Toshiba Satellite A215-s5850 64x2 - Vista+multi-Linux project

Hi all,

Here's something that really has nothing to do with
microtonal music ... well, not _yet_, anyway! ;-)
when Tonescape works on Linux, that will be
another story ...

(anyone may feel free to post this on various Linux
forum discussions: SliTaz, LinuxMint, Sabayon, GParted,
or for that matter on Windows Vista discussions too.
i'm interested in reading any comments, but for now
i'm just too tired to put anywhere else but here.)

anyway ...

******************************************

2008.07.04

my big project:
===============

Vista + multi-Linux Toshiba_64x2
================================

I finally bought a state-of-the-art laptop,
something i've been wanting for a long time,
back on 2008.05.06.

I've been wanting to put several versions
of Linux on it, but have in the meantime have
instead been experimenting with very cheap,
very old laptops (mostly dual-booting the
existing Windows95, and the BasicLinux
i installed from floppies).

machine:
Toshiba Satellite A215-s5850
AMD Turion 64x2 dual CPU
2 GB RAM
"200 GB" (= 186 GiB) hd
OS: 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium SP1

goal:
to partition the Vista hard-drive (a lot!)
and get some Linux OSs on there.

i wish i had documented all my commands
and data changes along the way during
this whole procedure. i guess i was too
eager to "just do it". well, i learned
my lesson: back up EVERYTHING before
you change it!

so anyway, i'm trying to document the whole
saga now, mostly after the fact (altho it's
far from over!). i'll be giving approximate
~fdisk partition info, until the point
where i finally made Linux text files
out of the command outputs (which wasn't
until more than a whole 30 hours of
nearly non-stop work later).

my OEM Windows Vista Toshiba
----------------------------

beginning (factory) ~fdisk -l:

device active filetype GB use
/dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
/dev/sda2 * vfat 184 windows vista

this was how the hard-drive was partitioned
from the factory, when i bought the Toshiba
on May 6. i had done some configuration of
vista, such as removing "free trial" junk
programs, and popping in Spybot, AVG,
virtualbox, and Opera as my default browser
... and of course Tonescape and its data-files.
but otherwise i hadn't done a whole lot to
vista other than play around with settings,
to get it the way i liked it.

Of course, the first step was to do a
chkdsk scan (and fix) for errors and
bad sectors, and then to run defragmenter
several times on the C: drive. That took
awhile, until after the first defrag was
finished, then the others went more quickly.
Now, to work ...

There's no "real DOS" in vista, so running
PartitionMagic was out. To get down to
business, i booted slitaz off the live-cd.
slitaz has by far the fastest-working
version of GParted that i've seen. i don't
have any idea why it's so much faster than
puppy, or even *much* faster than the
GParted Live-CD itself, but it is, so i use it.

Not changing anything yet, but just using
GParted to peek around at the drive, it
showed that there was ~1 MB of unallocated
space at the very beginning of the drive.
I don't have any idea why it's there
-- i thought that was very weird. apparently
Windows can finally boot from someplace
other than the first 512 bytes of the drive.

so anyway, there's ~1 MB of blank space at
the beginning, then ~1 GB for a recovery
partition, then the whole rest of the drive,
~184 GB, for vista and its programs and data.

to make room for the Linux partitions,
Vista has to be tamed a bit.

first i tried to use the Vista disk manager
to shrink the C: drive. It didn't want
to make it very much smaller to begin with:
only 824 MB.

i got rid of the old restore and with
the freed space was able to shrink it by
a whopping 6800 MB! (~6.6 GB), still not
nearly enough.

i couldn't figure out why Vista would
not let me use the huge amount of
apparently unused space on the later
3/4 of the drive.

but anyway, i figured that that 6 GB was
enough to create an S: swap partition, so
that i could get the Windows pagefil.sys
off the C: drive and into its own space.
the first step in making a cleaner system.

well, Windows disk manager looked like it
was working hard (and for a very long time!),
but it finally barfed just before completing
the task.

so, Linux to the rescue, as always.

but it wouldn't be *that* easy! ...

Linux partitions, take 1
------------------------

(i think the last part of the title
of this section is already giving away
some clues!) ;-)

i booted off the Slitaz Live CD, and
used GParted to partition the hard-drive
the way i wanted it:

~fdisk -l
device active filetype GB (intended) use
/dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
/dev/sda2 * vfat 100 windows vista
/dev/sda3 vfat 6 (windows vista swap)
/dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
/dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
/dev/sda6 ext3 24 (/home)
/dev/sda7 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
/dev/sda8 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
/dev/sda9 ext3 0.9 (slitaz)
/dev/sda10 ext3 18 (sabayon?)
unallocated ---- 39 (future OSs)

notice the parenthesis around "(intended) use",
and watch how they disappear in the entries
as i fill those partitions with OSs. :)

now i had lots of partitions ready for nice
clean installs of Linux. but ... (a REALLY BIG
but ...)

Vista gets trashed
------------------

but i had let GParted take the long slow path,
shrinking the Vista partition (/dev/sda2) and
then creating all the ones for Linux. that
turned out to be a really bad idea --

as soon as the long partitioning procedure
was finished, i could see in GParted's
graphical display that the beginning of
the Vista partition had been moved forward
~5 MB, with that 5 MB as unallocated space
between /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2.

i suspected that that would indicate that
Vista's boot sector was trashed by GParted
-- and i was exactly correct. i tried several
times to boot Vista and nothing happened at all.
just a blinking white cursor on a black screen.
this was bad.

i was really disappointed that my beautiful
new Vista completely unbootable. i booted
slitaz from the live-cd and could see that
AFAICT all of the Windows files were there.
so i *really* didn't want to reformat that
drive, especially after all the work i had
put into cleaning up Vista.

the good thing was that i really haven't
used this laptop much since i bought it
on May 6. i suppose i was really waiting
to make it a multi-boot machine before i
would really *use* it hard. but still, my
Vista was just how i wanted it, and now i
couldn't have it. :(

so now /dev/sda2 had regressed to and
unusable "(windows vista)", and my new
Toshiba was running nothing!

Reinstall of Vista
------------------

So i had to take the drastic step of
opening up and booting from the Toshiba
rescue-cd.

at first i tried the "Repair" option.
i tried it several times and kept rebooting,
but to no avail: Vista would not start,
despite the fact that the repair dialog
was telling me that it had fixed everything,
and the boot sector was ok.

so finally, in desperation to have my Vista
back again, i decided to use the Toshiba
Recovery Wizard, which would wipe the
hard-drive clean and put in the factory
Vista installation that came with the
machine when i bought it ... including
all the junk "trial offer" programs that
i would have to get rid of again.

but there *was* one beam of light in these
clouds: the Toshiba Wizard was willing to
give me the option of using a Custom
Partition Size. Hooray!

So i was able to use the Vista installation
itself to create not only the automatic
EISA recovery D: drive at the beginning
(/dev/sda1), and not only my desired ~100 GB
Vista C: partition (/dev/sda2), but also
another primary partition to house the Vista
pagefil.sys swap file. this was very good.
i would be sure to have a solid
Microsoft-certified NTFS filesystem on
that swap partition.

~fdisk -l
device active filetype GB (intended) use
/dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
/dev/sda2 * vfat 100 windows vista
/dev/sda3 vfat 6 (windows vista swap)
/dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
unallocated ---- 85 (future OSs)

And still lots of unallocated space on the
second ~half of the drive ... just ripe and
waiting for some Linux partitions! :)

but before i get to that ...

vista pagefil.sys in its own swap partition
-------------------------------------------

i was so happy to have my beautiful Vista
desktop back again. booting into it after
the fresh recovery install felt like a
big weight lifting off of me. the clouds parted.
(ha ha, sys-admin joke)

first stop: to clean up vista a bit
by putting pagefil.sys into its own S: drive,
/dev/sda3 in Linux. good, no problems there.

i booted back into Vista and set the
Virtual Memory to leave pagefil.sys off
of C: and manage it automatically on S:.
I gave S: enough space to be the preferred
1.5 times the projected full 4 GB of RAM
that i hope to eventually have on this machine.

bit hopefully with that much memory and
Vista managing it, i won't need that disk space
until a few years from now, when programs are
ready to consider consuming terabytes of RAM.
(yes, i'm sure the jump from 4 GB to 1000 GB
will happen that fast.)

So, now, *finally*, on to the Linux installs ...

Linux partitions, take 2
------------------------

slitaz 1.0 cooking
------------------

first i booted slitaz off the live-cd and
installed it, using the easy graphical
installer (in French ... good thing i know
the language a little).

i also let slitaz install GRUB into the MBR
-- this was the one thing i was scared of.
i really didn't want Vista to get trashed again.

so when the slitaz installation was finished
(which took about 20 seconds IIRC), instead
of clicking "Reboot" to finish it and reboot
into my newly-installed slitaz (on /dev/sda9),
i followed slitaz's optional suggestion and
stayed in the live-cd for awhile, so that i
could examine and play with some more files,
then reboot into Vista (hopefully).

i wanted to test the Vista boot first, to
be sure that it was still ok, before i messed
around with any of the Linuxes. and when i did,
Vista came up just fine. so, _that_ was good.

but then trying to reboot into my installed
slitaz, slitaz wouldn't boot. it kept sending
the machine back to the opening Toshiba
boot screen, and into GRUB, and back again,
in an endless loop

sabayon linux 3.5
-----------------

so after wasting a lot of time playing
ring-around-the-rosy with the Toshiba
boot screen and GRUB, and spending a
hell of a lot of time studying the GRUB
manual and forum webpages (basically the
whole afternoon and night of July 4),
and learning not much new that i could use
(well, i did learn how to use the GRUB shell!
... but it would have been a better learning
experience if GRUB had actually _booted_ into
a working OS!), i decided to lay slitaz aside,
and install a big Linux.

i debated for awhile what to put into that
16 MB partition (/dev/sda10), and finally
decided to try Sabayon, beginning the install
at exactly midnight.

the install took *forever* ... almost 2 hours.

at the end, it was asking me if i wanted to
install GRUB, and i know i really should have
let it. but i thought, hey, the slitaz install
of GRUB wasn't booting slitaz, but at least
it didn't mess up my Vista boot. so i left the
slitaz GRUB as it was, and just edited the
menu.lst file in the slitaz /boot/grub
directory.

and when it was finished, Sabayon also gave
me the choice that i could either reboot now
or stay in live-cd for awhile. having learned
my lesson, i was ready to reboot directly
into sabayon, so i said "oh no you don't!".

but fate had other plans ...

as i was examining the pop-up menus for
logging out / rebooting / etc., the touchpad
had that stupid "click on hover" activated
which i hate so much, and something that i
hovered over was a choice that i didn't want
to make, and it got rid of my reboot option
and left me stranded in the live-cd ramdisk.
fuck.

and sure enough, when i tried to reboot into
sabayon immediately after that, it wouldn't
boot from grub, giving me "Error 2: bad file
or directory". fuck fuck fuck. i also tried
this over and over again, did a lot of editing
of the menu.lst and /etc/fstab files,
to no avail. fuck.

so now after all that time i still had Vista,
at the size i wanted it, with its disconnected
swap file -- all good. but no Linux whatsoever,
even tho there were now thousands of Linux
files on those two partitions of the hard-drive.

by now it was around 2:00am ...

==========================

day 2
-----
2008.07.05

... so it's technically a new day.
well, i stayed up all night. tried to go
to sleep briefly, but after an hour i was up
working on the Toshiba again.

new /boot partition
-------------------

i decided to make a new boot partition
near the beginning of the
extended partition (sda4)
after the Linux swap partition (sda5).

so first i booted into live-cd slitaz,
and i tried to use GParted to shrink the
/home partition at the beginning, and then
add the /boot partition ahead of it.

this was still not a perfect solution,
because now the /boot partition would
be numbered as /dev/sda11. but it seemed
like the only way i could insert a /boot
partition without having to redo the
sabayon install.

but after waiting for a really long time for
GParted to do the shrink (taking so long
because GParted was carefully copying
and moving all the "data" in the
empty-but-for-lost+found) ... even tho it
was on the home-stretch, i realized that
it was ridiculous to wait any longer for
that procedure.

so i stopped it -- despite the dire warning
that "DATA WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE LOST!",
and deleted the /home partition along with
its "valuable" empty lost+found which GParted
had dutifully been preserving.

because my existing family of Linux partitions
was already consecutively numbered:

device active filetype GB (intended) use
/dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
/dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
/dev/sda6 ext3 24 (/boot)
/dev/sda7 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
/dev/sda8 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
/dev/sda9 ext3 0.9 (slitaz)
/dev/sda10 ext3 18 (sabayon)
unallocated ---- 39 (future OSs)

this act destroyed the logical numerical flow.
that was something that i had been careful to
avoid.

wiping slitaz and replacing it is no big deal,
because it's so small and fast. but the sabayon
install had been a very long pain-in-the-ass,
and i neither wanted to wipe it away nor sit
and wait while doing a reinstall.

so i'm stuck with lousy numbers now.

the numbers 6 thru 9 were moved ahead one
partition each, because what had been /dev/sda6
was now unallocated space:

device active filetype GB (intended) use
/dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
/dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
unallocated ---- 24 (/boot + /home)
/dev/sda6 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
/dev/sda7 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
/dev/sda8 ext3 0.9 (slitaz)
/dev/sda9 ext3 18 (sabayon)
unallocated ---- 39 (future OSs)

so again, i booted into live-cd slitaz, and
used GParted to create a brand new /home
on a brand new partition, which would later
become /dev/sda11 when GParted was finished.

then i put the new /boot partition before it,
to later become /dev/sda10.

so the old fdisk -l was changed to this:
~fdisk -l
device active filetype GB (intended) use
/dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
/dev/sda2 * vfat 100 windows vista
/dev/sda3 vfat 6 windows vista swap
/dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
/dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
/dev/sda10 ext2 (/boot)
/dev/sda11 ext3 (/home)
/dev/sda6 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
/dev/sda7 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
/dev/sda8 ext3 0.9 slitaz
/dev/sda9 ext3 18 sabayon
unallocated ---- -- (future OSs)

trying the new /boot ... and failing
------------------------------------

i put the kernel images of both slitaz and
sabayon, and also the sabayon initrd,
and also the slitaz /boot/grub/menu.lst,
into the new /boot partition.

i wasn't sure exactly where these files
should go, so i also made a new /boot/grub
directory on that partition, and put some
if the files in there too. i was just
trying to cover all of the bases.

(actually, it's a bad idea to _start_
that way, because it doesn't help you
isolate the location of a problem
-- rather, the opposite.)

trying that avenue failed for both of
the distros. i didn't waste a whole lot
of time on this -- as soon as it looked
like it was about to turn into a huge
time-suck, i abandoned it. so /dev/sda10
still lies abandoned on the drive.

slitaz install, take 2
----------------------

all this time, whenver i tried to boot into
slitaz, it still kept giving me the init-boot
endless-loop. so i finally decided to just
install slitaz all over again from scratch,
including a fresh install of GRUB (the scary
part again!).

that was a good idea!

slitaz installed successfully, but this time
i finished the install by ignoring the
suggestion to "kepp playing with the live-cd",
and so i clicked on the "Reboot" button,
which cause slitaz to pop the cd out of
the drive, and reboot successfully into
the installed-to-hd slitaz! Yay!
_finally_, a working Linux on the Toshiba!

so apparently, not rebooting into the
installed distro immediately, caused GRUB
to something to not be set up exactly right.

i had a hunch that this might also fix
sabayon, at least partially, and i was
right! ...

sabayon finally boots ... sort of
---------------------------------

so i rebooted and choose sabayon from the
slitaz GRUB menu, and it actually got to
a desktop!

however, when i log in as username,
an error dialog tells me that kstart.conf
is missing.

i thought that might have been because of
the sabayon /etc/fstab still mounting
/dev/sda10 as /boot (and in general other
partitions incorrect too), but fixing
them did not make sabayon boot better.

i was able to run sabayon in "failsafe" mode:
a tiny unmovable xterm console at the bottom
right of the screen. but even after changing
back to sabayon partition's /home, it still
kept booting the same way.

linux mint gnome 2008
---------------------

i don't recall now the exact sequence of
installs (hey, i've been up all night without
any sleep! ... and now at 3pm, i'm feeling it),
but i think the first thing i did after creating
the new /boot was to install mint.

i decided not to erase the sabayon install,
and to leave it alone and try another full
distro along with it.

so again, back into live-cd slitaz and
GParted, this time to create a new partition
for mint: /dev/sda12 (and now i can finally
present some real data that i copied!):

#fdisk -l
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System (intended) use
/dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown recovery
/dev/sda2 * 192 13246 104857600 7 HPFS/NTFS windows vist
/dev/sda3 13246 14011 6144000 7 HPFS/NTFS vista swap
/dev/sda4 14012 21013 56243565 5 Extended <container>
/dev/sda5 14012 14293 2265133+ 82 Linux swap/Solaris
linux swap
/dev/sda10 14294 14368 602406 83 Linux /boot
/dev/sda11 14369 17353 23976981 83 Linux /home
/dev/sda6 17354 17417 514048+ 83 Linux (basiclinux)
/dev/sda7 17418 17493 610438+ 83 Linux (puppy)
/dev/sda8 17494 17624 1052226 83 Linux slitaz
/dev/sda9 17625 19919 18434556 83 Linux sabayon
/dev/sda12 19920 21013 8787523+ 83 Linux mint

the mint installer was very nice, and
asked me how i planned to mount the existing
partitions. i only told it to put /dev/sda12
on /, and left /boot alone for the time being.
i think that turned out to be a bad idea.

(you'll find out later that i had more
troubles with mint, even tho i could get it
to run basically ok.)

mint also offered to install GRUB, and search
for other installed OSs to put into it. this
time i opted to install the more modern and
bigger-footprint version of GRUB, and let mint
do what it had to do to figure out where my
vista, slitaz, and sabayon were. with the
complete success i had up to this point with
vista and slitaz, and the partial success with
sabayon, it was again a little scary to possibly
give all that up.

but mint's GRUB install went _very_ nicely.
It created a very slick GRUB boot menu,
which included three modes of booting mint
first, and then vista, slitaz, and "gentoo"
(i.e, sabayon).

but ... mint didn't work all the way.
after finishing most of the boot, and
logging in as my username, an error dialog
told me that my /home/monz/.gconf was missing.
duh! -- that's because /dev/sda11 is still
_empty_!

well, at least by leaving /home on the mint
partition i could get mint to boot correctly.
so good, now i have two working linux distros
on this machine.

i decided to put this /home business aside
for now, and come back to it later.

=============

2008.07.05.10.39pdt

Windows Explorer reports the Toshiba
hard-drives thus:

/------------------------
drive GB free %free GB total
C: 69.1 60% 99.9
S: 4.33 70% 5.85
\-------------------------

The Device Manager says this:

/--------------------------
disk: disk 0
type: basic
status: online
partition style: master boot record (MBR)
capacity: 190781 MB
unallocated space: 0 MB (if only Windows knew what Linux knows!)
reserved space: 0 MB

volumes:

volume capacity
SQ004665V4 (C:) 102400 MB
swap (S:) 6000 MB
\-------------------------

Of course, i had to type all this crap myself.
If Windows does have a way to output the data,
it's not easy to figure out how to do it.

Linux fdisk reports are coming in the
next email ...

==============

now i finally took the trouble to document
my procedure with real data ... why didn't
i do this all along? Linux makes it easy.

command history example:
#mkdir /mnt/vista
#mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/vista
#fdisk -l > /mnt/vista/toshiba64_fdisk_2008-07-05-11-40.txt

then i attached them as text files in an
email to myself.

toshiba64 linux output, under mint
----------------------------------

#fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x170d799f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System (intended) use
/dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown recovery
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 192 13246 104857600 7 HPFS/NTFS windows vist
/dev/sda3 13246 14011 6144000 7 HPFS/NTFS vista swap
/dev/sda4 14012 21013 56243565 5 Extended <container>
/dev/sda5 14012 14293 2265133+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 17354 17417 514048+ 83 Linux (basiclinux)
/dev/sda7 17418 17493 610438+ 83 Linux (puppy)
/dev/sda8 17494 17624 1052226 83 Linux slitaz
/dev/sda9 17625 19919 18434556 83 Linux sabayon
/dev/sda10 14294 14368 602406 83 Linux /boot
/dev/sda11 14369 17353 23976981 83 Linux /home
/dev/sda12 19920 21013 8787523+ 83 Linux mint

Partition table entries are not in disk order

i had no Linux network support yet
(and running *THREE* different Linux distros!)
and Vista surfing the internet just fine
... see, there is something good to be said
about Windows after all).

so i had to mount the Vista partition
and copy these Linux command output files
to a folder there, so that i could send them
to myself in an email, to be able to use
them in *this* file, which i'm typing on
the B-street Gateway desktop (or to use
them *anywhere* outside of the Toshiba,
for that matter).

#df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
varrun 972064 96 971968 1% /var/run
varlock 972064 0 972064 0% /var/lock
udev 972064 80 971984 1% /dev
devshm 972064 12 972052 1% /dev/shm
lrm 972064 38176 933888 4%
/lib/modules/2.6.24-16-generic/volatile
/dev/sda11 23600600 185064 22216688 1% /mnt/home
/dev/sda2 104857596 32296288 72561308 31% /mnt/vista

#free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1944132 411304 1532828 0 12184 232740
-/+ buffers/cache: 166380 1777752
Swap: 0 0 0

i did a lot of this:
cp -R /home/monz/* /mnt/home
for awhile, trying to figure out exactly where
those files were supposed to go
to get them correctly onto /dev/sda11.

#ls -la /home/monz
total 164
drwxr-xr-x 28 root monz 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 ..
-rw------- 1 root root 13 2008-07-05 11:34 .bash_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 220 2008-07-05 11:34 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2928 2008-07-05 11:34 .bashrc_vanilla
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .cache
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .config
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 Desktop
-rw------- 1 root root 28 2008-07-05 11:34 .dmrc
drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Downloads
-rw------- 1 root root 16 2008-07-05 11:34 .esd_auth
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gconf
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gconfd
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 2008-07-05 11:34 .gksu.lock
drwx------ 6 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gnome2
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gnome2_private
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gstreamer-0.10
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gvfs
-rw------- 1 root root 161 2008-07-05 11:34 .ICEauthority
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .icons
drwxr-xr-x 3 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .linuxmint
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .local
drwx------ 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .metacity
drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Music
drwxr-xr-x 3 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .nautilus
drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Pictures
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 586 2008-07-05 11:34 .profile
drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Projects
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .pulse
-rw------- 1 root root 256 2008-07-05 11:34 .pulse-cookie
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 218 2008-07-05 11:34 .recently-used.xbel
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2008-07-05 11:34 .sudo_as_admin_successful
drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Templates
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .themes
drwx------ 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .thumbnails
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .tomboy
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4685 2008-07-05 11:34 .tomboy.log
drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Videos
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .wapi
-rw------- 1 root root 118 2008-07-05 11:34 .Xauthority
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2353 2008-07-05 11:34 .xsession-errors

finally, i saw that i had somehow trashed the
linux-mint /etc/fstab file -- and i don't know
how that happened. i had been editing it, but
the only deleting i did was with the /home stuff.
but anyway, the hard-link to it was still there
but it was empty.

that really sucked, because mint (like sabayon)
uses what is apparently a new standard, using
UUIDs for the partitions instead of the /dev/sd??
nomenclature. i don't know anything about that,
seeing it for the first time here (but i had
seen this kind of thing before in virtualbox's
handling of vdi's). i'm sure it's for greater
security.

so anyway, i had to completely populate the
/etc/fstab file. first i did it by hand,
using only the three sda partitions and a proc:

# nano /etc/fstab
/dev/sda12 / defaults 1 1
/dev/sda11 /home defaults 0 2
/dev/sda5 swap defaults 0 0
/dev/proc none

that's all i could remember first-hand.
but then i got the idea to do a "mount",
and send that to a text file.

#mount > /etc/fstab

but the mount output had *no* sda partitions
as devices! i couldn't figure that out, but
whatever, i just kept the data, added spaces
to make it a neat columnar fstab, and added
the three sda partitions 12, 11, and 5.

when i rebooted into mint, the fstab seemed
to work ok, but again i had a problem with
/home. i can't figure that out, and was hoping
that i'd be able to get some face-to-face
help at the Installfest, but at least mint
booted ok when i commented the /home
partition out of /etc/fstab, and just let
mint use its own /home on /dev/sda12.

(i ended up staying home typing this all
morning and early afternoon, thinking that
i was really screwing up by missing the
Installfest. then i looked online and found out
that the bookstore is closed all weekend for
the holiday, and the Installfest is *next*
Saturday. so good, i'll keep typing ...)

(ok, having gone back and added some missing
parts, now it's 3:40pm and i'm falling asleep
at the keyboard. time to quit this for now.)

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
Tonescape microtonal music software

Monz,

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
> Here's something that really has nothing to do with
> microtonal music ...

There is no easy way to put it: you seriously need to get a life
outside of the computer. Seriously.

Cheers,
Jon

Hi Jon,

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> Monz,
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
> > Here's something that really has nothing to do with
> > microtonal music ...
>
> There is no easy way to put it: you seriously need to
> get a life outside of the computer. Seriously.
>
> Cheers,
> Jon

But then if i did, i wouldn't be able to provide all this
entertaining reading for my fans! :-P

But really, you know, almost all of us now are using email,
cell phones, ipods, GPS, etc., and that trend -- i.e., the
"computer" extending beyond the big machine on the desk
and into smaller and smaller other devices which are
more closely connected to our physical selves -- is only
going to continue.

IOW, "a life outside of the computer" is more and more
becoming a meaningless phrase. And if you're going to
live in/with one, i feel that you might as well jump
all the way in and learn as much about it as you can.

Anyway, as i said in the original post, it really was
something that should be posted on a linux discussion
forum. I only put it here because i was really sleepy
when i got to the point where i finally decided to quit,
and i didn't feel like hunting around for the proper
place to put it.

And i also didn't want to just leave it lingering on
my own hard-drive. I plan to make use of it when i do
go to that Installfest next week, but that is a week
away, and i want to be sure that i can access it in case
i forget to bring it with me.

-monz

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
> IOW, "a life outside of the computer" is more and more
> becoming a meaningless phrase.

To each his own. I refuse to be a 'slave to the machine'. And I say
that in full view of my large use of nearly all the gear you mention.

I just don't consider it, or them, anything more than a means to an
end. I keep my priority on the existence that doesn't include staring
into a monitor for hours and hour.

I'm no Luddite, but I also don't plan on a William Gibson future.

Cheers,
Jon

Hi Jon,

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
>
> > IOW, "a life outside of the computer" is more and more
> > becoming a meaningless phrase.
>
> To each his own. I refuse to be a 'slave to the machine'.

Say that all you want, the time is coming -- and
much sooner than you think -- when you won't have
as much choice in that matter as you do now.

http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Don't just read that now while surfing ... put it aside
and save it for when you have a quiet hour, so that you
can really contemplate on it.

This is _not_ science-fiction.
It is what's really happening, and it's happening now.

-monz

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
> Say that all you want, the time is coming -- and
> much sooner than you think -- when you won't have
> as much choice in that matter as you do now.

Oh, please.

The whole premise is based on assumptions of what causes the ability
to experience. It's based on the assumption, for instance, that
experience is somehow a spontaneous result of a complicated system.

I believe that experience is just as fundamental to existence as
existence itself. In fact, I think experience -IS- existence. I don't
think you can define existence without the word experience being in
there. Cognitive abilities and discerning perceptions are undoubtedly
the result of a complicated system, but not there being experience at
all.

Furthermore, it's also based off of the paradigm that your experience
and my experience is completely separate. Obviously it appears that
way, but is that a fundamental behavior of the universe, or the
current state of experience?

Or, to put it into perspective: will the whole computer become self
aware, or just the tower? How about the monitor? Will the internet
become self aware, and will that be the same kind of self aware as my
monitor? Maybe the left half of my monitor will become self aware and
the right half separately self aware? It depends on how you divide
things up.

It touches on the deepest notions of how somehow I exist and you do as
well. But I feel that beyond that, there will be a single, unified
existence, which computers already have.

A computer that thinks? Do we even know what it means to think? Have
any of us really fully realized the weight of what it means that we
can will neural connections to form? That we can alter reality by
will, if even in that small way? That's what strikes me as odd about
this talk of the singularity: we haven't really figured out exactly
what we're saying yet.

-Mike

you might like the Phenomenolgy of Perception by Merlieu(sp?) Ponty
can't check spelling traveling
,',',',Kraig Grady,',',',
'''''''North/Western Hemisphere:
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
'''''''South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria
',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Battaglia [mailto:battaglia01@...]
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 01:23 AM
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [metatuning] Re: the Singularity (was: Toshiba Satellite....)

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

but the more they control the internet the more each of us will just want to get off!

,',',',Kraig Grady,',',',
'''''''North/Western Hemisphere:
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
'''''''South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria
',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

-----Original Message-----
From: monz [mailto:joemonz@...]
Sent: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 08:40 AM
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [metatuning] the Singularity (was: Toshiba Satellite....)

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Mike, Jon, and Kraig,

I think the main point to be gleaned from Vinge's paper
is that as our machines continually grow smarter and
more powerful, which is _inevitable_ (that is the
most important thing to keep in mind), it is in our
own best interests to integrate ourselves with the
machines as seamlessly and as deeply as possible.

If we don't do that, then certainly we humans will
become mere tools used by the machines, in the same
way that we now use (and for several thousands of
years have have been using) all other plants and
animals on the planet as raw material for our
"products".

If, on the other hand, we integrate with the machines,
then as the machines become more intelligent, there
will be less of a desire or tendency on their part to
have this kind of relationship with us, because _we_
will be a _part_ of _them_.

This kind of realization has already dawned on us
humans regarding our relationship to the "lower"
animals, but it's too late. Human civilization is
already the primary engine of the fastest rate of
mass extinction that has ever been observed to happen.
If the machines adopt this same perspective, along
the same kind of time scale, then we are just as doomed.

Of course many folks will feel the need or desire to
fight against this assimilation process, wanting to
cling to their "individual liberties". But i liken
that to a bacteria or virus that infects a living
body and wants nothing more than to live. The larger
organism is going to do its best to kill it. If
the larger organism's health is not so strong, then
the bacteria/virus will flourish and reproduce, and
perhaps ultimately kill its host -- and note: also
itself. But if the larger organism is healty, the
virus will be eliminated and the larger organism
will continue onward with its own development.

I know that paints a picture that mostly seems
fairly ugly. But it's something that we are forced
to come to terms with, whether we like it or not.
The virus may protest all it wants to its colleagues,
but unless a variety of forces work to weaken the host,
the virus is not going to survive. And besides, if
that host dies, there's always another one nearby.

In other words, if the smart machines decide that
we humans just need to be eliminated because we're
simply pests, then that will be our fate. Far better
to tie that fate in to that of the machine itself.

And when i say "machine" here, i'm really not thinking
so much of individual smart machines, but rather of
a global entity that embraces the whole electronically
interconnected earth.

The internet certainly plays a very large role in this
process, and in many ways. Mentioning only a couple:

* Obviously, interaction between individual humans
all over the planet becomes nearly instantaneous,
erasing all communication barriers of both time
and space.

* I think another _very_ important development is
the continuing evolution of Linux (in its larger
definition, embracing the whole open software movement),
which happens almost entirely over and because of
the internet -- _this_, more than anything, is what
is going to tie us inextricably to our machines.
I believe that this and nuclear weaponry are the two
biggest genies will _never_ go back into the bottle.

Certainly the evolution of Linux will be the main
driving force of the whole internet suddenly "waking up"
one day. When we reach that point, then we will have
finally become a global organism. And yes, it's not a
matter of "if" but of "when".

-monz

-- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Mike Battaglia" <battaglia01@...>
wrote:
>
> The whole premise is based on assumptions of what causes the ability
> to experience. It's based on the assumption, for instance, that
> experience is somehow a spontaneous result of a complicated system.
>
> ... [snipped a lot of good stuff]
>
> A computer that thinks? Do we even know what it means to think? Have
> any of us really fully realized the weight of what it means that we
> can will neural connections to form? That we can alter reality by
> will, if even in that small way? That's what strikes me as odd about
> this talk of the singularity: we haven't really figured out exactly
> what we're saying yet.
>
> -Mike
>

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
> I think the main point to be gleaned from Vinge's paper
> is that as our machines continually grow smarter and
> more powerful, which is _inevitable_ (that is the
> most important thing to keep in mind), it is in our
> own best interests to integrate ourselves with the
> machines as seamlessly and as deeply as possible.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I plan on the tactic that formed the name of the band, and a whole meme
of it's own: rage against the machine. If you simply toss this away, as
if it is meaningless because I don't understand machines, you are a
fool. I do, and I use them.

I use them utilitarily, and constantly. I use them pragmatically, and I
use them for whimsy and creativity. I even use them for other worlds, or
for extensions of this one.

But I never confuse the two.

Go ahead, buy into it. Sell your existence, as it is now, for a
simulacrum. Be at the vanguard of the human/machine coalescence. Be
bold; be Borg!

Then go out on the cliffs of Torry Pines, on a clear bright day, with
the ocean breeze at your face, dolphins in the surf, and the Pacific sun
warming your skin. You want to trade that? Go ahead.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:

> Say that all you want, the time is coming -- and
> much sooner than you think -- when you won't have
> as much choice in that matter as you do now.
>
> http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html

BTW, i thought this paragraph of Vinge's paper
worth pointing out (just past halfway down the page,
under the section titled "Other Paths to the Singularity:
Intelligence Amplification"):

<quote>

* Develop human/computer symbiosis in art:
Combine the graphic generation capability of
modern machines and the esthetic sensibility
of humans. Of course, there has been an enormous
amount of research in designing computer aids for
artists, as labor saving tools. I'm suggesting
that we explicitly aim for a greater merging of
competence, that we explicitly recognize the
cooperative approach that is possible. Karl Sims [23]
has done wonderful work in this direction.

</quote>

These ideas have informed my design of Tonescape
from the start, which goes all the way back to 1984
(the year, not the book).

-monz

The internet is already heavily patrolled, isn't it. I mean, with the FCC and Congress (Copyright Act) doin' their things, and file-sharing crypto-anarchism running amok, there's plenty of call of for communications cops and soldiers to protect our freedom (Ha!). The digital bloodletting with viruses and shutdowns,etc., -however subtle and discreet-, is already well underway, isn't it?

But Monz, I didn't get a chance to really read the stuff, so forgive me, but I didn't think I saw anything that really addressed feeling, thought, identity ( what is THAT? A chemical predisposition to Sufism and homosexuality?), what some like to call "spirit". Are the machines going to be able to manufacture beings that think and feel, and enjoy those things to some definition of extreme perversion, or not? Science is going to -or already does- understand all the chemical reactions and such that produced Et Expecto Mortuorum? Or, Wings of Desire, or My Best Fiend? Or will the machines be like the Indians -unleashed!- in that movie and just remove the petty annoyances coming from a Klaus Kinski, or somesuchlike? But hasn't it always been more the tendency that the _less_ intelligent being seeks to -or has to!- wipe out the more intelligent one, and not the other way 'round? The manifest destiny of mass stupidity is what is leading to a mechanized world, it seems to me. Or
it's going to be a dream come true, and the smart ones actuallly *will* wipe out the dumb ones? **And restore the natural world of plants and animals?** Sorry, if I'm missing/missed the point.

Salud,

Pete

kraiggrady@... wrote:
but the more they control the internet the more each of us will just want to get off!

,',',',Kraig Grady,',',',
'''''''North/Western Hemisphere:
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
'''''''South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria
',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

-----Original Message-----
From: monz [mailto:joemonz@...]
Sent: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 08:40 AM
To: metatuning@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [metatuning] the Singularity (was: Toshiba Satellite....)

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

actually all this technology has created nothing more that 'subhuman' intelligence. information is nothing more than inventory. (yet even then i still rely on books for real information)
PKD already predicted that in the future robots will be more human than people. the latter will be more like robots

/^_,',',',_ //^ /Kraig Grady_ ^_,',',',_
Mesotonal Music from:
_'''''''_ ^North/Western Hemisphere: North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>

_'''''''_ ^South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria <http://anaphoriasouth.blogspot.com/>

',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

monz wrote:
> Hi Jon,
>
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
> >> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
>>
>> >>> IOW, "a life outside of the computer" is more and more
>>> becoming a meaningless phrase.
>>> >> To each his own. I refuse to be a 'slave to the machine'.
>> >
>
>
> Say that all you want, the time is coming -- and
> much sooner than you think -- when you won't have
> as much choice in that matter as you do now.
>
> http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html
>
> Don't just read that now while surfing ... put it aside
> and save it for when you have a quiet hour, so that you
> can really contemplate on it.
>
> This is _not_ science-fiction. > It is what's really happening, and it's happening now.
>
>
> -monz
>
>
>
> >
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Meta Tuning meta-info:
>
> To unsubscribe, send an email to:
> metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
> Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/
>
> To post to the list, send to
> metatuning@yahoogroups.com
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>

Hey Joe,

where you going with that gun in your hand? (couldn't resist)

as an experienced Linux 'guru', I can tell you it's probably best to
stick with one Linux distro at a time, have a seperate partition for
/home (your personal files), and just reinstall a different distro if
things aren't working or you want to try others. Otherwise, you are
asking for pain and little sleep (as you probably figured out by now)

I recommend something like Ubuntu, openSuse or Mint for beginners, but
for stability and speed I go with an easier Slackware derivitive,
Zenwalk, which is what I use now. If you don't mind waiting hours or
days for large package compiles (I do, I want to get to work) then i
suppose Gentoo or Sabayon is fine, because they optimise the code for
your processor. But to me that's a pain. I don't mind compiling small
packages, and the largest I'll do is something like Ardour, which
might take a half hour and you can do while you take a nap or something.

I've tried all the distros mentioned save Sabayon and Mint. I'm with
Zenwalk b/c it's fast stable and elegant, and easy (in a way) but not
the easiest.

Alas, there's no one perfect distro :(

-AKJ

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Here's something that really has nothing to do with
> microtonal music ... well, not _yet_, anyway! ;-)
> when Tonescape works on Linux, that will be
> another story ...
>
> (anyone may feel free to post this on various Linux
> forum discussions: SliTaz, LinuxMint, Sabayon, GParted,
> or for that matter on Windows Vista discussions too.
> i'm interested in reading any comments, but for now
> i'm just too tired to put anywhere else but here.)
>
> anyway ...
>
> ******************************************
>
> 2008.07.04
>
>
> my big project:
> ===============
>
> Vista + multi-Linux Toshiba_64x2
> ================================
>
> I finally bought a state-of-the-art laptop,
> something i've been wanting for a long time,
> back on 2008.05.06.
>
> I've been wanting to put several versions
> of Linux on it, but have in the meantime have
> instead been experimenting with very cheap,
> very old laptops (mostly dual-booting the
> existing Windows95, and the BasicLinux
> i installed from floppies).
>
>
> machine:
> Toshiba Satellite A215-s5850
> AMD Turion 64x2 dual CPU
> 2 GB RAM
> "200 GB" (= 186 GiB) hd
> OS: 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
>
>
> goal:
> to partition the Vista hard-drive (a lot!)
> and get some Linux OSs on there.
>
>
> i wish i had documented all my commands
> and data changes along the way during
> this whole procedure. i guess i was too
> eager to "just do it". well, i learned
> my lesson: back up EVERYTHING before
> you change it!
>
> so anyway, i'm trying to document the whole
> saga now, mostly after the fact (altho it's
> far from over!). i'll be giving approximate
> ~fdisk partition info, until the point
> where i finally made Linux text files
> out of the command outputs (which wasn't
> until more than a whole 30 hours of
> nearly non-stop work later).
>
>
>
> my OEM Windows Vista Toshiba
> ----------------------------
>
>
> beginning (factory) ~fdisk -l:
>
> device active filetype GB use
> /dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
> /dev/sda2 * vfat 184 windows vista
>
> this was how the hard-drive was partitioned
> from the factory, when i bought the Toshiba
> on May 6. i had done some configuration of
> vista, such as removing "free trial" junk
> programs, and popping in Spybot, AVG,
> virtualbox, and Opera as my default browser
> ... and of course Tonescape and its data-files.
> but otherwise i hadn't done a whole lot to
> vista other than play around with settings,
> to get it the way i liked it.
>
> Of course, the first step was to do a
> chkdsk scan (and fix) for errors and
> bad sectors, and then to run defragmenter
> several times on the C: drive. That took
> awhile, until after the first defrag was
> finished, then the others went more quickly.
> Now, to work ...
>
>
> There's no "real DOS" in vista, so running
> PartitionMagic was out. To get down to
> business, i booted slitaz off the live-cd.
> slitaz has by far the fastest-working
> version of GParted that i've seen. i don't
> have any idea why it's so much faster than
> puppy, or even *much* faster than the
> GParted Live-CD itself, but it is, so i use it.
>
>
> Not changing anything yet, but just using
> GParted to peek around at the drive, it
> showed that there was ~1 MB of unallocated
> space at the very beginning of the drive.
> I don't have any idea why it's there
> -- i thought that was very weird. apparently
> Windows can finally boot from someplace
> other than the first 512 bytes of the drive.
>
>
> so anyway, there's ~1 MB of blank space at
> the beginning, then ~1 GB for a recovery
> partition, then the whole rest of the drive,
> ~184 GB, for vista and its programs and data.
>
> to make room for the Linux partitions,
> Vista has to be tamed a bit.
>
> first i tried to use the Vista disk manager
> to shrink the C: drive. It didn't want
> to make it very much smaller to begin with:
> only 824 MB.
>
> i got rid of the old restore and with
> the freed space was able to shrink it by
> a whopping 6800 MB! (~6.6 GB), still not
> nearly enough.
>
> i couldn't figure out why Vista would
> not let me use the huge amount of
> apparently unused space on the later
> 3/4 of the drive.
>
> but anyway, i figured that that 6 GB was
> enough to create an S: swap partition, so
> that i could get the Windows pagefil.sys
> off the C: drive and into its own space.
> the first step in making a cleaner system.
>
> well, Windows disk manager looked like it
> was working hard (and for a very long time!),
> but it finally barfed just before completing
> the task.
>
>
> so, Linux to the rescue, as always.
>
> but it wouldn't be *that* easy! ...
>
>
> Linux partitions, take 1
> ------------------------
>
> (i think the last part of the title
> of this section is already giving away
> some clues!) ;-)
>
>
> i booted off the Slitaz Live CD, and
> used GParted to partition the hard-drive
> the way i wanted it:
>
> ~fdisk -l
> device active filetype GB (intended) use
> /dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
> /dev/sda2 * vfat 100 windows vista
> /dev/sda3 vfat 6 (windows vista swap)
> /dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
> /dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
> /dev/sda6 ext3 24 (/home)
> /dev/sda7 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
> /dev/sda8 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
> /dev/sda9 ext3 0.9 (slitaz)
> /dev/sda10 ext3 18 (sabayon?)
> unallocated ---- 39 (future OSs)
>
>
> notice the parenthesis around "(intended) use",
> and watch how they disappear in the entries
> as i fill those partitions with OSs. :)
>
>
> now i had lots of partitions ready for nice
> clean installs of Linux. but ... (a REALLY BIG
> but ...)
>
>
> Vista gets trashed
> ------------------
>
> but i had let GParted take the long slow path,
> shrinking the Vista partition (/dev/sda2) and
> then creating all the ones for Linux. that
> turned out to be a really bad idea --
>
> as soon as the long partitioning procedure
> was finished, i could see in GParted's
> graphical display that the beginning of
> the Vista partition had been moved forward
> ~5 MB, with that 5 MB as unallocated space
> between /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2.
>
> i suspected that that would indicate that
> Vista's boot sector was trashed by GParted
> -- and i was exactly correct. i tried several
> times to boot Vista and nothing happened at all.
> just a blinking white cursor on a black screen.
> this was bad.
>
>
> i was really disappointed that my beautiful
> new Vista completely unbootable. i booted
> slitaz from the live-cd and could see that
> AFAICT all of the Windows files were there.
> so i *really* didn't want to reformat that
> drive, especially after all the work i had
> put into cleaning up Vista.
>
> the good thing was that i really haven't
> used this laptop much since i bought it
> on May 6. i suppose i was really waiting
> to make it a multi-boot machine before i
> would really *use* it hard. but still, my
> Vista was just how i wanted it, and now i
> couldn't have it. :(
>
> so now /dev/sda2 had regressed to and
> unusable "(windows vista)", and my new
> Toshiba was running nothing!
>
>
>
> Reinstall of Vista
> ------------------
>
> So i had to take the drastic step of
> opening up and booting from the Toshiba
> rescue-cd.
>
> at first i tried the "Repair" option.
> i tried it several times and kept rebooting,
> but to no avail: Vista would not start,
> despite the fact that the repair dialog
> was telling me that it had fixed everything,
> and the boot sector was ok.
>
> so finally, in desperation to have my Vista
> back again, i decided to use the Toshiba
> Recovery Wizard, which would wipe the
> hard-drive clean and put in the factory
> Vista installation that came with the
> machine when i bought it ... including
> all the junk "trial offer" programs that
> i would have to get rid of again.
>
> but there *was* one beam of light in these
> clouds: the Toshiba Wizard was willing to
> give me the option of using a Custom
> Partition Size. Hooray!
>
> So i was able to use the Vista installation
> itself to create not only the automatic
> EISA recovery D: drive at the beginning
> (/dev/sda1), and not only my desired ~100 GB
> Vista C: partition (/dev/sda2), but also
> another primary partition to house the Vista
> pagefil.sys swap file. this was very good.
> i would be sure to have a solid
> Microsoft-certified NTFS filesystem on
> that swap partition.
>
> ~fdisk -l
> device active filetype GB (intended) use
> /dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
> /dev/sda2 * vfat 100 windows vista
> /dev/sda3 vfat 6 (windows vista swap)
> /dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
> unallocated ---- 85 (future OSs)
>
>
> And still lots of unallocated space on the
> second ~half of the drive ... just ripe and
> waiting for some Linux partitions! :)
>
> but before i get to that ...
>
>
> vista pagefil.sys in its own swap partition
> -------------------------------------------
>
> i was so happy to have my beautiful Vista
> desktop back again. booting into it after
> the fresh recovery install felt like a
> big weight lifting off of me. the clouds parted.
> (ha ha, sys-admin joke)
>
> first stop: to clean up vista a bit
> by putting pagefil.sys into its own S: drive,
> /dev/sda3 in Linux. good, no problems there.
>
> i booted back into Vista and set the
> Virtual Memory to leave pagefil.sys off
> of C: and manage it automatically on S:.
> I gave S: enough space to be the preferred
> 1.5 times the projected full 4 GB of RAM
> that i hope to eventually have on this machine.
>
> bit hopefully with that much memory and
> Vista managing it, i won't need that disk space
> until a few years from now, when programs are
> ready to consider consuming terabytes of RAM.
> (yes, i'm sure the jump from 4 GB to 1000 GB
> will happen that fast.)
>
>
> So, now, *finally*, on to the Linux installs ...
>
>
> Linux partitions, take 2
> ------------------------
>
>
> slitaz 1.0 cooking
> ------------------
>
> first i booted slitaz off the live-cd and
> installed it, using the easy graphical
> installer (in French ... good thing i know
> the language a little).
>
> i also let slitaz install GRUB into the MBR
> -- this was the one thing i was scared of.
> i really didn't want Vista to get trashed again.
>
> so when the slitaz installation was finished
> (which took about 20 seconds IIRC), instead
> of clicking "Reboot" to finish it and reboot
> into my newly-installed slitaz (on /dev/sda9),
> i followed slitaz's optional suggestion and
> stayed in the live-cd for awhile, so that i
> could examine and play with some more files,
> then reboot into Vista (hopefully).
>
> i wanted to test the Vista boot first, to
> be sure that it was still ok, before i messed
> around with any of the Linuxes. and when i did,
> Vista came up just fine. so, _that_ was good.
>
> but then trying to reboot into my installed
> slitaz, slitaz wouldn't boot. it kept sending
> the machine back to the opening Toshiba
> boot screen, and into GRUB, and back again,
> in an endless loop
>
>
> sabayon linux 3.5
> -----------------
>
> so after wasting a lot of time playing
> ring-around-the-rosy with the Toshiba
> boot screen and GRUB, and spending a
> hell of a lot of time studying the GRUB
> manual and forum webpages (basically the
> whole afternoon and night of July 4),
> and learning not much new that i could use
> (well, i did learn how to use the GRUB shell!
> ... but it would have been a better learning
> experience if GRUB had actually _booted_ into
> a working OS!), i decided to lay slitaz aside,
> and install a big Linux.
>
> i debated for awhile what to put into that
> 16 MB partition (/dev/sda10), and finally
> decided to try Sabayon, beginning the install
> at exactly midnight.
>
> the install took *forever* ... almost 2 hours.
>
> at the end, it was asking me if i wanted to
> install GRUB, and i know i really should have
> let it. but i thought, hey, the slitaz install
> of GRUB wasn't booting slitaz, but at least
> it didn't mess up my Vista boot. so i left the
> slitaz GRUB as it was, and just edited the
> menu.lst file in the slitaz /boot/grub
> directory.
>
> and when it was finished, Sabayon also gave
> me the choice that i could either reboot now
> or stay in live-cd for awhile. having learned
> my lesson, i was ready to reboot directly
> into sabayon, so i said "oh no you don't!".
>
> but fate had other plans ...
>
> as i was examining the pop-up menus for
> logging out / rebooting / etc., the touchpad
> had that stupid "click on hover" activated
> which i hate so much, and something that i
> hovered over was a choice that i didn't want
> to make, and it got rid of my reboot option
> and left me stranded in the live-cd ramdisk.
> fuck.
>
> and sure enough, when i tried to reboot into
> sabayon immediately after that, it wouldn't
> boot from grub, giving me "Error 2: bad file
> or directory". fuck fuck fuck. i also tried
> this over and over again, did a lot of editing
> of the menu.lst and /etc/fstab files,
> to no avail. fuck.
>
> so now after all that time i still had Vista,
> at the size i wanted it, with its disconnected
> swap file -- all good. but no Linux whatsoever,
> even tho there were now thousands of Linux
> files on those two partitions of the hard-drive.
>
> by now it was around 2:00am ...
>
> ==========================
>
> day 2
> -----
> 2008.07.05
>
> ... so it's technically a new day.
> well, i stayed up all night. tried to go
> to sleep briefly, but after an hour i was up
> working on the Toshiba again.
>
>
> new /boot partition
> -------------------
>
> i decided to make a new boot partition
> near the beginning of the
> extended partition (sda4)
> after the Linux swap partition (sda5).
>
> so first i booted into live-cd slitaz,
> and i tried to use GParted to shrink the
> /home partition at the beginning, and then
> add the /boot partition ahead of it.
>
> this was still not a perfect solution,
> because now the /boot partition would
> be numbered as /dev/sda11. but it seemed
> like the only way i could insert a /boot
> partition without having to redo the
> sabayon install.
>
> but after waiting for a really long time for
> GParted to do the shrink (taking so long
> because GParted was carefully copying
> and moving all the "data" in the
> empty-but-for-lost+found) ... even tho it
> was on the home-stretch, i realized that
> it was ridiculous to wait any longer for
> that procedure.
>
> so i stopped it -- despite the dire warning
> that "DATA WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE LOST!",
> and deleted the /home partition along with
> its "valuable" empty lost+found which GParted
> had dutifully been preserving.
>
>
> because my existing family of Linux partitions
> was already consecutively numbered:
>
> device active filetype GB (intended) use
> /dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
> /dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
> /dev/sda6 ext3 24 (/boot)
> /dev/sda7 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
> /dev/sda8 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
> /dev/sda9 ext3 0.9 (slitaz)
> /dev/sda10 ext3 18 (sabayon)
> unallocated ---- 39 (future OSs)
>
> this act destroyed the logical numerical flow.
> that was something that i had been careful to
> avoid.
>
>
> wiping slitaz and replacing it is no big deal,
> because it's so small and fast. but the sabayon
> install had been a very long pain-in-the-ass,
> and i neither wanted to wipe it away nor sit
> and wait while doing a reinstall.
>
> so i'm stuck with lousy numbers now.
>
>
> the numbers 6 thru 9 were moved ahead one
> partition each, because what had been /dev/sda6
> was now unallocated space:
>
> device active filetype GB (intended) use
> /dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
> /dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
> unallocated ---- 24 (/boot + /home)
> /dev/sda6 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
> /dev/sda7 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
> /dev/sda8 ext3 0.9 (slitaz)
> /dev/sda9 ext3 18 (sabayon)
> unallocated ---- 39 (future OSs)
>
>
> so again, i booted into live-cd slitaz, and
> used GParted to create a brand new /home
> on a brand new partition, which would later
> become /dev/sda11 when GParted was finished.
>
> then i put the new /boot partition before it,
> to later become /dev/sda10.
>
>
> so the old fdisk -l was changed to this:
> ~fdisk -l
> device active filetype GB (intended) use
> /dev/sda1 [EISA] 1 system recovery
> /dev/sda2 * vfat 100 windows vista
> /dev/sda3 vfat 6 windows vista swap
> /dev/sda4 extended -- <container>
> /dev/sda5 Linux swap 2 (linux swap)
> /dev/sda10 ext2 (/boot)
> /dev/sda11 ext3 (/home)
> /dev/sda6 ext2 0.5 (basiclinux)
> /dev/sda7 ext3 0.6 (puppy)
> /dev/sda8 ext3 0.9 slitaz
> /dev/sda9 ext3 18 sabayon
> unallocated ---- -- (future OSs)
>
>
> trying the new /boot ... and failing
> ------------------------------------
>
> i put the kernel images of both slitaz and
> sabayon, and also the sabayon initrd,
> and also the slitaz /boot/grub/menu.lst,
> into the new /boot partition.
>
> i wasn't sure exactly where these files
> should go, so i also made a new /boot/grub
> directory on that partition, and put some
> if the files in there too. i was just
> trying to cover all of the bases.
>
> (actually, it's a bad idea to _start_
> that way, because it doesn't help you
> isolate the location of a problem
> -- rather, the opposite.)
>
> trying that avenue failed for both of
> the distros. i didn't waste a whole lot
> of time on this -- as soon as it looked
> like it was about to turn into a huge
> time-suck, i abandoned it. so /dev/sda10
> still lies abandoned on the drive.
>
>
> slitaz install, take 2
> ----------------------
>
> all this time, whenver i tried to boot into
> slitaz, it still kept giving me the init-boot
> endless-loop. so i finally decided to just
> install slitaz all over again from scratch,
> including a fresh install of GRUB (the scary
> part again!).
>
> that was a good idea!
>
> slitaz installed successfully, but this time
> i finished the install by ignoring the
> suggestion to "kepp playing with the live-cd",
> and so i clicked on the "Reboot" button,
> which cause slitaz to pop the cd out of
> the drive, and reboot successfully into
> the installed-to-hd slitaz! Yay!
> _finally_, a working Linux on the Toshiba!
>
> so apparently, not rebooting into the
> installed distro immediately, caused GRUB
> to something to not be set up exactly right.
>
> i had a hunch that this might also fix
> sabayon, at least partially, and i was
> right! ...
>
>
>
> sabayon finally boots ... sort of
> ---------------------------------
>
> so i rebooted and choose sabayon from the
> slitaz GRUB menu, and it actually got to
> a desktop!
>
> however, when i log in as username,
> an error dialog tells me that kstart.conf
> is missing.
>
> i thought that might have been because of
> the sabayon /etc/fstab still mounting
> /dev/sda10 as /boot (and in general other
> partitions incorrect too), but fixing
> them did not make sabayon boot better.
>
> i was able to run sabayon in "failsafe" mode:
> a tiny unmovable xterm console at the bottom
> right of the screen. but even after changing
> back to sabayon partition's /home, it still
> kept booting the same way.
>
>
>
> linux mint gnome 2008
> ---------------------
>
> i don't recall now the exact sequence of
> installs (hey, i've been up all night without
> any sleep! ... and now at 3pm, i'm feeling it),
> but i think the first thing i did after creating
> the new /boot was to install mint.
>
> i decided not to erase the sabayon install,
> and to leave it alone and try another full
> distro along with it.
>
> so again, back into live-cd slitaz and
> GParted, this time to create a new partition
> for mint: /dev/sda12 (and now i can finally
> present some real data that i copied!):
>
> #fdisk -l
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System (intended) use
> /dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown recovery
> /dev/sda2 * 192 13246 104857600 7 HPFS/NTFS windows vist
> /dev/sda3 13246 14011 6144000 7 HPFS/NTFS vista swap
> /dev/sda4 14012 21013 56243565 5 Extended <container>
> /dev/sda5 14012 14293 2265133+ 82 Linux swap/Solaris
> linux swap
> /dev/sda10 14294 14368 602406 83 Linux /boot
> /dev/sda11 14369 17353 23976981 83 Linux /home
> /dev/sda6 17354 17417 514048+ 83 Linux (basiclinux)
> /dev/sda7 17418 17493 610438+ 83 Linux (puppy)
> /dev/sda8 17494 17624 1052226 83 Linux slitaz
> /dev/sda9 17625 19919 18434556 83 Linux sabayon
> /dev/sda12 19920 21013 8787523+ 83 Linux mint
>
>
>
> the mint installer was very nice, and
> asked me how i planned to mount the existing
> partitions. i only told it to put /dev/sda12
> on /, and left /boot alone for the time being.
> i think that turned out to be a bad idea.
>
> (you'll find out later that i had more
> troubles with mint, even tho i could get it
> to run basically ok.)
>
> mint also offered to install GRUB, and search
> for other installed OSs to put into it. this
> time i opted to install the more modern and
> bigger-footprint version of GRUB, and let mint
> do what it had to do to figure out where my
> vista, slitaz, and sabayon were. with the
> complete success i had up to this point with
> vista and slitaz, and the partial success with
> sabayon, it was again a little scary to possibly
> give all that up.
>
> but mint's GRUB install went _very_ nicely.
> It created a very slick GRUB boot menu,
> which included three modes of booting mint
> first, and then vista, slitaz, and "gentoo"
> (i.e, sabayon).
>
>
> but ... mint didn't work all the way.
> after finishing most of the boot, and
> logging in as my username, an error dialog
> told me that my /home/monz/.gconf was missing.
> duh! -- that's because /dev/sda11 is still
> _empty_!
>
>
> well, at least by leaving /home on the mint
> partition i could get mint to boot correctly.
> so good, now i have two working linux distros
> on this machine.
>
> i decided to put this /home business aside
> for now, and come back to it later.
>
>
>
> =============
>
> 2008.07.05.10.39pdt
>
> Windows Explorer reports the Toshiba
> hard-drives thus:
>
> /------------------------
> drive GB free %free GB total
> C: 69.1 60% 99.9
> S: 4.33 70% 5.85
> \-------------------------
>
> The Device Manager says this:
>
> /--------------------------
> disk: disk 0
> type: basic
> status: online
> partition style: master boot record (MBR)
> capacity: 190781 MB
> unallocated space: 0 MB (if only Windows knew what Linux knows!)
> reserved space: 0 MB
>
> volumes:
>
> volume capacity
> SQ004665V4 (C:) 102400 MB
> swap (S:) 6000 MB
> \-------------------------
>
>
> Of course, i had to type all this crap myself.
> If Windows does have a way to output the data,
> it's not easy to figure out how to do it.
>
> Linux fdisk reports are coming in the
> next email ...
>
>
> ==============
>
> now i finally took the trouble to document
> my procedure with real data ... why didn't
> i do this all along? Linux makes it easy.
>
> command history example:
> #mkdir /mnt/vista
> #mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/vista
> #fdisk -l > /mnt/vista/toshiba64_fdisk_2008-07-05-11-40.txt
>
> then i attached them as text files in an
> email to myself.
>
>
> toshiba64 linux output, under mint
> ----------------------------------
>
> #fdisk -l
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x170d799f
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System (intended) use
> /dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown recovery
> Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
> /dev/sda2 * 192 13246 104857600 7 HPFS/NTFS windows vist
> /dev/sda3 13246 14011 6144000 7 HPFS/NTFS vista swap
> /dev/sda4 14012 21013 56243565 5 Extended <container>
> /dev/sda5 14012 14293 2265133+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/sda6 17354 17417 514048+ 83 Linux (basiclinux)
> /dev/sda7 17418 17493 610438+ 83 Linux (puppy)
> /dev/sda8 17494 17624 1052226 83 Linux slitaz
> /dev/sda9 17625 19919 18434556 83 Linux sabayon
> /dev/sda10 14294 14368 602406 83 Linux /boot
> /dev/sda11 14369 17353 23976981 83 Linux /home
> /dev/sda12 19920 21013 8787523+ 83 Linux mint
>
> Partition table entries are not in disk order
>
>
>
> i had no Linux network support yet
> (and running *THREE* different Linux distros!)
> and Vista surfing the internet just fine
> ... see, there is something good to be said
> about Windows after all).
>
> so i had to mount the Vista partition
> and copy these Linux command output files
> to a folder there, so that i could send them
> to myself in an email, to be able to use
> them in *this* file, which i'm typing on
> the B-street Gateway desktop (or to use
> them *anywhere* outside of the Toshiba,
> for that matter).
>
>
>
>
> #df
> Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> varrun 972064 96 971968 1% /var/run
> varlock 972064 0 972064 0% /var/lock
> udev 972064 80 971984 1% /dev
> devshm 972064 12 972052 1% /dev/shm
> lrm 972064 38176 933888 4%
> /lib/modules/2.6.24-16-generic/volatile
> /dev/sda11 23600600 185064 22216688 1% /mnt/home
> /dev/sda2 104857596 32296288 72561308 31% /mnt/vista
>
> #free
> total used free shared buffers
cached
> Mem: 1944132 411304 1532828 0 12184
232740
> -/+ buffers/cache: 166380 1777752
> Swap: 0 0 0
>
>
>
> i did a lot of this:
> cp -R /home/monz/* /mnt/home
> for awhile, trying to figure out exactly where
> those files were supposed to go
> to get them correctly onto /dev/sda11.
>
>
>
> #ls -la /home/monz
> total 164
> drwxr-xr-x 28 root monz 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .
> drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 ..
> -rw------- 1 root root 13 2008-07-05 11:34 .bash_history
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 220 2008-07-05 11:34 .bash_logout
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2928 2008-07-05 11:34 .bashrc_vanilla
> drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .cache
> drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .config
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 Desktop
> -rw------- 1 root root 28 2008-07-05 11:34 .dmrc
> drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Documents
> drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Downloads
> -rw------- 1 root root 16 2008-07-05 11:34 .esd_auth
> drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gconf
> drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gconfd
> -rw-r----- 1 root root 0 2008-07-05 11:34 .gksu.lock
> drwx------ 6 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gnome2
> drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gnome2_private
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gstreamer-0.10
> drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .gvfs
> -rw------- 1 root root 161 2008-07-05 11:34 .ICEauthority
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .icons
> drwxr-xr-x 3 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .linuxmint
> drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .local
> drwx------ 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .metacity
> drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Music
> drwxr-xr-x 3 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .nautilus
> drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Pictures
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 586 2008-07-05 11:34 .profile
> drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Projects
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .pulse
> -rw------- 1 root root 256 2008-07-05 11:34 .pulse-cookie
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 218 2008-07-05 11:34 .recently-used.xbel
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2008-07-05 11:34 .sudo_as_admin_successful
> drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Templates
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .themes
> drwx------ 3 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .thumbnails
> drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .tomboy
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4685 2008-07-05 11:34 .tomboy.log
> drwxr-xr-x 2 monz monz 4096 2008-07-05 10:54 Videos
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-07-05 11:34 .wapi
> -rw------- 1 root root 118 2008-07-05 11:34 .Xauthority
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2353 2008-07-05 11:34 .xsession-errors
>
>
> finally, i saw that i had somehow trashed the
> linux-mint /etc/fstab file -- and i don't know
> how that happened. i had been editing it, but
> the only deleting i did was with the /home stuff.
> but anyway, the hard-link to it was still there
> but it was empty.
>
> that really sucked, because mint (like sabayon)
> uses what is apparently a new standard, using
> UUIDs for the partitions instead of the /dev/sd??
> nomenclature. i don't know anything about that,
> seeing it for the first time here (but i had
> seen this kind of thing before in virtualbox's
> handling of vdi's). i'm sure it's for greater
> security.
>
> so anyway, i had to completely populate the
> /etc/fstab file. first i did it by hand,
> using only the three sda partitions and a proc:
>
> # nano /etc/fstab
> /dev/sda12 / defaults 1 1
> /dev/sda11 /home defaults 0 2
> /dev/sda5 swap defaults 0 0
> /dev/proc none
>
> that's all i could remember first-hand.
> but then i got the idea to do a "mount",
> and send that to a text file.
>
> #mount > /etc/fstab
>
> but the mount output had *no* sda partitions
> as devices! i couldn't figure that out, but
> whatever, i just kept the data, added spaces
> to make it a neat columnar fstab, and added
> the three sda partitions 12, 11, and 5.
>
> when i rebooted into mint, the fstab seemed
> to work ok, but again i had a problem with
> /home. i can't figure that out, and was hoping
> that i'd be able to get some face-to-face
> help at the Installfest, but at least mint
> booted ok when i commented the /home
> partition out of /etc/fstab, and just let
> mint use its own /home on /dev/sda12.
>
> (i ended up staying home typing this all
> morning and early afternoon, thinking that
> i was really screwing up by missing the
> Installfest. then i looked online and found out
> that the bookstore is closed all weekend for
> the holiday, and the Installfest is *next*
> Saturday. so good, i'll keep typing ...)
>
> (ok, having gone back and added some missing
> parts, now it's 3:40pm and i'm falling asleep
> at the keyboard. time to quit this for now.)
>
>
>
> -monz
> http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
> Tonescape microtonal music software
>

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Here's something that really has nothing to do with
> microtonal music ... well, not _yet_, anyway! ;-)
> when Tonescape works on Linux, that will be
> another story ...

Wow, cool---when will this happen?

Hi Aaron,

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson"
<aaron@...> wrote:
>
> Hey Joe,
>
> where you going with that gun in your hand? (couldn't resist)

It's ok, i'm used to it ... you're not the first. :-D

> as an experienced Linux 'guru', I can tell you it's
> probably best to stick with one Linux distro at a time,
> have a seperate partition for /home (your personal files),

Yes, i know about the wisdom of doing that! ;-)

> and just reinstall a different distro if things aren't
> working or you want to try others. Otherwise, you are
> asking for pain and little sleep (as you probably figured
> out by now)

Well, the "little sleep" part i'm already used to from
long ago ... but actually, i've really been enjoying my
honeymoon with Linux.

I learned a version of Unix way back in 1984, on a PDP-11
when i took a computer music course with Charles Dodge
at Brooklyn College, and that was also my first exposure
to C, and also to Music-11, which was a forerunning of
Csound.

In those days i had become somewhat proficient at writing
small programs in BASIC, but really didn't have any other
computer experience, because i still didn't have a decent
computer myself. My computer was a Timex Sinclair (if you
know what that was, you know what a joke of a computer it
was -- i only bought it because it was a cheap way for me
to have my own computer). I was still 2 years away from
getting my first IBM PC and learning DOS. But that was
exactly when i first dreamed up the idea for what ultimately
became Tonescape.

So during the 1990s i became a power DOS user, got quite good
at BASIC programming (even venturing as far as taking a course
in VisualBasic, twice) and an expert in Microsoft Excel and
Word. But once i got used to Windows 95/98/2000, i really
lost all affection for the command-line.

So when i took a course in C/C++ in fall 2006, with a
teacher who felt forced to teach us with Microsoft
VisualStudio "because if you want a job programming C++
you'd better know how to do it in Windows", but who himself
far preferred a Linux terminal and used it all the time
in class, i finally got some real exposure to Linux,
Suse 10.1. I could see what's so great about it, and
in fact to a great extent it brought me back to the Unix
i knew in 1984. But i still really wanted to work in a GUI,
and that system at school doesn't have one.

Of course, *nix being the great networking OS that it is,
i've been able to keep my account at school and log on
from my home computer anytime i want, and i was doing that
from time to time over the last year and a half. But without
the GUI it was really only a half-hearted attempt to just
not forget what i did learn/relearn about *nix while i was
in that course, and also to compile the occasional small
C program.

Then i start playing around with VirtualBox at the end
of March (of this year), and realized that that was a
great way to try out any Linux distros that i wanted to
try. So that's exactly what i did. And i got the bug.

I'm not going to preach to the choir here and tell you
why Linux is going to be the OS wave of the future,
you already know. But i'm certainly convinced of that,
and have been obsessed with getting up to speed.

> I recommend something like Ubuntu, openSuse or Mint for beginners,
but
> for stability and speed I go with an easier Slackware derivitive,
> Zenwalk, which is what I use now.

The first distro i tried was Ubuntu 7.10, because 1) i've
read so much about it being so user-friendly and popular,
and 2) i have a penchant for things African anyway. ;-)
And i like Ubuntu a lot ... in fact, i'm writing this
right now from Linux Mint, which one reviewer called
"Ubuntu done right".

I downloaded and burned a ton of ISOs, most of which
were live-CDs ... but one which _wasn't_ was a huge
DVD image of OpenSuse 10.3. So i had to "install" that one,
which i did into a Virtual Machine. Of course the reason
it was so big was because it came with a lot of bells
and whistles. So i used that one quite a bit during
April and May.

I also got interested in some of the really small distros,
and happened to catch SliTaz right when version 1.0 was
brand-new. I _love_ SliTaz (i created the English Wikipedia
page for it), but this early in its development it still
needs a lot of work. Having read so much about Puppy,
i tried that too, and in fact when the time finally came
to partition the hard-drive on my "regular" laptop
(an HP Omnibook from 2000, already running Windows XP),
Puppy 4.0 was the Linux that i put on it. When i use that
machine now, i hardly ever run Windows, and use Puppy
all the time.

I'd also like to put it on the record that i bought
that machine at a good price in 2006, specifically to
have Tonescape running on a laptop ... but the video on
it is not sufficient to run Tonescape, so it won't even
install. So without Tonescape, the only reason i even
keep Windows is for the build-up of other programs i've
installed in it.

And then having really been bitten by the Linux bug,
and particularly for these small distros which run well
on older hardware, i started buying up a whole "museum"
of ancient laptops and installing Linux on them. Most of
them have floppies and will not boot from CD (if they
even _have_ a CD), so i've installed BasicLinux 3.50.
which boots from 2 floppies. And BL is built to be
Slackware-compatible, so i've gotten a little familiar
with Slackware by that route.

Most of these old laptops have Windows 95 on them already.
But my favorite of them is a Toshiba T4800CT, which has
12 MB of RAM and a ~500 MB hard-drive. It was in a batch
of laptops i got 3 for $40, so i paid $13.33 for it.
The hard-drive had been wiped clean, so it's the only
machine i have which is running only Linux single-boot
(BL 3.50).

I also got an IBM Thinkpad for $20 which only has 8 MB
of RAM. The floppy version of BL needs at least 12 MB,
so it wouldn't even work on that machine. But there's
another version of BL which lives in a DOS directory
and boots from loadlin, after you first boot into DOS,
so i installed that. The battery on that machine even
holds a decent charge! (very rare with these old laptops).

So anyway, i've been using BasicLinux a lot, and while
it can run a JWM GUI, the video capabilities of these
old machines is so lousy that most of the time i don't
even bother starting x-windows, i just run it from a
command-line tty.

> If you don't mind waiting hours or days for large package
> compiles (I do, I want to get to work) then i suppose
> Gentoo or Sabayon is fine, because they optimise the
> code for your processor. But to me that's a pain. I don't
> mind compiling small packages, and the largest I'll do is
> something like Ardour, which might take a half hour and
> you can do while you take a nap or something.

Well, on July 12 i got my first taste of how long Sabayon
takes to do an update. I took my hot new laptop (the one
with Vista) to the Linux installfest, to try to get at
least _one_ of the four installed Linuxes to see my
wireless card and get online.

I started out by plugging in the ethernet cable and
booting into Sabayon. With its first chance of being
online, it informed me that it was ready for updates,
so i clicked "OK", and off it went ... for the next
_4 hours_!!! Needless to say, with my computer tied up
for that much of the Installfest, i didn't have much
time left for anything else. And at the end of that
big update, Sabayon still couldn't make my wireless card
work.

So, one of the gurus there suggested that i try Mint,
since i could probably find some Ubuntu help online.
So i booted into Mint, but at first still couldn't figure
out what to do. He suggested that i try a Windows driver
with ndiswrapper, and he helped me thru that process,
but that didn't work either. Finally, i found a madwifi
package for Mint that i had to build myself (i had to
download and install the builder first). It still didn't
work for me at the Installfest, but it was time to go home.
But later that night -- i.e., after a reboot -- it finally
worked and i got online in Mint.

Yesterday Mint wanted me to update, so i did ... and the
new kernel broke my wifi again. So now i boot mostly into
the old kernel so that i can still get online.

But anyway, i really do hope that i can get Sabayon online,
because that is a _hot_ distro. This machine has an AMD
Turion 64x2 CPU, so i decided to install the 64-bit version
of Sabayon. It's the only 64-bot OS i've ever used, and it's
awesome. (Even the Vista on this machine is 32-bit.)

> I've tried all the distros mentioned save Sabayon and Mint.
> I'm with Zenwalk b/c it's fast stable and elegant, and easy
> (in a way) but not the easiest.

Zenwalk is one of the many that i still have not tried.
I'll have to give it a look. Another one which came highly
recommended is Arch.

> Alas, there's no one perfect distro :(

But actually i don't see that as a bad thing at all.
For me, the beauty of Linux is that it will evolve right
along with the rest of our trappings of civilization,
and it will continue to shoot off in many different
directions all at once.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
Tonescape microtonal music software

hi Aaron,

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson"
<aaron@...> wrote:
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Here's something that really has nothing to do with
> > microtonal music ... well, not _yet_, anyway! ;-)
> > when Tonescape works on Linux, that will be
> > another story ...
>
> Wow, cool---when will this happen?

Well, sorry ... no time soon. I'm just being optimistic.

Tonescape is a huge program. In fact, the main reason
why development on it has been stalled since January 2006
is because it became too big for Chris (its sole coder
so far) to maintain by himself.

At that point we needed to hire a team of programmers
to work under his direction. But our investor backed out,
and so since then we've both had to focus on earning income.

One big part of my recent work with Linux is to see if
i can get a virtual Windows XP or Vista working under Linux,
which will run Tonescape. Ozan has tried it under Parallels
on the Mac, and it installed for him but crashes. But we
cannot even offer support for it right now -- it's truly
a dormant project at this time.

I'm hoping that as Windows keeps developing beyond Vista,
machines which run XP will become so cheap that musicians
(a notoriously poor lot) who use Mac or Linux will hopefully
be willing to spend a little on an XP machine just to run
Tonescape.

I wish i had more time for it myself now, because i should
be creating more help files and more native Tuning and
especially Musical Piece files for it. The one of
Mahler's 7th in 1/6-comma meantone that i've been
working on really kicks ass!!

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
Tonescape microtonal music software

Hi Joe,

My advice on Tonescape--if it's stalled anyway, and you weren't making
big bucks, open source it---releasing it to the community will allow
it's development to continue, and cross-platform at that.

Of course, I would completely understand the rationale for not doing
so---it was a huge business venture from the get go, but there might
be some plusses to cutting your losses and rethinking the project to
keep it alive.

I'm sure that it would be a reasonably doable thing to translate
windows API to a cross-platform toolkit. But you know better than I
how much Tonescape was tied to Windows API. In the future though, I
would always advise that in this day and age, a large package is best
developed with cross-platform toolkits and usability from the
beginning. Being usable on both Mac and Linux is huge....they both
have more 'hip cache' at this point than Windows (especially
Mac---Linux is still a ways from capturing the general hearts and
minds of Joe Q. Public---but geeks will love you). That way, the winds
of fortune blowing towards one OS and away from another don't effect
your code-base! Open source virtually guarantees the long life of your
project this way, too. The downside is of course, you can't become
rich on your software, but this is unlikely anyway with a tool
designed for microtonal addicted composers.

You may not make money on it, but at least you know that you've
contributed a valuable tool to the community that will get more and
more use than it ever had as a commercial product--and won't that give
you some great satisfaction and mojo? :)

-AKJ

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
>
> hi Aaron,
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson"
> <aaron@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > Here's something that really has nothing to do with
> > > microtonal music ... well, not _yet_, anyway! ;-)
> > > when Tonescape works on Linux, that will be
> > > another story ...
> >
> > Wow, cool---when will this happen?
>
>
> Well, sorry ... no time soon. I'm just being optimistic.
>
> Tonescape is a huge program. In fact, the main reason
> why development on it has been stalled since January 2006
> is because it became too big for Chris (its sole coder
> so far) to maintain by himself.
>
> At that point we needed to hire a team of programmers
> to work under his direction. But our investor backed out,
> and so since then we've both had to focus on earning income.
>
> One big part of my recent work with Linux is to see if
> i can get a virtual Windows XP or Vista working under Linux,
> which will run Tonescape. Ozan has tried it under Parallels
> on the Mac, and it installed for him but crashes. But we
> cannot even offer support for it right now -- it's truly
> a dormant project at this time.
>
> I'm hoping that as Windows keeps developing beyond Vista,
> machines which run XP will become so cheap that musicians
> (a notoriously poor lot) who use Mac or Linux will hopefully
> be willing to spend a little on an XP machine just to run
> Tonescape.
>
> I wish i had more time for it myself now, because i should
> be creating more help files and more native Tuning and
> especially Musical Piece files for it. The one of
> Mahler's 7th in 1/6-comma meantone that i've been
> working on really kicks ass!!

Hi Aaron,

Yes, all of your points are good ones. With my current
very deep interest in Linux, you can probably imagine
that i have considered all of them already.

Chris and i are both very strong believers in the
value of open-source software (me: Linux, him: FreeBSD).
But we did set this up as a commercial venture, and
invested not only several years of our lives into it,
but also a hell of a lot of money ... and considering
website costs, i'm still investing money into it.

Most of the problems with getting it running even on
a Windows machine are centered on the incompatibilities
of different version of Microsoft DirectX. We do plan
to migrate the graphics engine from DirectX to OpenGL.

But as for making the whole project open-source, that's
probably not going to happen soon. We do still want
to try to find a way to earn some income from Tonescape.

And also, while it is obvious that Tonescape primary
target audience is microtonal composers (a _very_ small
niche indeed), we designed it to appeal to anyone interested
in having fun making music on a computer. Imagine how
i feel watching the creators of Guitar Hero reap billions
of dollars in revenue, which my own project which has
many deep similiarities to it is asleep.

-monz

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson"
<aaron@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Joe,
>
> My advice on Tonescape--if it's stalled anyway, and you weren't
making
> big bucks, open source it---releasing it to the community will allow
> it's development to continue, and cross-platform at that.
>
> Of course, I would completely understand the rationale for not doing
> so---it was a huge business venture from the get go, but there might
> be some plusses to cutting your losses and rethinking the project to
> keep it alive.
>
> I'm sure that it would be a reasonably doable thing to translate
> windows API to a cross-platform toolkit. But you know better than I
> how much Tonescape was tied to Windows API. In the future though, I
> would always advise that in this day and age, a large package is
best
> developed with cross-platform toolkits and usability from the
> beginning. Being usable on both Mac and Linux is huge....they both
> have more 'hip cache' at this point than Windows (especially
> Mac---Linux is still a ways from capturing the general hearts and
> minds of Joe Q. Public---but geeks will love you). That way, the
winds
> of fortune blowing towards one OS and away from another don't effect
> your code-base! Open source virtually guarantees the long life of
your
> project this way, too. The downside is of course, you can't become
> rich on your software, but this is unlikely anyway with a tool
> designed for microtonal addicted composers.
>
> You may not make money on it, but at least you know that you've
> contributed a valuable tool to the community that will get more and
> more use than it ever had as a commercial product--and won't that
give
> you some great satisfaction and mojo? :)
>
> -AKJ
>
>
> --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
> >
> > hi Aaron,
> >
> > --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson"
> > <aaron@> wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > Here's something that really has nothing to do with
> > > > microtonal music ... well, not _yet_, anyway! ;-)
> > > > when Tonescape works on Linux, that will be
> > > > another story ...
> > >
> > > Wow, cool---when will this happen?
> >
> >
> > Well, sorry ... no time soon. I'm just being optimistic.
> >
> > Tonescape is a huge program. In fact, the main reason
> > why development on it has been stalled since January 2006
> > is because it became too big for Chris (its sole coder
> > so far) to maintain by himself.
> >
> > At that point we needed to hire a team of programmers
> > to work under his direction. But our investor backed out,
> > and so since then we've both had to focus on earning income.
> >
> > One big part of my recent work with Linux is to see if
> > i can get a virtual Windows XP or Vista working under Linux,
> > which will run Tonescape. Ozan has tried it under Parallels
> > on the Mac, and it installed for him but crashes. But we
> > cannot even offer support for it right now -- it's truly
> > a dormant project at this time.
> >
> > I'm hoping that as Windows keeps developing beyond Vista,
> > machines which run XP will become so cheap that musicians
> > (a notoriously poor lot) who use Mac or Linux will hopefully
> > be willing to spend a little on an XP machine just to run
> > Tonescape.
> >
> > I wish i had more time for it myself now, because i should
> > be creating more help files and more native Tuning and
> > especially Musical Piece files for it. The one of
> > Mahler's 7th in 1/6-comma meantone that i've been
> > working on really kicks ass!!
>

Monz,

> Imagine how
> i feel watching the creators of Guitar Hero reap billions
> of dollars in revenue, which my own project which has
> many deep similiarities to it is asleep.

I'd be curious to know what you think those similarities are. Outside
of the fact that they both emit sounds, I don't even see them in the
same universe.

Cheers,
Jon

Hi Jon,

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> Monz,
>
> > Imagine how
> > i feel watching the creators of Guitar Hero reap billions
> > of dollars in revenue, which my own project which has
> > many deep similiarities to it is asleep.
>
> I'd be curious to know what you think those similarities
> are. Outside of the fact that they both emit sounds,
> I don't even see them in the same universe.

Funny -- somehow when i wrote that, i had a strong gut
feeling that _you_ would post something like that in response.
Hmm ...

Anyway, i guess you don't see the similarities because
you didn't play around with Tonescape long enough. Then
again, maybe i think there are more similiarities than
there really are because i know what i _want_ Tonescape
to be (which it is still very far from).

Of course, what you're probably focusing on is that
Tonescape is intended to be a serious compositional tool
for microtonal music, and it most certainly has achieved
that goal.

But knowing that we're very unlikely to amass any kind of
fortune from selling to that market, we also wanted to
incorporate features that would make it very much a
musical video-game, something that kids would be attracted
to ... ok, maybe i really would like kids to be _addicted_
to it.

Of course, Guitar Hero only has that fun aspect, and
totally dispenses with any kind of real relation to
playing music, let alone the fact that it has nothing
at all to do with _creating_ new music.

But that kind of fun user interface is where we were/are
planning to go with our software.

Perhaps it was wrong of me to refer to Tonescape, because
we are a company (Tonalsoft) which plans/hopes to release
lots of other software too. Tonescape was only meant to be
our first and flagship product, so probably there would
later be either a different version of Tonescape or another
application entirely, which focused more on the fun stuff
and less on the heavily mathematical theory.

But even as it stands, Tonescape already makes a lot of
the complicated math much more intuitive and visual.

... OK, this particular list is supposed to be stuff that
tuning geeks want to discuss but which is off-topic for
any of the other tuning lists. Now at this point this
thread has gone totally off-topic for this list, and
probably should migrate to the regular tuning list.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
Tonescape microtonal music software

Monz,

You didn't answer the question.

> Anyway, i guess you don't see the similarities because
> you didn't play around with Tonescape long enough.

I don't think that is the issue, because I certainly "played around
with it" long enough to understand the UI.

> Of course, what you're probably focusing on is that
> Tonescape is intended to be a serious compositional tool
> for microtonal music, and it most certainly has achieved
> that goal.

Well, that almost sounds like Bush's "Mission Accomplished". I agree
that it is for serious work, but it isn't done yet.

> But knowing that we're very unlikely to amass any kind of
> fortune from selling to that market, we also wanted to
> incorporate features that would make it very much a
> musical video-game, something that kids would be attracted
> to ... ok, maybe i really would like kids to be _addicted_
> to it.

You didn't have anything remotely approaching that, and besides, this
is my whole point: the reason why Guitar Hero is a mass success is
because it allows people to mimic music they know and love, not create
some new, arcane music no one else has ever heard! I'm really not sure
what aspect of Tonescape you think would capture the imagination of
young kids in quite the same way.

> Of course, Guitar Hero only has that fun aspect...

Thank goodness. And that is why it is popular.

> But that kind of fun user interface is where we were/are
> planning to go with our software.

Trying to put the "fun interface" of a videogame music system onto
microtonal compositional software. Harry Partch now hands you the
title of "Dreamer That Remains"!

> But even as it stands, Tonescape already makes a lot of
> the complicated math much more intuitive and visual.

But hardly fun, in the average, blue-collar meaning.

I'm all for your success, and hope you someday can expand to include
some of these facilities. But my honest opinion is that being so
deeply involved in microtonality, scholarship, and complex math has
taken you completely out of the realm of grasping what an unwashed,
non-credentialed populace finds so cool about something like Guitar Hero.

I said at the top you never answered my question, which was just what
similarities did you really think existed. There is a reason why
products are tested with focus groups and random samples of the
population. I'm willing to bet Tonescape and Guitar Hero would get
very different responses. That isn't bad, but I think it is a more
realistic assessment.

Cheers,
Jon