Linux Tidbits

rsync with ssh generation

ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub someothercomputer
rsync -ave ssh /localfiles/ remotebox:/localfiles

(note: add --delete to rsync for a proper mirror, or leave off for full backup)

Ubuntu Upgrade Issues

I had trouble getting from 8.04 to 8.10... I was getting an error

Package udev has broken dep on lvm2
  Considering lvm2 0 as a solution to udev 74
  Upgrading lvm2 due to Breaks field in udev
Investigating lvm2
Package lvm2 has broken dep on lvm-common
  Considering lvm-common 1 as a solution to lvm2 0
  Holding Back lvm2 rather than change lvm-common

The key was to upgrade lvm2 manually (something like apt-get install lvm2) which do-release-upgrade wasn't willing to do itself) then run do-release-upgrade again.

9.10 Console (tty) Issues (from gdm)

gdm didn't work properly when I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). The logon console like to flash and made typing impossible. Tracked it down to gdm continually restarting (/var/run/gdm.pid was changing all the time), causing some errors. Solution for my headless, logonless machine? Nuke gdm: sudo service gdm stop note that I had to do this twice -- the first time I happened to hit a moment when gdm was between restart cycles and got an error.

Also, just for kicks, I removed it from the startup directories:
sudo update-rc.d gdm remove

This did not work.

So I tried:
sudo update-rc.d x11-common remove

... testing ...

Also, for some reason /etc/rc0.d/K25hwclock.sh links to nowhere (was ../init.d/hwclock.sh, which is gone), so we removed it just for kicks.

Ok, no luck.

Physically moved /etc/init.d/gdm and /etc/init.d/x11-common

no luck.

Edited /boot/grub/menu.lst and replaced
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-386 root=UUID=36bc90a2-9dd5-46ac-8f5f-1b0860ce34a6 ro quiet splash
with
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-386 root=UUID=36bc90a2-9dd5-46ac-8f5f-1b0860ce34a6 ro

which let me see the bootup messages, but still screwed the tty up. Fortunately, I watched the boot -- the message that failed was during the Apparmor load, and it read:
setting up console font and keymap

Well, whatever. Installed fvwm:
sudo apt-get install fvwm
and made it the default, by editing /etc/default-display-manager and replacing
/usr/sbin/gdm
with
/usr/bin/fvwm

THAT worked.  :-)