Linux

I continue to encounter bugs introduced by the Ubuntu Linux Edgy release. My media computer used to hibernate and resume fine with Dapper. It's been broken ever since the Edgy update.

Hibernation is important for an "appliance" computer such as a media player. It allows you to shutdown and restart the computer quickly. I don't want to have to sit through an entire Linux reboot just to listen to a CD.

Fortunately, this is a known bug with an easy fix. It appears that Edgy switched from identifying disk partitions by their device name (such as /dev/hda2) to a unique UUID identifier. This is good, because device names can change (e.g. you add or move a disk around) but UUIDs should stay constant.

Unfortunately, the UUID of my swap partition never got entered into /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume file, so the system startup was never configured with the location to look for the hibernation signature. Fortunately, the manual procedure described in the bug report corrected the problem, and now hibernation is working again.

I'm beginning to think I need to create a new blog category called "Ubuntu Edgy Brokenness". I continue finding functional defects that just shouldn't persist in post-beta software.

You may remember that I was delighted to find that the Linux kernel in Edgy would sync my Samsung i-500 PDA/phone, whereas Dapper would just hang. Unfortunately, I later realized that it was syncing a blank calendar.

This is a known and reported bug. The workaround is to build kdepim from source.

I did that and it works. But if I wanted to be building the blasted system from source I'd be running Gentoo Linux.

So, you might think, the solution is to get more involved in testing and bug reporting. Unfortunately, I've been there and done that, and I've yet to receive acknowledgment on a single one of the Ubuntu bugs that I've reported. I don't know what to productively do, other than cross my fingers and hope that the Feisty release next year isn't as bad.

Nov. 26 update: This bug has been fixed for the next release. Also, I finally got a response to a Ubuntu bug report I've made. Huzzah!

I recently reported my unhappy experience upgrading my main workstation from Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake to 6.10 Edgy Eft. There have been an awful lot of reports of difficulties with the Ubuntu upgrade.

There is a recent note posted to the Ubuntu Forums web site that says the method I used is now considered deprecated. They now specify a different method, using the update-manager command.

I held out some hope this new procedure would address my difficulties. So, I thought I'd go ahead and upgrade my Inspiron 600m laptop. The new procedure did address the old problems, but it still didn't go well.

The first problem is that the kubuntu variant doesn't include the update-manager program. I wasn't sure exactly which packages I needed to get that, so I went ahead and loaded the entire Gnome distribution (ubuntu-desktop) on the system.

Fortunately, the upgrade through update-manager did go a lot more smoothly than before, when I used apt-get.

Unfortunately, once complete, I was left with a non-functional wireless network. It appears that in the Edgy release, Ubuntu has switched from a community-maintained driver for the ZD1211 USB wireless network adapter to a preliminary version included in the Linux source tree. This new version loads correctly. It even sees my access point (iwlist eth1 scan). Unfortunately, it just never seems to connect and acquire an IP address. The network adapter worked under Dapper Drake (it appeared as device wlan0), albeit it would get a little flaky sometime.

I'm currently researching alternatives. I fear I may need to build a new Linux kernel and fall back to the community version. Any solution that involves building custom kernels is not a good one, so I'm not too happy about this.

Nov. 21 update: This document has a procedure that fixes the problem. I'm now operating fine with the community-supported zd1211 driver.

I upgraded chinacat to Ubuntu Linux Edgy Eft (version 6.10) tonight.

The upgrade did not go smoothly.I had to rerun apt-get and aptitude many times to get it to run to completion. It failed to upgrade the "restricted modules" package once again, so I lost my Nvidia graphics. Plus it downgraded me from the AMD K7 kernel to the generic i386 kernel.

The good news is that it didn't trounce any files along the way, so I didn't have to drop into system recovery mode. I just kept beating on package files until the install completed.

The best news is that the Palm sync breakage that was introduced in 6.06 appears to be fixed. I was having to boot another system on the old Hoary Hedgehog (version 5.10) release and mount my home directory across the network to sync my Samsung i500 PDA phone. I'm so delighted by this fix that any ill thoughts I had about the upgrade are mostly mitigated.

After my last Ubuntu Linux (Dapper Drake 6.06) kernel upgrade, the Nvidia graphic display stopped working. When the system booted I wouldn't get a graphic login. If I went to a text screen and tried to start graphics manually (startx command) it would fail with an error:

Module nvidia not found

Here are the details from the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file:

(II) Setting vga for screen 0.
(**) NVIDIA(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
(==) NVIDIA(0): RGB weight 888
(==) NVIDIA(0): Default visual is TrueColor
(==) NVIDIA(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
(**) NVIDIA(0): Enabling RENDER acceleration
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0):  *** Aborting ***
(II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
(II) UnloadModule: "ramdac"
(II) UnloadModule: "fb"
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Well, that was bizarre. The error says that the nvidia driver module isn't there. But it was there! Or at least, it was there and worked fine until I applied the kernel upgrade.

I didn't have time to debug the problem at the time, so I used a workaround. I ran dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and switched from the (proprietary) accelerated nvidia driver to the dumb vesa frame buffer.

Tonight I finally got around to debugging the problem. Turns out the error message was right. The nvidia driver wasn't there. Or, more correctly, the right version of the driver wasn't there.

The problem is that when the kernel update was applied, the update process failred to retrieve the corresponding version of the proprietary drivers package (linux-restricted-modules). These two have to match. I was running kernel version 2.6.15-27 but my video driver was for version 2.6.15-26.

Here is the relevant output from dpkg -l that illustrates the problem:

ii  linux-image-2.6.15-26-k7              2.6.15-26.47
ii  linux-image-2.6.15-27-k7              2.6.15-27.48
ii  linux-image-k7                        2.6.15.25
ii  linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-26-k7 2.6.15.11-4
ii  linux-restricted-modules-common       2.6.15.11-4

I fixed the problem by running:

aptitude install linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-27-k7

This changed the installed packages to:

ii  linux-image-2.6.15-26-k7              2.6.15-26.47
ii  linux-image-2.6.15-27-k7              2.6.15-27.48
ii  linux-image-k7                        2.6.15.25
ii  linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-26-k7 2.6.15.11-4
ii  linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-27-k7 2.6.15.11-5
ii  linux-restricted-modules-common       2.6.15.11-5

With the updated video drivers installed, everything worked fine.

I don't understand why Ubuntu failed to pull down the video drivers when it upgraded the kernel. Fortunately, this manual fix solved the problem. Thought I'd blog it in case somebody runs into this difficulty.

I just hope that somebody doesn't turn out to be me at the next kernel update.

About two weeks ago I upgraded chinacat (my Athlon 64 1.8GHz workstation) from Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Hoary Hedgehog) to 6.06 (Dapper Drake). The upgrade has been excellent, except for one minor problem that is rapidly growing into a major nuisance. I've been unable to sync my Samsung SPH-I500 Palm OS PDA/phone.

The problem, unfortunately, appears to be a kernel bug in the current Linux 2.6.15 release. I'm going to have to try building (or loading, if I can find it) a 2.6.17 kernel and see how it does.

This is really bad, because not only can't I carry a current calendar around with me, the calendar and addressbook data on my phone and my computer are drifting apart. Ouch!

I built a home media PC last October using an Asus Pundit-R "booksize" computer and Ubuntu Linux. You can read about the saga in my home media PC category.

Where we last left our story, there were two remaining items on my "less than ideal" list: the system was noiser than I'd like and hibernation wasn't working.

I have some better understanding—no progress—to report on the noise issue. The system is still louder than I'd like. It's not as loud as, say, a Sony Playstation 2, but it's still annoying to me. After all, people typically don't try to play André Segovia classical guitar music on a PS2.

I may be stuck and I suspect the CPU may be the culprit. I built the system with an Intel Celeron D 335 (2.8GHz) Prescott processor. It seems the Prescott architecture is notorious for heat and power issues. I wish I could swap it out for a Celeron M (Dothan) processor. The "M" stands for mobile (as in built for laptops), and they sound like great processors: zippy on the MIPs and stingy on the watts. (My Dell Inspiron 600m laptop uses a Pentium M and it kicks butt relative to its clock speed.) Unfortunately, it appears even though the Celeron D and Celeron M processors are both "Socket 478" packages, they are not plug compatible. (I've seen the notation "Socket 478M" to distinguish the latter.)

It's times like this I wish I had a good tweaking motherboard—not to overclock the processor but rather to underclock it and slow down the power burn.

Now, on to the good news: I got hibernation to work. Actually, the system would hibernate correctly—the problem was with resume. The system would resume alright into text mode, but would hang when it tried to enable graphics. My dilemma was that the ATI proprietary fglrx driver doesn't support hibernation, but the open source ati driver doesn't support the TV output.

The solution I found was to use the dumb vesa frame buffer driver. That gives me a display without video acceleration, but I really don't need it for typical use. The only thing remotely graphically involved I do is visualizations for the music player, and that continues to work fine on the vesa framebuffer.

Here are the steps I performed to make this work:

• Make a backup copy of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
• Run sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
• When asked to "autodetect video hardware" select "no".
• Select "vesa" driver.
• Pretty much take the defaults. The only place I didn't was when asked whether to use the "kernel framebuffer device interface". The default was "no" but I selected "yes".
• When asked for "video modes you would like the X server to use" I selected 800x600 and 640x480 (i.e. turned off 1024x768).
• I selected the "medium" option for "selecting your monitor characteristics".
• Then, I selected an "800x600 @ 60Hz" monitor.

With the configuration complete I restarted X and verified that the TV-out was still working correctly. Then I ran sudo /etc/acpi/hibernate.sh and watched the machine hibernate. When I rebooted the machine it found the suspend image, loaded it up, and brought me right back to where I was.

The results are great. Now, when I want to listen to music, it takes just 35 seconds for the computer to return from hibernation. The cold boot, by comparison, takes about 1:40—that's about 60 seconds to boot Linux and 40 seconds to start the KDE desktop. This is a significant improvement.

I recently saw an article about a low-cost computer system with Linux pre-installed called the Koobox. The entry-level system, called the "Essential Koobox", looks ideal for home usage.

I thought I'd see how the system stacks up against an entry-level Dell. For comparison I started with the bottom-of-the-line Dell home system (the Dimension B110) and configured it as close as I could to the Koobox.

For the past few days, I've been writing about my experience planning and running a Linux installfest at the recent Austin Free-Net computer sale. The Linux installfest idea has been around for years. It's one of the key ways that Linux has spread among computer enthusiasts. We didn't invent it, but we did take the installfest concept and try to make it work for non-technical users, and I think that's novel. For the past week I've been talking about installfast mechanics. Maybe it's time we discussed the users.

The world may not be fully ready for a Linux-based desktop, but we are going in that direction. Wal-Mart will sell you a Linux computer from their web site. That's clearly a sign of movement into the mainstream.

For the past few days, I've been writing about my experience planning and running a Linux installfest at the recent Austin Free-Net computer sale. I discussed the evaluation that led to the decision to select Ubuntu Linux as the sole platform to support. I also described some of the rough edges in the mostly fantastic Ubuntu installer. I've also given a report on the event. Today, I wrap up with a discussion of the procedure we developed to deliver a Ubuntu desktop to (non-technical) end users.

I previously noted that Ubuntu wants to be installed from media: network not supported. Network install would have been essential if we were going to be doing a large number of systems, but we weren't. (I planned for up to 12, but we only did two.) So, CD it is. That's fine; that saves the hassle of setting up a network. Issue one solved.