Don’t get me wrong, iTunes does a great job of keeping track of music, pictures and any app’s that you may have installed from their store…. but it’s the little things that it ignores.

You know, like configuration files!

Here is the set up…

I have an iPad and an iPhone and my machine runs Ubuntu Linux.

It was just recently upgraded to Ubuntu Natty Narwhal.

To “sync” my iDevices with iTunes i run a Windows XP environment inside of Virtualbox ( an emulator program that lets you run a different computer inside your regular computer. )

Here is a long and very painful story made a lot shorter… and if it sounds confusing, it’s because it is…. I’m still scratching my head over much of it.

After quite a few “issues” with the upgrade to Natty ( many things no longer worked as they should have – and this is yet another rant/reason as to why Linux isn’t ready for “regular users”! ) I finally got, or so I thought, everything working together. Or so I thought.

My iPad was due for a backup after putting a lot of new apps and information on it and so I flashed up my iTunes within Windows within Virtualbox within Ubuntu and after a very Very long time. A backup – I use that word lightly now…. was created. Note that the iPad connects to the computer via a USB port, this is important for later….

After which I was notified that a minor update for my iPad was available. So I said “sure”…. such a short word to lead to such a long and painful process….

iTunes does an odd thing when it does an update, it appears to first wipe out what is on the iPad ( the Operating System )before installing the update ( instead of overwriting )…. at least that is what it looks like from my end. Anyways all went well until the time came to install the new and improved “minor” fix.

Virtualbox, although it saw that the iPad was connected, refused to mount it ( make it available ) so that it could be actually used by iTunes…. matter of fact it refused to mount anything via USB at all except for my USB connected printers!

This took hours to track down and fix. From what I was able to discern, Ubuntu in it’s “non-commerical”  wisdom decided to replace the usual Virtualbox with Virtualbox-OSE. I’m still not sure what the difference is, nor do I care, but I stumbled across several other articles about how the OSE version won’t let you use USB connections…..  umm… but….. sigh…

I finally gave up and purged everything Virtualbox from the system ( sudo apt-get remove –purge virtualb* ) after which I went directly to Oracle’s ( used to be Sun for those in the know ) Virtualbox website and downloaded their latest non-OSE version of Virtualbox.

It too complained about not being able to support USB devices unless I added myself to the virtualbox group ( which I had previously done, but it may have been deleted by either the upgrade or the purge… sorry not sure about that one ) AND that I install something called an Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. Which is a completely new thing for me…. but I did and it worked!

Unfortunately…..

Remember that bit I mentioned about wiping the software before installing the minor upgrade? Well, once I got iTunes back up and running and looking at the iPad it said… and I paraphrase with sarcasm added …. “So sorry, but your iPad has to have it’s original software reinstalled in order to work with iTunes….. sigh.

So I did that, and then it automatically went into a Sync mode  and started reinstalling everything that was missing from my last backup and after several hours….. I had my iPad back….

Well….. sort of. As it would seem that all of the configuration files – like those for connecting to my WiFi. My email logins, all my news feeds that fed all my different programs etc etc etc. Were all MISSING! I have to redo all of that, and remember all my news sites from memory…..

Oh and before I forget, it took ALL of my apps and placed them one by one on the iPad…. All the folders that I had them organized in were gone as well….. It took me three hours just to recreate and shrink down stuff back into folders! All my news feeds….. well I may never get all of them back!

So, I don’t know why I was able to connect with my USB cables “for a while” using something that supposedly wouldn’t let me connect at all. And why Apple in it’s wisdom does updates the way it does boggles my mind.

But I can guaranty that there are a LOT of people out there who will be as “ticked” and as shocked as I am when they one day discover that the SYNC that iTunes does only Syncs what Apple thinks is important – the apps and doesn’t do a thing to protect your system from loss of configuration data! They really gotta fix that!

I’ve also done a fair bit of searching trying to find an app or any other utility that will let one backup EVERYTHING on the iPad/iPhone/etc. And so far, I haven’t found one that I would dare to try – kinda sad isn’t it

I’ll let you know if ever I do, and if you find or are using something that works for you – let me know – PLEASE!

I did a quick drop in to the store today, to check out a piece of technology that they “used” to be good at. Door/proximity alarm systems…. they used to have oodles of stuff like that. Of course they used to have oodles of things “technical” and geeky…. but not any more and it’s getting worse.

A bit of background, my wife’s office is moving, and they can’t see the front door  ( which is a little odd, but there you have it ) so she asked me to find a mat or some time of system that would ring and alert them as to when someone had entered the premises. To me this is a n0-brainer, there are TONS of things out there that will do that for her. Heck Radio Sha…. errr the Source used to have one in every store and tons of them in the back…. I told her I’d check them out and get back to her.

So I dropped into my local y0u-know-what-by-now, and went to the back where all the cool things used to be…. it’s a LOT and I mean LOT smaller than it used to be… every time I go in there it seems to shrink….

As an aside, every time I do go into that section of  “you-know-what” it seems all the sales clerks instantly go on break! It happened again today, there were 3 uniformed people in the store and as soon as I went into the “technical” area, they all went in the back and I could hear them arguing about how….. no no I’m on break right now…. I mean come on, I’m not in there THAT often for them to recognize me…. In reality though, it’s because NONE of them ( all in their early 20′s or earlier I think ) know nothing about that sort of  “stuff”. All they know is how to sell cell phones and maybe TV’s…. but I digress.

Eventually, one poor soul comes out of the back and walks right past me ( I’m the only one in the store by the way. )  I finally grab his attention after the third try and tell him I’m looking for their proximity or door alarm systems. He looks at me, curls his lip ( I kid you not… ) and says, “Nahhh don’ sell that”…. Suffice to say I voiced my incredulity and told them that they used to sell tons of them, and they were well stocked in that area…

I small glimmer ( but only in one eye ) comes on and he says “Oh… ma’be here…” and points to a discount bin ( 1 ft by 1 ft ) hidden under a larger discount bin, in it held the remains of their once mighty line of products.  Thankfully there was one proximity alarm left hidden amongst the dozen or so spare alarm parts.

I mentioned how unbelievable it was that this was all that was left of what they used to carry, he kinda shrugged his shoulders and said ” They don’ sell” and walked away!! I snapped back that the reason was that they were only interested in selling cell phones any more! Man I was ticked on several levels.

I suspect within a couple years “The Source” will be renamed “The Cell Phone Source” because they will certainly soon not be worth going into for anything else! What a pity …

On the other hand, it looks like “Radio Shack” in the states has learned it’s lesson ( hopefully ) and is asking its’ clientèle and people in general, what products they think they should be carrying to “re-become” the DIY ( Do It Yourself ) store….. one can only hope they will succeed AND once again come back to Canada.

Time will tell I guess…

I’m thinking that I should change my graphics card…. it’s an ATI Radeon X700 Pro ( or to be specific – an RV530 Graphics Card from ATI. ) Sure it’s a little dated, but still has 256MB graphics capability and is a highly rated card. Plus if it’s a bit dated it should be “known” – shouldn’t it???

So it all starts with a “simple, little, upgrade” – who knew? I decided it was time to upgrade my Ubuntu from 10.04 ( Maverick Meerkat ) to 11.04 ( Natty Narwhal ). Each upgrade of Ubuntu gets better with certain things, but unfortunately breaks other things in the process. Why they won’t stick with what they liked and decided on in the last version boggles the mind however and can lead to grief. In my case, a lot of grief….. once again .

The first tip off was when the upgrade abruptly announced that it couldn’t handle the new windows manager Unity and reverted to the original Gnome desktop. A bit alarming but okay, I wasn’t sure I wanted Unity anyways, especially since their next upgrade after this is already announced as the latest Gnome 3 version…. so why bother, I wasn’t “overly” concerned…. for the most part things “seemed” to be working…. that is until I tried something a little more graphics intensive…. sigh.

The first thing that tipped me off was my attempt at updating my beta version of Memoir44. A brilliant little board game that they are working on putting on the 3 main computer platforms: Windows, Apple and Linux. It started generating a bunch of graphics error messages and then aborted. So I started digging, and digging and digging and found that all my other graphics intensive programs also no longer ran…. yeah of course they don’t any more!

Running glxinfo (a great test utility to see what is going on behind the scenes showed me an error I hadn’t seen in TWO YEARS – see above )….

Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0″.

I was stunned and started searching to see if anyone else had this problem, and there were a few, and have always been a few out there who run into this for all sorts of reasons. So I started checking all my software, making sure all the right pieces were still in place. Now remember I have an ATI graphics card, that’s important for later…

I even tried installing that temperamental FGLRX software and removing it, and installing the open-source Radeon version and doing the same thing, and nothing, absolutely nothing worked! I was stumped, stymied and greatly frustrated. No matter how I tried to change things and rebuild my Xwindows environment…. nothing really “fixed” my problem! I always got the same stupid error… hundreds of them…

Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0″.

A funny thought eventually hit me,  it really came out of the blue. Is it possible that somehow I’ve gotten Nvidia ( a completely different and incompatible type of graphics card than what I have  – ATI remember ) software installed. I did a quick apropos command ( a quick way to check to see what you have manual pages for ) – i.e. “apropos nvidia” and found a bunch of manuals for all sorts of stuff….. and I thought – What the….??

So I removed them, and guess what? It actually fixed my problem….. but/and strangely the manuals are still there, so I’m not sure what is going on with that….

So here is what I did – in case you have/had the same problem.

• $ sudo apt-get remove –purge nvidia* ( this grabbed all sorts of nvidia “stuff” and deleted it all – save for the manuals…. )
• $ sudo apt-get remove –purge fglrx* ( making sure there wasn’t any of that around after intentionally installing it trying to fix things … )
• $ sudo apt-get install –reinstall libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa mesa-utils ( reintsalled the GL tools just in case they got whacked in all this … )
• $ sudo apt-get install –reinstall xorg xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core ( reinstalled the Xserver portions – making sure all is well… )
• $ sudo apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon ( reinstalled the open source drivers for my card… )
• $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg ( brought back the default xorg.config… )
• $  spat in my hand and spun around twice…. ( why take chances… )
• Restarted the computer… ( with fingers crossed… )

And Voila Unity popped right up and glxinfo and glxgears ran fine! For that matter so did all my other programs and my upgrade to Memoir44

So, it begs the obvious question. How did nvidia drivers get there in the first place? To be truthful, I really don’t know, but my gut tells me that it happened during the upgrade. So either the upgrade assumes you have nvidia ( I sure hope that’s not the case! ) or for whatever reason it reads my card and says – hey nvidia!! Which again is soooooo wrong! Any other ideas?

Alas, once again however it shows that Ubuntu, for the non computer type, can be a very VERY inhospitable place. Which shows that it still isn’t ready for the average user…. I don’t know, you think they’d focus more on making it work right the first time, instead of adding new bells and whistles and major changes every 6 months.

Wouldn’t you?!

It would start the main menu, but then fail when I tried to go further, complaining that the graphics card couldn’t handle pixel shaders ( a feature found in advanced graphics cards – which mine supposedly does. ) and I did my usual Google search looking for what other people may be trying or having problems with, and hopefully what they may have found that worked…

The best potential hit was on the RealFlight forum itself…. Which sort of made sense, if anyone has had experience with that sort of problem, I’ll probably find them there… and I actually found someone who was actually trying to get it to run in Wine ( another type of Windows emulator for Linux .) He was having problems getting the software to find the controller. I responded to him that I had installed RealFlight on my Virtualbox and it looked like it saw the controller ( it actually insisted that it be plugged in before continuing ) but that I ran into a pixel shader problem and thought that perhaps we were getting close because the main menu worked on my machine, but when I tried to go further the shader problem popped up. I asked if anyone had any experience with this issue and what they might recommend…

There were several others who mentioned that yeah, they tried too, but couldn’t get it to work and one or two who mentioned basically “give up” it’s a Windows program and it is only ever going to work on a Windows program… I mentioned that we may be starting to get close… and it was like I had pushed a button…

To minimize everything down to it’s sorry bottom line it was a case of whatever I said – I was wrong, because whatever the other person said – he was right. It went from being what I hoped would be a fun, fruitful and interesting discussion – to a negative response to whatever I said including all sorts of  “been there, done that, dont work” type comments from the other end. No real information on what was tried and what happened, just a straight out – “wont work because it wont”

It reminded me a lot about some of the other great blogs and forums that are out there ( ZDNet, PCMag, CNet, etc ) where ideas are raised and hopefully discussed, and questions are posed looking for answers, all of  which inevitably melts into a Linux/Windows/Mac sucks because Mac/Windows/Linux is the only thing that ever works right and will always be the best and “I’m right, you’re wrong”….

We have at our finger-tips one of the most powerful communications tools that man has ever created!

But… more and more it looks like humanity is devolving beyond kindergarten kids with no manners… petty little experts in their own minds who think the world needs to hear over and over and over again why they are right, and you are wrong….

What a waste….

Those “virtuous” organizations responsible for the protection of all the “stuff’ ( sorry I’m trying to be kind here ) coming out of Hollywood and of course all the CD makers are actively leveraging and possibly succeeding in getting the British Parliament to pass an altogether immoral law there to shut down a households ( note I did not say individuals ) access to the Internet because someone copied what the powers may be consider ‘copyrightten material’ and that would even mean if it was their neighbour who piggy-backed on their unencrypted wireless access. So much for free wireless in Britain me-thinks….

What really makes the whole thing quite ridiculous is that both police forces and those super sneaky spook forces have pleaded with the government to NOT implement such a policy as it will then make their job a whole lot worse  ( and quite  possibly impossible ) than what it was before – catching the ‘real’ bad guys…. as this will pretty well guarantee that everyone will eventually move to encrypted addressing and messaging and who knows what else in the future….

I came across a really smart article today on this subject posted on the Times of London website – www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6896049.ece which I think lays the whole thing out quite nicely and points out both the extreme danger of implementing this sort of process AND the folly of it.

The article was written by Cory Doctorow who has found that by publishing his own works online for free, it generates interest and sales for his hard copies as well. I really don’t understand why the media moguls of the world ( mainly focusing on the US of course ) don’t do the same thing, or better yet, DO IT BETTTER!

Instead, when they “sort of embrace” the Internet they still screw it up… Case in point, many US networks are now allowing their reruns of hit shows to be viewed online. This is really important for those people who may have missed a key episode in an ongoing story etc and I think it’s great. Unfortunately, for what ever reason they have restricted access to the denizens of the US – which is great for them… but anyone else outside of the US  gets a wonderful message saying essentially “…sorry you don’t count”  This of course led to other companies who did a brisk business hiding ( for a fee ) peoples addresses and making them appear so that they could view that long lost episode…. which guess what….. has now led these brilliant media moguls to now take these nefarious businesses to court in order to get them to cease and desist from allowing non Americans from viewing these shows…. www.pcauthority.com.au/News/159360,picking-the-perfect-home-entertainment-box-hulu-blocks-international-access-via-witopia.aspx

I think Cory nailed it on the head….  these media moguls really are dinosaurs, who are trying to keep us in the dark ages.  I am actually kind of surprised that they let HD TV’s get into the market place…. obviously the lure of making $$$ out of selling over-priced blue-ray disks blinded them from the fact that I really don’t want to see most of these actors in all their “made up” glory….. some of them look quite scary in large screen high def!

Here is a small bit of that article that Cory wrote in the Times ( which I have taken from Cory’s website in order to hopefully avoid any copyright guards out there…. )

Even more radical is the Mandelson proposal to disconnect entire families from the internet if a single member — or a neighbour who uses their internet connection — is accused, without proof, of violating copyright. Leave aside the fundamental injustice of collective punishment, a practice so abhorrent that it is outlawed in the Geneva Convention; think instead of the utter disproportionality of this.

The internet is an integral part of our children’s education; it’s critical to our employment; it’s how we stay in touch with distant relatives. It’s how we engage with government. It’s the single wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. It isn’t just a conduit for getting a few naughty free movies, it is the circulatory system of the information age.

Read the full article on the Times Website -  “Denying physics won’t  save the video stars” you won’t be disappointed….