Thursday, January 15, 2009

A story of package updating...#1

Today is not a busy day. The work has been done soon enough. I have plenty of time left ... after finishing several newspapers, I decided to continue upgrading my old Linux PC at work. It is an AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz with 512MB RAM. I took it over a few years ago before the IT guys would put it in the cellar. It has proved to be a good companion over time. Its only one defect is the on-board clock is unreliable. My clock tick is shorter than the normal clock. That meant, after setting it correctly with date, after one hour, it will run faster than the reference system for around 20 minutes. As long as I don't need to synchronize my work to the network, it is still acceptable (Although this is really annoy) I ever tried to synchronize it using NTP server but it did not help, so I gave it up.

After left it untouched for more than a year, I decided to update the system.
I started off from connecting my Linux from my Windows via XDMCP from cygwin with

$XWin -query linux-pc -screen 0 1280x1024

where 0 from screen option is the screen number and 1280x1024 is the geometry I want it to be. Or use the following command:

$XWin -query linux-pc :2

:2 is to tell the X server of the display number, the default is 0. You need to tell the X server of which display you have if you have multiple X accesses to the X server. The X server will assign a unique display number for each connection. Nevertheless, to enable network establishment between X client and server, you need to allow for X forwarding in your X configuration and keep in mind that this connection is insecure. It is therefore recommended only for home network.

One alternative to connect to Linux from Windows is to use VNC, although it has several advantages but using X via VNC is slower than using XDMCP.

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"What Every Computer Consultant Needs to Know:
1) In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
2) Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them."
Murphy's Computer Laws (Finagle's Rules)