danforys.com » 2007 » October http://www.danforys.com Dan is a web developer in London. He is interested in all things Internet, Linux and Mac. Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:28:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en Novell client on OpenSuse 10.3 http://www.danforys.com/2007/10/08/novell-client-on-opensuse-103/ http://www.danforys.com/2007/10/08/novell-client-on-opensuse-103/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:50:13 +0000 admin http://www.danforys.com/2007/10/08/novell-client-on-opensuse-103/ The latest (10.3) version of OpenSuse was released a few days ago. As I use Suse as my main development environment at work, I eagerly downloaded it as soon as I could, and installed it on a virtual machine.

First impressions are very good - very quick startup time, easy 1-click installs and a bright and cheery colour scheme.

Unfortunately, I can’t switch for real as the Novell Client doesn’t work yet, and I need to client to access my shared drives at work. (Although I could use WebDAV, it doesn’t work so well). Attempting to install the Beta 2.0 version yields a single dependency error (wrong version of binutils). Satisfying the dependency results in the Novell Client loading - but not connecting at all. Seemingly, the public Beta 2.0 of the client is no longer available for download.

There was quite a wait on Suse 10.2 for a working Novell Client - which was released in beta form a couple of months ago (and it works very nicely too). I’ll eagerly await and hope that Novell release a new client soon, then I will more than happily switch to the new version.

UPDATE 29th Nov 2007

I”ve just spotted that Novell have posted a way to run the 10.2 client on 10.3, over at coolsolutions.

It has a simple step-by-step guide that just involves entering a few commands into the shell.

]]> http://www.danforys.com/2007/10/08/novell-client-on-opensuse-103/feed/ Removing Windows from Apple’s Bootcamp http://www.danforys.com/2007/10/01/removing-windows-from-bootcamp/ http://www.danforys.com/2007/10/01/removing-windows-from-bootcamp/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:30:21 +0000 admin http://www.danforys.com/2007/10/01/7/ Having tried Windows Vista on my shiny new iMac and having a few issues (stuttering sound, slower loading times), I decided to revert back to using Windows XP.

Now, Bootcamp is supposed to make this easy - you just launch the Bootcamp assistant, and click “Restore the startup disk to a single volume”. A few moments later, all seemed well, and I was prompted to reboot.

After the reboot, the Windows XP drive is still visible, and it seems nothing has happened. After trying this multiple times and getting quickly fed up, I ruled out a few other ways to delete Windows:

  • I couldn’t run the Windows XP installer disk - rebooting the iMac with the disk in the drive caused a “Press any key to boot from CD…” prompt. Unfortunately, the iMac keyboard doesn’t work at that point.
  • Attempting to run the XP installer from within Vista - the “Install Windows XP” option is greyed out and not selectable
  • OS X’s disk utility wouldn’t let me unmount or erase the Windows parition
  • I was too scared to use fdisk from the command line, just in case I nuked my OS X partition (and didn’t want to reformat the whole lot for the same reason)

So, how did I fix it in the end?

If you can’t delete Windows from your Mac’s bootcamp installation:

  • Drag the Windows parition to the Trash to unmount it
  • Run the Bootcamp assistant and choose “Restore the startup disk to a single volume”

Guess that’s the risk you take when you use Beta software eh? :)

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