YEEEEHAAWWW ! I just had to say it. My new HP DV9000z came in Monday, which is why I haven't put anything on the site. Well, I have EVERYTHING working (well, the wireless works with linxant drivers). I tried every distro in the world, nearly, and some three times, but I finally got Debian testing installed on the thing. I still can't print to my Brother MFC-5840CN printer (if any of anyone who may read this knows how to overcome Brother's crappy Linux drivers I'd love to hear from ya').
Here's generally what I did:
1. I repartitioned the Drives deleting the partition from the second drive and shrinking the XP partition to 30 GB on the first drive. Whatever you do, DO NOT DELETE either the HP Rescue or the XP Embedded Partitions (that's the little hidden Partition at the end of the first drive). It took me 5 1/2 hours to restore everything to get the quickplay back.
2. I installed Debian etch with the Network install CD in text mode using the "noapic iommu=off" kernel switches. This got everything in place. To simplify things I just created an ext3 partition on the first drive filling the empty space for "/" or root, which turned out to be about 32 GB. I then created a 2.4 GB Swap partition (Don't ask about the .4 part I have no idea why I did that) and a /home partition on the second drive.
3. I installed just what the Debian presets were for Desktop, laptop etc. (they were the default selections) and I told it to use a mirror.
4. When all that was done I rebooted into recovery mode, or single user mode, brought up the Wired NIC, and adjusted my sources.list file to upgrade to Sid to get the 2.6.18 kernel (I'll post the link to the guys website who actually pioneered the setup later).
5. Then I did the usuall apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade stuff to get the latest and greatest. Hopefully you have better luck at this than I did initially. Make sure you get the 2.6.18 kernel. Once everything is finished updating, edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and remove the "noapic" from the load line for the new kernel, and reboot.
6. You should now get a shiney new Login screen GDM style (right now there's no KDE on it to speak of, you'll have to install that through synaptic).
From here you can do what you want. I installed the Nvidia driver using the installer from Nvidia's website to get the full 1680x1050 experience (AND IT IS SWEET!). Do some Googling for HP DV9000z linux and you should generally find all the same sites I did.
My MAJOR disappointments are that there are still NO 64bit versions of many apps. Adobe's Flash is still not available in a 64bit version. Google's toolbar will not install because of Debian's stupid renaming of Firefox to Iceweasel. Ndiswrapper doesn't work because only the 32bit windows driver is installed, if anyone knows how to get ndiswrapper working on this 64bit box, I'd be very happy to hear it, however the linuxant drivers work fairly well.
I'm not sure I'll leave Debian on there now that I know what it takes to install it on the machine. I'd really like to have Kubuntu running on the thing so that it matches all my other boxes, so I'll probably download the 64bit Edgy Alternate install CD, as the 32bit Live CD wouldn't even boot!
One thing I can say, this thing is Fast! So, anyway, I have 30 days on the Linuxant driver, so I'll have to do something quick. I'll keep this site posted.
Showing posts with label Edgy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edgy. Show all posts
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Debian Printing
Now I remember why I left debian in the first place. Printing. I can't get my Brother printer to print now that I've switched to Debian. I'd like to rant all over both Brother (and their crappy support for CUPS printing) and Debian (for their non-standard way of doing things). However, neither is going to help me figure out what to do next. I'm thinking that going back to Kubuntu Edgy would be a really good idea, at least my printing worked there. I switched up my partition scheme to what it should have been for a long time. I partitioned off / from /home so that I can completely change out distros and keep my home dir intact. It'll be a sweet day when Linux can live up to the hype of some, and overcome the hurdles others create.
Well, I'm not sure what to do next, I've removed and reinstalled the drivers from Brother to no avail. My printer lights up like its going to print, and then nothing happens. (Kinda like Curly's "I'm trying to think and nothing happens!). Well, I gotta finish getting ready for tonight, despite being more discouraged for some reason than I've been in a long time.
Well, I'm not sure what to do next, I've removed and reinstalled the drivers from Brother to no avail. My printer lights up like its going to print, and then nothing happens. (Kinda like Curly's "I'm trying to think and nothing happens!). Well, I gotta finish getting ready for tonight, despite being more discouraged for some reason than I've been in a long time.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Kubuntu Breakdown
Well, it appears that my work was in vain, or worse. It seems that now, whenever I come out of hibernation my PC just forgets how to access the hard drive. It will slowly begin to lock up, and then eventually get to the point of being so hosed, that I have to power it off! The problem is that now, I don't even have to come out of hibernation, as it could do it any time. I got so frustrated just before new years because I had just finished balancing my checkbook in KMymoney, and the whole system seized up when I clicked the "save" button. ARGGGHH! I had to go through the whole process again later. I never had this problem with the ReiserFS, but now it seems to be very regular with ext3. What gives?
Anyway, I'm looking at putting another distro on here just because I want to try another one. Actually If I could get someone to donate about 2,000.00 dollars I'd get me a new laptop :-D! Yea, I know, that'll never happen. However, as soon as I can get off this lousy Toshiba Crapillite the better. (Oh, did I tell you I can't stand Toshiba's laptops?).
On another note, I discovered yesterday that my license plate was 3 months out of date!! I've been driving my truck around on expired tags since September! So, I went to the downtown location to get my tags renewed, found out they are still in the 60's and only take cash or check, so I had to go find an ATM. So, now I'm kinda like Kevin in Home Alone, "I"m not afraid any more!"
As you may know I work with Ardent Health here in Nashville. We just got in some shiny new P590's from IBM. We're going to put our AIX systems on those things, running most in HA mode. The problem I have is they want to put TSM on them as well, and I'm not real keen on that idea. Its not that I don't trust the 590s, or whatever, its just that I think it puts too many eggs in that basket. I've always run TSM as isolated from the systems it backs up as possible, maybe having the TSM box in the same rack would be about as close as I've ever gotten to that kind of thing (and I didn't really like that much). I don't know, maybe I'm just a little paranoid, but it just doesn't seem wise to me. Well, I'll go with it if I have to, but what I'm lobbying for is a couple of mid to high end Series X servers with Linux running on them. I think if we could use hardware thats easy to obtain, and an OS thats easy to setup, our DR could start much faster in the field. We have a get together scheduled tomorrow so we can hash out who's going to do what this year. We'll see what we run up against there. I've heard of folks running TSM on Windows servers with it all tied into the same AD tree. How crazy can you get? I mean if a virus gets in and attacks your environment, your TSM server is going up in smoke right along with the rest of your Windoze servers. No, I believe your TSM system, or whatever backup system, should be isolated from the systems its meant to protect. If you need to restore, you don't need the headache. I mean think about it, how will you restore parts of your AD tree if you can't get into TSM because the AD tree is down? Sounds foolish but take a minute, you'll get it. Oh, I'm a Certified Directory Engineer, so I know you can get the AD up enough to do what you need, but why? When you can run TSM on the same x86 hardware with Linux, and cut your DR time in half!
So, anyway that's my rambling for today.
Anyway, I'm looking at putting another distro on here just because I want to try another one. Actually If I could get someone to donate about 2,000.00 dollars I'd get me a new laptop :-D! Yea, I know, that'll never happen. However, as soon as I can get off this lousy Toshiba Crapillite the better. (Oh, did I tell you I can't stand Toshiba's laptops?).
On another note, I discovered yesterday that my license plate was 3 months out of date!! I've been driving my truck around on expired tags since September! So, I went to the downtown location to get my tags renewed, found out they are still in the 60's and only take cash or check, so I had to go find an ATM. So, now I'm kinda like Kevin in Home Alone, "I"m not afraid any more!"
As you may know I work with Ardent Health here in Nashville. We just got in some shiny new P590's from IBM. We're going to put our AIX systems on those things, running most in HA mode. The problem I have is they want to put TSM on them as well, and I'm not real keen on that idea. Its not that I don't trust the 590s, or whatever, its just that I think it puts too many eggs in that basket. I've always run TSM as isolated from the systems it backs up as possible, maybe having the TSM box in the same rack would be about as close as I've ever gotten to that kind of thing (and I didn't really like that much). I don't know, maybe I'm just a little paranoid, but it just doesn't seem wise to me. Well, I'll go with it if I have to, but what I'm lobbying for is a couple of mid to high end Series X servers with Linux running on them. I think if we could use hardware thats easy to obtain, and an OS thats easy to setup, our DR could start much faster in the field. We have a get together scheduled tomorrow so we can hash out who's going to do what this year. We'll see what we run up against there. I've heard of folks running TSM on Windows servers with it all tied into the same AD tree. How crazy can you get? I mean if a virus gets in and attacks your environment, your TSM server is going up in smoke right along with the rest of your Windoze servers. No, I believe your TSM system, or whatever backup system, should be isolated from the systems its meant to protect. If you need to restore, you don't need the headache. I mean think about it, how will you restore parts of your AD tree if you can't get into TSM because the AD tree is down? Sounds foolish but take a minute, you'll get it. Oh, I'm a Certified Directory Engineer, so I know you can get the AD up enough to do what you need, but why? When you can run TSM on the same x86 hardware with Linux, and cut your DR time in half!
So, anyway that's my rambling for today.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Kubuntu Breakthrough
EUREKA! (No I'm not talking about Vacuum Cleaners). Anyway, I found a combination of software, and settings that appears to have fixed my hibernate problems with Kubuntu and my Toshiba Laptop. (HINT: NEVER buy a toshiba).
Anyway, a hint came from Elijah's Website. I didn't use the software he mentions, but it did bring to mind something I remember from way back. You need a "resume=" line on your kernel load command to enable it to read the old RAM contents back into RAM. Linux uses your Swap file by default. The problem had been that every time I did a hibernate with the powernow or klaptop daemons they would blow away my swap file. Well, Guidance does a nice job hibernating, however, I couldn't get it to resume.
So, here's what I did:
First, I modified the fstab file to do away with those stupid UUID labels (who thought that was a good idea anyway?):
change your fstab from:
Then edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add "resume=/dev/hda3" (If /dev/hda3 is your swap partition) to the end of your kernel load line as follows:
Anywhoo, I was able to hibernate successfully once with this setup, but have hence had IO problems. So, consider the above volatile at the moment. I'll keep working on it. I'll test it again here in a little while and make sure it wasn't a fluke.
OH, you may also want to note that I'm working in Edgy, not Dapper or Breezy. (that's version 6.10)
I'm seriously considering going to the next version already. I couldn't have as many problems with that version as I do this one. Whatchya think?
Anyway, a hint came from Elijah's Website. I didn't use the software he mentions, but it did bring to mind something I remember from way back. You need a "resume=" line on your kernel load command to enable it to read the old RAM contents back into RAM. Linux uses your Swap file by default. The problem had been that every time I did a hibernate with the powernow or klaptop daemons they would blow away my swap file. Well, Guidance does a nice job hibernating, however, I couldn't get it to resume.
So, here's what I did:
First, I modified the fstab file to do away with those stupid UUID labels (who thought that was a good idea anyway?):
change your fstab from:
# /dev/hda4To:
UUID=4e7536dd-d4d7-4338-9344-1bb9ae43ed4e / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/hda2
UUID=7792b1a8-17dc-4e15-8232-a2ff3f93a507 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/hda1
UUID=AC07-770A /winxp vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/hda3
UUID=0a208f65-e0ca-4fd2-a298-8bb1824d19cf none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda4 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1NOTE: I didn't delete the UUID stuff I just commented it out, in case I needed it later.
# UUID=4e7536dd-d4d7-4338-9344-1bb9ae43ed4e
/dev/hda2 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
# UUID=7792b1a8-17dc-4e15-8232-a2ff3f93a507
/dev/hda1 /winxp vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# UUID=AC07-770A
/dev/hda3 none swap sw 0 0
# UUID=0a208f65-e0ca-4fd2-a298-8bb1824d19cf
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
Then edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add "resume=/dev/hda3" (If /dev/hda3 is your swap partition) to the end of your kernel load line as follows:
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-genericNotice the line that starts with "kernel"? Thats the line you append the resume statement to. To find out which partition is your swap, if you don't already know, go back to your fstab and look for the line that looks similar to this:
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/hda4 ro quiet splash resume=/dev/hda3
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.17-10-generic
quiet
savedefault
boot
/dev/hda3 none swap sw 0 0the first section (/dev/hda3 in mine above) will give you the device id of the swap partition. By the way, hda is your first IDE drive, sda would be your first SCSI drive (or USB mass storage device if you use one of them). Then the number at the end is the number of the partition in particular. So, /dev/hda would be my first IDE drive, /dev/hda3 would be the third partition on that drive.
Anywhoo, I was able to hibernate successfully once with this setup, but have hence had IO problems. So, consider the above volatile at the moment. I'll keep working on it. I'll test it again here in a little while and make sure it wasn't a fluke.
OH, you may also want to note that I'm working in Edgy, not Dapper or Breezy. (that's version 6.10)
I'm seriously considering going to the next version already. I couldn't have as many problems with that version as I do this one. Whatchya think?
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