OK, I decided to reinstall Ubuntu. There were three reasons:
1) Now I now more about how it works I wanted to repartition my 3 disks accordingly. More specifically, I wanted my /home to have its own partition as one of the benefits.
2) My installation was a breezy (5.1) which is dist-upgraded to 6.06; something that went reasonably smoothly but resulted in constant hangs in firefox and the gnome menu's. Possibly a reinstall might be a good idea.
3) Kind of tied in to (2) was the fact that HW openGL and sound were not working. I had followed so many HowTos and Guides on getting these working in Ubuntu that my eyes were bleeding. A result being that module files, permissions, symlinks etc had all been tweaked here there and everywhere and I had no idea how to get my system back to a "clean" level without, well, reformatting and installing again. Before any COLA gang zealots start rolling their eyes and calling me a liar, there are some links below indicating the issues:
Step 1: Obtain ISO image of Dapper. Easy : I bit torrented it down in no time and used gnome-baker to burn the ISO : easy peasy.
Step 2: test live cd. Edit bios to boot from cd device. It booted fine. One problem with installed dapper is on the live cd too: it doesnt make sensible defaults for a monitor - and so my monitor is "synced" out on boot and shutdown. One must add "vga=795" to the boot line to get the video to switch to a suitable mode for my monitor. A pain. Without it you cant monitor the boot/shutdown process on your display.
Step 3 : check again for sound on live cd boot. No sound. No HW openGL. Fine. I had to tweak alsamixer the last time I installed : I can do it again when I reinstall.
Step 4 : Prepare PC for reinstall. Resized a petition on an external firewire drive, created a new primary ext3 partition and copied my /home to the new partitions remembering to maintain persmissions.
Step 5 : add mount line to fstab, hide /home somewhere and reboot to check new /home partition is working. Wunderbar! It is.
Step 6 : make a copy of important files in my new home directory for later references. Stuff like bash.bashrc, leafnode config, crontabs, export firefox bookmarks, passwd, shadow, gshadow,gpasswd, inetd.conf,xorg.conf, all relevant figures from system/admin/networking for getting wifi to connect to wireless router.
Step 7 : reinstall. Didnt work. when I selected "install" it said it couldnt mount the cd-rom. Strange since it was running from that very drive. Tried twice. Same result. Grr.
Step 8 : try another dapper install disk - I had a multi OS DVD from PC-Welt Linux with Dapper 6.06 LTS on. I booted that, switched it to English and booted up the Dapper "Live OS". Brilliant. And even better there on my desktop is an "install" icon.
Step 9: Try to install again. One of the best installations ever. It was flawless. An noob could almost do it : really. Keep in mind that I was doing a more complicated install though : even that was catered for. It allowed me to painlessly select locale, language, then presented me with partition options. And it was sensible. It actually tried to put itself on the bigger spaces on the external drives. Thats not what I wanted so I pointed its root mount back to my primary IDE drive. The best thing was the external partitions : all defaulted to "No format". All I had to do was drop down a list and select "mount as /home" for the partition which now contains my old /home stuff. Ditto for other stuff. Easy. It recognised windows and installed windows into the Grub too. Hence my comments earlier in the week about having windows installed before you install Ubuntu. You'd be mad not to take advantage of its windows friendly install. Even Köhlmann's wife uses windows ...
Step 9: Let's go. Deep breath. I hit "install". It took about 40 minutes. It reformatted what I told it to reformat and installed everything seamlessly. Not a hiccup. Only one room for improvement : it should have ejected the DVD when it had finished IMO. My particular HW can be funny about ejecting things during shutdown or boot.
Step 10 : reboot. OK, I lose my monitor for a while but ... it worked. I logged in and it was using my old home just fine. First thing I did was to edit grub's menu.lst and add "vga=795" to the boot line for this kernel - see Step 2 above. Other than that : there's my shiney new dapper desktop.
Step 11 : run automatix. Googled up and installed automatix. Ran it, let it to its stuff. Took about an hour and a half since it did a "update" and there was a lot to download. This included moving to kernel 2.6.15-26.
Step 12 : install emacs-snapshot. problems. Have my emacs stuff doesnt work. Shit!! I remember now. I had it all in the site-lisp and not in my local lisp directory. Doh!!!! Mea Culpa. It took about an hour and a half to google up and install all the bits & bobs for emacs that I use in my development cycle. remember folks : when learning by doing always revisit after a month or so and reconsider where you put things. "site-lisp" seemed a good idea at the time for all that stuff.
Step 13 : try and compile some stuff. Doh! Links to external drives in my home directory. Again, mea culpa, perform a few "ln -s" at the console and all is fixed.
Step 14 : sound. Tinkered my alsamixer and YESSSSSSSSS! Sound.
Step 15 : On the original Ubuntu breezy getting my HP 6110 to work was not easy. There was some conflict in the USB ports. On this install it worked perfectly first time. Excellent.
Step 16 : email & news. My major cockup. I had forgotten that unlike mail, my leafnode news was spooled to /var/spool/news and NOT to my home directory. Damn. All gone. All my gnus status files were useless. Deleted the lot. Had to go through the rigmarole of resubscribing etc - not too much trouble, and all my gnus and emacs personalization's were safe on my "external partition $HOME). /var goes on its own partition next :-; I should of thought of that earlier as I backed up my apache web stuff from that very hierarchy.
Step 17 : watch a movie. Uh oh. Whats this? Audio device busy? Click "close" and hit play - sound works fine. For half an hour. Now its stopped again and I'm back where I started. Oh well. At least I know I am starting to bug hunt on a clean distro install : and I learnt some things in the reinstall process. And here's the thing : I purposely did the dist-upgrade and installed all latest SW before testing sound. And it initially worked. Nothing new was installed from it working to it not working. It makes me think there is a lock file somewhere screwing up my day.
Conclusion : the installation was virtually flawless. The only "issues" I had were really of my own doing. I have no idea why the home made DVD didnt mount in the install - but my "magazine rack" DVD did the job.
OpenGL HW and sound still don't work : Ubuntu is good - but its not as good was Windows as installing and working flawlessly on *this HW*. What I do have is a more reliable OS for general work and I simply could not go back to the concept of single volume directory hierarchies.
Now, get that sound & video sorted,dump everything except for ALSA or a-n-other, and we're away.
On 2006-09-08, Hadron Quark <qadronhu...@geemail.com> wrote:
> Now, get that sound & video sorted,dump everything except for ALSA or > a-n-other, and we're away.
ATI cards are going to be problematic for a while yet. They just don't produce good drivers and won't tell anyone else how. For Linux, Nvidia is the way to go for now.
As to the sound, that's odd. I haven't run into problems like that, and from what I understand of the sound architecture I doubt it's a lock file issue. It could be an interrupt issue (does /proc/interrupts list more than one device on the interrupt used for sound?) or perhaps an issue with esd.
One potential fix is a sound card that supports multi-open (e.g. a cheap SBLive card). Not quite as guaranteed, but cheaper, is to look into setting up dmix for ALSA. (I still don't understand why this isn't the default.)
-- Sincerely,
Ray Ingles (313) 227-2317
We were once willing to go nuclear to avoid secret prisons, torture, and indefinite detention. What happened? - Malor
> OpenGL HW and sound still don't work : Ubuntu is good - but its not as > good was Windows as installing and working flawlessly on *this HW*. What > I do have is a more reliable OS for general work and I simply could not > go back to the concept of single volume directory hierarchies.
> Now, get that sound & video sorted,dump everything except for ALSA or > a-n-other, and we're away.
I'm just curious, are you using integrated sound and video that are bundled on the motherboard, or are you using cards? I've had spotty luck with out-of-box support for some integrated hardware, though it does seem improved with my last few system builds.
Apologies if you address this point in the forum posts you reference; I'm posting via dumb terminal newsreader while on the road, so jumping to external links is a pain.
> tar -zxvf imafuckhead.tar.gz /home/yourusername/
> And save the resulting file somewhere so you dont come back around > and whine for three fucking days again.
How was that whining?
I was pleased : OK sound is crap, but the rest is good. Almost there.
-- KDE == (see GayDE) Kool Desktop Environment - Make X Window look like winbloze... What a fucking great idea! The developers of this have a mental sickness, please avoid this product -> see GNOME. -- Jakes on #Debian
>> OpenGL HW and sound still don't work : Ubuntu is good - but its not as >> good was Windows as installing and working flawlessly on *this HW*. What >> I do have is a more reliable OS for general work and I simply could not >> go back to the concept of single volume directory hierarchies.
>> Now, get that sound & video sorted,dump everything except for ALSA or >> a-n-other, and we're away.
> I'm just curious, are you using integrated sound and video that are > bundled on the motherboard, or are you using cards? I've had spotty
Integrated atiixp sound, external agp ati x800pro for video.
> luck with out-of-box support for some integrated hardware, though > it does seem improved with my last few system builds.
> Apologies if you address this point in the forum posts you reference; > I'm posting via dumb terminal newsreader while on the road, so jumping > to external links is a pain.
> Later,
> Thad
-- KDE == (see GayDE) Kool Desktop Environment - Make X Window look like winbloze... What a fucking great idea! The developers of this have a mental sickness, please avoid this product -> see GNOME. -- Jakes on #Debian
>> tar -zxvf imafuckhead.tar.gz /home/yourusername/
>> And save the resulting file somewhere so you dont come back around >> and whine for three fucking days again.
> How was that whining?
I meant your original /home directory post and subsequent days-long whine about how everyone is so MEAN and why dont they HELP YOU and why isnt linux EASIER and and and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
> Integrated atiixp sound, external agp ati x800pro for video.
Well the video card should be OK. The Radeon series is rather well supported, and the gentoo wiki says specifically that the x800 pro is supported with the ati-drivers-8.26.18 driver. I think this is one of the proprietary drivers right from ATI, so it might not have been bundled with your distro, you might have to download it directly from the ATI web site. This driver supports hardware accelerated XGL, so it should solve your OpenGL issue if you can get it to work.
I tend to stick with nVidia cards for my personal systems, despite having actually hacked on an ATI Radeon video driver for one of my consulting jobs. I've just had good experiences with nVidia. Your mileage may vary.
Integrated sounds chips is one of those hit or miss things. Mobo makers seem to like to cheap out on them. I like high quality sound with high sample rates and lots of channels, so my usual fix has been to by a high-end card that I know is supported... but I realize that is not the answer you are looking for.
Your best bet is probably what you are already doing. Identify the sound chip on the mother board, and then make sure it shows up on the ALSA supported hardware list. You are best off not trusting the printed documents that came with your hardware... sometimes they switch vendors mid run and don't fix the docs (I've been burned by that). Look for the sound chip identifier in the BIOS messages or read it right off the board.
I've had good luck getting ALSA working with only minor tweaking, but if it refuses to work with the integrated chip, your best bet is probably to buy a really inexpensive sound card. Even a really cheap card will usually provide better sound than the integrated components.
Note: Integrated sound seems to be a problem regardless of the operating system. I just tried to help a friend with his Windows XP system. The speakers work fine, but his microphone is borked. We verified that the hardware is good, tried downloading new drivers. No go. No voice chat in WoW for him until he buys a sound card. :(
>> Integrated atiixp sound, external agp ati x800pro for video.
> Well the video card should be OK. The Radeon series is rather well > supported, and the gentoo wiki says specifically that the x800 pro > is supported with the ati-drivers-8.26.18 driver. I think this is > one of the proprietary drivers right from ATI, so it might not have > been bundled with your distro, you might have to download it directly > from the ATI web site. This driver supports hardware accelerated > XGL, so it should solve your OpenGL issue if you can get it to > work.
You didnt follow the links did you? Yes. It should work. It doesnt.
> I tend to stick with nVidia cards for my personal systems, despite > having actually hacked on an ATI Radeon video driver for one of my > consulting jobs. I've just had good experiences with nVidia. Your > mileage may vary.
It does. 0 miles. It does not work.
> Integrated sounds chips is one of those hit or miss things. Mobo
Amazing. It does vary. It does not work.
> makers seem to like to cheap out on them. I like high quality > sound with high sample rates and lots of channels, so my usual fix > has been to by a high-end card that I know is supported... but I > realize that is not the answer you are looking for.
My sound chips is capable of powering out frequencies higher than I can hear. Yeah I know about harmonics. Whatever.
> Your best bet is probably what you are already doing. Identify the > sound chip on the mother board, and then make sure it shows up on > the ALSA supported hardware list. You are best off not trusting
Do you really think I did not do this?
> the printed documents that came with your hardware... sometimes they
err? what? what HW comes with printed documents at the HW level?
> switch vendors mid run and don't fix the docs (I've been burned by > that). Look for the sound chip identifier in the BIOS messages or > read it right off the board.
Or use lspci etc.
> I've had good luck getting ALSA working with only minor tweaking,
Sure. Im sure.
> but if it refuses to work with the integrated chip, your best bet > is probably to buy a really inexpensive sound card. Even a really > cheap card will usually provide better sound than the integrated > components.
Bullshit. I use digital out to an external sound processor. Trsut me :its far better at deciding how to deal with raw digital data than some cheap as shit PC sound card.
> Note: Integrated sound seems to be a problem regardless of the > operating system. I just tried to help a friend with his Windows
Bullshit.
> XP system. The speakers work fine, but his microphone is borked.
Sure.
> We verified that the hardware is good, tried downloading new drivers. > No go. No voice chat in WoW for him until he buys a sound card. :(
> I hope this was helpful.
It wasnt : no disprespect - but I want the same HW which works flawlessly under windows to work the same under Linux.
Cue the boyz : "works for me".
> Thad
-- Montana: Where forty-three below keeps out the riff-raff.
> You didnt follow the links did you? Yes. It should work. It doesnt.
Sorry, no I didn't. As I mentioned before I'm on the road and following web links from usenet posts with this underpowered system is a pain. I'm in text only mode here.
>> Your best bet is probably what you are already doing. Identify the >> sound chip on the mother board, and then make sure it shows up on >> the ALSA supported hardware list. You are best off not trusting
> Do you really think I did not do this?
As I mentioned above, I assumed you were probably already doing this... sorry I mentioned the obvious, though the advice might be useful to a newbie that stumbles across this thread.
>> the printed documents that came with your hardware... sometimes they
> err? what? what HW comes with printed documents at the HW level?
Believe it or not, a few board makers still list the chip sets in their docs, but you are correct, it is becoming rare. I suspect many have begun leaving it off so when they change the chipset mid run they don't have to alter the docs.
[ gratuitous deletia ... ]
>> Note: Integrated sound seems to be a problem regardless of the >> operating system. I just tried to help a friend with his Windows
> Bullshit.
>> XP system. The speakers work fine, but his microphone is borked.
> Sure.
Feel free to doubt if it makes you happy... but its not like I have any reason to make this up. My friend Chris just bought a low end system from HP with XP Home Edition preinstalled. Works fine except the microphone does not work with the integrated audio input. Thats a fact. At least the output works fine, which is obviously more important. He can still play WoW, just not chat.
> It wasnt : no disprespect - but I want the same HW which works > flawlessly under windows to work the same under Linux.
You and me both. But unfortunately until all the hardware manufacturers jump on the Linux bandwagon, support will be less than perfect. Until that day, it means we must check those hardware compatibility lists when assembling our own systems and jump through the occasional hoop during install. It sucks, yes, but I find it the upfront effort worthwhile for the long term benefits of Linux. Of course the easiest solution is to just buy your Linux systems preinstalled by a VAR like Penguin Computing. That's what I did for my last system and I don't regret it.
Sorry my earlier post was not more helpful... without reading the referenced forum posts I wasn't sure how much ground you had already covered. Good luck on getting the sound and gl support working.
>> OpenGL HW and sound still don't work : Ubuntu is good - but its not as >> good was Windows as installing and working flawlessly on *this HW*. What >> I do have is a more reliable OS for general work and I simply could not >> go back to the concept of single volume directory hierarchies.
>> Now, get that sound & video sorted,dump everything except for ALSA or >> a-n-other, and we're away.
> I'm just curious, are you using integrated sound and video that are > bundled on the motherboard, or are you using cards? I've had spotty > luck with out-of-box support for some integrated hardware, though > it does seem improved with my last few system builds.
OTOH, I'm having no problems with integrated peripherals that meet the same description as Hadron's hardware.
[deletia]
-- Oracle... can't live with it... ||| / | \ can't just replace it with postgres...
>>> OpenGL HW and sound still don't work : Ubuntu is good - but its not as >>> good was Windows as installing and working flawlessly on *this HW*. What >>> I do have is a more reliable OS for general work and I simply could not >>> go back to the concept of single volume directory hierarchies.
>>> Now, get that sound & video sorted,dump everything except for ALSA or >>> a-n-other, and we're away.
>> I'm just curious, are you using integrated sound and video that are >> bundled on the motherboard, or are you using cards? I've had spotty >> luck with out-of-box support for some integrated hardware, though >> it does seem improved with my last few system builds.
> OTOH, I'm having no problems with integrated peripherals that > meet the same description as Hadron's hardware.
> [deletia]
I am gobsmacked by your apparent stupidity. This was posted as a joke I assume?
You didnt really suggest that all printers are the same? That all onboard sound cards are the same? Or that all AGP video cards are the same?
Please tell me it isnt so.
Thats two today. Mark'n'Roy Kent's was stupider of course - comparing the administration of embedded linux on a phone with that of a desktop os. That *will* take some beating even from the COLA zealots.
--
> If you don't need X then little VT-100 terminals are available for real > cheap. Should be able to find decent ones used for around $40 each. > For that price, they're a must for the kitchen, den, bathrooms, etc.. :)
You're right. Can you explain this to my wife? -- Seen on c.o.l.development.system, on the subject of extra terminals
>>>> OpenGL HW and sound still don't work : Ubuntu is good - but its not as >>>> good was Windows as installing and working flawlessly on *this HW*. What >>>> I do have is a more reliable OS for general work and I simply could not >>>> go back to the concept of single volume directory hierarchies.
>>>> Now, get that sound & video sorted,dump everything except for ALSA or >>>> a-n-other, and we're away.
>>> I'm just curious, are you using integrated sound and video that are >>> bundled on the motherboard, or are you using cards? I've had spotty >>> luck with out-of-box support for some integrated hardware, though >>> it does seem improved with my last few system builds.
>> OTOH, I'm having no problems with integrated peripherals that >> meet the same description as Hadron's hardware.
>> [deletia]
> I am gobsmacked by your apparent stupidity. This was posted as a joke I > assume?
> You didnt really suggest that all printers are the same? That all
In the absence of contrary information, no one knows otherwise.
> -- > KDE == (see GayDE) Kool Desktop Environment - Make X Window look like winbloze... > What a fucking great idea! The developers of this have a mental sickness, > please avoid this product -> see GNOME. > -- Jakes on #Debian
I don't care what it looks like. KDE has some very, very sweet applications;
- kate, kile, kdissert - kontact, korganizer, karm, kalarm, taskjuggler, - kjots, klipper, basket, - kdevelop, konqueror, quanta, - katapult, kompose, - kopete, akregator, - amarok, kaffeine... and so on.
>> -- >> KDE == (see GayDE) Kool Desktop Environment - Make X Window look like winbloze... >> What a fucking great idea! The developers of this have a mental sickness, >> please avoid this product -> see GNOME. >> -- Jakes on #Debian
> I don't care what it looks like. KDE has some very, very sweet > applications;
