In the past, we discussed the procedure for upgrading Fedora using yum. Ready to try it again for Werewolf?

Grab the new fedora-release and fedora-release-notes to update repos:

Now sit back, relax, and run yum -y upgrade for a couple of hours.

Actually, there was nothing relaxing about it. Yum repeatedly killed itself during the transaction test. If that happens, you might try upgrading sqlite (that’s yum -y upgrade sqlite) before all other packages.

Then I started getting memory alloc errors. I don’t exactly know how I ran out of memory, but I closed my VNC session and tried again through a remote shell. If that doesn’t work, try upgrading bits and pieces instead of everything at once. For example, upgrade perl, then rpm, then python, etc.

I also ran into problems with mismatched checksums. I didn’t want to re-download every last package AGAIN, so I removed pretty much everything in /var/cache/yum except for downloaded packages, and that took care of it. Another way: yum clean dbcache. Oh, and make sure you have a backup of your data first.

Eventually it installed 80 packages, updated 880, and removed 4. (Download size: 776 M)

Since the previous upgrade, I’ve reduced unnecessary packages, but the entire thing still sucked a lot compared to Ubuntu’s upgrade to 7.10.

If you attempted this upgrade, how did it go? Did you run into as many problems?

 

When opening files from Word, Excel, etc. you are presented with and have to wait for a dialog that says “Initializing the Root Folders to Display.” After it finishes, browsing through items becomes painfully slow.

There is a problem with one of your mapped network drives. At least one of them is either disconnected or awaiting credentials. If you reconnect or disconnect it altogether, this problem will go away.

 

Sometimes when syncing Offline Files in XP, things go haywire. No surprises. Stuff just starts to disappear and network drives contain only a partial listing of files, if any at all. You may experience other oddities, too. Yet another Microsoftism. Is that a word? It should be.

To recreate the cache and rebuild the database, add this registry key:

Reboot. The key will remove itself automatically after performing the operations.

Or from My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > Offline Files tab, hold down CTRL+SHIFT and click the Delete Files button. Yes, then reboot.

I’d like to thank Microsoft for this feature.

 

If you’ve been reprimanded for accidentally missing a mandatory staff meeting (oops) because Outlook didn’t remind you to go, you’ll be pleased to know that you can safely place the blame on someone from IT; it’s a known issue with Outlook.

Just make sure that after you’re through yelling at them (because I know how much you really wanted to attend that meeting) that you kindly direct them over here to fix your problems.

Exit Outlook and run:

If that doesn’t work, do this:

It’s my understanding that Microsoft would rather write KB articles instead of better code.

 

Recently I was asked by a client if I could restore their iTunes library (which had been deleted) on a PC. All that remained was on this person’s iPod. Thought I’d give it a shot, why not? My efforts were successful; the steps are detailed below.

1. Close iTunes. Delete ‘iTunes Library.itl’ and ‘iTunes Music Library.xml’ from your My Documents\My Music\iTunes directory. These are the database files that let iTunes know what’s up.

2. Do a hard reset on the iPod, such that when it’s ‘booting’ you go into disk mode. These key combinations are available at Command Tab.

3. Copy the ‘iPod_control’ directory from your iPod to your computer’s Desktop for simplicity’s sake. Sure, all the files and directories make no sense, but do it anyway.

4. When finished copying, right-click this directory, hit properties and uncheck the ‘hidden’ attribute box, then apply (include subdirectories).

5. Unplug the iPod, open iTunes, and configure the advanced tab:

Only the first two checks are important. You’re telling iTunes to copy music to the default location (above) and keep it under control.

6. On the file menu in iTunes, choose Add Folder to Library, browse to the iPod_control directory on your Desktop and gun it. Miraculously, iTunes should start scanning this location and add your tracks one-by-one, tags and all.

7. Now plug in your iPod (after you’ve taken it out of disk mode) and if you’re lucky, you should be presented with the option to ‘Erase and Sync’ your iPod with your new iTunes library. Seems like an extra step to me, but that’s what it takes.

Did it work for you?