PowerStrip and Windows Login Resolution

October 23, 2009 at 5:42 am | In EnTech, Utilities | Leave a Comment

Here’s a tasty treat that kept me up way longer than needed. I got a new LCD HDTV for the bedroom. Naturally, TV and DVD aren’t enough when the HDTV provides a VGA port.

The problem I ran into was that the HDTV did not use standard timing at its native resolution of 1368×768. While PowerStrip can change that when you log in, that didn’t solve the problem at the login screen.

The solution was buried in a FAQ on EnTech’s web site:

  • If you haven’t already, be sure to have PowerStrip automatically start when you log in.
  • Select the resolution you want to run in normally and save it as a profile called “Startup”
  • Select the resolution you want to use during login and save it as a profile called “Shutdown”

When you shut down Windows, PowerStrip will change the resolution to what you have saved in the “Shutdown” profile. When Windows starts back up, it will still be at the “Shutdown” resolution until you log in and PowerStrip starts up.

Ubuntu 9.04 “Bug” – OnDemand Doesn’t Scale CPU Speed

May 29, 2009 at 12:52 am | In Canonical, Ubuntu | 3 Comments
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Along another one of those long, strung-out searches, I came across a problem I didn’t know I had. Or to be more precise, peculiarities I couldn’t put a finger on. Before Ubuntu 9.04, I had no problem running a bunch of gee-whiz compiz effects on my desktop. Before Ubuntu 9.04, Flash overdoses and crashes caused my CPU fan to spin up instead of slowing down my desktop. Before Ubuntu 9.04, I could see my CPU frequencies bouncing around.

That’s because Ubuntu 8.10 didn’t set the CPU usage threshold to 95% before bumping up the CPU frequency with the ondemand governor.

Continue reading Ubuntu 9.04 “Bug” – OnDemand Doesn’t Scale CPU Speed…

HOWTO: Compile Midori From Source In Ubuntu

May 21, 2009 at 4:24 pm | In Browsers, Canonical, Ubuntu | 10 Comments
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Midori Logo HalfUbuntu Logo CircleOnly Half You know you want to do it. You know your friends want to do it. You’ve heard stories of people that have done it. We’ve all wanted to do it — compile a program from source. One of the ultimate goals of any geek to own a computer, compiling a program from source just gives you that geek street cred you’ve always wanted. Now you can have it!

I’m going to show you how to get the Midori browser from source. Midori is a project is headed up by Christian Dywan over at TwoToasts.de. I don’t what has happened, but the version packaged up in the Ubuntu repositories is sorely out-of date at v0.0.18. Midori went 0.1.0 on October 2008.

Continue reading HOWTO: Compile Midori From Source In Ubuntu…

HOWTO: Optimize Gigabit Networking in Linux

May 20, 2009 at 3:24 am | In Linux, Networking | 2 Comments

Ethernet Cable FullLinux Logo Half Even if you have a gigabit networking adapter and a gigabit switch capable of jumbo frames, Linux still uses the default MTU size of 1500. To get something better, you need to configure things by hand.

The reason for this is that the IETF has never standardized anything above 1500. You might very well have gigabit ethernet equipment that either does not have jumbo frame support, or may be very disappointed to find out that “jumbo frame” can be used to describe any packet size between 1500 and 9000.

To make matters worse, not every gigabit ethernet switch handles mixed networking the same. You would think a gigabit switch would guarantee a 1gb connection between two computers with 1gb networking adapters, but under various circumstances, this isn’t always the case. Optimally, it would be best to separate your 100mb and 1gb devices onto two different switches, but this isn’t guaranteed to work.

Now that we have all the caveats out of the way, read on if you want to start optimizing.

Continue reading HOWTO: Optimize Gigabit Networking in Linux…

Linux SSD Optimizations

May 14, 2009 at 5:01 am | In Linux | 3 Comments
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BE SURE TO USE EXT2 WITH NOATIME

Journaling adds writes. If possible, specify ext2 with the noatime option during install. If you specified ext3, you can switch over to ext2 with no hassle. If you didn’t specify ext2 and/or noatime at install, you can do it afterwards by editing /etc/fstab.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Look at the line that contains partitions that are on the SSD. It should look something like this:

UUID=1eea26d7-6893-4779-827b-150412c94703 / ext2 relatime 0 1

Replace ext3 with ext2 and relatime or defaults with noatime

CHANGING THE TASK SCHEDULING ALGORITHM

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.list

Press CTRL+W to find the string # kopt. It should look something like this:

# kopt=root=UUID=1eea26d7-6893-4779-827b-150412c94703 ro

Add the option elevator=noop so that it looks like this:

# kopt=root=UUID=1eea26d7-6893-4779-827b-150412c94703 ro elevator=noop

Make the changes take effect.

sudo update-grub

SAVING WRITES WITH TMPFS

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Insert these lines into the file:

tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=0755 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

This will cause some packages to fail mysteriously when they cannot access the log directories that were installed with the packages and then disappeared at reboot. To rebuild the directory structure inside /var/log on each reboot, add these lines to /etc/rc.local above the ‘exit 0′ line:

for dir in apache apparmor apt cups dist-upgrade fsck gdm installer news samba unattended-upgrades ; do
mkdir -p /var/log/$dir
done

MOVE FIREFOX’S CACHE TO RAM

Open Firefox, type about:config in the address bar, and press Enter. In an empty space on the screen, right-click and create a new String value browser.cache.disk.parent_directory and set it to /tmp. This will have to be done for each user.

Ubuntu And The GeForce 200 Series

May 14, 2009 at 1:27 am | In Canonical, Ubuntu, nVidia | Leave a Comment
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Ubuntu Logo
nVidia GeForce Logo

As of this writing, I’m getting conflicting views on the nVidia GTS 200 series of cards and Jaunty. Canonical says the GTS 250 is supported in 9.04, which uses driver version 180.44. However, nVidia states that driver version 180.51 adds support for the GTS 250. And while nVidia gives you the 180.51 drivers if you specify a GTX 295 card, driver package 181.20 on the Windows side officially states support for that card. Ah, the bleeding edge.

In all probability, you can use 180.44 but your card will come up as an unkown nVidia card. Try the Canonical-approved driver installation first with sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-180 (if you don’t already have the driver installed).

If that doesn’t work, use the Canonical Launchpad driver (180.53)

  • Add deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main to /etc/apt/sources.list
  • Issue the command sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 643dc6bd56580ceb1ab4a9f63b22ab97af1cdfa9
  • Use sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade

If that doesn’t work, there’s always manual installation.

HOWTO: Free Disk Space For An Apt Update

May 12, 2009 at 10:34 pm | In Ubuntu | Leave a Comment
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I try to limit the space available to my root partition, but sometimes that comes back to bite my in the ass. Especially if I haven’t updated in a while. The major problem with using binary package managers is that they need space for the downloaded tar.gz files AND the space to extract it. There are some tricks you can do to help free up some space for package upgrades.

Continue reading HOWTO: Free Disk Space For An Apt Update…

HOWTO: Restore GRUB with Knoppix

May 10, 2009 at 9:56 pm | In Knoppix, Microsoft | Leave a Comment

Knoppix Logo

Re-installing Windows for the umpteenth time? If you also have Linux installed on your system, you probably just lost GRUB again for the umpteenth time as well. Windows will never be considerate of the other operating systems it shares space with. You’ll have to come up with another plan. The best way is to beat Windows at it own game. Windows installs code to the MBR that simply seeks out the partition marked as active/boot and passes control to the boot loader located there. To cope with Windows, install GRUB to a partition, not the Master Boot Record.

Continue reading HOWTO: Restore GRUB with Knoppix…

Npviewer.bin Process Can Slow Down Linux

April 27, 2009 at 9:25 am | In Adobe, Canonical, Ubuntu | Leave a Comment

flash-logo-halflinux-logo-half

I woke up this morning. The computer was still on. I move the mouse to wake up the screen. I get right to my wife’s desktop. “That’s not very nice of me,” I thought. “I never set the option to lock the screen with a password.” As I got to select a screen saver she might like, I noticed the screen savers took a little long to load and ran kinda jerky. I didn’t get far down the list before I said, “Screw it, this is good enough.” I logged her out of her session and logged back in to mine.

When my desktop came to, everything was jerky. I utilize all the fancy compiz effects a heck of a lot more than my wife does, who is content to stick with Ubuntu’s default, not-all-that-intensive settings. I opened up System Monitor’s Resources tab to find both cores of my CPU being pegged at 100%. I opened up the process viewer, only to find nothing out of line. When I selected View All Processes, I saw about 8 copies of npviewer.bin, all of benign size minus one at 125MB. All were consuming 7%-8% CPU time.

A quick look to the Ubuntu forums revealed that npviewer.bin is the Flash plugin, a known resource hog no matter what platform you’re on. It also told of a pretty simple way to stop the madness in one blow: sudo pkill npviewer.bin. CPU went back to fluctuating between 5% and 25% per core.

A Disappointing 7th Generation

April 23, 2009 at 4:05 am | In Microsoft, Nintendo, PS3, Sony, Video Game Consoles, Video Games, Wii, Xbox 360 | 1 Comment
Wii Logo Half
Xbox 360 Logo Half PS3 Logo Half

It’s too early to call an end to the current generation of consoles, but after 3½ years I think it’s safe to give a run down on how things have gone. Wrong, that is. Sure, the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii all came in with a bang but I feel as if we’re hanging on to thin air here.

Continue reading A Disappointing 7th Generation…

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