If you’ve used and built packages from source, chances are you’ve run into some derivation of this dreadful message:

libtool: link: `/usr/lib/libgnomevfs-2.la' is not a valid libtool archive

Unfortunately, there are a few potential causes ranging from broken packages to missing packages, but in general, they are the result of broken dependencies (missing packages are broken dependencies, after all!). Read on about some potential workarounds and solutions! Read more…

If you’ve used *nix-based operating systems for any length of time, you’ve probably come across the gem that is screen. While Gnome and KDE both provide tabbed terminals that largely supplant the needs of screen, the latter is perfect for maintaining multiple sessions on a remote–or not so remote–host. Screen does have a few “gotchas” that can surface and they’re hugely annoying if you’re not familiar with some of its more esoteric shortcuts. Read more…

I was at university today when I realized I had disabled my WinVNC service over the weekend in order to isolate a problem that–as it turns out–was not related to VNC. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to restart the service and was left with no way to remote into my desktop at home. Worse, since I’ve been using Visual Studio a lot, I configured the bootloader to enter Windows by default rather than Gentoo–so no hope of fixing things remotely from there, either. As it turns out, however, the problem wasn’t nearly as difficult as I made it out to be. Read more…