Maintenance

Found some excellent Bash tutorials here:
http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/tutoriallist

The list points to two of the best - which I've found to be very good:
http://steve-parker.org/sh/first.shtml
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide

I had to find a file that had changed recently in order to track down a configuration file location.
The code is straightforward, but impossible to remember.

Run this:

find . -type f -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td %TT %p\n' | sort | grep '2010-09-23 11:09'

and it will return something like this:
2010-09-23 11:09:24.6718347970 ./.cache/ubuntuone/log/syncdaemon.log
2010-09-23 11:09:43.0224589250 ./.cache/google-chrome/Media Cache/data_1

Booting up this morning, Lab B 19 went into CheckDisk. It eventually completed the bootup successfully, but this may be a sign of a dying HD. Station 21 booted up at 800 x 600, and when I logged in to change it to 1024 x 768, it seemed to lose all communication with the monitor for a couple of minutes before coming back with a wobbly picture, then settling down. Watch this one in case the monitor is on the way out.

Had to help one of the ESL folks with video in Lab C, and discovered that the instructions on top of the VCR no longer match the setup. The system seems to have been set up so that the TV, VCR and speakers are hooked up together, with no feed to the teacher's console. This is fine -- in fact, it's nice and simple -- but the instructions assume the audio is going through the teacher station and the video will be shown on the projector. If we've given up on hosting video tape materials through the main system, we should remove those old instructions.

Lab B appears to be the same.

Every time I install VMWare (of any type - workstation, server, player) I need to edit some source code in order to get the network module functional. I've done it so often I figured I should document it.

1) Run the installer. It will try to build a network module (vmmon) and it will fail. The problem is that the Ubuntu kernels are a target that moves too fast for VMWare to keep on top of.
2) When it fails, head over to /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/ (this path will be different if you are installing the server or player versions) and
3) Unpack the vmmon source code thusly: sudo tar xvf vmmon.tar
4) Go into the resulting vmmon-only/include directory and sudo gedit compat_kernel.h
5) Edit the compat_kernel.h file to include the text in bold (below).

/*
* compat_exit() provides an access to the exit() function. It must
* be named compat_exit(), as exit() (with different signature) is
* provided by x86-64, arm and other (but not by i386).
*/
#define __NR_compat_exit __NR_exit
#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,19)
static inline _syscall1(int, compat_exit, int, exit_code);
#endif

6) Just to be safe, go up the tree and backup the old vmmon.tar: sudo mv vmmon.tar vmmon.orig.tar
7) Repack the edited module: sudo tar cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only
8) Run the config again: sudo vmware-config.pl

*** an effective alternative is the use the any-any patch from here: http://platan.vc.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/
Look for the file that starts with "vmware-any-any-update"

If you log in to the rsync machine with this:
ssh -X username@rsync.domain.ca
You will have initiated a connection between the remote X windows client and your local X windows server, allowing you to launch X apps "locally". So, as long as your doing this from an X terminal (X11 on a Mac, nothing on Windows that I can recommend) you can, once logged in as above, just launch an X app from the command line.

Here are some apps you may want to use this way:
nautilus (launches the file manager a la Finder/Windows Explorer)
synaptic (launches the system updater *note that you'll need to use "sudo synaptic" if you've logged in as a regular user)