Python error interpretation

[Ray Parrish]

CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> Ray Parrish wrote:
>   
>> I do not understand this fascination with attempting to install things 
>> from the command line, when there is the excellent Synaptic Package 
>> Manager available right there on your menu, which can easily circumvent 
>> the problems you're currently having with your python installation.
>>     
>
> Copying/pasting what to type in a shell is far easier than writing a
> description of what to point and click at. Also, it helps to know how to
> admin a system using a shell for those occasions you need to do it, such
> as with remote systems or when you have to write scripts. Having said
> that, using Synaptic, aptitude, or Adept manager is not mutually
> exclusive with using the command line. If you like using GUI tools,
> that's fine but the command line isn't inferior in any way and in some
> cases, it is superior.
>   

Maybe I'm not remembering right, but I'm pretty sure I was acknowledging 
that yesterday in one of my posts. Maybe it was on another list, as I 
read a bunch of them. 8-)  Yes, the command line just proved very useful 
to me yesterday as a matter of fact.

I recently borked my xorg.cong by incautiously adding a video mode that 
wouldn't work. After a day of tweaking things to get my nvidia video 
card recognized again, and re-establishing all of my Compiz settings to 
the way I like them again, all seemed well.  But! when I got up the next 
morning,and booted my computer, I was greeted by a system with no menus 
whatsoever in evidence, no menu panels, nothing!

The only change I had made the day before had stuck except for the video 
resolution, and my menus were all gone. I don't know what I changed the 
day before which caused that! So... I did an ALT-F2, and it worked! I 
got a run dialog up and started a Terminal window from there. I do not 
know the right command to restart xwindows, so I just  began 
re-instating all of the settings and pieces a bit at a time, using 
Terminal to start what other programs I needed to use, until I got the 
menu panels, menus, and launcher icons all back into place.

I suspect that when I exported my Compiz settings the day before to a 
file without the .profile extension on it, that all of my settings 
evaporated on me. While fixing the problem yesterday I discovered the 
default extension for the Compiz profile, and set it correctly that time.

Yes, there are definitely good uses for the command line, and I really 
like tearing my way down into the system scripts to see how things work. 
Windows has all of that information hidden away in binary files, so it 
blocks people from learning a lot of things.

As a result of my fiasco the other day with adding a wrong resolution 
mode to my xorg.conf, I have done a lot of learning, and now I actually 
know how to "do the math", to verify that a potential video mode will 
work, instead of blithely assuming that it will just because I set the 
dot clock rate a bit higher than the setting for the previous mode in 
the file.

I learned how to do that now by reading the man files, and info files 
for the "x" commands, and examining the scripts contained in the various 
xwindows folders. It rocks that it is so easy to do that in Ubuntu.

Later, Ray Parrish

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