Cryptswap and Linux assigning different devices letters to disk

I had this weird issue recently: I had a simple Ubuntu setup with cryptesetup and swap, and the crypt swap device (say /dev/mapper/mycryptoswap1) keept disappearing.
Caution: fiddling with cryptsetup and disk devices is dangerous for data and OS. I personally made a full backup on a separate disk and then umplugged it to be sure it wouldn’t be involved in any mishap.

Turns out is a little worse that that: Linux is changing the drive devices assignations (eg /dev/sdb /dev/sdg) at every boot under my nose. I did not notice at first because I am using UUIDs, so everything looked fine. Unfortunately my raw partition did not have any UUID.  Probably there’s a way to assign an UUID to a general partition, but I didn’t address this issue.
Having the disk changing its letter any time was the reason why the crypttab device wasn’t created a boot.  I was lucky: would a partition with valuable data be present in the other disk, it would be overwritten with encrypted swap data.

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Linux Kernel 3.6 is here

I had to upgrade a Pangolin Precise to Linux 3.6 to issue a bug on Linux Vs my Logitech mouse. So far I can say: Nvidia_current 295.40 fails to build module in 3.6.0 amd64 (I suspect it would also on i386) Solution: install nvidia-current 304.51 from ubuntu xedgers. Works out of the Box. Vmplayer VMware … Leggi tutto

Wi-fi for PowerPC powermac G5

I recently bought a PowerPC Powermac G5. I was very fond of this computer back in 2007, when for various reasons I could not afford it. Simply too much stuff for me!
Now I had it for a ridiculous price and got it back to life. A lot of RAM (DDR2 still come cheap these days), a new OS, some up-to-date apps. Of course the G5 didn’t have any Wifi card available, so I had to turn to the used market. There’s the standard Apple Airport card, but getting it is expensive, and I don’t want to spend a lot on this marvellous piece of hardware. Moreover I want to limit the direct tweaking inside the case as much as I can.

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