Just What We Need, a Regional Oil Spill

Posted on May 9, 2010 by ehurst

It’s not as if there is something inherently evil about off-shore drilling for oil. What is evil is the choice to underplay the risks for the sake of profit. It’s cheaper to lie, and pay others to lie, about what constitutes prudent precautions, and to bribe those who are supposed to check on them, than do what’s right. The result is the massive oil slick off the Gulf Coast of Louisiana.

And it’s growing, faster and larger than anyone can currently guess. We’ve seen what it does to wildlife and shore ecology on the smaller scale of previous spills, but we are now about to see what it’s like on a regional scale.

I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say tourism and sea life harvesting will soon be dead, perhaps for the entire Caribbean Sea. For a great many years. And this slick could easily spill into the Atlantic, and spread to near global proportions. Have you ever smelled raw petroleum? Touched it? I have. You don’t associate that with the idea of “harmless.” I don’t know any animals which think it’s a normal smell; they all seek to flee that nasty stuff. Their instincts tell them it’s toxic.

Not that I’m green by any means, because I have no qualms about reaping the benefits of petroleum extraction. I’ve worked closely with major companies in the past, and some of them are run by pretty decent people, at least at the levels I encountered. I have no sense about BP as a company, but I do know for a fact that drilling platform was shoddy all the way.

This will be an added crimp on the faltering global economy. Not just the US, nor other Caribbean shore nations, because the entire world is intertwined economically right now. Greece has economic indigestion and our markets puke.

Ugly political opportunism has already reared its head. The ruling elite will never miss a chance to add one more means of theft and coercion. Look for some really evil stuff coming down the pipe from DC on this. It seems almost tailor made for it, even if the proper term is “an act of God.” God lets stuff like this happen because we have asked for it, have begged for breakneck material progress at the cost of our souls. We have no grounds to pray for His help.

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Lucid Lynx: Many Small Breakages

Posted on May 8, 2010 by ehurst

After a couple of days playing again with Lucid, I discovered auto-mounting removable media is broken. It takes two or three tries just for a simple USB memory stick. Music CDs are not properly handled by any of a number of different players: Rhythm Box, Mplayer, and Xine, to name three. Even with all the restricted additions and Medibuntu, things aren’t working properly. I could not copy a DVD without losing the video, for example. Just playing a video DVD was an experience, because dvd-css kept barfing.

Chrome no longer rendered some sites properly after the upgrade to Lucid. I think the Cream/Vim combination has been broken on Debian for years, so Ubuntu has never had one which behaved properly, including this time. Things which worked under 9.10 don’t any more. I am asking my computer ministry clients to stay with Jaunty for now.

Meanwhile, I’m going to continue testing RHEL 6.0-Beta a little more. While there is some risk with things like PySol, it’s easy enough to avoid it for now. Should something else cause a similar X-server crash, I may try to find a way to discuss it with the developers.

Long delayed update — 15JUN10: The breakages have been fixed, apparently, so go for the gusto. I’m using Lynx now as my daily desktop. The issue with RHEL 6 crashing is, near as I can tell, an issue between the drivers (including experimental gl for ATI) and the still crappy accelerated desktop effects eye-candy, along with automated modesetting in the kernel.

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Thunderbird: Another Good Idea Trashed

Posted on May 8, 2010 by ehurst

Decided to test drive Thunderbird on my Lucid Lynx system. Big, big mistake.

Upon trying to configure my first account, the application grabbed my details and aggressively ran off with an automatic configuration. But it got things wrong. When I tried to stop it and get things set right, it rewrote things the way it wanted. After the third try, I gave up. I can’t say who for sure put this functionality in, but it broke the thing badly.

Telling me I absolutely must use IMAP just because the server offers it is inexcusable arrogance. I know what I want, and why I want it, and I don’t appreciate some doofus deciding for me based on some common expectation. Yes, I suppose I could have manually changed the prefs.js myself, but that should not be necessary. If I have to fight for what I want, it’s no longer worth it.

Thunderbird is now officially trash in my book.

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RHEL 6.0 Beta Catastrophic X-server Crash

Posted on May 6, 2010 by ehurst

I’m giving it a rest. When I tried to open my PySolFC game — compiled on the system — it took down the X server and the system froze. I’ve seen this behavior before in Ubuntu a couple of releases back. I’m sure the Red Hat folks will eventually fix it, but until they do, I need to get my work done. Yes, that “work” includes taking a mental break playing some silly game while my subconscious brain turns things over in the background. It has proven effective and I don’t plan to change.

I can’t even file a bug report because (1) as with the last time I saw this, nothing in the system picked up any crash info, and (2) it doesn’t fit the parameters of something that comes with the system. I built PySol from source.

It was fun, but I need to keep working. BTW, under Ubuntu the proprietary ATI drivers gives me about 5200 FPS on glxgears, not the 3000 or so I remembered.

Update: For the sake or readers seeking information, I have discerned long after this original post the issue was Compiz instability, particularly in relation to later ATI chips. So far as I know, unless the X.org bundled driver offers full 3D for your Radeon chips, you’re best to avoid Compiz — disable visual effects on the desktop. Frankly, I consider that a smart move regardless of the chipset you are running, because Compiz has yet to show me anything anyone really needs.

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Getting a Real Whois Client on RHEL 6

Posted on May 6, 2010 by ehurst

It may not be broken, but the default Jwhois package on RHEL and friends is not easy to use, and the results aren’t satisfactory. Why it is they dropped the original stand-alone client is beyond me. I can’t find anything on it.

What I can find is the source to the package and build it myself. Given all the stuff I’ve built and installed for developmental purposes on my RHEL 6.0-Beta box, I wasn’t too worried about dependencies. There is nothing to configure. You simply unzip and untar the tiny bundle. Step into the build directory and type “make” and “make install”. Job done.

And it works from the start without configuration.

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RHEL 6.0-Beta: Replace That Glacial OpenJDK

Posted on May 5, 2010 by ehurst

Java on RHEL 6.0 is in dire need of assistance. I understand the issues of patent encumbrance, but for the average desktop user, it’s just not that important. If something better is available, we use it.

The bundled OpenJDK on RHEL 6 is painful to use. Among other things, I have a copy of jShisen I downloaded some years ago, and drag it from one system and OS to the next. On Linux, I don’t want to install all the supporting junk with KDE 4 just to get Kshisen. Under Windows, nothing compares for the price. But with OpenJDK, it was unusable, hogging system resources for almost no return.

For quite some time the instructions for replacing it with Sun’s Java have been easy to find. For the peculiarities of RHEL/Fedora and friends, there is a more recent procedure available in several places around the Web which includes all the official methods for changing system defaults.

You’ll need to create an account with Sun (now owned by Oracle), but I’ve had mine for years. I’ve never found the Open Source version adequate for my uses.

The current version from Sun is jdk-6u20-linux-i586. You can opt for the lighter Java Runtime Environment (JRE), but since I expect to have to compile so very many things in the absence of official Red Hat support contracts, I chose the Java Development Kit (JDK). When following one of the guides linked above, simply remember to substitute the name of whatever you choose to download for the somewhat outdated references to older versions of the package.

In my case, the result went from painfully useless to lightening fast. The game works exceedingly well, and I keep find ways in which RHEL 6 is so much faster, lighter, and more stable than the current favorite. However, I have to admit the latter is a lot easier to introduce to non-techie Windows refugees.

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RHEL 6.0-Beta Additional Multimedia Stuff

Posted on May 4, 2010 by ehurst

Note: The linked text instructions are sorely out of date and no longer work with the current release or RHEL 6, nor will it work with the Beta-2 release before it. I’m betting it will not work with either of the Red Hat clones, either.

As promised, I wrote up my experience with building restricted multimedia stuff on RHEL 6.0-Beta. Because it was so long and involved, even a very terse explanation was too big to post here. So I’m offering it as a linked plain-text file on my static server archive. Feel free to keep a copy of the file for your own use. Comments welcome, because I am just a duffer.

Building Restricted Media Support on RHEL 6.0-Beta

If you have a compelling reason for asking, I may be persuaded to burn the rpms to a CD for you. Try emailing me at user account “eddie” on the same domain as the file liked above.

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Greece and More: What to Expect

Posted on May 4, 2010 by ehurst

Vox Day has it covered well. Without dragging in the mysterious Illuminati, he explains the real conspiracy in terms of function, not labels. There exists a known coterie of wealth and power in the world who don’t love Jesus and care even less for you and I. They have for some generations been building their abilities to simply take what they did not produce from those who did.

Credit is merely an arrangement where you receive today some representation of what you plan to produce in the future. You promise to work your booty off paying back something you get to enjoy today. It’s based on advertising provoking your burning lusts for things you cannot afford yet. It’s so normal for us, we believe folks are derelict if they don’t go into debt for all the finer things in life.

That trick with the housing finance bubble was simply creating a false investment vehicle which suckered in millions of investors. When it failed, as it was designed to do, they still own all this debt. That is, they own an awful lot of calls on future production. Those who managed to stay out of this mess and keep some of their future production uncommitted are now being roped in by taxation. So the rioting kids in Greece are simply trying to opt out of debts to which they did not agree. They are trying to tell their government elite — who are participants in this scheme — they will not play along. Here in the US, we aren’t smart enough to riot in the streets.

Yet.

We may get there, but probably way too late to do any good. I fear the kids in Greece aren’t going to win because they are too late, as well. These financial elite don’t have it all yet, and they are determined to get it.

What can we look forward to here in the US? This thing will not come down clean. It’s too complex to be anything but messy. We may or may not suffer a VAT tax system, but we will most certainly find the various government folks here creating new ways to confiscate what you have now and may someday gain. What the government agencies have committed to give you, for whatever reason, will eventually fail. You’ll be cut off in one way or another from those pensions, benefits, etc.

At the street level, across the board, everyone will find the relative price of things will go up. Whatever you have in your pocket will get you less and less of what you want. That’s what a depression does. Don’t think in terms of absolutes on this, but picture an economic crash as the painful loss of buying power. It combines the loss of income, the increasing scarcity of goods, and brings all the unhappiness of folks who feel they have somehow been denied their rightful due.

Those who were already given to such senseless demands will simply increase their predatory practices. We call that crime: burglary, robbery, petty theft, fraud, etc. It will be increasingly difficult to differentiate between crooks and the government folks who don’t like the competition from private enterprise crime. Well, the only difference is you voted for one group, not the other. One group bothered to convince you that you were on their side. The other doesn’t even pretend to care what you think.

So your Internet connection won’t go away, for example, but you may have a tough time paying the bill. Maybe you’ll switch from cable to dial-up. Got a modem on that luxury multimedia box? But then, you may be among those having a tough time just paying for the electricity to run it. If you struggled in the past, it won’t get any better. Those who survive will be the ones who adjust their thinking, primarily their expectations, to match the changing reality. The only question is how quickly things will become difficult in your area, in your personal situation, and so forth.

What I don’t expect is Americans to riot any time soon, though by rights they should have already lynched — literally — an awful lot of folks in DC.

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ATI and Nvidia Broken on RHEL 6

Posted on May 3, 2010 by ehurst

Update: In the comments below, Sean Kane provides a detailed explanation of how to get NVIDIA to work. Thank you very much, Sean!

Second Update: For those of you using ATrpms Repo, the NVIDIA kernel modules can be installed directly, and kept up to date that way. You still have to modify the Grub configuration, but it’s about as simple as it gets.

I don’t know that any one person is doing this, nor any one focused decision of a group, but the net result of all the decisions involved have made it impossible to run either the Radeon or Nvidia proprietary drivers on RHEL 6.

First, there is no third party repository for the drivers as with Fedora 12. Second, all those Fedora 12 users who tried and failed to work with the provided package from the manufacturer have shown me no reason to expect any better for RHEL 6. It’s bad enough ATI and Nvidia don’t really care, but I detect an on-going trend among developers and project managers to sabotage what little possibilities are left.

For the past three days I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Net searching with various different search engines the various techniques. Most of them who succeed at all have to go through manually blocking kernel modules, mucking about with initramfs, and some have downgraded their X.org packages. The official setup pretty much forces the bundled inferior drivers early in the boot process. While this makes for a very nice boot display, with a good high resolution screen and all, it also means you have to fight tooth and nail to keep them from loading.

Having tried all the various tricks others claim work, I have struck out completely. With my onboard Nvidia chipset, the Nouveau driver offers no better than 280FPS for my GeForce 6150. With the Radeon driver, it’s about the same on my HD 4350 card (512MB VRAM), but adding the experimental glx drivers at least gets me about 800FPS on a card capable of some 3000FPS or better. It’s okay if that’s the best you can do, developers, but for goodness’ sake, stop making it so impossible to work around your puny results!

At any rate, this is probably my only real complaint about RHEL 6. Otherwise, try and take it from me. This is great!

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RHEL 6.0 Beta Test Drive

Posted on May 2, 2010 by ehurst

Downloaded the DVD ISO from RedHat; even gave them my details representing Open for Business. I’ll be writing a longer report for that, but for now, just a few notes.

Because I’m using a new-ish Radeon HD 4350 card on my machine, I expected some troubles. Didn’t happen. The bundled X.org handles it well enough I haven’t yet bothered to build and install ATI’s Catalyst drivers yet. Indeed, after the nice graphical greeter, this was the first ever Linux distro to offer a full text-mode screen display properly on my Dell 23″ LCD. The entire thing had that standard RedHat TUI blue background, but the fonts were in correct proportion. I was really surprised. Nice, tight little fonts on the 1920×1080 scale instead of huge scaled fonts to crowd my screen at 80×25 characters.

Then the graphical installer also did something new, because it was properly scaled to the pixel resolution, but in the center of the screen, still large enough to read clearly, in spite of the rather large black borders. Nice and sharp fonts, etc.

I made a mistake and misread the part about selecting which harddrives I wanted to include. For my own amusement, I did some frantic clicking on the screen. I think the installer noticed, because it went back and started over at the part about selecting the drives! Got it right on the second run.

I chose the desktop installation profile, with refining the selection with more packages later. When the packages were all finished, upon reboot, I was nearly blinded by my screen filled with intense red. I don’t like it, but that’s the boot screen. Cute little pie-chart progress meter. I had to configure the ethernet connection by manually selecting to have it connect by default on startup. Otherwise it was correct. While Kudzu recognized my printer, the version of HPLIP is just a little too old, and prints poorly. I’ll be updating that later.

The package manager window is a little wonky. I had to close it and restart every time something changed much, because it didn’t refresh very well. This was the first time I got a little confused picking the developer stuff I wanted. I really needed to add the bytecode hinting and subpixel rendering to the Freetype libs. It was easy enough, but now you add switches to the rpmbuild -bb command to rebuild a source RPM, instead of editing the SPEC file. Still, nice results, cleaned up the fonts display on my LCD very nicely.

Then, I looked into how hard it would be to add the usual hacker-multimedia packages. There is currently no 3rd party repository for this. While most of this release is built on Fedora Core 12 (FC 12), it’s not precisely the same, from what I could find. So I decided not to use the packages themselves, but built everything from SRPMs designed for FC 12. I started with Gstreamer Bad Plugins. That was a huge task.

Now, I did it because I knew I’d learn something, even if I failed. In keeping with the policy of staying as close as possible to the original release, I first checked the FC 12 official repos, then the RPM Fusion stuff. I simply ran the rpmbuild -bb gstreamer-plugins-bad.spec and took notes on the dependencies. One at a time, I first tried to see if the RHEL 6.0 Beta Yum repo had the item. Sometimes it took a bit of research to find a certain library was part of a package with a totally different name. The dependencies branched out sometimes 5 deep before I got back to main branch. It was about eight hours on a pair of Xterm consoles, after I figured out to install Xterm and the miscellaneous bitmapped fonts of X.org.

BTW, on this release, everything was built under root’s home directory, instead of the traditional /usr/src/redhat. So I kept jumping back and forth between two open Xterms logged in as root, keeping one in the SPECS directory and the other jumping around doing the other work with Wget, RPM commands, etc. Having watched how it was all neatly scripted on FreeBSD to build from source that way (but always finding some critical ports broken) it wasn’t too hard to figure out how to keep track with a notebook, scribbling notes on the various branching dependencies. I really learned a lot, and it was quite doable. I had to hack only one SPEC file to finish (Mplayer), and one package I had to install directly from the FC 12 repo (x264) because of a circular dependence on building ffmpeg.

The reason I went to so much trouble is an idea which struck me the other day. Having learned progressively more about getting what I want by building it myself, why not just create my own DIY-RedHat clone? I know when the final release comes out in September (currently planned) I won’t likely be able to afford the basic support from RedHat. But the SRPMs are always available for updating, so I’ll just keep an eye on those. By then, at least one of the 3rd party repos should be up and ready to update all the other stuff I’m already building.

For the Fedora fans, thanks, but I despise rolling release and want to keep the same core system running for at least three years. Fedora drops previous releases like a hot rock when the new one comes out. I realize that’s pretty much by necessity, but it’s not for me. I’ll keep the RHEL installation and do whatever work is necessary to keep it up to date. If it all breaks down, I can tuck my tail between my legs and switch to CentOS when they finally pick up on 6.0. This way, I at least get a head start on learning the peculiarities.

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