As I’m writing this my laptop is upgrading from 9.10 to the new 10.o4 LTS version of Kubuntu. Kubuntu released the new version today.(this also goes for Ubuntu and Edubuntu as well as Xubuntu).

Go here to download the new version or use the update manager to upgrade. Make sure you do all the updates on your current version of Kubuntu or Ubuntu first. This goed for 8.04 & 9.04 LTS releases and any other release in between.

In the past updates like this could cause problems when doing them right at the time of release. It was common to find unreachable Ubuntu servers when upgrading causing an update to not work at all, or to just download some of the files and install a broken version of Kubuntu.

This seems to be resolved when I started the upgrade no time outs to Ubuntu servers were reported. Although the upgrade is downloading slow even on a fast broadband connection.

The only thing I now have to worry about is will everything work like it did after the upgrade.

I also have a few servers to upgrade which is usually what the LTS(Long Term Support) version is used for. As well as a few clients who are also on the LTS version.

Keep an eye on this blog for my report on how Kubuntu 10.04 LTS is working after the upgrade.

Related Posts

• November 7, 2008 -- How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (528)
• September 28, 2008 -- AR242x The saga continues (2)
• August 7, 2009 -- Bright Hub (0)
• May 14, 2009 -- Karmic Koala 9.10 The First Alpha Is Here (2)
• May 8, 2009 -- Want To Boot Linux From A Flash Drive? (2)

During this trial I found out it isn’t.  I opted to use the $8.99 a month subscription.  Two DVD’s out at a time and unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows.  I was kinda exited to see I could stream movies to all of my PC’s.  Especially because I have a HTPC(Home Theater PC) hooked up to our TV.  So this should work just like movies on-demand right?

WRONG for some unknown reason Netflix chooses to use Silverlight by Microsoft.  In Linux we do have an Linux version of Silverlight called Moonlight which is developed by Novell how ever Moonlight how ever is a few version behind.  Silverlight uses DRM and DRM in Moonlight seems to be a problem.  The precise details of the why there is still no DRM in Moonlight are only known to Microsoft and Novell.  But I imagine it has something to do with either copyright or patents that Microsoft owns.

It is still easier for company’s to get the rights to distribute when DRM is involved.  This means that Netflix just decided to either take the easy route or decided they didn’t want to pay the price for DRM free content.

Which ever it is they now use technology for streaming that doesn’t support Linux.

In this case Netflix get’s a big F.

Netflix needs to know that as Linux users we are unsatisfied with this.  In order to accomplish this Michael G. Paez started a petition at petitiononline.com:

http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/

Make sure to sign the petition and help Netflix realize they should not ignore the Linux users community.

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• August 7, 2009 -- Bright Hub (0)
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• May 8, 2009 -- Want To Boot Linux From A Flash Drive? (2)
• April 6, 2009 -- Took The Plunge Jaunty Jackalope Kubuntu 9.04 On Laptop (0)

New Features:

• The I/O pipeline now uses read-ahead buffering, which improves read performance especially on solid-state drives, typically by 30-50%.  (Windows)

Improvements, Bug Fixes, and Security Enhancements:

• The boot loader now supports motherboards with BIOSes that reserve large amounts of base memory (typically for on board RAID controllers). Note: In order to be able to take advantage of this improvement under Windows Vista, you will have to install Service Pack 1 or higher first. Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista resolved an issue causing a shortage of free base memory during system boot.  (Windows Vista/XP/2008/2003)
• Mounting using the ‘Auto-Mount Devices‘ feature may take significantly less time as partitions containing unencrypted files systems are now skipped.  (Windows)
• When volumes that are mounted as read-only or removable are saved as favorite volumes. They are mounted as read-only and/or removable when ‘Mount Favorite Volumes‘ is used.
• When a multiple-pass wipe algorithm is selected when performing in-place encryption of a non-system volume, the header areas will be wiped before the encrypted headers are written to the disk. Note: On an existing volume, you can perform such an operation by changing its password and/or key files.  (Windows)
• Many other minor improvements, bug fixes and security enhancements.  (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)

Keeping personal and corporate files saved is important.  Truecrypt is a great way to protect these files.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should do it now. Truecrypt is compatible with Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

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• April 29, 2010 -- Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Released Today (1)
• April 11, 2010 -- Why Netflix Sucks (0)
• August 7, 2009 -- Bright Hub (0)
• May 8, 2009 -- Want To Boot Linux From A Flash Drive? (2)
• April 6, 2009 -- Took The Plunge Jaunty Jackalope Kubuntu 9.04 On Laptop (0)

Unetbootin Install Linux Distro’s On A Flash Drive With Out Hassle

After burning a million CD’s I decided to search for a better solution.  I found Unetbootin. Unetbootin will automatically download and install Linux iso’s to your USB flash drive.  I’m always looking for applications that make my life easier.  Unetbootin saves me the time of having to burn every distro I want to try to disk.  Let’s face it, we are still in an economic crisis and saving money is a good thing.

Installation

There are two ways to install Unetbootin.  You can install it out of the repositories using Synaptic or adept.  But this will to allow you to install the latest version of Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04.  For that you have to install the version you can download from their website.  For the website version there is no install necessary.  The download is a executable file.  Download the file and make it executable make sure you are in the directory you downloaded it to:
In terminal:

sudo chmod +x ~/Desktop/unetbootin-linux*

Or the point and click way:
Right click on unetbootin-linux-323 and select properties. Click the Permissions tab mark the box in front of Is executable. Now you are able to click on the binary. A password prompt will pop-up put in your sudo password. Unetbootin will start and you are ready to make bootable flash drives.

Features

You can select a distribution to put on the flash drive as said, this will download and install the distro to the flash drive.  Select an iso that you have already downloaded and install that to the flash drive.  Or make a custom Kernel install with your own Initrd and options.  Select the drive (it also can install distros to the hardrive) and click OK.  Unetbootin will now download the iso, then install it to the flash drive.

Conclusion

Unetbootin is a great application. The only thing I wish it had out of the box, is support for multiple distro’s.  It does have a boot manager so it should not be to difficult to support.  I might be able to figure out how to do this.  If so I’ll write another blog post about it.

If you liked what you read or it helped you in any way. Please help keep this website available and donate.

Related Posts

• September 28, 2008 -- AR242x The saga continues (2)
• August 19, 2008 -- How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. 2 (125)
• August 13, 2008 -- What modules device drivers have got installed (2)
• August 5, 2008 -- So I’ve Installed Kubuntu, now what? (0)
• July 31, 2008 -- Remastersys. (2)

After a problem with the Kubuntu update to KDE 4.2, the laptop reinstalled the desktop all together, I’m now running the first Jaunty Jackalope Beta.  I like contributing back to the community, most of you already know this see my articles and previous work in here.  Installing a beta version and using it on a production box does take some guts.

How Did It Go?

If you have ever installed a beta product of anything then you know that instability is almost a given.  I started the installation of Jaunty on a clean HDD on Friday.  Then decided to do the rest of my configuration over this past weekend.  I take a little longer setting up my own boxes because I am precise about how stuff is installed.

I also choose for ext4 instead of the more standard ext3 just to be daring even more lol.

First impression

The new version of Kubuntu is faster just as promised.  Jaunty cuts my startup time by I would say 25%.  The Desktop look great.  I am however still missing some stuff on Jaunty.  Digikam to name one is still absent.  The promised version 10 did not get included into Jaunty.  This makes me sad because it’s such a great piece of software that really is missed by me.  For those who do not know Digikam is photo management software.  I take a lot of digital photo’s and I use Digikam on a daily basis.

The Nitty Gritty

Everything seems to be working okay.  Even my wireless card (AR242X) is now recognized in Jaunty.  The wireless network is seen and can be connected to using network manager out of the box, GREAT!!  I did try to upgrade rather than do a clean install.  However it did become apparent that a clean install was needed.  I would consider this a tip for everyone having these strange problems of Kmail loosing accounts.  These kind odd errors are the result of lingering OLD configuration files.

In the previous version of Kubuntu (8.10) I had the problem that after a suspend or hibernate  my laptop would overheat because of the fact that the CPU fan wouldn’t switch on.  Jaunty (9.04) also fixes this issue.

Plasma is even better with an actual usable system monitor.  Although I find that some of the plasmoids are missing configuration options.  The new LCD weather station is cool but unusable.  The data sources used don’t have any US city’s so nice but I don’t want to know the weather in London.

That Was Short

Yes but you can see this as a first impression article.  There will be more to follow as soon as I run into problems.

For more info about Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 read these articles I’ve written for Bright Hub:

Canonical Releases Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04

What’s New In Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Related Posts

• February 13, 2009 -- HAL, Xserver And How It Works (0)
• November 7, 2008 -- How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (528)
• August 19, 2008 -- How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. 2 (125)
• August 10, 2008 -- How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. (4)
• April 29, 2010 -- Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Released Today (1)

For instance:

Hey [mad]Berry,

I want to use a different browser besides Konqueror.
Are there many options?
Which browser do you recommend?
Which browsers do you use?

Thanks,

X

That is how this article on Bright Hub came about.  In the article I highlight some of the choices you have 10 to be exact.  I also name my favorite even though I’m using my least favorite right now.  Damn you Firefox with your handy addons.

If you have questions like this and would like to ask.  Then go to my contact page.

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• April 29, 2010 -- Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Released Today (1)
• April 11, 2010 -- Why Netflix Sucks (0)
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• May 11, 2009 -- Truecrypt Releases New Version 6.2 (4)

I’ve been getting more and more into HAL, Xserver.  Everyone knows by now I own a A205-S5825.  On a Laptop FN is used to get the extra functionality out of the F keys.  Not all F keys work out of the box.  For instance the F9 is used to toggle the touch pad on and off under Windows.  This same F9 key doesn’t do anything under my Kubuntu installation.

HAL stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer.  The Abstraction Layer provides a layer between hardware and software and is meant to “hide” differences between hardware for the Operation System (OS).

In Kubuntu 8.10 this works though a .fdi file in versions before 8.10 there was a xorg.conf file.  There was kind of a shock that went through the Linux community when it was announced that Xserver would go without the trusted xorg.conf file.

I believe how ever that the fdi files will allow for much more flexibility. As I read up on how to create and manage the fdi files I am learning more and more.  I will keep it up untill I know how to get the f-keys that I want working to work.

More about this subject in later posts.

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• April 29, 2010 -- Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Released Today (1)
• May 8, 2009 -- Want To Boot Linux From A Flash Drive? (2)
• February 9, 2009 -- Installing Windows After Kubuntu (0)
• November 7, 2008 -- How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (528)

As most of you know I write for Bright Hub.  I write for the Linux, hardware and Windows channels as well as small Business security which also is Windows oriented.  Unfortunately this also means I have to have Windows installed on at least one of my boxes.  I had to do so on my secondary slave. The box I’m installing Windows on has three HD’s and one CDrom.  The first and second HD are installed on Primary master and slave.  The Secondary master is the CD drive the slave is the Windows HD.

So Just Install It and that’s that right?

No not that simple.  Yes you have to install it, and the easiest way to do so is by unplugging the drives with Linux on them.  After you install Windows (XP or Vista take a pick) make sure Windows boots up and install all the millions of updates.  The Difficulty doesn’t come with installing Windows it’s telling Grub what drive an partition has Windows on it.

How To Get Grub To Recognize Where Windows Is

You have to understand how Grub looks at the drives.  If you run fdisk:

sudo fdisk -l

This command tells us that the frist drive is sda the second drive is sdb and the third drive is sdd. There is no sdc because our secondary master is the CD drive.  In Grub this translates to the following:

sda → hd(0,0)
sdb → hd(1,0)
sdd → hd(2,0)
etc.

This could also be:

hda → hd(0,0)
hdb → hd(1,0)
hdd → hd(2,0)
etc.

So what does it mean hd(0,0) hd stands for hard drive (duh) 0,0 stands for drive 0 partition 0.

So Use The Grub Default For Windows Right?

Wrong.  The default for Grub is the following:

title         Windows 95/98/NT/2000
root          (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader   +1

This how ever doesn’t work.  Because of the fact that windows is installed on the secondary slave, which would be hd(2,0). Okay so just change (hd0,0) to hd(2,0) and now it works right?  Wrong this will cause an Grub Error 13: “Invalid or unsupported executable format”. We are missing two crusial lines of code here:

title           Windows XP
root            (hd2,0)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd2)
map (hd2) (hd0)
chainloader     +1

Windows will only start from the first hard drive.  To get this to work we have to map hd2 to hd0.  Now Windows will believe it’s on hd0 even though it’s on hd2.

As always if you have any problems please post a comment below.  If it worked for you then let others know by posting a comment below.

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• April 29, 2010 -- Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Released Today (1)
• May 8, 2009 -- Want To Boot Linux From A Flash Drive? (2)
• April 6, 2009 -- Took The Plunge Jaunty Jackalope Kubuntu 9.04 On Laptop (0)
• February 13, 2009 -- HAL, Xserver And How It Works (0)
• November 7, 2008 -- How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (528)

It explains in detail how to do this and even goes into what bittorrent is a little.

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• April 11, 2010 -- Why Netflix Sucks (0)
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• May 8, 2009 -- Want To Boot Linux From A Flash Drive? (2)

**02-24-2009** Instructions for fix after update to kernel 2.6.27-11-generic below.  This how to uses compat-wireless-2009-02-24.tar.bz2. It was tested on (K)Ubuntu 8.10 KDE 4.1.2. Kernel version 2.6.27-7-generic & 2.6.27-9-generic

For instructions on getting the AR242x to work on 8.04 click here.

Introduction

You could see this as part 3 in the series: How To Get Atheros AR242x Wireless To Work
It’s with disappointment that I have to report the following:

I started with a fresh install of Kubuntu 8.10, the reason for this is simple I wanted to make sure that nobody could say “you should have done a clean install”. On a clean install out of the box the AR242x doesn’t work.

What I Tried First

So I started to search for solutions. There a several solutions out there here is a quick list:

The last option worked the best for me so that is what I’ll go with for this how to. Let me clarify that ath_hal, ath5k and ath9k are all developed by madwifi so props to them for doing such a great job of developing the drivers that make wireless for the AR242x work under Linux.

How To Get The AR242X To Work

Okay let’s get to the how to. I found this solution on the Ubuntu forums and credit goes to Malet for provinding the information in the first place.

Disclaimer:
The Package we’re about to use is as far as I know in beta. Installing this package might make your installation of Kubuntu(or Ubuntu) unstable. I am not responsible for any problems that arise after installing this package. But do feel free to post a comment for help if something doesn’t work right I will respond back and try to work with you to fix it. I am NOT responsible for damage to hardware as a result of applying anything you find on this website.

This how to uses Terminal (Konsole) and nano the best small text editor for terminal.

If you had linux-restricted-modules installed please completely remove these by running the following commands:

sudo update-rc.d -f linux-restricted-modules-common remove

Let’s make sure you have the right wireless adapter run this command in Terminal:

lspci | grep Atheros

If the result of that command is something like this:

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

This solution might also work for your wireless chipset so feel free to try it but no guaranty’s there.

First Let’s make sure we are on the desktop in Terminal:

cd ~/Desktop

Then let’s download the new driver (in Linux mostly called Module):

If re-running this after the Kernel update to 2.6.27-11-generic then run this line — and skip the next one — otherwise skip this and go to line below.

wget -c http://madberry.org/wp-content/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2

Please bare with me as I now have to manually change the file to the next date every night at 10pm. If you get a 404 then please change the date part in the file below to the next day. Example if it says 2009-01-26 and you get a 404 then change it to 2009-01-27 in the file to be downloaded below.

I will have to keep doing this until the universal file that I was using before is updating again. Thank for you patience.

wget -c http://wireless.kernel.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2009-02-24.tar.bz2

Now untar:

tar xvf compat*.tar.bz2

Go into the directory:

cd compat*

Let’s install the new Module:
First get the build-essential package installed:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install build-essential

Then run the following:

make

sudo make install

sudo make unload

sudo make load

The sudo make load command might produce some errors don’t worry about this it loads the ath5k module just fine.

Now reboot you’re box.
You should have wireless after rebooting just run:

iwconfig

The result could look like this:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:”linksys”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:16:B6:AA:AF:58
Bit Rate=24 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Power Management:off
Link Quality=93/100 Signal level:-43 dBm Noise level=-103 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

pan0 no wireless extensions.

If so then you can now configure your wireless settings please don’t forget to post a comment below to tell us it worked.

If there is no wlan0 and you have to run the make load command every time you boot then this might be because the ath5k module is not loading on boot. In this case run this command:

echo ath5k | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

This will add ath5k to the modules to be loaded at boot. Thank you HL for figuring this one out.

Sudhir had the problem that some of you seem to have as well. The driver didn’t find any networks. Here is his solution:

Originally Posted By Sudhir Thalore
But no wireless networks were getting detected by the network manager. After some more googling I disabled Bluetooth using system->administration->services and voila – wireless is now working like a champion.

If it didn’t work then please post a comment below include the results of the following commands:

uname -a

cat /etc/issue

iwconfig

iwlist wlan0 scanning

In Closing

Please use the pastebin and post the link you get in the comment. I want to keep the comments readable.

As always if something changes I will update this post. This means if there is a Kernel update and this solution doesn’t work any more then this is the place where you will find how to fix it.

I can’t stress enough how important your comments are even if the solution works for you. The comments are used by people with similar chipsets on different computers so if it works or not please leave a comment.

If this page helped you out at all then please donate. Donations will go towards the hosting cost for this website.
Thanks for donating.

Related Posts

• August 19, 2008 -- How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. 2 (125)
• April 29, 2010 -- Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Released Today (1)
• April 6, 2009 -- Took The Plunge Jaunty Jackalope Kubuntu 9.04 On Laptop (0)
• December 8, 2008 -- Get K3b To burn MP3′s (1)
• November 27, 2008 -- Getting Flash And Java To Work On Kubuntu (0)

What are the Features of the Two?

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• May 14, 2009 -- Karmic Koala 9.10 The First Alpha Is Here (2)

Why choose Krusader?

If you are like me and use a current version of Kubuntu (here is what I use), then you might find that D3lphin, which is now said to be the standard file browser, is insufficient in providing the more advanced file-browsing options. For one thing, it doesn’t have tabbing, which I use alot. It also doesn’t have a very good built-in search for files. D3lphin uses Strigi, and I haven’t been able to get any good search results from Strigi.

The following link will take you to a website I just started writing to check it out.

Read More

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• February 13, 2009 -- HAL, Xserver And How It Works (0)

Some good news for AR424x users. Intrepid Ibex the new version of (K)Ubuntu will support the AR242x natively. This means non of the work a rounds are necessary any more. At least we hope that they will not be.

I hope in the future that if there is a problem like this again that Ubuntu development team will act quicker to include drivers for important chip sets like this. Just from the responds on both of my posts on how to get the AR242X to work I can see that this should have been dealt with a lot faster. Just like the Suspend Hibernate problem. Ubuntu Linux will turn in to just another unusable distro’s for n00bs and first time users that don’t have the computer knowledge to dive into terminal and fix this problem.

I’ve been able to get some of my costumers to try and like Kubuntu. If any of those people how ever had to set up the AR242X them selves then they wouldn’t have converted from windows.

I would like to be able to get more customers to make the switch. But I can not sell them on not being able to use a device because I can’t get any drivers for there spanking new printer or other device.

If this would not be an issue and drivers like this could be included faster then I could get so much more people to make the switch from bloat ware windows to light weight usable ((K)Ubuntu)Linux.

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• May 8, 2009 -- Want To Boot Linux From A Flash Drive? (2)
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• August 7, 2009 -- Bright Hub (0)
• May 14, 2009 -- Karmic Koala 9.10 The First Alpha Is Here (2)

Why do you need CPU scaling?
Scaling in a laptop is used to conserve battery power when on battery power. How ever on a regular desktop you will find CPU scaling is on as well, why you might ask? On a desktop it’s a noise thing lowering the CPU frequency reduces heat and therefore reduces the fan speed needed to cool the CPU.

However I happen to like to have my desktop run in “performance” mode all the time, with the case that I have the increase of noise from the CPU fan is hardly noticeable because of the great noise canceling isolation in the case.

This is easily done by running a command in Terminal. But who can really remember the enormous line you have to put in to change the setting in the governor. There is an handy package we can install to control CPU scaling called cpufreq-set. Let’s install the package.

sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils

What does this give us? The two most important tools are cpufreq-set and cpufreq-info.

cpufreq-info

This will give you information about you’re CPU(‘s if you have a dual core).
Here is the result of my laptop:

cpufrequtils 002: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2006
Report errors and bugs to linux@brodo.de, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which need to switch frequency at the same time: 0 1
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 800 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 1.73 GHz.
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 1.73 GHz.
analyzing CPU 1:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which need to switch frequency at the same time: 0 1
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 800 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 1.73 GHz.
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 1.73 GHz.

cpufreq-set is the one we want though this will allow us to set the governor to what ever we want.

The following command will tell us what modes are available.

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors

The outcome:

conservative ondemand userspace powersave performance

This command will tel us what it is currently set on.

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

The outcome:

performance

This means we can set the following modes:
conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave and performance

I’m going to set it to performance:

sudo cpufreq-set -g performance

Now you will see that the frequency will stay close to as high as it can go.

We could set it to userspace and then set the frequency manually.

sudo cpufreq-set -g userspace

Then set the frequency.

sudo cpufreq-set -f 1733000

Now the frequency will be 1.73Ghz.

Note: After a restart the governor will be set back to what is the default. You could switch off the powernow daemon. Or prevent this from happening by setting a root crontab entry.

Related Posts

• April 6, 2009 -- Took The Plunge Jaunty Jackalope Kubuntu 9.04 On Laptop (0)
• February 13, 2009 -- HAL, Xserver And How It Works (0)
• August 23, 2008 -- Sound problem fixed. (0)
• April 29, 2010 -- Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Released Today (1)
• April 11, 2010 -- Why Netflix Sucks (0)

Unfortunately there is no way to do this in a “point and click” manner. At least I’ve not been able to find one.

Let’s take a look at the contents of fstab:

nano /etc/fstab

Note where not editing yet so we do not need to sudo this command yet, we will do so this when we start editing.
Contents:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# < file system> < mount point> < type> < options> < dump> < pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext3 nodev,nosuid,errors=remount-ro 0 2
/dev/sda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Lets pick the line for root apart.

(from WikiPedia)

The columns are as follows:

1. The device name or other means of locating the partition or data source.
2. The mount point, where the data is to be attached to the filesystem.
3. The filesystem type, or the algorithm used to interpret the filesystem.
4. Options, including if the filesystem should be mounted at boot.
5. dump-freq adjusts the archiving schedule for the partition (used by dump).
6. pass-num indicates the order in which the fsck utility will scan the partitions for errors when the computer powers on.

Now let’s find out what the dev point is of the new partition:

sudo fdisk -l

The contens could look like this:

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x983b983b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        4020    32290618+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2           14220       14593     3004155    5  Extended
/dev/sda3            4021       14219    81923467+  83  Linux
/dev/sda5           14220       14593     3004123+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002d62c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1        6452    51825658+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2            6453       39179   262879627+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb3           39180       91201   417866715   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

In this case the first disk(sda) is a 120GB disk the second(sdb) is a 750GB disk.
sda has 5 Partitions sda1, sda2 etc.
sdb has 3 partitions sdb1, sdb2 and sdb3.

We’re going to add sdb1 to the fstab file. I get asked often what to do with the options the answer nothing unless you are experiencing problem.
We need to create a mount point. Most mount point are created in /media or /mnt but you could put the mount point any where you want. I always choose /media.

sudo mkdir /media/partiotion1

Open fstab for editing:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Now add the following line bellow what is already there:

/dev/sdb1 /media/partition1 ext3 defaults 0 3

let’s explain again:
/dev/sdb1: dev stands for “device file system” and sdb1 the partition on our hard disk.
/media/partition1: the mount point in other words the folder that the new partition will be mounted to.
ext3: the file system used on the partition.
defaults: the defaults option this will automatically define these options: rw,suid,dev,exec,auto,nouser,async all the options we need to get the partition to work properly.
0: the dump frequency all the fstabs I’ve seen so far don’t change this setting so it don’t either explanation of this will follow in another post some other time.
3: this sets the order of fsck file system checking I happen to like all my partitions checked every once in a while so I changed this to 3. If you don’t want the partition checked simply set this to 0.

Close the fstab file(ctrl->x y enter).

If there is anything you want further explanation of please feel free to leave a comment. Also comment if this post was helpful at all.

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To fix this you can do two things.

1. Edit fstab to change the UIDD to /dev/sda5(this is on my computer you’re machine might be different).

sudo fdisk -l

The above command will give you a list of hard drives in your computer.
Your swap partition is the one that says Linux swap / Solaris the part in front is what we need /dev/sda5

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Edit the fstab file look for swap and change the UUID in front of it to what fdisk told you it is.

2. replace the wrong UUID with the right one.

sudo blkid

This will give you a list of the HD’s with there corresponding UUID’s.
Result on my computer:

/dev/sda1: UUID="a6287f4c-1764-43bf-adec-0e442501f213" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda3: UUID="e2dd5ffd-1403-479a-a26a-496f6f0f234d" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda5: TYPE="swap" UUID="bd79927f-6687-4b64-8632-d5716677f068"

This one TYPE=”swap” id the one we want to copy the UUID of.
Edit fstab to change the UUID to the right one:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Restart you computer and you swap problems should be over.

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Description of the problem:

Normally ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) will install Dmix out of the box and it will work right away in this case for some reason it didn’t. Possibly because of an issue during installation of the OS.

As a result of this problem Amarok kept popping up the same error. And my music wouldn’t play. Audicious same problem. I use Festival to to tell me I have mail or a message in my messenger. Festival would sometimes work and sometimes not.

To fix this I ran the following commands in Terminal:

Let’s make sure that we remove all the old ALSA stuff.

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-oss alsa-base

Remove the conf file out of /etc:

sudo rm /etc/asound.conf

Let’s reinstall everything.

sudo apt-get install  alsa-oss alsaplayer mpg321 alsaplayer-alsa alsa-base

At this point restart you computer.
Let’s test:

alsaplayer -o alsa -d plug:dmix some.mp3 &

Run that command twice with different MP3′s and you will notice it is now working.

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For this Kubuntu Linux also has a simple command:

lsmod

This will list all modules and device drivers installed in to your kernel.

For individual modules run:

lsmod | grep mudulename

For instance:

lsmod | grep ath

Will result in:

ath_rate_sample        15360  1
ath_pci               113448  0
wlan                  211888  5 wlan_tkip,wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal               280416  3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci

This command is used for debugging purposes mostly often when somebody has a problem lsmod and lspci as well as lsusb are often what you are asked to run in debugging what your problem is. Especially when you ask for my help on this website or on the forums and the IRC channels.

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The simplest tool too use in Linux is fsck(F-Sack) “file system check” or “file system consistency check”.

When to scan?
When your system doesn’t boot anymore.
When you get the “Super block” error at start up.

Linux file systems(ext3 and ext2) hardly fragment(that’s why you can’t find a defragmenter) so don’t use this to defragment your hard drive it is not necessary and it’s not what fsck is meant for.

How to use fsck:

First make sure you obtain an Live CD off course I would go for the Kubuntu one.

Put the freshly burned Live CD in your drive and start or restart the system. Remember fsck will only run if the partition isn’t mounted. If the disk you checking doesn’t hold root(partition that holds the OS) partition then just unmount the partitions used on the disk and run fsck in terminal.

there is nothing special about the command:

fsck -pf /dev/sda1

-p: Option to make repairs in when the following inconsistencies occur:

1. Unreferenced inodes
2. Link counts in inodes too large
3. Missing blocks in the free map
4. Blocks in the free map also in files
5. Counts in the super-block wrong

Without the -p option fsck will interactively repair inconsistencies  it finds.
-f: Will force fsck to clean file systems
/dev/sda1: This is the partition that needs to be checked.
Run:

sudo fdisk -l

To find what device and partitions names are on you system.

as alway for more info run:

man fsck

for more information.

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Changing the Terminal colors to something that looks interesting or even l33t.

Here is the “boring” version:


Now I’ve already changed the Schema. (Settings->Schema->White on Black)
I just like stuff to be on a black background.

So how do we change the colors like almost everything in Linux Terminal has a config file it’s located at:

~/.bashrc

Now we have to write some functions to take care of the coloring.  Open ~/.bashrc in nano:

nano ~/.bashrc

Add the following code to the end of this file:

function elite
{

local GRAY="\[\033[1;30m\]"
local LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
local CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\]"
local LIGHT_CYAN="\[\033[1;36m\]"
local BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"

case $TERM in
xterm*)
local TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
;;
*)
local TITLEBAR=""
;;
esac

local GRAD1=$(tty|cut -d/ -f3)
PS1="$TITLEBAR\
$GRAY-$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
$CYAN\u$GRAY@$CYAN\h\
$LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
$CYAN\#$GRAY/$CYAN$GRAD1\
$LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
$CYAN\$(date +%H%M)$GRAY/$CYAN\$(date +%d-%b-%y)\
$LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$GRAY-\
$LIGHT_GRAY\n\
$GRAY-$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
$CYAN\$$GRAY:$CYAN\w\
$LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$GRAY-$LIGHT_GRAY "
PS2="$LIGHT_CYAN-$CYAN-$GRAY-$LIGHT_GRAY "
}

Close you Terminal and open it again.
This is what it looks like:

Now it doesn’t yet does it?
That’s because we have to call the function:

elite

There l33t Terminal colors.
If you want the colors to stay like this without having to call the function first, add the function call to the bottom of the ~/.bashrc file.

Lets explain what where seeing in the elite function when we call it because it has some extra information.
we see:

--(madberry@Pernicious)-(3/pts)-(1728/07-Aug-08)--
--($:~)--

Explanation:

–(madberry@Pernicious): Username@Hostname
-(3/pts): Commands executed/Terminal your in(will show tty2 when you change to ctrl+alt+F2)
-(1728/07-Aug-08)–: time and date
--($:~)–: What you would normally find behind Usernae@hostname shows current path behind $.

Here is another option(which I just added to my file I like options):

function prompt
{
local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
local GREEN="\[\033[0;32m\]"
local CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\]"
local GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
local BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
export PS1="
${GREEN}\u${CYAN}@${BLUE}\h ${CYAN}\w${GRAY}$ "
}

Close and open Terminal.
This can be called with:

prompt

And this is what it looks like:

Same deal here if you want to keep the colors like that add prompt to the end of the ~/.bashrc file.

Now what if we want to just go back to what it was add this to the file:

function clback
{
local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
export PS1="
${WHITE}\u${WHITE}@${WHITE}\h ${WHITE}\w${WHITE}$ "
}

Now if you call:

clback

It changes the color back to white keep in mind that this is designed by me for the white on black color schema if your Terminal background is white then you won’t see anything.

Happy coloring

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