MaximumHoyt

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a first-person shooter originally released on November 19, 2001. The game, like many other classic games, is available at GOG.com and costs only US$5.99. iortcw for Linux Don't bother with old and crusty Linux binaries offered by idsoft; they are problematic and it's painful to use them on a modern Linux. Fortunately for us, there are more modern GPL-licensed Linux binaries available for 32- and 64-bit systems as well as high resolution textures packages. The project at GitHub provides source code that can also be compiled for MS Windows using MinGW. iortcw for Windows and Mac You can download pre-compiled binaries for 32- and 64-bit Linux, MS Windows and Mac from here . Let's put our files in /usr/local/games/rtcw . As root, extract the downloaded .ZIP file for your architecture to  /usr/local/games/rtcw . All we are missing are the game data files. I purchased them from GOG.com. The game installer downloaded from GOG.com can be ...

Just a place to leave some bookmarks for data recovery that I can access anywhere. Recover Data From a Scratched or Damaged CD or DVD GNU ddrescue Manual Making backup copies of damaged dvds using ddrescue Recovering damaged CDs or DVDs with Linux ddrescue at ForensicsWiki.org Guide to Using DDRescue to Recover Data Ddrescue - Data recovery tool How to Clone Hard Disks with ddrescue CD-ROM data recovery - ddrescue 12 Linux dd, ddrescue and dcfldd command examples dd_rescue at forensicsWiki.org dcfldd at forensicsWiki.org "The DoD version of dd is called dcfldd. It works the same way, but is has a progress bar." How to use dcfldd instead of dd How to do everything with dd Photorec WIKI TestDisk WIKI   download all OS CmosPwd WIKI Chntpw for Dos WIKI Disk Cloning with dd

Mageia does not provide makeself, so you must obtain it from it's homepage (which re-direct to its Github page). The homepage provides a description of the application and a discussion of its options as well as some history of the application. Download it from: https://github.com/megastep/makeself/tarball/master . Unpack it to a sub-directory of your /home directory and change to that directory. Then run $ sh  ./makeself.sh and makeself will unpack itself to ~/makeself . Read the README.md file contents. This provides a good overview of what the application does and how it goes about building itself and eventually extracting itself. For my example, I will create a makeself shell archive that will install certain files in my  /home directory that I use in every /home directory on every machine where I have an account. To quote the README.md file, the syntax of makeself is the following: `makeself.sh [args] archive_dir file_name label startup_script [script_ar...

After the release of Unreal Tournament 2003 came a follow-up with  Unreal Tournament 2004 which was intended to fix issues of game play from Unreal Tournament 2003. Disappointingly, Unreal Tournament 2004 did not come with a Linux installer on the game discs, but the installer was released later. By 2017, installing it is not so easy. Linux is not like it was in 2004. Not only has it improved, but lucky for us, Linux has been around long enough that it now includes tools to allow backwards compatibility. We'll be installing as root to make the game available to all system users. Download the the Linux installer. Mount the game discs and copy them all to ~/ut2004 . Copy the Linux installer to that directory, cd there and su to root. First, we need to set a workable POSIX version value. # export _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 Second, set a usable libc version. # export SETUP_LIBC=glibc-2.1 Third, tell the installer that we are running on a 32-bit system. #...

To easily manage single or multiple chroot environments, schroot , a sophisticated and highly flexible change-root management tool, may be employed. I'm most interested in first using schroot to test beta versions of Crossover. Chroot jails are commonly employed to add an additional level of security to some Linux services like ftp or http servers. If an attacker gains control of the server, he is trapped in the chroot jail and cannot easily harm the entire system. As well, chroot is often employed in a "rescue" mode where Linux is launched from a DVD of CD and the damaged root filesystem is run from a chroot environment to make repairs easier. To see how a chroot environment for Mageia is created, refer to the Chroot HOWTO in the Mageia Wiki. Mageia appears to have incorporated schroot from Debian because it makes for building and testing RPMs easier when they also use iurt . Since schroot was initially developed on Debian systems, much of the technical inform...

A few of my friends have been discussing archiving their files "in the Cloud" and other options. Using one of the "free" services is always an option, but there are limits on space for free and adding storage capacity can be expensive. Of course, archiving and data storage are very important to most business and there is a huger market for providing those services. While these solutions are overkill for the home, they can provide good examples of how it should be done. If your personal data is important enough to archive, it is important to insure that the backup will always be available and be free of corruption. Therefore, you should: 1. Have multiple copies of your data 2. Keep copies in multiple safe locations 3. Always test your backups The kind of data you want to archive can help in the decision of how best to archive it. For example, family photos would be data that would suggest multiple backups for protection against loss, but not on media that ...

I just came upon innoextract today. I have many of the wonderful games from GOG.com, some of which have native Linux Clients. Before now, I've had to use PlayOnLinux or Crossover to install these for use with WINE, then add the Linux client. InnoSetup as a way to create an installer to install the games on Windows.  Daniel Scharrer has created innoextract to allow the unpacking of those archives on a non-Windows platform. The website provides information on using innoextract , but this information from the page is very useful: GOG.com Installers GOG.com installers with a 2.x.x version number on the download page or in the filename use InnoSetup 5.5.0 and cannot be extracted by innoextract 1.2 and older. Older installers use InnoSetup 5.2.3 and usually have no version in the filename. Some GOG.com multi-part installers with version 2.1.x or higher use RAR archives (renamed to .bin) to store the game data. These files are not part of the InnoSetup installer and require...

Halo: Combat Evolved is a first-person shooter produced by Bungie for Microsoft. The game runs well under WINE, but it won't install unless you first put mfc42.dll in C:\Windows\System32 . I used Codeweaver's Crossover to install the game. Before the actual installation begins, make sure you have copies  mfc42.dll to  C:\Windows\System32 or the game will not install. Once done, you can install the updates, Patch-108  (the no-cd patch) and Patch-110  (removes and replaces Game-Spy servers plus several fixes). And finally, install msxml6 , the Microsoft XML Parser  to have the game display text. You can also download a full set of saved games . This allows you to play and level rather than forcing you to work your way through each mission. There's a nice tutorial by Benjamin7 at HaloWaypoint that details a generic WINE install and provides a nice startup script . He also provides install instructions for creating custom maps. The source for man...

Linux Version (The WINE version is here .) Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is an interesting first-person shooter. Trying to capitalize on their success with the online part of Return to Castle Wolfenstien, they developed an online component for RtCW and farmed out the single-player mode. Turns out, the SP mode sucked , so they ditched that and gave away the online game. The Game's PAK files remained proprietary (as always) and they released the source code for the game engine. The original release had a Linux version as well as Mac and Windows version and can still be downloaded from SplashDamage . The problem with the Linux version is that Linux changed sound subsystems (OSS, ALSA, PULSEAUDIO) and the sound component of the game is no longer compatible with a modern Linux. Never fear, several kind souls have updated the Linux binaries in two versions: ET-Legacy which tries to keep true to the original game and ETXreal, which modified the format for the game's maps and ...

Unreal is the first in a series of first-person shooters released by EPIC in 1998, It was followed by an add-on named Return to Na-Pali . The two games were combined into "Unreal Gold" and modified to run on the more modern Unreal Tournament game engine. The Windows version of the game is available from GOG for US$9.99 and is free of any Digital Rights Management restrictions. For my money, this is the best place to obtain the game. All four games in the series are available, often at a discount when purchased together. There are Linux installers available from Loki, but these are getting old and difficult to use . The game installs and plays well using PlayOnLinux  or Codeweaver's Crossover, both of which are a handy way of installing games when a native Linux game engine is not available or no longer works and using WINE and specially crafted installation scripts which not only select the best version of WINE to use, but also install any Windows apps that the ...

Quake3 Arena is a multiplayer online first-person shooter released in 1999. There is a Quake3 HOWTO written by Jonathan Bergknoff that should be your first stop for a general overview. It should be your first stop because even though dated, it provides useful details on how to launch mods and fix problems. There is also an interesting Wikipedia page for Quake3. It is quite amazing to me that this game was released way back in 1999 as the third installment to ID's Quake series. I've played it ever since the release; it has quite a following. Since id Software released the source code for the Quake3 game engine licensed under the GPL, there have been several projects that have attempted to make not only a better playing game, but a better looking game. You need a valid key to play Quake3, so if you don't already own the game, purchase the Windows version of the game from STEAM or Amazon to obtain the key code. There are several different game engines and...

There is a Quake2 HOWTO written by Bob Zimbinsky that should be your first stop. It should be your first stop because even though dated, it provides useful details on how to launch mods and fix problems. There is also an interesting Wikipedia page for Quake2. It is quite amazing to me that this game was released way back in 1997 as the second installment to ID's Quake series. I've played it ever since the release; it has quite a following. Since id Software released the source code for the Quake2 game engine, there have been several projects that have attempted to make not only a better playing game, but a better looking game. The game itself can be purchased from Amazon, GOG, eBay, or STEAM. There is no special code or password to unlock, run or install the game. In addition to the win32 game engine supplied with the original release as well as the GOG and STEAM releases, there are several different game engines and hi-res packs to choose from. What I'm prese...

There is a Linux Quake HOWTO written by Stevenuas that is extensive and should be your first stop. It provides guidance on how to run mods and fix problems. There is also an interesting Wikipedia page . It is quite amazing to me that this game was released in 1996 as the successor to id's Doom series. I've played it ever since the release. It has quite a following. Since id Software released the source code for the Quake game engine, there have been several projects that have attempted to make not only a better playing game, but a better looking game. There are several different game engines to choose from and several hi-res texture packs to choose from. What I'm presenting here is how I configure Quake on my Linux box. The game engine I chose is the DarkPlaces game engine built by LordHavoc . He last updated it in May of 2014 and his package provides binaries "for Windows (32bit, compatible with Windows XP/Vista x64/7 x64), Linux 686, Linux amd64, ...