Now I just need to get blogrolling back.

I like the new format of Blogger. more templates :)

I was finally able to get Gentoo installed on my machine at home. It would always choke when I tried to unpack any tarball. So what I did was unpack the stage 3 tarball and the portage tree I had, save that on a loopback filesystem, and copy the files from there when I got home. Now all I have to do is compile the rest of the stuff I want on there, and all's well. Why did the computer choke? Not sure, but I think it's got some hardware issues, and since I really can't buy a machine now, I'll do whatever workaround I need.

post and publish

I'm using blogBuddy...test 12 test 1 2

I'm also thinking about putting blosxom back to work on making my blog.

I copied the kernel and modules from the installation cd onto my Gentoo computer last night. That worked out fine. I'm still having problems with compiling software on it, althought I really think it's a problem with the motherboard or processor on the machine. As I don't have another machine right now, I have two choices: I can compile software on another machine, then install it on this one at home, or I can find a way to compile this software on this machine. It runs Linux (and Windows) pretty fast, so I'd like to use it as I want.

Long time, no see! What's been going on lately? Well, here goes.....

I finally got my gentoo installation up and going on my Pentium 200MHz computer. I had openbox, apache, xmame, rox, openoffice, etc. running on my machine. I even had a little blogging tool called blosxom running on it as well.

Then a lot of changes occurred. First we moved into a new apartment. Then I got a newer computer. The computer I got was a K6-2 with 64MB of ram. I got it from a friend after I built another computer for her. The mobo didn't recognize the hard drive I had in my old computer (A Western Digital drive,) so I had to reinstall everything. So far I got Windows 2000 running on that machine, and now I'm getting Gentoo put back on. I have problems compiling software on this machine, though. I tried compiling the kernel with lower optimization settings, but that didn't work. so I tried to compile the latest version of GCC, to no avail. When I tried to update gcc, the computer flopped on compiling ncurses (it's a portage thing.) I thought about compiling this manually, possibly using the ebuild.sh script.

I also have an ATI TV Wonder USB edition, which I would like to get to run with Linux, but as of yet there are no drivers for it. Looks like I'll have to get that working myself. No problem with that.

I got the stage 3 tarball installed. Now to installing the kernel and logging program. With a decent pair of speakers I plan on turning this thing into a MP3 server.

I downloaded the GRP CDs for Gentoo Linux in an attempt to install it on my home computer again. I should have some time this weekend to work on it.

Well, got my blogrolling thing back.

I've been trying to use distcc to speed up making packages for my system, but I keep getting an error when an ebuild (script for automating compiles for Gentoo) would try to generate libraries. I realize that since the other computer I'm using is my office computer (a Pentium 4 Windows XP system) is generating binaries and object files only understandable in windows. I'll need to tweak the Cygwin such that I can get Linux binaries and object files from it. I'm using this as a reference.

Well.....My Gentoo machine is going smoothly :). Got Samba running, got Webmin running, Apache running, PHP. I'm in the process of putting MySQL on now.

Haven't been here in a while. I was never able to install any packages onto my home machine, but after some time I was able to install the binary packages I made in the virtual machine onto this Pentium 120MHz machine I am converting into gentoo. I had to edit the /etc/make.conf file to make sure the PORTDIR and PKGDIR variables were set, and that I put the packages into the appropriate directory. I haven't given up on my machine at home, just need to find a place to put it.

I've used Macromedia Dreamweaver in the past, and they had a site management feature that allowed you to update your site via FTP. I dismissed it in the past, due to FTP's lack of security compared to SSH. I tried it today on my personal site, and I'm impressed.

This is coolness! Right now I'm posting this blog from within a VMWare session running Gentoo Linux. Speaking of which, I'd betterget some more mileage out of this trial before it runs out. :) That software (VMWare) has got to be the most impressive software I've worked with in a while. Let me find out some more packages I can emerge into this session. I'm trying out this ratpoison package I made. It's good to be able to work in X without the mouse, since my machine at home doesn't have a working mouse. :) Now that I think about it, I need to start making packages to put on my other machines.

At some point I need to get that distcc thing going again, so my compiles will be quicker.

I was thinking about some itches to scratch, and I've come up with a few, which should sharpen some of my skill on many fronts.

At my current employer I get floppy disks of information to be put up on the web site. I thought about making that process interactive over the web. I think I can use a combination of XML, for the data and CGI with Perl to pull this off. The only problem now would be the authentication mechanism. I probably can find a Perl module to take care of that, too. More on that in a minute

I was also thinking of configureng screen scraper to download all of my Yahoo email. That's another itch to scratch.

On the way to work I was thinking also about how to migrate users from one computer to another (that's happening a lot now.) Usually I just copy files to a network drive, but being able to package those files would be helpful, as I can preserve the directory structure of the files I back up (or migrate.)

I have stopped working on putting Gentoo on my old desktop and laptop at home for right now. I was setting up the desktop for working on my web stuff. I found another neat way, in my opinion to utilize Gentoo in the meantime. I'm using it to generate Slackware packages for software that's not part of that distro, like ratpoison and Mozilla Firebird. A lot of the software I'd like to install at home isn't part of the Slackware distribution, so I can use Gentoo to compile a package for me to take home.

I usually get those Linux Format magazines, and this issue had the DVD with the whole Linux Documentation Project on it, as well as a guide called RUTE. I'm burning a CD with that on it now. Speaking of which, let me download the latest FIRE (Biatchux Lite) CD.

I've noticed that I don't have any programming itches to scratch. One thing I want to do now is get Gentoo installed on my 486 laptop (good luck, huh?) I came up with an idea on how I can accomplish this.

It seems like I just need to get a stage 3 tarball installed on the laptop, and install all of the packages. But how to put the stage 3 tarball on the computer. Sounds like a trusty floppy distro should work. But since I don't have a network connection (like ethernet) I have to go the parallel port route. Then I can use the same methods to install any packages I may want. First, lets create the binary packages to be installed. While the computer's making the packages, I'll test the plip connection at home.

Home update: I finally got a chance to try to install Gentoo at home. Time to rethink my strategy. I was trying to onstall it on a UMSDOS folder on a FAT32 partition I have at home (I'm sharing that drive with a Windows installation.) In situations where file permissions were really important I haven't had much success with UMSDOS. So the next time I try it I'm going to make a loopback filesystem and go from there. Which means I'll need a ramdisk. Time to look at my documentation

I keep hearing about getting "blogrolled" so I went to this site to try it out It's a place where you can keep track of all your blog links. Now I'm blogrolling all of the blogs I visit frequently, and some I don't :) Also you can put all the links you blogroll on your own blog using some javascript. Interesting.