Archive for April 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 on a Thinkpad R61
Posted by: JDS
However, in Ubuntu 8.04, everything pretty much works Real Good(TM)
Okay, so, I really frikin love LinuxMint Daryna. That's LinuxMint 4. Actually, though, it felt like Mint 3.1 was a bit better, more polished, I don't know, friendlier, than LinuxMint 4. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. The point is, Daryna is pretty effin great. Really.
Also, I have always felt that Ubuntu, while sound of concept lacked a smidge in the execution department, and that is where an OS like Mint really shone: in the finall fit and finish of the OS.
However, Ubuntu 8.04 may just prove to be the very best Ubuntu release, nay, the best Linux Desktop Distribution release ever. We'll see.
Okay, back to Daryna. I think Mint is absolutely fantastic. But, unfortunately, some things just plain dain't work right on my rather new Lenovo Thinkpad R61. Wireless? Worked well. Built-in webcam? Worked great. But things that I really really want to work perfectly on a laptop did not. One major, the other minor: Suspend/hibernate and the trackpad.
Now, in Ubuntu 8.04 -- and this isn't the final version even -- the trackpad works perfectly, and suspend/hibernate has worked so far out-of-the-box. Flawless.
Oh, I just remembered another thing that was a bit dodgy in Daryna on this laptop: LCD brightness. Didn't work at all. Well, the screen brightness buttons did something -- they caused the brightness OSD to show up with what the system thought was the actual brightness -- but the brightness never changed. Now, however, all of the power management functions, including screen brightness, work. Perfectly, in fact. In fact, I don't think there is anything that doesn't work!
Other things that are really cool about Ubuntu 8.04:
- Screen configurator actually worked! It detected the external monitor, and had a neat little GUI that let you drag around the positioning of the connected monitors -- left of, right of, top of, etc. or cloned. Admittedly, this GUI was a bit buggy! But it did work and did not crash. Just quirky bugs.
- FireFox 3 is fucking fast as hell
- Actually, *everything* is faster. This is just subjective, but everything just seems to run faster: nautilus, VMWare (when I finally got that running), FireFox 3, etc.
- Actually, actually, not just speed, but FireFox 3 is better -- way better -- than FF2 in almost every respect. System integration is better. FF3 is faster. FF3 does popups, dialogs, and notices better (Take the "save password now" dialog. Before FF stopped and waited for you to make a decision on save now or later. Now, FF continues on through to what you were doing -- browsing a website -- and, if you want, you have plenty of time to click or ignore the very unobtrusive "save now?" dialog.)
- It was really easy to just add all the "extra stuff" -- MP3 playback, Java, video codecs, etc, with the "ubuntu-restricted-extras" meta-package. I don't know when that got added, all I know is that I don't remember seeing it before 8.04. (Automatix anyone?)
- Holy crap, even the little things that didn't seem to work before now work perfectly. NetworkManager, always a cool feature since 7.04, now is even better than ever. You can look at and edit the saved wireless access points. The VPN plugin worked perfectly for me. did you get that? PERFECTLY. No making a shell script to log on to my VPN -- NetworkManager just takes care of it! Mind you, I am useing another thing that worked perfectly and easily, the "vpnc" Cisco VPN client. (I think in my previous job, for a Large University, I couldn't use the vpnc client only because the buracracy there did not allow peons to configure their own VPN clients, and to use vpnc you really need to have the Group and User passwords. But I digress. Also, I have no way to test this anymore. Don't work there! (yay)).
I do think that some things need to get changed at the level of "choosing which packages belong on the CD" level. Like Evolution, a shitty, buggy, unstable, clunky app. (Does anyone actually use Evolution except Novell employess and the Evo developers?) Mplayer browser plug-in is way better than Totem's browser plugin. And Amarok? Waay better than Banshee or Rhythmbox. And where is K3B? I think Ubuntu draws lines between its core disto (Gnome-based) and the "official derivatives" (KDE-based Kubuntu, and XFCE-based Xubuntu) a little to tightly along Desktop lines, and there are simply some KDE apps (or just non-Gnome, e.g. Thunderbird) that are better than their Gnome counterparts (and Gnome apps that are better than their KDE counterparts). And that is another thing that LinuxMint does so well. Mint does not just "add codecs" to Ubuntu. Mint goes in and tweaks packages to make choices by what works best, irrespective of Desktop environment.
Anyway, I hope the Elysa release is as good as Ubuntu 8.04 has shown to be so far. It hasn't been all roses, though. The biggest problems so far are:
- NVIDIA drivers work well, when they are being used, but cause problems with other stuff, like the aforementioned screen configurator and with suspend/hibernate. Among other things. A non-issue for me at the moment as I can do without 3D acceleration. But it would be nice to have, certainly! I'll look into it...
- The screen settings get remembered across reboots BUT I have to remove the external monitor when I reboot! Or else I just get a blank screen -- on BOTH monitors! The laptop is running, mind you, it is just the screens that are blank. The workaround (sucky) is to remove the external monitor, reboot, and reattach the monitor after boot has finished. It is weird and doesn't make sense because the boot splash can even be seen on the external monitor when I have it plugged in during reboot, but something gets screwed up right as the boot sequence is wrapping up. This problem is definitely the worst one I've run into so far and I wouldn't have even noticed it at all but for my need to use my awesome, huge, fantastic external monitor.
The solutions for both of these problems are not too bad: just don't use the NVIDA drivers (of course, then there's no compiz), and do the reboot workaround.
Update: Not everything is so rosy.
Okay, so, there is this bug. Oh, well, not everything is perfect. The problem is with Pulseaudio and the solutions are
- Remove Pulseaudio
- Change default sound server to something else
- 'pulseaudio -k' when the bug occurs (i.e. kill pulseaudio). Then, maybe, just maybe, start it up again.
Not a showstopper for me, but very, very annoying.
Cisco VPN on Ubunut 8.04
Posted by: JDS
Some minor details. I have a client config filr for the Cisco-supplied client. Some of the terminology is a little different from that of VPNC. Here is the mapping:
| VPNC name, as asked when running CLI client (see below) | Cisco VPN Client Name (in config file) |
|---|---|
| IPSec gateway address | Host |
| IPSec ID | GroupName |
| IPSec secret | GroupPwd |
| username | Username |
| password | UserPassword |
Example:
jeff@frogpad:$ sudo vpnc
Enter IPSec gateway address: 123.45.67.89
Enter IPSec ID for 123.45.67.89: GroupNameAsSuppliedByYourNetworkAdmin
Enter IPSec secret for GroupName@123.45.67.89:
Enter username for 123.45.67.89: UsernameAsSuppliedByYourNetworkAdmin
Enter password for jeff@123.45.67.89:
VPNC started in background (pid: 1742)...
Wow! It actually worked!
Use a bind mount instead of a symbolic link
Posted by: JDS
This is really just a one liner, but I'll add a smidge of extra description. I don't remember the exact situation in Moodle that was causing me a headache, but I do know that there was an issue whereby my symbolically linked DirectoryRoot was creating a problem.
Oh! Here, I found the problem: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-6513
The soltuion, on Linux at least, was easy! Use the "--bind" option for mount to mount a directory on top of another directory.
mount --bind /home/www/ /var/www
Why is my DirectoryRoot in /home? Well, I love tinkering with my box and installing new distros. I put /home on a separate, big, disk partition. Then I put everything that I want to remain unscathed from an uprade into /home. That's really all. Makes upgrades really quite easy and painless.
Also note that this mount point does not get mounted automatically after a reboot! This is not in /etc/fstab, and I don't think a --bind mount can be put in fstab! To get around this, just put the one-liner in /etc/rc.local. (It seems that Ubuntu does now include rc.local, even if Debian does not. When did Ubuntu start carrying /etc/rc.local?)
jeff@frogpad:~$ cat /etc/rc.local
#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.
mount --bind /home/www/ /var/www
exit 0
Getting Microphone to Work with Skype Linux
Posted by: JDS
So the problem was: no one could hear me! (Or my wife). The fix was pretty simple but not very obvious, especially since everything appeared to be working: headphones worked, mic worked, but Skype was not picking up the sound!
Fix was this: adjust "Capture" levels to let Skype get the sound input. "Capture" mixer is evidently a different mixing channel altogether and Skype uses that. Plus the "Mic" channel. For me, on my R61, I also have "Internal Mic", "Docking Mic", "and "X Mic Boost" (where "X" is one of the three microphone channels).
Steps:
- Double click Volume applet.
- Go to Edit->Preferences
- Click the checkbox for "Capture". This adds the newly visible "Capture" slider in a newly visible "Recording" tab.
- Un-mute "Capture". Slide it to the top.
- And finally, in Skype, go to Options->Sound Devices and UN-check the "Allow Skype to automatically adjust my mixer levels" or else your Capture mix will jump all over the place. To a bad, way-too-low place.
Done!
Newt's Rules of System Administration
Posted by: JDS
- Practice the Commander Scott method of job estimation. Always say a task will take four times longer than you think it will, do it in half the stated time, and look like a genius.
- If something spontaneously resolves itself, never, ever, EVER, admit that.
- Not sure why something isn't working? Tell your users, "Network problems".
More as I think of them...