Hot Swapping [Was: Mounting my DVD-R Drive]

My ultrabay has a DVD multiburner/CDRW that I can put in instead of my hard drive. I can mount the drive, but I can't mount the DVD/CDRW drive.

I've tried

mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/cdrom /media/ultra

but I get back an error

special device /dev/cdrom does not exist

I try

mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/hdc1 /media/ultra

and I get back

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc1,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

So, I try

mount -t auto -o ro /dev/hdc1 /media/ultra

and I get back

mount: you must specify the filesystem type

I should say that I have a video dvd in the drive right now. Maybe if I try a data dvd or a data cdrom in there it will be different. But, I do need to be able to watch dvd's on my laptop, too....

Update:
I just tried it with a CDR that I burned under Windows, and shows up under windows, and I get the same results.

Update:
I had rebooted when I was trying this, and it didn't work. I just rebooted now, and it's working. I can eject the disk and put in a new one, and it all works.

I did notice that when I just issue mount, with no parameters, it lists the media in the drive as /dev/hdc, with no number. I tried manually

mount /dev/hdc /media/ultra

and that worked.

I'm not sure why it all worked. I want to try pulling the dvd drive and putting in my hard drive to see what happens.

Update:
As the title change implies, I've decided/figured out that it's a hot swapping issue. If I boot with the hard drive in, I can't use the DVD. If I boot with the DVD, I can't use the hard drive. I have to investigate the hot swapping issue.

USB Flash Drives -- Closed

Man, that was too easy. Wait, that's what I was complaining about, things not being easy in Linux. Well, here's one thing that was.

I use USB flash drives all the time, so I have to have that in Linux, right. Well, I was expecting to have to do something special to use them, but I didn't. I figured first thing I should do is try to put it in and see what happens.

It mounts the drive, opens the folder, and puts an icon on the desktop for it. I just right click on the icon and choose Umount Volume, and it unmounts it. Couldn't be any easier.

Just too easy!

Mounting My External Hard Drive--Closed

I have a Thinkpad T60, which has an UltraBay Slim adapter that I use for a 100Gig hard drive. I need to mount that under Linux.

So, first I have to figure out where it is. According to this article, it's /dev/hdc. So, with the help of another article, I used fdisk and mkfs to partition it and format it as a FAT32 drive. Well, it's still formatting now.

When that's done, I'll have to add it to fstab, which is new to me. Google is great. Helps you find out all kinds of info you don't know. Like how to add a drive to the fstab file. I couldn't, by the way, use the info in the first article about mounting drives because it wants to permenatly mount it. I don't want to do that as it comes in and out in exchange for my DVD Drive.

Update:
I got my drive mounted no problem. I had to add the following line to my /etc/fstab:

/dev/hdc1 /media/ultra auto rw,noauto,user 0 0

then issue

mount /media/ultra

Works great.

Gadgets/Widgets

I use Yahoo! widgets under windows, and I want something like that for Linux. I would show you a screenshot of my desktop with the widgets, but I'm running a Windows free weekend, so I can't do that.

This post is a place holder to remind me that I have to get into this aspect as well.

Any hints would be great, but I'll update my efforts later.

Update 8/23 2:00pm

I've found out about Google Gadgets for Linux. I'm following their install directions, but I'm having problems getting all the dependencies right. This is my biggest pet peeve about Linux. Under Windows you get an installer, and it installs with a few clicks. With Linux you have to cofigure, make, and so on. Sometimes they have dependencies you don't have, so you have to download this and that, and hope they don't have dependencies.

I understand that each distro has a different file structure, and everyone's computer might have a different kernel compiled, but it's got to be easier if Linux is to take on the desktop.

Apple's done it with a Unix based system, but they know what the structure will be and what the kernel will contain, so they've got it easy.

Update: 8/23 6:00pm
One of the dependencies was QT 2. I spent over two hours doing the install (watching the computer do the install), and it gobbled up the last 2.2 GIG of my hard drive. I'm running in a very small partition until my new hard drive comes in, so this is an issue. I'm going to install my external hard drive, try to mount it, and use that for my free space. 100 Gigs should be enough, no?

Update 8/24 9:20am
I got it installed last night and this morning, and tried running configure again. Still not installing. It gives me an error:

configure: error: conditional "GTK2_TARGET_X11" was never defined.

I've tried installing a few modules for GTK, some internet searches, and even Seamonkey. Nothing seems to work. I'm going to go to their support site and gripe a bit.

Update 8/25:
I got a response back from Google's mailing list. They said to install the dev packages, and it works. Now, I'm not so sure I like it.

I'm also experimenting with Screenlets. That installed and appears to run, but none of the screenlets show on my screen. I'm on their forum to try and get answers to that one.

Scrolling with the Track Point -- Closed

Man, this is a pain. I'm trying to get the trackpoint to scroll, as mentioned in my first post. I found an article on thinkwiki, but i can't seem to get it to work. I have to admit that I'm a bit on the tired side, and that Spongebob Squarepants is a little distracting. Plus, I have about 10 minutes before I have to leave for Karate.

I'm going to try again later.

Update:
I tried something, and it caused X to stop working. This article details some stuff to do, but it all failed.

Update:
Just strange. I rebooted, and now it scrolls in Thunderbird, but just in Thunderbird. Not in anything else.

Update:
I found another link. I managed to install the gsynaptics program, and I was able to disable to trackpad, which I hate. But I still can't scroll. The middle mouse button still does the paste what's highlighted thing.

Update:
I've gone to my company's internal group for help. See what they say.

Update:
I got the help I needed for the scrolling thing. Here's my final configuration in xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
# InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" "AlwaysCore"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
# Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
# Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
# Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
# Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "TouchPadOff" "1"
EndSection

Works just the way I want it to. Hope this helps some other poor soul who's having the same problems.

Windows free weekend! -- Over

Everything I need to run my normal life online is The Web, Email and IM. I do more, but that's 99% of it. I have all of this on my Linux partition already, so I'm going Windows free this weekend. No booting into Windows. No booting Windows in a Virtual Machine. No Windows on my laptop.

Wish me luck.

Update:
Still Windows Free, but I just ran into my first issue without Windows. NBC's online Olympic coverage only supports WIndows (IE/Firefox) and Mac OX (Safari). I tried adding the User Agent Switching plugin, and that got me past the message that said I wasn't supported. I still couldn't watch the video, however. So, no on line Olympic coverage for me today.

Update:
It's over. I'm back to Windows for work. My Linux partition isn't large enough for me to migrate my work stuff over yet, so I'm still in Windows for email and what not. I can't wait for my hard drive to come.

I do have to admit that I had to reboot my laptop, and forgot that unattended it boots to Windows, so I did boot into Windows over the weekend. I didn't log in, though. I just hit the shutdown button on the login window, and off I went, back to Linux.

I'm a little frustrated with the state of affairs in Linux right now. Things are much more difficult than they are in Windows. I still like the idea of LInux, but I'm leaning more towards going back to Windows. There, I said it. I'm not giving up yet, but I'm leaning that way now.

Syncing my Calendar

This is the big one. I MUST be able to sync my calendar to my phone to make this whole thing viable. I said before that I have an "in" with the development team that works on EasySync Pro, so I've sent them an email. It's really a very minor "in", and I don't expect more than a "Yes, we have/are working on a Linux solution" or "Sorry, but Linux is not supported" answer from them. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Updates to follow.

Update:
There is no EasySncy for Linux, which is what I expected. However, there is something called Notes Traveler, which we have, so I'm going to give that a try.

Firefox Upgrade and Thunderbird Install

As mentioned in my first post, I need to upgrade Firefox. My company's image includes 2, and I want 3.

I also use Thunderbird for my personal email, so I need to get that installed as well. I started there, actually, and got Firefox installed out of that.

I did a Google search, and found a website on installing Thunderbird. Their instructions helped me through the process greatly, and I got the Bird installed no problem.

Now, I need to move my profile stuff over. So, back to my Windows partition (which I plan on mounting as a VM some time soon), and I zip up my profile directory there. Now, I'm off to unzip it to my home directory.....

They're extracting now. Keep your fingers crossed. By the way, I did make a backup of my profile directory in my Linux partition before hand, just in case.

And it worked! All my email is there (IMAP through Google for domains). All my RSS feeds are there. WOOT! (Oh, they're one of my RSS feeds.)

So, now on to Firefox, right? Well, turns out the directions that worked for Thunderbird also worked for Firefox. Just a little tweaking to get the directories right, and I'm up and running Firefox 3. One small problem, however, was the Flash plug in. Firefox 3 said I didn't have it.

I downloaded it, and tried to install it, but was told that I had a newer version already installed. So, I went to my Firefox 2 install directory (/usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.14), and copied the contents of the plugins directory to my Firefox 3 install directory, and then restarted Firefox 3. That worked like a charm.

I still need to update my icons in my menus to start 3, and not two, but other than that, I think I'm golden.

Update:
One thing I relied on under Windows on Thuderbird was the new email icon in the system tray. Didn't see it in my Linux one. Some searching had me come across a plugin that does it. Installed it, and it worked fine. I couldn't install it via Firefox. I had to download it and install it directly from Thunderbird. Maybe that's normal, and I just don't know.

Update:
I fixed the menu entries. I wish I could remember how I did that, but it wasn't hard. Sorry I can't detail what I did, or provide a link to what I did.

Update:
I had a little pet peeve with the backspace key not taking me back in history in Firefox. I fixed that with the help of this article. Yes, it is for Firefox 2, but it worked for Firefox 3 just fine for me.

Only thing left now is to migrate my favorites, but I'm in the midst of a WIndows Free Weekend, so I can't get to them to export them.

Screenshots - Closed

Well, that was a lesson learned. As you can see, I added screenshots to my last post. The process was not pleasant. I had to go to the Red Hat menu > Accessories > Take Screenshot, then go to GIMP to open it up, select the area I wanted taken, crop and save.

In Windows if you do Alt-PrintScr, it will just take a screenshot of the active window. I'd love something like that, but I expect to have to download a utility that will allow me to better handle screenshots. There have to be a ton of them out there, so I'm off to sourceforge.net to take a look for one.

As always, I'll update this post with more info on what I find, how I install it, and how it works...

If you know of one, please feel free to add a comment and let me know.

UPDATE: Thanks to the folks who commented on this post. I tried them both, but the keymapping updating worked better for me. Interesting thing is that when I looked at the mapping for screenshot of a window, it said Print. I tried to remap it to Print, and it ended up mapped to Sys_Rq. It works like that, but whatever.

Lesson Learned: I have a bit to learn about Linux, I guess. Didn't know about the keyboard mappings. Also, if the one you expect doesn't work, remap it. Could be a keyboard issue.

Printing

I didn't even have this on my list of stuff to do from my first post, but printing seems kind of important, so I'll start there.

My home printer is an HP DeskJet 960c, which I have connected to a network print server. So, I have to go through the process of adding a printer. I looked up what it will take to download and install the driver by going to hp.com. Turns out that Red Hat doesn't have an automatic installer. It's pretty much a build from source thing.

So, I'm going to just try to install the printer and see what happens.

1. Click on my Red Hat menu, select System > Preferences > More Preferences > Control Center
2. Under Administration, double click on Printing
3. Click on New Printer
4. In the dialog that comes up, enter a name, a description and a location, then click on Forward:
   
5. Next, on the dialog that comes up, select Internet Printing Protocol (ipp), and enter the IP address of the printer, then click Forward:
6. Of course, since I'm going to be installing an HP printer, I pick HP from the next dialog and click Forward.
7. On the next dialog, I select the printer, and then leave the recommended driver, and then click on Forward:
8. The system tells me it's going to create a printer, so I click Apply.

That's it. So, now to test it. I'll open up the text editor and try to print.

Nothing. No printing. On further review, the support site for this driver says that network printing is not supported. Maybe that's why it's not printing.

I'm going to have to do some research and then come back to this later. I'll update this post when I do.

UPDATE!
Well, I played some more, and instead of using the IPP protocol, I tried AppSocket/HP Jetdirect, entered my IP, accepted the default port, and tested it. IT WORKED!

Lesson Learned: When using a network print server connected directly to your printers parallel port, try AppSocket/HP JetDirect.

BTW: I'm not "closing" this post until I get to try it from outside the home. I have everything setup to do it, and I can do it from Windows. I just want to add another printer with the right address and port, then try it from the road. Probably not a big deal....

First Post

So, I'm going to try (again) to make the switch to Linux. I'm starting this blog for two reasons. First, everyone seems to be doing it these days, and I want to see what it's all about. Second, I want a place where I can document the issues I've run into, and what I did to get around them. Who knows, maybe I'll get some good feedback that will help. Maybe having this up will help other people. Maybe no one will read it. We'll have to see.

A little about me
My name is Rick Seiden. I live in Western New York. I'm 39 years old. I work for a huge company as a computer consultant. I'm a geek. Tried and true. I love all the classic geek things--well almost all.

About my computer
You can't talk about installing Linux on a computer without knowing what is inside the computer, so here's what I'm working with:

IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60 Model 1951-BS7.

It's my company supplied laptop, and my primary workstation. I do everything on here, including writing this blog (oooo...exciting!).

About my distro
Linux, of course, comes in many different flavors, called Distributions. Choosing one can be a very difficult task, and depends on many, many factors. If I had a desktop at home I was doing this for, I would have to go with Ubuntu or Kubuntu (I like KDE better than Gnome for some reason...). I like it because it's simple to install, and offers a fairly simple desktop to work with. This is, however, my work machine I'm going to be doing this to. That means I need 100% compatibility with all my work stuff.

Luckily, the company I work for has a standard install of Linux. I can choose between running Windows XP Pro, or our branded version of Red Hat Linux Enterprise Desktop 4. It's Red Hat with a few changes to brand it, and a bunch of programs pre-installed---our VPN client, our email client, stuff like that.

Since I hope to be using this full time, I don't really have a choice. I need to be able to do my work on it, which means I need to be using my work supplied version of Linux.

That means, for a lot of stuff, my computer will just work. I don't have to worry about getting wireless networking or sound working. They just work. I don't have to worry about getting the right resolution on my video card. It just works. That's a plus.

Some things, however, don't work. For instance, the middle button on the track point doesn't scroll like it does in Windows. I'll have to fix that. None of my function keys (the Fn key on the keyboard) work. I'll have to work on that. And the list goes on.

Make it work or live with it
I know that I won't be able to get everything to work. I'll have to live with some things not working. That's the cost of going to Linux in my opinion. Hopefully it won't be enough to stop me from making the switch, but who knows, maybe it will.

Things I know I'll face, and how severe they'll be:

1. The track point must scroll: Pretty severe, as I'm used to it, and use it all the time. I might be able to live without it.
2. Email and RSS: I need to port these over from Windows. It won't be too difficult, as I'm already using Thunderbird there, and I'm sure I can just export and import.
3. Sharing Data: Until I finish the leap for good, I need to be able to share data between the OSs. This means a FAT32 partition that stores my data. I recently ordered a new hard drive, and that's where I'm going to need to do all the sharing. This should be easy, but is critical.
4. Synchronizing my Calendar: This one is a big one. We use Lotus Notes for email. My work life is on Lotus Notes. I also, however, like to have my calendar synced to my phone. I need to find a way to make that happen. If I can't do this, I can't switch to Linux, it's that simple. And, this could be tough, as I have a Windows Mobile phone. This is the one that scares me.
5. Upgrading Firefox: Firefox comes in version 2 from my company. I want to upgrade to 3. I've given it some effort, but failed. I just need to work a little harder on this one, and I'm sure I'll get it going just fine.
6. Utilities: I use a bunch of utilities on Windows that I will need to find Linux versions for, or alternatives to. I've already installed Pidgin for Linux, so I've made a start. I'm pretty big on using stuff that's Open, so probably most of my stuff will have a native Linux version, anyway.
7. I've added a post for Printing, already. This is done, pretty much, but will probably be on going, as my clients may have printers I can't get drivers to.
   
8. I've remembered I need to get my scanner working. It's a ScanJet 9something. This is not a deal breaker, as I only scan sporadically, and can do that from a Windows partition.
   

I'm sure there's more, but that's it for now. I'm adding to this list as I go along, and I'll link to the posts to make it easier for everyone to follow along.

My Plans
What I plan for this blog is probably a little untraditional. Most blogs will have one entry per day or session or whatever. I'm going to have one entry per issue, and update that entry as I make progress. So, for instance, I'm going to have a post on upgrading Firefox, and another on installing Thuderbird, and so on. I'm hoping this will work.

The End
I had a friend that like to say that to end a conversation. It's appropriate here, I think. This is the end of this post. I'm going to publish it now. Feel free to comment.