Current location:	Home
Current mood:	frustrated
Current music:	Seal - Amazing
Entry tags:	diary, linux

Unexpected surprises
Considering that Kubuntu 7.10 was recently released and I already downloaded the CD image, I've decided that I will install it over Vector tonight. Now I don't have much against Vector - it seems like a nice distribution and it hasn't failed me yet as well as being pretty fast on my old 800MHz Pentium3 desktop machine, but being based on Slackware, it has a very poor repository where I can barely find any software that I need. I couldn't easily make it perfectly synchronize with Kubuntu on my laptop and some of the limitations this imposed on me kind of annoyed me to a point where I felt like trying the latest Kubuntu out...

Alright then - let's begin: I burnt the Kubuntu image to a CD, backed the necessary files up to my mobile hard-drive, shut the box down and connected one of the CD-ROMs. I boot the machine up and realize that the disc doesn't want to boot - it keeps on being read for quite a long while (after which, Vector's booter starts, pointing out that the boot from CDROM has failed). I checked the disc on my laptop and it worked, so it's clearly the CD-ROM that's broken.

"No problem", I thought, I have another CD-ROM installed underneath! I've connected that one instead and figured that the lower CD-ROM doesn't want to open up and some tray-forcing will be necessary. Forcing the tray out got me a rather nasty surprise - one of the ripped rubber stripes came out along with the tray, showing a clear fact that this drive is also not operational. That got me rather annoyed since the 3rd CD-ROM I had laying somewhere, had its BIOS messed up and wouldn't work. A better-than-nothing attempt to plug it in and use it confirmed that little fact for me.

So there I am now - 3 CDROMs, all broken supposedly, and no way to install Linux tonight. PXE is something I prefer not to mess with 'cause I feel this will cause me a good (and I mean bad) headache too and I don't need it in the middle of the night... I effectively give up for tonight and will have to wait for my brother to wake up tomorrow. Hopefully, I can borrow a drive from him for this purpose. If he has no spares, I'll have to do some shopping...

Conclusion: Mission Failed