Far from over, my Fedora Core 9 woes continue. This time its on a Celeron 1.7 GHz cpu. And its the brand new Firefox and Adobe Flash releases giving me the headache.
FC9 yum now distributes 3.0-0.60.beta5.fc9.
Adobe, since my last writeup, has started shipping Version 10 of its Flash Player.
The issue is this: When I accessed any flash content, and then moved away to any non-flash content page, and by chance moved my mouse, Firefox crashed with a SEGV - segmentation fault with some weird error in run-mozilla.sh which contained something like $prog{$1+"$@"}. I spent almost 6-7 days trying to figure out who's problem it was - Firefox's, Flash's or the site's. I came upon people mentioning problems of locale (which I had started believing looking at some random messages in my strace log of firefox), xlib, fontconfig, and even setting RAM speed to match the CPU speed! Well, finally, I read up that the nspluginwrapper was needed in some older version of firefox, for the Flash plugin not to crash, and had been apparently solved in the latest version. Yeah right.
Looks like nspluginwrapper IS the culprit. Once I installed the package, things seem to be working. For now.
Damn you Mozilla guys.
One more interesting thing I have observed is why yum lists firefox-3.0-0.60.beta5.fc9 as stable? Is beta stuff stable nowadays? I might have missed something in the software engineering trend, but AFAIK, beta is NOT for general use. Hmm...
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Linux and Load shedding
This is amusing... I went to install Fedora Core 9 on on Celeron D CPU that I have... and couldn't because of load shedding. The thing was that it took so long for Fedora to install, that by the time the thing was nearing completion, I used to lose electricity. And I hadn't put the machine on my n-hour UPS.
One weird condition arose when Fedora DID install successfully, and on the first boot, I lost power and the machine shut down. When the power came up, the file system got mounted read-only for some reason and then the firstboot service couldn't write to disk. I tried doing an fsck, but that didn't do any wonders. The weird part is that I couldn't access the console tty's from the firstboot screen by doing a Ctrl-Alt-F1 etc. I had to murder the X screen by Ctrl-Alt-Bksp and that gave me prefdm errors by the ton. I could then access the console tty's. Weird.
Anyhow, I reinstalled the system again, and now its running good.
So who's to blame... Fedora for taking long to install, or MSEB, for keeping power on for short durations? I think we will all agree to blame MSEB. :-)
One weird condition arose when Fedora DID install successfully, and on the first boot, I lost power and the machine shut down. When the power came up, the file system got mounted read-only for some reason and then the firstboot service couldn't write to disk. I tried doing an fsck, but that didn't do any wonders. The weird part is that I couldn't access the console tty's from the firstboot screen by doing a Ctrl-Alt-F1 etc. I had to murder the X screen by Ctrl-Alt-Bksp and that gave me prefdm errors by the ton. I could then access the console tty's. Weird.
Anyhow, I reinstalled the system again, and now its running good.
So who's to blame... Fedora for taking long to install, or MSEB, for keeping power on for short durations? I think we will all agree to blame MSEB. :-)
Monday, October 6, 2008
Fedora Core 9 - done!
Done with installing Fedora Core 9 on my AMD Sempron machines. It was not as easy as 1-2-3, but much easier than LTSP.
I had a few issues that I faced, like installing the flash plugin, for non-root users, and Firefox working in offline mode every time it started up.
This site, gave an explanation of setting up symlinks to the Flash plugin in the users .mozilla/plugins/ directory. Why isn't this documented on any of Adobe's help or installation README's? Simple and effective.
For the offline mode solution, just uninstall network-manager. :-). yum erase network-manager.
Problem solved.
Next, there is this awfully dumb thing that Fedora has - system level menus for non-root users. Why would anyone want that? I don't even want to imagine what can happen. So, I saw this site and made changes to the menu. I agree that its dumb to find out how to make changes, but I couldn't figure it out. I know. I am dumb.
I have also compiled a list of software that I have installed on the machine. I just did a yum list installed > installed.txt and added software that I added apart from yum to this file. What I am going to do now is just make another file which will have all the educational packages installed in it. This can be a guideline for schools in India which want to adopt open source.
I had a few issues that I faced, like installing the flash plugin, for non-root users, and Firefox working in offline mode every time it started up.
This site, gave an explanation of setting up symlinks to the Flash plugin in the users .mozilla/plugins/ directory. Why isn't this documented on any of Adobe's help or installation README's? Simple and effective.
For the offline mode solution, just uninstall network-manager. :-). yum erase network-manager.
Problem solved.
Next, there is this awfully dumb thing that Fedora has - system level menus for non-root users. Why would anyone want that? I don't even want to imagine what can happen. So, I saw this site and made changes to the menu. I agree that its dumb to find out how to make changes, but I couldn't figure it out. I know. I am dumb.
I have also compiled a list of software that I have installed on the machine. I just did a yum list installed > installed.txt and added software that I added apart from yum to this file. What I am going to do now is just make another file which will have all the educational packages installed in it. This can be a guideline for schools in India which want to adopt open source.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Goodbye LTSP (for now)
ASUS M2N-MX SE and nVidia MCP61 made me do it. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why dhcpcd was failing on me. It seemed quirky that I had to make enhancements to the niclist to make the kernel recognize the appropriate forcedeth. And quirky it was - dhcpcd failed to load, probably for a socket bind error - who knows! I couldn't find a log on the LTSP server that the client threw (probably because it was too early in the boot up process).
But anyway, I have given up for now.
My new workstations get Fedora 9. And my really old ones get Vector Linux (its great - really!). If the oldies fail to even load Vector Linux, then I will try LTSP again. Till then... adieu LTSP!
But anyway, I have given up for now.
My new workstations get Fedora 9. And my really old ones get Vector Linux (its great - really!). If the oldies fail to even load Vector Linux, then I will try LTSP again. Till then... adieu LTSP!
Thursday, September 25, 2008
LTSP nightmares continue ...
Now to the dhcpcd failed error on K12LTSP. There is a totally whacko reason given here, which of course, was not applicable to me.
Have I figured out a way? Not yet. But I am almost sure its by sweet nForce chipset MCP61 forcedeth acting up.
Have I figured out a way? Not yet. But I am almost sure its by sweet nForce chipset MCP61 forcedeth acting up.
LTSP nightmares
Yes, there we go again. I have the ASUS M2N-MX SE motherboard with the nVidia nForce MCP61 chipset. And I'm trying to run K12LTSP on it. First, I figured out where to get the NIC from botting off the network. That was simple. Now, I had to actually 'boot'!
Ooh, what a freaking nightmare that has been! I FINALLY found out what the solution was: to make changes to the initramfs and compulsorily add the NIC kernel module. One dutch site was nice to give instructions on how to!
Now look for 'forcedeth'. And add the following after the last entry:
One more change to go: in the pxelinux.cfg/default file, you need to add NIC=forcedeth in the append list. Backward and ancient technique used for ISA cards.
Done? Not yet. Now we have a dhcpcd failed error. Haven't figured out a way to solve it. Will sleep over it and write back...
One interesting site regarding this is: http://www.geocities.com/nf2ltsp/
Ooh, what a freaking nightmare that has been! I FINALLY found out what the solution was: to make changes to the initramfs and compulsorily add the NIC kernel module. One dutch site was nice to give instructions on how to!
cd /tmp
mkdir initrd
cd initrd
gzip -dc /tftpboot/lts/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/initramfs.gz | cpio -id
emacs etc/niclistNow look for 'forcedeth'. And add the following after the last entry:
10de:0086 forcedeth
10de:008c forcedeth
10de:00e6 forcedeth
10de:00df forcedeth
10de:0056 forcedeth
10de:0057 forcedeth
10de:0037 forcedeth
10de:0038 forcedeth
10de:0269 forcedeth
Then, you run the following commands again:find ./ | cpio -H newc -o > /tftpboot/lts/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/initramfs
cd /tftpboot/lts/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/
rm initramfs.gz
gzip initramfs
Got it? Expect it to work? Yes? No.One more change to go: in the pxelinux.cfg/default file, you need to add NIC=forcedeth in the append list. Backward and ancient technique used for ISA cards.
Done? Not yet. Now we have a dhcpcd failed error. Haven't figured out a way to solve it. Will sleep over it and write back...
One interesting site regarding this is: http://www.geocities.com/nf2ltsp/
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
LTSP anyone?
I have had this idea for a long long time. Probably since LTSP was first launched. Now probably is the time when I will implement it in my school labs.
First, I needed cheap hardware. REAL cheap hardware. So I found out that I get an AMD Sempron processor with an ASUS M2N-MX SE motherboard with 512MB RAM and 80GB SATA HDD for like 10K. Which is somewhat affordable.
Next, of course I spent time searching for whether the on-board LAN adapter supported booting from the network. Sadly, there was no such documentation. Well, I went ahead and bought one machine anyway, just to check this out. Well, the answer is YES, the LAN adapter on the motherboard (NVIDIA® nForce™ 430 MCP) DOES support booting from LAN, via PXE. You have to go to the BIOS and go to the SouthBridge peripheral settings, where you can change the settings. You then have to mention in the boot order that you want to boot from LAN first. It works!
There was, and is, a problem with the ACPI settings of the BIOS. I have to upgrade the BIOS, or turn off ACPI, to allow Linux to load. The kernel panics if ACPI is enabled.
Well, more on LTSP will come as I go ahead and install a client and server...
First, I needed cheap hardware. REAL cheap hardware. So I found out that I get an AMD Sempron processor with an ASUS M2N-MX SE motherboard with 512MB RAM and 80GB SATA HDD for like 10K. Which is somewhat affordable.
Next, of course I spent time searching for whether the on-board LAN adapter supported booting from the network. Sadly, there was no such documentation. Well, I went ahead and bought one machine anyway, just to check this out. Well, the answer is YES, the LAN adapter on the motherboard (NVIDIA® nForce™ 430 MCP) DOES support booting from LAN, via PXE. You have to go to the BIOS and go to the SouthBridge peripheral settings, where you can change the settings. You then have to mention in the boot order that you want to boot from LAN first. It works!
There was, and is, a problem with the ACPI settings of the BIOS. I have to upgrade the BIOS, or turn off ACPI, to allow Linux to load. The kernel panics if ACPI is enabled.
Well, more on LTSP will come as I go ahead and install a client and server...
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The President gets a 100% salary hike!
This is ludicrous.
Why? Other than ribbon cutting, there isn't much more the President does. That too, for ribbon cutting ceremonies, the government bears the cost of transportation and living expenses. The perks, notably of which are - all living expenses taken care of, so much staff that would give the old time Maharaja's an inferiority complex, unlimited access to the government machinery, and unlimited security.
As for qualifications, other than Dr. Kalam, I don't think any President will come even close to a fresh IIM graduate. So, why even bother comparing anybodies salary to this one? The people who are compared to the salary of the President, are actually useful and important people for the country. Without them, there would be full scale chaos in the country. As for the President of the United States, he is the only one in charge of running the country. He's definitely not a figurehead.
Lastly, what difference will it make by expressing my opinion, like thousands of other educated
people who have already? Nothing. Zilch. Because no one is listening. And no one from the government cares. And no one from the government is so savvy to actually read what the Internet has to say.
Why? Other than ribbon cutting, there isn't much more the President does. That too, for ribbon cutting ceremonies, the government bears the cost of transportation and living expenses. The perks, notably of which are - all living expenses taken care of, so much staff that would give the old time Maharaja's an inferiority complex, unlimited access to the government machinery, and unlimited security.
As for qualifications, other than Dr. Kalam, I don't think any President will come even close to a fresh IIM graduate. So, why even bother comparing anybodies salary to this one? The people who are compared to the salary of the President, are actually useful and important people for the country. Without them, there would be full scale chaos in the country. As for the President of the United States, he is the only one in charge of running the country. He's definitely not a figurehead.
Lastly, what difference will it make by expressing my opinion, like thousands of other educated
people who have already? Nothing. Zilch. Because no one is listening. And no one from the government cares. And no one from the government is so savvy to actually read what the Internet has to say.
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