NewMedia On the Go » Ubuntu

Debian GNU/Linux

Katherine W. Prawl — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:59:49 +0000

Debian 4.0 (“Etch”) installed beautifully, and runs equally well! I’m very pleased. The desktop wallpaper isn’t quite as attractive as that in Ubuntu, but I’m sure I’ll figure out how to change that pretty soon. The important thing is that it works, and even better than that, I just found this in the Debian GNU/Linux Java FAQ:

The Etch release was the first one to provide Sun’s JDK environment without the need to download it from third-party repositories

Hooray! If the version is the one I need (JDK 6), I’m ready to download and install Wonderland. If not, it should be easier to update it than to try to do and entirely new install.

Yep, the Java 6 binary packages are available, so even if they didn’t get onto this virtual machine during initial installation, it should be an easy matter to get them and install. In fact, there are step-by-step instructions in the Debian Java FAQ for doing just that. I’m good to go!

Try, try again

Katherine W. Prawl — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:11:52 +0000

I’ve given up trying to configure Ubuntu to use as anything but a desktop system. It’s very pretty, and would be an excellent end-user computer for someone to use for web surfing and email, and maybe running SecondLife, but at least as I installed it (important caveat), it doesn’t have the right packages to let me get Wonderland to work on it. There seem to be some of them, but the versions are wrong or something. I got completely frustrated trying to install Java JDK6, which requires GCC 3, but Ubuntu has instead GCC 4.2, and so on. I couldn’t even get the Java plugin for Firefox to work, in order to verify my Java installation was correct!

So now I’m setting up Debian Linux on yet another virtual machine. Yesterday I tried OpenSuSE Linux, but wasn’t very favorably impressed with it. Maybe I’ll look at it again sometime, since there are lots of people who swear by it, but at least my installation left something to be desired. I guess appearances do matter to me, because the fonts they use on their desktop were difficult to read on my screen, and I couldn’t get it to use any display definition but VESA 800×600, which is pretty skimpy for someone used to a 20″ diagonal high-resolution LED display. I’m hoping Debian will let me use a bigger window — Ubuntu did. Thank goodness Linux distros only cost the time and bandwidth it takes to download them.

Blogging from Ubuntu Desktop

Katherine W. Prawl — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:24:47 +0000

I did install the MacOS 10.5.2 update today, which appears to have helped my WiFi connectivity as promised, but that has nothing to do with how I got Ubuntu to finally connect to the net. What I had to do was click a little icon at the top of the Parallels vm window that I simply had overlooked. Doh! All that reinstalling and breaking my brain trying to troubleshoot the connectivity problem…. I feel so dumb.

But now it’s working, and in fact I’m writing this blog in Ubuntu, so there are no more obstacles to plunging ahead with the Project Wonderland trial. No obstacles except the need to sleep once in awhile, that is. Also, today we took off to do some un-geeky sightseeing this afternoon, followed by dinner at a local restaurant and grocery shopping. It was a nice break, but tomorrow I’ll get back to working on this. I’d love to have Wonderland running before Metaverse U this weekend!

Ubuntu Server Installing

Katherine W. Prawl — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:59:45 +0000

Once I found out Parallels had some problems installing the Ubuntu Desktop, it was just a matter of searching their knowledgebase for information about Ubuntu Server. Sure enough, I came up with a page of instructions that not only gave a way to install the server, but even explained why it didn’t work out of the box. Ubuntu Server is compiled with something called PAE (Physical Address Extensions), but Parallels 3.0 does not yet support that. So, it’s necessary to install without PAE, either recompiling from source (which is rather difficult to do unless one already has a working version) or booting in rescue mode.

The instructions for getting to the console to tell the installer to use a different kernel are a little unclear, but at least I have a starting point now. And it’s installed!

Ubuntu aha! moment

Katherine W. Prawl — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:22:11 +0000

I should have looked at the Parallels knowledgebase sooner. Sure enough, there’s a special article on installing Ubuntu on Parallels 3.0 that instructs one to edit the screen resolution. I’ll try that, but I’m sure it will take care of the problem since it was obviously a display issue with Ubuntu desktop. The server installation, using a “typical” setup instead of the custom vm I’d tried earlier is nearly finished, though, so I’ll let it finish to see if it works before trying to create a new Ubuntu desktop vm. That error saying the CPU was too old was just too strange, but there it is again. Guess I’ll forget the server setup for now, and see if fixing the display setting works for the desktop.

Yep, it worked! So tomorrow I’ll try the same trick on the server installation. That’s a fun thing about virtual machines. If one doesn’t work, you just drag it to the trash and start over, but because they’re virtual there’s no worries about pollutants or disposal issues.

Ubuntu Server on Parallels

Katherine W. Prawl — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:24:11 +0000

Well, that’s interesting! I installed the Ubuntu 7.10 server on a new Parallels virtual machine, and it went through the whole process just fine. But when I tried to boot it up, I got an error that said, “PANIC: CPU too old for this kernel.” Weird! If it was that horrible, how could it have installed the system? I’m running the latest version of Parallels (3.0 for Mac), too. Something is wrong here, but I don’t know what.

Well, back to the Ubuntu website to download a new copy of the desktop version, and see if I can get that to run. It’s beginning to look like there’s a problem with Parallels or my Mac, though. The WindowsXP vm is working fine, so I can’t imagine what could be causing Ubuntu to fail.

Hmmm. When I start the installation on a new blank vm, Ubuntu installer says something about unable to load the system description tables, or something like that. It flashed off so quickly i didn’t get the exact words. Nope, it still does what it was doing before. The screen size enlarges, with a broken-looking graphic at the top, then it shrinks back down to the initial size. Yep, something wrong alright. I got an error message saying the display had been shut down 6 times in the last minute and “something bad may be happening”. Yeah. Back to step one. This time I’ll start using safe graphics mode, and see if that helps. Nope, same problem.

OK, the startup screen offers an option to check the CD’s integrity, so I’m doing that now. OK, that passed, so there’s no need to download a new copy. Now I’m running the memory test. No problems there. So, I guess the help forums are my next attempt. If anyone has suggestions, of course I’m more than ready to listen. Just hit the comments button and let me know.