World of Warcraft Patch 6.1 - New Patch new problem

Again. After update my WoW stopped running. This time there was no WoW-64 to disable, nor libraries to turn off.

When starting WoW without the Launcher like here what I got was an error window telling me:


This application has encountered a critical error:

ERROR #134 (0x85100086) Fatal Condition

Unable to open DBFilesClient\SoundEntriesFallbacks.dbc:

What needs doing is making sure you have actually upgraded the game.
So get into your installation directory and run Launcher

> cd /home/ishtar/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/World\ of\ Warcraft
> wine World\ of\ Warcraft\ Launcher.exe

And wait for the update to actually happen. If there is no update to be done it may mean your installation is so broken it's best to clean it and let the launcher repair it.
So again go to the installation directory, delete the Cache dir and start the launcher again.

Helpful command-line tips for Linux users part 4: working with directories - pwd (and a bit about symlinks)

list of all commands

explanation of the convention:

[] : values in square brackets are optional

pwd BASIC USAGE 
pwd [option] - Print the full filename of the current working directory

This is a very simple command with only two usage options available in linux (there may sometimes be more options, but in general there are only to display version and help info):

-L     use PWD from environment, even if it contains symlinks
-P     avoid all symlinks

so since there's not much to write about this command I'll explain the idea of symlinks in linux. For the purpose of this post I'll talk about soft links only, hardlinks are behaving the same with pwd.

symlink stands for symbolic link and is a mechanism allowing system or user to create a shortcut/pointer or, to describe it in layman terms, a description for the system to follow in order to navigate to another file or directory in another location.
This is usually done to shorten the access link, for example on many systems, the access to /var/www/html/ is linked as /public_html/.

This can only be done by a system administrator and the way to create a symlink /some_app which will actually be just a shortcut for /usr/sbin/some_dir/some_other/some_application is:

cd /
sudo ln -s  /usr/sbin/some_dir/some_application /some_app

now if you display contents for the / directory (ls -l), you will get:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root    root    18 Feb 24 16:07 /some_app -> /usr/sbin/some_dir/some_application

So much easier to execute /some_app than to look for it in its obscure directory :)
Of course /usr/sbin/some_dir/some_application has to exist, otherwise you will see the same but the /some_app -> /usr/sbin/some_dir/some_application will be marked with red or the colour your system uses to show an error.

Another common use is when there are many users on a server, they all have website content in their home directories, and administrator links the web content directory /var/www/ to them in order for the apache server to be able to serve them as actual webpages.
For example:

User ishtar has a home directory /home/ishtar and in it her webpage directory: /home/ishtar/my_site

Admin will them create a link to it:

ln -s  /home/ishtar/my_site /var/www/ishtar

And this may be shown by apache as under url: http://someserver.com/~ishtar

So now if you enter /var/www/ishtar (symbolic link) and issue pwd with the options above you will get:

> cd /var/www/ishtar
> pwd
/var/www/ishtar
> pwd -L
/var/www/ishtar
> pwd -P
/home/ishtar/my_site

As you can see the default use of pwd (without options) is is pwd -L.

Helpful command-line tips for Linux users part 3: working with directories - ls

list of all commands

explanation of the convention:

[] : values in square brackets are optional

... : means more elements of that type can be used

ls BASIC USAGE 
ls [option] ... [file] ... - list information about normal [file]s, by default if no options given, you are looking for the file in current directory and sort alphabetically.
for example this will display all files in directory /home/ishtar:

ls /home/ishtar

will show:

bin

Which means that in my home directory I only have one normal (not hidden) directory and no normal files. But really there's more there. For the rest of this entry I am assuming I am in directory /home/isthar so I don't need to specify it next time.

Usually you would like to use several basic options for ls command. And there are more, but the most useful I find are those:

list all files but . and .. (these are in all directories and are used by the system, not much use to normal user).

ls -A

and now suddenly my home directory shows:

.bash_history  bin     .fonts    .mozilla  .vimrc
.bashrc        .emacs  .inputrc  .profile

bold=directory
.name_of_the_file=hidden file

List files in long format

ls -l

will display:

total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 ishtar users 4096 Feb 17  2014 bin

you see here 7 columns, these are:
drwxr-xr-x file type (here d for directory) and permissions for group (3 letters following d) user (next three letters) and everyone else (last three letters) (w=write, x=execute, r=read, -=no rights)
2 number of hard links
ishtar owner name
users group name
4096 size in bytes
Feb 17 2014 timestamp
bin file/directory/link name
The first line that command produces is total 4 and it is showing you the number of 1kB blocks used by the files in the directory, non-recursively.

List files in long format, but do not list owner

ls -g

When listing files in long format, do not list group

ls -G

Sort by file size

ls -S

Sort by modification time

ls -t

Reverse sort order

ls -r

List one file per line

ls -1

Print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G), only makes sense if sizes are displayed, so for long formats only -l, -g and -G

ls -h

Do not sort; list entries in directory order. In combination with one_per_line format '-1', it will show files immediately and it has no memory limitations. Very useful if you're listing very large directories!

ls -U

You can use several options at the same time by combining them into a list starting with -, just like this:

ls -GgAh

This will show you long format list of files with no group and no ., .. directories and with sizes in human readable format:

-rw------- 1   53 Nov  7 13:13 .bash_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 1.2K Feb 17  2014 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x 2 4.0K Feb 17  2014 bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 1.6K Feb 17  2014 .emacs
drwxr-xr-x 2 4.0K Feb 17  2014 .fonts
-rw-r--r-- 1  861 Feb 17  2014 .inputrc
drwxr-xr-x 2 4.0K Feb 17  2014 .mozilla
-rw-r--r-- 1 1.1K Feb 17  2014 .profile
-rw-r--r-- 1  849 Feb 17  2014 .vimrc

I usually create several aliases in my .bashrc file to speed up traversing through files using the following:

alias la='ls -A'
alias ll='ls -lA'
alias lbig='ll -Sh'
alias lnew='ll -th'

to create lbig command to find the biggest files, and lnew to find the newest ones. As you can see it is simple to combine aliases and options too, so in my system this:

lnew -rG

will display files ordered from the oldest to the newest and will not show me file owner group.

Helpful command-line tips for Linux users part 2: working with directories - cd

list of all commands

explanation of the convention:

[] : values in square brackets are optional

| : pipe means OR

cd BASIC USAGE 
cd [-L|-P] [directory] - change your current directory to [directory]
for example this will take you to directory var:

cd /var

USEFUL USES

go to your home directory:

cd

To go back to the previous working directory:

cd -

Go one directory up in the hierarchy:

cd ..

Script the above to do more by adding this to .bashrc:

function cd () {
  local -ri n=${#*};
  if [ $n -eq 0 -o -d "${!n}" -o "${!n}" == "-" ]; then
    builtin cd "$@";
  else
    local e="s:\.\.\.:../..:g";
    builtin cd "${@:1:$n-1}" $(sed -e$e -e$e -e$e <<< "${!n}");
  fi
}

Now cd.. takes you to parent dir, cd ... takes you two up, cd .... 3 up and so on

Selling remains...

Since my LAtitude X1 has died I no longer have any need for this little tool:

Dell D/Bay External-Media Module Model:PD01S

Compatible Formats Read: DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, CD-R/RW, CD-ROM Mode 1, 2, CD-DA, CD-I/FMV, CD-XA, Mixed Mode, CD-Exra, CD-Audio, CD-Plus, CD-Text, Photo-CD, Video CD Write: CD-R/RW Product Features Dell Laptop Notebook D / Bay External Powered USB Media Drive Bay Housing This Bay housing uses D series Optical Drives. DP/N: H7531 or compatible Connects to D Port and D Docking Stations. and the following computers Compatible Dell Laptops: Inspiron 300M, Inspiron 9100, Inspiron XPS, Latitude D400 D410 D420 X300 D800 X1

Helpful command-line tips for Linux users part 1.

Lets start with a list of VERY useful commands every linux user should know. I will be explaining all of them and giving some nice tips on useful usage in following posts.

working with directories

cd - change directory
ls - list directory contents
pwd - print current working directory
mkdir - make directories
rmdir - remove empty directories

displaying files

cat - print file contents
less & more - print text (file contents) page by page. less is more versatile in many cases because it allows jumping back and forward through the  text and doesn't need to read in the whole document before displaying it, but more has some good uses too
tail - output the last part of files

creating/deleting/changing files and directories

cp - copy files and directories
mv - move (rename) files
rm - remove files or directories
chmod - change file access permissions
chown - change file owner and/or group
touch - change file timestamps (or create an empty file)
dd - convert and copy a file
tar, bzip2, unzip, gzip and many more - compression / decompression tools

displaying files and directories information

lsof - list opened files
find - search for files in a directory hierarchy
stat - display file or file system status
du - estimate file space usage

working with processes

ps - display snapshot of current processes
top - display and update information about CPU processes
kill - by default kill process of a given pid
bg - resume suspended job in the background, While running a command (job) you can pause/suspend it with ctrl-z and kill it with ctrl-c
fg - Resume suspended job in the foreground, and make it the current job

text operations

echo - display a line of text
history - display the command history
grep - print lines matching a pattern
sort - sort lines of text files
diff - find differences between two files or directories' contents
vi or vim - text editor
sed - powerful stream editor (input is file or command-line)

network tools

netstat - print network information
ping - send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to network hosts (pretty much translates to - check if the host will respond and how quickly)
traceroute - print the route packets trace to network host
wget - non-interactive network downloader
ssh - OpenSSH SSH client
telnet - user interface to the TELNET protocol
ftp - Internet file transfer program
scp - secure copy (remote file copy program)
curl - a tool to transfer data from or to a server

executing commands

sudo - execute a command as another user (mostly as root) alias - display aliases or create an alias for a command
watch - execute a program periodically and print output
cron - daemon to execute scheduled commands

system information

uname - print system information
crontab - print crontab entry for a specific user
free - display the free, used, swap memory available in the system
df - print the file system disk space usage
date - print or set the system date and time
dmesg - program to print out bootup messages

other

clear - clear the terminal screen
passwd - update user's password
mount - mount a file system
lsmod - program to show the status of modules in the Linux Kernel
insmod - simple program to insert a module into the Linux Kernel
rmmod - simple program to remove a module from the Linux Kernel

To get information about any command

man - display the on-line manual pages
whatis - usually a single line description of command
which - tells you what is the actuall path of the command
-h/--help - diplay help information of a command/program

RiP my faithful friend

So the day has come. My Latitude X1 has died. I thought it was the disk, then the memory, but it turned out to be the motherboard. Done and dusted. I thought about reviving it, but frankly it had served me for much longer any other electronic device had. Rest in Peace little one. Time to find a replacement...

See here for the continuation of the saga