Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right....What About Multiple Fails?

Good Morning CREU Fans! Looking back on the past week, it has certainly been filled with confusion, failure, mixed with downright frustration. In other words, it was a typical week in the life of programming and getting different components to get along! Our goals for the week were to install Ubuntu (A free-source operating system) on our 2 protege systems for the project, lolcat and rickroll, get them up to speed with CUDA (NVidia's Software to code algorithms to be executed via a GPU), make sure all of the necessary Linux packages were installed and running metric commands properly, and finally, update our fans. Sounds easy in theory, right?

The beginning of Stephanie and Dr. Rivoire's week was spent testing the 'try/fail' method for Ubuntu. Unfortunately, our systems were (seemingly) failing to install Ubuntu. The list of solutions:

1. New CD Drive - Fail
2. Changing install script command - Fail
3. Lots of Google to resolve the above - Fail
4. Burning the Ubuntu install discs are different speeds (8x, 16x, 24x) - Fail
5. Burning the Ubunut install discs in different formats (CD/DVD) - Fail
6. Update to Fedora 9.....updater was broken - Fail
7. Show that the software was actually failing to install by turning 'silent splash' off - Success!

At this point we even resorted to requesting software from Microsoft. We could see that the systems were still running post-blank screen, however. Roger, our server room extraordinaire at SSU, suggested to change the monitor after a few hours of fail.....and it worked! Who would've thought?

Unfortunately, our frustration did not end here. The install script was showing up fine on the new monitors, and went seemingly flawless, but Lady Gaga came on our resident radio and the screen went blank, again. Fail? Not quite. After a few more hours of tooling around, it turned out that the Ubuntu was installing successfully, but not informing us of this. Needless to say, we left Ubuntu feedback on their forum immediately.

Following our first step of success, we still have a large amount of work to complete for the week, and the success/fail pattern continued. Dr. Rivoire assisted in getting the rest of the Ubuntu/Linux partnership smoothed out, and installing some of the packages required to run our tests.

At the end of it all, we sat at our allotted time for the week still with some friendships to work out between CUDA, Ubuntu, and Linux. Two wrongs don't make a right, but we certainly have proven the trial/error theory. Cheers to more updates this week as we hopefully get our systems up and analyzing!