Things That Go Bork in the Night

I spent the last two nights migrating a friends shop to linux. Since we were pretty much just flying by the seat of our pants, we planned to make One Perfect Install and just copy the image over to the other 10 stations. Since the other boxen were identical copies of each other, it was a feasible idea.

So we made the One Perfect Installation, which took us the better part of 4 hours. Then, while imaging the Perfect Installation, thunder and lightning flashed in the toilet, the beer in our bottles started boiling, and the light started fading (no there was no power outage). And then, a sound....

BORK

It was hideous I tell you. Nothing can compare to the sound of a bork in the night. Especially if its a rush job and it happens after hours and hours of tweaking and getting the exact functionality you want, this sound will make your skin crawl...

=Þ

Well, while overly melodramatic, it does make its point. No one wants things to go bork, specially in the middle of the night. But at least, we managed to finish the next day (after another two borkings though, one bios failure, and one corrupted drive). All in all, it was a good experience (rewarding too - cha-ching$$), and I got the install routine down pat.

Now, in updating linux nvidia drivers, I find that after installing the driver, the quickest way to update the xorg.conf is to run xorgsetup (as root of course).

Step by step, its go to init 3 (or 1, whichever you prefer) run the nVidia Installer, accept the TOS, and then no to the first question, and yes to everything else. After that, xorgsetup, and yes to everything. Ater that, vim (yes, I enjoy vim very much, thank you) /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and go to the line that says Load "dri". On that line, hit dd, escape, then :wq [enter]. Restart X (by going back to init 2 (if Ubuntu) or 4 (for Slackware) or 5 (for everything else), and everything is smooth as silk.

As for winex (can't call it cedega, because it's a precompiled tarball without point2play), Counter Strike runs amazing. Install HL (licensed, of course) using winex from the command line (it was winex3 for me), then the update, cs patch and the podbot addon. Start with winex3. Under the video settings, switch over to openGL, and to whatever resolution your card/screen can handle. I must say, I have never seen CS work that smoothly under windows.

Well, the 10 units didn't give much of a problem, took me, maybe 30-40 minutes per machine (excluding OS installation time of course) to configure. I'm still working on Warcraft, and some talks are ongoing regarding some wildly popular online games developer and the shop owners.

I know, I'm barely coherent. Lack of sleep does that to you. You know how it feels. Admit it. Especially you, yeah you, the shop owner.

Anyway, anyone needs an assist in migrating? Drop me an email at jdevilla (at) eperformax.com, and lets talk turkey (Metro Manila area only, please, outlying areas only by agreement).