Gremlins!!!

I had the pleasure of installing Ubuntu onto two old computers this weekend. One laptop and one desktop. Both resistant to Doctor Dion’s orders.

The Ubuntu graphical installer is poor at detecting and setting up old graphics cards and monitors. It is a strange and frustrating problem because once Ubuntu is installed it detects and configures them effortlessly. The installation issue shows itself through symptoms which include any of the following:

A perpetually blank screen that prevents any set-up questions from being answered
A continuously moving animated gif that suggests “something amazing is about to happen“; which it is – the computer is about to get a boot from its frustrated user!

An error message that reads

vesamenu.c32: attempted DOS system call
boot:

Whatever the symptom, I am sure that it will have prompted you to clean your disc, to clean your disc drive, to re-download your installation iso, to reburn it at increasingly slower speeds, to Google umpteen times with search terms like:

For those of us who like to use highly customizable free WordPress themes like Suffusion and Thematic, there is some good news today: Atahualpa 3.5.2 is available for download. Unfortunately (did you guess that was coming?), Atahualpa 3.5.2 has a serious bug that causes server CPU and memory usage to skyrocket.

I’ve tried Atahualpa 3.5.2 on multiple servers and in all cases the CPU usage spirals above 37% and the memory usage goes beyond 5%. Such a shame because its straight-edged look is a great alternative to Suffusion’s curvy look.

I advise anyone wishing to upgrade to Atahualpa 3.5.2 to wait for a bug fix to be released or risk being kicked off your server. Alright, the most that’ll usually happen is that your server account will be suspended until the theme is downgraded.

If you have already installed (or upgraded to) the new theme version and your web host has suspended your account without providing you access to your WordPress admin panel, just delete the Atahualpa 3.5.2 directory in /wp-content/themes/ to force WordPress to use its default theme (TwentyTen, or Kubrik in pre WP 3 versions).