Do you feel lucky?

Well do you…punk?

Mint is showing another Grub2 update. Will it fix any of my issues? Will it revive Manjaro from the dead? Of course I have documented how to get Mint working, at least if it’s the same problem. However I might not find it using WordPress’s search. Of course I’m kidding because I just posted all about this!

My own static site creator & text log file

It looks like I’ve been using WordPress for about a year! So I really should update my text logfile starting there. I have occasionally updated it, but it was hit & miss.

Perhaps I should consider writing my own static site creator for my Log file, like I did for my judoplaces website. It uses Python/SQLite. It’s not super fancy but to my eyes it looks good. I really prefer to use something off the shelf, but so far haven’t really found what I want.It wouldn’t be that hard to add images and video. Judoplaces already has images. Perhaps writing it in Julia would be fun.

Grub screen resolution

In this post I said “I was able to work around Mint’s resolution problem by adding GRUB_GFXMODE=1600×1200 in /etc/default/grub”. That wasn’t completely true. The command I actually used was “GRUB_GFXMODE=1920×1080,1600×1200”, specifying two resolutions, because I read it would fallback to the resolution on the right if unsuccessful. I didn’t mention it, because it selected 1600×1200. But I never changed the command. Well this morning, at startup, I could tell immediately that it was using the 16:9 resolution. Sure enough when I used the Display menu item in Linux Mint it showed, I was using my desired 1900×1080 resolution (16:9 aspect ratio). I’ve booted more than a few times and until this morning I always got 1600×1200. I read that video cards would sometimes report the wrong info.

Too many distractions

Too much OS crap! I want to get back to using/learning stuff on my OS…not fixing the OS. In addition in this same time span, too much time looking for a simple WordPress replacement. I’ve been completely side tracked from my Udemy Pandas course. The last thing I did for my enjoyment was 9 days ago when I worked with Julia!

Screen resolution

I really don’t like this 4:3 aspect ratio in Linux Mint. I want’s me 16:9 back. Why can it install that way but it’s not even an option later? You type videoinfo at the grub console and it shows you what it will allow and 1900×1080 resolution isn’t there . So like I said it will work for now but I’m not happy. I’m running Mint 19.3 and 20s available but if I upgrade to 20 it will probably carry over grub problem which will be fixed by a patch which will probably just bring me back to where I am now.

Manjaro which is currently dead (kernel panic), download is at 20.0.3 which is where I was at in it’s rolling release stage. So that too may require to 2GB of updates right off the bat.

So it looks like I’ll stay with and use Mint in it’s sub standard mode till the next release. However at this point I lack any confidence in either distro when it comes to grub. Might have to re-evaluate my setup because I still want primary/backup distro. Perhaps put each on a separate hard drive

Linux Mint screwed up Grub

Unbelievable! I just this very day commented that Linux Mint never screwed up Grub. Which was true. Then I applied some Mint updates that included a Grub update and now Grub is screwed up. However a slight defense of Mint, today it was reported that researchers discovered a serious vulnerability called BootHole, in grub, that affects most Linux distros. It must be serious when a company like Forbes, is reporting on it. So it looks like in their rush to patch they didn’t test enough. It still bad though, Mint’s resolution was screwed up and Manjaro now doesn’t boot (kernel panic). I was able to work around Mint’s resolution problem by adding GRUB_GFXMODE=1600×1200 in /etc/default/grub. It’s still not right…but much more usable. Was using a 1900×1080 (16:9 aspect) resolution, had to choose 1600×1200 (4:3 aspect) resolution. Still better than 640×480! Perhaps they will have another better tested grub fix in the next day or two, if people start reporting problems. I assume I’m not the only person this happened to.

Grub…you’re Killing me!

Back to Mint as primary

Well I thought I had a handle on doing Manjaro updates…apparently not! After using Manjaro most of the time for the past 6 months. Once again a Manjaro update screwed it up. This was by far the longest that I stayed with another distro. But after the latest huge (~2GB) update, I couldn’t even do a normal logout. Then after forcing the logout it hung on restart. Then after restart very high CPU usage and my virtual desktops are screwed up. And almost unforgivable, it once again managed to screw up grub where I couldn’t properly boot my Linux Mint distro. Why can’t it only update the parts of grub that affect only it? One on the main reason I wanted a totally separate backup distro was to have a working distro to go to if I had problems with whatever distro I’m currently working with. Linux Mint has never screwed up grub. Why must Manjaro wait to do so many updates at once? No updates for days then out of the blue 450 packages for a total of 2GB. So this is twice I’ve tried to apply the latest updates to Manjaro and failed. Meaning 4GB of totally wasted bandwidth.

Grav

Uninstalled Bolt CMS and installed Grav. I want something simple yet nice. I found Bolt perplexing at least for as much learning I want to do to put my Log file online! Grav seems interesting. Now need to learn to use it. Doesn’t appear to come with an admin page. Perhaps the best way is to keep everything local then FTP to website. At least that way I always have a local backup. I had gotten so use to the ease of using WordPress for my log that I haven’t updated my simple log text file for a while. I regret that, now that I’ve found you can’t even depend on WordPress’s search. And search for my computer log is very important. What good is it if I tediously document a problem fix or process if I can’t find it?

/public_html/grav/user/pages/1st-page

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