Because I like to tinker with Linux, and use different distributions, I have been multi-booting Windows 7, and three different Linux distributions using Grub 2 as my boot loader for a about a month now. As with all things Linux off the mainstream, tinkering and multi-booting is a problem waiting to happen. Yesterday it happened again – with gusto.
One of the three linux distributions on my hard drive wanted a distribution upgrade. I allowed the upgrade, but was not happy with the results. Something in the upgrade went wrong and the system was very sluggish. Because all three distributions were XFCE or XFCE/Gnome, I thought perhaps a KDE distribution would be a fun change.
The Linux using KDE distribution I was installing had no option to not install Grub Legacy during install. How bad could this be I thought to myself as I let Grub legacy be installed. Perhaps for a Grub using expert it is not big deal.
As for myself, it was a problem. After some tinkering trying to recover gracefully, I went from Grub 2 with four main boot options, to two Linux only boot options, to no boot loader at all. All boot loading options were destroyed.
Parted Magic , saw my hard drive as one big blank space.
 I use a method I developed out of similar desperation as a result of past tinkering gone bad to fix my no boot loader dilemma. It is not the best, prettiest, or quickest way to fix a boot loader manager problem, but it works and is simple.
The best method I have read about is ‘Chroot’ing into a failed system and recovering the system. Reading about Chroot from the man page and random postings does not sound simple to me. There are probably other methods of fixing a non booting hard drive too, but I am not aware of them.
I developed my fail safe, easy way to recover my non booting hard drive through trial and error recovering from my past errors. I am only a system administrator for my home computers, so speed, elegance, and efficiency are not top priorities for me, though I have improved from days of old when I would wipe the hard drive and do a complete install starting with Windows.
My recovery system method is simple, and it saves the day at the expense of thirty minutes and for me an extra linux install.
I always have a Parted Magic CD , and an Ubuntu CD around. These two cd’s are part of my all around fix serious problems emergency kit. Both of them are about a year old, so I do not think they need to be the latest and greatest.
Here are the steps I use to recover from boot failure for a simple minded Linux user like myself. Recovery from times when my tinkering creates problems of epic proportion for myself. Times like today when I once again lost all ability to boot to either Windows or one of three installed Linux distributions on my hard drive.
Using Parted magic cd either reformat any current Ubuntu partitions for an Ubuntu re-install, or create two new small partitions using empty drive space for an initial Ubuntu install. Designate the two partitions as /root and /home and of course use the /swap partition you already have from previous installs.
Ubuntu is the best distribution I know for finding, identifying, and listing all operating systems on a hard drive. When Ubuntu installs Grub, it will find and list all bootable partitions on your hard drive, at least in my experience. Install Ubuntu to the two partitions you created or have made available using a manual install as you do not want to wipe out your hard drive.
You now have recovered Windows and all Linux operating systems on your hard drive. Ubuntu itself does not take up much space and you need not change anything or delete Ubuntu unless the space it takes up is needed. If Grub was your previous boot loader, you can boot into your Linux of choice and re-install grub and make a new configuration file.
If Lilo was your previous boot loader, it is best not to try to re-install Lilo as Lilo does not do well over writing Grub boot data.
For those that follow Zenwalk linux, you know the Zenwalk team members decided to go in different directions a few months back. The result is a new distribution named Salix OS, available in 32 and 64 bit torrent and iso files. Added 12/30/09: This review is of Salix64 13.0.2a
I chose Salix OS 64 bit XFCE torrent to download and install. I had trouble with Transmission on my Mac which gave me a ‘password’ error for the torrent file, so I opted for an iso file from SourceForge which downloaded quickly.
I set up my hard drive partitions using System Rescue CD with a /root, /home and /swap partition before installing Salix OS 64 iso. I may have cheated, or bypassed a possible install problem, but I doubt it. Installing any Linux distribution is not a complicated process, and almost anyone who has installed any OS should have an easy time with the Salix OS install.
Salix OS install is interesting because the opening screen give you three choices for install. The first choice is a ‘Full’ install which loads everything that is included in the iso. The second choice is a ‘Basic’ install, installs only the XFCE desktop, Firefox web browser, and Gslapt package manager. Third choice is the ‘Core’ which installs only the essentials for a console system to start.
I chose the ‘Full’ install which installs a complete operating system using one program for each application. The install was fast. The Salix OS home page states it takes “less than five minutes” for the full install on any modern pc. Installing Salix OS on my laptop was a fast install, but honestly I did not feel a urge to time it.
The only ‘issue’ I had was choosing to have ‘Numlock’ to be activated during bootup. Not a good choice for a laptop keyboard. It took logging in couple of times and getting kicked out before I realized what I did.
One dislike I have of Salix OS is using Lilo for the boot loader. Grub is in transition to Grub 2, so Lilo is the best boot manager choice at the moment. Grub 2 is available in the repositories if you wish to use it.
One treat I found was during the Salix OS install is I was given the option of creating a usb stick boot loader which when used at boot up brings you to the login screen bypassing the normal Lilo boot screen.
 Salix OS uses XFCE desktop which I am partial to. XFCE is simple to navigate, allowing one click access to the menu system. XFCE desktop for Salix OS is more complete and polished than Debian’s XFCE desktop. Whether this is important or not is for you to decide. Kde desktop is also available.
Multimedia functions I mainly use are flash, mp3 rip and playback, and youtube videos. While I completed updating to the most recent packages, I installed Lame so I am able to convert .wav files into .mp3 files.
Gslapt package manager is different, but that does not mean it is bad. Salix OS is a child of Slackware – which I have not tried. Salix OS claims there are as many or more tested and immediately usable packages in the Salix OS and Slackware repositories than are available for Slackware itself. As far as total number of packages available, there should be enough choices for most users.
If you are a newer Linux user the installed apps should meet most if not all of your your needs. Repositories available via Gslapt have more than enough programs to generally meet your needs. If you still are not satisfied, you probably can roll your own programs directly from the source.
Salix OS appears to be every bit as solid, dependable, and fresh as one would generally want in a Linux distribution. Salix OS is backwards compatible with Slackware but more user friendly with some tuning already done for the user. The repository contains all programs which I need or want, though your requirements may be different.
I am really undecided about Salix OS. Due to it’s lineage, it is a well put together distribution. Salix OS competes on its own with Debian and uses newer package versions. Differences between Salix OS and Zenwalk are not obvious to me, although it is what is under the hood that is different and not necessarily what I see as a user.
In wrapping up, Salix OS is not a flashy distribution like some, at least in my opinion. Salix OS is solid. Each installed applications does the job it was picked for very well. If you want more bling, you will have to install it yourself. If you are looking to move away from Ubuntu or Ubuntu’s children, or another ‘beginner type’ distribution you will find Salix OS a system that is rock solid and dependable.
I have Debian as my primary Linux, but I find myself booting into Salix OS and playing around because exploring and changing settings in Salix OS is a simple matter. If you decide to give Salix OS a try, I do not think you will be overwhelmed, frustrated, or disappointed. I think you will decide you have made a good choice.
Search the web for lower back pain, and the number of articles and references Google returns is over twenty million. If one was able to cull out the cross links and repeat entries, there would still be enough articles to keep one busy reading for a long while. If you are looking for advice or help with your back pain, this post is not a reference or a source, only an observation from days gone by.
What the more general articles have in common is almost everyone at some point in their life will have back pain from one cause or another. I read that we are prone to back pain because our spine is still in a form made for walking on four legs, and we have not evolved to a spine structure more suitable for standing and moving on two legs.
Unlike hurting your finger, hand, or arm, our back comprises is a major portion of our body trunk, going from bone to skull, it is a pretty hard to ignore when it hurts. If a hand or arm becomes injured, we can compensate by having our bodies opposite part do dual duty. While it is awkward to have to use your other hand, it can be done.
When back pain happens there is no opposite body part to use. No matter the movement or action, any major motion uses our back. It is not so common these days before there was so many products available to buy, almost every household had some basic equipment that would be pulled out and used when back pain happened to someone in the family.
The venerable hot water bottle was present in almost every home because of its many uses, helping with pain relief being only one of them. The rubber bottle could be filled with hot water, or ice and water depending on the moment and what was most effective.
A second item that was dragged out from time to time for various problems was a simple wooden cane or walking stick. Canes are used to redistribute body weight from a side in pain to the healthier other side. Canes also were usable for reaching, hooking, or pushing, and were an extension of an arm in a simple manner.
 The third item every home had was a basic wooden chair. The chair was never fancy, and always had more than one function. The chair did double or triple duty in the basement, garage, or anywhere in the home where seating was needed. When required a chair would also pull double duty as a bedside companion. A chair served as a place to put water, medicine, food, books, or anything else one needed who was confined to bed for any length of time.
Often when back pain is present, the range of motion in your legs becomes limited. Moving your legs in what would be a forward and backward motion when standing becomes painful or impossible when moving more than a few inches in either direction. Because leg movement is hindered, leg and overall body strength limited by pain of moving. Movements that were used to get in or out of bed may now cause pain.
When it comes to back pain and beds, chairs were played a very important role. Beds by their nature are soft and have a flexible surface by design. For someone experiencing back or other pain, the chair came in handy. The chair was used as a go between between being actually in bed and standing. One would sit on the chair, and from there would either slide onto the bed, or use the solid build of the chair to assist in helping oneself to a standing position after sliding on the chair from the bed.
Always ask your doctor for advice for your particular situation, What helps in general may not be good in you and your particular situation. These simple items that every home should have may make simple struggles with back pain more manageable. When I was a child I thought they were silly useless items to have around the house, but like any tool or item, when you need it, you need it now.
I am going to create a list of “I wants”. Many of us spend our lives making lists that start with, ‘I want’. Whether it is a grocery list, a checklist for a new computer, a new cell phone, even what we want in a partner or ourselves, we make and use lists all day every day.
One of the most used ‘I want’ lists is the famous, “To do” list. Even thought this appears to be a list of unfinished tasks, it is really a list about ourselves. Placing tasks in a list with some order of preference makes it not seem as much of an ‘I want’ list as a means to an end.
Another common ‘I want’ List os the shopping list. Whether the list contains grocery items, clothes, or make up, it is still an, ‘I want’ list. We write it out, drive to wherever we need to go, and put the items on our list into our cart or basket.
 Of all of our personal life lists, the list I find the most interesting are the lists we keep private. These lists are the most important lists in our life, and usually are not written down for anyone to find. These private lists are different lists of things we either want or do not want that define who we are.
One list may be a list of what we want to have the ability to attract a partner. Another list may be a list of items we are going to change in ourselves. There are other more private lists we have. We all carry around short lists of thoughts and habits we never let anyone else know about, such as our most secret desires, major flaws we believe we have, and our secret list of what is really important.
Keeping all these lists can be a good thing or bad depending on what we do with our list collection – and it really is a collection. Taking some time to review on our own secret lists, how do our private lists compare with our public self? Are our public and private lists similar, or do they have major differences?
For example somewhere on our public list there may be an entry to be generous when the occasion comes up. When we find ourselves in the public spotlight we are generous with what we have. Looking at our private list however we see that generosity is not on our private list. Our only entries for generosity applies to getting others to be generous with us.
Looking closely at our public and private lists it may be there is a lot of contradiction between our two lists. The list of items we show the world and our private list reads as if it were created by two different people.
It is not a simple matter to take out your private lists and live them in public. Social pressure to conform arrives via family, friends, church, and other sources. Anything public is a strong motivator to follow the group ideals. Doing what the group wants is the safest way to navigate life. However, doing what the group wants in public, and doing what we want in private is a tremendous drain on our own personal resources.
Having opposing lists of public and private actions, using one list or the other depending on momentary circumstance creates a large amount of inner conflict. Having this inner conflict swirling around, and determining our action by whether we are in public or private prevents us from really living in a manner that is of the most benefit to both our private and public self.
If you go over your public and private lists that comprise your life, and you find two different ‘I wants’ on your two lists, one of the responses needs to go away. Your public ‘I want’ should be replaced by your private ‘I want’. Your private ‘I want’ list may not be what your social group wants, and that is okay. As long as your private ‘I want’ list is not immoral or illegal, following your private list all the time is healthier for you and your social group.
Serving two masters at one time can not be done. When you review your lists, decide who is truly the captain of your ship, those around you, or you. If you decide you are the Captain of your ship, lead from within following the private ‘I want’ list that defines you, and let go of the faulty, problem fraught public ‘I want’ list which comes from outside of you.
We should have a class while we are school age to learn how to listen to our bodies. I know when I was growing up I abused the heck out of mine. I would explore boundaries that perhaps should have been left alone. Silly things such as how would I feel staying up for three days straight. Staying in the winter playing with damp clothes until my skin and muscles became numb and stiff from cold – which is very painful during the thaw out process. Letting myself get badly sunburned when there was no real need to. Taking risks I should not have taken because of the possible long term injuries I could have suffered.
There are other more subtle things I did I never really paid attention to because I didn’t know they were important. Eating that last slice of pizza with my third glass of soda. Experimenting with tobacco and alcohol. Ignoring my body telling me it did not appreciate being poisoned. Trying to get by on too little sleep, or not getting the right kind of exercise.
There are a lot of signals our bodies give us that we should take notice of. I imagine that most people are not aware their body performs much better when properly maintained. I was taught as a young child that my body existed and I was in it. Other than eating, bathing and brushing my teeth, nothing else really needed to be done. My body would happily do its thing while I did mine.
 We eventually reach an age where our body starts giving stronger signals about what it does and does not like concerning how it is being treated. Some of the signs are: indigestion, anxiety, stress, tiredness, lethargy, and so on. We start to notice that we do not feel as good as we used to. At first we tend to project these feelings off on something else. Our body is getting old, we have bad genes, the air is polluted, our work is stressful. We make excuses rather than admit listen to our body.
Some people go on ignoring the signs their body gives them telling them something needs to change. In the mean time our body goes on doing the best it can with what it has to work with. When someone discovers they have acid indigestion they are more likely to take an antacid than give up eating greasy foods. We internalize it is our body failing us, rather than us failing our body. We take a pill to mask our symptoms of poor diet and maintenance.
If our heartburn goes away we think all is well once more. What we do not see, is the internal damage going on inside our body. All that extra fat in our diet is coursing through our blood stream. Animal fats are acidy and etch away some of the walls of our blood vessels. Our body in trying to keep everything working applies a cholesterol patch to the etched away areas. As our body is concerned, as it can do no more, but it creates other health problems.
Something I never knew, and it may be news to you too, is these health problems we develop as we go through life are our bodies way of calling attention to itself. When our bodies speak we need to listen. Instead of reaching for a pill, we should evaluate what we are eating and whether it is good for us or only tastes good.
If we are tired all the time, perhaps we should look at our lifestyle. Maybe more than our diet that needs changing. Better sleep patterns and exercise help. Alternatively finding ways to eliminate stress in our life makes us healthier.
Our bodies I have discovered are wonderful and amazing vehicles for us to toodle around in. Our bodies can take an amazing amount of neglect and punishment without slowing down. Eventually there comes a time when all the abuse and neglect on our bodies is too much, and our bodies respond by signaling us something is not right. When those signals happen, it is in our best interest to slow down and evaluate what we think may be wrong and try to correct the situation.
It has been a busy couple of Linux weeks starting with saving a Windows based Laptop which the owner forgot the administrator password. While they were doing the right thing not using the administrator account for every day computing, forgetting the Windows password is a pretty daunting problem for a Windows user.
I do not remember an easy fix for restoring the administrator password. I did have a few live Linux cd’s along, and one I could use to fix the Windows lost password problem. I inserted the live cd into the laptop, and in another ten minutes the administrator password was set to something hopefully more memorable.
I took off Debian Linux from my laptop and installed Zenwalk Linux this week. My wants are pretty simple lately, and Zenwalk Linux idea of one application for each task suits me well. I have also been tinkering a little more with the configuration files and scripts, and Zenwalk is a good system to tinker with because everything is so clear and well written. Some Zenwalk Linux desktop images in place of a picture.
 Click to see more of this amazing desktop! Zenwalk Linux has a pretty default desktop called the XFCE environment. I prefer XFCE because I find right clicking anywhere on the desktop for the menu is easier and faster than clicking on the start button equivalent, although it is also present top and bottom of the screen. Plus the XFCE desktop is simple to configure and has some amazing theme creators who do desktops that look like this!
I was also asked if I had time, would I the forgotten admin’s password laptop other problems. Watching the laptop run without any virus protection installed, it was obvious what the problems were. I did not want to take the time to fix it, so I pulled off the files they wanted to save once again using a Linux Live Cd and saved their files to a memory stick I had with me.
I reinstalled Windows, replaced their files, and strongly suggested they use an anti virus product, or stay off of anything by mainstream web pages on the net, and not click on every pop up. Compared to a virus protection program that may not seem much of a defense although I used XP for a few years without virus protection and got along just fine. Some common sense goes a long way in keeping your computer running well.
Someone sent me an email recently telling me how I should protect myself and my finances when using online banking. The email suggested that I watch for ‘https’ which is a secure connection, and when done, clean out my browsers cache, cookies, and history. The person resending the email is not aware of Firefox Web browser and its option to clear private data. Perhaps other web browsers are doing the same data clearing too now. Personal privacy is a big issue these days and using the internet smartly should be everyones priority.
I would have added to the email if I had sent it on my thoughts about wireless connections. Many wireless internet connections are little better than standing at a bank teller’s window with a crowd of people behind you. If you are doing anything that you do not want the world to know about, do not use a wireless connection. There are some available programs that any twelve year old can run that will crack your wireless WEP Encryption a lot faster than you can set up your wireless connection. That is if you have your wireless connection secured. It has been my experience that only about half of all wireless connections use encryption.
I installed Puppy Linux on two older memory (usb) sticks, showed two people how to boot their computer off a usb stick. I used disk encryption on the Puppy Linux portion of the memory sticks and explained anything they saved on the memory stick is fairly safe is lost. They thought that it was pretty neat, running their computers off a usb memory stick. Linux is worth checking out and learning about.
I made changed my boot loader from Lilo to Grub 2 today and I spent some time figuring out why Lilo would find my Windows Vista partition and Grub 2 would not. I found a good fix on the Zenwalk website in the Zenwalk Companion section. Grub 2 is pretty slick. I can’t say I examined how Grub set things up, but in Grub 2 there are separate configuration files for each operating system which makes life easier by default. One of the best things about light Linux distributions such as Zenwalk is the questions are more precise and the answers are correct more often.
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I use a method I developed out of similar desperation as a result of past tinkering gone bad to fix my no boot loader dilemma. It is not the best, prettiest, or quickest way to fix a boot loader manager problem, but it works and is simple.
