Sitsofe's diary for September 2000
21 September, 2000 
Fiddled about with StarOffice scripts a bit more bit more because it is still core dumping in user's home directories. In the end tacked a bit onto the end of the script that just removes the core when it finishes running. Spent most of the day tidying the SUCS room and trying to keep the flies at bay. Smerf arrived back and the samba printers are misbehaving.
Back at home the washing up in the sink was the most it has ever been and had stacked up along the side (little did I know that the worst was yet to come...).
20 September, 2000
Tried to set up the home network this morning. I put both the cards in their computers and spent ages resetting the computers to let windows add the correct drivers. Unfortunately Network Neighbourhood appears to be malfunctioning.
Finally got Atuin back up and running after finding out that it has a really bizarre arrangement for simms. I must thank the person who told me this on the RedHat-sparc mailing list who drew an ASCII diagram in his email. Also fed Klatch some three pin simms and put the simms taken out into Atuin.
Came to install StarOffice and was given lots of grief trying to install it. Even after it was finally installed in the right place (oops) it was aborting when being run by users. Turned out this is a well known bug (it seems to have something to do with remote X display) and that you use the environment variable SAL_IGNOREXERRORS to tell it to ignore the X errors. Not a fix but it is a solution.
Found out the home network had been working all along after spending most of the night experimenting with it. Turns out that if you don't turn file and print sharing on in at least one computer then Network Neighbourhood will bring up errors.
19 September, 2000
Spent time reinstalling popular packages on sucs2. Unfortunately, not all of them are available in easy to use RedHat rpm form. Discovered that what I assumed to be an 8Mb simm was really a 4Mb one.
18 September, 2000
Returned to Swansea. Still no luck with Atuin (I hate old sparcs). Too much stuff needs to be done... Reinstalled mandrake after failing to find out why it had stopped auto loading modules. Stuffed the helix gnome update from Linux Format on it too.
17 September, 2000
Struggling to get Atuin running after putting its memory back inside. Supposed to go home and to a friend's baptism but kinda messed the whole day up. Eventually managed to get home and do some washing and pick up all the stuff that I'd left behind (yay my keys no longer keep falling off their ring). Fixed a few things about the house.
16 September, 2000
Added memory to Klatch stolen from Atuin. Found out a little more about how to net boot a sparc as a consequence. Installed RedHat 6.2 and openssh on Klatch. Ate the most vegetables today than I had in total for the whole previous week.
15 September, 2000
Forced out of bed by the postman at 8am. Had pen which didn't work too well. Found out that I'd forgotten to put SILO on the sparc so I had to do upgrade which took about as long as installing the thing in the first place. Would have reinstalled klatch but it is lacking memory. Did some shopping. Came back fairly tired. Unfortunately, the instructions in my friends cookery book were incorrect and the mince beef has burnt to a crisp. Popped down to shops again. Promised another house mate that I'd pick apple juice and forgot that too. Couldn't get back into Tesco so walked to the other side of the Quadrant to Iceland. After cooking way too many peas, I sat down and watched a Babylon 5 movie.
14 September, 2000
Woken at 4am by what I thought was by window about to crack. Turned out to be water spilling out of the gutter at the top of the house and hitting the window sill. Highly annoying and very loud. Didn't get back to sleep. Petrol crisis continues. Asked on IRC for help with minimal remote X installation but to no avail. Joined the RedHat sparc mailing list. Sussed it myself in the end. Hurriedly installed abisuite to let someone do some word processing on my computer - unfortunately it is unstable and crashed when they deleted a paragraph. Has promise though but I wish they'd implement an autosave. freedb and cddb know obscure CDs :P.
13 September, 2000
Lots of unwell people in the house. Fuel crisis continues. Isn't panic buying a wonderful phrase? Messed up morpork by trying to install up-to-date glibc on it. Learning how to install Linux on a sparc. Must learn to cross compile. Raf (house mate) arrived today. Driven down to shops to panic buy some supplies. Rationing taking place (milk bread). No potatoes or cornflakes left. Forced to cook a meal (oh no!) Actually didn't go too badly in the end. Got modem working.
12 September, 2000
Somehow idled the day away discussing the ever decreasing amount of petrol and trying to get (open)ssh on the sparcs. This required a recompilation which was still going when I left the SUCS room. Art came back and fixed sucs2's X. Got shuffled around the library before having to leave. Low batteries on phone. Made a to do list and did nothing. Jungle.com finally put order through for network card. Watched video, berated by house mates for coming home late.
11 September, 2000
Started day attempting to help telo on #linuxhelp. Arrived at new house in Swansea. Locked self out of room. Watched Mallrats video in Gareth Jenkin's room. Those guys in Dogma play exactly the same role in this movie too. Fixed samba on sucs ('cos of NT we *have* to use encryption). Set up smbpasswd file using (surprise) smbpasswd. Do I actually need to change the hosts?) Lazy LIS. Broken X on sucs2. No openssh on some of the sparcs. Must upgrade old sparcs with new OS. Need to write gui for mapsucs. Need to write cddb software for xtreme. Pizza (but no oven gloves). Discovered that my Slashdot Linux demos post hadn't drawn a huge crowd.
9 September, 2000
Installing storm Linux appears to have blated /boot/. Mandrake no longer auto loads kernel (so automount doesn't work). Re-compilation didn't help either.
6 September, 2000
Probably finished exams went home relaxed for a bit, learned a bit of C and bought a new computer. Probably.