A> <Insert Momma joke here>
……………………………………………

Well obviously thats more than enough to piss off most sane people I know. Sure once its funny but every other day it starts taking a toll. Hell you don’t even get a response like that from channels like Ubuntu or Archlinux. Obviously the answer is simple , I’ve been idling my time in the wrong channel or the people I once knew are now possessed by demons. Either way I’ve found that spending more time in my channel or #archlinux and #Ubuntu and its offtopic channel is more fun.

Over these years of using computers I’ve learned a couple of things. One of them is to not classify users based on the product they use or make general assumptions based on whatever they used. Go to any forum and you’ll find a bunch of nitwits that try to portray that anyone using Windows is a “n00b” and anyone who uses Linux is extra smart unlike the poor little dumbass on his Win box.  I’ve personally had so enough of this crap that I quit visiting the forums that I use to go to and enjoy. Go to and thread that starts with the word Windows and suddenly a Linux jerk comes in going “Oh wait , Linux already does this or HAHAHA you n00b Windows Sucks.” I mean seriously where do you draw a line.

Sure be free to advocate Linux but FFS do it without alienating the other users who would just want to be with their Windows box at home.

Its been a long time since I made my last post and I’m going to plead the Fifth so that I don’t look guilty of slacking. Anyway the past 1-2 months have been quite hectic. First of all results have come out and they are quite below what I expected. Although the subjects for this semester aren’t alot they contain quite a bit of content to keep a student busy.

The subjects I have for this Semester are given below:

1. Advanced Operating System
2. Advanced System Architecture
3. .Net Applications
4. Project

The subject .Net Applications is an elective which I chose over Embedded Systems. Mainly I chose that over Embedded cause I greatly doubt SMU’s ability to be able to provide quality study material on the subject. As the fourth subject you can see I’ve listed out a Project. It seems that the whole project is graded as a separate subject and even has an examination which is based on four subjects that we learned in previous semesters like OOPS , DBMS etc.Now to mention I have the usual slew of assignments which needs to be done within a month. This month and the next should be quite interesting.