Saturday, February 26, 2005

LEARNIN' FILE OWNERSHIP COMMANDS 4 MySQL DB TRANSFER STUFF

Spent time trying to get a thorough grasp on file ownership. Seemed to get on top of it pretty much - even the binary byte coding. Thought it might help with copying MySQL database files across from windows but no luck it seems. It's fine copying MySQL database files from linux to windows but transferring from windows to linux or linux to linux don't work. You seem to end up with a read only database each and every time. Have to do some scouting 'round to see if I can solve the problem.

Friday, February 25, 2005

SCAN 'N' DEFRAG STUFF

Scanned and defragged the workstation in preparation for migration to linux. Will be converted to a temporary linux fileserver on the 25th

EXPORTING IMPORTING MAIL 'N' STUFF

Developing method to Export contacts, from Outlook Express to Ximian Evolution. Utilised Outport - An intermediary tool found on on sourceforge.net. The trouble was finding an intermediary tool that would convert files from outlook into the necessary formats for Ximian. A bit concerned that in conversion it opens attachments and lets the virus's out of any spam mail attachments left in there. Best to run Vet prior to running Outport next time. Am a bit concerned as to the latency of Ximian. Will need to check for any Ximian version updates on their website.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

MIGRATE DATA FROM FMP 2 MYSQL STUFF

Export one of our FileMaker Pro databases to a .sql file format to import to MySQL linux. Copied data. Worked out method for exporting from FileMaker to MySQL although other methods need to be trailed as the data export import routine seemed a bit clunky.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

MOUNTING WINDOWS STUFF

I wanted to do the following so that I could get into windows without having to restart all the time. Save me a bit of time. I wanted to get wine going but did not have much success. Wines a program which runs windows applications.
After a bit of mucking about, got to view windows directories via linux. This mean't mounting c on in the folder /mnt. You have to create a mount point and you do that by navigating to the mnt folder and creating the mount point with:

mkdir /c
chmod a+rw /c

then:

mount /dev/hda1 /c -t vfat

which actually seemed to work. I followed the directions via instructions from

linux.org.mt/article/winmount

apparently this does not work with xp. I will have to find out!

Saturday, February 19, 2005

FILEMAKER 2 MYSQL STUFF

Looking at efficient ways to get the data from the one to the other. At the start I looked at getting the ODBC going between the two but it looked like taking quite a bit of fiddling from the MySQL end. I did get the driver into XP but after that things started to take too long so I gave up on that direction.

The method I chose wasn't pretty. Still you learn by your mistakes. Next time I will configure the data in FileMaker with a few calculation fields first, then export to a .csv file rather than spending time debugging Find - Replace steps in a word processing tool which I used to get things to look like an insert statement via a .sql file.

A couple of tricks I learned:
  • Do a simple mock sql INSERT first off in phpmysqladmin and copy it to a text file. Then go from there. That way you don't have to copy the column names into the INSERT statement. It seems you have to do this to get MySQL to pull the data in.
  • Sort your data into the same sequence in the export dialogue box in FileMaker then you'll have it ready to go for MySQL - it's got to be in the right sequence to writ

Friday, February 18, 2005

ASSESS SUSE STUFF

This is the configuration that SUSE performed to partition the hard drive on the laptop

/dev/hda 37.2 GB ST94019A 0 4863
/dev/hda1 17.0 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/C 0 2224
/dev/hda2 1.8 GB Win95 FAT32 LBA /windows/D 4623 4863
/dev/hda3 18.3 GB Extended 2225 4622
/dev/hda5 462.7 MB Linux swap swap 2225 2283
/dev/hda 17.9 GB Linux native / 2284 4622

Its a pretty good configuration so I am hoping that when I install redhat 2.6 on my laptop I can use it
as a basis for setting up the partitions on that machine.

Why Not Use SUSE's Stuff

Reasons:
I'm doing the Redhat course so it would be easier to use a Redhat Product
I've used Fedora Core before
SUSE didn't allow passwords greater than 8 digits
The Konqueror Browser was even slower that Mozilla
I like the design of Fedora GUI
I want to keep the heterogeneity of the system
SUSE seems to take ages to boot up

I think thats enough reasons to install Fedora 2.6 so thats next.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

BROWSER CONFIG STUFF

Next I'm configuring the Konqueror Browser. Never used it before, I'm in no mans land. It seems really slow. Even slower than Mozilla. I'm going to have to look on the net for configuring browsers.

CONFIGURE 'N' STUFF

Well after a stunning start yesterday we're off to another day of stunners. Suses' Yast configuration tool is quite different to Fedoras and of course it's naming conventions are different.
Anyway set up a samba share with entries in the text boxes as follows:

Workgroup: The name of our work group
Host name of the printer server: The workstation network name that the printer is on
Name of the remote queue: The name of the printer share

It seemed a bit obscure "Name of the remote queue:" I checked this in Fedoras' GUI and //RECEPTION/HP seemed to be the thing. It didn't like that - it was not happy! So after a bit of a fiddle - got it right.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

# II DUAL BOOT 'N' STUFF

...Fantastic! Everything has been successful. I have the whole lot set up exactly the way I wanted. All I have to do now is configure the network and stuff. Awesome. That is a job for tomorrow.

DUAL BOOT'N' STUFF

Backed up the various file on the laptop. Worked out how to change the BIOS settings. SUSE opened up easily. Window Partition could not be changed. Was a bit sceptical of going ahead with an install so fooled about with partitioning tool. It wouldn't let me divide the partition.

Went to
Suse to get some knowledge

Got the idea to re-size hard disc partition in windows prior to installation. Found that scandisc has been renamed to check disc. Have scanned the HD and deleted files. Have Defragged. Next thing is to switch off virtual memory but it looks as if you can only reduce it down to 2 MB

I've just noticed the settings for partitioning - these look similar to what was done for the previous work station that was converted to fedora:

Format Partition /dev/hda3 12.4 GB (for / with reiser)
Format Partition /dev/hda2 258.8 MB (for swap)
Format Partition /dev/hda3 23.6 MB (for /boot with ext2)

The Initial Size of the swap file in windows was 360 MB
The Maximun Size of the swap file in windows was 720 MB

I'm reloading SUSE to see if we can get somewhere. Well everything looks OK now I've swap files and the hard disc seems to have the right amount of partitioning to be ok, so I'm 29 minutes from finding out...


WHATS ALL THIS STUFF

It's taken me about 2 weeks to work out what the hell this blog will be about and I've finally come up with something. It will be a log of changing from windows to linux. I've been keeping a "Captains log" as I navigate these unknown waters "Rrrrr, that be roight Jim-me-lad", so why not have it in blog format.