Blog - /Personal

My laptop had filesystem corruption for the second time in two weeks on Friday. I had to completely reinstall Ubuntu. Instead of using the bootstrap method, I went with a live install CD. Ubuntu's live CD did not work for me (presumably due to the metacity window manager eating too much memory and starving the installer), but Xubuntu's live CD worked.

This time, I made note of what extra steps were needed in the installation process, and put those steps into several scripts which will do them for me automatically the next time. Eventually, I might start using cfengine instead of version control + scripts, but at least implementing scripts will help me work toward that direction.

I think that the filesystem corruption may have been caused by taking my laptop with me to PLUG meetings, since both times I first noticed the corruption there. I'm trying reiserfs this time instead of the ext3 filesystem, but this is a tad too coincidental for my liking. Methinks it's time to turn the 3-year-old Dell laptop out to pasture (namely, my dad and stepmom, if they want it). So I went out on a limb and did something that most of my friends would not expect me to do: I purchased a Mac Mini.

I purchased the 1.83GHz version, with 1GB of RAM. I wanted a machine that I could leave on all the time — my laptop turns itself off due to heat problems after about 2 days, even with a Targus ChillPad underneath. Another requirement is that it had to be either dual-core (and it is), dual-processor, or have a 64-bit architecture. I noticed that the Mac Mini weighs half as much as my laptop, will be quieter than it, and will actually fit in my current laptop carrying bag. Crazy. It's also very small in height — small enough that I didn't see it when I visited iTaP's store because it was cowering behind an awkward-looking iMac (man those things look ugly). I ordered it from iTaP's store using Apple's website, and got a bit of an education discount, maybe around 8% of the total, sans shipping. It should get it on Oct. 1.

I tentatively plan to hook it up to my TV instead of buying a monitor, in order to save space in my room. I also purchased a USB mini-keyboard (about laptop size) with a built-it trackpad because I like trackpads better than mice. This opens up the possibility of using it to play DVDs instead of my Playstation 2, which can be a tad flaky. In particular, the Playstation 2 DVD-playing software allows the programmer of the DVD to prevent me from skipping past some sections, like the FBI warning message. Bad DRM, bad.

I will of course be installing Ubuntu GNU/Linux on the new machine. I'm a tad hesitant to use Bootcamp, since it only gives you one try to get the partitioning right, and if you want to change it later, you have to wipe the disk. Brilliant. Also, I don't like that it forces you to leave 5GB of unused space in your Mac OS X partition. I found a good wiki page on getting Ubuntu working on a Mac and Intel machine, which I will probably use heavily. I guess as long as I can replace Bootcamp's boot menu with something that won't go away arbitrarily when Bootcamp goes commercial, I'll use it to set things up.

The three partition limit shouldn't be a problem, since I'll have an OS X partition, a 5GB root Linux partition, and all the rest on an LVM parition. I don't need to make any go-between partitions for use with OS X. I've picked up LVM from work, and it seems like a useful technology. I just need to figure out what it allows besides creating new "virtual" partitions. In particular, I need to know whether it supports painless partition resizing without wiping the contents of the partition.

Ugh, all this trouble with the laptop has set me back when it comes to school and projects. I'm almost to the point where I am ready to figure out which Gmane groups I was subscribed to and re-subscribe to them, at which point I can reply to bug reports for my software and the like. I remember saying that I would do some work on EMMS recently, but forgot because of the trouble.