dear lazywebs…

My sound broke. There is a good reason why my sound shouldn’t break. I upgraded Xubutnu Gutsy to Kubuntu Gutsy (apt-get install kubuntu-desktop) and then Kubuntu Hardy (apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade) and now my sound won’t work. I can’t see any reason why this would happen. Specs:

Under System Settings-> Sound System I have the ‘enable the sound system’ button clicked (sidenote, why is this even an *option*?)
Audio Device configured to Autodetect my audio device.
Running alsamixer in a konsole, I see that all my sound is enabled
I don’t have the mute button enable.
This is true for movies, music, etc.
When I open up kmix, instead of the slide button being blue (it is all the way up), it is grey.
When I try to play a song in Amarok, the amarok slide button is grey, instead of blue. This is the button that leads you skip to a certain section of a song, etc.
Restarting HAL doesn’t fix the issue

Any/all ideas are appreciated.

-Eddie M.

Virtual Box Kubuntu Gutsy Install Attempts= Fail

Any and all suggestions are appreciated and I’ll input them to the post.

darkforce@speculum:~/Desktop$ sudo dpkg -i virtualbox_1.5.2-25433_Ubuntu_gutsy_i386.deb

[sudo] password for darkforce:
(Reading database … 132072 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking virtualbox (from virtualbox_1.5.2-25433_Ubuntu_gutsy_i386.deb) …
dpkg: error processing virtualbox_1.5.2-25433_Ubuntu_gutsy_i386.deb (–install):
trying to overwrite `/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/misc/vboxdrv.ko’, which is also in package virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.22-14-generic
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
virtualbox_1.5.2-25433_Ubuntu_gutsy_i386.deb

Computer Issues

It started a few months ago, maybe 6 or so. KDE would freeze up, and give me all sorts of errors. Reboots would usually revert the computer to computer back to it’s state of happiness. However, I should have realized that their no such thing as a state of happiness when Linux needs to be rebooted, and indicative of larger issues.

Later it was ‘i-o slave’ errors. KDE wouldn’t launch anything properly; I would have to reboot and run any errors through a manual check of FSCK, after which point I could cruise the web-tubes again. Again, this should be indicative of larger issues, but I chose to ignore them.

Last night, it was a major system freeze. X froze, after which point I did another hard reboot. This time, attempts to launch Feisty (7.04) gave me the following error:

[27.077987] VFS: Cannot open root device “UUID=b9909cbb-3f43-4c53-bb42-7fbad6 7719be” or unknown block (0,0)
[27.078051] Please append a correct “root=” boot option
[27.078051] Kernel panic – not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block (0,0)
[27.078156] ___

The underscore on the last line is the cursor, which is funny only because I wasn’t allowed to put any input into my comptuer. This error occurs in both the normal boot and in recovery mood.

So of course, being an uber 1337 hacker, I did the most logical thing to mind- grabbed my bookbag and pulled out a LiveCD to take care of this ‘boot’ business for the time being. I launched the cd, hit ‘run and install’ and …. nothing. My computer refuses to load the OS from the cd.

Issue One- My HD is slowly dying. This much is certain from the noises and broken sounds it’s making.
Issue Two- My feisty partition is also broken.

Fix One- A new HD should be on it’s way from Tiger Direct, and I can set this up before the end of Fall Break.
Fix Two- Gutsy release is tomorrow!

Issue One with Fixes One and Two- How do you load an OS onto a new HD if the computer wont read from cd?
Issue Two with Fixes One and Two- How do you get a gutsy cd without a proper HD/cd drive? (friends/family is the obvious choice here)
Issue Three with Fixes One and Two-It is no secret that Gutsy is not close to release ready and that errors/bugs will be rampant on release day.

Issue Number Main- My computer is broken and this makes me unhappy.

-Eddie M.

new school

For those of you who don’t know, I will be attending the Illinois Institute of Technology next semester. Since orientation earlier this week, I have been bashing bugs in their system and proprietary licenses in general. My last email to them read something to the degree of ‘You won’t fix my bug report because you don’t want to, or don’t consider it a bug? Weak.’ Step two includes a planned invasion of the technology offices with Richard Stallman himself! (For those who read this and aren’t sure/to make this more clear: That was a joke. A very funny joke about RMS’ stance on free software). I’m excited to start a new school and learn stuff. I am so smart.

-Eddie Martinez

First post/Install Bug

Before I say anything interesting (never) let me introduce myself. Eddie Martinez. Posingaspopular. I like computers (Ubuntu rox), skateboarding, photography, Freedom, FL/OSS, reading (anything is fine by me), discussing politics with open minded people, movies, music (all genres), sports of all kinds and talking to people in general. My email is eddiemartinez@gmail.com and I don’t mind being contacted by non spammers at all.

Blog, Blago-Blag, Web-Blag etc. Here we go, post #1:

I don’t really know what to do with all this so I’ll just update whatenever anything remotely connected to Linux comes across my lap. I recently (2-11-07) reinstalled my Dapper Ubuntu (thanks to chris_) on my hard drive and the partioning was particularly tricky. Yesterday (2-12-03) I ran into a user at #ubuntu on IRC who was having the exact same problem as me. Note: I’m in there as much as possible, as well as #ubuntu-chicago and #imagi-nation. If I’m online, I’ll respond to ping from any of those rooms. Apparently, there is a bug where Edgy (and Dapper) will refuse to reuse an existing partion and claim ‘no root file system’. The bug report is https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/67130
Does wordpress support HTML? I assume it does, but I don’t know how.

Terminal>root>fdisk>delete partitions (Windows partitions dont need to be deleted). Switch back to the installer and edit it again.

This is for MANUALLY editing a partition table at the installer. I have yet to understand

In particular, my / and swap both went to hda2 after reformating hda2. This is all IIRC though. Hopefully anyone who reads this will now know what to do in case they run across this problem while trying to help someone out. If I’m making myself unclear, or I posted something incorrectly, let me know.

YAY! End of my first blog. More soon if all goes well.

Best Wishes,

Eddie Martinez CC, NC