blog.litke.info

pumpkin ale update

2009-11-23T16:29:02Z

We kegged the pumpkin ale yesterday. I am pretty sure we over spiced it, since it tastes a bit like chewing on cinnamon bark. My keg is chilling in the kegerator. Hopefully after chilling and carbonating it will be drinkable, but I am not getting my hopes up. Needless to say we were rather disappointed when we tried it, especially since it tasted great on the last transfer. On a brighter note, the rye tastes great!

window woes

2009-11-23T16:28:57Z

Since we moved into our house, Danika and I had planned to have some of our windows replaced. When we bought the house a number of the windows were aluminum, some of which were quite old and only single pane. We finally got new windows put in last August which was followed by a very long period of problems. A few of which were:

the wrong door was sent with our windows and the correct one never showed up
handles for the double hungs that we were promised took months and several visits from the installers before they were finally installed
two of the windows came with broken hardware
once it started raining several of the windows leaked

... and that was just some of the issues.

Finally in April (nine months after they were installed) we believed all the issues had been resolved. Well, unfortunately we discovered yesterday that was not the case. The picture window in our living room is leaking. So it begins again. I am going to send the installers a message to let them know. Hopefully we will be able to resolve the issue in less time than it took previously.

Update (11.24.2009)
Someone from the company that installed the windows was out today to take a look. He believes he knows how to solve the problem. He said they will call today to schedule a time when they can come out, fix the issue and then do some testing.

happy 0.5 birthday!

2009-11-23T16:28:52Z

Graham is six months old today. Happy half birthday!

email issues

2009-11-14T07:47:52Z

About a month ago I finally got fed up with all the spam I was receiving. I had an account set up at litke.info to where all my email would forward (that I would then download to my home desktop system) and my email was going through a spam filter there, but it was proving to be inadequate. My email was also being forwarded to a Gmail account and since Gmail's spam filter was doing a much better job of sorting the spam out, I decided to reconfigure my litke.info account to only forward email to a new Gmail account.

The reconfiguration consisted mostly of creating a new Gmail account, making a forwarder and then deleting my litke.info account. A few months ago Gmail added a feater that would allow users to send email out through an SMTP server other than theirs. I had set up my account to send my email through my litke.info account. Well, after I deleted my litke.info account (back on Oct 15th) which was the account Gmail was sending my email through, none of the email I sent through my Gmail account was actually being sent.

Gmail did give me any indication that the emails were no longer going out. I finally figured out what was happening tonight. Danika mentioned something about an email we both received from my sister that I had responded to and she did not get the response. We did a bit more checking and discovered that she had not been receiving any of the messages I had sent to her from my Gmail account in the last month. I went to check the outgoing email settings and noticed it was set up to send outgoing messages through the litke.info account I had deleted. I sent up a new account at litke.info, reconfigured Gmail to send email through that account and now everything appears to be working again. I have say I am fairly surprised that there is no mechanism in Gmail to alert you when it can no longer send email out.

graham-o-lantern

2009-11-02T03:51:32Z

Here is Graham dressed up like a pumpkin/jack-o-latern for Halloween this year. Perhaps we'll use him as a mascot for our pumpkin ale ;)

ready for mn

2009-10-27T02:54:33Z

Danika found a hat and some mittens for Graham to wear this winter when we visit his Grandpa in MN. He seems to like them. I wonder how we will keep them from freezing since I have a feeling he will be chewing and drooling on them non-stop?

autumn in seattle

2009-10-14T16:26:31Z

Autumns in Seattle are often rainy and the leaves tend to change fairly quickly compared to the east coast or the midwest. This year's Seattle autumn has been great so far. We have had quite a bit of sun and pretty mild weather. The vine maple in front of our house has turned a brillant red, it looks neon red when the sun hits it right.

frost on the pumpkin v2.0

2009-10-05T16:14:28Z

Marc and I brewed again on Saturday. We brewed a rye PA and a pumpkin ale. We brewed a pumpkin one other time back in 2005. We put a lot of pumpkin in it, 15 pounds, and it ended up tasting a bit vegetable-ly. After a aging a while (2-3 weeks) in the keg the vegetable flavor subsided and the spices become more prominent. It was an okay beer, but not quite what we had hoped.

]]> Elysian Brewing makes a really great pumpkin ale. Marc had a chance to talk to the brewer and we got some tips that we incorporated into the recipe this time. We used way less pumpkin, more spices, raw and toasted seeds and changed the grain bill, so, pretty much a whole new recipe. Last time we brewed it earlier in the season and pumpkins were not yet available at the grocery stores, so we used canned pumpkin. This time we got two sugar pumpkins (around four pounds each). I halved them, pulled the seeds out, baked them, shelled them and then broiled them until they started to brown a bit. We used the seeds from both them, toasted seeds from one and raw from the other. The brewing session went well, and I think both beers are going to turn out great. We'll likely be transferring them the beginning of next week. The spices will be added when we transfer to the secondary ferementers.

Stemmed and halved

Gutted and seeded

The toasted and raw seeds

latitude c400 x3

2009-09-27T04:12:29Z

I have been watching Latitude C400 auctions on eBay to get an idea of what they sell for. There have been a few decent ones that have sold for less than $40. Most have one or two things wrong with them, but nothing that can not be fixed with a $10 part. I figured if I got the C400 from Danika's mom up and running and liked it enough I might try to get another one to have a spare and/or use for replacement parts. After playing around with it for a while I decided it was a fairly nice laptop--small, light with enough horsepower to run most of the applications I use. I saw an auction come up for two C400s that the seller said he had gotten at a garage sale. He included the Dell tag numbers, so I could look them up on Dell's support site and see how they were configured when they originally left Dell. The price stayed pretty low, so I ended up bidding on them and winning them for $70 ($35 each).

]]> When they arrived, I assessed their condition and here is what I had purchased:

eBay-1 (calypso):

CPU: 1.2 GHz
RAM: 256 MB (1 × 256 MB)
Hard Drive: 20 GB 4200 RPM
LCD: OK condition (a few bright spots)
Mini PCI Card: none
AC Power Supply: none
Misc: onboard NIC defunct

eBay-2 (iapetus):

CPU: 1.0 GHz
RAM: 512 MB (2 × 256 MB)
Hard Drive: 20 GB 4200 RPM
LCD: great condition
Mini PCI Card: none
AC Power Supply: none
Misc: cracked palm rest, keyboard missing key

Once I had assessed what I had received, I decided they were both in good enough shape that it made sense to get parts to get them both up and running. I started thinking about the updates they needed and looking for parts on eBay. I decided to get wireless cards for both of them, a new keyboard for one of them, a new palm rest for one of them (and one for the C400 I already had), a couple of AC power adapters and a PCMCIA wired NIC. I wanted both to have at least 512 MB or RAM, but I already had a 256 MB module to add to the one the only came with 256 MB, so I did not need to get any more RAM.

After a couple weeks or so, I had found and received all the parts. I had both laptops and the one Danika's mom gave me (telesto) completely disassembled. I cleaned them up, updated some of the parts and swapped parts between them. In the end this is what I ended up with:

telesto:

CPU: 1.2 GHz
RAM: 1 GB (2 × 512 MB)
Hard Drive: 160 GB 5400 RPM
LCD: Great condition
Mini PCI Card: Intel PRO 2200BG
AC Power Supply: PA-8
Misc: new palm rest, new keyboard

calypso:

CPU: 1.2 GHz
RAM: 512 MB (2 × 256 MB)
Hard Drive: 20 GB 4200 RPM
LCD: OK condition (a few bright spots)
Mini PCI Card: Intel PRO 2200BG
AC Power Supply: PA-8
Misc: new palm rest, onboard NIC defunct

iapetus:

CPU: 1.0 GHz
RAM: 512 MB (2 × 256 MB)
Hard Drive: 20 GB 4200 RPM
LCD: OK condition (a few bright spots, one dead pixel)
Mini PCI Card: Intel PRO 2200BG
AC Power Supply: PA-8

Since the laptops do not include a floppy or CD/DVD drive I planned to use PXE to boot via their NICs to install a Linux distro onto them. I was a little disappointed when I discovered the onboard NIC on one of them was not working. The boot menu listed PCMCIA NIC booting as an option, so it was not too big a problem, until I discovered that it is nearly impossible to find a PCMCIA NIC that also supports it. I ended up pulling the hard drive, connecting it to another PC, installing GRUB and an install kernel on it, putting it back in the hard drive booting and doing the install. It worked OK, and in the mean time, I also got a docking port for it which also includes a NIC that the laptop can boot from.

So, I now have three relatively small laptops that are all in pretty nice condition and can run adequately run any of the applications I would throw at them for less than $70 each. That sure beats the price of a shiny new netbook with similar specs.

bonita justice

2009-09-25T04:47:30Z

Danika went back to work today. We managed to work it out so she could go back part time. Her office allows people to work part time, but you need to find someone to share the week with. One person works three days and the other two. They more or less consider it one position and the person working three days gets all the benefits a full time employee would, but the person working two days gets none. As you might expect finding someone to work the three day portion is not too difficult but finding someone to work the two day portion is another story. All three of us are on Danika's medical plan and losing that benefit was not something we wanted to happen. It seemed unlikely that she would be able to find someone willing to work a two day week so she could work a three day week.

About a week ago she got a call from the office asking if she was interested in going back part time. Someone had heard that she may be interested, so when an opportunity came up, they called her about it. It was a three day position, so she could get to keep all her benefits. She and I discussed it, and she discussed with her mom and her sister (since they would have to rework the child care plans) and the next day she called her office to accept the part time position. We had planned for her mom to watch Graham when she went back full time, so watching him three days a week worked for her as well. Danika talked to her boss, and if she had gone back full time, she would have been on a trial rotation with lots of long hours, so I am really glad we were able to make this work.

kudos to dell

2009-09-24T20:51:16Z

Dell does not have great Linux support, but they do at least have some. The other day I needed to update the BIOS on a Dell laptop, so I went to Dell's support site to get the BIOS files. I was not surprised to find the only options were to use Windows and DOS to updated the BIOS. I eventually came up with a solution where I copied (using dd) an image of a DOS install onto the empty laptop hard drive, mounted it, copied over the Dell BIOS DOS executable, put the hard drive in the target laptop and then booted to DOS and ran the executable. It was a bit of a pain, and if I did have an extra laptop hard drive laying around I would not have been able to do it.

Since then, I have discovered that Dell actually makes a tool to install BIOS for Linux users called biosdisk. It essentially automates the process of creating a DOS floppy image with the BIOS executable, coping the image and syslinux's memtest into the /boot directory and adding an entry into the grub boot loader menu to boot the image. I have not tried it out, but it was nice to see that Dell acknowledges the fact that not everyone runs Windows and they have alternate solutions.

Dell's biosdisk page: linux.dell.com/projects.shtml#biosdisk

new spouts for the ventmatics

2009-09-24T06:32:31Z

My kegerator is equipped with Ventmatic forward seal faucets. These are great faucets for taps that are "infrequently" used. Regular beer faucets seal in the back and not all of the beer in front of the seal drains out. After a couple of days of non-use the beer in front of the seal gets sticky and faucet locks up. A stuck faucet was a fairly common occurrence with my kegerator until I got the Ventmatic faucets. They are really nice faucets with a high quality of workmanship. Unfortunately the company went out of business, so getting any sort of parts for them has been a bit problematic. Recently I discovered a small CNC machine shop that makes spouts for the Ventmatic faucets.

]]> I was looking for alternatives to the Blichmann beer gun for bottling beer from a keg and came across Center Line Technologies. They are a CNC machine shop with a few products geared toward home brewers. One of the products they sell is a spout that allows a beer line sized hose to be easily attached to a Ventmatic (or Perlick) faucet. It looked like it would make filling growlers and bottles much more convienent. The people posting on the forum where I found the reference to Center Line had great things to say about the company, so ordered one of the spouts. They also sell 8 mm spouts for the Ventmatic faucets. The spouts are advertised as decreasing the amount of "hallow pours" compared to that of 11/12 mm spouts. Hollow pours agitate the beer and produce unwanted amounts of foam. I have noticed hollow pours with my faucets, so I decided to order some 8mm spouts as well.

Two days after I placed my order the spouts arrived. The first thing I noticed was the high quality of workmanship--the spouts looked very nice. I removed spouts that were on the faucets and screwed on the 8 mm spouts. I noticed that they did not screw in all the way. I saw mention of this in the forum, but I thought the issue had be resolved. I made a note of it and proceeded to pour a beer. The spout performed great, I did not see the "hallow pour" bubble develop and there was less foaming. I decided to send an email to the machine shop to ask about the spouts not screwing in all the way. I very promptly got a response back saying it was not expected. They mentioned that there have been a few people reporting the problem and if I was willing to be a test subject they would try to resolve the issue. I told them I would be happy to help, so they are going to machine some more spouts and send them to me to test. So far I have been very impressed with the level of service from Center Line Technologies. On their website they also list custom mill work as a service they provide, so I am thinking about designing some custom tap handles and seeing how much it would cost to have them machined. Center Line Technologies can be found online at centerlinemachining.com.

Update (10.02.2009)
Center Line found a local customer experiencing the same issues as me regarding the spouts not screwing in all the way. They will be testing with that person and will let me know what they figure out. I also sent Center Line a drawing of the tap handle I wanted to create, they said it was a bit more complicated then they can handle. Oh well, it would have been nice, but certainly was not necessary.

Update (10.25.2009)
I got my spouts back on Friday (10.23.2009) and had a chance to try them out today. Center Line added a taper to the top of them and now they screw all the way onto the Ventmatic faucets. They paid for shipping both ways and did not charge for the update. They provided great customer service and the spouts are a nice product. I definitely recommend the spouts to anyone out there with Perlick and Ventmatic faucets.

Growler filling spout and two 8 mm spouts

grub on a usb drive

2009-09-24T06:31:51Z

I typically use PXE to boot PCs when I am not booting them from the hard drive, but I really like the convenience of USB flash drives. They are extremely portable, cheap and most systems can boot from them. I have been playing around a lot with GRUB lately, so I thought I would spend some time setting up a USB flash drive with GRUB. The setup is pretty similar to setting GRUB up on a hard drive (which I have outlined in other post). This post outlines how to setup a USB flash drive to use GRUB to boot memtest86+, FreeDOS, a Fedora Install kernel, an Arch Linux Install kernel and Parted Magic Live.

]]> Installing GRUB on a USB Flash Drive
Here are steps outlining how to install GRUB on a USB flash drive:

Insert the drive into a USB slot on a Linux system (for me, this was my desktop system which is running Fedora 8)
Create a partition on the USB flash drive large enough to fit the GRUB files as well as any kernels you want to boot (this will destroy any data on the drive, I typically create a single partition that spans the entire drive)
Set the bootable flag on the partition (not all BIOS require this, but some do)
Format the partition (this can be formatted as ext2/3, vfat or any other file system that GRUB supports, I typically use ext2, unless a Micro$oft system will need to access the drive, then I format it as vfat)
Mount the partition
Create directories to store the GRUB files (I create a boot directory in the partition's root directory and then a grub directory in the boot directory, boot/ and boot/grub/)
Copy the GRUB stage1, stage 1.5 and stage2 files to mounted partition (I put them in the boot/grub directory, the stage1.5 file should be for the file system you used to format the partition)
Unmount the partition
Launch GRUB (run grub)
Wait for grub to start (it make take a while to probe your hardware and you should eventually get the grub> prompt)
Determine how GRUB identifies the USB flash drive - GRUB labels partitions with the format (hdX,Y), where X is the drive and Y is the partition, you can use the find command from within GRUB to determine the partition label, run:
grub> find
where is the full path and file name of a file that is on your grub partition, in my case I ran:
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
This returned (hd1,0), so the partition where my my GRUB files are located is (hd1,0), note that if you have another partition anywhere on the system with the same path and file name, GRUB will return more than one partition, I have more than one stage1 file on my desktop system, but the partition on the USB flash drive is the only one whose path matches what I entered with the find command, so GRUB only returned one label
Set the GRUB root device, run:
grub> root (hdX,Y)
where (hdX,Y) is the label for the partition you identified in the previous step
Install GRUB on the USB flash drive, run:
grub> setup (hdX)
where (hdX) is the label for the drive you identified in the above step, GRUB will check that all the necessary files exist and will return successfully if everything has been correctly setup
Exit GRUB (grub> quit)
Remove the USB flash drive from the Linux system

At this point you should be able to boot into GRUB from the USB flash drive. Of course, there are no kernels to boot yet, so you will be limited to only running GRUB.

Next I will walk through setting up the USB flash drive with all the files needed for memtest86+, FreeDOS, a Fedora Install kernel, an Arch Linux Install kernel and Parted Magic Live. I typically create some directories to keep these files in, they can all be in the root directory, but that gets a little messy, especially if you want to use the USB flash drive to store other files. I typically create boot/, boot/grub (I already created both of these when I installed GRUB), boot/kernels/, boot/utils/. If I use the PXE images that are available for Parted Magic and Arch Linux these are all the directories I create, if I want to use the USB images, I also create pmagic/, pmagic/pmodules and boot/arch.

Adding memtest86+ Files
All that is needed to boot the memtest86+ utility is one file. The file is available from the memtest website and it is included with the Fedora and Arch Linux install images/ISOs. Grab the precompiled bootable binary from the memtest website (or get it from a distro image). Place a copy of the binary on the USB flash drive (I put it in the boot/utils directory).

Adding FreeDOS Files
Two files are needed to boot FreeDOS, a FreeDOS floppy image and the memdisk binary from the syslinux package. Grab a FreeDOS floppy image (images are available from the FreeDOS website, you may need to look around a bit, but they are there) and the memdisk binary (memdisk is available from the syslinux website). Place a copy of the FreeDOS floppy image and the memdisk binary on the USB flash drive (I put them both in the boot/utils directory).

Adding Fedora Install Kernel Files
Two files are needed to boot a Fedora Install kernel, the kernel itself and an initial RAM disk file. Both files are available from the Fedora installation media. Grab the kernel file and initial RAM disk file off of the Fedora installation media. Both files are located in the isolinux folder, vmlinuz is the kernel file and initrd.img is the initial RAM disk file. Place a copy of both files on the USB flash drive (I put them both in the boot/kernels directory and rename them vmlinuz-fedora and initrd-fedora.img, to distinguish them from the other kernel and initial RAM disk files that are copied to the same directory).

Adding Arch Linux Install Kernel Files
I have installed Arch Linux Install kernels two different ways. One way uses files from the archboot installation ISO (non-official image) and one using files from the official installation media. The archboot method is easier. Just like the Fedora method, it requires the kernel and initial RAM disk files to be copied onto the USB flash drive. Grab the kernel file and initial RAM disk file off of the archboot installation ISO. Both files are located in the isolinux folder, vmlinuz is the kernel file and initrd.img is the initial RAM disk file. Place a copy of both files on the USB flash drive (I put them both in the boot/kernels directory and rename them vmlinuz-archboot and initrd-archboot.img).

The other method, using the official installation media requires a few more files to be copied and also labeling the partition. It requires the kernel and initial RAM disk files as well as an isomount file and two squash file system files. Grab the kernel file and initial RAM disk file off of an official Arch Linux installation ISO/image. Both files are located in the boot folder, vmlinuz26 is the kernel file and archiso_pata.img is the initial RAM disk file. Place a copy of both files on the USB flash drive (I put them both in the boot/kernels directory and rename them vmlinuz-arch and initrd-arch.img). Grab the isomount file from the root directory of the official Arch Linux installation ISO/image and copy it to the root directory of the USB flash drive. Grab the two squash file system files, overlay.sqfs and root-image.sqfs from the root directory of the official Arch Linux installation ISO/image and copy them to the USB flash drive (I put them both in the boot/arch directory). Open the isomount file on the USB flash drive for editing. Update the entries for overlay.sqfs and root-image.sqfs to reflect the locations of the files on the USB flash drive. The final step is to label the USB flash drive partition that contains the Arch Linux files (I labeled my partition cruzer, since it is a SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive, you can label it whatever you like). e2label can be used to label an ext2/3 partition, mlabel can be used to label a vfat partition.

Adding Parted Magic Live Files
I have also installed the Parted Magic Live kernels two different ways. One way uses the files from the Parted Magic PXE distribution, the other uses files from the Parted Magic USB distribution. The PXE method is easier. Just like the other Linux methods, it requires the kernel and initial RAM disk files to be copied onto the USB flash drive. Grab the kernel file and initial RAM disk file off of the Parted Magic PXE distribution. Both files are located in the pmagic-pxe-/pmagic/ directory, bzImage is the kernel file and initramfs is the initial RAM disk file. Place a copy of both files on the USB flash drive (I put them both in the boot/utils directory and rename them bzImage-pmagic-pxe and initramfs-pmagic-pxe).

The other method, using the Parted Magic USB distribution requires the kernel and initial RAM disk files as well as a squash file system file. Grab the kernel file and initial RAM disk file off of the Parted Magic USB distribution. Both files are located in the pmagic-usb-/pmagic/ directory, bzImage is the kernel file and initramfs is the initial RAM disk file. Place a copy of both files on the USB flash drive (I put them both in the boot/utils directory and rename them bzImage-pmagic-usb and initramfs-pmagic-usb). Grab the squash file system file, pmagic-.sqfs located in the pmagic-usb-/pmagic/pmodules directory copy it to the pmagic/pmodules directory on the USB flash drive.

Example menu.lst
At this point you should be able to boot into GRUB from the USB flash drive and run the commands to boot any of the kernels/utilities. To make it easier to boot one of the kernels/utilities you can configure GRUB to display a menu with each of the kernels/utilities as a selectable boot option. To do this you create a file named menu.lst (or grub.conf if you are using Fedora to install GRUB on the USB flash drive) in the same directory GRUB is located and add configuration information for each of the kernels/utilities you want it to display. Here is my menu.lst/grub.conf GRUB configuration file with entries for all the files discussed above.

timeout 5 # sets the timeout to 5 seconds default 0 # sets 0th menu item (memtest+86) as the default boot option # boot sections follow # each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below # (0) memtest+86 title memtest+86 V4.00 kernel /boot/utils/memtest86+-4.00.bin # (1) FreeDOS title FreeDOS kernel /boot/utils/memdisk floppy initrd /boot/utils/fdboot.img # (2) Fedora title Fedora kernel /boot/kernels/vmlinuz-fedora initrd /boot/kernels/initrd-fedora.img # (3) Arch Linux using archboot files title Arch Linux (archboot) kernel /boot/kernels/vmlinuz-archboot initrd /boot/kernels/initrd-archboot.img # (4) Arch Linux using official media files title Arch Linux Live CD kernel /boot/kernels/vmlinuz-arch lang=en locale=en_US.UTF-8 archisolabel=cruzer ramdisk_size=75% initrd /boot/kernels/initrd-arch.img # (5) Parted Magic PXE files title Parted Magic v4.5 (PXE) kernel /boot/utils/bzImage-pmagic-pxe edd=off noapic load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw sleep=10 loglevel=0 keymap=us initrd /boot/utils/initramfs-pmagic-pxe # (6) Parted Magic USB files title Parted Magic v4.5 (USB) kernel /boot/utils/bzImage-pmagic-usb edd=off noapic load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw sleep=10 loglevel=0 keymap=us initrd /boot/utils/initramfs-pmagic-usb

The value for archisolabel for the Arch Linux Live CD entry must match the label you gave your file system.

Testing Using VirtualBox
Testing and troubling shooting the USB flash drive can be a bit of a pain if you are using the same PC to create it as you are to test it. You make some changes, reboot the system, change the boot options to boot from USB, run some tests, reboot the system, change the boot options to boot the hard drive, etc. Since this can be somewhat time consuming (most of which is spent waiting for the system to (re)boot) I will often use VirtualBox during the testing phase. VirtualBox is a great x86 virtualization product that can be used to simulate a PC as well as simulate booting from a USB flash drive. To use VirtualBox to test booting from a USB flash drive:

Install VirtualBox
Create a virtual disk image (vmdk file) for the USB device, run:
> VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/.VirtualBox/usb.vmdk -rawdisk -register
where is the Linux device label for the USB flash drive, in my case /dev/sdb, the user creating the vmdk file must have read and write permissions for that device
Configure VirtualBox to boot the virtual disk
Boot the virtual machine

At this point the virtual machine should boot to GRUB and you can test your GRUB install.

Resources
Arch Linux website: www.archlinux.org
Fedora Project website: fedoraproject.org
FreeDOS website: www.freedos.org
GRUB website: www.gnu.org/software/grub
memtest86+ website: www.memtest.org
Parted Magic website: partedmagic.com
syslinux website: syslinux.zytor.com
VirtualBox webstie www.virtualbox.org

booting the c400

2009-09-24T06:24:38Z

The Dell Latitude C400 has a number of boot menu options, but few that do not require a docking port. Without a docking port the boot options are limited to the hard drive and NICs. I have done network (PXE) boots before and they are pretty easy to set up. After having done a few, I actually prefer to do PXE installs since they typically go faster if the install does not need to read from a DVD/CD (I usually have a copy of the DVD/CD image on the hard drive). For two of the C400s I was able to setup PXE and boot from their on board NICs to install a Linux distro.

]]> With the third C400 I was not so lucky. As it turns out the on board NIC on the third C400 does not work. At first I thought, no problem, I will just get a PCMCIA (wired) ethernet card and boot from it (since that is another option on the boot menu). I got a PCMCIA card from one of my friends, installed it, set the laptop to boot from it and tried to boot. No luck. I tried the card in another laptop that already had on OS installed and it appeared to not be working. I checked some eBay auctions and found that I could get another card for around $6 so I ordered one. When it arrived I tried to boot from it, again, no luck. I tried the card in another laptop that already had an OS installed and it worked fine. I did some searching on the web only to find out very few PCMCIA ethernet cards support PXE. In fact, I had a very difficult time finding information about any that support PXE. I tried a few more configurations, and in the end I was not able to get the laptop to network boot from the PCMCIA card.

At that point I thought about getting a docking port, so I checked some eBay auctions and found one for $13 and I decided to order it. The laptop has only one USB port and no PS/2 ports, so I figured if I every wanted to connect it to a KVM I would spend more than $13 for a hub and/or adapters anyway. The dock adds PS/2 connections as well as another wired NIC (which supports PXE booting) and two USB ports. During the time I spent deciding whether or not to buy the docking port and then waiting for it to arrive, I decided I could look into what it would take to boot a network install kernel from the hard drive using GRUB. It turns out to be pretty easy, so tried it out. Below are steps outlining how to setup a hard drive to boot a network install kernel using GRUB.

Hard Drive Setup
Here are the steps I used to set up the laptop hard drive for booting a network install kernel via GRUB:

Pull the laptop hard drive out of the laptop
Connect the laptop hard drive to another Linux system (for me, this was my desktop system which is running Fedora 8)
Create a partition on the hard drive large enough to fit the GRUB files as well as any kernels you want to boot
Format the partition (this can be formatted as ext2/3, vfat or any other file system that GRUB supports, I used ext2)
Mount the partition
Create directories to store the GRUB and kernel files (I created a boot directory in the partition's root directory and then a grub and kernel directory in the boot directory, boot/, boot/grub/ and boot/kernel/)
Copy the GRUB stage1, stage 1.5 and stage2 files to mounted partition (I put them in the boot/grub directory, the stage1.5 file should be for the file system you used to format the partition, in my case it was e2fs_stage1_5)
Copy the network install kernel (and initrd if necessary) to the mounted partition (I put them in the boot/kernel directory)
Create a menu.lst (or grub.conf if using Fedora) GRUB configuration file in the same location where you put the GRUB files (in my case, boot/grub/, creating this file is not necessary, but it makes booting from GRUB easier)
Unmount the partition
Install GRUB on the master boot record (MBR) of the hard drive
Disconnect the laptop hard drive from the Linux system
Install the laptop hard drive back in the laptop
Set the laptop BIOS to boot the from the hard drive
Boot up the system and start a network install as if you were booting from any other bootable device

Adding Kernels
Here are some notes on how to include network install kernels for Arch Linux and Fedora.

Obtain the network install kernel and initrd files - for Arch Linux the recommend kernel and initrd files are on the archboot installation iso (I have not tried the a kernel from the official install images) and located in the isolinux directory, for Fedora use the kernel and initrd files also in the isolinux directory of the installation media
Copy the kernel (usually the file named vmlinuz) and the initrd file (usually named initrd.img) somewhere located on the same partition that contains the GRUB files (in my case, boot/kernel and since I put both the Arch Linux and Fedora files in the same directory, I renamed them vmlinuz-arch, initrd-arch.img, vmlinuz-fedora and initrd-fedora.img)

A note on the Arch Linux network install kernel. After getting everything setup I booted the Arch Linux network install kernel and ended up getting a kernel panic when the PCMCIA ethernet card was installed. It has a Realtek 8139 chipset in it. Since I was not sure if it was the PCMCIA hardware, the ethernet card or the kernel, I booted the Fedora network install kernel to see if it also went into a kernel panic. It booted without any issues. I decided to try the other ethernet card (3Com) even though it appeared to not be working. I pulled the RealTek card and inserted the 3Com card and booted the Arch Linux network install kernel. There was no kernel panic during the reboot. Once I got the command prompt I tried bringing up the network interface and it worked (so it either started working, or my other testing was not conclusive). I proceeded to run the Arch Linux network install with the 3Com card.

Example grub.conf/menu.lst File
Here is an example grub.conf/menu.lst GRUB configuration file (with comments). If you use Fedora to install GRUB, GRUB will look for grub.conf, if you use any other distro GRUB will probably look for menu.lst. Using this configuration file, when GRUB boots, I have five seconds to choose from four options: an Arch Linux install, a Fedora install, testing RAM and booting into FreeDOS, if five seconds expires, GRUB boots the Arch Linux install. The kernel, and initrd lines specify the location of the kernel and initrd files copied over from the distros network install media.

timeout 5 # sets the timeout to 5 seconds default 0 # sets 0th menu item (arch-install) as the default boot option # boot sections follow # each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below # (0) Arch Linux Install title arch-install # this is what will be displayed in the GRUB menu on boot up kernel /boot/kernel/vmlinuz-arch # copied from the Arch Linux archboot iso initrd /boot/kernel/initrd-arch.img # copied from the Arch Linux archboot iso # (1) Fedora Install title fedora-install kernel /boot/kernel/vmlinuz-fedora # copied from the Fedora install iso initrd /boot/kernel/initrd-fedora.img # copied from the Fedora install iso # (2) memtest # added so RAM can be tested title memtest kernel /boot/utils/memtest # copied from the Fedora install iso # (3) FreeDOS # added so the laptop BIOS could be updated title FreeDOS kernel /boot/utils/memdisk floppy # memdisk was copied from the syslinux package initrd /boot/utils/balder.img # blader.img is a FreeDOS floppy image

Install GRUB on MBR
Here are some notes on how to install GRUB on the MBR:

As the root user on the Linux system the laptop hard drive has been connected to, run grub
Wait for grub to start (it make take a while to probe your hardware and you should eventually get the grub> prompt)
Determine how GRUB identifies the drive you want to install it on - GRUB labels partitions with the format (hdX,Y), where X is the drive and Y is the partition, you can use the find command from within GRUB to determine the partition label, run:
grub> find
where is the full path and file name of a file that is on your grub partition, in my case I ran:
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
This returned (hd1,0), so the partition where my my GRUB files are located is (hd1,0), note that if you have another partition anywhere on the system with the same path and file name, GRUB will return more than one partition, I have more than one stage1 file on my desktop system, but the partition on the laptop hard drive is the only one whose path matches what I entered with the find command, so GRUB only returned one label
Set the GRUB root device, run:
grub> root (hdX,Y)
where (hdX,Y) is the label for the partition you identified in the previous step
Install GRUB on the MBR, run:
grub> setup (hdX)
where (hdX) is the label for the drive you identified in the above step, GRUB will check that all the necessary files exist and will return successfully if everything has been correctly setup
Exit GRUB, run:
grub> quit

powershot s400

2009-09-19T05:55:41Z

Our 4-5 year old Canon PowerShot S400 (Digital Elph) started acting strangely. In capture mode the LCD is all black or looks like it is on acid. Taking a photo captures the weirdness (see the image below), usually very distored and purple-ish. The LCD works fine, so you can still review photos and use the menus. I did a bit of searching and found that the problem is most likely a known issue. I called Canon and they are sending a prepaid label so I can ship the camera to them to evaluate it. If it is the known issue, they will fix the camera and send it back to me free. I would expect this if the camera was 90 days to 1 year old, but I am very pleasantly surprised since it is 4-5 years old. Here is a link to Canon's Service Notice.

Update (09.30.2009)
I got the UPS label from Canon and sent them our S400. I received an email from them today stating:

Based on our initial examination, we will start the necessary repairs at no charge to you. You can expect the repair to be completed and returned back to you within approximately 7 business days.

Update (10.05.2009)
I got email from Canon on Saturday with a FedEx tracking number. They have fixed and shipped the S400. FedEx tracking says it should arrive tomorrow.

Update (10.07.2009)
FedEx tried to deliver the camera yesterday, but it required a signature, so they did not leave it. I signed the slip they left and they delivered it today. It appears to working great, and not only did Canon fix the issue with the CCD, they replaced the two housing parts that had dents in them. Thanks Canon!

Weirdness captured

This is a photo of Dax