Month: April 2008

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From scratch: re-installing Ubuntu 8.04

What a pity… after trying the alternate ubuntu CD of 8.04 I almost lost my “Home” directory.

For Ms-Windows guys: it is somehow like your local “C:” drive, or – if tobe more precise – like the “My Documents and settings”.

I was lucky enough to have two things:

1) A backup of all important documents;

and:

2) Mandriva 2008.1 Gnome CD that I tried “exposed” it – It showed me the lost “/home” directories – so I could take a second backup. It is a separate partition – which is in the Ms-Windows world a logical disk / hard drive.

So … I was so happy with what Mandriva showed me that I really think to go back to this lovely Linux distribution. I still have good memories from it, when it was still called “Mandrake”.

But for the meantime – and since my “/home” was no really gone I re-install Ubuntu 8.04 from scratch.

I told the installer – of course – to use the same /sda7 partition for “/home” without formatting it.

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The alternate Ubuntu 8.04 CD

I’m writing from the PC, not the laptop.
This one – the PC – runs Debian and it’s quite steady. But I don’t use it very often.

I like the laptop which is in upgrade of the Ubuntu, from 7.10 to 8.04.

I tried to do all “regular” upgrade instructions for the laptop, including this (Network upgrade):

meorero@myubuntu:~$ sudo  do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new ubuntu release
 0% [Working
...

But it ends with the following error:

Could not calculate the upgrade

A unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade.

This can be caused by:
* Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu
* Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu
* Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu

If none of this applies, then please report this bug against the
'update-manager' package and include the files in
/var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport.


Restoring original system state

Aborting
cdrom://Ubuntu 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016.1) gutsy/main Packag
cdrom://Ubuntu 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016.1) gutsy/main Packag
cdrom://Ubuntu 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016.1) gutsy/main Packag
cdrom://Ubuntu 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016.1) gutsy/main Packag
cdrom://Ubuntu 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016.1) gutsy/main Packag
cdrom://Ubuntu 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release i386 (20071016.1) gutsy/restricted
Reading package lists: Donetable/non-free Packages: 90
Reading state information: Done
Reading state information: Done
Reading state information: Done
meorero@myubuntu:~$

So… Now I’m downloading the ubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386.iso CD from the mirror of isoc.org.il.

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Upgrading Ubuntu: 7.10 –> 8.04

Just like my revious time, when upradng from 6.06 to 7.10, the “Update Manager” did not recognize it automatically – so I need to do it myself.

I follow the instructions under: “Network upgrade for Kubuntu desktops (recommended)” – on the Ubuntu site.
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

Even though I have the “classic” Ubuntu – I mean the Gnome desktop – this does seem to start working:

1. Install update-manager-core if it is not already installed:

      			sudo aptitude install update-manager-core

2.

Launch the upgrade tool:

      			sudo do-release-upgrade

3.

Follow the on-screen instructions.

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Teldan “Info 2008” Conference – My presentation

I wrote a post in Hebrew – פוסט בעברית about it.

On Wednesday – 2 April 2008 – I participated in Teldan “Info 2008” Conference.
The day I had the title:
“לקוח או לקוח שבוי? הספריה וצרכי המשתמש – בעידן web 2.0”
(“Customer or captive? The library and users needs at the Web 2.0 era”).

The presentation I gave was titled:
“חופשי זה יותר מחינם” ספריות וקוד חופשי פתוח / “קתדרלה” או “בזאר”
(Free in more than gratis – Libraries and Free Open Source software – “Cathedral” or “Bazaar”).

The specific day was organized by Haifa University library, so many of the speakers were from Haifa.
Therefore also the presentations can be found at the Blog of Haifa University library.

A PDF can be also found on my home site in compressed (zipped) format.

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When I discovered *BSD

My first experiences were in late 2003 and the beginning of 2004.

I received from my father an old PC – really old one – from the early 1990’s.

It had a 486 processor of AMD, and a tiny hard disk of 325Mb.
I thought it will be cool to have it as a home-made firewall.

In the end – I did have a working FreeBSD, but didn’t build any firewall.
I had no power to go into all th security staff , and mainly – I had troubles setting the ADSL connection from it.

I found my messages at “Whatsup” that describe it.

and about OpenBSD:
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An other (Hebrew) blog I used to write

An other Hebrew blog I used to write is called “Free / Open Source in the Information Science world“.
or in the official Hebrew title: ” קוד חופשי/פתוח בעולם המידענות“.

Since May 2005 until today I wrote 34 posts, maily about F/O.S.S aspects that can be interesting for librarians.
It is less personal than I plan for this current blog, that you read now.

Maybe I’ll post also there from time to time… when I’ll have news, and of course – time…

יש לי בלוג נוסף ב-“פורלוג -צמתי מידע” תחת הכותרת:
“קוד חופשי/פתוח בעולם המידענות“.
שם אני כולל דברים שעשויים לעניין ספרנים / מידענים מבחינה מקצועית.

הבלוג ההוא פחות אישי ממה שחשבתי לעשות כאן, ואמשיך גם שם מדי פעם, בהתאם לזמן הפנוי.

בנימת פסח – כל דכפין יתי ויפסח לרשימת הגליונות.

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Short Linux / F.O.S.S. activity in Israel

This post is mostly in Hebrew since it deals with my short Linux / F.O.S.S. activity in Israel.

אז ככה – נרשמתי לאתר וואטסאפ ב- 22/04/2003.
ואוו, המון זמן – כבר 5 שנים ממש בעוד 9 ימים.

וזאת לאחר שיטוטים שקדמו לזה בפורום לינוקס של “תפוז”.

מאוחר יותר הפעלתי בלוג ב-“לינמגזין”. זה היה בשנים 2004-2005.

אז עוד עבדתי באוניברסיטת בר-אילן ונכחתי בחידוש פעילות מועדון הלינוקס שם. (המועדון אולי זקוק לעות תחיה?)

וזהו סך הכל.
אח”כ עברתי לעבודה חדשה בירושלים, מה שהפחית את זמני הפנוי באופן משמעותי, ואת יכולתי להיות מעורב.

הייתי כמובן בכמה מימי ה- “אוגוסט פנגווין“. הראשון שהייתי בו היה נדמה לי מס’ 2.

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My beginning with Linux (2000-2004)

The first Linux I tried was Red Hat.

This was around 2000 – 2001, just before the end of my M.A. studies.

It was Red Hat 6.1 or 6.2, which I got on a CD-ROM with a Linux book. I think I stil have this CD with the book.

It is Peter Norton Linux book translated to Hebrew:

‫ נורטון, פיטר

LINUX : המדריך השלם / של פיטר נורטון ; (תרגום ועריכה: ענת קדם [בן–צבי] ; עריכה מקצועית: אייל אייזנשטיין).

‫ (ר“ג) : פוקוס מחשבים, 2000. רמת גן

Around 2002-2003 I played furthermore with later RedHat distributions and got used to work with the Gnome desktop.

I do think that KDE is nice and easy desktop, and it’s very rich and flexible – but for me Gnome was the first so I still keep it as my favorite.

The last Red Hat I tried was Red Hat 8, in 2003 or 2004. I think I tried to have a dual-boot PC and it ruined the Windows partition.

So I had to recover it. It was also my mother’s PC …

Than I used Mandrake which was close enough to Red Hat (using RPM) but also had nice GUI for editing partitions.