Newbie Trials and Tribulations

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Fergus
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Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Post by Fergus »

I was looking at Sabayon too.... very intrigued. I think i might try a live cd. Whats that distro based upon?

I fixed the kiba dock - finally got it uninstalled then went with the script from the forum. Yes its a better dock but i'm getting very very high CPU usage when i turn the physics engine on.
Again.... i'll keep pluggin away!

Thanks for the advice!
telic
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Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:48 am

Post by telic »

I was looking at Sabayon too.... very intrigued. I think i might try a live cd. Whats that distro based upon?
Sabayon is based on Gentoo Linux, so there's a mountain of online documentation and community support, plus a well-stocked software repository (see Portage and Kuroo).

It's clear that the Sabayon team has focused on detail, making the installation process highly polished and seamless. It uses a customized Anaconda installer, a la Red Hat, which I think is overall superior to the GParted et al process.

For combined simplicity and glossy appearance, I won't be surprised if Sabayon challenges PCLinuxOS for popularity (though the Sabayon default theme is kind of funky and broody). Have a look-see at the Sabayon 3.3 miniEd live CD. Step-by-step instructions for installing kiba-dock are posted [here], which you can copy and paste line-by-line into Sabayon's liveCD Konsole.

FWIW, my Mint setup used the bash command shell, whereas your Bianca (Edgy) defaults to dash. Dash is POSIX compliant, but some Linux hacks use old bash quirks. This is known to jinx some script-based compiling procedures.

To switch from dash to bash, go Terminal and enter...

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sudo bash
rm /bin/sh
ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh
exit
Whenever you want to return to using dash...

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sudo bash
rm /bin/sh
ln -s /bin/dash /bin/sh
exit
Mint 3.0 Cassandra (Feisty) also uses dash.

Good luck with your determined plugging-away. It's a worthwhile learning process.

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Fergus
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Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Post by Fergus »

Telic could you post a link to the kiba-dock installation instructions?
I'm still not happy with it.

I think i'll leave gentoo till i get my mint experience a little higher!
Next on my agenda is bluetooth, so i can use my headset with skype.
Fergus
Level 2
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Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Installation of something different

Post by Fergus »

Another quickie from me.... i do a lot of work in electronics design and i have been asked to do some research in asynchronous logic and so i need to download the appropriate design tools.

one of which is from here

http://intranet.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/projects/tools/balsa/

Could some one please explain the correct procedure for install this for mint and then in general. The install file is not helpfull to me at just seems to send me down a garden path.
There is no instruction on installing and launching the package from the fresh install.

I'm really struggling without a .deb package. I'm still a noob at heart...
telic
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Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:48 am

Post by telic »

Telic could you post a link to the kiba-dock installation instructions?
Same place as before: Install kiba-dock on Edgy Eft
I'm really struggling without a .deb package. I'm still a noob at heart...
I'm a Linux n00b too, having wandered onto the scene in March.

The following procedure got Balsa up and running on my Feisty setup. No guarantee about how it might go with Mint. And whether or not Balsa will actually function as intended is something you'll discover by trying it.

The following steps should install Balsa in your home directory under a subdirectory named etc. You can copy and paste each line of code from here into Terminal. I recommend that you disable Beryl before trying to install Balsa (re-enable Beryl after you've successfully installed Balsa).

1) Use the Synaptic repository manager to find and install the following packages required by Balsa...
libgtk1.2 (Balsa looks for this specific version)
libgmp (get highest version available)
guile-1.8 (or highest version of guile available)
2) Go to your Home directory, in Terminal...

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cd ~
3) Download the Balsa 3.5 for Linux i686 binaries tarball file...

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wget http://intranet.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/projects/tools/balsa/temporary_http_mirror/Balsa-3.5/balsa-3.5-full-linux-i686.tar.bz2
4) Download the Balsa User Manual, a PDF file...

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wget ftp://ftp.cs.man.ac.uk/pub/amulet/balsa/3.5/BalsaManual3.5.pdf
5) Create the etc subdirectory and go into it...

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mkdir etc
cd etc
6) Extract all the stuff that's in the Balsa tarball, creating subdirectory ~/etc/balsa ...

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tar xjfv ~/balsa-3.5-full-linux-i686.tar.bz2
7) Make a backup copy of your .profile file, then open it using the gedit text editor...

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cp ~/.profile ~/.profile.bakup
gedit ~/.profile
8 ) To set the Linux environment variables required by Balsa, copy and paste all of these lines to the end of your .profile file...
# BEGIN Balsa Environment Variable Section
export PATH=~/etc/balsa/bin:${PATH}
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/etc/balsa/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
export BALSAHOME=~/etc/balsa
export WAVE_SHARE_DIR=~/etc/balsa/share/gtkwave
export WAVE_READER_PATH=~/etc/balsa/lib/gtkwave
# END Balsa Environment Variable Section
Save your updated .profile file, closing gedit.

Finally, close whatever other apps are open and restart X with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.

The complete suite of Balsa tools is now installed. To invoke the Balsa Manager, go Terminal and enter...

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balsa-mgr
I haven't tested Balsa's proper operation. You should run the examples from the User Manual and compare your results. Watch for errors that complain of something missing.

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Fergus
Level 2
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Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Post by Fergus »

Telic,

what do you do if you have no .profile file?
The closest i got was the bash_profile, but even then there were no other environment variables.

Where do they hide in bianca?
telic
Level 3
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Posts: 188
Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:48 am

Post by telic »

what do you do if you have no .profile file?
The closest i got was the bash_profile, but even then there were no other environment variables.
Just use your .bash_profile file for Step 8, instead of .profile (your login command shell won't even look for ~/.profile if it finds ~/.bash_profile first).

This will set the variables for just you. To globally effect the environment variables for every user who logs onto your system, including you, edit /etc/profile instead. Everyone, including root, also has their own profile script file in their home directory.

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Last edited by telic on Thu May 24, 2007 6:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Fergus
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Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Post by Fergus »

I tried again and this time terminal would not recognise the balsa-mgr command when modifying the .bash_profile, i edited the /etc/profiles and now i can launch balsa-mgr however, two errors on the basla console:

cannot open tech directory '~/etc/balsa/share/tech'
cannot open tech directory '/usr/local/balsa/share/tech'
No valid balsa technologies found

The third statement related to the first statement, but i cannot understand why it cannot open the tech directory from my home directory. Is this a permissions thing or something else?

Not convinced with the balsa install from the binary distribution. Would i be better installing it from the source or is this just stuptid.
Is this a distro specific install, or is this general install instructions that need to be taylor for mint/ubuntu?

i think i will email the help link and see if they can be a little more detailed in there installation explanation. Any thoughts in the interim?
telic
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Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:48 am

Post by telic »

Is this a permissions thing or something else?
A user shouldn't have access permission problems with files or subdirectories in their home directory -- unless perhaps you unwittingly used sudo to invoke tar with superuser honors.

To assure that you've got proper permissions with Balsa's files and directories, log in to Mint as your usual self and go Terminal to enter...

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sudo chown -R $USER:$USER ~/etc
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Fergus
Level 2
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Posts: 76
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Post by Fergus »

Nope still no change on that. I have yet to email the developers so i'll update when i have time.

Just a little note: many many times i have been working in windows, and left my laptop running only for it to hibernate due to lack of usage or just putting the lid down. On reboot mint will be come temperamental with disk access and will require a disk scan. I don't know the in depth reason but i believe that windows must allocate the disk to itself and does not relinquish this hold until you have shut down windows. Hence mint will try to use the disk with windows still attached to it. So if ever you see mint checking disks regularly and wont load your windows partition this will be the reason.
Husse

Post by Husse »

I split off your last post in the hope someone might have an answer - but no, so I gave an answer myself in
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25005
I forgot to add a note about it before
Fergus
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Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Post by Fergus »

I have no idea how though... i just thought to myself the other day. Wipe everything apart from the actual install files then follow the binary distribution instructions. I have no idea how i didn't get this right the first time!

This was my procedure for installations with no deb or rpm file.

Code: Select all

Install it (in /usr/local/balsa for example):
   cd /usr/local
    [u]sudo[/u] tar xjf balsa-3.5-full-<arch>.tar.bz2

Add these definitions to your shell configurations in /usr/profile for everyone:
   PATH=/usr/local/balsa/bin:${PATH}
   LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/balsa/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
   export PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH
The following environment variables might also be needed (change /usr/local/balsa to your chosen installation directory):
   export BALSAHOME=/usr/local/balsa
   export WAVE_SHARE_DIR=/usr/local/balsa/share/gtkwave
   export WAVE_READER_PATH=/usr/local/balsa/lib/gtkwave
the ctrl-alt-backspace to re-load everything!

I hope this helps someone else!
next i will try wit my bluetooth headset
Husse

Post by Husse »

You did it!?
I'm glad that it worked out for you, with the long story behind you. Never give up!
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