Read more for suckiness.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to install Debian on an external drive, you can follow these instructions. THis has the advantage of being portable and persistent, and works for hard drives and flash drives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just Installed Debian on my laptop again a few days ago. Already upgraded to sid repos. I like the new network-manager. I’ll post if anything new comes up.

The server, over the past two weeks or so, has gone through some upgrades. First of all, it now has a third hard drive in its RAID 1 array. Secondly, it now has a third ethernet card, an Intel Pro/1000. This card is connected directly to the NAS used for backups and it is a Gigabit card while the other two cards are only 100mbit cards, so backups should be much faster. Third, it has been upgraded from SDRAM DDR 333 non-ECC RAM to SDRAM DDR 400 ECC. This should provide for extra speed and reliability. Lastly, the server now has backup power. It is powered by a 2U APC Smart-UPS, which is 1400VA/1050W. It also powers some network equipment, including a switch, a router, and a NAS.

The next upgrades are increasing the capacity of the RAM, getting another Gig-e NIC, getting some SATA drives, and a new PSU (I really don’t think 290W is going to cut it after many more upgrades).

I made a stylus that works on laptops and an iPhone for less than a dollar and a watch battery. Read for instructions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I got a new server today. Here are the specs, compared with the old server:

Unlike previous versions of Ubuntu, which, in order to make a persistent liveUSB, required partitioning, installer bootloaders, copying files, etc, 8.10, which comes with a convenient USB installer program on the LiveCD that creates a no-hassle, no partitioning, persistent liveUSB. This seems like it would be the perfect solution to creating a portable, free environment. However, on two different USB drives (one of which is usually fast), 8.10 (installed through the liveUSB creator) runs extremely slow. It takes about 3-5 minutes to boot, and about 30 seconds to load programs like Firefox 3. Scrolling and typing is extremely slow in all programs, almost to the point where it is completely unusable. Is 8.10 more bloated and slow than previous releases?

The reason I think it is running slow is that with older versions (with the complex methods of doing persistent USB installs), changes were committed on shutdown. In 8.10, they appear to be committed instantly. This I/O increase may be slowing it down.

I have thought about making a cut-down version of 8.10, as I have done this with previous versions to make it fit on smaller flash drives. Does anyone know why it is this slow, and if there is any way to speed it up? Is the solution just to use the old method?

Seeing how inconvenient the whole tethering process is, I decided to simplify it with these scripts. You will probably want to keep the SUID bit on these, or use sudo and set it up to not ask for a password for this command. Be sure to replace wlan0 with your wifi interface.
Read the rest of this entry »

Since I want to be able to use my Linux laptop on the go without paying for a “tethering plan” or paying for a separate plan, I decided to try tethering my iPhone. Doing this with network-manager is simple.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just testing out the new system.