GDM (Login Screen) Resolution Too Big to Fit Screen

This black friday I purchased two 19" widescreen samsung 931bw's. I had a problem getting the optimum resolution (1440x900 for one and 2880x900 for two) to work properly in ubuntu.

I had added 1440x900 to the appropriate modelines, which once I when to System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution and changed it from 2880x1000 to 2880x900 it worked fine for my gnome session.

The problem was that the login window was too big. It was still using 2880x1000 for some reason. I found this web page which offered a fix:

GDM (Login Screen) Resolution Too Big to Fit Screen? Try this… « Linux FUD: "Read Ubuntu Forum Post"

To fix it I removed everything from the 24 bit modeline in the screen section except 1440x900, and in all other modelines outside of the screen section. Upon rebooting, the login screen was no longer bigger the than monitor and it worked fine in the session also.

RAID: Growing & Software Vs. Hardware

Growing:

Basically the step includes adding a disc to the array as a spare, then growing the array onto this device.

mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sdf1
mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --raid-devices=4

This then took about 3 hours to reshape the array.

The filesystem the needs to be expanded to fill up the new space.

fsck.ext3 /dev/md1
resize2fs /dev/md1

Software Vs. Hardware

An interesting real case experiment of various raid levels, and file system options.

Using RAID 5 with chunk of 128k, and Ext3 with a stride of 16 and block of 4k seems to be the best!
..and something that suprises me is that raid 50 was slower and less cost effective in terms of available storage than Raid 5.

I spent last night reformatting my raid array into RAID 10, then kernel RAID 10 level (rather than a RAID 0 array of RAID 1 arrays), then RAID 50, before going back to RAID 5. There was no real difference in output, and since RAID 5 maximises the storage space, it was an easy decision.

Which indicates that I need a much faster external SCSI box. All the discs are 10k u160 or better. The box is only a SUN UW Box. e.g. u40. I guess the bus is completely saturated!

For anybody who wants to experminent with software RAID in linux, MDADM is really the way to go. It’s just so easy….!

mdadm -v --create /dev/md0 --raid-devices=6 --level=raid5 /dev/sd[abcdef]1

mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0

mount /dev/mdo /mnt/raid

will create, build a filesystem and mount a 6 drive RAID 5 array. I should mention that between steps 1 and 2, you really should wait until the array has finished synchronising and reconstructing itself. Although this point is not essential, it will slow things down. Also MDADM is quite clever, and leaves a drive out as a spare. It constructs the array in degraded mode. That is the array is missing a drive. This speeds things up as there are less drives to saturate the bus.

Linux Software RAID

I recently setup a hardware raid 0. I was interested in setting up a raid 5 array for the redundancy aspect, but hardware raid 5 controllers are too expensive. After reading a few pages, I have decided to setup a linux software-based raid 5 array. I plan to use the following howtos.

The Software-RAID HOWTO

Linux Software RAID

RAID 5 improves on RAID 4 by striping the parity data between all the disks in the RAID set. This avoids the parity disk bottleneck, while maintaining many of the speed features of RAID 0 and the redundancy of RAID 1. Like RAID 4, RAID 5 can survive the loss of a single disk only. RAID 5 is supported by Fedora Linux. Figure 26.2 illustrates the data allocation process in RAID 5. Linux RAID 5 requires a minimum of three disks or partitions.

powered by performancing firefox

Gmail Controlling Junk Mail

This site explains how you can add a plus sign '+' along with a string to your gmail address which will still be delivered to you, but will allow you to filter out that information later on.

For example:

stocks29+test@gmail.com


This will still be delivered to by gmail account, but now I can create a filter based on the To: line of the email. This will allow me to control junk messages that arrive in the inbox from signup sites and also allow me to see who is spamming me.

k9copy

I installed k9copy today, which is a DVD backup program for linux. Using the "Penguin Liberation Foundation" repositories for edgy. It looks like a great easy to use GUI.

I tried it for a quick minute, but got distracted, and when I came back it had crashed. Ill test it out again later.

Re: [Freevo-users] "No action defined for this choice!" error :-(

Re: [Freevo-users] "No action defined for this choice!" error :-(: "Re: [Freevo-users] 'No action defined for this choice!' error :-(

nikosapi
Sun, 23 Jul 2006 07:46:15 -0700
Sorry to bother you all but I found the solution, it was as simple as adding MPLAYER_VERSION = 9999 to my local_conf.py"

Not sure why this fixed the freevo problem, but it did.

Allow nautilus to browse smb: edgy

HOWTO: Enable nautilus integration with beagle - Page 3 - Ubuntu Forums: "That's due to other changes in gnome-vfs. You have to install the libgnomevfs2-bin and libgnomevfs2-extra packages. Then restart nautilus (with a killall nautilus in a terminal)."

This is how to fix the nautilus browsing smb problem.

lxdvdrip in Ubuntu

How to install lxdvdrip using .deb packages. Although it says it is for Breezy, it worked in Edgy.

Edit:

This site has the most updated repository:

http://ftp.sh.cvut.cz/MIRRORS/debian-multimedia/pool/main/l/lxdvdrip/

Swap not mounted in Edgy

So I upgraded to Edgy. Nice so far. A few problems with Beryl and now this:

The symptoms I experienced:

- Unbearable slowness with multiple applications open.
- Noticed the swap in the system monitor said 0% of 0 bytes.

This is when I realized the swap space wasn't mounted.

After viewing the forums I found a bug report. There were directions which fixed the problem and they worked:

1. Run the mkswap command on your current swap partition. So if your swap partition is /dev/sda3 you would run:

mkswap /dev/sda3

2. Now you need to record the UUID produced by mkswap. Keep this handy.

3. Next you need to update the /etc/fstab file. Find the line referring to the swap partition. Change the UUID on that line to the UUID produced by mkswap.

4. Next you need to edit the /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume file. This file should read:

RESUME=UUID=

Note: Replace with the actual UUID reported by mkswap.

5. Lastly, you need to regenerate the initramfs. To do this run:

update-initramfs -u

Now you should be able to reboot and have your swap space enabled and be able to hibernate.

CUPS Login UserName - Ubuntu Forums

Want to use the cups web interface in ubuntu. Here is how:

CUPS Login UserName - Ubuntu Forums: "d root' in a console, follow the dialogue and make a root password. Then 'su' to change to root (a # will be shown in the console)t"

HOWTO: Install Cups-PDF - Ubuntu Forums

I found this website which is a reference for setting up a PDF printer that takes all input and outputs PDF files. Very useful.

HOWTO: Install Cups-PDF - Ubuntu Forums: "Doubleclick 'New Pinter'"

HOWTO: Install Cups-PDF - Ubuntu Forums

I found this website which is a reference for setting up a PDF printer that takes all input and outputs PDF files. Very useful.

HOWTO: Install Cups-PDF - Ubuntu Forums: "Doubleclick 'New Pinter'"

Ubuntu 64 bit w/ XGL and Compiz

I finally got XGL and Compiz running on my 64 bit machine with Ubuntu AMD 64 bit running. It is sooo nice. XGL is working with Twinview also. So I can maximize a window to only 1 monitor.

The biggest key was the repositories. I didn't realize there was a separate 64 bit repository for compiz, which I couldn't get running previously. That made all the difference.

The linked site above is the one I ended up using when I got it working.

The 64 bit repositor site is:

deb http://xgl.compiz.info/ dapper main main-amd64

When attempting to install I got the "white screen of death" as I have seen it called on forums and mailing lists. To fix this I installed the newest version of XGL. I had a version from some cvs and it was causing the problem. Thats what happens when you try 8 different approaches in eight different tutorials.

Ubuntu/Compiz/Aiglx

I did it a while ago....made the switch to Ubuntu. It is much much more convenient and easy to use than Gentoo, not to mention the time it takes to install apps is soo much less. And everything seems to work. Even compiz and aiglx on my laptop. Here the howto I used:

http://wiki.compiz.net/index.php/Aiglx/compiz_on_an_Intel_i915_video_card

The workaround on that page was a MUST for my laptop.

SSH Public Key Authentication Setup

This website is a great reference for setting up public key authentication using ssh, so you don't need to enter a password when SSHing into a machine.

http://wiki.met.tamu.edu/index.php?title=SSH_Logins_Without_Providing_a_Password

QEMU Windows XP License Problem

Ever since Plex86 died and VMWare cost money I have been looking for a way to run XP inside Linux. After finally finding it, I ran into a snag:

Windows XP without SP2 freaks out when trying to login saying "a problem prevents windows from veryfing precisely the licence of this computer" which prevents a user from logging in except in Safe Mode.

To remedy this problem I did what I always do: google. I found this website:

The QEMU forum :: View topic - WinXP licence check problem

Which tells you that you simply need to install SP2. So I googled for an SP2 download found it. I then used mkisofs to create an ISO image and mounted that as Windows' CD Rom drive and I am now in the process of installing it.

Creating ISO images from command line

If you were ever wondering how to create an ISO image from a command line I recommend you take a look at this site:
ISO, CDR, and CDRW in Linux

Here is the general command:

[root@server /root]# mkisofs -RJ -o image.iso /burndirectory/

the RJ option preserves long file names.

Firefox/Thunderbird Integration

I was trying to find out how to have Thunderbird open links in Firefox and Firefox compose emails in Thunderbird. After googling for a little while I found some great directions here: Troubleshooting

They are as follows:

This is an issue that I believe we'll see fixed in a fairly short period of time, and it has to do with where Firefox sources it's preferences for default browsers from... that is, the gnome configuration. This is particularly not helpful to those of us that choose to use Firefox, while NOT using gnome. Some of use use, KDE, others Fluxbox, or XFCE, or plethora of other desktop environments. Fortunately for us there is a method that is not so hard to side step this sad case of pigeon holing.
Get Firefox To Open Thunderbird As Default Mail Application

1. Open the url "about:config"
2. In about:config create the entry "network.protocol-handler.app.mailto" with the value "path/to/Thunderbird".
1. Right click --> new --> string
2. Paste in "network.protocol-handler.app.mailto" for preference name.
3. Paste in "path/to/Thunderbird"as the string value
3. Restart Firefox

If all went well, Thunderbird should now be your default application to open up "mailto" links
Open Firefox From Thunderbird As Default Browser

1. Following the instructions earlier for installing an extension not on update.mozila.org (adding the site to the whitelist, etc) Install the extension "about:config" from here
1. Right click the install link and select "save as".
2. Save it to a place you will remember and open up Thunderbird.
3. From the menu, select Tools --> Extensions
4. In the extensions window select "install" from the bottom left
5. This will ask you to point Thunderbird towards the path to the extension ***.xpi, select it and hit "open"
6. A new window will now pop up, (similar to the Firefox install window), it will make you wait two seconds, then select "install" from the bottom right.
7. Restart Thunderbird
2. Now that About:config is installed we have easy access to some of Thunderbird's hidden preferences. So, from the menu go to Tools --> About:config
3. This will take you to a new window, from here create the entries listed below, and add the paths as the values listed.
1. Right click --> new --> string
2. Paste in "network.protocol-handler.app.http" for preference name.
3. Paste in "path/to/Firefox"as the string value
4. add "network.protocol-handler.app.https" with a value of "path/to/Firefox" the same way.

No Sound in Games

Well after getting my new machine up and running I was having a problem getting my sound to work in games. It worked perfect in audio playing programs. I was just unable to get it to work in Enemy Territory or Americas Army. I had not clue why, but I ran it from a terminal and read the output after I quit it. The errors I was getting were:


/dev/dsp: Input/output error
Could not mmap /dev/dsp

No idea why. I did find some things to try in this article though:
quake 3 no sound in breezy [Archive] - Ubuntu Forums

The first thing I tried was emerging alsa-oss. No luck. Then I tried adding the following to /etc/init.d/bootmisc

#-----------------------
# fix sound for Quake 3 and Enemy Territory
echo "et.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss
echo "quake3.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss
echo "quake3.x86 0 0 disable" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0c/oss
#------------------------

I then restarted bootmisc (you can also reboot) and sound worked in both games.

Auto-source .bashrc

I was looking for a way to automatically source the .bashrc file whenever I opened a terminal. I was able to find the directions quickly. Basically what you have to do is source the .bashrc file from within the .bash_profile file because that is what is read when the terminal is opened.

"I'll tell you how it works, easy as pie is how it works"