Category Archives: Linux

Linux

Linux Install Fest Aug 18th 2007 @ MIT

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From the BLU Discussion List:

Boston Linux Installfest XXVI
When: Saturday, August 18, 2007 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: MIT Building E-51, Room 061

Parking: parking is available in front of the building with a ramp.

What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and your Linux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions. In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance.

COST: It's free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions are welcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system. While Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web pages for hardware compatibility.

Linux.ORG: http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
Hardware HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.linuxdoc.org/

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and Ubuntu distributions.

Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further information and directions. Parking is available in front of the building on Amherst St. Enter the building, and take the elevator to your left down 1 floor. Room 061 is opposite the elevator.

I probably won’t be there, but if your interested in Linux or meeting other Linux folk this will be a good event to go to. The BLU folk are a sound bunch.

—————
Now playing: Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldier
via FoxyTunes

Linux, Tech

Xorg stopped working …

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Updated my Debian system last night and this moring Xorg wouldn’t work. In /var/log/Xorg.0.log at the end of the file is this:

(II) LoadModule: “nvidia”
(WW) Warning, couldn’t open module nvidia
(II) UnloadModule: “nvidia”
(EE) Failed to load module “nvidia” (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: “keyboard”
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input//keyboard_drv.so
(II) Module keyboard: vendor=”X.Org Foundation”
compiled for 7.1.1, module version = 1.0.0
Module class: X.Org XInput Driver
ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 0.6
(II) LoadModule: “mouse”
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input//mouse_drv.so
(II) Module mouse: vendor=”X.Org Foundation”
compiled for 7.1.1, module version = 1.1.1
Module class: X.Org XInput Driver
ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 0.6
(EE) No drivers available.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

Looks like /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so is missing.

Found the fix here:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=420177

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=428580

To create the .so file do the following (as root or using sudo):

cd /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers

gcc -shared -o nvidia_drv.so nvidia_drv.o

Debian, e17, Linux, Ubuntu

Enlightement e17 on Ubuntu Screenshots

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E17 Darkness Theme on Ubuntu:

E17 Darkness Theme on Ubuntu with the menu highlighted:

E17 Darkness theme with a wallpaper from vladstudio.com:

Themes are available from get-e.org. The packages for Ubuntu come with Darkness and other themes, the Debian package appears to only come with the default theme.

Look for my latest posting on E17 as this information could be out-of-date:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/category/e17/

Boston, Linux, personal, portal, Tech

The Pogues

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Going to see The Pogue at The Paradise tonight. Should be good craic. 😀

On other notes, Jetspeed 2.1 was released on March 3rd, so putting together an internal build for use at work.

Can’t believe that it’s been almost a month since I’v blogged. And on the Enlightement instructions, it works well on Debian, but in my Ubuntu Laptop it doesn’t work at all. I realised that after installing E17 using apt-get, that I had old libraries lying around from 2005 when I had compiled and installed E17 myself. I’m sure that caused a problem, but I’ve removed all traces I could find of the build I did and the binaries I apt-get’ed still work …

e17, Linux, picture

Enlightement e17 on Debian & Ubuntu

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Update, April 17th, 2008:

This post is out of date, for a Debian update see:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/2008/04/17/update-on-enlightenment-e17-for-debian/

See newer instructions for Ubuntu here:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/2008/04/15/e17-on-ubuntu-revisited/

Look for my latest postings on E17 as this information could be out-of-date:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/category/e17/

UPDATE, April 14th 2008:

Edevelop.org is temporarily down as they move their server to a new datacenter, which means these instructions will not work for Debian until the server is back online. However, for Ubuntu you can use the Dunnewind.net repository. Follow the instructions below, and comment out references to the Edevelop.org repository. I’ll do a proper update in the near future, or create a new posting and separate out the Debian & Ubuntu instructions.

Announcement below:

http://www1.get-e.org/Main/News/_articles/381.html


Edevelop.org has e17 packages for both Debian & Ubuntu. If you’d like to install the packages on either Debian or Ubuntu follow the procedure below:

Note: Not responsible for any damage this might do to your system.

Debian
For Debian sid/unstable edit /etc/apt/sources.list as root or using sudo and add the following lines:
# enlightenment e17 packages:
deb http://edevelop.org/debian unstable main

Ubuntu
If your using Ubuntu Edgy, add the following line to your sources.list, found in /etc/apt/:
# enlightenment e17 packages:
deb http://edevelop.org/pkg-e/ubuntu edgy e17
deb http://e17.dunnewind.net/ubuntu edgy e17

You can replace “edgy” with “gutsy” or “hardy”. Also, I’m not sure if there conflicts between the edevelop & dunnewind repostiories. And I cannot test them as edevelop is still down.

Update package list
Next you’ll need to update the package list:
sudo apt-get update
If needed install signing key
If you get the following warning:
W: GPG error: http://edevelop.org edgy Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 223020C2A7C6F0DF
you can add the signing key for the Edevelop repository. This is trivial to do, but not necessary, if you don’t do this you’ll receive a warning every time you update or install a package from edevelop.org:
cd /tmp/;
wget http://lut1n.ifrance.com/repo_key.asc;
sudo apt-key add repo_key.asc;

Install E17
To see most of the E17 packages available:
apt-cache search e17
To install all the packages (as of Feb-18-2007) on Debian:
sudo apt-get install e17 e17-extras engage engage eclair libemotion0-xine
To install all the packages (as of Feb-18-2007) on Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install e17 engage libewl1-engines-all libewl1-engines-all engage

If you want to see what any of the packages provides you can use apt-cache show packagename. e.g.

apt-cache show e17
Package: e17
Source: enlightenment
Version: 1:0.16.999.037-0cvs20070217
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Maintainer: Falko Schmidt
Depends: enlightenment, e17-libs, e17-modules, eutils
Suggests: e17-extras
Architecture: i386
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/x11/e17_0.16.999.037-0cvs20070217_i386.deb
Size: 8702
Installed-Size: 48
MD5sum: 1bf3e406695b3145fb3bb48944bb44ff
Description: Virtual package providing the E17 desktop shell
Enlightenment is an advanced window manager for X11. Unique
features include: a fully animated background, nice drop shadows
around windows, backed by an extremely clean and optimized
foundation of APIs.
.
This virtual package provides all you need to run E17:
* E17 windowmanager
* E17 modules
* E17 tools.

Logout and at the Login Screen, click on Session and select Enlightenment.

Thanks to the Enlightenment developers for creating Enlightement and continuing work on E17, and thanks to the folk at Edevelop.org for building and hosting the E17 packages.

For more information see the following links:
http://forums.debian.net/
https://launchpad.net/e17-repository
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ebuntu

Update: removed e-mail address in package listing.

Look for my latest posting on E17 as this information could be out-of-date:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/category/e17/

This originally posted at:

http://timony.com/mickzblog/2007/02/18/enlightement-e17-on-debian-ubuntu/

games, Linux

Ghouls and Ghosts!

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Fun looking game:

http://www.valarsoft.com/ramuso/?dpage=pagine&page=pagine&pagID=8

Used to play the original game, that this is based on, when I was a wee bit younger. Going to see if I can build it on my Ubuntu laptop, so far I need to install the liballegro-dev packages and associated dependencies.

Found out about the game at Linux Games.

Ghouls & Ghosts!

Got it to build easily enough, but it looks like the author isn’t too familiar with Linux/Unix based on how and where everything got compiled too! The binary is even called game.exe!

Otherwise, the game is a very good rendition of the original. I haven’t played it too much yet, kinda hard to play it properly on my laptop, gotta try it on my desktop which has a real keyboard. Plus, I need to figure out how to re-map the keys, ctrl is shoot and alt is jump, which just feels clumsy to me. All-in-all it looks pretty good, can’t tell if there is sound as the speakers on my lovely Dell 700m laptop don’t work anymore. From what I’ve read this is pretty common and is due to the wires to the speakers fraying where the laptop lid/screen is hinged. Way to go Dell!

Linux

Debian, Ubuntu & iPods

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These days there isn’t much you have to do to configure iPod support for Linux. On either Debian or Ubuntu you need to make sure your a member of the plugdev group. To add yourself to the goup do the following either using sudo or as root:

useradd -g plugdev username

Where username, is the username of the user you want to have iPod access.

Logout, and login again and your iPod should be mounted when you plug it in. If you use Gnome you can start up the “Removeable Drives & Media” configuration tool (it’s under the System -> Preferences menu). And on the Multimedia tab add the following line to have Gtkpod automatically started when your iPod is attached and told where it was mounted:

gtkpod -m %m

gtkpod_config

Also, you need to have the sbp2 module loaded. You can manually load it like so:

sudo modprobe sbp2

To have it auto-loaded at boot time add sbp2 to the /etc/modules file.