June 3, 2008
mitch @ 9:06 am on June 3, 2008
Last night i decided that running the server kernel for the PAE mods isn’t really a good fix on my new ThinkPad T61, so I installed the 64bit version of Ubuntu.
I had a few issues with getting the Cisco VPN client installed but found these instructions to help.
1. Untar the VPN Client
# tar xzf vpnclient-linux-4.8.01.0640-k9.tar.gz
2. Download the patch #1
# wget -q http://projects.tuxx-home.at/ciscovpn/patches/vpnclient-linux-2.6.24-final.diff
3. Download the patch #2
# wget -q http://projects.tuxx-home.at/ciscovpn/patches/cisco_skbuff_offset.patch
4. Change to the vpnclient diretory
# cd vpnclient
5. Apply the patch #1
# patch <../vpnclient-linux-2.6.24-final.diff
patching file GenDefs.h
patching file interceptor.c
6. Apply the patch #2
# patch <../cisco_skbuff_offset.patch
patching file frag.c
patching file interceptor.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 646 (offset 16 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 685 (offset 16 lines).
Hunk #3 succeeded at 807 (offset 16 lines).
patching file linuxcniapi.c
patching file linuxkernelapi.c
7. Open your "Makefile" and rename the CFLAGS line to EXTRA_CFLAGS
8. Now the patches have been applied and you can safely install the client
#./vpn_install
Linux· Ubuntu — No Comments
April 13, 2008
mitch @ 8:42 am on April 13, 2008
I’ve been shutting down and booting my laptop since the day I got it, and to be honest, the one thing I like the most about the mac is its ability to hibernate, and just “be there” when you want to use it, otherwise you can shut the lid and leave it for hours or days without plugging it in.
Well, I was up at 3:30 this morning not able to sleep and I thought about it, as I had immediately grabbed the macbook instead of my Lenovo 3000 n100. Even when I was getting up to read more of the online version of the Django book, I knew I wouldn’t be doing any actual testing or playing with any django code, unless I installed it on this web server and “tested” it from here. The reason I find it interesting is because I’ve yet to like to do any form of coding on the Mac, other than the couple times I’ve played with the new iPhone development tools in XCode. So, I ask myself… why?
I find the reason is simply that it was more convenient, I could take the MBP and open it up, launch firefox (3 beta 5 - its awesome!) and be reading in 10-15 seconds. Instead of having to wait for my lenovo to boot.
after I had read a couple pages worth of django, it made me curious, because I haven’t looked for any information about hibernate for my laptop for a long time. Everything else works (well, that I use anyway, I’ve yet to test the modem, and I don’t much care about the finger print scanner.. that will probably be my next quest or possibly fixing the stupid alsa drivers for the sound)
And sure enough, I found an Ubuntu wiki post about my specific laptop, and to get hibernate working all I had to change was add one line to my grub config and reboot. Heres what I changed:
from the file /boot/grub/menu.lst
# defoptions=quiet splash
to this:
# defoptions=quiet splash locale=en_US i8042.reset
sudo grub-update
and reboot.
apparently the part that makes it work is the i8042.reset line, not sure what the locale has to do with it, but the poster on the ubuntu wiki had his locale set as well, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.
Sure enough it works and I updated my power setting to start putting my laptop in hibernate mode when I shut the lid.
On that page, it also has the information about fixing the alsa drivers, as well as the much annoying touchpad while typing fixes, which I’ve also applied. I’ve yet to experience any issues with random grazes of the touchpad like I used to when I was typing, so I believe it has worked, but it rarely happened at home and was usually while I was at work for some reason so we’ll see on that one.
Linux· Technology· Ubuntu — No Comments
April 9, 2007
mitch @ 4:28 pm on April 9, 2007
Well, Debian finally released version 4.0! Its been a long time coming, yet again, and I think I’ll be staying with Debian on my server as a result. Since it comes with all of the things I wanted and had been running from Testing prior to its release. I updated to Etch earlier today, so if you experienced problems earlier. Thats what was going on. There was a change with Apache (upgraded to 2.2) That required some changes to my virtual host config file for metauser.net, after I got that sorted out everything else so far has seemed like its working really well… Other than some botched problems with wordpress and a bad plugin (I updated to the latest wordpress finally a while ago too…) But I’m trying to find a decent plugin that will allow me to embed youtube video’s like the one I linked to a while a go(why they can’t include the one thats been put into the online wordpress.com I don’t understand). Anyway, its broken my categories stuff, so thats why this post and the one prior don’t have any listed… its borken and I haven’t been able to fix them yet. Rest assured that once I find the time to fix them I will… maybe later tonight in my other class, since I’ll have SSH access there….
Debian· Linux — No Comments
July 27, 2006
mitch @ 6:19 pm on July 27, 2006
I’ve been wanting to run Ubuntu for a while so I can see what all the talk is about. First I was saying I would after I got my RHCE, well I did that then I still kept putting it off, then I changed jobs and and put it off even more… Now I finally bought my own laptop and I was still contemplating installing Fedora just because I need Oracle for school. Well, Ubuntu works out of the box with the wireless card on my laptop, and fedora doesn’t. As my previous post stated, I was having problems getting it to work. And it was turning into a very hacked up install to get it to “sorta” work. When I could get it to work, it was still alot of command line tweaking to get it running and I really don’t want to do that all the time. So…. I checked out and to get Xen working on Ubuntu is just installing a custom kernel, which is no big deal, or VMWare also installs on Ubuntu so… I’m set, I reinstalled Ubuntu 6.06(Dapper Drake) At work today, and got it updated… fixed the minor issue with NetworkManager (which just needs to recache a pix directory in gnome?) And so far so good. I got all the multimedia stuff installed but I still need to test it. And I have a pretty slick theme going I’ll post a screen shot in a bit. Anyway VMWare is downloading, and since its free, I should be good to go.
Anyway, all in all, I’m liking Ubuntu. I’m not sure if its because of this latest and greatest release or what… but so far its excelent.
Debian· Fedora· Linux — No Comments
July 26, 2006
mitch @ 1:49 pm on July 26, 2006
Why is it these hardware manufacturers have such a hard time letting go of this idea that they’ll loose something if they were to let the linux community distribute their drivers, or even more… if they’d just release the specs for their wireless hardware and let the open source community develop the drivers independantly. Anyway, I’m documenting my setup on my Lenovo N100 page. Check it out for my final how-to on getting wireless to work in hopefully an easily maintainable way.
Debian· Fedora· Linux· Open Source — No Comments
January 16, 2006
mitch @ 2:30 pm on January 16, 2006
I figured writing out my upcomming projects might help me accomplish them a little better…. so here goes:
Need to buy another PVR-150/PVR-500 card for my MythTV box, and a different case to make it quiet. It will then need to be configured with the TV-out on the Nvidia card so it can sit in the living room.
Asterisk! I need/want to learn more about VOIP and gain some experience with it… What better way to do this than with setting up a home PBX? Hopefully when we move the house will be wired with Cat 5e or… guess what my first project will be? 
(We’ll see if I can convice Elissa about that…)
Need to become more accustomed with CVS/Subversion, however, this I think will evolve from work and from an ongoing task of getting better at scripting. If I start using CVS/Subversion in the mix, this should be a piece of cake… Key is to get an editor that does it automagically to some degree… need to look into what vim can do more… if it will fit the bill then I’m set. (I hear its adopted some of the stuff Emacs can do…)
Home Automation, this is another area I want to dig into a bit. As its wicked cool, for the most part tho, its really getting devices to do what you need, and then writing the glue to make it all cohesive. It will however require some funding to make happen, thus it will need Elissa’s write off More geek things to make her understand.
Thoughts:
Being both a car nut and a geek makes some things rather difficult… as I’m always wanting something… for one of the two… gradually, I’m slowly giving up the thought of ever being able to tune up my civic, and looking just to buy a car I’m going to be “ok” with as it sits stock. These thoughts have forced me to *REALLY* want a Mitsubishi Evo. As I really don’t know what else I’d want to do with it, other than maybe a new ECU chip, and maybe a different deck… but even then I think I’m leaning more towards going with a MP3 player with FM transmitter so a different deck wouldn’t be nessisary. They’re still somewhat expensive tho, so I might have to settle for a Civic Si if I end up selling/trade in my current civic. Or I might end up just hanging on to my Civic untill I can afford an Evo… (which ever comes first in the next two years) Anyway, we’ll see.
Life· Linux· Thoughts — No Comments
November 5, 2005
mitch @ 5:27 pm on November 5, 2005
I’ve been running Fedora for a while now, both at home and on my work machine. Up untill Core 4, the repositories used for the extra packages that are not included with Fedora were excellent. However, both boxes I have, are getting quite messed up when updating… Its becomming extremely annoying. So annoying that I’m considering switching distro’s again. Possibly going back to Gentoo. With gentoo’s massive software collection, and having it at my fingertips ready to be compiled. If you remember I ran gentoo a year or so ago on my home machine for a while… untill some file system corruption that I blamed on my configuration of Gentoo. Had I known then it was because my harddrive was dieing I might not have been so hasty in making the switch. There were other things that made me make the switch as well however. Such as the Cisco VPN client. New developtments in software packages however, have added an option for vpnc. Which is an open source project that is compatible with the Cisco VPN concentrator we have at work. I still need to test it for myself to make sure I’m able to connect with it, but it will probably be the thing that allows me to go back to Gentoo. With Gentoo, using all the questionably legal software on linux becomes *MUCH* easier because they’re still in portage, and no third party repository is needed. So I won’t experience the problems I’ve had currently with Core 4. (Like I said before, using the same repositories now, as I did with core 3… and I never had these problems with core 3.) I’ll let you know how it goes.
Fedora· Gentoo· Linux — No Comments
July 21, 2005
mitch @ 1:15 pm on July 21, 2005
From The Register, the article talks about Sun’s constant flux of wether or not they like linux this hour(yes they can change that often). Some people were excited when Sun said they were going to start supporting and selling linux(Java Desktop Anyone?). There were always the nay sayers who wouldn’t give Sun a chance. Well I’m now officially going to stay on that side of the fence. I hate to say it (really I do). Sun sees the writing on the wall, but they *still* refuse to adapt to the changing market. They’re bent on riding Solaris to the ground if thats where its going to take them. Maybe one day they’ll wake up and pull a 180. IBM did… took them a while but they did it. Everyone else seems to be tip toeing around saying “maybe we will, maybe we won’t… we’re not sure”. Getting on the boat would be great, but the ships not going to wait for them. It opens the door for more players to step up and take their place however. Which would be good, because we don’t want everyone bowing out leaving IBM. Competition is a good thing.
Linux· Technology· Thoughts — No Comments
June 30, 2005
mitch @ 3:38 pm on June 30, 2005
Fedora Core 4 has been out a while, and repositories are just starting to pop up for it finally. Seems theres problems with the move to GCC 4.0 and getting things to compile. Other than that, I’m really liking it. I haven’t made the move on my home PC yet, but I’ve been running it here at work for some time (since test 2 i believe…) and I’ve had it on my laptop since test 3. Major updates include Gnome 2.10, GCC 4.0, and more enhancements to SELinux. Worth the upgrade? I would say yes. Mostly for cosmetic reasons tho. I loved how it detected and even would allow me to install over my Cisco 340 Aironet wireless card at work. I was amazed (since Ubuntu could do it figured Fedora should too!). I’m loving NetworkManager. I finally can confidently say Linux does wireless as easy (i think its actually easier) as windows. (When the card is supported…) Anyway Props to the developers for another great release! I’ll be posting more on my bro’s install for his new Athlon64 and an ATI Express200 board, and a SATA Drive using the SB400 chipset.
Fedora· Linux — No Comments
January 28, 2005
mitch @ 10:07 am on January 28, 2005
I haven’t updated in a while because my home computer has been out of commission for a while… Not sure what happened… For some reason, both Gentoo, and Fedora have corrupted ext3 partions on my computer… Not sure if its because of the via_sata driver, hardware, or a combination of them. Any how, this last time, it corrupted my home partion and I had fsck running but it was taking *days* to run. I even stoped it and restarted it from a knoppix CD, and the fedora disk 1. They all took forever, and still didn’t seem like it fixed anything when they were done. So, I lost everything…. I hadn’t bought the Dual DVD/CD burner yet, so I didn’t have any backups… which is completely my fault. Anyhow, this time around I’m going with a different filesystem for my home partion. XFS is what I desided to go with. I did some research a while ago and looked into its benifits and it seems to have quite a few. Dispite not being officially supported by Fedora, I think it will be able to handle my 107GB partion better than ext3. ReiserFS would have been my other choice, but found on the fedorafaq site that SELinux won’t work on anything but ext3 and XFS. That sealed the deal, XFS it is. I’m currently loading it up right now, so far so good.
Fedora· Gentoo· Linux· News· Technology — No Comments
