So I came up with my plan: copy the contents of each partition to a directory on the MyBook, then use gparted to combine all of the partitions on each disk. It would be a simple process: copy all data to the MyBook, unmount the current directory, create a symlink to the corresponding directory on the MyBook, then use gparted to nuke the corresponding partition. Simple and straight-forward.

My issue, hwoever, was that I didn’t stop to consider what the ramifications of unmounting part of a filesystem could have. I had no problem moving /home. And I actually had no problems copying /usr onto the MyBook. But then I made the mistake. And learned my lesson:

Never umount /usr if you are not logged in as root! Doing a “sudo umount /usr” worked perfect, of course. However, since sudo is in /usr/bin, and since I had just umounted /usr, there was no way to do a “sudo ln -s /media/mybook/usr /usr”. Or sudo. anything else, including mount. In short, I was hosed!

The easy fix, of course, would be to reboot and let the system re-mount /usr. Except that I had already removed the reference to that partition in /etc/fstab, and since sudo didn’t exist anymore, I couldn’t re-edit /etc/fstab.

With rebooting out, the next solution would be booting off of a recovery CD. The problem with that is I was not at home; I was making these changes remotely. Yeah, that was quite stupid of me; I won’t be doing that again!

I spent a couple hours last night trying to fix everything. I booted off a GPartEd Live CD, and then finished copying files from the various partitions to the MyBook. I then nuked all of the partitions off sda and created one nice, big partition. I’ll be mounting that as /data, and making symlinks where necessary. I also deleted all of the partitions off of sdb except for the root partition. I made this bigger (figured I won’t come close to 50gb anytime soon), then made the rest of the drive a big partition, too.

Of course, I am still running from the gparted CD. I need to copy everything back onto the new partitions. I am also decomissioning a file server, so I’ll be adding another 320gb drive to the system (all as one big partition). That’ll put my Linux Mint box at around 800gb of internal storage plus 1tb external. I think that might handle my needs for a while.

Assuming I don’t break anything else, of course.

Dell isn’t resting on its recent consumer Linux PC laurels. The computing giant has added a new laptop — the Inspiron 1420 Notebook — to its Ubuntu Linux 7.04 offering. It is also replacing the Dimension E520 desktop with the new, low-priced Inspiron 530.

The E530 seems like a lower-powered entry-level system. Which is probably a good idea for budget-conscious users. And those are exactly the type of users that may be willing to switch to Ubuntu to save some dollars. But I’d prefer to see a higher-end desktop configured with Ubuntu. Give me something with a faster processor and a more powerful nVidia GPU, por favor!

Back in the day, I would’ve never been able to comprehend a single gigabyte of data. But having just shy of a half a terabyte on my own personal computer?

My how the world has changed.

Considering how useful some of these apps turn out to be, I may just get involved in development on a project or two.

Of the years, my desire to own one of these continued, though it dwindled a bit. Every now and then, I’d tell myself that I was just being silly to continue to want one. After all, Handspring folded and many other PDA manufacturers rose up to take their place. Who wants a bulky Visor when one can have a small, sleek and sexy PocketPC?

Well, I did. And I finally nabbed an original Visor Deluxe off of eBay for the grand price of $17. But many years later, would this device still be useful? Could I make any use out of it?

The answer is a big-time yes. The Visor Deluxe runs PalmOS, and Palm had some damned good productivity apps, even way back then. My favorite app so far is the To Do List. I find myself continually jotting down tasks as they come to me throughout the day. Normally, I would’ve just forgotten about the task before. Now, I capture it, prioritize it, and then complete the task. Instant rise in productivity!

So the only other question was how I’d do a hotsync with my computer. I’m a Linux guy, and wasn’t in a big hurry to boot into Windows just to sync up a PDA. So I did a little research, and found out a few things that totally failed to surprise me. First of all, there’s a kernel module built specifically for Handspring’s USB-to-Serial connectors on their Visor line. So I knew then that my Debian box would recognize that there was a Visor there. But what to sync with?

And that’s where I found KPilot. To quote from the website:

KPilot is a replacement for the Palm Desktop software from PalmSource Inc., which makes your PalmOS powered handheld (e.g., a Palm Zire 31) capable of exchanging information with your KDE powered computer. [...]
KPilot has plugins that can exchange information between your Palm and other applications like KOrganizer, KNotes and KMail. In KPilot you can display and edit your contacts, write notes or install new programs on your Palm.

Which is probably more than I needed to quote. The short version is that KPilot allows integration with all the pieces of the Kontact PIM suite. KOrganizer syncs with the Visor’s To Do and Calendar apps. KNotes syncs with the Visor’s Memo Pad. KAddressbook syncs with the Visor’s Address Book. And etc.

Syncing itself was almost pathetically easy. I hooked up the Visor’s USB cradle to a spare USB port. Then I put the Visor into it’s cradle and hit the hotsync button. Finally, I fired up KPilot and told it to auto-detect the PDA. The Visor beeped, and then the sync started. I actually thought something had gone wrong, ‘cuz the sync took less than 10 seconds. But I pulled the Visor out of its cradle, turned it on, went to the address book, and there were all of my Kaddressbook contacts! Ditto for my notes, calendar appointments, and tasks.

This is the way that I wish everything worked in Linux. You plug it in, you press a button, and it Just Works. There’s nothing to think about (indeed, I over-thought the whole thing, thinking I needed to convert my system to UDEV to make this work), nothing to configure, no new programs to learn. Press a button, Just Works.

Muy bueno!

Technorati tags: kde, pda

Carly decided to put her job on the line by combining the two divisions. It cost her her job, and just a few months later the divisions are split up again. Those of us who worked at HP back when Fiorina got the CEO position were pretty sure that she wouldn’t last long, and that she’d ruin the company on her way down. We were at least partially right.

This has been annoying me for a little while, but since I almost never use XP, it hasn’t annoyed me too much. The only time I really notice the problem is when I boot into XP, fire up iTunes, and plug in the iPod Shuffle to transfer songs to it. XP pops up a warning, “A high-speed device has been attached to a low-speed USB port.”

I had a couple of free minutes yesterday, so I decided to do a quick Google search. And I couldn’t find anything at all relating to this problem. I searched Asus’s website, too, and didn’t find anything even related. But on their downloads page for the A7V8X-X, I noticed that they had a USB 2.0 driver. And it occurred to me that I never installed this driver in XP. I assumed that XP would simply detect the USB 2.0 port, and all would be fine. So I downloaded and installed the driver. After a reboot, XP correctly saw the ports as USB 2.0 high-speed. And transfer speeds in iTunes to the Shuffle went up drastically.

Moral of the story: Install the drivers, even if you don’t think they are necessary.

My second PC is a home-built Athlon 2500+ system. I run WinXP on this, and use it as my game machine. Aside from games and Quicken, this machine doesn’t get much use. I have a GeForce 2Ti in this system, a video card I originally had in the Gateway.

Erin bought me Half-Life 2 for Christmas. I played this for a while, but I got tired of the lag and the sometimes-awful framerate, so I put it away in favor of finishing Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Now that I have done that, I decided it was time to upgrade my video card so I can finish Half-Life 2.

I have a 256mb nVidia GeForce 6600 waiting at home for me to install. But since I’m going to have to crack open one of the boxes, I figured I might as well do some other hardware swaps while I am at it. So I am going to make the following changes:

• The Windows box gets the GeForce 6600
• The Debian box gets the GeForce 2Ti
• The Debian box loses its DVD-ROM drive
• The Windows box gets the DVD-ROM drive, but loses its CD-RW drive
• The Debian box then gets the CD-RW drive

The end result is the Debian box will have a faster video card, plus a 48x CD-RW drive for use with K3b. The Windows box will get a kick-ass video card for Half-Life 2, and it will become a full-fledged DVD burning station, as it will now have both a DVD+-RW and a DVD-ROM drive.

I love shuffling hardware!