Anytime a person updates their computer operating system, it takes some time to customize it for a comfortable look and feel. Over the past few days, I've been working with Linux Mint 11 to get to work as I want it to. I've made great progress, but there are a few minor modifications I've been wrestling with.
Last night, before going off to bed, I made some changes to the start-up manager in order to speed up the reboot process. This morning I rebooted without the somewhat annoying splash screen (since I'm the only person who uses this computer, I don't see a need to log in each time I reboot it). Everything seemed fine...until I tried to perform an application upgrade.
In Linux, to protect the core processes, you must enter the administrative password anytime you wish to modify integral parts of the system. As I marked the program for upgrade, the authentication screen popped up and I entered my password. To my horror, the system wouldn't accept it. I typed it again with the same result. I tried to switch to root and the same thing happened.
I spent the next few hours pulling out what little hair I have left. I tried a number of different strategies to no avail. It was getting to the point in which I thought I would need to reload the operating system all over again.
Before taking this drastic step, I decided to shutdown the computer for a few minutes to see if this somehow would help. Once rebooted, I again tried to upgrade the program I had been trying to upgrade for some time. As I typed in the password, I noticed that one of the keys on my keyboard didn't feel right -- I had noticed this before, but ignored it. I looked down to discover that a glob of something had become wedged between it and the key next to it.
I removed the glob...and the problem was solved!!!!
You see, the glob was causing two keys to be compressed at once and so this specific letter of my password was unintelligible to the operating system. Consequently, I had spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon seeking a complicated solution for a very easy problem.
I know it's not just me. We humans have a penchant for missing the simple and the obvious.
This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.
Last night, before going off to bed, I made some changes to the start-up manager in order to speed up the reboot process. This morning I rebooted without the somewhat annoying splash screen (since I'm the only person who uses this computer, I don't see a need to log in each time I reboot it). Everything seemed fine...until I tried to perform an application upgrade.
In Linux, to protect the core processes, you must enter the administrative password anytime you wish to modify integral parts of the system. As I marked the program for upgrade, the authentication screen popped up and I entered my password. To my horror, the system wouldn't accept it. I typed it again with the same result. I tried to switch to root and the same thing happened.
I spent the next few hours pulling out what little hair I have left. I tried a number of different strategies to no avail. It was getting to the point in which I thought I would need to reload the operating system all over again.
Before taking this drastic step, I decided to shutdown the computer for a few minutes to see if this somehow would help. Once rebooted, I again tried to upgrade the program I had been trying to upgrade for some time. As I typed in the password, I noticed that one of the keys on my keyboard didn't feel right -- I had noticed this before, but ignored it. I looked down to discover that a glob of something had become wedged between it and the key next to it.
I removed the glob...and the problem was solved!!!!
You see, the glob was causing two keys to be compressed at once and so this specific letter of my password was unintelligible to the operating system. Consequently, I had spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon seeking a complicated solution for a very easy problem.
I know it's not just me. We humans have a penchant for missing the simple and the obvious.
This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.
Taoist practice is undertaken to be sensitive to the simple and obvious.
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