debian “lenny” vs ubuntu “jaunty”

April 3rd, 2009

I have used both of these new updates for several weeks. “jaunty” is a moving target but it is rapidly getting finished. It is already quite usable.

First I love the debian “lenny” release. It is very quick, refined and up to date. I have compiled and installed the latest kernel 2.6.29 for both desktops (lenny and jaunty). They both work great with the newest kernel. The latest nvidia releasee (180.44) also works very well. Some of the applications like “streamtuner” seem more stable on “lenny”. However, I did compile xmms for “lenny”. I have to admit with each update “jaunty” is closing the gap.

The big difference which I cannot overcome is the difference in font rendering. It is probably due to Xorg 1.6 but “jaunty” is comparable with Windows XP and despite much tweeking “lenny” just won’t compare. The fonts are acceptable on “lenny” however after you use “jaunty” you just don’t want to go back.

admin tech ramblings

new xorg.conf cont.

April 3rd, 2009

I have since found that in order for nvidia-settings to work correctly you need this in the xorg.conf file:

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier     “Default Layout”
Identifier     “Default Layout”
Screen         “Default Screen” 0 0
InputDevice    “Keyboard0″ “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice    “Mouse0″ “CorePointer”
EndSection
Section “Module”
Load           “glx”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
# generated from default
Identifier     “Keyboard0″
Driver         “keyboard”
EndSection
Section “InputDevice”
# generated from default
Identifier     “Mouse0″
Driver         “mouse”
Option         “Protocol” “auto”
Option         “Device” “/dev/psaux”
Option         “Emulate3Buttons” “no”
Option         “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
EndSection
Section “Monitor”
Identifier     “Configured Monitor”
EndSection
Section “Device”
Identifier     “Configured Video Device”
Driver         “nvidia”
EndSection
Section “Screen”
Option          “DPI” “96×96″
Identifier     “Default Screen”
Device         “Configured Video Device”
Monitor        “Configured Monitor”
DefaultDepth    24
Option         “NoLogo” “True”
Option         “DPI” “96×96″
Option         “RenderAccel” “True”
Option         “TripleBuffer” “True”
Option         “AllowGLXWithComposite” “True”
Option         “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “True”
SubSection     “Display”
Depth       24
Modes      “nvidia-auto-select”
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
Option         “Composite” “Enable”
Option         “RENDER” “true”
Option         “DAMAGE” “true”
EndSection

admin tech ramblings

Using xorg w/o an xorg.conf file

March 18th, 2009

With the 2.6.28 kernel series, you can use xorg without xorg.conf. This works fine if you don’t plan to use 3d graphics (nvidia in my case). If you do you will need a minimal xorg.conf. This is what I ended up with:

Section “Module”
Load “glx”
Load “fb”
Load “wfb”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier      “nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 8400 GS]”
Driver          “nvidia”
Busid           “PCI:1:0:0″
Option          “AddARGBGLXVisuals”     “True”
Option         “DPI” “1366 x 768″
Option         “RenderAccel” “True”
Option         “TripleBuffer” “True”
Option         “AllowGLXWithComposite” “True”
Option “DisableGLXRootClipping” “True”
Option “BackingStore” “True”

EndSection
Section “Extensions”
Option         “Composite” “Enable”
Option         “RENDER” “true”
Option         “DAMAGE” “true
EndSection

admin tech ramblings

Edit dns records using sed

February 5th, 2009

You can easily replace an existing IP with and new IP in a dns record using sed. Here is the way you do it.

sed -e ’s#xx.xx.xx.xx#yy.yy.yy.yy#g’ domain.com > new.domain.com

where xx.xx.xx.xx is the existing IP and yy.yy.yy.yy is the new IP

admin tech ramblings

nginx fastcgi

January 19th, 2009

I ran into a problem using nginx and squirrelmail. Squirrelmail would display correctly but would return an error when you tried to login. It turned out to be a problem with the user running php-fastcgi. I am using a script that uses spawn-fcgi (from lighttpd) and had the user set to www-data (nginx user). Since I had previously used apache, I reset the script to user apache and ngnix to user apache.

That cleared my problem.

admin tech ramblings

Correcting pyzor error

January 16th, 2009

If you noticed this error in your mail logs:  pyzor: check failed: internal error. It is most likely due to a permissions problem within the .pyzor folder in the home directory of the mail user. Simply cd .pyzor and chmod 770 the ’server’ file. This should correct the error you are seeing in your mail logs.

Happy spam hunting!

admin tech ramblings

Installing 64 bit linux java

December 17th, 2008

You can download the new 64 bit linux java. The installation is somewhat of a secret. Here is how.

Run the binary:

sudo sh ~/jre-6u12-ea-bin-b03-linux-amd64-22_dec_2008.bin

Then move it the /opt and do the following:

cd /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins

sudo ln -s /opt/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

restart firefox and you should have 64 bit linux java!

sudo ln -s /opt/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so
(restart firefox)

admin tech ramblings

Ubuntu 8.10

November 5th, 2008

I installed Ubuntu 8.10. I am impressed. There were a few minor bugs including 1) amd64 kernel gives iommu error with > 4gb ram. You can eliminate this by including iommu=noapeture in your grub menu boot parameters. Skype does not work correctly because of a missing asound.conf file or .asoundrc. A GTK modules (libcanberra-gtk-module) does not load which makes desktop sound effects inoperative. The last two items can be fixed with simple start-up scripts. All said, this is a fine update of 8.04.1 and the bugs noted are very minor.

admin tech ramblings

Debian Lenny beta 2 first look

August 18th, 2008

I just installed the amd64 version of Debian Lenny (v5 beta 2). It looks very promising.  It comes with kernel 2.6.25.2 and is very up to date. Exim, kernel and most of the packages are newer that Ubuntu 8.0.4.1.

The install was very smooth and I encounted no problems at all.

admin tech ramblings

Ubuntu 8.04.1 desktop

August 12th, 2008

I have settled on Ubuntu 8.01.1 as a desktop. I have modified it and run the desktop as a superuser to avoid the sudo thing. It is very stable (I use the AMD 64 version) and all the multimedia plugins work well. I recently installed Flash 10 and nspluginwrapper 1.0.0. I had to compile nspluginwrapper to upgrade to version 1.0.0 (probably not necessary).

To install flash 10 it was necessary to install getlibs from http://www.boundlesssupremacy.com/Ca…etlibs-all.deb and the following libraries to get it to work correctly with nspluginwrapper:libnss3-1d, libnspr4-0d, libcurl3.

admin tech ramblings