Now upgrading video cards…

I am having problems with my dated NVIDIA GeForce 5200 AGP (128MB) card in my son’s computer. Nothing past driver 8776 will work on it with any stability, and I cannot get 8776 to install on any kernel more recent than 2.6.18.6 (I tried symlinking /usr/src/linux-2.6.18.6/include/linux/autoconf.h to config.h in the same directory, as advised [...]

Registered Linux User….Finally.

I went ahead and registered on the Linux Counter, and put my three machines on there too. Interesting stuff, lots of statistics.

Unlocking URPMI…

Sometimes when using urpmi (command line or via a GUI mechanism), it can crash and leave you stuck with a cryptic message that the urpmi database is locked. When this happens, open a shell (Konsole, xterm, whatever), su to root, and navigate to “/var/lib/urpmi”. Look for and delete the hidden files (“ls -la” [...]

Installing Beryl on Mandriva 2007…

(Editorial note on May 22, 2007 – Since I wrote this article, Beryl had changed quite a bit, even merging with Compiz. I do not know how much of this is still accurate or relevant, so YMMV. When I get more time, I will put together more current instructions…. now, back [...]

Magic keys (updated Hot Keys)

I found a very good site on magic key sequences – “Debian Administration – The magic sysreq options introduced”. So, it would seem that a safer way of rebooting a locked system would be to include the “u” sequence, which unmounts and then remounts all of your partitions, but as read-only. Especially interesting [...]

2007 – Happy New Year!

Akimashita omeddettou gozaimasu!