Ubuntu
From Admin-SIG
I have recently decided to try Ubuntu for installation on desktops instead of Debian. It was my hope that Ubuntu would be easier to install all those little devices that desktops need, but servers don't... like X windows, sound cards, USB drives, etc.
My first attempt was dissapointing. I hit the ubuntu install option, and only had 640x480, which was not enough to show the whole install menus. rather painful.
Its a long story, but my first attempt eventually got corrupted, and I re-installed. I was trying go get Sawfish window manager, and something went very, very wrong. The second try is going better.
This time I chose the save graphics install option, which only gave me a 2.6.15 kernel, whereas the other install also had a slightly newer 2.6 kernel. (This is a Dapper Drake install, 6.06, circa August 2006). That's OK. As long as its 2.6.
This install was able to run a reasonable resoltion, and went better.
I added an SATA disk to a running IDE/ATA Windoze x86_64 machine, ran the install to the SATA drive, /dev/sda. Ununtu automagicly installed Grub with proper entries to boot Windows AND Ubuntu, AND revovery mode.
| Table of contents |
Sound
On my first install attempt, I tried to install a fancy MAudio sound card along with the on-board sound. Windows freaked. It would no longer recognize the on-board sound, and since the MAudio card was old, I had no XP drivers. It was a mess.
Ubuntu wanted to use MAudio by default, which frustrated me. I wanted it to use the on-board sound for all the standard things, and just use the MAudio for more serious recording operations. I was lead to believe that LINUX/Alsa had support for multiple audio cards. Unfortunately, it seemed to confuse Ubuntu a lot, so I gave up. I'll try later.
I may end up installing the MAudio card on the server, which does not need sounds much. I'll move the turntable to the server room. The MAudio has good A/D converters, so my main need for it these days is in converting LP's to MP3 or Ogg.
Mixers
The digital out on my on-board controller was off by default on the first install.
I had some trouble finding the option on a mixer to turn on the digital line-out. One that worked was to un-mute the Line slider on aumix.
I tried gamix and alsamixer, but could not figure out how to un-mute the digital out.
X Server
After installing, I went to:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto (Thanks for the reference, Jeff Fenton!)
Here I followed the directions to get the proper drivers for my ATI fglrx chip. Reboot, and I now have full resolution.
Window Managers
My first attempt at an install was severely corrupted (would not even boot to single-user mode) when attempting to install more window managers. This happened again on the second try.
After installing enlightenment and sawfish, I logged out.
The machine froze.
Guessing that the issue was with gdm getting confused at log-out, I booted
to single-user, and removed gdm.
This also had the side-effect of removing
ubuntu-desktop.
I was able to reboot, and enter my X session with startx.
I re-installed gdm (and ubuntu-desktop) and they seem fine now. They include options for enlightenment and sawfish desktops now. However, the enlightenment and sawfish session selections run these window managers without the gnome decorations. Not what I wanted. I found that the E-GNOME session was gnome with enlightenment. Not my favorite, but acceptable. It has the single-large desktop with individual windows. I like these so that I can have windows bigger than my desktop, and go to neighboring 'desktops' to access other parts of the window. I also like simply moving a window to the left, then edge-flipping to the workspace to the left, and getting the window there. Thats the way I like to grow my desktops.
Still working on finding/getting sawfish with gnome. After that, I'll want to try and get some of those nice gnome applets running, like cpu/memory monitors.
There is no default entry for sawfish with gnome. I may want to hack that. The startx scripts are a bit confusing to me. I'm having trouble finding out which file to put in ~ so I can select an environment there instead of from gdm, which is broken.
gdm
It looks like gdm is somehow the culprit in freezing my system. After re-installing gdm, after adding enlightenment and sawfish window managers, I can now log in, and select a session. However, when I log out (or try to kill gdm) my entire system freezes. No consoles. No ping response.
At least I can start an E-GNOME session, then switch window managers to sawfish to get GNOME-Sawfish.
I really would like to get gdm to work. Changing sessions is nice, and switching users might be nice too.
--Aaron 09:41, 10 Sep 2006 (MDT)
Automatix
I found package availability by default to be lacking to say the least. The next thing to do is install Automatix. Good instructions are at :
http://getautomatix.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation#Installing_with_Apt
Now you can run automatix. Once Automatix installs, you will have a more complete /etc/apt/sources.list, and most of your favorite packages should be available.
For some reason, Automatix populates /etc/apt/sources.list, does it's thing, then
reverts it to its original state.
I added many entries to mine, and just use apt-get whenever possible.
As an old-school UN*X troll, I find the Automatix GUI more cumbersome than:
apt-cache search apt-get install apt-get source apt-get remove dpkg-reconfigure
NFS Automounter
I still haven't experimented on doing this without the portmapper. Sor for now I recommend:
apt-get install portmap apt-get install autofs
Then see the NFS page for details. --Aaron 07:34, 11 Sep 2006 (MDT)
Flash
It appears that MacroMedia does not have an x86_64 flash player. The Open Source ones do not work for some of my favorites like YouTube (http://www.youtube.com). Is there a way around this? Perhaps install a 32-bit version of firefox, and use it with the regular LINUX flash players?
--Aaron 07:34, 11 Sep 2006 (MDT)
encfs
Looks like all is provided for with
apt-get install encfs
Add any encfs users to the fuse group.
encfs /path/to/cyphertext/folder /path/to/cleartext/folder
now works. No need to build new kernel modules with Ubuntu (dapper drake)! Woo Hoo!
--Aaron 07:48, 11 Sep 2006 (MDT)
LVM
Although the Ubuntu stock kernel has LVM, and it is mentioned several places in the install, there did NOT seem to be a choice to make an LVM partition in the GUI partitioner.
I ran fdisk to create this partition.
fdisk /dev/sda
n - add new partition t - toggle label on this partition to 8e, LINUX LVM w - write and exit
It complained, but worked even on the running disk. Note that I did NOT touch existing partitions. Just changed the free space into a new LVM partition.
I didn't have a device for this pariition, so I made one. Here's what I had:
# cd /dev # ls -l sda* brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 2006-09-10 03:28 sda brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 2006-09-10 03:28 sda1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 2006-09-10 03:28 sda2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 3 2006-09-10 03:28 sda3
Do this to make a new device special file, with appropriate ownership and permissions:
# mknod sda4 b 8 4 # chmod g+w sda4 # chgrp disk sda4
Now your devices should look like:
# ls -l sda* brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 2006-09-10 03:28 sda brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 2006-09-10 03:28 sda1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 2006-09-10 03:28 sda2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 3 2006-09-10 03:28 sda3 brw-rw-r-- 1 root disk 8, 4 2006-09-11 08:06 sda4
Now you are ready to Create a new LVM Group.
--Aaron 08:12, 11 Sep 2006 (MDT)
todo
Here are some of the things I want to do. I will try to expand these listings as I go. If you know about them, please complete these sections so I can check before I go.
- Install Sawfish as Gnome Window manager (or even without Gnome)
- Set up printing to use CUPS server on yet another linux machnine (not local)
- Import my old gnupg keyring, and identities. Get them integrated with Evolution mailer.
- See if there is a way to synch Evolution calendar stuff with Yahoo calendar, which I am
using with a friends list like exchange calendars.
- See if I can use standard debian procedures to create custom kernel package and install...
if it becomes necessary for some kernel features or modules.
- Wine. Never suceeded with it. Looking forward to trying again.
- VMware. Can I build a free Windows VM these days?
--Aaron 10:32, 11 Sep 2006 (MDT)
