Filling my Technological Void

Symlink errors

The Void — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:46:00 +0000

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

A change is in order.

The Void — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:25:30 +0000

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.

Hey guys,
Hi!
Hey is it possible to .
Learn to fcking spell it.
STFU
GTFO

……………………………………………

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.

Lets just shoot all the elitists.

The Void — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:09:50 +0000

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.

After a long break…

The Void — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:47:45 +0000

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:

Advanced Operating System
Advanced System Architecture
.Net Applications
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.

Protected: Seriously ….

The Void — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 07:25:06 +0000

Cent OS 5.2 in VirtualBox

The Void — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:19:07 +0000

Finally, I decided to go and download Cent OS so I could try it out for my Network Installation Project. You can access the download section here at this page . At first when I saw the size I was kind of pessimistic if this was going to happen anytime this year. I couldn’t have been any more wrong, I managed to get speeds above 150 kbps for their downloads which is the fastest speeds I have had yet (329 kbps). Anyway I managed to get the 32 bit of the distro very fast.

Next task was installing Virtualbox. So I went ahead and entered the following command.
pacman -S virtualbox

After confirming the download and installing it I followed the instructions which I found here on the ArchWiki. Once Virtualbox was installed I configured it for the installation of Cent OS (Red Hat). Next I burned the ISO I downloaded onto a DVD for backup purposes and then inserted the Disk and checked if I was able to start the Installation. As soon as I started the installation I was greeted by the Cent OS GUI Installer. Continued with the Installation and choose the Option for Server and with the Gnome GUI. Further selected server services like Apache, Samba etc as this was going to help me with my Network Install project.

Heres a picture of my Arch Linux desktop with Cent OS 5.2 Running in VirtualBox.

I noticed one thing though, the mouse seemed not to be captured till I went to Devices > Install Guest Additions. Although I’m not sure why that actually fixed it or it wasn’t working in the first place. Now its time for me to get my hands dirty and goof around on the server and prepare for setting up this on our Windows Network :).

My Desktop for this Month.

The Void — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:46:05 +0000

Here is my desktop for the month. I haven’t modified it quit alot . Its just using a new theme , icon set , wallpaper and a modified conky script. Links for each of them are given below.

Theme : SlateHorn Blue (Comes in Emerald Theme Manager on Arch)

Wallpaper : From Hdwallpapers.net

Icon Set: Crashbit on Gnome-look.org

Conky : Gnome-look.org

Network installation Assignment

The Void — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:31:54 +0000

The college I go to has assigned me with the task of fixing their network. Well actually they want me to fix a Lab which has around 15 Prehistoric Computers and 3 average systems. The main objective the teachers would like to get accomplished is to have a network where all students files are located on a central server. At the moment each students just logs on to whatever system he / she wants and just saves all the files to the local hard disk. Further they would like a bulletin board or message board sort of facility included which would allow them to post messages to a group of students or issue Homework questions and other notices .

Well after proper consideration I’ve decided to give Cent Os 5.2 a try on the network. Not only is the operating system free but it has the features that the staff we’re looking for. So I decided to download it from one of the torrents which you can find here. While downloading it I noticed that i got speeds in excess of 100 Kbps easily so the download didn’t take alot of time either. Although the server is going to be Linux based I’m still keeping the systems as WIndows XP or Windows 2000, If I feel the old systems are too weak to run them then I’ll probably even give Arch a whirl on them. I’ll be sure to update my progress here.

So finally my Exams are over.

The Void — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:23:32 +0000

I’m sorry for the lack of updates during the last month. If you read previous posts you might have noticed that my exams we’re this month and I must say I’m not quite impressed with the way I did though. My averages hit around 80-85% and to be frank I studied much more than I usually do for the other Semesters but it seems that those scores are from reality this time. By the way, SMU please have the courtesy of at least running a spell check on your papers to confirm whether at least 50% of it is typed up correctly . The way your papers come out just glorifies the inefficiency of whoever made those question papers in the first place.

Anyway this Semester should be real fun as I have to do my Project and I don’t have a clue yet on what I will be doing. The little college where I go to ask me if I could make them some bulletin board which each student could access. Although I could probably do that easily with Joomla I’m only going to resort to that if I can’t find anything else proper to do. On the other hand I’ve been looking forward to work on something involving Python, but I still have ways to go before I reach a competent level to do the same.

Speed… I’m Loving it

The Void — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:48:50 +0000

There are quite a few things I love about Arch Linux. But the Main thing I love is its speed. I’ve never been on a faster Distro. That said I’ve never been on anythign else other than Ubuntu Hardy Heron, Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, Mandriva , Sabayon and Mint.

One of the main things I always had a problem with is getting updates. The highest speed I ever got from Ubuntu Mirrors was like 30-35 Kbps and that too from a mirror from Mongolia. As for the other distributions I had either lower or comparitively same speeds as well. Let me show you the time it took to do a 12 MB update on Arch Linux in the morning in India.

Every single update I make seems to get me good speeds and I’m just loving it.