Please, Release me, let me go…. and print

So, the campus is getting the print control system that the Library staff have wanted for so long.  Yay!

Thanks to the preparation, however, it’s being done up in a major way, by replacing all the i.d. cards with new ones, and a system to have the cards act like on-campus credit cards — pay for printing, meals, bookstore, and a growing range of things.  It’s a lot of work for our campus IT people to help the contractor set up, but it looks like it’s going to be a great system.  21st century tech stuff.

The contractor is Blackboard (that is a statement, not an endorsement or criticism), another branch of the company that does the campus learning software system.

Of course, that means that the Library (like many other places on campus) needed to have Printer Release Stations for each printer location.

The subcontractor for this is Pharos (that is a statement, not an endorsement or criticism).  You hit print at a computer, you get a popup option to password-protect it, and the job goes to the Printer Release Station.  If you show up within 2 hours (before the job automatically deletes), you can enter your password (if you used one) and print the job.  That alone will save paper, as we have a lot of waste just from jobs sent to the printer that aren’t ever picked up.

If you notice that you forgot a footnote just after you printed, then you can print again, but only release the last version.  That saves printing a version you don’t want.  More saving paper and toner, not to mention wear and tear on the printers.  Looks greener all the time.

We do have students who bring their own laptops.  That’s a little more complicated.  We have Windows 32-bit systems, Windows 64-bit systems, and Macs among students.

Windows 32-bit systems are usually 2GB of RAM or less (XP and older Windows don’t handle RAM larger than that very well).

64-bit systems (3GB or more of RAM) are usually Vista, and soon Windows 7.  It seems that when Vista proved to be slow on some new computers, vendors went to the slightly faster 64-bit version of Vista to make performance look better… but 64-bit systems have more compatibility problems, including with printer drivers.

Now we’ve got a 32-bit Windows driver and a separate 64-bit Windows driver, and we have a handout explaining how to get the right one.  That is, provided the student knows the difference, which many don’t — they just bought what was on sale.  So, we’ll need to help them with that from time to time.  I think the instructions I did up will cover most cases.

Then we have students-+ with Macs.  The catch is, we are a primarily Windows campus.  (Please, no judgements or advice or proselytizing — I don’t make the decisions, I just try to deal with them.  Besides, I do Windows.)  I don’t have a Mac to experiment with, or save screen shots on, and neither do the tech people, so at this point, Mac users will just have to save their files off in .rtf format and bring them up on a Windows computer to print.

The printer drivers are “universal” drivers for HP printers.  That means that the handful of other printers on the network may choke, but that’s not a big factor.

Now, aside from paying the Cashier, there are going to be two quick ways to put money in your account — online using a credit card, and through a special station on campus using money or a credit card.  Of course, that device is not cheap, and since non-students will need it to pay for printing/copies at the Library, we ended up hosting the single PHIL for the entire campus.

PHIL stands for Payment Headquarters In Location.  Personally, I think of it as Payment Headquarters in Library, but I’m admittedly biased on the acronym.

PHIL is a metal box, which we mounted on the supplied metal stand.  It won’t have much money from cash; most people will use credit cards to top up their accounts, we expect.  Public users will be able to purchase cards, and then put money on them to pay for printing, which is likely to stay down to a couple of bucks at a time.  Screen in front will show you your balance, let you deposit money in your account, or buy a card.  Pretty simple.  Basic black and fairly discreet.

Naturally, some people will not be entirely content with having to pay when they’ve printed for free all this time (except for our color printing service, which at this point is still not on the card system yet).  But, everyone else is charging — often more than we will — including the public library.  And students will get some free credit on their cards each semester to start with.  It should make them more aware of the cost of things, and that’s something they need to learn before they go out in the big wide world where everyone else expects payment.

TANSTAAFL – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  (Anyone remember their Heinlein?)

The Burro is back — sort of

[updated 2009.9.10 see at bottom]

The drawback to upgrades is that you may improve one thing while breaking another.

Case in point: going from Firefox 3 to 3.5, I lost the BookBurro addon.

Now, BookBurro is a really nifty (and judging from posts, popular) addon for Firefox, which looks on pages for ISBNs and when you visit a page with one present, it offers a small block which you can click on to dropdown (or delete if you don’t need it).

The dropdown will show you a number of vendors and their pricing, to compare to whatever you’re looking at.  Example: I could look at something on a particular online store, it would give me prices at Amazon, Alibris, Half.com, Barnes & Noble, and several other online stores that can be selected in the options.

It also allows you to check WorldCat and a number of library OPACs which are searchable by ISBN.

There are links to the relevant pages on those sites.

Obviously, invaluable for librarians and other booklovers, especially those of us doing the ordering.

And it hasn’t been updated — despite a personal unanswered email request from me to the author, and a number of forum posts and tweets from others — for Firefox 3.5 as of Sept. 9, 2009.  It’s a freebie, after all, and perhaps the talented and clever author Jesse Andrews (stroke, stroke) just hasn’t had a spare moment to get back to it.

HOWEVER — there’s a (slightly) risky workaround hack for this.  Basically, it consists of turning off the compatibility check in 3.5 for addons.  Lifehacker provided it in one of their posts which was originally intended for Firefox 3 Beta, but works for 3.5.

This means that you can now install addons which may or may not work reliably with 3.5, without warning, and some things on BookBurro may not work completely or properly, but that’s the price of the hack.  So far, I think it’s worth it.

I dropped a strong hint to an Alibris rep today that they look at it, and encourage the author to update it.  Alibris isn’t working perfectly now anyway, as they have multiple (used and new) prices, so they need two lines or something arranged.  Any other reps that anybody sees, please suggest they ask/help to pay for this to be upgraded.

[update 2009.9.10]

Jesse Andrews kindly DID respond to my email just after I posted this, and commented to it as well.  Check his comment.  Looks good for an update!  I’m glad to hear it!

3,901

I think we’re (the campus) entitled to boast a little.  Just a bit.

A post on Web4lib led me to a website that ranks institutions.  UA Fort Smith is ranked among more than 17,000 universities worldwide.  That’s more than 17,000, in the entire world, and how did we rank?

Well, the title gave it away.  3,901 in the July 2009 listing.  Catch it fast, they update twice a year.

Now, for a relatively small institution with less than 10,000 students, that’s only been a four-year university a few years, I think that’s pretty good, out of that many, in the entire planet.  That’s well within the top 6,000 (a range the site itself delimited as the “top 6,000″).

The site is available in English, although the ranking work is done in Madrid, Spain (no American bias), and the “Webometrics Ranking formally and explicitly adheres to the Berlin Principles of Higher Education Institutions. The ultimate aim is the continuous improvement and refinement of the methodologies according to a set of agreed principles of good practices.”

“… the current objective of the Webometrics Ranking is to promote Web publication by universities, evaluating the commitment to the electronic distribution of these organizations and to fight a very concerning academic digital divide which is evident even among world universities from developed countries. However, even when we do not intend to assess universities performance solely on the basis of their web output, Webometrics Ranking is measuring a wider range of activities than the current generation of bibliometric indicators that focuses only in the activities of scientific elite.”

I particularly noticed that “Webometrics Ranking is measuring the volume, visibility and impact of the web pages published by universities, with special emphasis in the scientific output (referred papers, conference contributions, pre-prints, monographs, thesis, reports, …) but also taking into account other materials (courseware, seminars or workshops documentation, digital libraries, databases, multimedia, personal pages, …) and the general information on the institution, their departments, research groups or supporting services and people working or attending courses.” [italics mine]

So I think the Library here was a factor in our standing.

Go, Boreham Library.   Go, UA Fort Smith!

Evolution of a code system

Fair warning: highly technical library cataloging talk in this specific post.  May have soporific effects on non-catalogers.

When the Library here first got OCLC, we were assigned 4-character codes for types of materials.  OCLC used these codes (in part) to assign the ‘above the call number’ indicators like “REF” for Reference materials, or “VIDEO” for videocassettes, to show where materials were shelved in the building, so they could print catalog cards for us.  (Yes, I’m that old.)

The codes looked like asza, aszb, aszc… you get the idea.  Those codes were for Nonfiction (circulating), Fiction, Reference, and on.  In time, we had to add more codes for new materials that hadn’t existed earlier, such as Compact Discs and DVDs and websites.

Years went by, we automated, then we changed automation systems.

Once we got the Innovative Interfaces Millennium system, we assigned codes more or less in line with these.  We had codes for bibliographic records and codes for item records (among others).  If a book had a CD inside, for example, then the bibliographic record had a book code, and there was one item with a book code and a second item with a CD code.

I had wide categories (Books, Serials, AV Media, etc.) in the BCode1 group (here called BGeneral) in the bibliographic records.  Item records (1 per barcoded item) were attached to bibliographic records.

The location codes in the item corresponded to the OCLC 4-letter codes (asza meant Nonfiction – 1st East, meaning 1st floor east side, for example).

We had BCode2 (a.k.a. here as BType) and, in item records, ICode2 more or less matching it.  For example, we needed to have a BType of just Reference, but the item records ICode2 (and locations) had to be divided into Reference and Reference Oversize as separate locations.

We had codes scattered along the alphabet as they evolved.  If you wanted all the audio-visual media, you had to ask for this OR that OR that OR that OR that OR… it was a chore to set up a search.

Then I recently learned from the IUG (Innovative Users Group) elist that the symbol for ebooks, which Innovative had some years back designated as “@” (at) was now a problem with their newer software, which didn’t read the @ but considered it punctuation and therefore equal to blank.  This meant the Preferred Searches function couldn’t handle ebooks.  I needed to change the symbol for ebooks in BType and ICode2.

And while I was at it, since it was July and we were starting a new fiscal year and statistics, if I wanted to change the codes, this was a good time to do it.

Result: I revised the codes, and the codelist.

First, I lined up all the existing codes in a spreadsheet, and got the BType codes and ICode2 codes all matched up.  Some codes (such as ICode2 for Ref Oversize and Indexes) didn’t exist separately inside BType for Reference (they all just got coded BType for Reference), and didn’t need to be created.  Some ICode2 codes such as Scores and Microformat Books didn’t exist separately and didn’t need to be created, and so on.

In Millennium, we mostly use ICode2 codes to take counts for inventory purposes.  Since we don’t need to barcode ebooks (for example), we don’t bother to create item records for them, unless we need an item record to function within the EReserves system (if an instructor put an ebook on his/her Reserve list, we would need to create an item record — without barcode — just to attach to the instructor’s list, but not to count on inventory).  So, ebooks are counted by the BType for ebooks rather than an ICode2.

Then along came the titles where we had both paper and ebook formats.  So, we put the ebook code in BType (where ebooks are counted) and the paper type in the ICode2 of the item record containing the barcode (where the paper copy is counted) so both versions are counted in their respective material types.

Anyway, I wanted to group the codes better, so that instead of “this OR that OR that OR that” I could search for codes in the range “this to that” and have an easier time setting up a search.

I also cleaned up a few odd problems, fixed a few records with wrong codes, and separated our ebooks into fiction and nonfiction.

I created a file for each code that was going to change and used names with “btype= w > d” to indicate that code w was going to become code d.

Then I revised the codelist, the web manual pages, the saved searches in Millennium, the saved templates for records in Millennium, etc.

Someday I’ll probably have to do it all over again, but for now, I think this arrangement will work for us a while.  If anyone setting up a system finds anything useful in this, that’s nice, too.

Tipping My Fedora, part 4

[updated 2009.7.20]

This is another in a series of posts on my attempt to get acquainted with Fedora on VirtualBox.  YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), of course.

[The computers are a Windows XP Pro 32-bit (2GB RAM with 512MB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox) and a Vista 64-bit laptop (4GB RAM with 1GB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox).]

====================================================

I admit to being something of an empiricist when it comes to computer systems, since I often have to test things that others will be using.  Can I figure it out myself?  Is the answer in the Help file?  (A huge amount of what people think makes me an “expert” is just what I’ve learned by actually reading Help files.  Who’d a’ thunk?)

So, I’m just trying out some things and reading up on others.  That’s why this might seem more than a little haphazard at times.

Screen adjustments

Still a bit erratic on the screen.  I may have to go to CTRL-F full screen once or twice, and try multiple times, before CTRL-G resize screen gets me the maximum Fedora screen within the max VirtualBox screen (my ideal, as this allows me to use the VirtualBox icons to keep track of hard drive access, etc. while still getting the most Fedora real estate possible).

Add/Remove Software

This is a function under System dropdown menu, but it turns out to be a lot more than the one of a similar name in the Windows Control Panel.

In this, you can pick a category, such as Education, Games, Multimedia, and many others, and get a list of possible programs.  Some of these are apparently included, but not necessarily loaded, while many others are downloadable from various sites.  Presumably they are safe enough for Fedora to approve putting them in these lists.  Most have a brief description of what they are used for; the clarity of the description depends on the program and how familiar you might be with some Linux terminology, especially for things like Administration programs.

When I open a category, I have a column of boxes — some opened with a checkmark next to them, which I’m assuming means they are installed.  Some are closed and the checkmark box is empty, but can be checked.  If I choose to install, say, a font I don’t have (closed box), I can check the box next to it, and then hit the Install button.

In some cases, Fedora wants to install additional software, and will tell me that, or uninstall or update something, and I’m told that as well.  Which is why it takes a lot of checking on stuff while you sit and wait.  Still, it seems to be a fairly automatic process, unless Fedora is unable to download something, and then you are told that.  The independent stuff is installed, and anything requiring a failed download is not (or not enabled, anyway).

BTW: remember to avoid using this on Mondays or Fridays if possible – heavy Internet-use days.

For example, I tried some additional wallpaper apps from the Gnome desktop group.  Fedora checked, and came back to tell me it needed an additional 22 packages to go with these.

So, I clicked the Install button (because there wasn’t a button labeled “Oh, all right, if you insist”) and off it went to do what I wanted plus the additional packages.  This actually seems to be a fairly cooperative process.

Then I searched some wallpaper in Firefox, downloaded it to Download, and used the “Wallpapoz” program now in the Accessories apps menu to change my wallpaper.  Seems to work, although the instructions could be more clear.

Printing versus Printing

I’ve noticed that once I print from Fedora, or do anything with printing in it, I lose the ability to print from that printer in Windows.  A minor conflict, but as long as I have more than one printer — and don’t configure one of them in Fedora — I think I can get by.

Supplies are wiki’ed

In honor of the change from pbwiki to pbworks (well, thrown in the honor), I’ve added a new page to the staff wiki for Supplies.

This is one of those “I’ve been meaning to get around to something for this purpose for some time” kind of things.

This is basically just a staff info page to keep everything important where we all can find it easily and quickly, when it comes time to reorder.

Caveat emptor: this is what we presently buy, based on our state contracts with vendors and other factors which may or may not be optimal for anybody else. We may not go to the same vendor or use the same product next time we order — this is just a starting point.  This should not be considered any kind of endorsement for the products or vendors listed.

We have some things that we don’t order very often (targets for the security system, barcode scanners, printer drums, etc.) and we end up shuffling through backfiles to find where we got them originally, or where to go for parts, or where we got that better deal.  This is intended to shortcut that process.

Office Supplies

Office supplies are usually cheaper from office supply vendors (rather than a library supply vendor).

Routine things like pens and paper clips and such, not needed.  But things such as “what’s the label stock number for those labels we use for …” are appropriate.

Library Supplies

Specialized library/archival-only supplies.  Targets for the security system, covering supplies, etc.

Equipment

This I broke down into sections like Audio-Visual (for things like headphones), Barcode Scanners, Printers, Scanners, etc., with links to my online manuals.

I think it will be useful  — to me and maybe to others here.

Tipping my Fedora, part 3

[updated 2009.6.17]

This is another in a series of posts on my attempt to get acquainted with Fedora on VirtualBox.  YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), of course.

[The computers are a Windows XP Pro 32-bit (2GB RAM with 512MB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox) and a Vista 64-bit laptop (4GB RAM with 1GB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox).]

I’m using the book Fedora 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux by Negus and Foster-Johnson [9780470413395] but not the included discs, as I wanted to make sure I had the latest version of Fedora, and I wanted to run it in VirtualBox as a virtual machine, so I could switch back to Windows when needed.  Having a big book on this can be a help in trying to learn a new system, although the variations due to running Fedora inside VirtualBox are not covered.

The book has tips such as:

* double-clicking on a folder to move down to a subfolder, or clicking the folder name at the bottom-left to move up to a parent.  This gives you a menu for selection.  This varies from the little green up-arrow folder in Windows Explorer.

* the “window shade” feature (double-click in the title bar “rolls up” the window instead of maximizing it) needs to be turned on.  System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Windows and in the pop-up, change Maximize to Roll Up. Not a perfectly working gimmick, IMHO.

Screen Resizing

I can log in, and once the Fedora is up, I can use the Auto-Resize Guest Display in VirtualBox (provided I have VirtualBox already set to full screen) to expand Fedora to fit completely inside VirtualBox.  There’s also a full screen option, but it’s easier to switch back to Windows if I just expand to size inside VirtualBox, and that’s enough to get a decent window for Firefox, etc.  (See Part 2 of this series for how that was enabled.)  Mind, it make take several tries to get it to work at times, and you have to have Fedora up for at least 2 or 3 minutes before it seems to want to work.

This also gives me access to the VirtualBox icons at the bottom of the window, which can help when I’m sitting wondering if anything is happening… oh, look, the drive icon is flashing.  Something is still working.  Fedora is not exactly encouraging on a lot of activities, as the little blue circling-around arrow doesn’t always appear for the cursor so you know something is going on.

Media Manipulating

I figured playing a few MP3 files would test the media capabilities… oops.

Fedora, it turns out, can’t do MP3 files.  It’s a matter of licensing.  So, I looked for and found a workaround called Fluendo and installed it, by downloading it (in Fedora using Firefox) and opening it, giving the root password several times in the process, and it installed.  Doing workarounds like this is something I expected, although not for something I had considered this basic (MP3 files).

Then I used Firefox to download some free MP3 files as samples and tried them out by importing them to Fedora’s Rhythmbox music player (which couldn’t handle MP3s before Fluendo).  Worked fine.  (I did this mostly just to see if I could get the connection to the sound card even through VirtualBox.)

The holders of the patent on the MP3 format wanted about 7 1/2 cents (according to the book) per system using this, and Red Hat decided not to include it (well, a lot of people just try Fedora out, much as I’m doing).  Makes sense.  Fluendo, however, legally has an unlimited MP3 license, so this stays within the law.  It’s free; you just can’t redistribute it.

(There’s actually a page in the Fedora wiki on “forbidden items.“  It includes commercial DVDs, since the format for commercial DVD discs is a patented one, so you may not see a lot of movies on Fedora machines without getting some extra software from somewhere — a popular source is rpm.livna.org .)

Terminal

I figured out — even before the book suggested it — that I needed to put an icon for the terminal function on the desktop.

Since Linux systems are aimed at multiple users, you log in as yourself, but often need to become root — the superuser (system administrator) to do certain things.  (I am Root, see me type.)

In the terminal panel, you get a prompt for you as user.  Type su - and enter (the hyphen added puts you in the root directory to begin).  The prompt will change and now you can install stuff, make changes, etc., that you were forbidden to do under your regular login.  Since you (supposedly) set your root password during the setup I described in earlier posts, you are better protected from malware, while using your regular login abilities, which might try to plant viruses, etc.  It does not make you immune to viruses and such; it just makes it harder than usual for the bad guys.

Of course, it also makes it more of an effort to install stuff, but that’s the tradeoff.

Future publishing?

I’m seeing a lot of “predictions” thrown around by various columnists and bloggers trying to foresee the future of publishing.

Ransom Stephens has “Booking the future” and it’s an interesting take.  The timeline, as usual, looks a bit fast (at least to start) but it seems like a pretty practical view of what could (should?) happen.

Tipping My Fedora, part 2

[last updated 2009.6.7]

I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the biggest obstacles in this Linux endeavor is the fact that I’m doing it over and over, trying to describe the steps each time, and each time I lead up to a Fedora that no longer will load, I have to start over and create a whole new virtual machine.  But some files may be updated, and therefore it may behave differently the next time.

Maybe that explains (in part) why, when I try to get advice from forums, the posts there always seem to skip steps.  After you go through something often enough, it’s certainly easy to leave out steps you’ve gone through before without remembering that others haven’t gone through them yet.

I’ll try to avoid skipping steps here.  I hope.  But I will skip a LOT of attempts to get things to work.

BTW: my work system is a Dell Optiplex 745 running Windows XP Pro on 2GB of RAM.  My personal laptop is Windows Vista 64-bit on 4GB of RAM.

In our last thrilling episode, I created a virtual machine in VirtualBox with Fedora 10.  The next step is to be able to control the resolution in Fedora 10 inside VirtualBox.  Better yet, to optimize Fedora to run in VirtualBox.

VBoxAdditions … eventually

Based on experience in several attempts at this, I went to the Applications dropdown menu, selected System Tools, and right-clicked on Terminal.  I chose to send a link for this to the desktop.  Believe me, you’re going to need to use Terminal a lot, and this is more convenient than digging down through the menus to load it each time.

The screen was still limited to 800×600 maximum.  Needed to find a fix for that.  Should be simple, right?  NOT.  There are a lot of people making suggestions in the VirtualBox forum.  None of them worked for me, and some of them locked up the Fedora so it wouldn’t boot up.  I had to delete it and reinstall it.  Several rounds of this ensued.

Loading packages into Fedora

I will consolidate and condense the advice that actually did work for me here:

1. Load Terminal
2. type su - (this will turn you into the root user, and the hyphen puts you in the root directory)
3. type yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel (this runs installations on a number of packages)

I got a Fedora popup about updates right after this. I approved it to install all updates.  There were a number of them, so I let it go a while and watched the little blinker dot on the VirtualBox hard drive icon flickering at me, sometimes orange, sometimes green, which probably means something for each color.

During this, there is a little open box with a green down arrow at the top next to the double-terminal icon for network activity, which indicates that downloading is going on, at least.  Then the box finally changes to a page in front of the open box, while it tests the changes.  Then comes a plus sign alternating with circular arrows while it does the actual installing.  Certainly resembles Windows in that it takes a while to do updates.  Go eat lunch.  A big lunch.  With dessert.  And gas up your vehicle while you’re at it.  Maybe change the oil, too.

While I waited for all that, I used the System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Screensaver to set it to 30 minutes and not lock me out.  10 minutes default isn’t much time, especially while you’re waiting for updates.

I also tried something from the book, which is to right-click on the top toolbar, and select Add to panel.  I picked a Drawer to add, and then right-clicked on the narrow little thing’s properties so I could widen it out some.  I put on some widgets: a system load indicator (now I had that CPU activity meter!), sticky notes, and a shutdown button.  I added a weather widget to the bar itself.  Now I could open a drawer and use the widgets in there.  Just a slightly different way to get handy widgets out there.

Finally I get a completed message for the updates and the open box disappears.

Now I open the terminal again and — glutton for punishment that I am — I became root again and typed yum update just be sure.  I got “another app is currently holding the yum lock” and after repeating that multiple times, it finally got to check.  Everything is updated.

Installing the VBOXADDITIONS

Now the best advice I found says “By then it’s time for another run at that install script: [root@fedoravm VBOXADDITIONS_2.2.0_45846]# sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run – which should run smoothly now, install all the guest additions” — only what does that mean?   (Aside from the minor difference in VirtualBox versions, that is.)

It looks like root (judging by the root prompt of #) is inside the directory.  This is the kind of thing that makes Linux harder than it has to be — the advice skipped steps here.

Okay, right-click on the desktop icon for VBOXADDITIONS and look inside it with “browse folder”.  Aha!  There’s the VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run file.  Now I need to get to it inside the Terminal function as root.

Used the “up” green arrow in the browse function until I got up to a batch of folders, starting with “bin” and going on.  Okay, this is main directory stuff in Linux.  There’s the “Media” directory and the VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run file is in that.

Now that I know that, I can use Terminal and become root with privileges to run it.

1. Okay, log into Terminal.
2. Type su without the hyphen, to become root without being in the root directory — I won’t stay there anyway.
3. Type cd / to get to the main directory.  (Well, it used to work in DOS to change directories.  Seems to work here also.)
4. Type dir to see the subdirectories folders.  (Another old DOS command.)
5. There’s the “media” folder.  Type cd media to get into that folder.
6. Type dir and there’s the folder contents.
7. Type cd VBOXADDITIONS_2.2.4_47978 to get into that folder.
8. Type dir and there it is, listed with the other files.
9. Type sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
10. it runs!

And now it wants to restart.  Whew!  I do a full shutdown.  Restarts are not a safe bet.

Please note that you were not party to a LOT of attempts to get something else to work, before I found this advice.  And even then, it did not tell me how to get to the file in order to run it as root.

Success So Far

This time when I boot, I get a message that the guest OS supports mouse pointer integration and it doesn’t need to capture the mouse anymore, just use it over the Fedora panel.  Oh, joy!  Big improvement there, believe me, not having to swap back and forth.

Oh, and the time is correct in the top toolbar.  That bodes well.

And CTRL-F lets the Fedora FINALLY go to full screen mode, and toggle back and forth (you can’t switch to Windows while in full screen).  All the functions under Machine dropdown menu in VirtualBox now appear to be working.

Looks nice, and windows for stuff like Firefox finally allow the full width of the screen.

And it only took me… was it 10 or 11 attempts? — to get Fedora 10 to run properly in VirtualBox 2.2.4.  I hope it gets easier from here.

I took my notes home and tried it on my Vista 64-bit laptop system.  It worked there, too.  Due to the wide screen, I had to adjust the Firefox window a bit, but it worked properly.

So, it seems I can actually run a virtual machine for Fedora 10 inside VirtualBox on my XP Pro and Vista 64-bit systems.  At least, the basics seem to work.

Tipping my Fedora, part 1

[last updated 2009.6.7]

So, we’re planning to move our library web site onto a Linux server on the campus system (long story omitted, for which all should be grateful).

Finally I have a practical reason to learn Linux.  The question is, do I enjoy or dread it?  I’d like to like it, really.

First, bear in mind that I started out (way back in the ’80s) with a Radio Shack Model 3, upgraded it to a Model 4, and then moved to a 80286 and MS-DOS, Radio Shack Xenix, Windows 3.1, and onwards.  The point being, I started with text-based operating systems, so it’s not a matter of avoiding them just because I can’t do everything with a mouse.

And Linux, at this point, is still very text-based because you seem to need to do some kind of typed instruction or file editing every time you want to do just about anything, including even the basic setup.

As a number of bloggers and columnists have commented, this kind of technical tweaking is a big barrier to acceptance of Linux by the general computer-using public.  Granted, it allows versatility, but most people don’t want to bother with that.  I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of most of it, myself.

Special note: I’m going to skip a lot (a LOT) of the trial and error that went into this and just cover what actually worked in the end… mostly.  That will save a lot of space, believe me.  I’m also omitting all the “capture” dialogs when I go in and out of VirtualBox/Fedora back and forth to Windows.

Picking the distro

Linux comes in distributions, which are commonly called “distros” (not to be confused with “discos”).  The campus will use Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is a “pay” distro, for the web site.

However, Red Hat set up an interesting system some time ago.  They took the Fedora distro of Linux and let it be available for free, and when people developed and tested out enough new good stuff on Fedora, Red Hat moved it into the next version of Enterprise.  Very enterprising of them, even if I do pun that myself.

So, to get more familiar with Red Hat Enterprise, I can just use Fedora for free.  In fact, the book I got to help is Fedora 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible by Negus and Foster-Johnson (9780470413395).

VirtualBox for a Virtual Machine

However, I was a little wary of dual-booting using my work PC (Windows XP Pro) or even my laptop (Windows Vista 64-bit), because I would need to switch operating systems about 15 or 20 times a day at work (I get a lot of rush interruptions, like the rest of our staff).  I had to be able to switch back to Windows to use programs there (many of them not compatible with Linux).

So, I decided to try using VirtualBox to create a “virtual” machine on each computer and then installing Fedora inside that.  That, of course, creates a separate set of problems and fixes, but that should be interesting.

I did look at some other virtual systems, but this was the one that seemed to have the most functionality with “guest” OS (operating system) while handling various systems on various host systems.

Off we go….

Downloads

First, I got the latest distro of Fedora, which turned out to be version 10.

Now, Fedora comes with either a Gnome (default) or a KDE graphic interface.  Pick one.  Or, pick both and try them both as separate installations.  I don’t know yet which one will be on the campus server, but I’m not sure it matters all that much for what we’ll be doing to manage the web site.

I created a folder in Windows for all the Linux stuff, and started downloading.

Downloaded the stock version of Fedora, which apparently uses Gnome.  This is freeware.  I had the option to get the version with the KDE interface, and I got that on my laptop at home, just to see the differences.

I also got the freeware for VirtualBox which allows me to run other operating systems (such as Windows or Linux) like a program inside Windows.  (You can also run Windows inside Linux, but that’s not relevant to my situation.)  You can set up several different virtual “machines” and start up whichever one you choose — say, have both Gnome and KDE versions of Fedora, a copy of Ubuntu, a beta version of some new system, etc.

Initial Setup for Fedora in VirtualBox

I loaded VirtualBox (version 2.2.4) and it showed a window with a “new” blue sun (well, it’s a Sun product).   This lets you set up the virtual machine for each system.

I set it up by naming my new virtual machine “fedora 10″ and giving it 512MB of memory to work with (out of my 2GB, so that’s 25% of my memory and still more than the minimum of 256MB recommended by default).

I pointed the CD/ROM to the F10-i686-Live.iso file  (to start with) to use.

I set a shared file pointing to the directories where I keep some HTML files, so I could use them in the browser in Fedora, and the Linux downloads, and I set a USB device filter up so it would detect my printer on a USB port.

I also set it up with an “expanding” default space of 8GB to start, so anything I added or changed would have room to be saved.

Once I had that, I used the green arrow “start” button.  Things progressed.  Patience was certainly required; sometimes there are long pauses with little or no activity shown in the VirtualBox “guest OS” window.  I sat there wondering if the program had locked up or what, and then something would happen…  but the little icon for the drive activity (a single CD) kept blinking at me every little bit, so I kept waiting.  (There’s also a little blue spinning arrow around the cursor some of the time, which may or may not be visible depending on the type of action.)

BTW (By The Way): the virtual machine shows up as a window inside the VirtualBox window, and while you can enlarge the VirtualBox to full screen, the virtual machine window of Fedora stays at 800×600 by default.  There is a “resize” option in VirtualBox but that just reduces the VirtualBox to fit around the 800×600 panel.  The “Auto-resize guest display” function in VirtualBox is grayed out at this point.  There’s supposed to be a way around this — more later.

The initial login is “automatic” so I did that, and Fedora loaded, using the .iso (“Live”) file to run.

Now I had a nice 800×600 window with Fedora inside VirtualBox.  VirtualBox has something in the icons along the bottom of the window for the USB (which says the printer is on that) and a file folder (which says the shared files I set up are there).

Whenever I clicked inside the Fedora window, I got a little popup from VirtualBox saying that Fedora could capture the cursor/keyboard action for use in Fedora, and I could swap in and out of that using the right CTRL key.  When I approved that, I could work in Fedora.  I could get out by hitting the right CTRL key again.

Fedora 10 has the taskbar at the top with Applications  Places  System and the Firefox button and one for the mail/calendar app provided.  Fedora 10 with Gnome comes with a nice little batch of basic application software like Firefox and ABI Word and such.

In the “panel” (Microsoft doesn’t like you to say “window” when it’s not in Windows, apparently — but at least Linux didn’t elect to call them “doors”) below, are icons for Computer, liveuser’s Home, Trash, and an opened box with a disc saying Install to Hard Drive.  For starters, I am simply “liveuser”.

The “install to hard drive” function lets Fedora (inside VirtualBox) set up a space on my hard drive so Fedora runs faster from that and I can do some long-term work that gets saved.   I started with that and doubleclicked.

Little green dot flashes on the single CD icon at the bottom of the VirtualBox window.  Got a big white box with a small Fedora graphic and a Next button.  Clicked on that.  Got to select my language (U.S. English, as opposed to U.S. International or United Kingdom).  Got to choose a host name, and the default was localhost.localdomain, so I went with that.  Select a city for time zone — but nothing in a lot of states in the middle of the U.S., so I ended up with Chicago as being in the same time zone as Arkansas, at least.

Root password was next, so I set that.  Very important, as I was going to need to do a lot of stuff as root.  Warned my choice was “weak” but stuck with it.

Next I got a scary warning:

The partition table on device sda (ATA VBOX HARDDISK 8189 MB) was unreadable.

To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on this drive.

This operation will override any previous installation choices about which about which drives to ignore.

Would you like to initialize this drive, erasing ALL DATA?

Very nice — obscure, confusing, and scary, all in one.  Went to the VirtualBox forum, and finally learned that all this does is format the one little spot you already reserved, and not your entire hard drive.  Given that Fedora doesn’t “know” it’s running in VirtualBox, it also doesn’t “know” that it’s only formatting that one little spot only, rather than setting up a normal boot.  I can cut it some slack on that, but it’s nerve-wracking the first time.  I thought that’s what it meant, but I wasn’t eager to find out that I had guessed wrong.

I told it Yes, and it then moved to another screen about partitioning the hard drive.  I didn’t change anything, but I did check the Review and modify partitioning layout box so I could doublecheck on what was being done.  Yes, just the one little spot being done, according to the layout screen — under 8GB.

Another warning, and then an install boot loader option, which I left in place.  Approved that and moved on.  Another option about replacing files, and approved that (the default was to stop, but I changed it).

Copying live image to hard drive was shown, and the blue line crawled slowly across to mark progress while the little blue arrow circled around the cursor.  Don’t plan on doing much while this is going on, but you only do it once per virtual machine.

Finished up and displayed a congrats screen and told me to reboot the system.  That only means rebooting the virtual machine, not the entire PC.

Went back to the Fedora desktop, and System dropdown menu, and selected Shutdown (not Restart – I needed to change something in VirtualBox) and went through those steps.

Fedora 10 showed up as “powered off” in VirtualBox, so I changed the CDROM in the VirtualBox Settings (that’s why I shutdown rather than restarted) to use the Host CD and checked the “Passthrough” box, using the E: drive (not the D, which would be my hardware CD drive) and then started Fedora 10 again.  You don’t want to use the same .iso file as before since that is for a “Live” version, and you are running on the virtual E: hard drive now.

This time the little VirtualBox icon that looks like a stack of CDs indicating the virtual hard disk was the one with the blinking green dot activity.

Welcome screen, ready to finish the setup.  It wanted to create a standard user and password, for when I didn’t need the extended authorizations of root.  I set up a login for that.

Time and date came next, and I set the time.  It then asked permission to send info on my PC’s configuration to Fedora, and I agreed (nothing confidential in there — I checked).

Now it showed a login for the user I’d just created, and “Other”.

After logging in as my regular user, I got the desktop, but now my user name was on the Home icon.

Now I went up to the Devices menu in VirtualBox and clicked on Install Guest Additions and it told me the software should be automatically started, and asked if I wanted to run it.  I approved.  It installed the VirtualBox Guest Additions and now in the VirtualBox window it showed that .iso file as the CD/DVD-ROM image (instead of the E: drive).

That created a desktop icon with a CD graphic labeled VBOXADDITIONS_2.2.4_47978 .  That showed I was using the VBoxGuest Additions for this release of VirtualBox, which made it more compatible with use in VirtualBox (I certainly hoped).

I checked System and printers — and no printer.  It searched and didn’t find it.  I turned my printer off and back on, and got a Windows popup for the VirtualBox USB to be installed, so I installed it.

Shutdown Fedora, and start it again — this time with the printer showing in the VirtualBox USB icon.

System > Administration > Printing and install a printer.  Looked for and found my Canon inkjet.

Now, Linux apparently has some trouble here, as a lot of manufacturers haven’t bothered to create printer drivers for Linux.  I did some checking, and the one for a printer can be found at the Linux Foundation site search box.  The one for my Canon i560 was called bj8pa06n.upp (well, that’s certainly descriptive…NOT) which is described as “a set of UPP files for the Canon BJC-8200 which comes with Ghostscript 6.50 or newer”.  I looked for the BJC-8200 in the list instead and used that one, and did a test print.  Seemed to work fine, so I went with that.

Still stuck at 800×600 resolution.  That’s next.