Tungsol Filaments

Simple. Just run yum upgrade.

tech ramblings

I have Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) amd 64 running as a desktop. It is superb. It plays Sirius, Apple Trailers, and any other media I have tried. I am using nvidia drivers for compiz however the nouveau driver works fine if you are satisfied with 2D acceleration.

tech ramblings

Directly from the source:

yum clean all
yum update glibc\*
yum update yum\* rpm\* python\*
yum clean all
yum update
shutdown -r now

tech ramblings

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.

tech ramblings

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

tech ramblings

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

tech ramblings

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

tech ramblings

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.

tech ramblings

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!

tech ramblings

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)

tech ramblings