ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso omnia

For many of you this is probably not news. For me it’s life changing.

Is this our destiny?

During the past few days I’ve been getting acquainted with my new Android tablet (Motorola Xoom). I notice already that another technological advance is altering the way I live. It’s making me less capable of doing basic things and making me more dependent upon technology.

When I was a kid, at the time when hand held calculators were first becoming commonplace, my father was capable of doing square root calculations in his head. I never learned that skill. I didn’t need to, there were calculators.

Since then a series of technological advances have taken place. Each one changes the way we behave and weakens our ability to perform certain tasks natively.

It used to be normal for me to stand up to change the TV channel …

I used to be confined to a radius of about three feet when making a telephone call …

I used to be able to type a document and get it right the first time through (although it took a little longer)  …

I used to read a physical newspaper in the morning …

I used to go to the store to buy books and magazines …

I used to be able to find my way around town without a device telling me where I am …

AND NOW with the latest device to come into my life I’m certain many more modifications to my native skill set will take place
This is a good thing, is it not ?

I recently updated my home computer from openSuse 11.4 to version 12.1. In this post I’d like to recount the steps, pitfalls and successes I had in the process. Maybe someone will find this helpful.

Prelude

I’ve been with Suse Linux since version 5.x. In the past an installation would usually take me a week to get everything setup the way I wanted. Ethernet, graphics, printer and many other things required a lot of searching and this took a lot of time in the pre-google era. In the meantime the install process goes very smoothly. However, the last few updates I did were always from scratch. That is, I would reformat my root partition where the system files were located and leave my home partition the way it was (with a backup of course). This time I wanted to do a straight upgrade without cleaning up. Since the last few installations and upgrades went so smoothly I assumed this one would be a piece of cake. I had kept my 11.4 distribution up to date and was pretty much one leap away from the new 12.1 distribution.

Phase One

This forum thread pointed me to two explanations of how to go forward with and upgrade: SDB:System upgrade and Chapter 15. Upgrading the System and System Changes. I chose to first try the SBD:System upgrade. I did the steps under Prepare your installation and Running the Upgrade. At the step issuing the command “zypper ref” things started to go bad. Sorry but I can’t remember the exact error message but I think it had something to do with the RPM library. I was hoping to do a pure internet upgrade (i.e. no need to burn an installation DVD) but that hope died with the errors coming from the zypper command. So I began doing the other approach (Chapter 15. Upgrading the System and System Changes) and started an ISO Download heeding the warning about Persistent Device Names by changing my fstab entries via Yast to mount using a label. The original 11.4 system was still working after this change so I thought everything was OK. After a few hours I gave the install DVD a try as per the instructions. I got to the point where I instructed the installer to do an update rather than a complete install. At this point the installer would go no further. And the error message was disturbingly windows like: something involving the RPM package library and continuing the message “unknown error.”

RPM Package Library

I discovered that my RPM package library file /var/lib/rpm/Packages was corrupted. I was unsure how and when this occurred but I strongly suspect that the aforementioned zypper command was the culprit. Somehow I’ve had better luck with Yast and am still a littler uneasy with the zypper command. Anyway, I was stuck trying to find a way to re-create the Packages file. After several unsuccessful attempts using rpm to rebuild the file, I discovered that openSuse makes backups of the rpm Package library. They can be found in /var/adm/backup/rpmdb. As I understand it the rebuild function is not a recreation but simply a reparation of a corrupted file. If I didn’t have a backup i’m not sure what I could have done. Probably do a clean installation instead of an update. Anyway, once I cleanup up my RPM package library the update via DVD worked just fine. Until it came time to reboot into the second phase.

Grub

When attempting the reboot GRUB was not able to boot the system. Due to my previous experiences installing Suse I knew that this was not a major problem, just bothersome. I had to figure out how to convince GRUB to boot into the system which I was confidant was properly installed. I dove into the GRUB command line editor and began playing around and reading the help. By a stroke of luck I happened to find an “easy” solution. The GRUB entries for the boot disk and the initrd referenced my hard-drive as (hd0). However, my hard drive has three paritions and the boot disk is in the second one. I manually changed the prefix to be (hd0,1) [1 indicates the second partition as the first is 0]. After this the newly installed system booted into its second round and every went without a hitch. All the vital components seemed to be working. I was glad I was able to get over two major hurdles. But things were not finished yet.

Graphics

I have an ATI-Radeon graphics card which runs quite well with the open source drivers, but I do notice the proprietary drivers do run a tad faster. I notice this when the mouse cursor moves over areas where a pop-up box is displayed. It works but it’s slow enough to be irritating. The native ATI driver can be installed easily and after a reboot things are working quite well. The downside of this is that using tumbleweed in this constellation is not recommended. I’m still debating this one.

Audio

Another irritating thing is that was quite irritating was the lack of audio. I spent several hours looking at pulse-audio and also settings to no avail.  In Yast my sound card was recognized and even played a test sound. But within KDE itself no sound. The pulse audio setup, kmix and so forth showed only a dummy sound sink. The solution was very simple. The user must be added to the audio group. After I did this everything worked like a charm. An easy solution but bothersome because this was not required before.

Kmail

The final problem was a real pain and caused me much anxiety. Kmail (now kmail2) is unable to migrate all my Kontact data: mail, contacs, calender etc. This was quite unnerving. I quickly found several forums on the openSuse site where frustrated users were ranting about the major KMAIL FAIL. I shared their concerns and was equally displeased. I have several hundred emails and rely heavily on my calender. I was not looking forward to digging through my old files and backups to restore my data to a usable state.  BTW, the kmail/kontact data locations can be found here.

I considered going to Thunderbird or even using Claws but I really wanted to stick with Kmail if it were possible. I spent a few days fiddling around trying to see if the other software could do what I need and most of all if they could import the mail data, which was still intact. What I eventually realized is that I had panicked. I just needed to get acquainted with the new setup, in particular how to manage the new akonadi, and kontact/kmail worked just fine. Akonadi just needs to know where the data is and it works just fine. Once i got that set up correctly, kmail2 was able to read my old mail directories without a problem. At first I saw my old mail directory tree but everything was empty. I though they had all been erased but it was simply a matter of telling kmail2 to do an update of the directories. After that everything was there.

The thing that helped me get that all cleaned up is to realize a few new tings about the kontact/akonadi architecture. Akonadi is a data layer between kontact and the hard-drive (I’m still using vcard and ical files). Once I got the data sources in akonadi cleared up kontact worked just fine. Because the initial migration failed and I tried several manual attempts akonadi was full of entries which pointed to nothing useful. After looking more closely I deleted all the extraneous entries and recreated those for my calendar, email directory and contacts list. That was a scary situation but in the end everything is working well.

Just finished watching the #BEDPEACE video which Yoko Ono has made available for this weekend via a free stream. It is a portrait of John and Yoko’s Bed-In in Montreal from 1969. Yoko writes “John and I were so naïve to think that doing the Bed-In would help change the world.” My response would be “yes” and “no”. I’d like to elaborate on a few points, if I may.

The Beatles and the whole counter-culture movement of the sixties is indirectly part of my youth and something that always strikes a chord within me. I was to young to experience the movement firsthand. I was only seven years old when the Bed-In took place. But later in the seventies when I began to get interested in music, I was always drawn to the music and culture that took place at that time instead of the contemporary music of the day. I had often secretly wished that I would have been born ten years earlier so that I could have experienced all these things firsthand. Maybe I was drawn to it because then events of that period had already achieved a kind of mythical status by the mid seventies. I’m sure there are many factors. But maybe it was better that I wasn’t born earlier. Perhaps my reaction would have been different.

Anyway, in 1980 I became a Christian of the evangelical variety and as was the case with many like me, I was drawn into the realm of conservative political thought, This in turn brought me into an inner conflict about many of the views of the sixties and in particular John and Yoko’s pacifism. I had accepted as true  and necsessary many of the things which they were campaigning against. I have since become more flexible in my thinking, which is in a constant process of reevaluation. Especially the fact that I’ve lived outside the USA for over twenty years now, has given me the opportunity to reflect on things from afar and from other perspectives.

Watching the video struck me and I was impressed by several things. John Lennon was very intelligent and had an excellent grasp of human nature and the problems of the world. Quite remarkable, since at the time he was not yet thirty years old. He was not advocating a kind of class warfare. He realized that the problem lie in the heart of all mankind. He realized that a revolution by force would not solve things but simply replace the existing regime with a new one that would end up repeating the same mistakes. His hope was to do something different, to change the hearts of people and bring change from within. This is where I would disagree with Yoko. They were not naïve in thier analysis of the problem but right on.

Where I would agree with Yoko is in another area, their solution to the problem. The change that is required in the heart of mankind is not something that can be achieved by a simple refelction and change of the will. It requires Jesus Christ. The nature of mankind must be radically altered and this can only be achieved by God. But for this to occur we need as individualy to recognize this and ask for his forgiveness and life changing power. A conversion must take place which takes usfrom the kingdom of darkeness into the kingdom of light. As admirable as their efforts were I think they were naïve as to the solution.

I think many valuable lessons can still be gained from their approach: we require change,  the system is not the problem but our human nature, it is our responsibility to take action the solution won’t come from othersin the sense of a system or structure. In my opinion the action that is needed is for us to get on our knees and come before God. Yes, “power to the people,” but the power comes from God.

Recently I’ve been doing some research on the doctrine of sola scriptura. Among the many sources I’ve been reading is the Book “Exploring Protestant Traditions” from W. David Buschart. I’ve created the following table to compare how the protestant traditions employ sola scriptura. Although this table may be helpful for an initial overview, please refer to the book itself^[1] or other literature to get a more informed opinion. There is a high degree of variability within all of these denominations and a tabular description such as this cannot convey many of the nuances that are involved. Nonetheless it can be useful for a quick-glance overview.

Sources for Theology:

Theological Sources Key:

Other Aspects:

1. ^[1] The book is nicely subdivided so that one can quickly focus on the interpretive aspects of each denominational community. ↩

The public memory of historical epochs is marked by major historical events.There are many examples which mark historical shifts: Luther’s posting of the 95 theses, the peace of Westphalia, the declaration of independence, the stock market crash of 1929, the death of Hitler, the appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, Niel Armstrong setting foot on the moon and of course the 9-11 attack on the World trade center.

These historical demarcations are often one event amidst a series of changes. These events did not singularly cause the changes they have come to represent. They do coincide with the epochs they demarcate but they are often only one of a series of shifts. Over time the provide us a means for categorization and closure allowing the public mood to move into a new epoch.

I believe the death of Osama Bin Laden is one of these demarcations. It will become a point where we can say terrorist threat that began on 9-11 (although this also is only a demarcation point, the threat had already been present) has now entered a new era. The public mood has shifted considerably over the past 10 years. However, it had no prominent marking point close the chapter. With the death of Bin Laden the public psyche now has an official demarcation point to allow itself to move on.