I will provide instruction on how to fix the latter first, because usually gunzip should be installed by default. To create the proper file linking we will use the ln command, which is used to create links to files. So, all you have to do is first make sure you are logged in as root, then run the following command:

ln -s /usr/bin/gunzip /usr/bin/uncompress

Once this has been done try running the command you executed last when you received the “sh: uncompress: command not found” error. I last encountered this error when I was installing the Valve Source gaming dedicated server – SRCDS, and I was executing the following command – ./hldsupdatetool.bin.

Now, if you do not have gunzip installed, just login as root and use yum or yast to do so. Below is how you can install gunzip using yum.

yum install gzip

For starters, you should first see what hard drives and partitions are available. A real quick way to see the available hard drives in your system is to run the command fdisk -l. The results will give you some helpful information about the drive(s), as well as information on the partitions.

List of hard drives on the system.

I should point out that your hard drive or drives might be identified on your system as hd or sd. If you have multiple drives they will be identified by a letter, i.e. hda / hdb, or sda /sdb. The partitions on each drive will be identified numerically, i.e. hda1 /hda2, or sdb1 /sdb2. You can see this in the screenshot above.

Here is how to mount a hard drive in Linux.

First thing you should do is create a directory where the drive or partition will be mounted. In my case, I use the second hard drive for backups so I created a directory called backups. I set the permissions to 755, although others would recommend 777 – full read and write access for everyone. In my opinion that is a security risk, especially on an Internet accessible server. The command to create the directory and set its permissions is:

mkdir /path/dir name <= mkdir /backups
chmod 755 /path/dir name <= chmod 755 /backups

Now that we have the target directory, it is time to mount the hard rive partition. In my case the second hard drive has only one partition. It encompasses the entire hard drive.

mount /dev/partitionId /path/dir name <= mount /dev/sdb1 /backups

You partition should be permanently mounted now.

Here is how to unmount a hard drive in Linux.

To unmount a hard drive or a partition in Linux, the command is the same as when you are mounting the same, except you have to add a u to the front of the command. It becomes umount.

umount /dev/partitionId /path/dir name <= umount /dev/sdb1 /backups

Keep in mind that although when we refer to the procedure we use the word unmount, the actual command does not have n in the beginning.

After spending few minutes searching on the Internet, I wasn’t able to find much information on the problem. Next I decided to look for API documents and other help information published by Google. Seeing that the Google Buzz button works by sharing via Google Reader, the best place for the answer was in the Google Reader help docs . I found this post – Adding a ‘Share in Reader’ link to your website or blog.

The solution to the problem is very simple and logical. As “title” – the title of the item you are sharing, is to “url” – the address of the item you are sharing, “srcTitle” is to “srcUrl”. In which case the former is the name you want to use for the source of the item, and the latter is the address to that source.

... &srcurl=123&srctitle=numbers ...

The use of “srcUrl” is completely optional for your Google Buzz button, but keep in mind that if you do use this URI parameter, then you should probably also use “srcTitle”. Otherwise people will be seeing ”null” in their Google Buzz feed, and some of them might not like that and start deleting buzzed/shared item and eventually completely stop sharing your content.

By the way, you can set the “src Url” and “srcTitle” to anything you want. In my case, I am contemplating between setting them to to my blog’s home page or to the author’s post archive. I suppose the latter would be more crucial/useful when used on blogs or websites with multiple authors!

xbox 360, logo, controller

My XBOX 360 is kaput! It’s at the point where it won’t even turn on. Well, it does, but it immediately powers off everything but the Red Ring of Death (RRoD). It sucks. I have been having some issue with the Xbox for some time know. Recently I wrote about how I was experiencing some xbox video problems. Well, about a week or so ago, I lost video on it completely. The TV knows that there is something connected to it, but all I get is a black screen. Amanda came across a tutorial on how to check what might be wrong with the Xbox 360, through getting it to show an error code. Well, the error code I repeatedly received was 0102, which indicated that the Xbox has no idea what the problem might be.

We have had the system since 2005. So it is definitely out of Microsoft’s manufacturer warranty. I figured there isn’t much to loose by trying some of the hacks and fixes people have described on the Internet. Since it was already broken, what could happen? Brake it even further than it is? ….. hahaha, funny, now that I write this after the fact. What can I tell you … I have  indeed managed to brake a broken Xbox 360!

Back to the Xbox 360 hack on the World Wide Web. After reading number of issues and fixes described by Xbox owners, I decided to go with the 360 Hot Air Gun fix. Supposedly if the CPU and GPU, and some times the RAM chips are heated up, with a Hot Air Gun, to the point where the solder melts, it possibly can resolve the problem with the cracked solder joints and lack of conductivity between the chips and the xbox motherboard. Unfortunately for me this fix did not work, and “broke” the Xbox 360.

It will be easier for me just to go out and get a new Xbox 360 around Christmas than to keep trying to fix a 2005 Xbox 360. Hopefully newer models do not have the same issues. Although, I thought about simply picking up a new Xbox 360 motherboard from eBay, but I see that there are Xbox 360 Elite motherboards with the same issue, 4 year latter! I will most likely post this one on Craigslist for $50 or so to help contribute toward the cost of replacing it.

What is DNS prefetching? – It is the process of requesting domain name and IP (Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property) address resolution used in links, images, documents and other content linked to from a page a web surfer is currently browsing. Theoretically, by taking care of the name resolution before a surfer desires to navigate to a file or another page from a link on the current page can save fractions to X number of seconds. Name resolution being out of the way the surfer should arrive at its next destination faster. The former is my definition and understanding of DNS prefetching. In my experience, at leased in Google Chrome, I am able to see performance improvements.

I needed to know how can I tell if it is on or off. In Google Chrome it is in the options menu and it can easily be turned on and with a simple check-mark click.

Google Chrome DNS prefetching option.

But, in Firefox this is not a function in the options menu. At leased not at this time.

xbox 360, logo, controller

Over the weekend I had some lack of video from my XBox360. Nothing that some heat couldn’t fix. Apparently most problems with the Xbox360 are fixed by that which kills PCs – heat.

I have an XBox360, which is one of those that was born with bugs and “genetic” issue – meaning an early version – one from the early ones, made before the red ring of death became evident  and all the various versions started to come out. Luckily, I don’t abuse and rarely spend massive amount of hours playing it, thus I don’t have very many problem with it! Other than the occasional screen flicker and the constant refusal of the DVD-Rom tray to actually stay closed after attempting to close it. Apparently the DVD drive gets a bad taste from DVD discs and refuses to work with them. HAHA. My solution for the latter is to place my thumb on the drive tray and prevent it from coming back out, then pushing the open/close button again!!

This past weekend I experienced something new – the XBox booted fine and there was audio, but no video. The digital TV detected an active video source, but there was no picture. At first I was going to disassemble the XBox to look for problem myself, because the warranty had expired a long time ago. But then I decided to wait for Monday and call Microsoft and possibly sent it back.

After researching the problem in the global knowledge fix and repair database, i.e. the Internet, I was able to determined that 1) it might not be worth the money spend to sent it in for repair, and 2) the issue could be related to the heat sync on the video chip. Something about the x-clamp (see x-clamp fix video at the end of the post). A problem which is most commonly fixed by wrapping the Xbox in a towel causing it to overheat. I again considered taking it apart and performing the x-clam fix, because I wasn’t willing to wrap the XBox in something to cause it to overheat and possibly cause heat damage to other components. Before proceeding, I simply opted out to just turn it on and let it run heat up. I’ve noticed how hot it can get! About 20 minutes later I came back to check on it. I turned the XBox off and back on. Voila, there was video again! Problem fixed.

Now if that darn DVD-drive tray could stay closed, it would be great.

Whois domain record: Microsoft, YouTUBE, XBox

Last update: Thursday January 01, 2004 12:45:33 PM -0500

Hi everyone,

I hope this will be useful for all of you, who are having issues with updating to STEAM on Linux.

Here it is how after three days of sleepless headaches and swearing left and right at anyone and anything and trying to update HLDS 1.1.1.0, a Linux server update can be accomplished in 3 minutes.

The -(MP)- server is hosted remotely. The host company does not provide any support regarding Half-Life, only actual hardware and administration support.

To translate the above, I, as an admin of the account, have to do all installations and configurations of HLDS by myself and rely on what I can find on the Internet.

I did not have access to the root directory only the directory allocated to me by the host company. This means that I HAD to use – hldaupdatetool.bin, simply because the destination path is hard coded in the standalone installation file – hlds_l_1120_full.bin

This guide is on how to migrate* to STEAM with or without administrative privileges on the hosted / remote server.

* This is if you have an HLDS (1.1.1.0) installed but it is still under the WON system.

Go into the directory which contains the HLDS server. It usually is hlds_l

You need the steam file from the Valve FTP server. I use wget here to get the file, if your Linux doesn’t have wget, use the FTP program provided with your distribution to get it.

For those who get it by FTP, this is the server to get it from:

Server: ftp.valvesoftware.com
User: hlserver
Pass: hlserver
Remote dir: /Linux
File: hldsupdatetool.bin

bash$ wget ftp://hlserver:hlserver@ftp.valvesoftware.com/Linux/hldsupdatetool.bin

———–

You can get the file on the server by uploading it from your machine, as well.

We now have the file we need, now lets run it!

bash$ chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin
bash$ ./hldsupdatetool.bin

This will extract the steam utility. Now make it executable.

bash$ chmod +x steam

Now we are all ready to create an account for steam, and to get the files! But first, you MUST have the box administrator or yourself, create .steam directory in the root directory. Root in my case was the home directory of my account. I hade .steam permissions set to 777, just in case. The only file which will reside in the directory is a text file – ClientRegistry.blob

(1) You must have the .steam directory, for the utility to work.
(2) Change steam’s (the utility) permissions to 777.

./steam -create < username> < password> < question> < answer>

Here is an example how the fields will be filled out:

./steam -create you@youraddy.com hard2guess “is STEAM a pain?” yes

Now you know how it must be done so lets do it. Go make and account. Run:

bash$ ./steam -create you@youaddy.com hard2guess "is STEAM a pain?" yes

Steam will now update the steam client to the latest version

Getting version X of Steam Linux Client
Downloading. . . . . . . . . . .
Linux Client updated, please retry the command

It is updated, now we must restart the program.

bash$ ./steam -create you@youaddy.com hard2guess "is STEAM a pain?" yes

If all goes well it will respond with: Account Created successfully.

———–

If you have any problems with updating, you can run the process again, but make sure you have deleted ClientRegistry.blob file from .steam directory. After deleting the ClientRegistry.blob file, when you run the process from the beginning of section 3, it will be like you never executed the commands before.

To update the engine run the following command:

bash$ ./steam -update valve

This will update the HLDS engine. You will see it download all of the update files to the designated directories and sub directories. When it is done, all you have to do is start the game the way you have always started it.

Any questions and problems, feel free to contact me: Alexandar Tzanov