Sometimes simple things become hard problems. This happened to me when I discovered that my Fedora 18 OS was obsolete (very old indeed) and I tried to upgrade it to the Fedora 20 version.
Fedora 18 doesn’t support the automatic OS upgrade so I had to spend some hours to find information on Internet and create the right DIY solution for my case. At the end of my little (sic!) research I discovered that I was able not only able to upgrade the PC to Fedora 20 but I also found a good “trick” to upgrade to the latest Fedora 21 following in just a couple of steps with the help of fedup and some other escamotages.
This is how I succeed…
First, you have to open a Terminal and type:
su
init 3
but you will immediately leave the Fedora GUI and so it’s better if you write the below commands on an -old style, paper notepad- to be sure to have all the right information in you hands and correctly manage the upgrade from Fedora 18 to Fedora 20
sudo su -
yum update
yum install fedup
fedup-cli --network 20 --nogpgcheck
It’s better to add –nogpgcheck because often you are not able to complete your upgrade for the “old”, “bad saved” gpg key in your system.
reboot
Now, at the boot-up menu (GRUB 2 menu) you have to choose “System Upgrade (Fedup)”.
Then just to be sure you really have an up to date OS, in Terminal, type:
Yum update
If you have problems with one or more of your “old” repositories don’t forget to deconfigure them. In my case I had to launch this command line in Terminal due to skip an old repository and proceed with the upgrade:
yum-config-manager --save --setopt=home_moritzmolch_gencfsm.skip_if_unavailable=true
At this point, to upgrade from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21 you have to open (again) the Terminal and type:
su
fedup --network 21 --product=workstation --nogpgcheck
OR
fedup --network 21 --product=server --nogpgcheck
(if your Fedora version is the server one)
OR
fedup --network 21 --product=cloud --nogpgcheck
(for the Fedora cloud edition for generic virtual machines or Container)
Take it easy and go to bed for a long snap because, in my case, the download took some hours as for 2,577 files to be upgraded…
At the end, as before, you have to Reboot and select “System Upgrade (Fedup)” at the boot-up menu (GRUB 2 menu) and all the necessary files will be installed. Again, take a good book to read while you wait the installation.
Good luck and remind you MUST backup all your data before you start any upgrade because unforeseen risks are always around the corner!
References:
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/37247/upgrade-fedora-18-to-fedora-20-via-yum-or-fedup/
http://tecadmin.net/steps-to-upgrade-fedora-19-to-20-using-fedup-tool/
http://www.unixmen.com/upgrade-fedora-20-fedora-21-using-fedup/
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/39558/how-to-remove-a-repository-from-my-system
Teenagers are leaving Facebook. Why? Because their parents are on it. [The Guardian]
by Rob Beschizza.
This brief article is interesting because it analyzes a new trend between 16-18 years old EU citizens who prefer alternative social media to Facebook. Moreover, the article describes a new “mood” between young European who “feel embarrassed to even be associated with” Facebook because it is considerate a conservative choice strictly related to their parents relational behaviour. Something to reflect on over the new year!… Tempus fugit! 
After more than one month of silence I would like to end this year with a simple thought about the interaction between technology and our society. I know that usually this blog has principally developed topics about Linux and Freeware but the “Christmas season” could be the right occasion for something different.
A recent post by Matthew Yglesias on Slate, focused my attention on the possibility that big data and “new” technologies could influence our society and personal creativeness in a strange, utilitaristic way.
In the above mentioned post, Matthew Yglesias describes some new possibilities, offered by big data, of deeply analyze the readers behaviour when they use e-readers. Some Yglesias’ examples let us know not only what kind of literature is the most popular today but also detailed analytics about the best number of pages that readers want when they read a certain type of book (e.g. biography or fiction).
These squeezed information drive to the possible next step: a writer could prefer to write a new book on the basis of quantitative marketing data instead of creativity.
In few words, we are potentially slowing the evolution of our knowledge curve because writers could prefer to pander “customers” behaviour and maximize earnings instead of spreading new ideas and theories that could be (sic! are) initially less profitable.
The Darwin “evolution by mistake” will be soon replaced by an utilitarian and transitive “involution by big data marketing analytics”?
It’s impossible to predict but, on the other hand, my hope is that big data marketing analytics will be used just as a tool to maximize and speed new ideas through readers than a mere earning factor to tame buyers.
SliTaz Linux: a minimalist but effective Linux Distro
My old desktop was just lying around, and I decided to equip it with a minimalist distro — something just enough to run a web browser. I wanted to use that machine because its screen and keyboard are positioned at just the right elevation.
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Grooveshark is an online music service, very well-known and common especially in Europe. The quality of its mp3, offered just for listening is higher than what you find on YouTube and some programs were developed to allow listeners to search and listen songs without visiting the Grooveshark website. Some of these software let you save sample of songs for a later listening but this habit doesn’t complain with the copyright laws in many countries so we discourage this kind of practice.
Today we would like to just endorse the ability of a single developer (www.caleta.fm) who was able to modify one of these programs, GrooveDown, and adapt it to the new website requisites.
This developer, using wireshark, was able to identify the misconfiguration between GrooveDown and the Grooveshark’s server and to positively update the data (client version and password) exchanged.
More in general I think that GrooveDown is the best client to listen to Grooveshark also because it is more powerful, fast and easy to use than its competitors. In particular, during some tests I did, I was positively impressed by the results I obtained using GrooveDown because I received better and more complete search results than using, for example, GrooveOff which is too a good software but, for my personal experience, gave back less impressive results.
Last but not least I want to underline that the caleta.fm development of GrooveDown is really stable and it was developed in two different versions just to be used with Java6 or Java7 platform. Recommended!
In a previous post I already suggested to use HTTPS Everywhere and HTTPS Finder to better protect your privacy on the web. Today I would like to focus your attention on the privacy risks caused by cookies.
Some of them can track your internet activity also when you have logged off from the websites that created them. In few words, some cookies can actively support the creation of a quite punctual profile of your interests and share these information with third parties without you know if your data will be anonymised and correctly stored.
Internet tracking is actual and silent and antivirus software are not the best solution to manage them because every day new types of apparently harmless cookies and supercookies are created and spread into our computers. Cookies usually don’t directly affect your internet browsing but they are a real risk if you want to protect your privacy. A good VPN service (e.g. one that does not link your payment to your “new” assigned VPN IP) could be the best solution but flash cookies, evercookies (a particular type of zombie cookies which are able to geometrically clone themselves outside the original folder where they were stored) could reveal your IP and your habits, just after you disconnect your OS from the VPN shield.
To improve your privacy you can start to combine your VPN with some particular Firefox add-on as Self-Destructing Cookies (for the regular cookies) and BetterPrivacy which has been developed to “search and destroy” Flash cookies.
To improve your privacy, never forget that you can tune your Firefox Privacy settings also using Secure Sanitizer which wipe the browser cache in a stronger way than Firefox itself.
Last but not least, don’t forget to “waste” some minutes of your time and use BleachBit after every internet session or every time you shutdown your computer. Better to be slow than sorry!
Computer Borders 