Web Design Programs, Jsp, Tomcat, J2Ee, Hibernate Programming Blog

Reduce the number of active programs.Stop running unnecessary ser- vices and applications that aren t related to the problem at hand. You maymore easily figure out what s happening if other services and applicationsaren t getting in the way. Check to see whether the problem is reproducible.Does the samesequence of events produce the same problem? Suppose that when you try to print to a color printer, nothing happens. If nothing happensevery time you attempt to print, the problem is reproducible. If, instead, sometimes your information is printed and at other times it isn t, theproblem pattern isn t the same and isn t reproducible or it s causedby something more complicated than just clicking one button. Unfortu- nately, problems that are nonreproducible are more difficult to resolvebecause it seems that no set pattern of events re-creates those problems. After you ve come up with a solution, take a few moments to document thesituation. Note the symptoms of the problem, its cause, and the solution youimplement. The next time you encounter the same problem, you can call onyour notes for a solution rather than reinvent the wheel. If you don t have any problems to troubleshoot (yet), document your envi- ronment beforeyou do. Making a backup of your /etcdirectory and your/bootdirectory is a great place to start. The Linux Installer Froze When you re installing Linux, the installation may just freeze. If it does, wait a bit and make sure that the installation program really froze. (Sometimes, the software just takes a while to process information.) If the software lookslike it has frozen, there s no harm in rebooting your computer and startingover just as you would do with any operating system installation. Some- times, you can reboot and never have that problem again. At other times, theproblem may happen twice in a row and then be fine the third time. Be sureto try several times before giving up. If the installation still freezes in the same spot or close to the same spot, goto the distribution s support pages (see Chapter 2). These pages may talkabout some known problems and solutions that can help you and shouldshow you how to join discussion lists in order to get more assistance. Otherwise, diagnosing the problem can be tricky and may seem more likevoodoo than science. Here are some tips: If this problem happens repeatedly at exactly the same spot, you mayhave a bad installation disk.If you re a Fedora Core or Red Hat Enter- prise Linux user, see the next section, For Fedora Core Users, and thenreturn here if that technique doesn t solve your problem. Otherwise, trythe disk in another machine if possible and see whether the installation370Part V:The Part of Tens

Chapter 20Ten Troubleshooting TipsIn This Chapter Dealing with frozen installations Changing your boot environment Recovering when you see some black-and-white text screen! Escaping a hung GUI Using multiple resolutionsTroubleshooting is like reading a mystery novel. You have some facts, symptoms, and details, but you don t know whodunit. You have to takewhatever information you have, work with that data, weigh the various possi- bilities, and then narrow them to a single suspect. Finally, you need to testyour theory and prove that your suspect is the guilty party. Troubleshooting problems in Linux (or any operating system) can encompassmany hardware and software issues. Whether the problem is the operatingsystem, the hardware, or a service giving you fits, you can use some basictroubleshooting techniques to start your investigations: Document the problem.Write down any and all symptoms that thesystem is showing, including actions you can and can t do. Jot down any information you see in error messages. Examine the Linux log files. You can find most of these in the /var/logdirectory. Look for the word error. Compare your problem system with a working system running thesame distribution and version. Sometimes, comparing configurationfiles and settings may uncover the problem or narrow the possibilities. Check connections.Check to make sure that all the hardware is con- nected properly and powered on. Verify that all cables and connectionsare attached properly. There s always someone, somewhere, acciden- tally kicking a cable out from a wall connection. Remove new hardware.Remove any hardware that you have changed oradded recently (before the problem started) and see whether the problemdisappears. If so, you can probably conclude that the new or changedhardware (or its driver) is the culprit and start researching solutions.

In this part . . . In this part of the book, I cover answers to the questionsmost frequently asked about Linux. I explain some keyLinux installation and setup points, as well as share moreroutine troubleshooting tips and tricks. I also talk aboutthe most popular bootable distribution: Knoppix. Ratherthan telling you just how to use Knoppix like any other dis- tribution (I figure you d like to have an installed machineso that you can enjoy it, rather than just using a LiveCD), you discover some cool ways to make use of Knoppix torescue floundering computers, including Windows boxes. I only hope you enjoy reading this part of the book asmuch as I enjoyed writing it!

Part VThe Part of Tens27_

If you re trying to find the .winedirectory in the GUI and can t see it, youprobably have to go to the View menu and choose Show Hidden Files. So, torun the program, I double-click it and, when asked what program to run it with, enter wine. That s it (see Figure 19-5). Now pull out those old Windows 95and 98 CDs and give them a try! Not all of them will work, but some probablywill. The cool thing is that you can keep trying them on and off over time asnewer versions of Wine come out. Figure 19-5: WINErunning anold homedesignWindows 98program. 366Part IV:Getting Things Done

Fedora Core:Available through yum, depending on what repositoriesyou ve added (see Chapter 12). Type yum search wineto find the available packages. Then, install both of them. For example, on my AMDAthlon machine, I type yum -y install winesetuptk wine.athlonin order to install the setup tool and the main program. Knoppix:From the main menu, choose WINE. Linspire:From the main menu, choose Programs.SoftwareDevelopment.CNR More.WINE for Linspire. Mandrake:Available through the package installation program (Chapter 12). Search for wine. (xwine is not the same as WineX.) SuSE:Available through YaST s software installation routine (seeChapter 12). You can find it in System.Emulators.PC .WINE. Xandros:Not available. The adventurous are welcome to go towww.winehq.org, click the Download link, and try to build this program from source code (see Chapter 12). You can find the Wine documentation at www.winehq.org/site/docs/ wine-user/index. Start in the Configuring Wine section. Now comes the fun part trying to run your old Windows software. Youdon t really run Wine, per se. Instead, you invoke Wine whenever you need touse something from the Windows world. To install a Windows program throughWine, insert the CD-ROM or floppy into the appropriate drive. Your distribu- tion might open the File Manager for you, or you may need to open the FileManager manually. Regardless, your goal is to run the installation routine, which is typically SETUP.EXE. You can double-click this icon in the FileManager and, when asked what program you want to use to open this file, answer wine. As I write this, I m trying some old home design program I bought back whenI was silly enough to think I d be able to afford to build a house before I wasninety. Because it s difficult to describe a standard Wine session, I thought I dwalk you through how this goes for me. The installer loads and runs just fine. I stick with the defaults (because Wineis still a work-in-progress and it s best not to taunt it with getting too fancy) and then wait while the installer adds all of the files to my SuSE system. Now, to run my new old software. To run a Wine program, I first need to know whatthe path is to that program. I can find it by looking in the ~/.winedirectory. In this case, the program was installed into /home/dee/.wine/fake_ windows/Program Files/HOUSE. The file house.exelooks like the one for launching the program. 365Chapter 19: Windows-Only Media Formats and Programs26_

Installing and Using WineAnd then there s Wine (www.winehq.org), a complete rebuild of MicrosoftWindows 9xfunctionality that runs under Linux. Wine is in many ways themother of everything in the previous section. However, because it s a freeand very complicated project, it s not quite as friendly as the commercial versions. It s kind of like the others but with all the makeup and hairsprayremoved. Some Linux distributions offer Wine RPMs directly on their installation CDsor through their packaging schemes. For the distributions covered in thisbook, do the following to install WINE for the distributions that don t have it already installed, or to start it for the distributions that do have it. (SeeChapter 12 for more details on installing software.) Figure 19-4: A VMwarewindowcontainingWindowsXP, butrunning in Linux. 364Part IV:Getting Things Done

VMwareIf you absolutely haveto do something under Windows itself but only haveone computer and it s running Linux (or vice versa, for that matter), there sVMware (www.vmware.com). This is a popular tool in technical support officeswhere people need access to many different kinds of machines to test things. It s also popular with authors, like myself, because it allows us to grab thosetricky screenshots of the boot process and installer screens. In VMware, you run a full session of another operating system (or even anextra session of the same one you re running on the main machine) withinyour desktop see Figure 19-4. If your machine is powerful enough, youcould have five different operating systems all running in their own windowson a single computer. A minus to VMWare is that it requires a bit of extra oomph in your system. Check out its requirements and then try to go as farabove them as you can. It also runs in a self-contained window. A plus, though, is that this programreally is the next best thing to buying another computer. Figure 19-3: The Trans- GamingPoint2Playinstaller. 363Chapter 19: Windows-Only Media Formats and Programs26_

CedegaMore interested in games than office tools? There s also TransGaming sCedega (www.transgaming.com), which was once called WineX. This versionof the free Wine project (see the upcoming section Installing and Using Wine ) is specifically designed to support Direct X, which is used in Windows to makeprogramming for multimedia and games easier. Subscribers have access toregular updates, allowing them to make use of their favorite games and alsoadd any games they like to the growing list of games that are being testedwith the system. Go to www.transgaming.com/searchgame.php, scroll to the bottom of thescreen, and click the Here link. A listing of all games, in order, appears so thatyou re able to find out what games are supported at what level. A handynew(ish) feature is the Point2Play installer (see Figure 19-3), which you can use to ready your computer for the Cedega experience. A plus to Cedega is, again, that you don t need to keep those Windows CDslying around. However, its support for individual games can be spotty, so besure to check the Web site before you invest in this product. Also, be sure tomake use of the help forums! Figure 19-2: Windows 98installingunderWin4Lin in a SuSE9.1 window. 362Part IV:Getting Things Done

What I most appreciate about CodeWeavers (and all these companies, really) is that they are very upfront about what works really well, what works exceptfor a few features, and what works not so well. All you have to do is checktheir Web site. For those who always seem to want to scream piracy when itcomesto Linux, you actually do have to own the programs you want to run(say, Microsoft Office) and install them through CrossOver Office off of their original CDs or DVDs. However, you don t have to own the version of Microsoft Windows the software would run under. CodeWeavers has built a re-implementation of the necessary Windows functionality under the hoodinstead. Are you an iPod and iTunes junkie? There s no Linux version of iTunes avail- able, but CrossOver Office lets you run iTunes under Linux. A plus to CodeWeavers CrossOver Office is that the applications run in indi- vidual windows just like every other program on your machine. A minus isthat not all Windows software is supported, because hooks have to be builtunder the hood for each new piece of software. CrossOver Office comes with the Xandros Deluxe desktop (available for instal- lation through the Xandros Networks, see Chapter 12) and is available forpurchase from the Xandros Networks store for other Xandros users. Win4LinAnother option is Win4Lin from NeTraverse (www.netraverse.com/). Win4Lin actually offers you a platform within which you install MicrosoftWindows (so have those CDs handy) and then run programs on top of it. Asof this writing, Win4Lin supports Windows 95, 98 (see Figure 19-2), and ME. Soon, it will support newer versions of Windows as well. A plus to Win4Lin is that it supports a more full range of Windows software. Aminus is that it runs in its own separate window, so its applications aren tintegrated into the rest of your desktop. You also have to actually keep yourMicrosoft Windows operating system CDs around because you need to beable to install the operating system into Win4Lin though you can then putthem in storage after you ve done the installation. You also end up having tohave a special kernel (boot session) to run Win4Lin 5.0, so if you hate reboot- ing, this program may not be the solution for you though you could justmake this your default boot option. Win4Lin is available for purchase for Linspire users through their Click And Run Warehouse; from the main menu, choose Programs.Utilities. CNR More.Win4Lin. 361Chapter 19: Windows-Only Media Formats and Programs26_