Posts Tagged ‘system’

Remove pre-installed HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Toshiba not needed default vendor software on a new bought PC notebook quickly with Decrap My Computer

Thursday, April 14th, 2016

remove-default-unneded-software-from-manufacturer-hp-asus-acer-dell-toshiba
While browsing today and looking for software to clean up all the spy software from my corporate HP laptop, I've come across an interesting tool called Decrap which aims at removing Bloatware from a Windows PC / notebook (mirrored here because original software site was down)

So what is Bloatware ?

The term Bloatware (also called jokingly crapware) is term is the one that was coined to describe, the default pre-installed software that comes to you together with Windows pre-installed OS by the hardware manufacturer.
I'm sure anyone who bought brand new branded PC or laptop over the last 10 years have already suffered the unwanted and unnecessery
bunch of software that comes pre-installed freeware programs aiming to help you in your daily work but in reality just slowing down your PC
and showing annoying popups or at best keeping useless in Windows system apptray.

Let me give you an example:

Cleanup (Remove) common ASUS, HP, Dell default  installed unneded (Bloatware) software

Many users may want to uninstall ASUS Crapware software such as ASUS Tutor, ASUS LifeFrame3, ASUS WebStorage and ASUSVibe.

Like Asus, HP computers often come preloaded with useless software from factory, example for this is HP Customer Service enhancements, HP Update, HP Total Care Setup and ProtectSmart.

If you buy Dell PC notebook soon you'll discover that there are several preloaded software (often unnecessery software) such as Dell Stage, Dell Digital Delivery and Dell DataSafe.

Toshiba computers and notebooks contain pre-loeaded "crapware" software from Toshiba.
Just to mention a few of those: Toshiba Disc Creator, Toshiba ReelTime, Service Station, Bulletin Board and Toshiba Assist.

Often there are fingerprint reader programs, Wi-Fi connection managers, Bluetooth managers, Audio Management sofware and other third party vendor software which tend to be not working as good as others softwares from third vendor, so Decrap is to help you to identify and remove these too in a easy GUI manner.

Non-experienced Computer users often leave the bloatware to hang around for even years and only if some relative that is an IT involved person / sysadmin / Even once you're aware that the Bloatware is on the system the ordinary user is hard to remove it as he is scared not to break the system.
Besides that fften this bloatware just soft comes so much integrated into Windows that removing it costs hours of tries and research online on
all the Bloatware components and even then could mislead you so you break the PC. programmer etc. comes home of such users finds out about the happily existing of the useless software on the notebook.


So here is Decrap My Computer coming at place aiming to help to remove the unnecessery Hardware vendor software in few easy (Click, Click, Click Next ..) steps.

decrap-my-computer-clean-up-bloatware-crapware-on-windows-laptop-main-gui

Then decrap does silently all the complex operations and suggestions to make the HP, Dell, Asus, Toshiba manufacturer prebundled software to be stopped and uninstalled.
Decrap My Computer is a freeware, lightweight and easy to use and lets you safely remove crapware and bloatware, or any software, from any Windows PC.

Even for Old computers, Decrap comes handy for the unexperienced avarage user who used his laptop with this useless  default vendors programs silently killing the performance respectively user experience for years.

Using Decrap is quite intuitive PC is scanned for Bloatware and then after a backup Windows Restore Point is offered you're offered to review and Uninstall the unwanted softwares. There is also an automatic mode but those one still could be a bit dangerous, so use the automatic mode only on multiple machines with the same model  / brand notebooks that comes prebundled with same sofware after testing and confirming the automatic mode on 1 initial machine will not break up some needed functionality.

decrap-your-pc-clean-up-windows-from-hp-dell-toshiba-asus-bloatware-unuseful-programs

Here is few screenshots of the tool in action:
decrap-choose-what-default-laptop-manufacturer-software-you-want-to-clean-from-new-bought-pc

decrap-choose-what-default-laptop-manufacturer-software-you-want-to-clean-from-new-bought-pc-1

decrap-choose-what-default-laptop-manufacturer-software-you-want-to-clean-from-new-bought

Another good alternative (since decrap seems to be not maintained anymore) as I just leardned from Natasha Myles (thanks for pointing me about the broken link to decrap website) is SpeedUpPC more on speeding up old PC or laptop is her article 

Classical System Administration is dying – you either say hello to DevOps and SRE or move to programming or other business if you can

Wednesday, August 29th, 2018

sysadmin-hell-being-a-sysadmin-is-easy-its-like-riding-a-bike

1. Back in the normal computer old Sys Admin days before the new Age of Computing (the Cloud HELL)

I've been in the system (server) administration business for more than 15 years. We started as kids dreaming about managing big Data Centers having ultimate control over servers data and services and in a sense the beginning of the 2000s looked like the system adminsitration will be among the most promising and profitable professions for the coming 30 years or so.

The amount of servers installed were booming, the Domain Registrantrant Ballon (Dot-Com Bubble) and the appearing need for everyone to have and run a website with the connected hardware and software (OS) needs made the sysadmin of the time like a precious asset for a company and business …

Many companies (small and mid-sized) still did not have a separate role for sys admin, but hired some crazy IT enthusiast that was doing a lot of the sysadm job for them.

It was wild years of freedom for the common IT specialist with a server software install / update / maintenance background.

The complexity level to install configure or tune for performance a (UNIX) like server be it GNU / Linux or FreeBSD or farm of servers was also high and there was little documentation than today and a lot of custom tweaks (scripts) to develop to make things working and system administration job was way more custom than today.
In other words the sys admin was a digital artist just like the UI / Web designer or the common programmer (who was way more advanced and hack, thought oriented) than todays "coders" most of which knows no damn thing but are a great Human Robots serving the functionos of ("Google Search for some ind of Programming language code" then "Copy" and "Paste" into a buggy module / script / application function) and then of course as a result you have a large clumsy (softwares) programs which eat a lot of Server resources (often crash – that's especially true for Java based applications) in the background and get respawned (which does severely load the servers CPUs / Memory) but as the end user is not aware of that it is considered a job finely done.

computers-kills-people-silence-means-security


2. The IT Computing and SysAdmin / Programmer Jobs offered today

In other words nowadays computing is becoming a mess, just like a system is complicating it becomes more prone to failures, the same happens with modern informatics. The chaos of programming languages code and concepts (especially), the abstracts makes a programming code harder to debug than in the past (of course that depends on the programmer too), but as most programmers are totally lame and doesn't understand even basic Hardware / Electronics concepts but are more of a Code Monkeys (yes I can say today's programmers are not really a programmers but a CODE MONKEYS !).

The result for the avarage sys admin is that the developed software are less and less custom but written in a way (to just run it on a server) and usually the sys admin ends up with less and less options for modification or debug problems of the software. As the tendency of installable services / programs (I am talking about the proprietary ones) are becoming more and more monolithic of nature.
As a consequence that starts making the classical system administration as most of todays softwares can be installed even by a highly trained monkeys (no real sysadm needed) and even if you work as a sysadmin it is very likely you are not involved in interesting job but doing more and more routine and burecracy work (which is hell at least for me – as one of my primary motivators to start a career in the IT field and specifically in the field of System Administration that back in the day the system administrator used to be a more important person for a company as a whole company infrastructure depended on the work of that single Super Man that made possible the Internet Accessibility for office users, made possible Linux / Windows servers to operate fine with a bunch of websites and some crazy softwares and platforms, and even took a periodic maintenance of an Office Workers PCs, not to mention the responsibilities to do the frequent data backups, do a support functions (talk heavily on the phone with customers with issues etc.) and help programmers set-up their crazy testing environments (developed project code) on a testing servers etc.

It was the golden age of system administration … and perhaps a golden age for the ones involved in the field of Computing .. really …

3. What if you end up to be a Jobless System Administrator today? What does current sys admin Job Market Place look like?


Have you listened to Venom (black metal band) song – Welcome to Hell?  … its like that ..

Yes, that's the worst nightmare for most of us sys admins , becoming jobless due to company bankruptcy, dismissal or just a desire for a rest for some time from the over active job to talk over the phone with uneasy and angry customers.
Al this put you you in a very harsh situation, because the Classical System Administartor jobs from the past such as building a Strong Company Firewall with IPTABLES or BSD PF is nowdays done by some pre-purchased router such as:

McAffee, Palo Alto, JuniperSRX 2020, Next Generation (firewall as a service such as Cato Networks), Kaspersky, Fortinet, (if you're lucky pfSense), Comodo Internet Security, Zone Alarm (the possible list of sh*t goes on and on …)

In other words businesses nowadays, prefer to buy a ready solution and most of this solutions even though being configurable, often have a weird interfaces and force the user to use a ready set of firewall rules (policies) rather than building ones from scratch … and most of the softwares can be configured by a normal non sysadmin anyways so mostly or soon the sysadm is not needed.

devops-diagram-explained-512px-Devops-toolchain.svg

If in the past you have build things from source or deployed / configured things server by server and each of your servers as a consequence had its kind of own spirit, because of the many custom things placed on it, the current situation with sysadmin job are mass deployments of pre-bundled packages (DevOpsDevelopment Operations – another crazy business non-sense buzzword that describes server scripting automation development) as a DevOps (SysAdmin) which is some kind of Hybdir between a programmer / scripter / db developer / and scripter you have to be eloquent or at least have some basic knowledge in mass deploy tools such as Docker, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, TeamCity, Bamboo, Fabric, Etc.
and to add even more hell to the hell, in most System Administration jobs you perhaps won't manage your own company data even but you will have to deal with third party vendors such as AWS Amazon or store the company important data in some external Cloud Storage service (except if you don't have the option to choose for a custom Own Cloud solution)

But often this is not enough you have to be more or less aware or have some experience with some SRE (Site Reliability Engineering)

But wait, that's not enough you need to be also a good Team Player communicate to a good number of often lame burecrats / lame progammers / a manager over your head that usually does not know shit about technology / a project manager / some Database guys that oten have a very questionable knowledge in Database programming maintenance .. etc. …  and the worst (in my humbe opinion) is that you have to spend 2, 3 as a mimumum daily in a non-sense meetings over proprietary non-free software program such as Skype For Business or Web Room meeting online such as WebEx with people that have little to know idea about technology or are presenting professionals but have a very questionable amount of knowledge in their field …

To summarize modern SysAdmin jobs, just like all other jobs are slavery but with the difference that in most common daily jobs most people have more freedom and are less dependent for their daily work, than you end up as a New Age of Computing Sys Admin.

system-administrator-stress-October-Poll-Sysadmin-Results-stress

Oh yeah and lets not forget the high amounts of STRESS you get daily as a sysadmin that for some is almost 24/7 especially for people who manage a large networks or server infrastructures. Suppose you migrate a Web services, database service, mail server, DNS record etc. and you make a minor mistake so the users can't access the service, guess who will be fired first ?! YOU !!! Even if you don't get hired, you'll be murmored and send for some kind of meaningless training just because you did a mistake (which is very normal, as every human daily days tons of mistakes) …

Another thing is if you're truely dedicated to system administration profession and you spend hours reading and learning new technologies (which in the field of system administration is inevitable) or just doing work from home as a freelancer to get some extra bucks and you don't have to actively sport (Running, Biking, Fitness, Mountaun Riding, whatver …), your Spinal problems and Herniated Discs (Neck or Waist) is to soon knock your door
and stay with you until your death bed.

 

But that's not all of the hurdles, many of the System Administrator like jobs of today require you to have an overview knowledge on Virtualization technologies such as VMWare ESX, VServer … and have a good idea about VPS management and even some employeers require a knowledge in Astrerisk IP PBX (Open Source Communiation Software) or other IP Telelphony software strangie …

Dear sysadmin collegues, my opinion is this kind of requirements are a little bit higher and almost impossible to match (or there are none to any living flesh) that attains all this knowledge or they will ever be.

… But even if you get employeed (and you tricked the HR interviee that you own the SuperMan + Batman + Robocop + You name your favourite movie superhero superpowers and went through the other interview (hell) circles) … finally you get hired and you end up often part of projects that are already seriously messed up from the start or developed in a way that even if succeed in a short term, guarantees a long term failure.

Oh the hirement process is also a lot of enjoyment for the burecracy freak, you have to fill in a number of documents, describing tons of information, provide tons of documents, certifications, talk a number of times on the phones with inadequate Human Resource representative (usually highly brainwashed ppl) "specialist" that knows shit about technology … Then you have to go to a few more selections, interviews further with a technical guy, fill in tests online (maybe not always) and finally talk to a company manager.

All above screening and selection I'm desribing of-course is featuring large corporations (which are among the little) that offers some decent sallaries like 1500 – 1800 EUR (for Eastern Europe) or 3000 – 3500 for rest of Western Europe (if you're a lucky American citizen you might earn up to 10 000 – 11 000 $).
The advantages of the large corporation besides the so-so sallary is the sense of security (that you want be jobless just next year or two from your day 1 in the company).

You can always become a sysadmin in a start-up company but finding such is also nowadays a real pain in the ass and even if you have a 12000+ unique a day visits site such as mine and you offer your sys admin skills for really cheap , you still will have troubles in finding clients / employeer for whom you can practice your skills and make a living as a SysAdmin.

That's pretty weird for me especially with the fact that everyone is tubing that more and more IT specialists are required ..

Anyways assuming you have the "luck" to get hired in a large corporation such as IBM you will have to do a very tedious job, such as either Backup with (IBM Data Protect), Veritas Backup, Barracuda Backup, HP Data Protector or similar software, only do build or deploy new servers, web services, databases or whatever else. E.g. your type of work is likely to be monotonоus and boring and will offer you not much than learning a little bit more about the technology you're already acquainted to ..

Moreover, because in modern IT, human freedom is not really respected … you either comply to the company brainwashing strategies a bulk shit procedures or you get fired, you either become a small wheel in the failing machine (here i mean most large companies you might end up hired nowdays reached its peak state are into a decline) and a logical result is living in constant fear that they might fire you end you might end up jobless or you stand up for what you're in the company and be careless about political correctnes and you quickly get inconvenient, politically incorrect (oh yes I forgot to mention this other craziness if you happen to be employeed you have to be politically correct) and do periodically a stupid exhausting Trainings (I prefer to call them a brainwashing session as most of the trainings are not teaching you anything but just wash your head to comply to shit). But if that Hell is not enough in the large corporation in order to look "normal" you have to partcipate in the Non-Sense Teambuildings, with team mates you have little to know affection (with the very same people you spend 5 days a week, now you have spend 1 /2 more day. every month or so …

long-term-ago-people-who-sacrifice-their-time-sleep-family-food-laughter-were-called-saints-now-they-are-called-it-professionals

So welcome to modern HELL OF system administration, or better to say welcome to the Cult of the large corporation businesses.

4. What are your options if you end up as a poor old school sys admin on the job market?

If you have a long history as a sys admin and computers become too boring for you like my case, you can always think about migrating to a Management position in the field of IT (this in most cases means doing nothing all day long pretending that you understand management and talking shit (laughing in a group), being present in a crazy management meeting whose essense is a shit talk all day long … with a bunch of people who facebook / youtube all day long talk about Latest Cars models and how they wish to have a half million car, watch and talk about fuzzy hand clocks, cheeks, plan their next vacation or where to have the lunch and housing (apartments) all day long (in some more extravagant cases you have some guys being wacky talking about drugs, sex and  rock-and-roll.)
but the unpleasent surprise here is even as a Manager you will probably have to start working for a corporation and have the same depressing atmosphere of people standing in front of their computers (tailor like) all their long with the only difference you will have to speak more with a number of computer addict zoombies (left without much options) that are doing some monkey programming / coding or Services job day after …

Other option you have is to move out of the virtual business at all and get into a real works industry such as getting a Construction job (but believe me such transitions, though I heard of are too painful) and sooner or later you will get back to computing virtual business ..

I have a friend Jose Mathew, whose exit poll from the IT business was to graduate a 2 years post-university course to become a professional Chef (cook) in restaurant but after already few years employeed as a Cook, he is again considering getting back into the IT and paradoxically he wants to enter the niche of Network Administrator (which I forget to mention earlier in that article).

The Network Administrators are among lucky System Administartors job profiles because there job is depending nowadays mostly on their CCNA / CCNP certificate, there experience with network routers such as Juniper, LinkSys, Cisco, Avaya etc.  But the big problem with being one of the guys is that the employment jobs offered are much less than the general Senior or Junior System Administrator (that is more free software Linux based).

The most luckly ones are the Windows System Administrators as the amount of such that are looked up on the market at the moment of writting this article is relatively high. The type of job for Win Sys Admin offered on the market as long as I researched is for Windows Sys Admins that have a good amount of experience / knowledge (with Active Directory) domain controller.

There might be some enjoyment for the Win SysAdmin if you have to develop your own PowerShell scripts or do some kind of automations on a domain controller level and from that perspective this job positions are attractive, but unfortunately that comes at the price for being a totally Microsoft software dependent (junkie).
But in overall it is much easier for the ordinary Win Sys Admin than the Unix one because of the reason Windows Servers and related scripting automation solutions is generally much easier to learn and many of the things you have to make up yourself on a common *NIX OS are already available in Windows in the form of some proprietary extra software you have to buy …
However for people as me who are involved in the UNIX world for the last 15 years, it want be easy to migrate to Windows System Administartor.

In my previous employment Job in Hewlett Packard (and later DXC) I have to do a lot of Windows System Administration jobs and I have to says, that was too easy in general but the downside of deploying some third party software on Windows in case of failure is the debugging on Windows is generally harder task than on Linux / BSD..

Another option if you want to move from the field of System Administarton is to start your own company in either Sys Admin or Programming field or Website building, Website hosting.
That's easy especially if you have a good amount of experience but the problem with this is you need a partner and often finding a partner is a tedious job …
Plus most of the clients you can get for your business are already clients of the Large Sharks corporations and at best you or your company might have to work as a contractor for the uncle SAM corporations ..

Of course as a sysadmin you can always repair computers and could try to start a business of computer (OS) repair niche, but as the competition in the field is enormous and you will have to work like crazy to be able to make a decent living, plus it is very likely that you bankrupt, because of lack of enough clients in need to fix their OS (as most people nowadays have learned on how to install Windows and basic surrounding softwares) …

 



system-administration-is-dying-grave-RIP-sysadmins

 


If you have land like my parents you can try to make a living by growing vegetables like Bio potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, garlic and other fruits such as Apples, Pears, Walnuts, Peaches etc.
The bio-fruits growing business though profitable in western societies is way from profitable in Eastern world so if you happen to be in some eastern country and you want to make good moving to the fruit growing / selling business might not make you rich but at least you will have benefits for your health because of the village / land work + you will have a little bit more independence and your mind will be much clearer. If you decide to try a physical work like this, your concentration level will improve as most IT industry people because of the long hours of computer madness jobs slowly start totally loose focus and often the stress of the Computer works impare memory ..

 

 

Another option for exit from System Administration industry if you have some little marketing experience or background is to move to become a Marketing or E-Marketing SEO specialist, that's not a bad option but the problem is still you will bundled in a permament marriage with the computer and the sallary you will get would most likely no different from the one you will get as a system administrator.
So just like any other Computer related job in order to keep in shape you either have to go Fitness 2 / 3 times a week or actively sport something, otherwise you might experience a growing decline in health over time (just like you already might have in sys admin field).

To sum up being a sysadmin is very enjoyable fun and bright profession, the only small problem is most true dedicated system administrators are know tend to suffer constant anxiety, hyper activity, have physical health issues, suffer forms of depressions or have mental issues (perhaps because of the inhuman amount of information they have to process daily and the large amounts of hard alcohol vodka, beer etc. 🙂 consumed as a mean of anti-depressant) …
But it seems other IT specialists I know such as programmers tend to often suffer similar problems. Besides that many of the people involved in sysadmin business or IT have troubles finding decent woman to marry, as they tend to become more or less anti-social (or gradually loose their ability for proper interactivion with human) because of the fact most of their life is being led in the virtual reality online.

But lets be optimistic, perhaps there are many sysadmins who have the luck to have started a normal life in a normal company and managed their life well with family and kids it is just I haven't met them yet 🙂

I know this post was quite a lot of rant and I would like to excuse anyone who was bored to read all this mess, but I felt obliged to share about this problem as the things are rushing through my mind for over a two years now and we had quite a discussions with friends / collegues on the realization that the system administration job is loosing its attractivity and that the new age of (cloud) computing is pushing computer science to move towards a bad and dark path which makes the individual both employee and user more dependant and less free  …

How to make for loop (cycles) in KSH useful for FreeBSD / UNIX system administrators

Friday, November 3rd, 2017

korn-shell-how-to-make-loops-easily-for-sys-admin-purposes

Sometimes we have to administrate this operating systems such as FreeBSD / AIX / HP UX or even Mac OS server where by default due to historical reasons or for security bash shell is not avialable. That's not a common scenario but it happens so if as sysadmin we need to create for loops on ksh it is useful to know how to do that, as for loop cycles are one of the most important command line tools the sysadmin swiss army knife kind of.

So how to create a for loop (cycle) in ksh (Korn Shell)?

The most basic example for a KSH loop shell is below:
 

#!/bin/ksh
for i in 1 2 3 4 5
do
  echo "Welcome $i times"
done

 


Add the content to any file lets say ksh_loop.ksh then make it executable as you do in bash shells

 

 

$ chmod +x ksh_loop.ksh
$ ksh ksh_loop.ksh

 


The overall syntax of the for loop ksh command is as follows:

 

 

for {Variable} in {lists}
do
    echo ${Variable}
done

 


Hence to list lets say 20 iterations in a loop in ksh you can use something like:
 

#!/bin/ksh
for i in {1..20}
do
  echo "Just a simple echo Command $i times";
# add whatever system commands you like here
done

 


Example for some useful example with KSH loop is to list a directory content so you can execute whatever command you need on each of the files or directories inside

 

#!/bin/ksh
for f in $(ls /tmp/*)
do
        print "Iterating whatever command you like on /tmp dir : $f"
done


Other useful for loop iteration would be to print a file content line by line just like it is done in bash shell, you can do that with a small loop like belows:

 

#!/bin/ksh
for iteration_variable in $(cat  file_with-your-loved-content-to-iterate.txt)
do
        print "Current iteration like is : $iteration_variable"
done

 

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on Toshiba Satellite L40 14B ACPI problem ACPI loading problem and workaround

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

As you have noticed in my previous posts I'm playing a bit with Toshiba Satellite L40 14B updates this days. I've came across an ugly problem with ACPI on Ubuntu Jaunty. It's really a big issue because acpi stalls and keeps loading the system on 100% leaving it with 0% idle all the time. The solution I’ve found is suggested on the following Ubuntu bug launchpad . As it describes the solution comes to this:

1. rm -f /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-on

2. rm -f /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-2

the next two steps are added by meto prevent some problems caused by acpidupgrades.

3. touch /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-2

4. touch /etc/acpi/events/asus-wireless-on

Fixing Disappeared intel net link 5100 wifi on Toshiba Satellite L300 1YA

Friday, October 29th, 2010

I've recently had to fix a Toshiba Satellite L300 1YA notebook , running the shitty Windows Vista operating system.
For some reason suddenly the Net Link 5100 Wi-FI Network Adapter of the laptop mysteriously disappeared.
The led indicating the device is enabled was blinking the driver showed properly installed in Windows -> System and everything.
Even though that the wireless network scanning in the notebook was not working.

In networking in System there were two lines showing up with excalammation mark "!".

To fix the mess it took me 3.5 hours. I tried many things first logical thing I tried was reinstalling the driver with the latest available from Intel's website. Anyways this doesn't helped so I was about to think about other solutions.
What made thinks even worse was that the Vista installed was in Chineese!, yes you red this correctly chineese. You cannot imagine what a hell it is to deal with Windows whose language pack was Chineese …

The Vista had installed also the Chineese antivirus program Rising which also provided the system with some weird firewall and this made the dealing with the problem even more complicated.

After many tries I finally completely removed the wireless driver on the system and reinstalled it with the latest version from Intel's website.
Thanksfully after a couple of reboots and going into save mode the Intel Net Link 5100 started working again by itself?!

Well you know how things goes with Windows, you never know what will happen next.

Maybe a lot of notebooks suffer the same weird issue with Wireless Wi-Fi adapter suddenly stopping to work.

So now you know the solution, remove the driver install it again, restart and it should be working again.
Hope this quick and dirty article will save somebody an hours of time to figure it out …

xorg on Toshiba Satellite L40 14B with Intel GM965 video hangs up after boot and the worst fix ever / How to reinstall Ubuntu by keeping the old personal data and programs

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

black screen ubuntu troubles

I have updated Ubuntu version 9.04 (Jaunty) to 9.10 and followed the my previous post update ubuntu from 9.04 to Latest Ubuntu

I expected that a step by step upgrade from a release to release will work like a charm and though it does on many notebooks it doesn't on Toshiba Satellite L40

The update itself went fine, whether I used the update-manager -d and followed the above pointed tutorial, however after a system restart the PC failed to boot the X server properly, a completely blank screen with blinking cursor appeared and that was all.

I restarted the system into the 2.6.35-28-generic kernel rescue-mode recovery kernel in order to be able to enter into physical console.

Logically the first thing I did is to check /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg.0.log but I couldn't find nothing unusual or wrong there.

I suspected something might be wrong with /etc/X11/xorg.conf so I deleted it:

ubuntu:~# rm -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and attempted to re-create the xorg.conf X configuration with command:

ubuntu:~# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

This command was reported to be the usual way to reconfigure the X server settings from console, but in my case (for unknown reasons) it did nothing.

Next the command which was able to re-generate the xorg.conf file was:

ubuntu:~# X -configure

The command generates a xorg.conf sample file in /root/xorg.conf.* so I used the conf to put it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf X's default location and restarted in hope that this would fix the non-booting issue.

Very sadly again the black screen of death appeared on the notebook toshiba screen.
I further thought of completely wipe out the xorg.conf in hope that at least it might boot without the conf file but this worked out neither.

I attempted to run the Xserver with a xorg.conf configured to work with vesa as it's well known vesa X server driver is supposed to work on 99% of the video cards, as almost all of them nowdays are compatible with the vesa standard, but guess what in my case vesa worked not!

The only version of X I can boot in was the failsafe X screen mode which is available through the grub's boot menu recovery mode.

Further on I decided to try few xorg.conf which I found online and were reported to work fine with Intel GM965 internal video , and yes this was also unsucessful.

Some of my other futile attempts were: to re-install the xorg server with apt-get, reinstall the xserver-xorg-video-intel driver e.g.:

ubuntu:~# apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-intel

As nothing worked out I was completely pissed off and decided to take an alternative approach which will take a lot of time but at least will probably be succesful, I decided to completely re-install the Ubuntu from a CD after backing up the /home directory and making a list of available packages on the system, so I can further easily run a tiny bash one-liner script to install all the packages which were previously existing on the laptop before the re-install:

Here is how I did it:

First I archived the /home directory:

ubuntu:/# tar -czvf home.tar.gz home/
....

For 12GB of data with some few thousands of files archiving it took about 40 minutes.

The tar spit archive became like 9GB and I hence used sftp to upload it to a remote FTP server as I was missing a flash drive or an external HDD where I can place the just archived data.

Uploading with sftp can be achieved with a command similar to:

sftp user@yourhost.com
Password:
Connected to yourhost.com.
sftp> put home.tar.gz

As a next step to backup in a file the list of all current installed packages, before I can further proceed to boot-up with the Ubuntu Maverich 10.10 CD and prooceed with the fresh install I used command:

for i in $(dpkg -l| awk '{ print $2 }'); do
echo $i; done >> my_current_ubuntu_packages.txt

Once again I used sftp as in above example to upload my_current_update_packages.txt file to my FTP host.

After backing up all the stuff necessery, I restarted the system and booted from the CD-rom with Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu installation as usual is more than a piece of cake and even if you don't have a brain you can succeed with it, so I wouldn't comment on it 😉

Right after the installation I used the sftp client once again to fetch the home.tar.gz and my_current_ubuntu_packages.txt

I placed the home.tar.gz in /home/ and untarred it inside the fresh /home dir:

ubuntu:/home# tar -zxvf home.tar.gz

Eventually the old home directory was located in /home/home so thereon I used Midnight Commander ( the good old mc text file explorer and manager ) to restore the important user files to their respective places.

As a last step I used the my_current_ubuntu_packages.txt in combination with a tiny shell script to install all the listed packages inside the file with command:

ubuntu:~# for i in $(cat my_current_ubuntu_packagespackages.txt); do
apt-get install --yes $i; sleep 1;
done

You will have to stay in front of the computer and manually answer a ncurses interface questions concerning some packages configuration and to be honest this is really annoying and time consuming.

Summing up the overall time I spend with this stupid Toshiba Satellite L40 with the shitty Intel GM965 was 4 days, where each day I tried numerous ways to fix up the X and did my best to get through the blank screen xserver non-bootable issue, without a complete re-install of the old Ubuntu system.
This is a lesson for me that if I stumble such a shitty issues I will straight proceed to the re-install option and not loose my time with non-sense fixes which would never work.

Hope the article might be helpful to somebody else who experience some problems with Linux similar to mine.

After all at least the Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 is really good looking in general from a design perspective.
What really striked me was the placement of the close, minimize and maximize window buttons , it seems in newer Ubuntus the ubuntu guys decided to place the buttons on the left, here is a screenshot:

Left button positioning of navigation Buttons in Ubuntu 10.10

I believe the solution I explain, though very radical and slow is a solution that would always work and hence worthy 😉
Let me hear from you if the article was helpful.

How to fix unfixable broken package dependencies on Debian GNU / Linux – Fix package mismatch

Wednesday, September 27th, 2017

how-to-fix-unfixable-broken-package-dependency-on-debian-ubuntu-linux-icon

I just tried to upgrade my Debian Wheezy 7 to the latest stable Debian Stretch 9 by not thinking too much and just changing the word wheezy with stretch in /etc/apt/sources.list so onwards on it looked like so:
 

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

 

deb http://ftp.bg.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.bg.debian.org/debian/ stretch main

deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main 

# stretch-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
##deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main

 

I also make sure all the defined Google Chrome / Opera / Skype and Squeeze Backports repositories existent in /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory files which in my case were like so;

 

root@noah:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# ls
google-chrome.list  opera-stable.list  squeeze-backports.list
opera.list          skype-stable.list


 were commented out because they were producing extra apt update errors …

And afterwards ran as usual:

 

apt-get update
apt-get –yes upgrade


The upgrade command executed fine and a lot of packages got downloaded and reinstalled without much issue, so I thought everything would be fine and just proceeded with the attempt to finalize the distribution major release 7 to major release 9 by running:

 

apt-get –yes dist-upgrade


But guess what now I got some dependency errors with cron and other installed packages that depend on package versions that are not going to be installed as the apt-get tool informed me.

I tried to out-smart the dpkg dependency system and removed all the packages reporting to have a missing dependencies with a short for bash loop after duming all the problematic packages showing dependency issues with commands such as:

apt-get -f dist-upgrade >> out.txt
for i in $(cat out.txt); awk '{ print $1 }' >> to_delete.txt; done


Before proceeding further I had to manually edit few lines in a text editor to remove some of the junk left from apt-get too.

So i was brave and just removed the dependency missing packages with following other for loop:

 

for i in $(cat to_delete.txt); do dpkg -r –force-all $i; done


Now I was hoping that rerunning:

 

apt-get autoremove

dpkg --configure -a

apt-get update -f
apt-get dist-upgrade -f


would no longer complain and I would just install the removed packages in another for shell loop once every other packages gets installed.

But guess what I was wrong … the system entered into another bunch of depedency terribly issues and messed up so badly that there were at least 50 packages reporting to have a missing / broken or uninstallable deb version depedency …

I got totally Angry, I knew already from experience that just trying to jump over while skipping a major release e.g. upgrade Debian 7 to Debian 9, instead of first upgrading to Debian 8 Linux and then upgrading Debian 8 to Debian 9 have always produced the same mess but I was lame and stupid again to f**k it up and I was out of mind swearing (a truly bad habid I'm not proud of) …

So as the notebook with Linux so far was perfectly working with Debian 7 and had a tons of old installed software and I was in a state where if I restart the system it was very likely my Thinkpad r61 laptop won't boot at all, I googled around to find a solution unfortunately without any luck, so finally I used the good old and tested method to DO IT MYSELF and Find the Fix without Uncle Google's help and by God's grace I did, after experimenting a while with the aptitude package / install / remove update tool without much success, finally I find the solution to the totally messed up Debian package dependencies and it all came to a simply reverting back my /etc/apt/source.list to look like following:

 

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 7.0.0 _Wheezy_ – Official amd64 CD Binary-1 20130504-14:44]/ wheezy main

##deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 7.0.0 _Wheezy_ – Official amd64 CD Binary-1 20130504-14:44]/ wheezy main

deb http://ftp.bg.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.bg.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main

deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main

# wheezy-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
##deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main
##deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org wheezy main non-free
#deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports main
###deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports main contrib non-free
##deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ wheezy main
#deb http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian-volatile wheezy/volatile main
###deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org wheezy main non-free


run of the following two depedency fix commands !!!!

 

aptitude upgrade –full-resolver

aptitude full-upgrade –full-resolver


After a while a Debian LinuxOS system downgrade was initated and the missing packages were found, downloaded from the correct wheezy repositories and all broken and missing dependencies packages were fixed !!! HOORAY IT WORKS AGAIN!!

 

Upgrade old crappy Windows 7 32 bit to Windows 10 32 bit, post install fixes and impressions / How to enter Safe Mode in Windows 10

Wednesday, June 28th, 2017

Upgrade-Windows-7-Vista-XP-to-Windows-10-upgrade-howto-observations-post-fixes

However as I've been upgrading my sister's computer previously running Windows 7 to Windows 10 (the process of upgrading is really simple you just download Windows-Media-Creation-tool from Microsoft website and the rest comes to few clicks (Accept Windows 10 User Agreement, Create current install  restore point (backup) etc.) and waiting some 30 minutes or so for the upgrade to complete.

windows-7-to-10-windows-setup-upgrade-this-pc-prompt

Then it was up to downloading some other updates on a few times and restarting the computer, each time the upgrades were made and all the computer was ready. I've installed Avira (AntiVirus) as I usually do on new PCs and downloaded a bunch of anti-malware (MalwareBytes / Rfkill  / Zemanta)  to make sure that the old upgraded  WIndows was not already infected before the upgrade and I've found a bunch of malware, that got quickly cleared up.

Anyways I've tried also another tool called ReimagePlus – Online Computer Repair in order to check whether there are no some broken WIndows system files after the upgrade

Reimage_Repair-Windows-fix-windows-failing-services-and-broken-windows-installations-clear-up-malware
(here I have to say I've done that besides running in an Administrator command prompt (cmd.exe) and running
 

sfc /scannow


command to check base system files integrity, which luckily showed no problems with the Win base system files.

ReimagePlus however showed some failed services and some failed programs that were previously installed from Windows 7 before the upgrade and even it showed indication for Trojan present on computer but since ReImagePlus is a payed software and I didn't have the money to spend on it, I just proceeded to clean up what was found manually.

After that the computer ran fine, with the only strange thing that some data was from hard drive was red a bit too frequently, after a short call with a close friend (Nomen) – thx man, he suggested that the frequenty hdd usage might be related to Windows Search Indexing service database rebuilt and he adviced me to disable it which I did following this article How to speed up Windows by disabling Search Index Service.

One issue worthy to mention  stumbled upon after the upgrade was problems with Windows Explorer which was frequently crashing and "restarting the Desktop", but once, I've enabled all upgrades from Microsoft and Applied them after some update failures and restarts, once all was up2date to all latest from Microsoft, Explorer started working normally.

In the mean time while Windows Explorer was crashing in order to browse my file system I used the good old Win Total Command or Norton Commander for Windows – WinNC (with its most cool bizzarre own File Explorer tool).

Windows-Total-commander-tool-running-on-MS-Windows-10

As I wanted to run a MalwareBytes scan and Antivirus under Windows Safe-Mode, I tried entering it by restarting the Computer and pressing F8 a number of times before the Windows boot screen but this didn't work as Safe-Mode boot was changed in Windows 10 to be callable in another way because of some extra Windows Boot speed up optimizations, in short the easiest way I found to enter Windows 10 Safe Mode was to Hit Start Button -> Choose Restart PC and keep pressed SHIFT button simultaneously
that calls a menu that gives you some restore options, along with safe mode options for those who want to read more on How to Enter Safe mode (Command Prompt) on Windows 10 – please read this article.

Windows-10-enable-Safe-Mode-options-screen

Once the upgrade was over and all below done unfortunately I've realized her previously installed WIndows 7 is x86 (32 bit) version and the Acer notebook 5736Z where it is being installed is actually X64 (64 bit), hence I've decided to upgrade my dear sis computer to a 64 Bit Windows 10 and researched online whether, there is some tool that is capable to upgrade WIndows 10 from 32 bit to Windows 10 64 bit just to find out the only option is to either use some program to creaty a backup of files on the PC or to manually copy files to external hard drive and reinstall with a Windows 10 64 bit bootable USB Flash or CD / DVD image, so I took my USB flash and used again Windows Media Creation Tool to burn Windows and re-install with the 64 bit iso.

If you're wonder about why I choose to re-install finally Win 10 32 bit with Win 64 bit, because you might think performance difference might be not really so dramatic, then I have to say the Acer notebook is equipped with 4 Gigabytes of RAM Memory and Windows 10 32bit  (Pro) could recognize a maximum of 3 Gigabytes (2.9 GB if I have to be precise) and 1 Gigabyte of memory stays totally unusued all the time with  Winblows 10 32 bit.

Windows-10-4gb-memory-present-only-3gb-usable-why-reason-and-solution

I've tried my best actually to not loose time to fully upgrade Windows 7 (32 bit) -> Windows 10 (64 bit) but to make Windows 7 32 bit Windows to use more than the default Limitation of 3GB of memory by using this thirt party PAE Externsion Kernel Patch
which is patching the Windows Kernel to extend the Windows support for PCs with up to 128 GB of memory however it turned out that this Patch file is not compatible with my Windows Kernel version once I followed readme instructions.

It seems the PAE (Physical Address Extension) is supported by default  by Microsoft only on 32 bit Windows Server 10 to read more on the PAE if interested give a look here.

Well that's all folks, the rest I did was to just boot from the USB drive just burned and re-install WIndows and copy my files from User profile / Downloads / Pictures / Music etc. to the same locations on the new installed Windows 10 professional 64 bit and enjoy the better performance.

Europe will be predominated by muslims 20 years from now / European Union might soon become Eurabia

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

europe-dangers-of-becoming-eurabia-in-20-years-from-now

I've come across a schoking video, exposing the latest trends that Demographic researches points at. According to researches as of this year. Whole europe without exceptions is suffering from a HUGE DEMOGRAPHIC BREAK DOWN. As of time of writting the rate of muslim births all across european countries is multiplicating exponentiolly. There is no virtually country left in the realms of the European Union to have a exponential fertility rate. At the same time muslim emigrants population and child growth rate is ever increasing. As you can see from below video according to current demographic researches 20 years from 2012 (2032) or so 50% of population of Europe will be muslim. This means without war by faith and migration muslims are slowly taking over "Christian Europe". What makes this demographic catastrophy occur is probably the islamic people communality. The islam faith and the patriarchate which is part of the Islamic laws keeps families and Islamic communities very strong and united, while we Europeans by forgetting the importance of Christian faith and the main rule of love has shifted towards non-communal hard-core materialistic individualism. At most the we the officially Christian population of Europe (be it Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholic or Protestants as well as atheist has put our faith and hope not in God united Church centered communality as it used to be for centuries of bloom in europe but at hands of government social system, technology and money.

Though both good social system, good government structure and good money earnings is a great thing, this cannot produce population (except if soon people cloning is not practiced) …

The moral out of the data provided in video is obvious, we Europeans have to start making and support family and bury empty philosophers individualism currently rulling western and eastern European societies.