Some back story: About two weeks ago, one of my cats stepped on my surge suppressor power switch, and killed power to my machines (the suppressors are now zip-tied to my desk out of reach.) The only machine that was effected was my main Linux desktop (of course) which would no longer boot reliably. Seeing this as a chance to get rid of the last IDE drive in that system, I went out and got a new drive and installed it. Now as I have already posted, I have been with Gentoo for a year. Not one to rest on my laurels and let the Ubuntu sensation pass me by, I decided to install that on the desktop.

So after using Ubuntu for a week, I decided I didn’t like the coddling it does. What do you mean I can’t accidentally uninstall Coreutils and have to spend 4 frenzied hours trying to download and extract a version with no “advanced” tools such as ls and rm? I can’t trust anything that doesn’t boot to the command line prior to a GUI (Thus my current problems with Windows and OSX.)

So, in the spirit of “This works, but not to my satisfaction”, I nuked my Ubuntu install and put Gentoo back on the machine.

Ahh, that’s better.

Immediately I run into package blocks (HOORAY! I missed you, blocked packages!) between coldplug and udev. This is a known issue with older installs (2006.1, from the scrawl on the disc. The current install version of Gentoo is 2007.0) upgrading to the newest packages. Udev now has coldplug included (Linux Primer: Udev dynamically creates your /dev directory… the directory where all your raw devices are kept. Hard drive information, sound card information, etc. It’s much better than the old way. Coldplug checks for devices that cannot be changed while the computer is running… PCI cards and the like… and makes them useable by the linux system.) That paragraph got huge. Time for a new one.

So Coldplug is blocking Udev. No worries. I unmerge (uninstall) coldplug, and do the udev upgrade. Around the same time I change my network settings so that I have a static IP from my router, but it’s not taking. So, reboot. Once the system comes back up, I have to modprobe forcedeth (basically my NIC driver) before I can run /etc/init.d/net.eth0 start (the start-up script for my network card.) It didn’t twig in my head that because of removing coldplug and not running revdep-rebuild (basically recompiles any packages dependent on changed/removed components) to make sure everything used the new Udev, I might have some issues with services.

Prior to leaving to work this morning, I got a pretty big package upgrade going and strolled out the door thinking all is fine. Upon getting to work this morning, though, I find that ssh isn’t running. Oh woe is me!! A new Linux system, and I can’t even tinker with it remotely? Maddening! I meant to install my graphics card drivers and my current favorite Xwindows Manager whilst here (yes, everything I did prior was from a command line.) Nothing chafes me more than my own stupidity in these situations.

So I’ll be pissed about that for a good while

First, an aside: Today I am a real Blogger. I am posting this from a coffee shop in Toronto!

January 10th (or thereabouts) marks the 1 year anniversary of me getting bored with a Windows XP workstation and installing Linux for the first time in many years. Since then I’ve added a wee Ubuntu box and a PowerMac G4 running OS X Leopard (a topic for a different post) to my managre,  and I haven’t missed having a Windows OS machine yet!

The Gentoo machine (Rands) has been running like a champ for over a year, with only a couple foibles (all my fault) ruining it’s uptime. Since I posted about setting it up I’ve migrated to the unstable AMD 64 branch (~amd64) and had nary a problem. A memorable futz-up on my part was me un-emerging coreutils after a package blocking problem… leaving me with no basic Linux utilitys (like LS or RM!) Thankfully, some kind soul on the Gentoo Forums saved me with a tar of his AMD 64-compiled coreutils!

I loved my year with Gentoo, and look forward to many more!

Poor oft-neglected blog. A fairly quick update on the state of the nerd:

My various and sundry linux machines are running well: No major changes to Scummbox recently, and the desktop machine is running well (with an AMD X2 processor upgrade.)

I’ve all but  stopped playing World Of Warcraft, instead switching to City Of Heroes. I’ve been having a great time righting wrongs and saving the citizens of Paragon City.

On the console front, I’ve gained a Wii and XBox 360 in addition to the PS2. I’ve been having quite a lot of fun with both of the consoles. Bioshock for the 360 is an especially good game… I’d reccomend it to any one. I’ve also picked up a PSP (running Open Firmware 3.30) which is excellent as it will let me play ScummVM games whilst on the subway.

That is about it for the past 7 months of Nerdyness

I usually leave my computer on over night, for seeding purposes. When I went to wake it up this morning, I noticed that I had no keyboard activity. No num lock, ctrl+alt+backspace (Kills the X Windows session) wasn’t working… nor was ctrl+alt+F12 (the DMESG view). The monitor came on to a black screen (power saving mode.) The thing was hung. My keyboard has an LCD built into it, which shows the system time. It was stopped at 3:15 AM. So, I reboot.

On reboot I see that there are several major errors: Udev wasn’t loading properly, the System Clock cannot be accessed, ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) won’t load, nor will my network card. Crap.

What did I do last night? I ran a deep system update based on a new portage listing. What was updated? Umm… my Vorbis libraries… oh, the Linux Kernel Headers. Well, that might have something to do with it. So, genkernel -all, wait 30 minutes, reboot… success! I don’t know if the kernel rebuild was strictly necessary, but it seems to have done the trick.

Going through the logs from last night, all I can see is the cron agent running at 3:00, and then some NTFS checks happening. Nothing that *should* have caused a major freak out. We’ll see how things go tonight.

*Update*

After posting on the Gentoo forums, it turns out the issue had to do with my NTFS driver and my localization settings. Two commands and my system hasn’t seized in days!

First things first. man emerge. Seriously. You’ll be using it a *lot*
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2006 was a topsy-turvy year… I went from XP installs to Vista installs then back to XP installs… but I was feeling very *meh* towards my computer. It was boring. No umph.

So a new year has started, and a friend managed to get me interested in Desktop Linux again. I’ve run a couple day-to-day Linux installs, but they never lasted for one reason or another. The last one was probably in the very early 2000’s.
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My network at home has been dependent on a Linksys Router with a 4 port switch built in for connectivity. It is the BEFSX41 Router with VPN Endpoint, and it has served us well for over two years.

Recently at my (now ex-) job, we’ve started testing IPv6 deployment to end users. I am in this test pool, and sadly the router we have doesn’t support IPv6 in any way, shape or form.

Enter the Linksys WRT54G Wireless G Router (Version 3, for those that care) and OpenWRT. OpenWRT was made possible by Linksys violating the GPL by using a linux distro as the OS on the WRT54G and not releasing the source code. Once the dust had cleared on that debacle, people could write and install their own OSes for the device.

OpenWRT is very easy to install (just flash the proper image to your router) and is package based, for easy expandability. Among those packages are IPv6 stack and announcement packages. It is theoretically perfect for my needs!

Now, you might be wondering why I put “theoretically” in there. The one problem with IPv6 being so bleeding-edge is that nobody has a tutorial on how to configure OpenWRT to handle a Native IPv6 connection. Plenty of information on tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 connections, but bupkis on what I need. If I figure out the proper way to configure it, I’ll be sure to post it here.

A couple quick hints about getting Wireless connections to work properly with the stock OpenWRT install. First: change the default wireless channel from 6 to Auto… Channel 6 is a popular one for many 2.4ghz cordless phones. Second: If you are going to use some sort of WEP security, be sure to install the nas package. You will have no end of problems without it.

I’m quite impressed with OpenWRT thus far… and the sheer number of packages available for it is just staggering. There is Asterisk (VOIP PBX software) packages, HTTP server packages, RADIUS (authentication) packages… too many to list.

If you’re feeling adventurous, and not afraid of potentially “bricking” a router, I’d highly recommend checking out OpenWRT

The TV Out computer in the living room has been slightly re-purposed! There is now a 15″ LCD display in the dining room with a keyboard and mouse hooked up to it for using the internet at readable resolutions! Quite handy!

Our house is getting nerdier and nerdier!

The new Windows Update interface for Windows Vista is quite nice. Depending on your settings (as it was with Windows XP) the Windows Update program will either: 1) alert you as to new Updates (Allowing you to download and install them at your leisure), 2) automatically download the updates or 3) automatically download and install the updates. I’ve chosen the second option for my setup.

Windows update presents everything you need to know (current settings, pending installs, options to view install histories) in a single window, which is nice. The install history is a good feature, just in case you didn’t review what each patch and hotfix does before you installed it (and you *do* review them all, don’t you? ) Installing is a breeze, just push a button, and the patches (or the selected patches) install.
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So I have hit a snag with Windows Vista. Not a huge one, but a snag nonetheless.

Windows Vista does not properly support OpenGL. I had been using the -opengl switch with World Of Warcraft to get better frame rates out of Windows XP, and assumed the same would happen under Windows Vista. This is not the case.

A little back story about Microsoft and OpenGL.

All previous versions of Windows that “support” OpenGL have basically an old, crippled version by default running independently of DirectX. OpenGL 1.4 without extensions is what MS packages with Windows. The good part is that ATI and Nvidia add an OpenGL driver with their installs, so games and programs can use the current OpenGL 2.0 with extensions.

With Windows Vista, MS is having OpenGL run on top of DirectX 10. This is reducing the performance of OpenGL by as much as 50% (by some estimates.) Microsoft hasn’t shared any information to ATI and Nvidia on how to override this default OpenGL so they can have a separate OpenGL 2.0 driver for programs to use.

By removing the -opengl option from World Of Warcraft, I increased the frame rate by quite a bit.

It’s a bit of an underhanded move, forcing any 3D program under Vista to use DirectX for the best performance. Hopefully MS will allow a 3rd party OpenGL 2.0 driver to be installed.

Edit!

I found the following in the abstract for the current Nvidia ForceWare Drivers for Windows Vista x86:

Release Highlights:

* These drivers are tested for use only with Microsoft Windows Vista Beta2 only. Click here to download Windows Vista Beta 2.
* Includes OpenGL driver for compatibility testing.

So hopefully they get the OpenGL drivers in better shape for better performance!