Managed to steal a little time to work on Anakin some more.

For those who don't know (yes, I mean you, whole wide world), anakin is the name I gave to my gentoo machine. Maybe it's the most powerful of all jedi, who knows? Maybe he'll restore balance?

Me, I just plain hope he won't fall into the dark side.

Where was I? Yes, last time, I managed to go back to my config and set the root password, 'cuz I forgot. Good thing I didn't lock out the console.

My newest problem was that the connection the the Internet was gone. Lan was fine. Web was not.

Easily done - I emerged the dhcp client and ran it. It made a config good.

Then, ssh daemon was gone. I can start it, but I don't want to have to manually start it everytime. I want to play with this config remote!

I figured out fast enough (cuz I'm lucky) that rc-update is Gentoo's most favored way to place your service in the boot.

See, what I had figured out was that /etc/conf.d/local.start was a script that was running at boot. So I added a command for the daemon to start from there.

Then I remembered I sometimes had to run a rc-something command after I emerged a package. As I was using a walkthrough, I didn't stop to properly examine and undertand, rc-something.

Turns out the bugger installs a neat-o start script (all neat-o start script are stored into /etc/init.d) at the runlevel you want.

All these neat-o start scripts work the same. /etc/init.d/<name of neat-o script> (start|stop|restart). There might be variant, but at this point, I don't care.

And yes, emerging sshd installed a neat-o script. So I removed whatever I did to local.start and rc-configed my ssh daemon.

(If only Windows was this simple! There'd be a whole lot less end-users and all of us tech-heads could party all night long like there'd be no yesterday)

Nothing too exciting, see. If you're a linux (I keep on typing lunix... I'm getting dyslexia or something) guy, this is all pretty everyday stuff, I guess.

What was a real challenge was configuring the office's network setup so that the machine could be accessed remote.

All would've gone very fast I were aware of the following things:

• There's a difference between TCP and UDP, and it's exactly the opposite of what I thought it was.
• When a PC on your network is resolving a DNS entry that brings it back to your network, you ain't gonna see that machine if it's not yours.
• The all-in-one-router-switch-thingie we're setup with is an old clunky piece of crap that just barely works.

(Thanks, Martin! Now I know. And knowing earlier would've spared me the battle).

So after a while, I ended up figuring out that the setup had been properly working for the last hour and that what I was doing to test it was never going to work.

Martin then got me acquainted with the hosts file, which I had already met when setting up gentoo. I wasn't completely aware of it's use and was unaware of its existence under windows (<windows>\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, if you gotta know). So I could setup my local network to access the server the same was as from outside the office.

My next step is to setup a cvs server.

Then, depending on what's happening, I'll be wanting to setup (KDE) or (postfix,httpd,mysql,php,tomcat) We'll see what the future has in store for padawan Maze and master Anakin.

See, today - more precisely yesterday night, while I should have been sleeping - the idea crawled into my head that I should setup a gentoo linux station at work.

Why?

1. The server we're getting setup for our soon-to-be-released product/service runs on gentoo linux, for starters.
2. I never successfully set up a Linux box, and its an experience that leaves a gaping hole in my life.
3. I want to run some of our webpages againsts safari, I don't have a recent bleedin' mac and I've heard safari runs on KHTML for its rendering, which Konqueror uses, which Windows can't run.

So see, the perfect excuses.

Never mind that I have so much stuff to do I actually have to schedule time for my lungs to actually suck air through my facial holes.

So yeah, I'm green at this, but I'm far from stupid, so I figure I should be able to get this running, right?

After all, if there are some people writing articles like this about how friendly Linux is, should be no problem.

Some people need to take the stupid red pill and smell the real smell of the end user (and I'm not talking about the proveribal they - not the guy who wrote the previous article. I don't care what pills he takes, really. It's his own business - I'm talking about the 'they' that compares setting up a Windows end-user desktop with setting up any flava' of ux.)

I've heard (and almost witnessed) that Red Hat is easier to setup than gentoo, but, for christ sake, let's not compare apples and oranges. But I digress. I'll expand on my thoughts about software communism, software capitalism, its followers and all that jazz some other time.

I've had a blast starting to set up gentoo (cuz I ain't done. heck no.) I love this hard core techie stuff.

There were two blunders worth noting during my day of setup - during which I was able to actually get some work done. I mean, recompiling a kernel under an old celereon 400mhz processor is not exactly something you sit in front of with a bag of popcorn, expecting to be entertained.

First think that got me and most of my community of open-source lover friends bogged was that the boot CD - that actually booted from the CD - did not detect my CD, my hard drive or anything else for that matter.

Now, its an old computer, so I figure, ok... that's possible. BUT YOU JUST BOOTED FROM THE DANG CD!! Why can't you detect it!!

Well, screaming at it didn't work. So I messengered a few friends who told me run this piece of code, run that piece of code, execute this or that program.

Most of the commands they wanted me to run were just not there. Which got them kinda screwed.

But I had a nagging suspicion about the CD not being detected. I figured I was most likely on a ram drive - which can't be big, the fraggin' machine only has 128 megs of ram. So, if the CD was not detected, maybe the drivers for the HD could not be read (and all these nifty alien commands my friends got me to try and execute).

Maybe I've got an old CD. (but you freakin' booted from the CD, you moron! It's there! I see it!!!). Eventually, someone mentionned that maybe, since my CD was an old creative lab ATAPI drive, that I needed some kind of special cd-rom driver or package or something.

Well, fine.

After some arguing and some browsing, I saw somewhere someone mentionning to go and try to add a kernel parameter command when you boot from the CD.

ide=nodma

Why not? It's better than kicking a wall, or trying to bite your own forehead off, no?

Maybe I should get this stupid parameter tatooed. Or just plain fraggin' mentionned somewhere in the doc. That'd be nice and would mutilate me less.

So, the CD got detected and - lo and behold - so was the hard drives and stuff.

The rest of the procedure ran as expected - I was following a walkthrough (if you have no fun playing the game, you can always resort to cheating) to get it done as fast as possible. After all, I don't care too much about knowing how to tweak a kernel and optimize a network or whatever. I just want to get the damn server working. I'll hire real pros for the hard stuff.

So, I finished the basic config, which was so intuitive and user friendly, my dad could've done it. That's sacrasm.

If I had given this to my dad and said - "hey, dude, that's an easy-to use OS! Install it on your system and tell me what you think!", there's only one thing that could've happened.

I would've seen my father cry... for, like the second time in about 30 years of existance. (I did the same thing with a windows 95 setup CD, though, and he barely had to ask me for help.)

Anyway, who cares. These kind of setups are not for the same kind of end users. Lets move on to blunder #2.

That was my day-ender, really.

I had to go and forget to set the stupid root password.

How stupid can you be? (How hard could it be to fucking ask to set it during the normal setup process? Oh, wait, I forgot - there's no such thing :P)

It was a few hours of pleasure, trying to get a root password set in. I forgot the commands, but I have it at work somewhere.

Basically, I had to boot back from the CD and redo a mounting of my hard drives onto /mnt/gentoo, /mnt/gentoo/swap and /mnt/gentoo/proc or something like that.

Then, I could chroot into my almost-completely set system, from where I could change the root password.

Well, if worked! But I forgot to set a stupid DHCP client and so the station was not connected to the Internet (which was my goal) and I thus cannot access it remotely.

Still, it was fun. I love puzzles. But it takes training to actually understand most of what I did in there. I suppose after you did a few setups in the same week, it starts to look rather easy. But it's not.

I follows a rule of software design that cannot be circumvented.

More flexibility == less clarity

You can streamline flexibility up to a certain point of elegance, of course. But ultimate elegance and clarity usually means less options.

Well, I've been a software developper for just about as long as I can remember.

I love design.

I love problem solving.

I love efficiency.

I love elegance.

I love effectiveness.

I love when all of these previous things work towards a similar goal.

Why do I think a blog on dev. technology is of public interrest?

I've used alot of open source the last few years. I'm senior partner in a software development company. I've lead projects. I've designed projects. I've coded on projects. I've anaysed from specs. I've analysed from talking to customer. I've developped UI. I've developped visual identities. I've developped marketing campains. I've done support. I've done QA. I've set up machines. I've had my hands in mostly every aspects of a project.

I'd say one of my main skills is being able to keep in mind alot of a project's different aspects.

That's why I think my thoughts might be worth a thought or two.

Hope you'll often agree with me.