A little while ago I bought a Zoostorm PC from Ebuyer. It’s a farily basic (but powerful) i7 based system with 8GB RAM and a 1TB hard disk. This is to replace my older (but still fully working) Mesh PC. The newer one is more power efficient, quieter, a lot faster, and all Intel inside – the previous desktop was nVidia based.

I wanted to migrate from the install on my old Mesh PC to a new clean install on the Zoostorm. I could have just yanked the disk out of the Mesh and put it in the Zoostorm, but I did it slightly differently. I’m typing it up here for my own notes but also to find out how other people do it, and to get any tips.

So the goal was to have a clean install of Ubuntu Precise (which will become 12.04 LTS in April) and keep all my existing files and folders intact. I wanted to keep all my home files but didn’t want to keep the applications I had built up over several install/upgrades on that machine. Time for a fresh start.

The old Mesh has a single 120GB SSD and the Zoostorm has a 1TB Hard disk and I added a 120GB SSD to that too. My idea was to do a clean install on the Zoostorm SSD, and use the 1TB hard disk for my /home directory. That way I get the super zippy performance of an SSD for loading apps, but the slow(er) hard disk for loading my files. I’m happy with this tradeoff in speed/capacity.

Here’s the steps I went through.

• Clean install of Ubuntu Precise on the Zoostorm with / and swap on SSD, /home on HDD. Use a hostname of ‘zoo’ so as not to conflict on the network with the hostname ‘wopr’ used by the Mesh PC
• Boot into new installation and make sure everything works
• Boot Mesh PC but don’t login, so none of my personal files are open/changing
• Use rsync on the new install to copy files from Mesh to Zoostorm over the network

$ cd /home
$ rsync -avz -e ssh wopr:/home/alan .

• Shutdown the old Mesh PC
• Edit /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname to change host from ‘zoo’ to ‘wopr’
• Reboot the Zoostorm PC to ‘Bring the WOPR on-line’ as they say

I think that’s about it. I now have all my personal stuff, work, config on the new computer, and can consider things to do with the old one. I think I might install GameOS on it until Valve get around to porting Steam (and all the games) to Linux.

Things to consider:-

• I could probably have sped this up a bit by taking the disk out of the Mesh PC and putting it in the Zoostorm, then partition up the 1TB disk and move my /home directory over to it, edit fstab, remount /home and logout/in. That seemed like more effort in my mind, so I went for the approach above
• I now have a whole load of packages I need to install because my Zoostorm is a clean installation. So the first thing I did was to get the basic things I need. I will apt-get any missing bits as and when I need them. I have a decent connection so it doesn’t bother me that I’m missing critical stuff at the moment.
• Copying only /home means I may have missed out some stuff in other places like /usr/local, /root and /etc. I have full backups of my old machine, so I am not to worried about missing stuff here or there, I can get them if I really need to

Hope that’s useful to someone, and if you have any comments, do let me know.

                          

I’ve been playing with the python-elements but it seems like the project is dead.

The upstream website has gone and the packages has had no updates for some time. I’d like to create a simple demo/game along the lines of some of the mini games you find in WarioWare on the Nintendo Wii. The Python Elements (and box2d) libraries seem to fit the bill but I don’t want to code using something that is going to disappear.

Suggestions for other libraries welcome.

Update: seems the python elements is maintained in debian, my mistake. Still keen to hear of libraries in this area.

                          

Tonight I’ll be in the Prince of Wales Pub in Farnborough, Hampshire, UK from about 8pm to celebrate Ubuntu Happy Hour with friends. Everyone is welcome, and you don’t need to bring a computer.

It’s super easy to find, and is very near Farnborough North Railway Station and not too far to walk from Farnborough Main Railway Station.

There’s also some parking around the back.

                          

The Ubuntu Community Council (CC) comprises a group of individuals from Canonical and the wider Ubuntu community. It’s the primary non-technical governance body for the Ubuntu project. I was fortunate enough to be nominated along with others and elected to the CC for a two year term. That two year term is now up and it’s time to vote in a new Community Council.

The current Community Council consists of myself, Benjamin Mako Hill, Daniel Holbach, Elizabeth Krumbach, Emmet Hikory, Mark Shuttleworth, Matthew East and Mike Basinger. It’s been great to work with such fantastic people, I’ve really enjoyed being part of the governance of Ubuntu, but I feel it’s time for me personally to move on and let others take the reins. As well as myself, Mike, Matt and Mako are also stepping down.

Very soon all Ubuntu Members will receive an email asking them to vote on who should become part of the new Community Council. It will look a bit like this (URL redacted).

If you are an Ubuntu Member and didn’t get the mail, check your spam folder, and if you think you were missed, contact Daniel Holbach.

Click the link in the mail. Don’t pass the mail on to other people, it’s unique to you. The page explains what to do. Simply place the nominees in order of preference from most preferred to least, and submit when you’re done.

Daniel and Lyz are standing again, and Mark has a special diamond encrusted permanent seat, so the line up for voting looks (in no particular order) like this:-

• Daniel Holbach
• Elizabeth Krumbach
• Charles Profitt
• Laura Czajkowski
• Amber Graner
• Emmet Hikory
• Martin Albisetti
• Milo Casagrande
• Scott Ritchie
• Philip Ballew
• Joe Barker

I wish them all good luck and to the elected ones, please take care of the Community many of us love.

Edit: It’s been pointed out that Emmet was previously on the CC and I didn’t mention him under the people standing again. He was previously chosen after someone else stepped down, and his term doesn’t yet expire. However we decided to force the vote again to avoid us having another vote later.

                          

“It is the duty, and ought to be the pleasure, of age and experience
to warn and instruct youth and to come to the aid of inexperience.”
— William Cobbett, ~1829

This weekend (13th / 14th August) we (Linux Outlaws and Ubuntu UK Podcast) are holding Oggcamp 11 at Farnham Maltings in Surrey, UK.

OggCamp is a free semi-unconference two-day event about technology, open source, music, art, politics, community, creativity and more! People are welcome to come along and give talks about subjects that interest them.

This is our third such free event, the first being in Wolverhampton in 2009, and the second last year in Liverpool. This time we’re down South in the beautiful town of Farnham. I’m so excited I could pop!

The event is the culmination of planning and co-operation between the presenters of both podcasts and a huge team of dedicated community contributors. It’s been made possible by some fantastic sponsors without whom we just couldn’t run the event.

Bytemark came on board very early on in the project, in fact they approached us before we even started soliciting for sponsors. They’ve been extremely generous in helping us pay the considerable cost for the hire of the venue. Consider them the next time you’re looking for robust hosting, a VPS or dedicated servers.

Conversely Canonical are our most recent sponsor, also providing us with generous financial help. We’ve used the money from Canonical in various ways, rather than one big thing, which will make the event even more awesome than it already is. Canonical have also supplied us with some great Ubuntu branded merchandise from their online store.

Ex-LUGRadio presenter Chris Procter (and all-round nice guy) has consistently provided support for OggCamp over the years, and this year is no exception. Under the banner of LUG.org.uk, provider of technical services to UK Linux User Groups, Chris has once again donated funds to help make OggCamp 11 happen.

BitFolk are good friends of the show and generously provide a free VPS for the Ubuntu UK Local Community Team. Once again they’ve come up trumps and are sponsoring the Saturday evening event at this years OggCamp. BitFolk have made it possible for us to hire a room and bar on Saturday night so everyone can wind down after a great day geeking out. Check them out if you’re looking for a high quality, reliable and well run VPS.

Google should need no introduction! They’re generously supporting OggCamp 11 for which we are very grateful!

Prolific and diverse publisher Apress have once again provided us with some excellent books from their extensive line-up. The books cover current topics we’re certain will interest many OggCamp attendees. Along with other merchandise we’ve been given, these will be entered into a raffle, tickets will be available at the venue.

Once again we’re delighted to have O’Reilly on board to support OggCamp 11. O’Reilly should be on site (which is convenient for them, given they have an office only a few hundred yards away) selling books at superb prices. They’re also generously giving us liquid sustenance at lunchtime to help keep attendees nicely lubricated!

Finally we’re happy once more to announce our friends and fellow podcasters at Linux Format who are the Media Partner for OggCamp 11! The guys from Linux Format have been awesome in promoting the event in their magazine with this great full page advert. Click to see the full size PDF, or buy the magazine and see it in print!

I’m really looking forward to this years OggCamp, and hope to see many of my ‘Internet friends’ there! Plus it’s a full moon, so anything could happen!