Notes on Linux Installs

Lately I've been installing some flavor of linux, usually one of the ubuntu distros, on nearly every thing I can get my hands on. I've created this page of notes to remind me of the problems and solutions I've encountered.

1. Mythbuntu 8.04 on an Intel P4 3GHz
I bought a SiliconDust HDHomeRun and wanted to run mythTV on a spare PC already connected to my 1080P DLP HDTV. I burned mythbuntu 8.04 to a Live CD and followed the directions here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HDHomeRun. All went smoothly; my version of mythbuntu seemed a bit different (newer?), but everything was still pretty obvious. All was well until I started trying to watch TV...

I have an ATI Radeon 9600 video card. I've read all over the web that this card can't be used with HDTV in Linux. THIS IS NOT TRUE. I currently have it working, through no skill of my own besides websurfing. Using the standard ubuntu procedure, I enabled the proprietary ATI Linux drivers (solved a flickering screen issue I had just after the install). At this point, I couldn't watch any of the MPEG2 streams recorded from the HDHomerun, but I knew they were recorded because the little preview would play fine.

After reading many pages, I found this one. Buried in the webpage, is this section:

Post-Installation Tweaks

To enable hardware accelerated video on pre-R500 cards, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to include the following lines without [...]

File: /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device" [...] Driver "fglrx" Option "VideoOverlay" "on" Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off" [...] EndSection

Made this change and 1080i works beautifully.

2. Ubuntu 8.04 on a Hewlett-Packard ze4600 (AMD)
My girlfriend's laptop. It had been running WindowsXP and became unbearably slow. We decided to format and reinstall XP, and I took the opportunity to also add Ubuntu. Ran into several issues.

• The install would give me a strange error that looked like a hard disk problem (should have saved it), but I realized it was the CD drive it was complaining about. The confusing thing was that it would start at random places during the install. After a bit of searching on the error, I found some advice to try burning the Live/Install CD at a slower speed. That did the trick.
• We had installed windows XP first allowing it to use the full disk. Based on prior experience, I expected Ubuntu to automatically resize the windows partition and install on a new partition. But it wouldn't give me the resize option. Solution: booted the LiveCD and tried repartitioning the drive using gparted(?). It complained of bad sectors on the disk - this apparently prevents the Ubuntu from doing its magic during the install. Went command line and forced things using fdisk and ntfsresize I think. Installed Ubuntu successfully.
• Wireless doesn't work. It's running a Broadcom 4306 rev 02. I've found instructions here, but haven't gotten it working. Will update when/if I do. (Update - after upgrading to 8.10, it recognized the card and everything started working...).
  

3. Xubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on a Dell Latitude L400
Trying to turn this one into a cheap netbook. Sort of amusing since it has zero minutes of battery life and hinges so broken I'm afraid to touch it...probably the point where I realized I have an addiction...

• Install would randomly crash in the middle. Have no idea why, just kept trying until I got to the end. Looking back, it was probably either trouble reading the CD or something to do with the sleep mode described below.
• My L400 would boot-up, but then mysteriously die before I had time to login. I was completely befuddled. Until I ran across this post. No idea how Gavin ever figured this all out, but I owe him a debt of gratitude. For my setup, all I had to do was:

  • in /etc/default/acpi-support, 

  • set ACPI_SLEEP=false
    

• Wireless didn't work...it's a Broadcom 4306 rev 03. Somehow got this one working after a few missteps. Mostly followed the instructions here. Somewhere along the way, I disabled "Roaming Mode" for the wireless, which was apparently the wrong thing to do.
• Having to enter the keyring for the wireless key at every login was annoying. Found a solution without autologin, but I'm lazy and I like autologin. Best solution I've found with autologin is to replace the built-in wireless manager with wicd.