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purrkur
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Ubuntu articles

Post by purrkur »

I found these two while surfing around...

Customizing Ubuntu - Part I

Ubuntu Applications - Part II

I haven't tried Ubuntu yet and I only scanned the pages but they look decent enough. Hugoc, I need your help on this one...
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Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
hugoc
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Post by hugoc »

Okey-dokey. I think this is a great idea, Ubuntu is an excellent distro with many strengths: it's based on Debian, so there is lots of support for it; it's very easy to set up; and it runs fast even on a BP6, faster than WinXP in my opinion.

Hands-down the best starter guide I have found for Ubuntu is the Unofficial Ubuntu 4.10 Starter Guide. There's all the information to get it up-to-date and loaded with the software you'd need.

There are some other things I'll mention myself. I'll write them in separate posts so as to make them easy to search.
BP6, RU BIOS, 2*Celeron 366@550 1.9v
2*GlobalWin FEP32, 512MB PC100 CAS2
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Enabling SMP in Ubuntu 4.10

Post by hugoc »

Enabling SMP in Ubuntu 4.10

Ubuntu installs with a 386-based uniprocessor kernel by default. You can verify this by clicking Applications > System Tools > System Monitor. Only one CPU is shown. However, this is very easy to fix.

Firstly, make sure your sources.list reflects all the repositories it should and is updated. Go here to do that.

Now, we're going to use apt-get to download and install the latest Linux kernel for a Pentium-II SMP system such as a BP6. Open a terminal and enter the following ('$' denotes the prompt and should not be entered, all text after '$' should be entered as one line in a terminal):
$ sudo apt-get install linux-686-smp
The apt-get system will automatically resolve the dependancies. You will be prompted for your password, just enter the one you picked for login since Ubuntu does not use a root account. If prompted to give a final go-ahead, hit 'Y'.

Once the installation of the new kernel has finished, reboot. After the system has restarted, open a terminal and enter:
$ uname -sr
This should return something like "Linux 2.6.8.1-4-686-smp". The numbers (the version) may differ since new kernels are being released all the time. What is crucial is that at the end you see the 686-smp component, this means your new kernel is optimised for PII and higher processors (which will give you a performance boost since the extra instructions of your PII-based chips are now enabled) and that your kernel now supports SMP and should work with both CPUs.

To verify this, once again click Applications > System Tools > System Monitor. You should now see two CPUs listed and two separate graphs for their load. That's it!
Last edited by hugoc on Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
BP6, RU BIOS, 2*Celeron 366@550 1.9v
2*GlobalWin FEP32, 512MB PC100 CAS2
GeForce DDR, CMI8738 audio, Accton SMC2-1211TX NIC
Ubuntu Linux, Kernel 2.6.8.1-4-686-smp
hugoc
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Installing K3B in Ubuntu 4.10

Post by hugoc »

Installing K3B in Ubuntu 4.10

Ubuntu ships with Gnome as the default window manager. I think Gnome is great, and Gnome does now come with CD-burning built into the file manager. However, it's quite limited (at this stage it only burns data CDs and ISOs), and can't even burn CD audio discs, which is an essential function for me at least.

There are GTK-based CD-burning applications out there, such as xcdroast, but IMHO they aren't much good. xcdroast, for instance, has a very amateurish interface and doesn't support some key features like on-the-fly conversion of mp3 to CD-DA.

Again IMHO, the best Linux cd-burning application is K3B. It's an awesome program that knows how to burn just about any kind of CD or DVD, converts MP3 on the fly and so on. I think it's better than Nero on Win32. However, the problem for Ubuntu is that K3B is a KDE application, and Ubuntu is Gnome-centric.

Not to worry. This can be fixed and I have K3B running just fine. There are a few 'gotchas' in the installation process, however, and information on installing K3B is hard to find. This is what I know works.

Firstly, open your command prompt and enter the following:
$ sudo apt-get install cdrdao k3b
This will install K3B and all its dependencies. cdrdao is, for some reason, not listed as a dependency, although it practically should be, so we're going to install that too. You will be prompted for your password, enter it. Answer 'Y' if apt-get prompts you to confirm the installation. Wait for it to finish.

When you are done, close the terminal. To run K3B, the program 'k3bsetup' must be run first. This has to be run with root permissions.

DO NOT RUN K3B SETUP WITH 'SUDO'. Doing this is likely to make your home directory inaccessible and may stop you being able to log on to the system.

Instead, open a root terminal by clicking Applications > System Tools > Root Terminal. You'll need your password. Once there, enter:
$ k3bsetup
It will return a bunch of error messages about icon directories. Ignore them, K3B will still run just fine. You will then get a funny-looking window in front of you. It looks funny because KDE uses its own QT libraries, not the GTK libraries that Gnome uses, so it won't look like your other Gnome apps. But it'll run just fine.

You should see two windows. In the top you'll have your CD-burning device. Make sure its check-box is checked. In the bottom you'll have two programs listed under the "found programs" tab, cdrecord and cdrdao (which we just installed). Make sure these are checked too. It should look like this:

Image

Click 'OK' when done. Now K3B can be used properly.

Finally, we're going to add K3B to the Applications menu. Open a terminal and enter:
$ nautilus applications:///Multimedia
A new window will open. Right-click somewhere and go to "Create Launcher". For "Name" enter "K3B", for "Command" enter "k3b". Fill in the other fields as you like, or leave blank. Finally, click on the "No Icon" button, scroll down until you see K3B's icon and select it. Then click OK. Now you can launch K3B like any other app.


Some people have found that K3B will still ask for a password when started. I have not, but if you do, then instead of entering "k3b" for the command in the above panel, enter "gksudo k3b".
BP6, RU BIOS, 2*Celeron 366@550 1.9v
2*GlobalWin FEP32, 512MB PC100 CAS2
GeForce DDR, CMI8738 audio, Accton SMC2-1211TX NIC
Ubuntu Linux, Kernel 2.6.8.1-4-686-smp
hugoc
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Disabling ACPI in Ubuntu 4.10

Post by hugoc »

Duplicate post
Last edited by hugoc on Mon Jan 24, 2005 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BP6, RU BIOS, 2*Celeron 366@550 1.9v
2*GlobalWin FEP32, 512MB PC100 CAS2
GeForce DDR, CMI8738 audio, Accton SMC2-1211TX NIC
Ubuntu Linux, Kernel 2.6.8.1-4-686-smp
hugoc
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Disabling ACPI in Ubuntu 4.10

Post by hugoc »

Disabling ACPI in Ubuntu 4.10

The default Ubuntu installation will enable ACPI, however, the BP6 is too old for this and it generally doesn't work. If you open up /var/log/messages and have a look, you will probably see flurries of lines that read something like:
Jan 21 20:23:39 localhost kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 02(08)
Jan 21 20:24:20 localhost kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 08(02)
Jan 21 20:24:39 localhost kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 02(02)
Jan 21 20:25:27 localhost kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 02(02)
Jan 21 20:25:33 localhost kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 02(02)
Jan 21 20:25:54 localhost kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 02(08)
This might affect system stability, but in any case it's definitely annoying. In the shell, without X-Windows running, your prompt will be interrupted by these messages all the time, making it hard to see what you're doing, and they'll also spam the system logs, making it hard to diagnose problems.

Therefore, we'll simply disable ACPI. Ubuntu installs with the Grub bootloader by default, so open a shell and enter:
$ sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
After the kernel line, enter the following text:
noapic pci=usepirqmask
Then save the file. I don't use Grub myself, so if someone could verify that this works I'd appreciate it.

You can also use Ubuntu with Lilo. The same thing can be done here, load your shell again and enter:
$ sudo gedit /etc/lilo.conf
Then scroll down until you see the line
# append=""
Uncomment the line (delete the #) and add "nolapic noapic" between the quotation marks so that it reads:
append="nolapic noapic"
Then save it. Exit gedit and go back to the shell. Now enter:
$ sudo lilo
This will update Lilo to use the new commands. Failing to do this will probably make your system unbootable.

Reboot the computer. When it comes back up, open up /var/log/messages and scroll down to the entries made since last boot. The APIC errors should have disappeared.
BP6, RU BIOS, 2*Celeron 366@550 1.9v
2*GlobalWin FEP32, 512MB PC100 CAS2
GeForce DDR, CMI8738 audio, Accton SMC2-1211TX NIC
Ubuntu Linux, Kernel 2.6.8.1-4-686-smp
Billl
Posts: 211
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Location: USA

Re: Ubuntu articles

Post by Billl »

Just wanted to say to the both of you great job. In particular to Hugoc now thats what I call explaining things. Very clear and easy to understand.

Thanks,

Billl
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