flog

f-logjust another web log


29 Nov 2004 20:12 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


I PASSED !!

got 5 questions wrong out of 65, giving me a scaled total of 710, where the pass mark was 500 and 700 is above average.

So I was very happy with that.

At the end of the exam you are told which sections you did well at and I was surprised to find the only one I did get 100% on was Package Management.

Why the surprise? Well I have never used RPM before, I am a Debian man ! (but I choose the RPM exam cos redhat seems to be the industry standard for servers).

Some of the questions were frighteningly easy while others required you reread the question to try and wheedle out what the examiners were asking for.

Only one question stumped me completely and I would love to know if I got it right,(I agreed to a NDA at the beginning of the exam so I will not reproduce it here).

Now whether or not to take a break before tackling the second part of the LPIC.


29 Nov 20040 9:37 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


Exam today, wish me luck !

Did a quick apt-get upgrade last night and ignored all the prompts then the system would not boot, got



VFS: Cannot open root device "LABEL=/" or unknown-block(0,0)

Please append a correct "root=" boot option



tried various "root=" boot options, non worked.

Booted from Linux Formats Live Suse 9.2 CD and at the desktop opened a shell and typed



su

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

cd /mnt

ln -s boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-1-k7 initrd.img

chroot /mnt

lilo



then shutdown and restarted and all was well again !!



The "su" gets you to being root (no password)

"mount" sets up my hard drive (yours may not be hda1) in the /mnt folder

change to that directory

[not sure this step is needed but ...] links the image to the correct place holder (shortcut) (your image name may vary)

"chroot" sets the /mnt directory to the only thing lilo can see

run lilo to rebuild the MBR (ignore warnings about the /proc/partitions)



Of course if I just read the prompts that come up in the upgrade process I  would no to run lilo as root before rebooting DOH!


27 Nov 2004 15:12 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


Been playing Halo 2 online, very cool and absolutely ZERO lag !

I still have not completed Gish, can get to the end boss every time but ... <shame action="hangs head">

Even if I fail the exam on Monday I will have learnt a hell of a lot, like the noclobber shell option, using $amp;$amp; and double pipe to control chained programs not to mention split screens in VI and what tr/od/pr and tee do.


26 Nov 2004 18:23 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


Completed Halo 2 !!

It is short (shorter than Halo) but it is very good, very little repetition lots of interesting stuff.

Had absolutely no puzzles, no switch sequences or anything other than shooting, not necessarily a bad thing ;)

The DVD extras were also good, quite long and a good reward for completing the main game, I wonder what limited edition actually means in this case ??

There is a creature called the Monument in the game that looks like it belongs on the N64, which is a pity because the rest of the game is full of highly detailed,complex, varied textures !

And if you have not played it to the end, it leaves you in no doubt that there will be Halo 3! (or a number of mini series)


25 Nov 2004 21:35 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


 tried to get mplayer or ogle to play me a DVD and got



 libdvdread: Could not open device with libdvdcss.

 libdvdread: Can't open /dev/dvd for reading

 Couldn't open DVD device: /dev/dvd

  

 But http://www.mindcandydvd.com (which is region free) worked, and then I realised my USA (region 1) DVDs work just not the English ones, oh well.


23 Nov 2004 21:21 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


Oh, and Halo2 is taking to much of my time, if I fail the LPI exam I will blame that !


23 Nov 2004 21:20 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


I mentioned that I fixed the annoying (well to me) bug (uh hmm) in Firefox for tabs loading in the background.setting Firefox background loading tabs

But something over wrote my change (i think it was an upgrade via apt-get), Linux Format to the rescue.

Found /home/$USER/.mozilla/default/jhpjppbb.slt/prefs.js and added

user_pref("browser.tabs.loadInBackground", true);

to the end (while Firefox was not loaded) and bobs your uncle !

Note: the LF article referred to /home/$USER/.mozilla/Firefox/longnumber.default/prefs.js


22 Nov 2004 20:55 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


No updates for a while, blame Halo 2 !

I loved the first one so I pre-ordered my limited edition boxed version months ago.

I was disappointed at first, the GFX were amazing and everything seemed cool, but the game play was not there, although I could not put my finger on what the problem was.

But I was rewarded for my perserverience and the later levels get very VERY good !

I am still preparing for my LPI 101 exam (http://www.lpi.org) and have booked to take it on Monday, so wish me luck, I am going to needed it this is looks v.hard !

Quick note to myself, the shell scripts run from the /etc/cron.daily .weekly .monthly NEED to have the first line as follows to prove it is a shell script !

#!/bin/sh


13 Nov 2004 21:14 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


In other news I finished another book (not sure why it took so long) Steven Kings (yes him again) "Desperation", a classic king horror set in the a small desert town which has a few problems with ancient evil (don't they always ?). Great characters with gritty real world personalities, recommended !!

I also found a couple of Excel saga Anime DVDs still in their wrappers, I can not believe this show had such a long run !! It so bizarre, taking the piss out of any Anime before it this is for hard core fans only !

I will have to update the history of the machine web page again ... but not right now !


13 Nov 2004 16:20 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


Good news is I have a new GFX card the bad news is I had to buy a new GFX card and then replace my new CPU with the old one.

First off the pump on my water cooling system just died, luckily a soon as the BIOS noticed the CPU getting to hot it shut down. The GFX card was being cooled by the water cooling system and I had damaged the old GFX card fan, tried to get cooler for NVidia but only ATI available.

New GFX card is PCI not AGP but worked with no changes to the XConfig what so ever.

I tried to get USB working but the kernel logs were backed up with APIC errors from the CPU mis match so I swapped back to the old 1.2ghz AMD and here we are.

For some reason my USB hub had died again, just needed the power cycling but USB storage and USB mouse (track-ball) work fine.

Now to turn my attention to Halo 2 ...? (well maybe I will watch the extras DVD ;)


10 Nov 2004 21:59 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


Got to 5-6 level of Gish, can not work out this level at all though, there appears to be two switch on is obvious, it raises and lowers the floor and the other does nothing , except when first pushed it makes a thunk sound.

Got an email from amazon that my halo2 limited edition has shipped ....


8 Nov 2004 20:46 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


I found Ross Brunson on the LPI mailing list and he happens to have published an up to date PI 101/102 guide, and my amazon order lands tomorrow, just need to finish up my current book, Steven Kings "Desperation", classic 'King' horror.

I get further on Gish and then I get stuck again, I hope my pre-order of Halo 2 does not get here b4 I have had a chance to complete it !!

What does my Dad want for Xmas ? a web site and he wants me to design/create and maintain it for him, has he not noticed how bad this website is ??


4 Nov 2004 22:04 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


And I have updated the History of the Machine with the latest shananagins.


4 Nov 2004 21:56 -- 
no distributed network project statistics for the mo


Well the LPI book was a bust, at four years old it is very out of date the new exam covers a lot more. Which is odd cos the book covers things you would expect a Linux administrator to know yet the new exam is stuff you would expect a Linux desktop support/builder to know ...

http://www.chroniclogic.com/index.htm?gish.htm is taking a lot of my free time, fiendishly difficult.

The BiaB tutorial is on a break but I have been http://www.blender.org (blendering), this was loosely based on a tutorial from http://www.blenderman.org.



Various things are on going, like the Cron setup I had for backups that I killed by running crontab and saving as empty, doh!

<<<<>>>>

root

flog archives

Disclaimer:
This page is by me for me, if you are not me then please be aware of the following

I am not responsible for anything that works or does not work including files and pages made available at www.jumpstation.co.uk
I am also not responsible for any information(or what you or others do with it) available at www.jumpstation.co.uk

In fact I'm not responsible for anything ever, so there!