Posts from October 2011

Okay, NOW I have tried everything except OpenSuse.

Though Debian has been my favourite in terms of usability and friendliness, there is something really wrong with how Debian systems interact with R and deal with numerical ordering.

For eg. you would expect intervals to be ordered as:
[ 7,11)
[11,12)
[12,13)
[13,14)
[14,29]

Instead Debian orders them as:
[11,12)
[12,13)
[13,14)
[14,29]
[ 7,11)

In a scenario where I have one-digit, two-digit and three-digit numbers, I get the weirdest possible ordering. In the example above, it compares 1 and 7, rather than 11 and 7. This number-by-number evaluation creates serious problems in trend testing and determination of direction of association between variables. It potentially distorts the category that is treated as the reference variable. I looked at R documentation to see if I could change something to make it right. However, after many trials, my windows machine and machines running Fedora were uniformly giving me the right answers while Debian derivatives were giving me the weird answers.

For now, this is a dealbreaker for me and I can't go back to Debian.

That leaves me with
-- CentOS
-- Scientific Linux
-- Fedora
-- OpenSuse

I tried installing CentOS and Scientific Linux on the brawny Toshiba this past weekend but first there were problems with permissions and then problems with the R repository in both CentOS and Scientific Linux. Though Scientific Linux claims to come with R, the DVD I downloaded did not have R! When I tried to install R, there was no R in the default repository. Adding the correct R repository was an unending nightmare that took up 2 hours. I gave up in frustration. Then there was a problem with permissions. CentOS and Scientific Linux don't set up a username to go with the root password in the installation sequence. Even though you might have given a name to your computer during installation, you start up with something like:

yourgivenname@localhost.

instead of

yourgivenname@yourgivencomputername

In addition, it doesn't automatically add you to the sudoers group. I know linux admins won't view this as a problem but end-users like me don't need to work out details about how to add themselves to sudoers, change the localhost name, set up root permissions once more after installation. Its a pain to be burdened with all these nitty grittys even before you start using the system.

CentOS and Scientific Linux are so similar in their installation setup and behaviour, they might as well be clones of each other. The permissions and repositories problem rears its ugly head at every possible software installation. It gets to be very tiring. And what is with the repositories anyway??! They have software from 2 years ago! I understand they are more stable than the newer ones, but come on, newer features that make life easier in the software I use are very important to me!

So no more RHEL derivatives for me.

Which leaves me with Fedora. Sigh. I don't know if I can deal with all the mess that I have been documenting.

So at this point, I am thinking Suse Studio with the software I need from the list below. It could be better than getting OpenSuse and then installing everything because adding software and repositories beforehand might reduce dependency conflicts.

Things are not great in linux land. Maybe my particular combination of requirements breaks things? I can't believe it. This is my list of absolutely essential software for my linux machine. These are ones that I use on an hourly or a "minutely" basis.

Analyses Environment
- R
- RStudio
- Variable number of R packages

Spreadsheet
- Gnumeric

Writing Environment
- Texlive
- Texmaker Texstudio
- Texworks
- Gummi
- Geany
- Abiword: Yuck. Going to LibreOffice Writer. Compatibility is awful with MS Word.
- WriteType
- Zim desktop wiki
- LibreOffice Writer.

Networking
- Wireless
- Wired
- (Bluetooth would be nice, but seldom works, so I could let it go.)

Media
- Some hassle-free media player that would play multiple formats. Not liking Rhythmbox so much. I am done even risking any media formats on the Satellite P750 till the issues with the intel/nvidia cards are resolved.

Graphics
- Gimp
- Mypaint
- Pinta: This is just a pretty replica of paint.net. Clicking on the buttons doesn't do ANYTHING on Fedora 15.

... to be continued as I think of more things I use.

---

EDIT: Turns out I need WAAY more things that this puny list, so I decided to attached my latest yum log as a text file here.
Type:

sudo geany /var/log/yum.log

And you will get this log with date and time details of every package you have ever updated, installed or erased in Fedora 15.
[txt]1011/yum102311.txt[/txt]

Seriously? Behold Fedora 15's Black Screen of Death.

Transcript of Error:
[5.693915] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents
[5.825510] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Pointer to BIT loadval table invalid
[5.849874] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 0XD518: i2c wr fail: -6
[5.964968] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: PGRAPH: unsupported chipset, please report!
[6.092104] [drm: intel_dsm_platform_mux_info] *ERROR* MUX INFO call failed

Looks like I might need a hard reboot. The wretched thing is not coming out of this error screen. And it goes into it at every boot and suspend.

Apparently, this is a known new bug:

With some insights from here:

ds,
Your issue is related to the optimus technology deployed in the m14x, it's a new piece of tech that allows switching between your nvidia card and intel sandy bridge. In short, your nvidia card does not work on Linux out-of-the-box. Read more about how you can either disable your nvidia card (I did that and saved 14 w (1½ hours of battery time) or try and enable it using some experimental tech called switcheroo. Read more here:
Posted by Magnus Glantz 2011-07-06 01:07:30

My brother's hacky solution:

Close the lid for 15-30 seconds and then open. If it doesn't work, repeat as many times as necessary.

I can only say... !!!

Where on earth is the bluetooth??! According to:

systemctl status bluetooth.servicebluetooth.service

- Bluetooth Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service)
     Active: active (running) since Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:06:35 -0400; 43min ago
    Main PID: 1027 (bluetoothd)
     CGroup: name=systemd:/system/bluetooth.service
         â”” 1027 /usr/sbin/bluetoothd -n

But the bluetooth gui says:

No Bluetooth adapters found

I am stumped. Is there a hardware switch to the bluetooth that is turned off?

rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

The bluetooth is not even there.

Gaaaah!!

lspci output

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0116 (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point HECI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cougar Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b4)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b4)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev b4)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cougar Point SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0df4 (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06)
03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8176 (rev 01)
04:00.0 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller (rev 30)
04:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller (rev 30)
04:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller (rev 30)
04:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller (rev 30)
05:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04)

Some googling lead to another bloke facing the exact problem

Oct 13 21:57:15 bluetoothd[1027]: Stopping SDP server
Oct 13 21:57:15 bluetoothd[1027]: Exit
Oct 13 21:57:15 bluetoothd[1027]: bluetoothd[1027]: Stopping SDP server
Oct 13 21:57:15 bluetoothd[1027]: bluetoothd[1027]: Exit
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: Bluetooth deamon 4.87
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: bluetoothd[2481]: Bluetooth deamon 4.87
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: Starting SDP server
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: bluetoothd[2481]: Starting SDP server
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: Parsing /etc/bluetooth/input.conf failed: No such file or directory
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: bluetoothd[2481]: Parsing /etc/bluetooth/input.conf failed: No such file or directory
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: Parsing /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf failed: No such file or directory
Oct 13 21:57:16 bluetoothd[2481]: bluetoothd[2481]: Parsing /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf failed: No such file or directory
Oct 13 21:57:16 NetworkManager[934]: bluez error getting default adapter: No such adapter

Some more googling lead to this thread:
Keany says:

before you start BT installation be sure WLAN LED is ON.

Hmm... so the WLAN LED is on, but the Bluetooth LED is not on and there is no function key to turn the bluetooth LED on!

Aarrrgh. Another unsolved mystery.

Escapist solution to ensuing mess:
The wrestling match with Texmaker on Fedora 15 got way too confusing. I found that Texmaker has a fork called Texstudio and I have installed it instead. The x86_64 version of Texstudio for Fedora 15 is available here:

---

My most useful LaTeX editor doesn't start in Fedora 15. I am getting this error message:

texmaker: error while loading shared libraries: libQtWebKit.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

But I do have libQtWebKit.so.4!

whereis libQtWebKit.so.4
libQtWebKit.so: /usr/lib/libQtWebKit.so.4

After some googling, I think the problem lies here:

whereis libQtGui.so.4
libQtGui.so:
/usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4
/usr/lib64/libQtGui.so.4

To try and find out which one of these is "owned" or "required" by other packages, I used the syntax from this VERY helpful document:

rpm -qf /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4

gives

qt-x11-4.7.4-2.fc15.i686

rpm -qf /usr/lib64/libQtGui.so.4

gives

qt-x11-4.7.4-2.fc15.x86_64

Just for kicks, I also queried rpm for everything containing qt

rpm -qa | grep -i qt

qt-x11-4.7.4-2.fc15.x86_64
PyQt4-4.8.3-2.fc15.x86_64
poppler-qt-0.16.7-1.fc15.x86_64
qt-webkit-4.7.4-2.fc15.i686
qt-x11-4.7.4-2.fc15.i686
qt-4.7.4-2.fc15.x86_64
qt-4.7.4-2.fc15.i686

Hmm... so my system is x86_64. Do I need these i686 packages? Are these not being recognized by texmaker, perhaps? Should I be deleting these i686 packages (and their dependencies) and replacing them with the x86_64 versions?

---

See solution at the top. It's not worth my time to be wrestling with this level of hideous confusion.

Fedora
the
Beefy Miracleator!

---

Totally inspired: But without the consummate V's.

favourites$absolutelyawesome <- which(YoYoMa == 'Amazing' & Ennio Morricone == 'Genius')

My super-generous brother swapped out my crappy problematic System76 PanP7 this past weekend. As a result, I now have a brawny top-of-the-line quad core i7 8GB RAM Toshiba Satellite P750 with Dolby advanced audio and Harman/Kardon speakers. I have no idea why anyone would go through with this completely imbalanced swap but he did. It defies all logic. I guess I will always remain the little kid in the family who makes rotten decisions and constantly needs rescue.

And so I am back on Fedora 15 lovelock. Because that is my brother's preferred linux distro. Apparently he has now brute-forced F15 on the System76. I hope it works out for him. Since he has an internet connection that matches the century we live in (as opposed to the paleolithic lowly dial-up equivalent DSL that I have), the laptop didn't have any mp3 or ape codecs (because he streams all his media from the cloud).

Thankfully there is an easy way to make it old-world compatible.

In the terminal, type:

sudo c

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly xine-lib-extras-nonfree gstreamer-ffmpeg

I said Hi to Chris Rock early yesterday morning in the Highline Park. I was so surprised that I didn't really say anything much. I just said

Hiiiii!

like a stupid teenager.

After all the musings about what I would say if I ever ran across a hollywood star I really like, I just managed an extended single syllable.

He did say hello back, but what a ridiculously generic thing to say!

I got an email from @enknot today morning. He is getting Amazon prime membership. He wants 5 more folks to join so that costs could be lower for everyone for the same kind of benefits. Sounds pretty good, but I am unfortunately passing on this very generous offer.

I had Amazon Prime for the whole of last year. It made me buy all sorts of irrational things, really. There was an element of thrill in getting something delivered in 2 days flat.

Then the wok drama happened @tinypliny #54693 I know this is probably going to sound petty. But the wok was in my shopping cart and I was definitely going to buy it that day. The price suddenly spiked up more than 2x the original cost just as I was taking the preliminary steps to go through the checkout process (And no, I don't have the one click magic phrase because I think it's such nonsense)!

I sent a nasty letter of complaint to Amazon and heard back from the customer service team. According to them the prices on Amazon are fair market prices (or something to that effect) and it's not under their control. I was annoyed and deleted the wok from the shopping cart. Needless to say the wok magically sprang back to its original lower price when I did.

If this had happened once or even twice I would have overlooked it but this kind of price jumping has happened quite a few times for me in the past. They definitely monitor the shopping carts of people in general (because I receive target email that explicitly says that it is for things related to the ones in my shopping cart). I think that when a critical mass of people have some item in their shopping cart, they try and increase profits with some atrocious price change. Of course, this is only a theory and a bitter one at that. I have no evidence but that is what the whole thing feels like to me.

I think most people research to at least some level before they buy things (unless it's a hasty impulse buy). ALL of my "big" purchase (above $80 for me) are well considered. Unless it's for necessary travel or something related to my immediate family I don't make impulse buys, on principle. I am morbidly scared of the "accumulation tax" that follows me around if I accumulate ridiculous junk with little purpose. So I know exactly what I am going to be spending on anything ages before I actually buy it. If I am not careful and just spend willy-nilly (I have in the past), the consequences are sometimes quite embarrassing (for e.g., rent cheque bouncing or some such stupid financial faux pas).

Given this level of thought that goes into what I buy, I appreciate it if the prices are stable. If Amazon or any other merchant thinks they should charge something for an item, they should just go ahead and tag it with that price instead of changing prices all the time. Unfavourable price changes makes customers who research annoyed and gives them an unsettling sense of not buying well. Favourable price changes makes them feel like they got a bargain - a kind of shifty emotional maneuvering to make them buy more impulsively. I know Amazon is not the only one that engages in all the price jumping but I just wanted to blow off some steam about the wok incident. ;-)

I ended up buying the wok from Overstock and not renewing my membership with Amazon. Thus far, I have bought 2 other beautiful fry pans and a sewing machine from Overstock. Each time the customer service has been exemplary and flawless. Sure, the deliveries take longer than 2 days but seriously, my kitchen is not going to implode if a frying pan (or really anything) that I have wanted for 3 or more months takes a few more days to arrive.

I have a massive paleolithic joke of an internet speed to even consider video on demand. Plus I don't like watching anything passively for more than 15 minutes anyway. I have some kind of an attention deficit when it comes to television. It's too impersonal and I am too guilt-ridden.