Tag 'em and bag 'em.

I knew I couldn't go for long without a new post. Here's some friendly advice for all you folks with dual boot systems like mine. If you're allowing each OS read-write access to a shared FAT partition, be careful when changing the tags on music files.

I ran into some trouble with my song tags just now. As I've mentioned previously, I have Ubuntu automatically mount the FAT32 partition with the UTF-8 character set. Windows also has access to said partition. I edited song tags in Windows because characters like ü showed up as gibberish. So I just replaced them with the Alt+0252 key combination. As soon as I booted into Linux again, Rhythmbox refused to run. It would crash while loading the song library. When I deleted the folder containing the files whose tags I edited in Windows, Rhythmbox could suddenly load without incident. The cause of the crashes seems clear.

So unless you want to delete and recopy your songs, don't put special characters in your song tags in Windows; do it in Linux. You'll just have to ignore the weird symbols. Maybe it wouldn't be an issue if I didn't have the shared partition mounted with charset=utf-8, but I'm not about to mess with my /etc/fstab when everything is working so well.

Mounting a FAT partition in Ubuntu

Having a FAT32 partition to allow read/write access from both Windows and Linux can be extremely useful. Windows XP makes accessing the partition easy, since the OS mounts all available drives on login. Ubuntu, by contrast, will not mount the partition unless specifically instructed to do so. You could do this manually every time you start a new session, but I wouldn't recommend it. The addition of one line to /etc/fstab tells Ubuntu to automatically mount the FAT32 partition at the start of a new session. I made a backup copy of /etc/fstab before editing it.

$ sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab

I opened a different terminal tab (Ctrl+Shift+T) and looked up the device name for the partition.

$ sudo fdisk -l

That's an L, as in Lima. Then I added the following line to the end of the file.

/dev/hda5 /media/windows vfat user,iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0

With this change, Ubuntu will mount /dev/hda5 to /media/windows and make it visible in computer:/// each time the OS boots. iocharset and umask determine the character set and permissions of the partition respectively. Note that some Linux distros won't allow you to mount a FAT32 partition with the UTF-8 character set because it makes file names case sensitive. Ubuntu displays a warning but doesn't stop you. I wanted to verify that the change had the desired effect without rebooting.

$ sudo mount -a

If I had entered sudo -s -H at the start of the process, I would have been running the commands as root user and would not have had to preface each one with sudo. I personally dislike switching to root unless absolutely necessary. As root user, minor typos can spell major problems.

What do we have in store for the next episode of Live Gnude Girls?

• Install missing plug-ins for mozilla-firefox.
• Optimize NVIDIA performance.
• Import my music collection—in Ogg Vorbis whenever possible.
• Install the necessary libraries for DVD playback.

In the meantime, I ought to get some rest.

Inaugural Address

When I started using GNU/Linux it didn't take long to realize it's best to keep a record of all changes I make to my OS. So I created this blog. If I do something that breaks my installation, it may enable me to undo the damage. Since I just reformatted my hard drive and effectively started from scratch, this seems like a particularly opportune time. Let's take inventory.

• Microprocessor: Intel® Pentium® 4 3.00GHz
• Memory: 1GB PC3200 400MHz DDR SDRAM*
• Chipset: Intel 865G
  
• Hard Drive: Western Digital® Caviar® WD800BB 80GB 7200 RPM
• Optical Device: Samsung CDRW/DVD SM-348B
• Removable Media: 3.5" Floppy Drive
• Audio: Integrated AC '97 Audio
• Video: 64MB NVIDIA^TM GeForce4® MX 440 AGP 8x*
• Monitor: Dell 1703FP
• Network Interface: Intel 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet

* Not original hardware

Now let's check out the partition table.

Device	Boot	Start	End	Blocks	Id	System
/dev/hda1		1	5	40131	de	Dell Utility
/dev/hda2	*	6	5227	41945715	7	HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3		5228	9172	31688212+	f	W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda4		9173	9726	4450005	83	Linux
/dev/hda5		5228	9143	31455238+	b	W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6		9144	9172	232911	82	Linux swap / Solaris

I've always assumed the Dell Utility partition has the potential to perform some important function, so I never mess with it when I reformat. All the other partitions are fresh. Windows XP requires a large (40.0GB) NTFS partition. The OS is relatively compact, but Windows applications tend to be space hogs. I booted from the Windows CD (F12 at the BIOS splash screen) and created and formatted the necessary partition. Then I ran Windows to install drivers and essential applications. I also used the Disk Management utility to create an extended partition with one 30.0GB FAT32 logical drive and roughly 4.5GB of unpartitioned space. It was time to install Ubuntu Linux 5.04, my weapon of choice. I booted from the Ubuntu CD and ran the installer with the default options. Surprise! The installer seems to have detected all the hardware without my help. That's quite a relief.

In our next episode, I will attempt to get this battle station fully armed and operational.