Operating System Frustrations

Warning: The following post is my expression of some frustrations with a certain OS, with some contrasting examples from a different OS; I'm mostly writing it to vent, and figure it might be interesting to some readers. If you are apt to take OS stuff personally and/or feel like defending/criticizing one of the OS's involved, please skip this post.

I recently resurrected my old desktop machine, with a combination of Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10 (dual-boot). The big change from my old desktop was replacing the Win XP that's been my choice for gaming ever since it came out. I hadn't had a Linux distro in use in a while (since my laptop is OS X, it fulfills my need for a programming machine), but figured I should try one of the new ones after messing around with some Linux Live CD's for L's little netbook and seeing how nice they were. [Live CD: it's a CD which can be booted as a full fledged operating system, many of these can also be used to install said OS to a hard drive if you like how it works. They're fun to try out, with no risk (unlike purchasing a new Mac OS or Windows version).]

Let me say right now, my experience with the new install of both OS's were great. Up to a point, where one plummeted like a rock, while the other kept improving. I doubt that this will be a surprise that the rock was Win 7, while Ubuntu just got better.

The point in question was when one of my hard drives started dying; coincidentally the one which had the MBR (Master Boot Record, it's how the computer knows how to start up an OS) and was first in the HD chain [important for Windows, Linux could care less afaik]. This drive was a legacy from my old setup, and had been replaced with a new hard drive; it had no OS partitions and nothing except old data (which had been copied to the new drive + backups). Until it was acting flaky it was more trouble to just remove it, in retrospect I think it would probably have led to the exact same mess as having it die did.

Well, the drive died about a week ago and neither OS would boot from the remaining hard drive, as there was no MBR even though both OS's were installed there. I thought to myself:  "Drat, now I have to grab the Linux Live CD / Windows Repair disk to repair my dual boot stuff, that'll take maybe an hour one evening to sort it all out." I finally got around to spending that hour. All good repair jobs start with a web search to find someone who's solved the problem already. I try a search for MBR fixes for the Windows side, but get nothing on an official site, just lots of forums and tech help sites, so I try a search on the Ubuntu side and immediately get an official Wiki page (conveniently titled Recovering Ubuntu After Installing Windows), it appears to have a pretty simple set of instructions for fixing a lost MBR, which boiled down to these four steps:

1. Boot the Ubuntu Live CD.
2. Check what version of GRUB you were previously using [Grub is a boot loader; it's what the MBR can be sent to, to allow the user a choice as to which operating system or tool they want booted], and find the hard drive partition that had your linux install. [This boils down to clicking on the hard drive in your list of partitions in the "Places" menu, and checking to see which one of two files is in a certain directory there]
3. Run one command on the command line, using the information found in step 2 to tell it which hard drive and what partition it needed to update.
4. Reboot.

(Details for those curious at the link, above; it took me about a minute to do steps 2-4, most of the time was me misreading grub.cfg as being the Grub Legacy config file and being very confused as I was 99% certain I had Grub2 installed. Yes, it uses the command line; I think I saw a nice graphical app that does it too, but I didn't want to bother since it was simple.)

Bonus info on the Ubuntu webpage: how to get your Windows install to show up on boot in the Grub menu. Win! I may only have to do a single repair and have both OS's up and running.

Great, I stick in the Ubuntu Live CD and boot that, get distracted web surfing for a bit [on that computer!], load up the Ubuntu wiki page I had been reading and copy/paste most of the steps. It completes and says it worked, so I reboot. Yep, sure did, there's my nice boot menu again, and I boot up Ubuntu to check that it works and it did; all my normal settings and programs are there, data looks fine, etc.

Ok, that was easy; now to test the windows side. Reboot, try the Windows 7 entry that the update added to the boot menu. Hey, it's the correct Windows partition to boot. How do I know that? Because it complained about a missing BOOTMGR and refused to boot. (also, there are only 3 partitions on the drive; Win 7 OS, Linux OS, and a huge storage partition) Anyways, I think it's got some sort of love attachment with the old hard drive and really misses it. I try to tell the OS that the hard drive is still around, it's even still in the case, just it ain't plugged in because if it was it'd make horrible scraping noises and nothing would work.

Anyways, at least I have an error message, and a search turns up more forum pages, but they look more relevant than the last set  (none of the 1st page of results were Microsoft though); paring through all that data I find that the best way to fix this issue is to load up the Win 7 install disk and use the repair function. Great, that will be simple. I boot the disc, click 'startup repair' as instructed, it chugs for a bit, I check the log and hey, it says it fixed a MBR issue. Perfect, that's what I needed fixed.

It does the reboot thing and hey, the boot menu entry for windows has been removed. That's odd, it should have auto-detected it just fine like it did previously. Maybe Linux borked it. Very bad, no cookie. Try the same update I did before to get it to add the Windows partition. No luck. Examine the full drive info, the partitions are all there just fine it just looks like... the Windows 'repair' completely borked the Windows partition's bootable flags so it's not even registering to anyone as being valid a valid choice to boot. Ok, another Ubuntu wiki link later and I try adding a custom boot entry to Grub that will go to the Windows partition (and flag it bootable as needed).  That takes a few minutes, but I have it back in the boot menu and what do you know, BOOTMGR is still missing.

At this point I'm wondering why I'm even bothering; all my data is ok as I can mount windows partitions in linux trivially (but not vice versa) and get the very limited, mostly non-Steam game save data off those partitions. Oh right, games is why I had the Win 7 stuff in the first place. Ok, might as well try the Windows repair again.

Why do I think the repair might work this time? Well, the websites did say that sometimes it just doesn't work the first time and you should reboot and run it again. I'm not kidding, that's what it recommends; many user comments saying hey, it failed but after the next repair boot it worked!)

Ok, Windows CD loads again. At this point I should mention that I kept getting bored while the repair CD booted. To diverge for a second, I eventually decided to measure the repair CD boot times [that was after boot #8 of that CD]. No wonder I got bored; it was taking five minutes to go from detecting hard drives (which is all BIOS, e.g. before the OS starts to load) to when I actually got to anything looking like a menu that needed input.

Ok, repair (it fixed a MBR record, I note dubiously), reboot... hmm, that's funny, it should boot off the hard drive first, but now it's going straight to CD. Oh joy, it trashed the entire MBR so the drive isn't even bootable now. This is roughly equivalent to my starting state after the drive died.

Wash, rinse, repeat with the Windows Repair. Try again, using the helpful 'command line' bootrec /fixboot and other stuff mentioned on the forums. Drive's still not bootable, my only available diagnostic on the Windows Repair CD (bootrec) has four options. Three of them fail with the same cryptic error, and the last, a pure diagnostic rather than actual repair tool, says I have a Windows install on C:. No ****, Sherlock, that's what I want you to make bootable!

Ok, my patience is shot for the Windows Repair. [I'm now up to try #8 or so]. Reboot time.

2m, 15s later, I am back in a Ubuntu linux desktop, with working network, web browser, etc. Ready to fix the MBR issue, again. No, that's not my hard drive install, it's the Live CD I'm going to use to repair my install; Yes, it's already fully functional at this point and I can program, read web pages, etc. I don't really need to repair the MBR, I just prefer running it off the hard drive as some things are smoother.

I reassure myself that I don't have to click on the repair startup button anymore, or look at a mangled graphical interface with a joke of a command line. In fact, I go read web comics just because I can, and I probably need the relaxation.

Back to the MBR fixing again. Load up the nice Ubuntu webpage I used last time, follow the steps, this time taking much less time (30s?).  Nice, it says it had no issues and we're good. Reboot time.

Hard drives spin up, boot starts and there's my boot menu back again (pretty much instant after the hard drive pause). 21.5s later and I'm at my Ubuntu linux login screen. One password and 10s later, I'm at my desktop and good to go.

Some final thoughts and other notes:

I like it when a repair that says it worked actually works. Also, I don't expect snappiness from a CD boot, but I also don't want to wait 2x as long to get something I can't even use except to attempt at a repair that's likely going to need another long boot anyways.

For reference, the times mentioned above were 5m for the Windows Repair disk to reach the first menu, 2m 15s for the Ubuntu Live CD to reach the first menu (about 15s more to reach a fully functional desktop, if you wanted one), 20.5s for the Ubuntu HD install to reach the User Login screen, and another 10 for it to actually be on the desktop, ready to use.

Yes, I know Win 7 boots pretty fast too; I was liking that back when it worked. I'd time the hard drive boot for it, *IF IT WORKED*. I'm sure it'd be competitive.

If you time the same events, it's likely to vary from my times so don't complain to me; I don't want to hear it. The desktop in question is on the order of 5+ years old (it's using an Athlon 64 3800, single core), and runs Linux great. Win 7 for most tasks ran great as well; some games were CPU-bound (the graphics card is pretty new, so it made up for many deficiencies in some games). Also, I know there are super fast booting Linux Live CD's. I was using my Ubuntu 10.10 Live CD (that can also be used as a full fledged install CD) as it's what I had on hand. The Windows 7 CD was the equivalent Windows Install/Repair CD. [I've also used a Knoppix Live CD in the past, and it's very snappy as it was designed to be a used as a LiveCD only, never needing a hard drive install.]

Comment policy for this post:    Comments welcome, but I'll repeat what I said at the start: defensive or critical comments about either OS aren't welcome. Commiserating is ok; as are similar stories about OS troubles (in any direction) as long as they're personal experience.

Flamewar inciting is not welcome; both OS's have their place, and Win 7 certainly ran nicely when it worked; for anything resembling my own work [e.g. research and programming] my preference has always been Linux or Mac OS X, and my preference for gaming is rapidly moving towards OS X, just there are many games that are non-existant on that platform.

Comments re: possible fixes are also welcome, but at this point it's not been worth the startup cost for me to try the repair CD after spending nearly the original 1 hr estimate in waiting for it to boot all those times. If you know a way to fix it via Linux that'd be ideal, otherwise I likely will just wipe the partition and do a fresh reinstall the next time I have several more hours to spend.

Errors in spelling, typos and grammer are all mine; see my previous policy on correcting those. I already did one full edit of this post to make it flow better, so anything left in there I really don't feel like fixing.

That said, if some of my story is too technical for whoever reads this, feel free to ask questions; I'd be happy to help people learn more about these topics, and tried to make it at least somewhat approachable! :)

Hopefully the above post was entertaining to someone; should you have problems with boot records or OS dual boot installs or the like, feel free to ask me for help; at this point I should have something to show for banging my head against the problem all evening. Similarly, if you want to try a Linux Live CD, I have tried two recently and they are very usable and can give recommendations or help out if needed.

Myalgia

I saw a hand specialist today about my rapidly worsening hands - the diagnosis was myalgia which basically means muscle pain. That's a good thing in that it's not a symptom of something more serious (e.g. carpal tunnel, etc), but a bad thing in that the next step is to not use my hands for at least a week. So if I am not easily reachable by the usual methods, the best bet is to try calling or just drop by; I think there's a bluetooth headset somewhere that works with my phone [yes, holding the cell phone is painful].

For perspective on what this is like, I nearly was in tears at least twice due to the pain - today when I saw and filled out all the forms for the doctor's appointment [they measured that same thing later, in how much pain I was in to grip things - I'm not sure the scale but it was a 10 for each of three trials for each hand], and yesterday when I went to vote. That's a longer story, new paragraph.

Our voting place moved to the fire station nearby, I went to vote in early evening and there wasn't any line. Usually there's no problems and I'm on the list, but they couldn't find me so I had to fill out a provisional ballot; signing my name was already painful and when they asked me to fill out all the info on the envelope it was too much. I asked if there was some other way to fill it out, and the lady who was helping me said she could fill it out. I am ever so grateful to her for filling out all those details for me!

In general I don't notice it much, as I have a fairly high pain tolerance for non-sharp pains. It's worst and less ignorable when actually using my hands though, so I should really finish this post and start resting. See yall in a week or more!

The other day...

Yesterday I was walking on campus and I happened upon a distinguished gentleman, the kind one runs into on Caltech's campus and you find out later they're someone whose name you recognize. He was stopped on the sidewalk near Baxter, and looked pretty concerned, so I stopped to see what was the matter. It quickly became obvious: there was a humongous critter on the sidewalk, flailing around. He looked concerned and asked if I had a paper or something to pick it up with - it was a crayfish! And a pretty big one too, like a good 4-5 inches long. It must have come out of the pond and fallen, because from where it was on the sidewalk there was no chance of it getting back into the pond.

I ran over to the notice board to grab a paper, and some other students gathered to see what was going on. By the time I got back, one of them had just stepped in and picked the crayfish up and put it back into the pond. It seemed pretty happy and swam off under the lily pads. I felt sort of silly that I hadn't just tried picking it up, but the student said he used to catch them all the time and so he was used to holding them. The original gentleman was very happy - he beamed at all of us, and thanked us for helping save a life. We all wandered off back to our normal lives, but that one moment really brightened my day.

Times are Odd

Today, while walking, I ran into two people who needed something. In both cases I was listening to music, but since I tend to get stopped to ask for direction fairly often I noticed them and didn't really mind.

The first person was a middle-aged man, standing near the Kabuki restaurant (near the Islands/etc on Foothill and Rosemead), while I was on my way to the dentist. He wanted to know if there was a Motel 6 nearby. Caught me off-guard, as I don't think that's ever been asked before. I'd already guessed he was someone who was having lunch at Kabuki and stepped outside for a smoke. I tend to do this with everyone I see. Try to figure out why they are there, what they are doing, etc. No idea how accurate it is, though in this case I very much doubt my initial guess. Anyways, I pointed him towards Colorado Blvd, which tends to have most of the hotels in Pasadena, though I don't recall ever seeing a Motel 6 here. Okay, that was odd, I still am not quite sure why someone would ask about a motel while smoking a cigarette outside a restaurant, but I was nearly late for the dentist appointment so I didn't stop to find out. (Sometimes I wish I traveled more when I didn't have anywhere to be. It'd be a whole lot easier to stop and talk to people who might be interesting.)

The second encounter was a bit more odd. I was in the parking lot in front of Best Buy (the one on Foothill), walking up to the Petsmart to get stuff for the rats. A big honking white Range Rover slows up and a lady on the passenger side (with an open window) starts talking to me. Okay, it's going to be directions somewhere for sure. On any walk of over a mile total, at least one person will ask me for directions, on average. Wrong again! She explains that she is traveling to Anaheim to see a friend/relative, along with a kid (pointed at in the back seat, but I couldn't see due to tinted windows) and boyfriend. (I didn't pay attention to that part, I was trying to figure out how one gives directions to Anaheim. I had it boiled down to "go south, you'll run into signs", when it becomes clear it's not directions she wants, but money for gas. I found that really odd. She offered to give me her name and number to repay me, but as I rarely carry any cash it was a moot point. (I had 1$ in quarters and four metro bus tokens on me at that point, the quarters being if I needed to take a foothill transit bus back, as they don't take the metro tokens anymore.) I'm never quite sure what to say to people who want money, and in this case it was very weird. The combination of giant gas guzzling cartruck thing and them needing money for gas, and not only that, but cruising around a parking lot (ie, using up their gas) while trying to get cash, was a bit much for me. Still, this is always a difficult problem for me, as I tend to feel like I should be sharing money if people ask, even though that makes it harder for myself.

Presentations

I should really post some pictures I took of the ratties the last few days, but haven't gotten them off the camera yet. Anyways, I'm working on a presentation for tomorrow's group meeting. It's going to cover the one major section in the master's thesis which I haven't (hadn't) worked on much, involving comparing the simulator results with many experiments in similar areas. Right now the data is being generated by the simulator, so I can't really say much about it, but I finally got all the pieces I actually want data from started, and so now I am messing around with the presentation format and slides and such. I have this feeling that I'm going to need to set up a bunch of the math and background for people or it will be hard to follow, so working on that is my priority tonight, and I'll fill in the data and comparison slides tomorrow.

Productive?

So Wednesday turned out a lot better. I actually woke up feeling energetic, which is VERY rare for me, it usually takes me about an hour or so before I feel awake. Lots of stuff done today, only a little of it was research, but the other stuff was productive, I think.

I tracked down the postman and asked about our missing packages. They definitely were deliver, so it appears someone has been stealing our books. Please warn me if you send a package here, they should be waiting to deliver on signature only now, but if I know it's coming I can make sure it arrives. I think I can get amazon to send another copy without too much hassle, but one of the other orders that's missing is a used book L wanted that's pretty tough to find.

I also ate today, which is good. Having trouble eating lately, mostly because I don't want to walk places to get food, but keep missing the on campus options. I actually had three meals (lunch, dinner, and second dinner!). I went by the health center to check on some random stuff, which turned out well too.

So, productive day, not necessarily in the ways I would wish, but I did have a few research insights before going to sleep, so it's a start. :)

Even more work...

So I got a great email today with results back from one of the people I want to collaborate with that I spent a lot of time talking with at the conference. Some great results and stuff to look into.

Unfortunately, my day was already heavily scheduled with some work on verifying the energy model parameters, and by the time I'd gotten the email I was deep into that work and it wasn't looking like it would end any time soon. So I wrote a quick reply and continued. It's now nearly 3am, but everything is looking good, whew. I didn't actually work straight through until now, there was a two hour break for some raiding (ZA again) and then dinner w/Mason, which was excellent and there's lots of leftovers which I need to go eat. :)

Spare Time

I've found it very useful to have the new laptop, as it's a lot more portable and generally useable than my old one. Today for example, I had a normal recitation section I was going to teach for CS1, and no-one showed up. Instead I got a bunch of work done while waiting around to see if anyone would show up.

I think in general it helps to have things close at hand: I may have mentioned before that I have trouble if I have ideas for blog posts and don't have anything handy to write them down. Clearly I should just carry my laptop around more places, but it's still a bit bulky to do so.

Hmm, maybe in a few years we'll all be using really small units with projected holographic displays... there's a dream. :)

Aroma

I just saw that my previous post was mislabeled as far as days go, guess I missed that. Anyways, that one was tuesday. The mood did go away after dealing with the core roots, which is good.

Today I had a hectic day. This evening was E's birthday party, which was a potluck thing at his place. I managed to make a dish for it, though I took a bit longer than I'd intended, and people seemed to like it. (If you can guess what dish it was, you get a point! Or maybe half a point, it's probably not that hard to guess.) I then just sat around and listened and was generally antisocial and tired, except for some passing comments in a conversation about the time hierarchy theorem which actually got pretty interesting. And now I'm back home, finished reading the book I started on the bus ride to the dentist this morning, and wishing this headache would go away, again. Not sure why headaches have been plaguing me the last week, but I hope it stops.

AFK

So, you may have noticed that I haven't updated the blog in what, 5 days? If not, please continue to not notice, I'll feel better about it perhaps.

If you did notice, well... I was out of town for the weekend, and been having trouble writing anything I think is interesting. More accurately, I keep thinking of interesting things, but not while my computer is available and thus they get lost into my poor memory.

I'm writing this just fifteen minutes before a group meeting, and I'm a bit nervous. I've presented on some of this before, but not with the new computer and not with all this material about experimental data. But I've done what I can, so just writing here as a form of distraction.

Anyways, all I want to say here really is that I'm sad there were no updates since saturday, and if you check back in, you may see me add a little something to each of the missing days, just so there is something there. Right now I'm thinking of just writing about the wedding for sunday, and maybe a bit about the traveling for monday, and the rest I'll just play by ear. I have some various thoughts on money and savings, plus various books I've read that I'd like to write about, so I think it will all be filled, just may take a bit.

Stumbling Around

Today I spent a lot of time taking care of errands, just a lot of small stuff that needed doing. Still haven't managed to offload photos onto my laptop so that I can put up a big photo post, but maybe I'll have time for that eventually! Anyways, frisbee was today and we ended up having eight people total, so it was pretty exhausting though after we swapped around a bit the teams were pretty good so it was a fun game. I also finished reading another of the books I bought a few days back - Accelerando. More on that when I get a chance to write a review.

Surprises

Thursday was going fine, the paper rewrite was nearly done, the figures were coming together, was going to get to play ultimate frisbee in an hour and then finish it up and send it on, when I get an email. Everything is needed ASAP, the conference organizers have some sort of issues and they need the paper right now. There went my frisbee plans, any semblance of sanity and then a mad rush set in.

Oh well, I did finish it up, Erik thought it looked good and the figures were very good, and I don't have to worry about it now. Or at least, I don't have to worry about it until they complain on zero notice and I have to work on it, but I'm hoping that doesn't happen for at least another two weeks or so. :) I actually got to relax tonight, it was great. Nothing I particularly had to do, at least until I go in to work tomorrow and realize all the other stuff I need to catch up on. But tonight at least was relaxing.

Oh, and the post I've been writing the teasers about is due this weekend.

Comfortably Numb

I spent six hours at the dentist's office today. No, a very small percentage of that was waiting. If you count travel times, it's closer to eight hours.

Oddly enough, it was a lot more painless than I'd imagined. It was very nice to hear that it's going to be painless after a point, and then have it actually be true. Plus, I got to hear the soothing voice of James Earl Jones for a while.

Pretty Pictures

Not much has happened today. At work today we had a huge amount of moving of desks and computers, so that we would be set to use the new rooms and also have a secondary room with a nice table (Currently we only have the conference room and the table in the hallway). This meant that I didn't actually get much done before playing frisbee, because there was always another computer that needed to get shut down, and I'm one of the few people that know how to check to see if there's still processes running on the computer, and also have sudo privileges to shut down the computers that have no visual interface. I've taught people how to check if others are using the computer, but it never seems to stick as I still get this type of request all the time.

Today at frisbee we had a new player in the sense of never having thrown the frisbee much. He had a really bad backhand throw, but it was due to a simple mistake: holding the disc with both hands, the trailing hand stayed on the disc as it was tossed and it consistently would dive to one side. After seeing this a few times to be sure he wasn't doing it intentionally, I worked up the courage to go ask if he'd like a few tips. He seemed quite happy to listen, so I just pointed out how to throw the backhand without using the second hand, explaining why, and then we went back to throwing in the circle (a standard warm-up before playing). Teams came up quickly after that and we started the game, but there were several subs on each side, so I sat out the first few points to toss with the new guy, and he quickly got the hang of it and was throwing a lot better when we entered the game. That really was the payoff for me, he seemed really receptive to advice, and when he took it he got a lot better at the throwing.

Finally, back at home we moved desks and computers a bunch too. This seemed pretty familiar, we set up the desk G+P gave us, and started moving the computers around to better space them out. I'm still not happy with my computer's set up, but I'll figure it out eventually. The constraining issue right now is that it needs to be near the AC or it can overheat fairly badly.

And now, since I named this post before I started writing it, and haven't actually gotten to the one small bit I was going to say, I should do so. Check out this site: GelaSkins. They make vinyl covers for iPods and MacBooks with some really neat paintings/pictures on them. My favorites were "Odaijini", and the classics "Starry Night" and "The Great Wave". Anyways, just thought these were cool enough to pass on since I know a lot of the people reading this have iPods, etc. If you like the link, thank L as she was the one who pointed it out to me.