As is often the case, Samba has me pulling hair, of which I have little to spare.
First of all, yes, I’ve read this.
Category Archives: Administrative
Chrome And Systemd
Just did an upgradedate in Fedora. Looks like the new systemd has broken Chrome. Anyone have any ideas? Nothing about it at the site that I saw, at least based on a Google search. This is sort of a PITA, because Chrome is the only way I can access Tweetdeck, which I need for my multiple Twitter accounts.
[Update a while later]
This is the error message I get when I run from command line: “Failed to create /home/*****/.pki/nssdb directory.”
[Update late afternoon]
I realize the title may be a little cryptic. Every time Chrome fails to open, I get a message that systemd had a problem. Before the update, no problem, after the update, borked.
[Late-afternoon update]
OK, partially solved problem. If I disable SELinux, I can fire it up. Then I can re-enable. Here’s the errors when I run it:
ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.
[7630:7630:0315/162457:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(325)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process
[7571:8329:0315/162710:ERROR:get_updates_processor.cc(240)] PostClientToServerMessage() failed during GetUpdates
[7571:7605:0315/162710:ERROR:mcs_client.cc(644)] Failed to log in to GCM, resetting connection.
And there about about ten instances of chrome sandbox process running. Not sure what this means, but at least I can use it for now, until I figure out what’s going on. Unfortunately, I lost all recent history.
Virtual Machines
So I ended up installing Windows into one in Qemu. Now I can’t get out of it. I thought that ctrl-alt-L would release it, but nothing happens. I somehow got into a full-screen Windows mode and can’t get out or even see the virt-manager. Any ideas?
[Update a while later]
OK, I figured it out. I’d accidentally clicked on “Full Screen View,” and had to get out of that mode to release the mouse and keyboard, by getting it to drop down from the top.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, next question. Anyone know how to make a physical NTFS partition viewable by a virtual machine?
[Saturday-morning update]
I decided to try to look at the drive by making it a share on the network, through the virtual ethernet port, but I can’t get Samba to work. Maybe Winscp?
Mojave
Heading up there in a few minutes for the day. Haven’t been in a while, want to see what’s going on. Posting will be light.
My Site Improvements
For those curious about the differences between the out-of-the-box TwentyFourteen theme, and my child theme, I’ve done the following:
- Changed header and sidebar backgrounds from black to dark gray.
- Changed all instances of all caps to capitalized first letter.
- Switched from the sans serif typeface “Lato” to Georgia.
- Moved meta data from top to bottom of post.
- Added time stamp (without seconds) to the post date, and the word “by” in front of post author.
- Increased size of blog title.
Most of these involved style sheet changes, which will be preserved if I have to do a theme update, but a couple (adding time stamp and moving metadata) necessitated changes to the template and tag files in the parent theme. But they’re minor, and can be redone if needed.
One thing I’d still like to do, but have been unable to so far, is to change the color of the blog title from white to the same green as the search box. Not sure why a color change in the CSS won’t do it. I can change font size, but not color.
WordPress Problems
So I’m slowly beating the site into submission, but running into a few issues. First, I’m using a child theme of TwentyFourteen, in order to avoid making changes to the main templates. The way that works is that I add changes to the child style sheet, which then supercede the parent. But there are some things that can’t be fixed with the style sheet. For instance, in order to move things around in the post, I have to actually change the PHP code in the templates, in the parent. Another problem I’m having is that, in theory, a new function file in the child will override a function of the same name in WordPress. I want to display the time along with the date on the post, which is generated by a function called “twentyfourteen_posted_on” (the original can be found here). It retrieves the date, but not the time. In order to get it to do so, I’d have to modify it. But when I copy that into my child theme directory, and make changes, nothing happens. Anyone have any idea what the problem is, or how to troubleshoot?
[Update a while later]
OK, I think I figured out the problem. Apparently you can only override functions that are in the function.php file, in the main template directory. This is a tag, buried in the “inc” directory. So I have to edit it in there. Which means that I’ll lose the changes if I have to update the template. But it’s not a huge deal.
Site Redesign
You probably noticed a new look here. I just did a WordPress upgrade, and switched to the new standard theme Twenty Fifteen. Not sure I’ll stick with it (for one thing, it’s not clear how to get the column structure I want) but I’ll play with it for a while.
[Update a while later]
Well, it looks like you can have as many columns as you like, as long as it’s not more than two. Only one sidebar. Not sure whether to stick with this.
[Update a few more minutes later]
OK, looks like the only way to get multiple sidebars is to create a child theme with them. Not sure how much time I want to invest in writing PHP.
[Update a few minutes later]
Last time I tried TwentyFourteen, it was kind of a disaster, but I just got the latest version, and am trying that now. I’ll have to tinker with it, but it at least gives me two customizable sidebars. Definitely have to resize sidebars, and play with style sheet. Feedback appreciated.
A High-Pitched Whistle In My Office
It’s driving me crazy. Not a smoke alarm, not the computer. I can’t echo-locate it. Cant really hear it much outside the room, but very distracting within it. Any ideas?
[Update a few minutes later]
Turned out to be the UPS. Off to Frys to replace it.
[Update a while later]
Spent about $60 for 425 VA. It’s charging now, meanwhile, I’m just operating without one. Peace and quiet.
Generally, my need for them isn’t that great. My machine can survive a sudden power loss, and most of the stuff I do backs up automatically periodically. The main reason to have one these days, for me, is to keep my internet alive. The main fiber router in the garage has its own UPS, but I need to keep my wireless routers up if I want to use a laptop with power out.
New Computer Question
She kind of likes the Linux set up, but she really doesn’t want to give up things like (and this is an immediate issue), Turbotax. From what I find in searches, it doesn’t seem to play well with Wine, but it might be OK if I ran it in a virtual Windows machine. But don’t I still need to buy Windows in order to set one of those up? And is there an advantage to running it in a VM, other than not having to reboot into the OS?
Computer Problems
Welp, Windows (7) isn’t happy with the computer upgrade. It keeps running start-up repair, but it never boots.
[Update a while later]
It occurred to me that Windows might not have liked the BIOS settings. So I went into it, and found something under “Advanced” that enabled it for Windows 8 (which I was planning to upgrade to, anyway). When I did that, it told me that the graphics card was incompatible with that setting. So I pulled the card, and am running directly off the mother board. But now when I try to boot, it dumps me into an EFI shell…
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, this doesn’t seem to be an unusual problem…
I tried moving the SATA port of the hard drive, but no joy.
[Evening update]
Well, isn’t this wonderful. I now have a computer that wantonly destroys USB drives.
[Update a minute after I typed that]
OK, it didn’t destroy the drive. It just made it take a couple minutes to recognize it. I guess that’s not quite as bad, but it still isn’t bootable.
[Late-evening update]
OK, now seriously, it is wrecking flash drives. That’s the second one today. I copy a bootable ISO to a drive, it doesn’t boot, then no other computer can even see the drive. That’s two. Today.