Minicom ymodem issue

This was a simple fix, but took a while to figure out because of less than informative error messages. While trying to transfer a file (a Linux kernel) using minicom and ymodem we got a protocol failed error when using one machine (my laptop) and it worked on another. After checking versions of minicom, serial adapter drivers, ymodem config, etc… we noticed that minicom is setup to use /usr/bin/rb and /usr/bin/sb for ymodem comm. Turns out, they weren’t installed! On Debian (*buntu) the lrzsz package is what is needed. A quick apt-get install lrzsz and we were up and running.

Gotta love cryptic error messages!

MySQL install fails on Ubuntu with static IP

Update:

It was not the static IP address, but the fact that due to a typo in /etc/network/interfaces the loopback device was not active.

Installing MySQL server on Ubuntu fails if the machine has a static IP address.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Results in:

Setting up mysql-server-5.0 (5.0.45-1ubuntu3.1) ...
* Stopping MySQL database server mysqld
...done.
* Starting MySQL database server mysqld
...fail!
invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.0 (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server:
mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.0; however:
Package mysql-server-5.0 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
mysql-server-5.0
mysql-server
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

To fix this edit /etc/mysql/my.conf and change the bind-address to the static address of the machine. Then rerun apt-get to finish the configuration of the packages.

sudo apt-get -f install

Reported to Ubuntu launchpad