Maintenance

I'm setting up a TSM node for the Colonist project and am working on getting it running under an XP virtual machine.
The node is set up, with Martin and Stewart as co-admins.
The software is installed, but I can't get it to send any data to backup.uvic.ca for some reason.

Forgot to post this when it happened, but beet's SSD died last week, and I have been unable to recover any data. Unfortunately, there was some data loss for one project. Not unrecoverable, but an annoyance nonetheless.
While waiting for a replacement drive I put a old-school drive in beet and got it up and running. The replacement SSD has arrived and I'm now waiting for an opportunity to put the new drive in to beet.

We've been having spontaneous reboots on several machines in the last two months or so.
We've had an electrician double-check the power we're getting and all is well.
Looking in to potential computer-based issues I discover that many people experience this kind of thing with SSDs on Sabayon, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, and likely other distros. There do not seem to be any real solutions, but suggestions include the usual:
1) Get the latest firmware for the drive. Right now we have at least 2 different model of SSD in our machines (haven't checked Martin's yet): OCZ Vertex (96GB running f/w v1.6) and Vertex2 (115GB running f/w v1.29 or 1.33). Firmware and general info on OCZ drives can be found here. Firmware is here
2) Adjust fstab and /etc/rc.local like this

I'll come back to this next week.

<egg_on_face>
Figured it out. The problem was I stupidly changed the security update config to reboot after a security update gets done. It explains everything. The file has been edited, the package updated. Now I wait with my fingers crossed...
</egg_on_face>

Some notes on how to configure Gnome 3, in preparation for trying to roll it out to the lab machines:

• Install gnome-tweak-tool.
• Get buttons on window title bars: gnome-tweak-tool / Shell / Arrangement of buttons in the title bar / All.
• My installed extensions:

  advanced-settings-in-usermenu@nuware.ru              places-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  apps-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com  RecentItems@bananenfisch.net
  force-quit@xtranophilist                             Shut_Down_Menu@rmy.pobox.com
  nohotcorner@azuri.free.fr                            panel-docklet@quina.at
  workspace-indicator@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  

  These are in ~.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions.
• Settings also seem to be stored in ~/.gconf.
• Showing date on Gnome 3 panel:

  gsettings set org.gnome.shell.clock show-date true

Just blogging something I keep having to look up. This is how to switch your SVN repo from the old tapor URL to hcmc:

svn switch --relocate https://revision.tapor.uvic.ca/svn/[reponame] https://revision.hcmc.uvic.ca/svn/[reponame] 

SM working on MoL has been seeing LibreOffice Writer crash frequently when editing a complex document with comments. I've worked with similar documents without problems, though.

I looked around for alternative word-processors, but neither Calligra Words nor AbiWord handle comments. Noting that Writer works fine for me on Precise + Gnome 3, and fine for CB with Gnome 2, I've now installed Gnome Shell on Radish, and we'll see if that solves the problem. Never liked Unity anyway.

In the process of doing this, I noticed that an HCMC style deb is failing to update itself when doing apt-get upgrade.

Tested projector with new build/Intel Graphics and wireless keyboard.
Turns out that the projector looks fabulous as long as you use its native resolution. The bad news is that its native resolution is 1024x768. Any other 4:3 resolution that works with the Intel Graphics chip looks terrible on the screen.
To get mirroring to work, you need to plug the HDMI plug in to the DVI port on the computer (via the HDMI-DVI converter) and use a VGA cable for the monitor itself. Any other combo is fraught.
Wireless keyboard/trackpad has a nice feel to it but is a real pain to use as it loses its connection regularly. Pressing the connect button MAY work, but it doesn't always. I tried elevating the receiver, which helps some (but not enough). Martin replaced the batteries and reports that performance is better.

If you want to do a presentation in B045 using our equipment:
Projector plugs in to the orange DVI converter and then in to the DVI port on the computer. Monitor plugs in to the computer via the VGA cable.
Connect wireless keyboard: plug the receiver in to the computer using a USB extension cable and elevate the receiver so it's within line-of-sight of the keyboard. Turn on the (keyboard) power and depress the connect button. It should work more-or-less right away.

NOTE: This is now obsolete
There is now a complete build system for Ubuntu 12.04 set up. Here's how it works.
A machine called papaya is set up with a mirror of the precise repo (main, restricted, security, extras, universe and multiverse), Google's repos for Earth and Chrome, Oracle's Virtualbox and a groovy icon set (Faenza). It also has a reprepro setup that runs a kind-of local ppa with a few home-brew apps for use in the HCMC labs: hcmc-desktop (a metapackage that installs a bunch of necessary software and sets up stuff like printers and so forth), hcmc-auth (for LDAP logins), hcmc-oxygen (xml editor) and hcmc-style (adjusts the candy-cane look to a greyscale look).

In order to manage the mirrors see the setup documention here. The mirror should automatically update itself every day. To add a new repo to be mirrored run the script called add-mirror.sh in the admin user's homedir. It's a wizard-kind-of-thing that leads you by the hand through the process.

In order to add a package to the hcmc repo there is a script in the admin homedir called uprepo.sh. It is extremely basic, adding anything it finds in the admin user's homedir/packages directory to the repo, ignoring anything that is already in the repo. It demands a passphrase (twice) for my gpg key (ask me for it) in order to add a package.

To remove a package from the hcmc repo there is a script called rmpkg.sh in the admin user's homedir. It takes a package name as an argument (e.g. hcmc-desktop) and also demands my gpg passphrase

In order to install a fresh Ubuntu 12.04 you can either do the vanilla install first, then run the Bob the Builder script, or you can grab the hcmc-mini.iso from http://apt.hcmc.uvic.ca/iso/precise/ and put it on a thumb drive using something like unetbootin, which is in the repos. The hcmc-mini.iso is a custom-built iso which has a set of preseeds built in to it so it sets up everything required in the HCMC labs. The great thing about using it is that it pulls all packages for the install directly from papaya, so there is no need to update the machine after the install. After the install you're left with a completely set up HCMC lab machine that's ready to go.
***** NOTE: the admin user that gets set up by hcmc-mini is preseeded with a LAME password because I have so far been unsuccessful in creating an md5 hash to store in the preseed - although it is *supposed* to work. I'll change the preseed if I can get it to work. In the meantime, chage the admin user's password after the build is finished.

The hcmc-mini.iso image is created by a script in the admin user's homedir called build-hcmc-mini.sh. It downloads a stock netboot image from an official Ubuntu source, mangles it to include the necessary preseeds, then repacks it in to a bootable iso image, storing it in /var/www/iso/precise.

Made an attempt at using my maverick script to build the new machine (beet) but there were so many changes (package dependencies, config deprecations etc.) that I gave up and started on an oneiric builder - A LOT HAS CHANGED under the hood!

Spent a few days working on that and deployed beet with the new HCMC oneiric build. It seems OK, but still requires a few tweaks after a person logs in. I have a script on the desktop that will set things up and delete itself when done. One apparent bug that I'm tracking down: one cannot shut the machine down from the login screen. I think it's a lightdm problem at this point.

I'm continuing work on the oneiric build in preparation for pangolin as I intend to upgrade the lab to pangolin once it lands.