Installing Windows8.1 after Linux Mint

I'm going to wipe the existing winXP partition and substitute it with Win8.1.
The Linux Mint install should be retained, therefore I need to run the installation of the SOs in the generally-not-suggested route: first linux than windows.

There shouldn't be any major issues, also because my PC is quite old and it shouldn'e be starting in EFI mode (aka "Secure boot"), but in the common BIOS mode (aka "legacy boot").

To check the booting mode:

The simplest way is to check for the presence of a /sys/firmware/efi directory. The mere existence of this directory indicates that the computer has booted in EFI mode

 or else:

dmesg | grep -i EFI
A BIOS-based computer will lack most or all of these lines, and certainly the EFI: mem## lines.

Still on EFI booot, check this link.
 
To repair grub:

• Boot-Repair
• is it available for my Linux Mint LMDE Mate 64bit install?
• Rescue dedicated distro, such as Rescatux, UBCD, PartedMagic, Hiren's boot CD, Trinity rescue disc...

To reinstall grub:
Boot  a live CD (mint 64bit in my case) and fire up a terminal.
Identify boot partition with

ls -l /dev/disk/by-label/

Reinstall grub with

sudo grub-install /dev/XXX

 
This should work.....

Cloning XP and linux to a SSD, part1

I've recently bought a Crucial SSD M500 240GB SATA III to substitute my old IDE HD seagate (120GB). 162e from Prokoo, not bad.

Capacity (Unformatted): 240GB
Interface: SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3GB/s compatible)
Sustained Sequential Read up to (128k transfer): 500MB/s
Sustained Sequential Write up to (128k transfer): 250MB/s
Random Read up to (4k transfer): 72,000 IOPS
Random Write up to (4k transfer): 60,000 IOPS
Form Factor: 2.5-inch, m-SATA, and M.2
NAND: 20nm Micron MLC NND
Life Expectancy: 1.2 million hours mean time to failure (MTTF)
Endurance: 72TB total bytes written (TBW), equal to 40GB per day for 5 years
Operating Temperature: 0°C to 70°C
Compliance: RoHS, CE, FCC, UL, BSMI, C-TICK, KCC RRL, W.E.E.E., TUV VCCI, IC
Firmware: Field upgradable firmware
Product Health Monitoring: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) commands

The old disk hosted WinXP and Ubuntu 10.04, the latter spread on several dedicated partitions (boot, / and swap on this disk, /home on another, larger, SATA disk).

Cloning
Once connected internally to a SATA port my pc (Fujitsu-Siemens, quite old, Athlon64 X2), the SSD took the first disk position (sda) and the old disk moved to the last (sdc).
Cloning with Parted Magic (pmagic_2013_05_01) live from DVD was fast and easy.
It used partclone to copy "disk to local disk" at the astonishing rate of 3.35GB/min!!
Then I edited the grub.cfg file adding a new instance of linux pointing to the correct disk and to differentiate from the grub in the old disk: this would make evident that I'm actually booting from the SSD.
At this point I rebooted, entered BIOS to set the boot disk priority to let the SSD kick in first, rebooted and the grub from the SSD showed up correctly.
So far, so good.
But here my BIG mistake: I booted firstly windows, with BOTH the new and the old disk (cloned) connected.
WinXP did boot, but it went to the old disk, not the new one.
The reason -I've learned after long internet serach- is probably that I didn't change the UUIDs of the partitions of the new disk, therefore the boot got confused and started the old installation. The problem is that windows apparently realised that there was an identical installation on an identical partition and changed something to prevent -possibly- copy of the system.

Lesson learnt: after cloning NEVER reboot with both disks connected! Start with the new one, restart with a liveCD, change the UUIDs, re-install grub, reboot in the new disk (both OSs) and only ath this point you can safely reconnect the old disk!

Before going into the part2, with the recovery and installation of the lates LinuxMint LMDE 201303 along with XP and Ubuntu, here are the final performances:

Win XP:
was 1'16" from grub to the ethernet icon appearance (=system usable)
is ~45"

Ubuntu:
was ~ 47" from grub to the ethernet connected (=system boot finished)
is ~32"

Mint (not installed originally):
is ~ 27" from grub to the ethernet connected (=system boot finished)

Very, very good!

Thumbnails on Synology NAS

After moving from DSM3 to DSM4.0, the NAS started creating thumbnails of images.
This consumes CPU power for ages: several days may be needed to create thumbs, with the disk continuously scratching and the CPU at 100%.
After 15days of processing I was still left with 20000+ images to process.
Peering through the forums I found that this was an issue everybody met and I was eventually pointed to a great script by Phillips312: synoThumbs.sh, which uses your PC CPU and RAM to create the thumbnails and then moves the thumbs to the proper "@eaDir" on the NAS.

This is the comment I left there, to list what I did to let it work:
This works for DSM4.0 and DSM4.1, both tested on my DS210j.

0. pause the thumbnails creation on the NAS (not actually needed)
1. in your linux box, install nfs-common
2. in your DSM control panel, go to NFS management and create the appropriate rules for your PC. In my case, the NAS is on 192.168.2.10. The PC is on 192.168.2.40. The rule I’ve created allows read/write access to 192.168.2.40. It works with “no mapping” and with “mapping to root account” as well. It didn’t work by mapping the hostname, I had to fill in the real IP address.
3. on your PC:
a) showmount -e 192.168.2.10 (to check that the PC ip address is correctly allowed to access)
b) sudo mkdir /mnt/photo
c) cd /mnt
d) sudo cp /path-to-the-script/synoThumbs.sh .
e) sudo chmod u+x synoThumbs.sh
f) sudo mount -o soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 192.168.2.10:/volume1/photo /mnt/photo
g) ./synoThumbs.sh photo
4. the script seems to hang doing nothing, but I guess it is just looking through your files. After a while it will start showing thumbnails already created or creating the new thumbs.
5. relax, take your time and say thanks to Phillips312!!!!


Help on NFS found here.

Now, what I'm thinking of is to completely remove the photostation, which is terribly slow to browse. And all those thumbnails are taking a lot of space, too.
So, two interesting links on the subject:

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=37379&start=150#p229956

1.I created a directory named Photographs under the Files directory.
2.I moved all my photos into this directory.
3.I turn off Media server long enough to change the properties of the “system created” Phot directory and made it hidden to my network places.
4.I restarted Media Server to allow the Diskstation to be seen as a UPnp device on the network again…. No More Coverting…. Hooray!

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=52060&start=75

1) SSH in to the NAS as root (as previously in this thread)
2) Stop the thumbnailing service
Code: Select all
/usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S77synomkthumbd.sh stop

3) Disable the thumbnailing service app from running (it's a linux thing, this marks the file as not executable)
Code: Select all
chmod -x /usr/syno/bin/synomkthumbd

4) Optionaly, and at your own risk, go in to your files root directory and delete any previously generated thumbnail folders/directories from the whole directory tree
Code: Select all
cd /volume1/
find ./ -type d -name "@eaDir" -exec rm -rf {} \;

And before removing everything, this is what NERDlogger suggests:

Run the command below and it will “echo” the names of these “@eaDir” folders to the terminal. Then once you’re satistied that it’s working well (no weird filenames/characters/etc.), then replace the “echo” with “rm -rf” to actually remove those folders.
find . -name "@eaDir" -type d -print |while read FILENAME; do echo "${FILENAME}"; done

Grub2: terribly slow at boot

Karmic Koala comes with Grub2, on a fresh install (but it will keep grub legacy on upgrades).

Beside the scarcely comprehensible layer of complexity that grub2 has added to the great old grub, I was very disappointed by the long delay on boot.

After BIOS, the booting process just hanged with a "GRUB starting" message on black screen.

It stays like that for ~15-20 seconds.

Than grub menu shows up.

Amazing, since Karmic was said to be one of the fastest booting experiences one could have....

Now, poossibly the solution is here:

Grub 2 Basics

Grub 2 Hangs 10-30 Seconds between Grub 2 Loading and Menu Display.

This is a known bug that can be caused by GRUB 2 and /boot being loaded on different partitions. To fix the problem, run

Code:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc

Select to load Grub 2 on the same device as the /boot partition. In your system BIOS, change the drive to boot from first to the drive with the /boot partition.

As it happens, my /boot partition and my /home are on two different disks.

I need to check, but it might actually be that grub got installed on the disk with the /home partition and not the one with /boot and / partitions (which is amazing, since I kept the insalling disk for grub suggested by the installation process....).

Sound issues on Karmic 64bit

Issue and possible solutions, just listed, very few comments.

=================

No sound problem:

=================

Live CD --> everything's fine

Install --> fine

Restart --> install nvidia proprietary --> restart --> no sound!

200+ updates --> restart --> continuous whistle

Disable on board Audio card --> crappy sound, but something, at least.

Movieplayer and Rythmbox ask for additional codecs (to play wma and mp3). I let them download their codecs and reboot.

Still crappy sound (with rythmbox and vlc, no sound at all with movieplayer). See below for sound problem description and possible solutions.

=================

Useful output commands for audio/video troubleshooting

=================

uname -a

aplay -l

arecord -l

amixer -c 0

to check if the system recognizes the soundcard:

aplay -l

lspci -v | less

sounds module installed?:

find /lib/modules/`uname -r` | grep snd

===========

Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766683&highlight=sound+present+live+-present+install

===========

enable medibuntu:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/`lsb_release -cs`.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list; sudo apt-get -q update; sudo apt-get --yes -q --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring; sudo apt-get -q update

install all multimedia stuff:

sudo apt-get remove gnash gnash-common libflashsupport mozilla-plugin-gnash swfdec-mozilla && sudo apt-get install alsa-oss faac faad flashplugin-nonfree gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse ia32-libs ia32-sun-java6-bin icedtea6-plugin libmp3lame0 non-free-codecs openjdk-6-jre unrar

install gecko (for audio/video streaming in web browser):

sudo apt-get remove kaffeine-mozilla mozilla-helix-player mozilla-mplayer mozilla-plugin-vlc totem-mozilla xine-plugin

sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer

reboot

audio conversion:

sudo apt-get install soundconverter audacity oggconvert

tag editor:

sudo apt-get install exfalso

Video conversion:

sudo apt-get install avidemux ffmpeg winff

DVD playback:

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libdvdread4 libdvdnav4 vlc

alternative to VLC: sudo apt-get install gxine libxine1-ffmpeg

DVD rip

sudo apt-get install dvdrip

alternative: sudo apt-get install k9copy

Firefox add-ons:

NoScript (tick the box entitled "Temporarily allow top-level sites by default");

Screen resolution:

sudo xrandr -s 1280x800 (to set at 1280x/800)

sudo xrandr -q

Use the first command again and set the highest resolution that RandR claims is supported. Once that is set, try setting the resolution you know is correct, as it may now accept that resolution

==============

==============

Possible solutions or approaches to solve the sound issue

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1144009&highlight=no+sound+after+install

==============

Here after, a list of solutions that are reported to have worked at least ones:

1. kernel

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8365308&postcount=50

check that grub is really starting the latest kernel (2.6.31-14-generic reported to work)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8202698&postcount=37

dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-image

uname -r

Edit your menu.lst file so that the kernel version numbers are up to date:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

2. check volumes or mute

gnome-alsamixer

or

alsamixer -Dhw (hw device should be specified)

3. pulseaudio fixes

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578

backup and delete

$ mkdir ~/pulse-backup && cp -r ~/.pulse ~/.asound* /etc/asound.conf /etc/pulse -t ~/pulse-backup/

$ rm -r ~/.pulse ~/.asound*

$ sudo rm /etc/asound.conf

install libreries and utilities

sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins padevchooser libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

purge libflashsupport

sudo apt-get remove --purge libflashsupport flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound

config pulsaudio device chooser (choose default output and input card)

$ pulseaudio & pavucontrol

check alsa PCM volume or mute

alsamixer -Dhw

Note: When the PulseAudio ALSA plugins are active, you must explicitly specify your hardware device in alsamixer (marked in blue above), otherwise it will open the PulseAudio mixer

4. alsa reinstall

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8541933&postcount=68

backup as in previous item:

mkdir ~/pulse-backup && cp -r ~/.pulse ~/.asound* /etc/asound.conf /etc/pulse -t ~/pulse-backup/

remove alsa:

sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

shutdown and restart

reinstall alsa:

sudo apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

sudo apt-get install gdm ubuntu-desktop

shutdown and restart

configure:

goto System > Preferences > Sound

goto Hardware tab and goto Profile:

Select "Analog Stereo Duplex"

5. upgrade alsa to 1.0.22

http://monespaceperso.org/blog-en/2009/12/17/upgrade-alsa-1-0-22-on-ubuntu-karmic-koala-9-10/

6. modem proprietario

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8213242&postcount=40

(= switch it off from "Proprietary Driver" dialog)

answer to issued bug:

This problem has been temporarily resolved by disabling the proprietary Smart Link Software Modem driver available in Ubuntu's Hardware Drivers dialog (jockey-gtk).

7. remove pulseaudio

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

-----------------

EDIT: approach 4 made the trick and now sound works, even if not perfectly yet.

-----------------

Karmic Koala 64bit: almost fresh install

Fresh install of Karmic Koala, but keeping the previous /home partition unformatted.

Installation quite OK, but a few issues immediately arose.

Most important of which, several sound issues.

More detailed installation description in a later post.

As for now, the overall impression is that compared to 8.04 this Ubuntu release has several improvements, but it's missing loads details and functionalities which for sure would make at least a bad impression on new linux adepts, if not falling back on windows.

O2Media HMR-600W

Ho appena comperato l'oggetto qui sopra, con l'idea di fare principalmente un lettore di file video, immagini e magari prepararsi al digitale terrestre.

Una delle caratteristiche interessanti per l'utente finale (genitori) e che lo rende teoricamente molto semplice da connettere, e' la presenza di due scart (in e out) per collegarsi alla televisione e per collegare magari il videoregistratore (e riversare le vecchie videocasssette) o un decoder.

Ieri mi e' arrivato, dalla Spagna, in soli 3gg dall'ordine....!

L'ho collegato alla TV (scart), al decoder sky (sempre scart) e all'antenna per il DVB-T.
Ho pure attaccato la chiavetta wifi allegata.

C'e' un forum interessante, forse l'unico dedicato ai prodotti O2Media. Sul sito e sul forum di 1e2.it ci sono molte informazioni utili e c'e' un'ottima recensione dell'amministratore, Galerio.

Cito velocemente le mie impressioni, magari possono tornare utili a potenziali nuovi utenti.
Orami ho una esperienza pluriennale con Mythtv, e ho recentemente aggiunto un po' di tentativi con VDR,, XBMC e VistaMediaCenter, quindi soprattutto Mythtv e' il mio metro di paragone per un MediaCenter.


L'HD incluso e' un Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 da 1TB.
La formattazione e' andata come preannunciato da Galerio in un altro thread: timeshift swap una grande partizione NTFS.

La qualita' di visione e di registrazione (sia DVB-T che scart) e' ottima, anche il cambio canali e' molto veloce.
Con Mythtv, lo zapping e' praticamente impossibile (a causa del timeshift permanente). Qui invece e' ottimo, anche con il timeshift attivo e' accettabile. Solo VDR forse e' piu' veloce.
Lo scan dei canali a Milano ha trovato circa 80 voci, molte inutili (come Rai Test, et similia)

Il telecomando ha una disposizione (e assegnazione) di tasti non esattamente intuitiva, ma si impara.
La ventola e' abbastanza silenziosa e non si sente l'hard disk "grattare", in registrazione.
Il software e' piuttosto brutto, esteticamente, e non del tutto funzionale. In compenso e' piuttosto intuitivo.
Trovo antipatico che non si possa settare l'avvio del mediacenter direttamente sulla trasmissione TV o sul browsing dei film o altro a scelta.
Anche il metodo di browsing dei file e' un po' poco pratico: le voci al top dello schermo fanno solo da filtro e non ho trovato modo di settare come minimo una directory di default (ad es. sarebbe naturale che il filtro "video" puntasse direttamente a una cartella di video, e non alla root o all'ultima visitata).

La visione delle foto e' veloce, gli effetti di transizione sono ridicoli e anche il tentativo di colonna sonora mi pare un po' poco curato.
Comunque le foto si guardano bene, si ruotano e si fa lo zoom con velocita' e facilita'.

Anche la gestione dei file musicali e' scarsa: non vedo possibilita' di ricerca o ordinamento per teg o creazione di playlist. In compenso legge formati di tutti i tipi e direi con buona resa.

Le registrazioni sono di ottima qualita', ma il fatto di non poter dare un nome alla registrazione in fase di programmazione e' una grave lacuna. Anche registrando dal DVB-T il nome automatico del file non viene preso dall'EPG, ma e' automatico, con data e ora. Non tiene neppure un database con informazioni tipo nome film, trama, attori, durata. Veramente un peccato.
Per altro, l'EPG trasmessa sul digitale terrestre e' davvero scarsa, non si puo' praticamente programmare niente. Se almeno mettessero la possibilita' di usare xmltv... Magari prossimamente lo segnalo nell'apposito thread sui suggerimenti di 1e2.it ....

E per restare in tema, altra pecca enorme e' l'assenza di possibilita' di un editing anche elementare della registrazione, ad esempio per eliminare le parti pre- e post-film oppure marcare e tagliare le pubblicita'.

Se poi mettessero una funzione di transcoding, anche solo per produrre un semplice Xvid senza troppe pretese...

Magari qualche nuova versione del firmware aggiungera' queste funzioni. Chissa'.

Ultimo difetto per la parte registratore e' che apparentemente la funzione OTR non e' ben implementata dato che scadenza del timer l'HMR non si spegne. Invece di 1h30 di registrazione OTR, ha registrato per 7 ore, prima che lo spegnessi.....!!!

Wireless: La gestione wireless e' piuttosto macchinosa, ma funzionale. Peccato che non serva a molto. Vedendo il wireless in bundle col sistema, ho scioccamente creduto che ci fosse un browser o anche solo che si collegasse a you tube, shoutcast e le previsioni meteo.... Invece niente, mi pare di capire che serva solo per collegarsi alla rete domestica, o ai torrent, ad amule testuale, etc. Magari si puo' installare links per fare del browsing testuale, ma bisognerebbe almeno poter aprire un terminale da telecomando, cosa che mi pare non si possa fare.

La connessione di un dispositivo USB, non fa partire automaticamente il browsing dei file.

La possibilita' di connettere una tastiera USB semplificherebbe molte delle operazioni di rename e trasferimento dei file. Anche l'indicazione della durata totale del film in visione sarebbe utile.

Ultima pecca, il manuale e' scarno e troppo essenziale. Ad esempio nulla si dice su come gestire le foto, la colonna sonora delle stesse, la rotazione etc. Bisogna andare per tentativi....
Anche la mancanza di un forum ufficiale in inglese o spagnolo, mi pare una lacuna che O2media dovrebbe colmare.

In generale, pero', l'HMR-600W mi pare funzionale anche se un po' di aspetti andrebbero curati di piu', a cominciare dal software e dalla mancanza di accesso diretto a internet collegato alla GUI.
Prossimamente magari provo a testare i nuovi firmware ufficiali e/o moddati (presente sempre su 1e2.it).


Devo fare ancora delle prova piu' estensive, in particolare con i diversi formati video.

Per finire, alcune questioni aperte che ho riproposte nel forum:

1. A HMR spento (HW, non col telecomando) e TV accesa sul canale AV, sento un sacco di interferenze (canale 5, per la cronaca). Appena accendo la corrente con il tasto HW le interferenze spariscono. Anche in modalita' stand-by non si sentono. Capita anche ad altri?

2. Esiste un modo per associare una particolare funzione a un tasto del telecomando? Ad esempio, vorrei con un tasto andare direttamente al browsing delle immagini in una particolare cartella.

3. C'e' un modo per aprire un browser? Per vedere you tube e meteo o cose simili....

Fix a Frozen System with the Magic SysRq Keys

http://fosswire.com/post/2007/09/fix-a-frozen-system-with-the-magic-sysrq-keys/
It says:

You finally got your Linux environment to crash. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does nothing [...]
The Linux kernel includes a secret method of restarting your PC should it ever stop doing its job.

1. Hold down the Alt and SysRq (Print Screen) keys.
2. While holding those down, type the following in order. Nothing will appear to happen until the last letter is pressed: REISUB
3. Watch your computer reboot magically.

What the individual keys do in that sequence are not as important as
what it does as a whole: stops all programs, unmounts all drives, and
reboots. A lot safer than just cutting the power.

Here it is again: REISUB. Remember that, as it
will save you a lot of time when you are configuring a system and
something gets messed up. Need a mnemonic? Try Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring.

nix's note (09 Dec 2008):
Just some other additional notes: alt+print screen + REISUB = reboot alt+print screen + REISUO = shutdown

---------

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key:

The AltGr key, if present, can be used in place of Alt key in order to avoid alternative uses of these combinations such as Screenshot for Alt+SysRq+s under Gnome. It also can be accessed from the serial console
[...]

unRaw      (take control of keyboard back from X), 
tErminate (send SIGTERM to all processes, allowing them to terminate gracefully),
kIll      (send SIGKILL to all processes, forcing them to terminate immediately),
 Sync     (flush data to disk),
 Unmount  (remount all filesystems read-only),
reBoot.

This can prevent a fsck being required on reboot and gives some programs a chance to save emergency backups of unsaved work.

Another common version of this mnemonic device is "Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring", which performs the same task, but in an alternate order. There is debate regarding whether the Sync command should come earlier or later.

Wait a few seconds between each command. For example, many applications will do an emergency save on receiving SIGTERM, but if SIGKILL is sent too soon, the application will not have time. Likewise, the Sync and Unmount processes need a few seconds before the system is rebooted.

ZyXel G-220 v2 on (Myth)Ubuntu 8.04 x86_64

Issue:
System hangs upon insertion; need several reboots before working.
It used to work fine with Mythbuntu 7.10 x86_64.
A friend tested it on its Ubuntu 8.10 x86 and it works --> is it a 64-bit issue?

Suggestions:
1. blacklist:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/74362

Tim Gardner wrote on 2007-03-27: (permalink)
Try a more current driver by blacklisting zd1211rw:
edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add zd1211rw
edit /etc/modules and add zd1211rw-mac80211
Either reboot or 'modprobe zd1211rw-mac80211', then insert the zd1211.

2. cardbus:
issue muight be related to cardbus and USB system (my pc seems to hang because both mouse and keyb are USB...)
http://communities.vmware.com/message/575305#575305

In short, the problem was Ubuntu not mounting USBFS to /proc/bus/usb.
Solution:
sudo mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb
and add the following line in the /etc/fstab file:
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto 0 0
Similar effect should be obtained if inserting a another USB dongle and AFTER that the USB wifi key: the first insertino should trigger the usbfs system, than the wifi key mounts with no issue.

3. kernel
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/74362

Mark Krapivner wrote on 2008-09-20:
i worked with alpha 6 a few days and i didn't encounter this bug (with Kernel 2.6.27), if any one else can confirm it's fixed too please do so :-)
BUT, this bug still exists on kernel 2.6.24 that comes with hardy, which is an LTS release.

SnowTDM wrote on 2008-05-09:
[...]
But if I start 8.04 version with 7.10 kernel (2.6.22) card connects perfectly, including with WAP encryption. It also connect if I boot with 7.10 desktop CD.
I think it is a problem with driver or module zd1211rw in conjunction with new kernel.

4. ndiswrapper
my try:
blaklist zd1211rw module and try ndiswrapper with the original windows driver

PVR-150 IRBlaster

Periodically, I spend some time on the internet looking for a "simple" and "working" method to let the IRBlaster of my Hauppauge PVR-150 pilot a SKY satellite receiver.
The system is now upgraded to a Mythbuntu 8.04.1 x64.

Recently I've found two interesting hints:

This last post here, and the raw codes for the SKY receiver here (only italian).

rkocher writes:


Remove lirc by running:

"sudo apt-get --purge remove lirc"

To ensure the driver is not still loaded run:

"modprobe -r lirc_i2c"

Then follow the instructions at http://www.blushingpenguin.com/mark/blog/?p=24

which links to the evergreen "Marks' Braindump" blog, which has recently been updated for the recent kernels.

I'll give it a try soon

PCLinuxOS 2009.1 installation

PCLinuxOS 2009.1 installation
Apr 08, 2009

My previous post on PCLinuxOS 2007 installation is here.

Upgrade attempt:

The instructions on the forum or website are not at all easy to find.
Actually I couldn't find a description of the upgrade procedure.
Luckily, our friend Google brought me here.
I've followed this simple guide, but the dist-upgrade command didn't complete: halfway up it started complaining that some packages couldn't be installed due to dependencies conflicting with other versions of the same dependency....

Probably there is a way out, but I was already prepared (=BACKUP important data!!!!) to a fresh install.
And here it goes.

Fresh install:

tot install time ~20min
tot personalization so far <0h10 style="font-weight: bold;">The notebook:
IBM ThinkPad T40
CPU intel pentium M 1300MHz
RAM 512MB
HD fujitsu 100GB
Sound max integrated digital audio from Analog Devices
video: ATI mobility radeon 7500 (32MB shared memory)
modem: agere system AC'97
infrared, LAN, 2 USB 1.1, docking station

BASE INSTALL

note: system is WinXP dual boot and when starting the installation, I forgot to fully switch off winXP and left it hybernated. Not a good idea!

old partitioning scheme:
hda1 (/winXP not automounted, ntfs) (85GB)
hda2 /boot ext3 (100MB)
hda3 /media/scambio fat32 (2GB)
hda5 /media/important ext3 (1GB)
hda6 / ext3 (11GB)
hda5 swap (1GB)

Before starting:
backup of sensitive data
backup of /home (just in case)
backup of netani.inf from /etc/ndiswrapper

I've accepted to "use existing partitions" during install, which didn't gave me the possibility of automounting hda1 and 3. And no way back possible, too (no "back" button, or similar).
So, if you need to mount partitions different from native linux FS, don't "use existing partitions"....!
I've got a hard shake when the systema asked me to install GRUB on hda1.
I've accepted quickly, for it is where it should be installed.
Immediatley after I realized that hda1 is where WinXP resides. And it was hybernated. Therfore not writeable. But pclos WAS actually writing!!! Result: grub has been installed with no problem and winXP resumed from hybernation with no issue.
Lucky me.
Next time I MUST remember not to leave an OS suspended when installing another OS...

Keyboard: UK
Time zone: Europe/Rome


after base install: ~2.5GB used space
TV card Dazzle ?, wireless PCMCIA Belkin Mimo not recognized

kernel: 2.6.26-8 (i586)

Feeling after first install:
Very similar to previous (2007) version.
Removed the eye-dazing dotted black background.
Horrible and awkward splashscreen with PCLOS logos in time....
Compiz Fusion has to be enabled, but it works out-of-the-box, with no need for (ATI) driver download.

mp3 audio works out of the box.
ntfs and fat32 partition read and write to be tested (not automanted during install, my mistake)

PERSONALIZATION

WiFi: setup through control center/network/wireless/ndiswrapper.
inf file used: netani.inf from the previous installation (in turn coming from netgear wpnt511 driver)
--> network working very fine and fast. WPA also OK.
Connection status icon is already in the panel (as opposed to pclos 2007)
Net switching applet was very bad in pclos 2007: it was not really changing connection to the desired SSID when needed. It was picking its own choice from the available SSID. Not very kind from it! Now it seems to work. In case, a simple (from root):

iwconfig wlan0 essid your_ssid_name

makes the magic.

Installed through synaptics (in different sessions):
note: no need to change or add respositories, everything works as it is.
note2: fastest from Milano seems the Swiss ftp repository

1. gcompris, gcompris-sounds-it, ktuberling
2. gramps, libdvdcss2
3. aspell-it, locales-it, mozilla-firefox-it, mozilla-thunderbird-it, myspell-it_IT, myspell-thes-it_IT, openoffice.org-l10n-it
3. timidity++, easytag, rosegarden
4. googleearth, kdegames-suite, ksudoku, skype, wesnoth
5. mercurial
6. lib-dvb

Fonts:
tbd
--> pclos control panel --> "install fonts" --> "import windows fonts" button.

Compiz:
As said, Compiz Fusion works out-of-the-box, with no need for (ATI) driver download.
It has to be enabled in the control center/hardware/3D effects dialog box.
Unfortunately, with Compiz enabled, some system dialogs are not visible.
For instance, the "root password request dialog" is an empty window and when typing nothing is shown (but it is actually typed because if you press ENTER it accepts it).
It can be just annoying or very bad, depending on which dialog is blankened...
I'll see in the future.

DVD play:

next:

TV tuner "Dazzle TV Hybrid Stick":

TV tuner testing:

HandBrake 0.9.3

Good news: this new version has a linux GUI available as well.
xBuntus debs can be found here.
Forum thread here.

Links to wake/shutdown mythbuntu

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5775203&postcount=60
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5776393&postcount=65
ACPI wakeup wiki
Ubuntu community docs

Sound issues on my Hardy 64bit

Still no success with the Alsa/PulseAudio settings on Hardy 64bit (Hercules Game Theater XP 5.1, CS46xx).
Only way I can get the sound to work, is to set everything to OSS.

Now, a few links with hints/guides to follow:

Alsa:
need to have soundcore loaded:

modinfo soundcore

Multiple soundcards:

explicitly assign the default device numbers of our sound card drivers by adding lines at the end of the /etc/modprode.d/alsa-base file like this (These are mine):

Code:

options snd_hda_intel index=0
options snd_cmipci index=1
options snd_atiixp index=2
options snd_usb_audio index=3

This way each device will always be numbered the same.

You can use:

Code:

cat /proc/asound/modules

to discover your sound device driver module names and their order.

Generic troubleshoot:

to check if the system recognnizes the soundcard:
aplay -l
lspci -v | less

sounds module installed?:
find /lib/modules/`uname -r` | grep snd

The 10,000 Page Guide to Sound Troubleshooting:
Among several tips, this:
Create a new user and login with that: if sound works, it's an issue of user configuration

Another (older) guide on sound problems:
This is a quite comprehensive guide, with a "failure/success" path to follow. Nice.

PulseAudio fixes:
It says libflashsupport should not be installed.
this is confusing, since it's the only way I could find to let Flash produce sounds.

PulseAudio installation (Italian):
Italian guide to PulseAudio installation.
Makes use of most of the previous hints, and summarizes them.
Too simple?
A noticeable difference with the "fixes" page:
Here it uses ladspa without even checking its installation. In "fixes":
Install the required LADSPA plugins and tools:

Code:

$ sudo apt-get install swh-plugins ladspa-sdk

Maybe
Also, there is no editing of the /etc/pulse/default.pa and no note on the necessity of changing the
slave.pcm "plughw"
line in ~/.asoundrc (or /etc/asound.conf)

Surround guide (italian):
To be tested yet

---------------------------
Edit:
this might be the real fix: remove pulsaudio....!
Or even better, in the same thread: post 51.
Or still, I can keep my "OSS" settings: not brilliant, but working...!
---------------------------

Installazione Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 AMD64

Sono passato dalla vecchia Dapper alla nuova Hardy, sul computer fisso.

Di seguito i vari step seguiti, in forma di nota/promemoria.

CAP 0: mettiamoci in condizione di tornare indietro, se qualcosa va storto....:

Backup Dapper

Disinstallare software inutili

Fare lista sw

dpkg --get-selections > installed-packages.txt

oppure da synaptic (vengono meno voci. Perche?)

Fare lista di storia di installazioni con synaptic (export to txt)

Fare screenshot del menu applicazioni (magari c’e’ un file con l’elenco delle icone: verificare e salvare da qualche parte, cosi’ c’e’ un elenco delle applicazioni installate)

--> copiato i vari file .desktop (in usr/share/applications e in ~/.local/share/applications)

Cancellare roba inutile, anche dal trash

Copiare fstab, menu.lst, part table di fdisk, xorg.conf

Copiare bookmarks, dati thunderbird, dati utenti

Partimage di boot (5min), home (30min) e sistema (30min)

Partimage di partition table (http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-manual_Backup-partition-table)

        dd if=/dev/hda of=backup-hda.mbr count=1 bs=512

Now, we will save entries of the extended partitions:

        sfdisk -d /dev/hda > backup-hda.sf

To restore:

        dd if=backup-hda.mbr of=/dev/hda

        sfdisk /dev/hda < style="">

CAP 1: Installazione sistema

Una guida passo-passo

http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-ubuntu-8.04-lts-hardy-heron

il mio schema di partizioni:

Device	Mount point	File system	size
/dev/hda1	/home	reiserfs	30GB
/dev/hda2	/media/music_fat32	vfat	30GB
/dev/hda3	/media/shared_fat32	vfat	50GB
/dev/sda1	/media/winXP	ntfs	30GB
/dev/sda2	/boot	ext3	100MB
/dev/sda3	/	reiserfs	50GB
/dev/sda5	/media/myth	ext3	50GB
/dev/sda6	/media/distro	ext3	8GB
/dev/sda7	swap	swap	1GB
/dev/sda8	/media/video_fat32	vfat	100GB

L'installazione dal liveCD AMD64 va liscissima.
Mi ha cambiato i nomi delle partizioni (chissa' perche') e ora vede il disco IDE hda come sdb. A parte questo tutto tranquillo.
Ho mantenuto la mia home, sperando di tenere tutti i dati e i settaggi.
In ~35min ho la Hardy installata e pronta all'uso, con dati e settaggi conservati!

Cap 2: Personalizzazioni

Step1 - Ritocchi al sistema base:

Nautilus: enable delete

Font: pref/appearance --> subpixel smoothing

pref/appearance/advanced --> 96dpi

Services: admin/services --> rimuovere gli inutili (--> bluetooth)

Startup: pref/sessions --> disabilitare roba inutile

Uninstall: togliere programmi inutili (--> nessun programma tolto)

Update: ricaricare e fare update del sistema

Reboot

Al termine dello step1 (~15min), ho 47.3GB free (49.2GB dichiarati da system monitor) → usati circa 2GB in /

Proseguiamo con le installazioni dei software necessari a rendere usabile (ai miei scopi) la essenzialissima Ubuntu.
Installo tutto da Synaptic, per poter avere un log di tutte le dipendenze installate di volta in volta, in modo da poterle eliminare insieme al programma in caso di malfunzionamento

Step2 - I fondamentali:

Fonts: msttcorefonts

Compilare: build-essential

Posta: Thunderbird

Sistema: partimage, checkinstall, language-support-it

Java: gcjwebplugin (non funziona!) oppure icedtea: jre e plugin (ok)

Flash: flashplugin-nonfree, libflashsupport

(http://www.ubuntu1501.com/2008/06/play-video-audio-while-playing-flash.html)

padevchooser → fotte tutto!!! pare che ne' alsa ne' pulseaudio funzionino: devo usare OSS in pref/sound

pulseaudio fallisce cosi': audiotestsrc wave=sine freq=512 ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink: Failed to connect stream: Invalid argument

idem alsa e CS46xx (scheda Hercules Game Theater XP)

Ntfs: ntfs-config per abilitare/disabilitare scrittura su ntfs

Multimedia: vlc, DVD95, gthumb (da usare al posto di fspot), doppio click su un .mp3 e installazione gstreamer ffmpeg e extra plugins

Compiz: pref/appearance/visual effect à per abilitare effetti (compizconfig-settings-manager)

Repo: aggiungere medibuntu

Codecs: w64codecs, libdvdcss2

Internet: aMule

update e reboot

2ore circa, 46.7GB free

Step2b: Partimage di installazione base (root, boot). Root ~2.8GB

Step3 - Utili:

Software complessi o con molte dipendenze, che potrebbero appesantire il sistema o renderlo instabile.

Li installo uno per volta.

https://help.ubuntu.com/

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766683

Exaile (al posto di amarok) (c’e’ bisogno anche di python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 per abilitare lyrics e guitar tablature)

Dvd::rip

EasyTag (o exfalso)

WinFF (e’ 32 bit! Richiede ia32-libs) (converte video da un formato a un altro)

cd ~/Desktop && sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i winff.deb

HandbrakeCLI (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5410459&postcount=54)

Step3b - Utili, II parte :http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766683

Multimedia, codecs, falsh e Java

sudo apt-get remove gnash gnash-common libflash-mozplugin libflashsupport mozilla-plugin-gnash swfdec-mozilla && sudo apt-get install alsa-oss faac faad flashplugin-nonfree faad gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse ia32-libs icedtea-java7-jre icedtea-java7-plugin liblame0 non-free-codecs unrar

Ancora flash audio non funziona!!! --> http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5465376&postcount=13

Download libflashsupport.so compilato con OSS support:

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.p...6&d=1210377383

sudo apt-get install alsa-oss

sudo apt-get remove libflashsupport

cd ~/Desktop; gunzip libflashsupport.so.gz; sudo mv libflashsupport.so /usr/lib

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libflashsupport.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libflashsupport.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libflashsupport.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

If you're running x86_64:

sudo cp /usr/lib/libflashsupport.so /usr/lib32/

ora flash funziona!!!!

unrar

htop

lm-sensors

(Tovid) Devede, avidemux

Google Earth

Dizionario Ita-Eng: vocabulary.aioe.org in Applicazioni -> Accessori -> Dizionario

Ubuntustudio-video (--> openmovieeditor, kino, jack, imagemagik)

Mplayer (installato come dipendenza di openmovieeditor)

TV-out su Radeon Mobility M7 (7500)

Sto cercando di far funzionare il TVout del mio IBM ThinkPad T40 sotto PCLinuxOS.
Nel passato, con Mepis (e XFree86) funzionava (male) con atitvout.
Qui con xorg non sembra funzionare.
Ho trovato queste istruzioni, pero'.
E anche queste.
Ci devo provare.

c'e' poi un tipo sul forum di pclinuxos che ha fatto cosi':

Ran XFdrake:
Selected "ATI Radeon (fglrx)"
Answered YES to "proprietary" driver prompt
Took defaults for the card options / startup:

Graphic card options ____________________
|*| 3D hardware acceleration
| | Enable Translucency (Composite extension)
Graphical interface at startup ____________________
|*| Automatically start the graphical interface (Xorg) upon booting

Selected generic monitor 800x600 @ 60 Hz 24bpp.

Ran startx

The desktop came up on the TV, monitor went black.
Opened up a Konsole session and everything locked up.

I then booted back into text mode and ran XFdrake again and unchecked the "3D hardware acceleration" and rebooted.
The display came up on the TV and everything seems to work ok (no lockups so far).

I also ran the "/usr/X11R6/bin/fireglcontrolpanel" and selected clone mode for the 2 displays. After restarting X, both the
TV & the monitor were active.

When I get time I'll experiment some more and try to load MythTV, but right now I'm pretty impressed with GBPVR.

Recently tested distro

All of them in Virtualbox or VMware.
Sidux Gaia
Debian Sid, KDE, very recent Kernel, nice tools for TV and nice scripts and customization scripts.
Menu is confused, too many applications.
Nice way to approach a "pure" debian.
Also 64bit.


Klikit alpha
Very nice look, needs at least 192MB RAM in the virtualbox and it's still slow.
Kubuntu Feisty based, KDE, one-clik install, kooldock, to be tested deeper, but it's very promising and user friendly.
Too much "Ubuntu", though.
Still I prefer PCLOS, which is very easy to use for the beginner but also powerful and complete.
I'll keep a close eye on it.

SAM
PCLinuxOS, XFCE with Beryl, nice, cool, light and complete.


Wolvix 1.1.0
Slackware, XFCE, very light but complete.
Very nice for a light vitual linux.

64Studio
Gnome, very, very good distro for music. It introduced me to Rosegarden and Jack.
Yet it's pretty simple (as a distribution, software is tough!). Much better than the other distros I've tried in this field (ubuntu studio, dynabolic. musix still to test) and its pure 64bit. A i686 version is available too.

Dreamlinux and Vectorlinux
Only opened in VMware (which is too slow on my pc) thanks to bagside and his appliances.
Not liked much. Nothing distinctive at my quick look.

LinuxMint Cassandra
Ubuntu Feisty, Gnome, very nice look (much much better than Ubuntu).
Ready to use and simple. Most of the missing things in Ubuntu are readily available here. Not only the proprietary/closed source stuff (maybe philosophically not acceptable, but often very useful) but also amarok, among others.
Should I reinstall an Ubuntu-like gnome distro I might really consider to install Mint instead of the "original" Ubuntu.
Even more appealing is the KDE version, which I'll test soon.
With PCLOS (and klikit), Mint is to me the "best" distro for beginners or ex-windows users.


My Preferred Distro
Still, so far, my top distro depending on the environment:
KDE: PCLinuxOS 2007
Gnome: LinuxMint Cassandra
XFCE: Wolvix and SAM
USB drive: DamnSmallLinux, Puppy 2.15, Slax Killbill (depending on available size)

USB speakers

On PCLinuxOS I can't let the USB speakers work.
I think it might be a missing feature in KDE, more than a pclos issue.
The USB speakers are recognized as a different sound card.
In Gnome there's a nice setting were you just declare which soundcard is your default.
On boot it tries that card, if not present it falls back to the other card.
This works nicely with the USB speakers, just declearing those as the default card.
There are some annoyances when switching the speakers on and off, but it generally works.
Same feature is in Rhythmbox, if I'm not mistaken.
No way to find this in KDE or Amarok, though.

I've found an interesting post for Kubuntu, but should work on pclos as well.

Re: switching between USB speakers and PCI sound card

---

Here is a fix for ya; although not a GUI one perhaps - but it is clickable.

open a shell and type

Quote:

asoundconf list

Then make a note of the sound cards you have.
In my case, I have
CK8S
UART
Headset

Since I know that CK8S is my on-board sound card and the headset is - A HEADSET, then I can create switches for each:

First new text file, write:

#! /bin/sh -f
sudo asoundconf set-default-card (your main soundcard - no brackets)

so mine looks like this:

Quote:

#! /bin/sh -f sudo asoundconf set-default-card CK8S

OK, save this and then create one just like it for your headset.

Congrats, now you have two cool looking icons (Ubuntu Dapper) that do
nothing whatsoever! Just kidding, go ahead and right click on each of
them. Goto properties and then permissions. Under owner, check off the
Execute option. Then click the close button at the bottom.

OK, are you ready? Click on the one for your headset - boom, it will
ask you how you wish to run this. Choose "in the terminal" and then
enter the password - you just changed the default sound card without
needing to hack the .conf file manually.

From here on out, just click as you wish to toggle between the two. You
may not have to enter the password each time, it's a timed sort of
deal.

If using to toggle media in a browser, you will need to close the
browser with each new toggle. With on the desktop media files however,
you will need to close whatever program you were using for the same
affect.



In addition, this also seems to clean up sound issues that are assigned
in Skype. In short, once assigned the settings in Skype are not staying
set.

__________________

---

Last edited by ctsdownloads : January 3rd, 2007 at 09:27 AM.

PCLinuxOS 2007 installation

PCLinuxOS 2007 installation
jul 09, 2007

tot install time ~20min
tot personalization so far <2h00

The notebook:
IBM ThinkPad T40
CPU intel pentium M 1300MHz
RAM 512MB
HF fujitsu 100GB
Sound max integrated digital audio from Analog Devices
video: ATI mobility radeon 7500 (32MB shared memory)
modem: agere system AC'97
infrared, LAN, 2 USB 1.1, docking station

BASE INSTALL

partitioning scheme:
hda1 (/winXP not automounted, ntfs) (85GB)
hda2 /boot ext3 (100MB)
hda3 /media/scambio fat32 (2GB)
hda5 /media/important ext3 (1GB)
hda6 / ext3 (11GB)
hda5 swap (1GB)

Keyboard: UK
Time zone: Europe/Rome


after base install: ~2.5GB used space
TV card Dazzle not recognized, wireless PCMCIA Belkin Mimo not recognized

kernel: 2.6.18-8 (i586)

Feeling after first install:
It's very nice and very fast, compared to all other distros I've tested (including different flavours of Ubuntu, Sabayon, Mandriva...). I like the way of organizing the start menu, very clean and essential, even though it might be tricky to find something such as the Beryl manager which is very well hidden in the hyerarchy...
I've loved the search area seen firstly in Sabayon, also present now in Ubuntu, Mint and some others. I'd like to see it here as well. I'll install Kerry, maybe there's some option there to add it in the start menu.
mp3 audio works out of the box.
ntfs can be read with no hassle and fat32 partition can be written --> no need to play around with fstab, first time in my decade-long linux experience.
a very useful menu in ubuntu is the places menu, with all the mounted partitions immediately visible. I prefer this way then going through the places/storage group. the menu way is faster and cleaner. I'd like to see tha same in pclos.
Beryl doesn't start immediatly or doesn't ask to start. that's a pity, for a new user might not know that beryl/compiz does exist and will be left with the impression that pclos does not support all the beautiful desktop effects.
the way sabayon manages this is very nice: at the first boot (also in the live CD) the user is prompt with the question of wich (if any) acceleration is preferred: AIGLX, XGL, nothing. pclos can do the same and ask for beryl, compiz or nothing and suggest where to find the beryl manager application in the menus.

PERSONALIZATION

WiFi: setup through control center/wireless/ndiswrapper.
inf file used: netani.inf from netgear wpnt511 driver
--> network working very fine and fast (WEP-WPA not tested)
No connection status icon found --> added to panel by adding the network applet.
This in turn has started the usual monitor with the link strength and net switch possibility.
In the preferences of this monitor I've selected "start on startup".

Installed through synaptics (in different sessions):
note: no need to change or add respositories, everything works as it is.

1. gramps, kerry, libdvdcss2
2. aspell-it, locales-it, mozilla-firefox-it, mozilla-thunderbird-it, myspell-it_IT, myspell-thes-it_IT, openoffice.org-l10n-it (with OOo upgrade to 2.2.1-1)
3. timidity++, easytag, gcompris, gcompris-sounds-it, rosegarden
4. googleearth, kdegames-suite, ksudoku, skype, wesnoth
5. mercurial
6. lib-dvb

Fonts:
msttcorefonts is not in the repository.
peering through the pclos control panel, I found an "install fonts" application, which includes an "import windows fonts" button. this retrievs the fonts from the existing windows installation (should be mounted). in 10min I have a full set of true type fonts to increase compatibility with microsoft applications.
btw, starting OOo (writer, in my test) takes some time, but not too long. the second time it starts, though, it's really fast, much faster than I've seen in other distributions. I don't know what made the trick, maybe that package openoffice.org-ooqstart that I've seen during the upgrade of OOo

Beryl:
started through the Beryl manager icon hidden in the menus.
beryl works very fine, fast and really really smooth.
I've switched to compiz, but this has some small imperfections, such as the top border of the window is completely transparent.
also, there was no way to switch from compiz to anything else (beryl or kde).
I had to restart the X server (CTRL+backspace) to exit compiz.
porbably the switching among window managers should be more carefully checked by the developers/testers.
another plus for pclos: I've been used to switch off beryl when trying to watch a video or even sometimes when opening OOo document. instead pclos lets me watch video (or dvd) and open documents without switching off beryl and with no apparent performance loss.

DVD play:
with the libdvdcss installed, dvd plays well with the default player, though mplayer gives better results as for rendering and smoothness. mplayer should be the default for DVD play.
I haven't checked, but I believe DMA is automatically enabled on the DVD, for it spins fast and the video is smooth.

TV tuner "Dazzle TV Hybrid Stick":
followed the french howto at http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/pctv_hybrid_pro_stick.
"build-essentials" and "linux-headers" are not present in the repositories.
Nevermind, though: I've seen that gcc is already installed and also the headers. (note: this is very unusual but very welcome. most of the users do not need to compile anything, but it's always annoying that headers and compilers are not installed as default).
I had to install mercurial with synaptics.
dvb-utils and libxine-extracodecs are also not present.
don't know what dvb-utils does, so I've installed lib-dvb, hoping it's the same with a different name. xine codecs seem to be already installed as well.
(note: sudo does not work, I had to use su instead. I'll need to check how to enable sudo).
I've used firmware_v3.
the directory "/lib/firmware/`uname -r` " does not exist in pclos. I've unpacked the file in /lib/firmware/ instead.
after restarting the machine, the modprobe commands did succeed but em2880-dvb. don't know why.
dmesg did show the correct info.
still need to add the modules to modprobe.preload (not to /etc/modules): I want to understand the em2880-dvb first.

TV tuner testing:
the hardware installer in the control panel still did not found anything (maybe I need a reboot with automatic load of the modules at boot?).
tvtime also didn't show anything (but I don't know this software, first-time user...).
kaffeine instead not only did find the TV stick, but also completed the channel scan, found loads of channels and played very well, fast and smooth the dvb channels. (so, what does the -dvb module do?).
to me seems faster and better than the original pinnacle software for winxp bundled to the stick.
overall, it took much lower effort and gave better results the installation on pclos than on winXP (need to get the XP2...).
I didn't succed with sabayon on the same task. I haven't tested ubuntu with the stick, anyway, I was delighted with the results on pclos.

next:
I need to test most of the SW I've installed so far, especially gcompris, rosegarden, wesnoth, skype and OOo/win compatibility.
openwengo is not available in the rep. need to find it.

copiare gruppi di appartenenza utente

Understanding /etc/group file

cdrom:x:24:vivek,student13,raj


molto interessante anche questo:

migrate user accounts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

da feisty su virtualbox: utente std base appartiene a questi gruppi:


$ cat /etc/group | grep zagor



adm:x:4:zagor

dialout:x:20:cupsys,zagor

cdrom:x:24:haldaemon,zagor

floppy:x:25:haldaemon,zagor

audio:x:29:zagor

dip:x:30:zagor

video:x:44:zagor

plugdev:x:46:haldaemon,zagor

lpadmin:x:109:zagor

scanner:x:111:cupsys,hplip,zagor

zagor:x:1000:

admin:x:114:zagor

in definitiva quindi, basta aprire il file /etc/group con distro live e editarlo assegnando l'utente davide ai gruppi std, cosi' dovrebbe tornare a posto, senza toccare /etc/sudoers.

controllare anche che lpadmin sia espressamente dichiarato per davide, altrimenti siamo punto e a capo con cupsadmin