I'm surprised that the Fedora documentation for working with GRUB 2 doesn't address rebuilding GRUB 2 entries for EFI booting.

They do address it, but they get it wrong.

The grub2-mkconfig instructions for both BIOS and UEFI systems are the same. The problem is that this instruction will only build the BIOS entries. The UEFI entries won't be rebuilt.

Once you have your changes set in /etc/default/grub, here is how to rebuild the GRUB 2 entries for BIOS and UEFI systems?

BIOS systems

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

UEFI systems

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

It is perfectly OK to do both of these commands (using root, hence the # prompt, or with sudo), but you do need the one that matches your booting method (BIOS for older systems, optionally UEFI for newer systems).

The only reason I figured this out is because I poked around quite a bit when having dual-booting issues. Someone should fix the Fedora GRUB page. I'm a Fedora member and could probably make the fix myself, but I'm not 100 percent sure what I'm doing here is the absolute best method because my GRUB bootlines after doing this look different then they do when the system (either yum or dnf) does a kernel update.

I needed to use LibreOffice today. It's not something that happens very often. I almost always write or edit in a text editor, web form or Google Docs. But today I opened up LibreOffice.

I wanted to use "automatic" spell-checking in LibreOffice, which you invoke with shift-F7. But it didn't work.

I looked at my default "language," which was U.S. English. There was no little blue check next to it that indicated it had a dictionary. I checked my packages. I wasn't missing English.

It turns out there's a hack that gets spell-checking working and gives me the red squiggly lines under my misspelled words (that's the way I like to do it.

I found the answer in LibreOffice's "Ask LibreOffice" forum (which uses the same software as Ask Fedora).

Here is the fix from that helpful post:

Under Tools -> Options -> Language Settings: Writing Aids, the list of available language modules showed almost everything set. I unchecked and then re-checked "Hunspell SpellChecker" and "Libhyphen Hyphenator" and hit OK. (I strongly suspect that the hunspell was the significant checkbox). Then, when I go back to Language and look at the default language settings, the "English (USA)" entry has the ABC✔ by it, and now spell checking is working.

Best guess is that some results of invoking something from hunspell is saved by libreoffice and that with updating versions, the cached output is no longer valid. Re-invoking (when re-checking the checkbox) refreshes the cached data and now everything is all better.

It sure worked for me.

I like to learn by doing. I'm reading and typing in code and futzing around with it. But I had an idea, and I'm betting I can learn what I need to make it happen.

The idea is a "What is this acronym?" app, where there's a web page, the user types in an acronym (or partial acronym) and gets in return a list of possible full names for that acronym.

Nothing too crazy, and I'm going to keep it as simple as I can.

I want to do it as a single-page JavaScript app. Call it "just a web page with some interactive JavaScripty elements." Is that an "app"? (Don't know, don't care).

I'm choosing JavaScript for this project because I want to keep it simple. And I want to learn JavaScript.

Read the rest of this post

Today I started playing with Java arrays.

I'm also trying to figure out JavaScript objects at the same time.

(The Javascript is for a project I'm cooking up. I'll focus when I'm ready to focus.)

I had to set up my laptop to access a new Citrix site, and I got the dreaded SSL Error 61, where the proper certificate could not be found.

It was a Go Daddy certificate, and I knew that I had it. I went to Go Daddy, got another copy and dropped it into /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/.

The error persisted.

After a few other unsuccessful attempts, I found the answer at Ask Fedora.

Basically you find the right certificate by going through Firefox itself, exporting the certificate and then using rootly privileges to put it in /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/.

• In Firefox, go to the web site for your Citrix app. It should be a secure site.

• Click on the little lock icon to the left of the URL.

• Click "More Information"

• Click "View Certificate"

• Click "Details"

• You should now see the certificate(s) you need. Click on them to select and then click "Export," and save it/them somewhere in your /home directory

• Use the terminal and either su or sudo to copy the certificates to /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/.

Everything should work. At least it did for me.

I already use Bash scripts to run my rsync backups automatically, more to avoid mistakes in the rsync syntax (copying the wrong directory) than anything else.

I've been wanting to improve the script both to enhance portability by setting the target and destination directories with variables and to auto-mount the destination drive if it is not mounted already.

I decided to start with a Google search, and this entry from Frustrated Tech does exactly what I need:

• Bash Script: Mount Drive Automatically to Backup Using Rsync

Time has been a little tight over the past couple of weeks, but I had an "opening" today that I used to work on Java. Beginning Java. Very beginning Java.

I'm using the Oracle Java tutorials. You can download the whole thing as HTML in a .zip, or as epub and mobi files.

I have both the full HTML and the mobi version, which is made up of 20 separate .mobi files that I emailed to my Amazon Kindle reader because a) I'm too lazy to plug it in to the computer and b) they offer e-mail-to-Kindle, so why not use it.

I'm going through the material slowly, typing in the programs when that seems appropriate and using javac to compile and java to run them.

Read the rest of this post

I've been coding a little every day.

Way back, say a year ago, I could write code in the course of my job.

Not so much lately. I'm just too busy and focused on news production and other requests.

So I've been taking my "lunch" time (a loose term when you start work at 5 a.m.) to walk a bit, laptop bag in hand, to a coffee shop (Starbucks/Coffee Bean/Western Bagel depending on seating) to do a little coding.

In the past two days I've worked on my Ode Counter addin in Perl (which is live in the upper right side of this blog, and played around with writing files in Node.

It's a little time every day, and so far it's been fun.

Since my home Internet connection has been so bad, I haven't been using my Fedora 22 laptop as my main production machine for Citrix apps, and that means I can run GNOME 3 on it without trouble.

Instead, I use the laptop for writing, web browsing, development and watching media.

And instead of my usual Xfce, I've been using GNOME 3.16 as the desktop environment.

I have few complaints. GNOME 3 is getting better and better with each release, and even between releases there have been little improvements here and there.

Right now my only complaint with GNOME 3 is with file management in Nautilus. When you drag a file into a folder, if you linger too long over the folder, you end up in it. That should be something you can configure not to happen.

To avoid this problem, I've been using Nautilus' move to feature. It's clean.

My problems with the upper panel (I'm using the TopIcons GNOME Extension) are pretty much gone. Everything shows like it's supposed to.

I like the notifications system.

GNOME Software's notion that you want to reboot for every update is absurd. I use the Yum Extender for DNF to update, and that doesn't require any rebooting. The new Yum Extender fails about 25 percent of the time. I'm confident that the Fedora team will continue polishing the application. In the meantime, dnf in the terminal works without fail.

I'm having a PulseAudio issue that presents itself in both GNOME and Xfce: When I switch audio to HDMI via PulseAudio Volume Control (aka pavu), there is no audio over that connection unless I log out and log back in. I can switch back to local audio and hear it on the laptop speakers, but going back to HDMI requires another logout/login. This fairly recent issue is not a deal-breaker but is annoying.

Otherwise, my 2-year-old HP Pavilion g6 laptop is running better than ever under Linux.

Notes:

• While I said I was going to stop obsessing about Linux, I reserve the right to talk/write about software I'm using. Tools are still interesting. And important. My focus remains on programming. And the rest of life. (Or so I tell myself.)

• I am getting ready to pull the trigger on 100Mb/s Time Warner Cable broadband to replace my sub-1Mb/s DSL Extreme "broadband." That would mean I could work at home more, and I would probably swing back to Xfce for production because it plays so much better with the unwieldy Citrix apps I must use.

I'm probably using more Linux than ever. My laptop runs Fedora. I'm the admin on a server running CentOS.

I will keep doing those things.

But today I unsubscribed from most of the mailing lists that have been flowing through my Gmail account over the past few years.

The Debian, Fedora, Xubuntu and Lubuntu users list? All gone. So are the development lists for Debian, Fedora and Xubuntu, and most of the others. I'm keeping a few low-volume lists. For now anyway.

I was always more of a lurker than active participant on all of those mailing lists.

Lately, and probably before that, I didn't find much of value in most of that mail. Even though the quality of the Fedora lists is a bit higher than average, I wasn't getting a whole lot out of them. I'd scan the mail, maybe read one or two posts every few days, then delete the whole lot.

At this point, I see my operating system as a tool. To get things done.

I'm not interested in Linux evangelism. If you want to use it, that's great. I still do and will do.

If not, that's cool. Do what makes you happy.

I'm still a satisfied user of Linux. It's pretty much all I've run on my laptops since maybe 2009, and I messed around a whole lot with it before that, starting in late 2006 if I remember correctly.

There's more to life.

There's my family. I sure as hell want to do better where they're concerned.

Putting together coherent sentences? I'm still very much interested.

I've threatened to write about more than Linux for years. I'd like to write about things that aren't technology. It's been in the sidebar of this particular blog for as long as I've been writing it.

I see the "tech guy" on the morning news, and I wince. Is that me? Other than the fact that I'm very obviously not on TV, I worry that it is.

There's more to life than gadgets and apps.

That being said (there's always a that being said) ...

It sounds like I'm just on the other end of the same pool, but lately programming has dominated what little free time I have. I read a whole lot about it. And occasionally do it. Maybe I'll be able to tip the scales toward more doing in the near future.

I've been playing with Go, Perl, Python and Ruby. I need to focus.

Coding is what interests me at the moment.

What I'm not playing with are Linux distributions. I don't burn ISOs of anything, don't install just to see what something's like.

New releases of obscure distributions, or even not-so-obscure ones? I'm just not into it.

The ins, outs, politics and boiling pots of the Linux world? Not interested.

Give me my working Fedora system (or maybe Debian if the hardware is willing) and let me do my work, write my code, live my life.

If that sounds melodramatic, so be it.

I reserve the right to change my mind. But for now, I'm 50 other things first and a Linux user after that.