Yesterday was a bad bad linux day for me. It all started when RedCarpet reported that I didn’t have the latest
release of Evolution installed. I was sure I had and the about screen reported I had 1.0.1 installed, but I was a little
annoyed by that message so I tried upgrading. Well Evolution rpm downloaded and Red Carpet crashed. Ok, well
I
am not one to be detered by such an occurence so I tried running rpm from the command line instead to upgrade
Evolution. Well it failed due to the rpm process that redcarpet had started still hanging around, and the process
was not killable. Ok, well being the resourcefull chap I am I tried rebooting. Ok, computer rebooted and trying the
RPM of evolution once again. No, it reached 81% and rpm segfaults. Hmm, ok tried one more time this time
using
–nodeps and –force parameters. No, this time reaches 81% and then full stop, had to close the terminal window.
Ok, new reboot. Tried uninstalling old evolution and then install new one, same story segfault at 81%. New reboot.
Ok tried another Evolution rpm, this time the one from gnomehide. No 74% this time and segfault. New reboot.
Ok, tried compiling Evolution myself then.Hmm, needed db3 3.1.7. Ok, got hold of that and tried making a rpm of
it
which would install under /opt. No go, the shitty think still installed under /usr. Ok, well having it installed I tried
once again compiling evolution, but this time it complained about not finding db3 library. Argh. Gave up on that an
installed original RH rpms again. Ok, rebooted again. Linux failed to boot, hmmm, /home not valid…hmm.
Ok, now I had some problems with partitions going to hell when I first tried installing the SGI XFS 7.2 version of
linux, but the error had gone away. Now it seems to be as if the XFS setup somehow manages to corrupt
partitions
if you boot your computer many times with say 15-20 minutes intervales between each time.

Ok, so now my home partition was blown to hell and I lost all my mail for the last 2 months, my latest article and
the latest GNOME summary. Luckily I had sent Erik a copy of my article earlier same day so that I can get back
and the GNOME summary I had commited to CVS a earlier draft of. So it is just my mail that is gone with the
wind.

So now I am going to reinstall using basic RH7.2 and using ext2 as file system. Those journaling systems has
not
given my anything but grief.

Took of some steam by downloading the Return to Wolfenstein Demo and blow away some people on the
internet.
In the mood I was it was extra fun to kill those who believed themselves my allies.

One of the challenges with working with free software is
that of overextending oneself. Once you are familiar with a
project there is always 10 times as many tasks as there is
time to actually do them, especially if you want to do them
well. Last year I sometimes felt like I was doing to much,
which in the end meant I just did to little many places
instead of doing enough a few places. So my new year
resolution is to try and limit myself a little more and
instead focusing on a few things and do them well instead of
spreading myself thin on a million tasks and do none of them
in a satisfactory manner. So for this year I think I will
try to focus on doing the GNOME Summaries and helping out on
GStreamer. That means I will try not to get much involved in
GNOME website work or offer to help out with this and that
on a lot of other projects which I did last year, this also
means I will continue having a rather low output rate of new
articles.