July 2010 Archives

A quick update on the Lenovo G555: I just tried PC-BSD 8.1 from the live DVD and couldn't get X working right. The screen image was grainy and very wavy. I was able to fix this same problem in Lucid Puppy but not in PC-BSD.

I tried the Jggimi live image of OpenBSD 4.7 with Xfce, and that configured X perfectly. The OS detects the wired Ethernet port but won't bring it up. There are no lights (and no bits) on the port. ... I'm pretty sure the wireless works.

My Linux deal-breaker on the Lenovo is that the Conexant sound chip won't mute the audio from the speakers when a headphone jack is plugged in. Nor does the internal mic mute when an external mic is plugged in. I initially thought it was a Fedora thing, but it turns out every Linux distribution suffers from this same fate. I think it's an ALSA problem. There are solutions out there, but I'm skeptical (and right now I'm waiting for my RMA'd Western Digital drive to be replaced and don't have Linux on it).

My OpenBSD 4.7 installation on the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 is only a couple days old. The last time I ran OpenBSD on the desktop for an extended period of time, I stuck with the default Fvwm2 desktop for most of it but added Xfce near the end.

Since then I experimented with GNOME in FreeBSD 8.0 and 7.2. Everything worked pretty well, except Totem would crash whenever it started.

I wondered whether or not OpenBSD's GNOME would behave similarly.

I installed gnome-session and a bunch of GNOME applications, as recommended in /usr/local/share/doc/gnome-session/README.OpenBSD ... and I did some of the configuration recommended at the end of the installer.

That brings me to another point. Often in OpenBSD when you use pkg_add to add a package, there's helpful output on what you need to do to make things work with the package in question.

Since I installed so many packages at once, most of that info scrolled off my terminal and I wasn't able to copy/paste it into a document. I wonder where that information can be found once the package is installed. If anybody knows, please clue me in.

Back to GNOME. I should do this again and detail everything that needs to be done to get the desktop working. It's not as easy as Linux, but not so hard that a person familiar with Linux couldn't do it.

I added a lot of GNOME. It's easier in FreeBSD where you install gnome-session and gnome-fifth-toe and get just about everything. OpenBSD has no "fifth toe," and packages must be added one-by-one. It's not much of an inconvenience.

Anyhow, long story not so long: Totem works (i.e. doesn't crash).

The Gossip IM client (Jabber only) didn't work. I then installed Empathy, and that is working.

I have CUPS printing set up, the gThumb image viewer/editor (my No. 1 application in Unix/Linux), the FileZilla FTP client, Geany text editor, plus plenty of GNOME bits.

So how does GNOME perform in OpenBSD? I'd say slightly slower than FreeBSD and Debian, but not appreciably so. That means slightly faster than Ubuntu.

And I have to mention that the GNOME screensaver that's broken on this platform in Xubuntu/Ubuntu works fine in OpenBSD ...

It's not all rosy in OpenBSD 4.7 on the Toshiba. There have been some audio dropouts and slight delays in redrawing the screen when the CPU is stressed for one reason or another, but overall the CPU load is pretty low. I've seen over the years that applications seem to give up CPU more readily in OpenBSD than in Linux.

Overall there are many, many fewer processes running. The top utility list 55 processes in this OpenBSD GNOME environment. That's in contrast to 120+ in Linux (Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora).

It's a snappy GNOME in OpenBSD 4.7 on this aging platform (Celeron 1.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB hard drive). I haven't yet added the ports tree and installed the Opera Web browser and Flash 7 plugin.

I'm not going to say OpenBSD runs faster than Linux, because it doesn't. But let's say it's extremely "competitive," and a viable platform if you don't miss, want or need Flash 10. I did create an ext2 partition in OpenBSD. I'm not quite sure exactly how "correctly" I did it. I can't see the Linux partition in Parted Magic, but I can see it from Puppy Linux 5 (aka Lucid Puppy), which I'm using as a live CD with that ext2 partition for storage and file-sharing across the two OSes.

That way, when I need Flash or anything that isn't in OpenBSD, I can boot the Puppy CD and tap into that functionality.

Maybe addressing OpenBSD in the second person singular isn't the right way to announce my return to what I think is one of the best operating-system projects available.

If you're read it once in this blog, you've read it a few dozen times: When I first acquired a couple of trash-destined Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptops, I hadn't yet figured out that the machines' CD/DVD-ROM drives don't like CD-R discs, barely tolerate CD-ROMs but seem to like DVD+/-R discs. Without that critical piece of the old-hardware puzzle, just about the only thing I could install was OpenBSD via floppy. (That you can still install OpenBSD via a single floppy disk is a wonderful, beautiful thing — especially when it works for you.)

I ran OpenBSD 4.4 for six months, actually ordered the 4.5 CD set and was more than a bit crushed when my in-place upgrade blew up. I suspected Xorg problems. (Intel video of a certain age equals pain in all but the most recent versions of Xorg. Not so with OpenBSD 4.7, which runs Xorg as smoothly on this platform as did 4.4.)

When the upgrade failed, I did have all of my data backed up. At the time I transitioned to Debian Lenny, which I ran happily for quite some time ... until I blew up that install while trying an in-place upgrade. It seems that transitioning from the 2.6.26 Lenny kernel to whatever is in Debian Squeeze isn't so easy; advice I got since then instructed me to grab an up-to-date kernel and install that before attempting the Lenny-to-Squeeze dist-upgrade.

Anyway, after I killed Lenny (which I should have reinstalled — if hindsight means anything) I moved on to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, eventually upgrading to 8.10 and 9.10 (both in a single weekend), finally installing 10.04.

I could go on about my experiences with Ubuntu 10.04 and its social-from-the-start desktop integration and Ubuntu One capability. Let me just say that I added the Xubuntu desktop and turned off a boatload of services just to make things usable on my aging laptop (2002 era).

Since then I acquired a new (yet cheap) Lenovo G555 laptop. I've been running Fedora 13 with Xfce on it. Aside from a few issues with Linux in general, I'm happy with the distribution.

Just about everything I think is "wrong" with Fedora turns out to be something affecting the kernel or Xorg and isn't Fedora-caused or -specific. Functionality, design and the underlying systems (which which I'm somewhat unfamiliar due to my Debian-based background) seem very solid. Did I mention the design elements? Best-looking Xfce implementation I've ever seen (and better than my previous favorite, which was Xubuntu 7.04 ... or was it 7.10?). The Fedora design team is doing everything right.

That's on the new Lenovo. The Fedora live CD won't even boot on the old Toshiba. That's OK. I've been testing Debian Squeeze on it. I'm not deliriously happy with the Debian installer (which refuses to pull files from a mirror), nor with the way the Xfce and GNOME desktops look in Squeeze (not much progress from Lenny or even Etch). I know I can configure anything to look "better" in my eyes, but for now I'm still looking around.

One thing I can say is it's nice to have a test machine again.

With the Lenovo I'm going to stick with Fedora for now.

But on the Toshiba, I just popped in the OpenBSD 4.7 network-install image. You've got to love OpenBSD's install process. OK, you don't have to love it, but it has its advantages. Whether it's painless or painful (and that depends on your perspective and familiarity with it), it is over quickly. Very quickly. You can probably go from boot to Fvwm2 desktop in less than 10 minutes. Take that (fill in the blank)!

Things I've noticed immediately about OpenBSD 4.7 vs. 4.4/4.5 are that the installer is actually easier to use. I really appreciated the installer's suggestion of a disk layout. It makes probably the quickest installation in FOSS operating systems even quicker. Looking back, I probably should have made /usr/local bigger than the 2.1 GB allotted (or just done /usr in one big partition), but I hopefully won't be packing this particular installation with too much software. (Must ... resist ... GNOME ...)

At this point I've got an OpenBSD 4.7 installation running the default Fvwm2 desktop with Firefox. Once I get my saved OpenBSD files off of the backup (I've tried to document everything I did so I won't have to totally re-learn it), I can get my custom Fvwm setup running with all my menu entries and really get things working.

Thus far in OpenBSD 4.7, X looks way better out of the box than it did in Debian. The desktop seems adequately snappy.

True today as it was when I first began experimenting with OpenBSD in the 4.2 days are that it seems to run on just about any machine you throw it at, and from the packages to the documentation to the code itself, it's a very solid and useful operating environment.

To a certain extent it's actually fun to do the manual configuration needed to make things work in OpenBSD, and much of what I learned not just about Unix-like systems but also about the applications we use day to day (Web browsers, CUPS, PDF readers, mail clients) I learned getting them to work in an environment that doesn't do all the setup for you.

I haven't set it up yet, but I did leave an ext3 partition on the end of the drive so I could use a live CD distro like TinyCore or Puppy for those times when I absolutely, positively need Flash 10. That partition will also serve as an area in which I can share files between OpenBSD and Linux. I'm sure there's a way for a Linux machine to read an OpenBSD FFS partition, but I have no idea how to make it happen. I probably should look into it.

Maybe I'm self-punishing, but as before, I do find it fun to tinker around in OpenBSD and try to make it work as a desktop. Try it (or any other BSD ... or maybe every other BSD) to see both how a BSD project differs from your average Linux distribution and how it's the same. For the most part, Firefox is Firefox. Hell, OpenOffice is here if you want it. I did have it on my "old" OpenBSD installation, but these days I avoid having an office suite on the hard drive, preferring not just to use Google Docs but to have the files in Google's cloud so I can access them from any number of machines. It's just too convenient.

And as far as Flash goes, you can still run Flash 7 in the Opera Web browser, but the near future for the Web should mean that HTML 5 will make video a much easier proposition in non-Windows/Mac environments.

If you do have a spare machine in your stable — and who doesn't, do a little distro-hopping. And a few BSD experiments couldn't hurt. You'll learn something. That I guarantee.

One of the best technical-book writers on the planet, Carla Schroder, whose "Linux Cookbook" helped me suck less at things like package management and backups, has "The Book of Audacity" on the way in November from No Starch Press.

I'm no audio expert. The software confuses me. The hardware really confuses me. But I'm in Audacity, the free, open-source audio editor, quite a bit while producing podcasts for the Los Angeles Daily News (including the new sports podcast "The JV Show," with staff writers Jon Gold and Vinny Bosignore).

Clearly I need to take my audio-capturing and -editing skills to the next level. Or maybe skip a few levels and really get good at it.

If Carla's previous work on "Linux Cookbook" and "Linux Networking Cookbook" are any indication, "The Book of Audacity" will be a must-have for podcasters and anybody who wants to record and edit audio. I want it (and need it).

Linux Weekly News has an interview with Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein, and Ben Whaley, authors of the aged classics "Linux Administration Handbook" and "UNIX System Administration Handbook," which are essential references for real sysadmins, or would be if they were up to date.

Now they will be. Both books have been combined into one "UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook."

Like any classic in its field, this is a book of tremendous benefit when new — and that means you should just buy it right now and start digging into it.

The Western Digital 320 GB Scorpio Black hard drive I bought from NewEgg.com more than a month ago (and which I only recently got around to breaking out of the box and installing) is dying. This is the drive from which I've been running Fedora 13.

Those annoying clicks when the drive first boots (and occasionally thereafter) are not normal. The smartctl utility hasn't provided much help, nor has the diagnostic image that WD offers on their Web site (which runs with Dr. DOS — who remembers Dr. DOS??)

But the clicking persisted. I was prepared to ignore it and curse WD, especially because the cheaper WD Scorpio Blue drive I also have exhibits none of these symptoms.

Today the WD Scorpio Black started throwing i/o errors. The computer would stop in mid process with the disk light pegged. Amid the clicks it wouldn't boot at times.

Had this been under the 30-day mark, I would have been able to return the drive to NewEgg. But it's more than that. So I'm going to return it to WD.

In the interim, I set up Lucid Puppy to run on the Lenovo G555. The X configuration was a bit dicey. It didn't autoconfigure properly. I had to manually choose the 1280x800, which for some reason yielded the laptop's native resolution of 1366x768. That's a bit quirky (and yes, I've tried the Puppy spinoff Quirky and do like it).

I managed to add the Ubuntu Universe repository so I could install gThumb, which didn't run at first due to the missing dependency libesd.so.0.

Why does an image viewer/editor need the Enlightened Sound Daemon, you ask? I have no idea.

But there is no libesd package that I can access via the Ubuntu repositories in Puppy (and I did refresh them).

However, there is the esound package, which includes libesd. I installed that, and gThumb started working.

I could have dropped the original Windows 7-running WD Scorpio Blue hard drive back into the laptop while I wait for my new WD Scorpio Black drive to arrive, but I didn't do that. Instead I'm booting Lucid Puppy from the live CD and saving files in my regular ext3 partition on my USB-connected Toshiba hard drive.

I'll reserve judgment on Western Digital until I see how the return/replacement of the spotty drive goes. But right now I'm looking at the Toshiba and Hitachi drives I've purchases in the past year in a much more positive light. Haven't had a problem with those. And they were cheaper, too.

I've always thought Lucid Puppy was a great idea. Being able to leverage the huge Ubuntu repository, especially that of a long-term support release, gives Puppy a kind of flexibility it didn't have in the 2.x and 3.x days when I ran it quite a bit.

One thing I can tell you is that Lucid Puppy seems to be as blindingly fast as any other version I've tried. Mind you, this is new hardware with an AMD Athlon II at 2.something GHz (can't remember at present). I just turned on frequency scaling a) because I can and b) because I really don't need full power in Puppy and would welcome the cooler operating temperature that should result.

Whenever I make a major jump to a new computer and/or operating system, there's usually quite a bit of distro-hopping instability as I try to figure out what works best for my hardware, my work and my moods.

After I had Fedora 13 x86_64 with Xfce firmly planted on my new Lenovo G555 laptop, I (presumptively) attributed problems (on which I'll elaborate in a future post) with a couple of applications to either Fedora 13 or the Fedora-packaged applications, deciding to wipe F13 Xfce and try a couple other things.

During this wandering period of distro-hopping, I learned that the wired Ethernet chip in this laptop isn't exactly a household name in the world of free, open-source operating systems.

Before I continue, lspci in Fedora 13 (which does recognize both the wired and wireless chips) outputs the following:

08:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8132 Fast Ethernet (rev c0)

While trying out other distributions, I couldn't get any instance of the Debian Squeeze net or full installer to hook up to a mirror. (One tip for the Debian installer, which I found out only today, is to pass noacpi as a boot parameter, possibly jump-starting the networking that way.)

I couldn't get the wired interface to show up in the Debian Squeeze live Alpha image, although the Wi-Fi worked perfectly. And as a GNOME desktop, Squeeze looks terrific in this build.

A full install of Debian Squeeze with Xfce looked a bit broken due to missing icons. I like the fact that Debian with Xfce includes the Wicd wireless/wired interface manager (where in the case of Etch and Lenny it had ... nothing) although I couldn't really test it because my wired interface, again, was not recognized by the system.

I'm sure there's a way after the fact to add a module to make the Atheros AR8132 run in Debian. But I'm used to things the other way around: The wired interface works and packages must be added to get the wireless working.

Again, I'm sure I could've figured it out, but aside from the problems with the missing icons, the desktop seemed a bit slow. My first guess was a problem with xorg that very well could have been fixed with a software update, but since I didn't have Wi-Fi during the install and couldn't get the wired interface working, I decided to move on. I will try Debian again in the months ahead and will probably install it on my now-second-string Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop.

Back to the Lenovo G555. I did an install of Fedora 13 with GNOME — the standard Fedora desktop. I've run Fedora before, and it was pretty familiar. Quite surprisingly, I found the look and feel of the system to be not slower but more antiquated-looking than that of the Xfce spin. I missed the little carat in the upper right portion of the window that allows it to be "rolled up," if that's what you call it. I missed the Xfce terminal, Mousepad and Thunar.

I didn't do a count or anything, but I have a pretty good feeling that the Xfce spin of Fedora ships with more applications than does the GNOME default.

Before I returned full circle, I decided to try for an OpenBSD 4.7 installation. I couldn't get a usable image from Jggimi's excellent repository of OpenBSD live images. I'm going to try again. Those live ISOs are a great way to test OpenBSD compatibility without resorting to a full install.

Since I had nothing on the drive, I opted for the standard OpenBSD network-install image, which is something like 6 MB. Once I got the CD burned, I started it up in the Lenovo G555, and all was well until the networking portion of the installation process.

Again, my Wi-Fi interface showed up but not the wired interface. And this interface — the Atheros AR8132 — is supposed to be supported in OpenBSD 4.7 via the alc device driver.

Well, maybe something was/is amiss on my end. I knew that I'm not in the frame of mind to build a working OpenBSD desktop system from the ground up (especially the Java runtime nightmare), so I reassessed my options.

One thing I really wanted was an easy-to-roll-out encrypted desktop, or at least an encrypted home. The encrypted /home is easy to get in Ubuntu as an installation option, but I found that I had more problems with it (mainly that it increased the time to do an rsync because of extra files that I needed to exclude) than with fully encrypted LVM from my Debian Lenny days.

Fedora does encryption in the installer in the form of fully encrypted LVM, just like in Debian (and the Ubuntu alternate installer images for those who want to go that way).

I looked at Slackware, Zenwalk, Salix and Mint, and none of the installers seemed to support either full encryption or encrypted /home — at least not without of hacking. I'm sure Slackware can do this, but as far as I know not easily. And I wanted it to be easy.

Today I redid the Fedora 13 x86_64 Xfce installation. I've already re-created most of my "old" setup of a couple days ago.

For some reason, when installing Adobe Flash (32-bit with the wrapper for x86_64), this time I got Adobe Reader (I keep forgetting to deselect it as detailed here) in Swedish. I used yum to remove the Swedish version (which was also Adobe Reader 8) and for now replaced it with Adobe Reader 9 in English. I'm not accustomed to acroread, though I did use it in OpenBSD 4.4, though for now I'll let it ride.

I finally figured out how to bring my gPodder subscriptions down from gpodder.net onto the new installation, so now I'm set up as far as my podcasts go. Problems with gPodder 2.6 were a major force in all of this rapid distro-hopping, but now I've got it all nailed down (and, as I say above, will elaborate in the near future).

Conclusion

I'm finding Fedora 13 with Xfce to be an extraordinarily polished and functional desktop system.

Fedora has a reputation as a distro that's so bleeding edge you don't expect much of anything to work perfectly and do expect a whole lot of it to be a little buggy. But so far that is not at all the case. F13 has been extremely solid.

As far as support goes, I've found the Fedora community to be quite helpful. And I'm enjoying the process of getting to know how the yum and gpk package managers work. Right now I'm very impressed with yum. And I'm eager to learn more about the Red Hat/Fedora way of doing things after my years with Debian-based distros.

Between F13 and Xubuntu 10.04, I've been in Xfce for about a month now, and I don't at all feel it's a compromise features-wise in comparison with GNOME. I can't say that it's faster And as I mention above, I missed the Xfce apps more than I thought I would during my brief time in F13 with GNOME.

And I don't miss the resource-hungry social desktop, left-side window buttons, or Ubuntu One, Ubuntu-only cloud service.

I should have written this at the beginning of the post instead of at the end, but in my experience even a Ubuntu-running newbieis going to run into problems that require a bit of Googling, forum-searching and experimentation to solve.

In Fedora, which is positioned as an enthusiast's distribution, you expect to run into a problem or three. But during this particular cycle on my new hardware, Fedora has been extremely smooth.

I'm not saying I won't be distro-hopping again in one/three/six months, but right now I'm enjoying setting up and working in this new environment.

The question is what the hell I'm doing hacking at Web pages on Saturday night into Sunday morning. That question is best left unanswered.

But it's my first heavy use of Fedora 13 with Xfce in production on my Lenovo G555 laptop.

I didn't expect things to run so well, but thus far they are doing just that. Fedora appears solidly ready for production, at least my version of same.

Most of this session was spent in Firefox, with gThumb to edit images and the Mousepad text editor and Xfce terminal for miscellaneous tasks.

Oh ... I also installed Flash (the 32-bit version with wrapper). I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll report back when that happens.

Off to bed ...

If you want to easily get all the multimedia bits that aren't included in the freedom-loving Fedora Linux distribution, one of the best places is the RPM Fusion repository. While RPM Fusion has its own instructions on how to add the repos to Fedora, I found these instructions from Vincent Danen to be more clear and complete. They told me what RPM Fusion didn't, namely that running yum update after installing the repos would verify the GPG keys. Good tip.

I've already got MP3 playback working in my Xfce desktop in Fedora 13.

My first install of Fedora 13's Xfce spin didn't go so smoothly. During the initial (and lengthy) software update, something apparently went wrong and the system wouldn't reboot to a desktop. It might have had something to do with a very vertical window opening on my very horizontal screen instructing me to do something about OKing some dependencies for new packages. I tabbed my way through and did it by "feel," rather than by sight, and I guess it didn't work.

I didn't have a whole lot invested time-wise, so I reinstalled and then used yum in a terminal window to update the box.

That worked. I was able to reboot.

I was also able to invoke touchpad tapping, as described in this Fedora forum entry.

I first installed gpointing-device-settings, as described in the same thread, but that didn't work.

Once I modified /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf (as detailed here), I logged out, logged in and had tapping for left-click along with tapping on the lower right for right-click. Scrolling on the right side worked the whole time.

And after making that change to 50-synaptics.conf (note: this laptop has an Alps touchpad), tapping can now be controlled at the user level with gpointing-device-settings.

There's one small yet surmountable problem: In the Xfce desktop anyway, gpointing-device-settings is NOT in the menus anywhere. I called it from the terminal and was happy to learn that it indeed works. I'll add it manually (if I can somehow remember how to do that in Xfce).

Now that I'm back from vacation, it's time to actually start using my new $329 Lenovo G555 laptop. Yep, that's cheap for new hardware, and that's what prompted me to spend the money in the first place.

Though possessing a 64-bit processor like the rest of the PC world (in this case and AMD Athlon II), the laptop shipped with Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

Since the original 160 GB Western Digital hard drive was a bit smallish, I opted to replace it with a faster 320 GB WD drive, keeping the Windows-running drive safely tucked away in a drawer somewhere until I should need it. Note: While pulling the drive from the Lenovo G555 was easy, there are 4 pesky tabs in addition to the two screws and end tab on the drive door that made it both hard to remove and replace. One of the flimsy plastic tabs broke in the replacement process, but since they seem to have little purpose in the first place (other than to annoy), that's no problem.

The tabs secure the hard-drive door even without the screws, and they seem designed so the drive can be sealed in at the factory and never removed. But you and I know that removing hard drives is essential.

This was my first SATA drive experience, and I must say that once the drive door was off, it was easy to untuck the plastic tab and slide the drive out of its connector and then lift it out. This is much easier than removing IDE laptop drives, and it's a very welcome change in the way laptops are put together.

Anyhow, I dropped the 320 GB hard drive into the laptop, sealed up the door (sans 1/4 the flimsy plastic tabs), burned a CD of the Fedora x86_64 live Xfce spin, booted into the live environment, poked around for a few minutes (which I've done in the i686, aka 32-bit image before) and then proceeded with the install.

I wouldn't call it as smooth as Ubuntu's current installer, and it doesn't resemble what I think of when I think of the Anaconda installer (maybe the live installer is different).

I opted for an encrypted drive (which I will supplement with an unencrypted backup in a different location) and recommend encryption for just about any system out there, desktop or laptop.

As far as the installation went, I liked what I saw in terms of the automatic partitioning and let the installer do its thing. The whole thing was over pretty quickly.

Now I'm waiting for some 380+ updates to roll into the system, but so far everything works great. X was autoconfigured, wired and wireless networking are both working perfectly, and the mix of applications in the Xfce spin (more than the LXDE spin but less than the standard GNOME) looks pretty good so far.