December 2002 Archives
A warning for all people who want to see our house: do it fast!!!! We are already destroying our new house:
Yesterday at lunchtime I decided to check our e-mail. So I took my laptop and walked to my working room. Just when I walked into the hallway, the laptop slipped out of my hands and dropped on the floor. Immediately I looked down to see whether my laptop was damaged, but I noticed something worse: the laptop had hit the floor with its edge and had damaged our brand-new floor!!
After the basic installation of MuLinux earlier this week, I have been looking around and expanding the system during the last days. The whole thing is mature and really well though out, with lots of user-friendly scripts and help files. The core of the system is the setup script. This script is used to create configurations, and to configure modules. In the configuration is specified which modules are loaded and with what parameters. It is loaded during boot, so that all modules alre loaded correctly. To save a configuration as default symply type setup -s. To load a configured module MOD use setup -r MOD and to force reconfiguration use setup -f MOD. Setup also can be used without parameters, to start the setup menu. This menu shows all available add-ons and modules and lets you configure them from one screen. Besides setup, there are a lot more scripts. Even well known UNIX command like grep are implemented as a script. I was really impressed!
After looking around and playing with all options, I decided that it was time to expand the possibilities of my system. So it took the WKS (workstation), SRV (server) and X11 (X window system) add-on floppies and installed them from the setup menu. The WKS add-on gave me applications like mutt, ssh, pgp, tyhe SRV add-on gave me samba, smail, web-based system administration and PCMCIA support. X11 has the x-windows system with VGA-16,fvwm95, Afterstep and wm2. At this moment I had an incredible amount of features, using only 4 diskettes. I played around a little bit again, and started configuring xf86 to have a grapghical interfase. Usually this is the most difficult part to configure, since you need to know a lot of parameters from your system (OK, not in the modern Linux systems), but MuLinux was perfectly able to configure X using its probe feature. After 5 minutes I had a screen like this:
Not bad, isn't is? For next week, I'm planning to get Internet connection. First I want to put the PCMCIA modem from my Toshiba into tye MuLinux machine (which is by the an IPC Porta-PC P5E-486/DSTN) and get it connected to Internet. Furthermore I want to try to connect it to another computer using a LapLink cable. And mayby, I'll download some more add-ons (GCC TCL TEX PERL EMU JVM NS1 NS2). I haven't finished playing yet!
Yesterday morning I found the official invitation for the company christmas dinner on my desk, the dinner was goign to take place the same day. Furtunately we already new about the dinner for one week... After work, I first went to our office in Torrefarrera to receive the traditional christbas box, this year with a lot of alcohol and chocolate.
Then quickly home to change clothes. Since this was my first christmas dinner, I didn't know the dress code. I knew that a suit would be overdone, but to be sure I decided to take a tie with me and decide whether to wear it or not at the restaurant when I see how my colleagues are dressed.
The dinner was really good, but I could expect that from this restaurant (Petit Catalá). One thing I didn't like was the distribution of the tables. They decided to keep all departments together, so I shared the table with the colleagues I work with every day, while I would have liked to talk more with the colleagues I don't see so often.
At one o'clock we finished, but because we still had a lot to 'discuss', we went to Smiling jack. Today I can see my colleagues having troubles keeping their eyes open...
Tomorrow is the birthday of BasiqAir, the cheapest way to get from Barcelona to Amsterdam. To celebrate this, they have lowered their prices on December 17--19.
Of course I took the opportunity to book some flights, and checked if the advertised action really exist. So yesterday I checked the possibility to visit Holland during Christmas. The cheapest flight for two persons was €409. Today, the same flight only costs €169. Clickety click... booked!!!
Since these prices are valid untill the end of March, I looked further and decided to book a flight for March 1--2. The same price! Clickety click... booked!!!
One month ago we moved to our new house. Since then, things have settled down, but one thing still is missing: our working room still serves as a storage room, with my old computer packed into boxes.
Until that moment we both use my (even older) Toshiba Satellite Pro 400 CDT. This computer is not really fast, but in the mean time I have gotten used to it. It's really comfortable working on the sofa, but to connect to internet I have to move to the floor of the hallway. For the moment we have this solution, but sometimes one computer just isn't enough for two people. That's why I dug up my really old laptop, a 486 with 8 Mb memory and 525 Mb harddisk, but without CD player. I once installed Windows 98, but it wasn't running perfectly. Besides this, I don't have a licence for this machine, and don't want to buy one. Therefore I decided to install GNU/Linux on it.
Taken the absence of the CD-player and the minimal hardware, I started looking for a floppy-based distribution. I once used the HAL91 distribution, but this only runs on a RAM disk, while I want to be able to install it onto my harddisk. Then I found MuLinux, a tiny single floppy based distribution with the ability to copy the installation to the harddisk, and with some add-on floppies to install additional features like the X-Windows system, Wine, TeX, ... It looked promising, so I set to work.
While the disk images were downloading to my Toshiba laptop, I started the other laptop from a DOS bootdisk to format the harddisk. It had quite some bad sectors, but that shouldn't be a big problem. In the mean time the download was finished. I extracted the DOSTOOLS to C:\mulinux and copied the images (BOOT, WKS, SRV en X11) to the same directory. Next, I runned unpack.bat, which opened the main archive mulinux-13r2.tgz. Then I fired up makefi.bat, which created an installation disk. Since muLinux distribution running from floppy, installation means preparing the floppies. After the installation disk was prepared, I rebooted my Toshiba, after which the installation process prepared the BOOT floppy.
I immediately took this floppy to my old laptop and booted it with it. It booted nicely and started the configuration procedure. The first thing I had to do was configure the swap space. The harddisk was DOS formatted, but I want to install my linux on a ext2 partition. Therefore I decided to boot the machine with only the necessary configuration, after which I should be able to use the linux fdisk utility to partition the harddisk. For the moment I configured the swap space as a file on the DOS partition and continued.
After configuring the swap space I had the option to load each of the available add-on disks. After selecting No for each of them, a configuration menu was presented with three options: No additional configuration, a minimal configuration or a custom configuration. I selected the minimal configuration, and Linux continued loading its applications onto the RAM disk.
At the end I was asked if I wanted to save these settings as default (which I did not since I want to change the partitioning) and then I was offered a tour which I also declined. Finally I was presented with the prompt, indicating that I could start to work. This prompt is a silly thing, since the multi-user options are on the SRV add-on. Anyway, I enterer root (just for the show) and fired up fdisk. I quickly deleted the DOS partition and created an ext2 partition and a swap partition.
I rebooted the laptop, and went through the same procedure again, but this time I used my new partition as swap space and did some more configuration, like the keyboard layout.
Unfortunately, my time to play with computers is finished for today, so I saved my configuration to the floppy (setup -s lock) and shut down the machine.
Tomorrow I am going to copy the files from the RAM drive onto the harddisk and if I have enough time left, I am going to install the SRV and WKS add-ons. That will keep me busy for a while...
Yesterday I finally had time to put the pictures of our house (made with the camera of Coen) on this site. You can find them in the Image Gallery.
[Update 31.07.2003]: I change the link since I changed the location of my photo's
During the day, I always wear my cellphone. Always. Except last Saturday. We left in the morning to Alpicat to visit Maria José's parents, and I didn't think about my phone.
When we came back home at 20:00 hours, I had two messages on my voicemail; one of my sister and one of my mother. Their message: I have become an uncle!!!!! My sister's son is called Sven, weighed 3,5 kilos and is 52 centimeters long. Both of them are alright.
I already have some pictures of the cute little boy, and will place them on this site as soon as possible.
