[dundee] war stories

Sat Sep 10 18:17:32 UTC 2011

I will leave this up to 'the group' to decided how much this is a war story or 
just a case of "You Bloody Fool!"

During a normal system update using APT X11 was updated along with ~30 other 
programs, so in my defence I didn't specifically notice X was getting changed.

Beginning of the next week, after a power cut, when I turn the PC back on 
Gnome failed too start. The only feedback from the system is restarting X in 
'fail-safe' mode.

Being somewhat tired, maybe even a little hot headed. I decided the best 
solution would be just reinstalling Ubuntu and the Nvidia graphics drivers. So 
that's what I did. Again in my defence with out the PC it didn't seem much of 
an option asking Google for help.

Over time the mind wondered and with a little alcoholic lubrication the events 
of this stressful Monday went . . . . .

In time as you would expect, the almost identical situation repeated but 
having already 'decided' the solution was reinstalling so I looked out my 
trusty CD and started the reinstall. Again the mind just went . . . . .

It wasn't till the forth repeat of the same problems I thought to investigate 
the real problem. As some might have noticed I run with the proprietary Nvidia 
drivers, so every time APT updated X11 the drivers needed recompiled it just 
took me slightly longer than I'd like to admit to make the connection.

Now if you have stuck with me to the end, the thought I'd like to leave you 
with is this. If you are a newbie to Linux or even just feeling slightly slow, 
when your machine fails to load with no indication why where do you go for 
help when there's no Firefox? Anyway, that has been my story now you can 
decided if it was a war or stupidity story

-- 
As always, if you have been, thanks for reading
* Stuart McCulloch Anderson   |  http://nx15.com
*  OpenPGP Key ID: A7EEB609   |  http://nx15.com/contact
*  FingerPrint: 299B6F75C137950F031F5DFAD4065F5EA7EEB609

On Saturday 10 Sep 2011 17:33:32 Markus Tauber wrote:
> Hi
> 
> As mentioned last Thursday in the pub (err I mean at the meeting) I am
> planing to include some "Linux War Storries" in may SFD talk and would
> appreachiate if you can share some of your war storries with me.
> 
> My talk aims to give newbies an idea what sort of things they have to cope
> with and how to survive - it also gives Linux veterans an idea what
> newbies expect (based on a survey) A rather non-exiting example of my war
> storries include: Spell checking in standard/default open office
> installation in ubuntu 10.04 did not work. After reading in the
> documentaion of open office that spell checking is done via myspell I've
> fixed it by installing myspell.
> 
> cheers
> Markus
> 
> 
> Dr. Markus Tauber
> School of Computer Science
> University of St Andrews
> North Haugh
> St Andrews       phone: +44 1334 463691
> Fife KY16 9SX    fax:   +44 1334 463278
> Scotland        
> http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~markus/<http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/%7E
> markus/>
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