Tuesday, July 19, 2005
DeMuDi 1.2.1
About a week and a half ago or so, the newest version of the Agnula/DeMuDi music making Linux OS was released, much to my surprise and delight. I was expecting, maybe another release candidate. I didn't think it would be finished anytime soon. I had installed the previous release candidate (rc2) out of impatience. Release candidates are sorts like advanced beta releases. This one had some issues, which I think I mention somewhere on this site.
Impatience got the better of me again and instead of backing up the music I worked on since the last upgrade before proceeding, I went ahead and attempted to upgrade to 1.2.1. I think you know where I'm going with this.
I was interested in this thing called apt, which allowed for upgrading from the server. I wouldn't have to burn a cd or whatever. Sounded cool, but as usual I only glanced through the instructions before deciding I was ready to go.
I didn't use the command prompt for apt. There was a program in DeMuDi which I used, but I don't remember what it's called right now. All seemed to be going well until a point where I was asked if I wanted to update a few programs or keep the current versions. There was an option "D" which would explain the differences or something. I chose "D", but it didn't give me any info I could make any sense out of. I tried to get out of that screen, but couldn't for whatever reason. A number of things were tried. This was about last weekend so I don't remember what exactly, only that I failed repeatedly and when I succeeded I still couldn't get the install to continue. There was a mesaage at the bottom of the window telling me it was stalled at 66%.
At some point I found an option that appeared would roll back what I'd done and I figured I could start from scratch after that. You know where this is going, don't you? So anyway I'm watching tons of shit get uninstalled including fonts and stuff and I'm staring at the screen, going "this can't be good". I manage to stop the process, but I still can't get the program to do what I want (start over). So I reboot the machine and it all goes to hell.
The computer boots back up, but there's barely readable type on the screen. What's more, instead of a GUI, I'm looking at a command prompt. I have no idea what to do here. At least I can go back to Windows, go online and figure out what to do. Nope. Something happened to the boot loader in the process. There's a dll file missing and I can't boot into Windows either.
I'd created another partition previously in Fat32 to share files between the two OSes. It was only a gig in size but I figure I'd attempt to install DeMuDi 1.2.0 on it and maybe manage to fix things from there or at least get some answers. I should've known better than to attempt a full install. There wasn't enough space. I used the Windows installation disc to erase that partition. My plan was to used the disc to repair XP, but I had administrator password issues, so I went ahead and deleted the shared partition and rebooted. This time XP came on with no problem, but no DeMuDi.
I use Explore2fs to grab wav files and whatnot from Linux to Windows. I decided to use it to see if my crap was still on my Linux drive, and so it was. I transferred the songs that had been recently updated. All of the others had been backed up on CD. The problem here was that previous attempts to burn Ardour and Hydrogen files in XP and then have those CDs readable in DeMuDi came with problems. In Windows, the discs contained the original file names from Linux but in Linux, those same discs had slightly altered filenames which made things difficult for Ardour and Hydrogen. Impossible, actually. In the previous situation I simply learned to use the CD burner in Linux. Couldn't do that now. The plan was to migrate the files from Linux to Windows, Install DeMuDi 1.2.1 from scratch and figure out a way around the filename problem.
The migration and installation went fine. A preliminary check showed that most of the issues I had with rc2 were resolved. The only thing was to figure out what to do about the weird file names. I make audio mixdowns of every song at each stage, and those are both on my hard drive and for the most part, here as well. It wouldn't be a total loss if the saved files couldn't be saved. Any re-recording I would have to do would likely be somewhat different than the tracks being replaced. I am as undisciplined at music as I am at everything else. But re-recordings can be made if neccesary. I just prefered that they not be neccesary.
Ardour files are divided in a number of folders within a folder for each song; automation, dead sounds, peaks, and sounds. Thus far, all of my dead sound folders have been empty. So that leaves the other three folders and the main *.ardour, *.ardour.bak, and *.xml files in the main song folder. Not only would the filenames be shortened with number appended to them, but the file extentions would often be abbreviated as well except for *.wav. So, what was my plan? To manually change each and every file name back to it's original and see if that would work.
Before I'd come to that conclusion I did try to look for another answer. I'm sure it's out there, but again I was impatient. I used Screenshot Utility to make jpgs of my files for Menage A Trois With Robots, the song with the most data. I figure, let's get that one out of the way first.
In the midst of manually renaming all these files, it occured to me that they may not be in the same order in Linux, that they were in Windows. I may've been giving some files the wrong names. My suspicion later proved very probable, but I continued to make sure no stone was left unturned. When I was done Ardour was at least able to sort of open the song, though with a ton of error messages. I don't think any of it was playable, though I may be wrong. It then occured to me that the automation and peak files were small enough to be e-mailed to myself, though not in great numbers. Through email, the filenames retained their integrety until they were saved. When saved, a space often became an underline in a filename, so I had to manualy see to it that the saved file had the same name as the emailed file. Once that was done Ardour opened with a bunch of error messages, though less than before, and I was able to play some of the tracks. A few of them were not where or when they should be, but I figured how to fix that.
The wav files were too big and to email, so I took another snapshot of the wav files and included the file sizes so I could better match a wav to it's name. All of this was naturally very tedious, but it got done and the song seems to be fine, though it still opens with a few error messages.
I'm not complaining. I knew I screwed up, and hopefully I've learned my lesson (not likely).
I'm just about ready to get back to making music (or something like it).
Impatience got the better of me again and instead of backing up the music I worked on since the last upgrade before proceeding, I went ahead and attempted to upgrade to 1.2.1. I think you know where I'm going with this.
I was interested in this thing called apt, which allowed for upgrading from the server. I wouldn't have to burn a cd or whatever. Sounded cool, but as usual I only glanced through the instructions before deciding I was ready to go.
I didn't use the command prompt for apt. There was a program in DeMuDi which I used, but I don't remember what it's called right now. All seemed to be going well until a point where I was asked if I wanted to update a few programs or keep the current versions. There was an option "D" which would explain the differences or something. I chose "D", but it didn't give me any info I could make any sense out of. I tried to get out of that screen, but couldn't for whatever reason. A number of things were tried. This was about last weekend so I don't remember what exactly, only that I failed repeatedly and when I succeeded I still couldn't get the install to continue. There was a mesaage at the bottom of the window telling me it was stalled at 66%.
At some point I found an option that appeared would roll back what I'd done and I figured I could start from scratch after that. You know where this is going, don't you? So anyway I'm watching tons of shit get uninstalled including fonts and stuff and I'm staring at the screen, going "this can't be good". I manage to stop the process, but I still can't get the program to do what I want (start over). So I reboot the machine and it all goes to hell.
The computer boots back up, but there's barely readable type on the screen. What's more, instead of a GUI, I'm looking at a command prompt. I have no idea what to do here. At least I can go back to Windows, go online and figure out what to do. Nope. Something happened to the boot loader in the process. There's a dll file missing and I can't boot into Windows either.
I'd created another partition previously in Fat32 to share files between the two OSes. It was only a gig in size but I figure I'd attempt to install DeMuDi 1.2.0 on it and maybe manage to fix things from there or at least get some answers. I should've known better than to attempt a full install. There wasn't enough space. I used the Windows installation disc to erase that partition. My plan was to used the disc to repair XP, but I had administrator password issues, so I went ahead and deleted the shared partition and rebooted. This time XP came on with no problem, but no DeMuDi.
I use Explore2fs to grab wav files and whatnot from Linux to Windows. I decided to use it to see if my crap was still on my Linux drive, and so it was. I transferred the songs that had been recently updated. All of the others had been backed up on CD. The problem here was that previous attempts to burn Ardour and Hydrogen files in XP and then have those CDs readable in DeMuDi came with problems. In Windows, the discs contained the original file names from Linux but in Linux, those same discs had slightly altered filenames which made things difficult for Ardour and Hydrogen. Impossible, actually. In the previous situation I simply learned to use the CD burner in Linux. Couldn't do that now. The plan was to migrate the files from Linux to Windows, Install DeMuDi 1.2.1 from scratch and figure out a way around the filename problem.
The migration and installation went fine. A preliminary check showed that most of the issues I had with rc2 were resolved. The only thing was to figure out what to do about the weird file names. I make audio mixdowns of every song at each stage, and those are both on my hard drive and for the most part, here as well. It wouldn't be a total loss if the saved files couldn't be saved. Any re-recording I would have to do would likely be somewhat different than the tracks being replaced. I am as undisciplined at music as I am at everything else. But re-recordings can be made if neccesary. I just prefered that they not be neccesary.
Ardour files are divided in a number of folders within a folder for each song; automation, dead sounds, peaks, and sounds. Thus far, all of my dead sound folders have been empty. So that leaves the other three folders and the main *.ardour, *.ardour.bak, and *.xml files in the main song folder. Not only would the filenames be shortened with number appended to them, but the file extentions would often be abbreviated as well except for *.wav. So, what was my plan? To manually change each and every file name back to it's original and see if that would work.
Before I'd come to that conclusion I did try to look for another answer. I'm sure it's out there, but again I was impatient. I used Screenshot Utility to make jpgs of my files for Menage A Trois With Robots, the song with the most data. I figure, let's get that one out of the way first.
In the midst of manually renaming all these files, it occured to me that they may not be in the same order in Linux, that they were in Windows. I may've been giving some files the wrong names. My suspicion later proved very probable, but I continued to make sure no stone was left unturned. When I was done Ardour was at least able to sort of open the song, though with a ton of error messages. I don't think any of it was playable, though I may be wrong. It then occured to me that the automation and peak files were small enough to be e-mailed to myself, though not in great numbers. Through email, the filenames retained their integrety until they were saved. When saved, a space often became an underline in a filename, so I had to manualy see to it that the saved file had the same name as the emailed file. Once that was done Ardour opened with a bunch of error messages, though less than before, and I was able to play some of the tracks. A few of them were not where or when they should be, but I figured how to fix that.
The wav files were too big and to email, so I took another snapshot of the wav files and included the file sizes so I could better match a wav to it's name. All of this was naturally very tedious, but it got done and the song seems to be fine, though it still opens with a few error messages.
I'm not complaining. I knew I screwed up, and hopefully I've learned my lesson (not likely).
I'm just about ready to get back to making music (or something like it).
Labels: Agnula, distros, Explore2fs, Linux
