I updated this server from Debian 5.0 lenny to Debian 6.0 squeeze.

Although better to wait for the stable release of Debian 6.0 squeeze, I updated the operating system of this server.

Unable to install grub on lenny, I had to edit /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf for lilo can read. The edit is like this. (cf. 4.1.6. Prepare initramfs for LILO.)

20c20

< MODULES=most

> MODULES=dep

But the upgrade is succeeded across the board with seeing the Japanese version of Chapter 4. Upgrades from previous releases, although I’m impressed these points.

Continue reading I updated this server from Debian 5.0 lenny to Debian 6.0 squeeze.

Making a category of Ubuntu Linux, I link the websites related to that.

Ubuntu Linux is the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop, based on Debian unstable(sid). I had been interested in Ubuntu Linux for a long time, to install Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat on 11 Oct., 2010 but I haven’t linked the related websites on Des Liens de Emmanuel Chanel, my links page.

I linked the websites with their explanations below.

Ubuntu homepage | Ubuntu
The official website of Ubuntu Linux, the most popular linux distribution nowadays for easy installation, distributed as live CDs. It has a wiki for support.
Ubuntu Forums
The official English forum of Ubuntu Linux.
Ubuntu Europe
The Europe community of Ubuntu Linux. They record the logs of the official channels including #ubuntu and #ubuntu-jp , the Japanese channel on FreeNode, an IRC network.
Home | Ubuntu Japanese Team
The Japanese community of Ubuntu Linux. They distribute their own packages for Japanese on their own repository and the Japanese Remix CD with the packages. You can get supports on its forum. And there’s also a wiki for built-up information.

I installed Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat amd64 on my Linux desktop PC.

I hadn’t installed any other distributions than RedHat/Fedora and Debian to my Linux PCs. But when I tried installing VirtualBox, I did Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to one virtual PC last week. Since I felt that it boots very fast, I installed Ubuntu 10.10 instead of Fedora 13 to my Linux PC.

I want to install the Ubuntu from Live CD. But I use LVM. And I couldn’t use Gparted or so. So I did with alternate CD. Perhaps, when on the Live CD, I should try

/etc/init.d/udev restart

or so on after installing LVM. But I couldn’t think up such way…

I installed Fedora 11 x86_64 few days ago.

I wanted to enable ReiserFS on the installation but I couldn’t.
First of all, I hadn’t known even how I can see the “boot:” prompt till one answered me “hit escape” on #fedora @ FreeNode.
After hitting ESC key, I saw “boot:” prompt. And I typed “linux selinux=0 reiserfs”. But it doesn’t work. I don’t know why. It would be a bug or so. I need reiserfs since the /home partion is on ReiserFS. So after the usual installation, I installed reiserfs-utils and disable selinux.
Oops… For writing that, seeing the kernel package, I can use reiserfs first of all… Just I hadn’t had reiserfs-utils. But anaconda (the installer of Linux) doesn’t show that I can select ReiserFS.

The limitation of the memory size is 4 GB @ Intel HDA driver of alsa

It seems solved. It will be fixed soon.
[Addition on 22:45]
* Mr. Daniel Koukola says that I mistook the prblem. It’s a bug of amd/ati sb600.
I had a problem that Realtek ALC889A Audio Codec (ATI azalia) isn’t detected on alsa-driver of Fedora 10 x86_64. Detail info is alsa doesn’t recognize onboard sound on GA-MA69H-S3H (On Fedora‘s bugzilla. Originally, I posted.)

[root@star1 ~]# cat /proc/version

Linux version 2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64 (mockbuild@xenbuilder2.fedora.redhat.com) (gcc version 4.3.2 20081105 (Red Hat 4.3.2-7) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Mon Feb 23 13:00:23 EST 2009

[root@star1 ~]# lspci |grep -i “multi|audio|040[0-3]”

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

lspci shows the sound card detected. But alsa‘s driver snd_hda_intel doesn’t work but output error messages on /var/log/dmesg and on /var/log/messages . On Fedora 10 on my old HDD, this problem didn’t occur. It occured after I installed Fedora 10 on a new 1TB HDD with 6GB memory (with two new 2GB memories) 9 Mar, 2009. So I had even a clean installation again from the installation DVD. But that problem didn’t extinguish. Yeah… the memory is too big for the sound driver. I couldn’t find it by panic then.

So I posted the report: “alsa doesn’t recognize onboard sound on GA-MA69H-S3H”. to Fedora 10‘s bugzilla. Mr. Jaroslav Kysela says that I can compile alsa’s latest snapshot. I tried both the snapshot and the latest stable alsa-driver but failed.

Wanting advices on chat, I joined #alsa @ FreeNode, the IRC channel of alsa. on 13 Mar. And on 14 Mar. I subscribed alsa-user and alsa-devel that I posted this problem two mailing lists. And on the channel, I got a good helper: Mr. Daniel Koukola. He spared all his evening and night time (About 14 hours!) for helping me. By his indication, I modified some of the source for debug, tried loading the modified driver, and sent him the records on /var/log/dmesg and /var/log/messages . And he got the answer that the Intel HDA driver fails when the Response Inbound Ring Buffer is placed at a physical address greater than 4 GB, on memory. I thank him a lot. It was too a bad problem but I thank him very, very, much!

This is the modified part from the source. I installed it, reading INSTALL . [emmanuel@star1 hda]$ pwd /home/emmanuel/Softwares/alsa-driver-1.0.19/alsa-kernel/pci/hda

[emmanuel@star1 hda]$ diff hda_intel.c{0,}

2215,2216c2215,2218

< if ((gcap & 0x01) && !pci_set_dma_mask(pci, DMA_64BIT_MASK))

< pci_set_consistent_dma_mask(pci, DMA_64BIT_MASK);

> /* if ((gcap & 0x01) && !pci_set_dma_mask(pci, DMA_64BIT_MASK))

> pci_set_consistent_dma_mask(pci, DMA_64BIT_MASK); */

> pci_set_dma_mask(pci, DMA_32BIT_MASK);

> pci_set_consistent_dma_mask(pci, DMA_32BIT_MASK);

About the addition on 22:45

Thingol Emmanuel_Chanel, hello again 🙂 this is not intel hda driver limitation. it looks like a bug in your southbridge (amd/ati sb600), it says it support 64-bit dma (gcap bit 1 is set), but apparently it doesn’t (at least not for the RIRB).
Emmanuel_Chanel Oh… What a bad news!
* Silkjc has quit (Remote closed the connection)
Thingol Emmanuel_Chanel, why? the workaround is easy… disable 64-bit dma for sb600. 🙂
Emmanuel_Chanel Oh… ok.
Thingol Emmanuel_Chanel, that’s what those two lines (pci_set_dma_mask/pci_set_consistent_dma_mask) do.. disable 64-bit dma. it only needs to be modified so it’s disabled only for sb600 (not for all hda controllers).
Emmanuel_Chanel Oh… ok.
Thingol Oh.. http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-ide@vger.kernel.org/msg06694.html ..seems like sb600 ahci (hdd) controller is broken in the same way. 🙂
Emmanuel_Chanel That bug can disable me to use 2TB SATA HDD or so, too?
Emmanuel_Chanel Thingol: Can I export your comments for my entry?
(Omitted)
Thingol Emmanuel_Chanel, yeah.. but my English is not good. 🙂

I cleanly installed etch on an old PC. And NFS didn’t work. Now it looks working but I don’t know why.

I have an old PC given by a friend. And I installed Debian etch 4.0 via network. I installed NFS server with postgresql 7.4 . I wanted the NFS server and not postgresql . But the NFS server didn’t work even with these lines.

# /etc/init.d/nfs-common restart
# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

When I tried to mount, it says:

mount.nfs: mount to NFS server ‘rpcbind’ failed: RPC Error: Program not registered
mount.nfs: internal error

Continue reading I cleanly installed etch on an old PC. And NFS didn’t work. Now it looks working but I don’t know why.

Trouble with reducing /usr and /var

I wanted to expand the /tmp partition (On a Logical Volume.) on Fedora 9. So seeing 3 GB free space on /usr and /var in total, I tried to reduce them in single user mode. But it doesn’t let me unmount them.
I messed up for a long time. But someone said why I didn’t edit /etc/fstab for not mounting the file systems. So I did like this.

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
#/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol05 /home reiserfs defaults 1 2
#/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol04 /tmp reiserfs defaults 1 2
#/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol03 /var reiserfs defaults 1 2
#/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol02 /usr reiserfs defaults 1 2
UUID=eb422228-006b-488e-8aa2-78e211ec5667 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0

Restarting in the single user mode after that, I could resize the file systems. But it’s not recommended since you can fail. Someone advised me to use a rescue CD and someone advised me to use Knoppix.

I installed Fedora 9 few days ago and failed to burn my irc log and so on with Brasero.

I installed Fedora 9 by network installation. I had Fedora 8. (Fedora is one of the biggest linux distribution.) Soon after that, I tried to backup my log of irc chat and so on via Brasero. And I failed. It doesn’t complete to burn DVD-R correctly when I tried to burn it from the project directly. I found the bugzilla entry of Ubuntu: Brasero requieres 4GiB on /tmp to write an iso image
You can install it without a DVD media with the way below. (I forgot to record them. So I write it by my memory.)

  • put Fedora-9-i386-DVD.iso on another server’s root of the nfs exported directory. (Now I name)
  • su –
  • mount -o loop Fedora-9-i386-DVD.iso /opt
  • cd /opt/isolinux
  • Copy vmlinuz and initrg.img to /boot
  • vim /boot/menu.lst
    (Add these lines.)

    title Fedora 9 Installer
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/sda1 selinux=0 reiserfs
    initrd /initrd.img

  • shutdown -r now
  • Go to the selection screen and select “Fedora 9 Installer”.

I’ve used only Fedora and Debian. So I know only those two. I love Linux for its CLI, especially bash. I found that I don’t know bash well but it let me use the commandline very conveniently.