Michael Harper’s Tech & Art Blog

I have written a few posts recently that have reviewed the latest version of Ubuntu. At first, it seemed, I wouldn’t be able to use Ubuntu 9.04 because of extreme graphical issues. My main issued was caused by Ubuntu Studio. Now, I have finally found the method of installation that proves to be the stablest and hassle-free.

I tried a clean install of Ubuntu Studio 9.04 only to have major issues. Nothing worked. Then I tried upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10 to Ubuntu Studio 9.04. Same problems. After much dismay and trying other distros, I made the decision to do a clean install of Ubuntu 9.04 and what do you know - amazing results. The latest Ubuntu is amazing. Very stable and I’ve had several issues fixed permanetly including working wifi and certain graphical issues.

The other day I realized that Linux Mint wasn’t receiving the official security updates from Ubuntu. My Ubuntu Studio desktop had update after update while my Linux Mint desktop had nothing. Strange - so I decided to install Ubuntu 8.04 - LTS edition because my laptop’s ATI card wasn’t supported in the newer version of Ubuntu 9.04. I at least wanted the support that was available until April 2011 from Canonical. I reinstalled Ubuntu 8.04 will all codecs and additonal software and then decided to install even more with the Ubuntu Studio upgrade. That installed the real-time kernel which I was dying to try out. Unfortunately, an error I had experienced in the past came back up dealing with the wifi drivers and the new kernel location. I blogged about it before but it’s not even worth mentioning now. As a reminder to everyone, I use a Toshiba Satellite A215 that has an ATI chipset and Atheros chipset. I couldn’t upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 because the FGLRX driver is completely corrupted in the newest version of Ubuntu. I still tote the Ubuntu decal on my laptop but I have definitely ventured out to other distros. Besides the 9.04 issue and my keeping 8.04 as the LTS edition, I have been experiencing a few other issues such as Blender never working correctly on any version of my Ubuntu installed on my laptop (worked great on nVidia desktop) and the inability to go into suspend without breaking the system on resume.

This last week has been extremely frustrating and all because of wifi. I really need to stretch the cable modem 5 feet closer in my general direction. I first upgraded from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 without error. Everything worked perfectly fine. Then I installed Ubuntu Studio 9.04 with an eagerness to get a clean install on my computer and wipe off some of the junk from residual upgrades and package installs. I installed Ubuntu Studio 9.04 onto my nVidia desktop (because my ATI laptop obviously won’t cut it). The wifi didn’t work immediately. I’ve installed openSUSE, Fedora and several versions of Ubuntu and my Linksys WUSB54G wireless adapter worked everytime. For some reason, Studio 9.04 wouldn’t see it. I tried a few things and got no where. I’m going to have to have a few drinks with the makers of ndiswrapper and MadWifi to try and get a better grip on how exactly wifi works in Linux. So I have a DD-WRT router that I use as a repeater and I tried to configure it through Studio’s copy of Firefox. Studio froze time after time while trying to configure it and I gave up on it. Apparently the real-time kernel is very unstable. I’ll have to look into it.

I’ve tried to do this multiple times with Ubuntu yet never suceeded for some reason. I purchased a full Skype package the other day and I’ve been stuck on Vista as I could never get the audio to work on Ubuntu. I tried a few new distros the other day after the ATI incident with Ubuntu 9.04. Ubuntu Studio 8.04 and Linux Mint 6. Ubuntu Studio 8.04 failed due to a few random issues such as the Linux headers error. I was unable to compile the madwifi modules against the kernel and I dropped it. I grew tired of this wifi issue and decided to move on. I read many reviews about Linux Mint - an unofficial variant of Ubuntu that has a few additional packages and supposedly wifi readiness. My wifi didn’t work off the bat but at least I was able to compile it easily. I use Linux Mint because it is Ubuntu made easy - essentially. The latest version is based off of Ubuntu 8.10. They are working on the Linux Mint 7 version that is based on 9.04.

Lately I’ve been interested in seeing what some of the other flavors of Ubuntu might be available and I stumbled across this “official” variant of Ubuntu known as Ubuntu Studio. Very interesting - seems that it has a real-time kernel that cuts latency down tremendously in a lot of applications, espcially audio apps. I found this interesting due to the fact that I had attempted to use my M-Audio Keystation 49e keyboard with Vista and I was let down to see a full second or two delay in MIDI processing. I haven’t had a chance to test latency yet but I do know that Ubuntu readily recognizes my keyboard in many applications. Though this probably isn’t completely accurate, I equate this real-time kernel to the high-priority settings found in Windows Task Manager. I believe that in Windows, it is a per-application basis whereas Ubuntu Studio has real-time access for all apps.

I can’t believe I’m in the situation I’m in. It’s 2:13 am and I’m copying all of my important files from my Toshiba A215 to an external hard drive so that I can format what is left of my latest 9.04 install. I’ve been waiting patiently since its release a few days ago to try and install Jaunty Jackalope, the latest release of Ubuntu. I hadn’t read any reviews about it yet and I wanted to give it a go as soon as possible to experience the greatest Ubuntu to date. During install, a warning popped up and basically said, “WARNING: The FGLRX driver you’re using for your ATI/Radeon graphics card is no longer compatible with the latest version of X Server. The only way graphics will operate is to use the free and open-source driver available with Ubuntu.” I said sure, no problem. I’m using several other restricted drivers anyways, let’s see how it works. I install it using the “alternate” ISO file available from ubuntu.com and give it a half-hour or so. It reboots and finally finishes the install.

Ok guys, it’s been about a month since my last post but I have plenty to talk about. Hopefully I’ll get all the content up before the end of the week.

I had an issue earlier this month with Error 17 (see Super Grub Disk and the Mysterious Error 17). My Ubuntu laptop would not resume properly and I was forced to manually restart it. I did some thorough research on the web yielding a possible fix - fsck. This command - I’m assuming to mean “file system check” - allowed me to “repair” my Ubuntu partition using a Ubuntu LiveCD and terminal. After selecting “yes” to every suggested action that was to be taken by fsck, I rebooted into Super Grub Disk which was able to fix my Grub boot loader. I rebooted again and I discovered that my user name and password didn’t work. From there I did some more reading and realized that I needed to create another user name and password to get access my Ubuntu desktop. I used a LiveCD to get to a terminal and created another user, rebooted back in to my Ubuntu installation and discovered, to my dismay, that my Home folder and many other programs and documents were gone. At that point I knew that some serious rearranging had taken place without my knowledge. Oh, the pangs of being a Linux n00b. I rebooted into my Vista installation and had been using that for a while. I left my Ubuntu partition alone for a week until I could figure how to recover files. I tried running R-Linux from Windows but that yielded no results. I then read an article about the Lost+Found directory and how it works. I checked my L+F directory and there laid a multitude of numbered files and directories that were recovered. That me led to search the directories and I have copied over many of my missing files at this point.

Samba, http://us1.samba.org/samba/,  is widely spoken of throughout the Linux community. It is an efficient way of sharing your network resources like printers and shared drives with Windows computers. I even managed to share my 500 GB USB drive that was attached to my Ubuntu desktop. I installed the latest version of Samba from the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu 8.10. After installation, it installs to the System>Admin menu. Open Samba and take a gander at the window. It has been a few weeks since I installed it but I believe that Samba shares your default Ubuntu printer automatically. Which is great. Anyways, click “Add Share” and select the directory, folder or even USB device (found under the “Media” directory). On the Basic tab, make your share writable and visible and, on the Advanced tab, select your specific user or even allow anyone on your network to see your share.

Not familiar with Error 17? It is apparently a tricky GRUB error (and not a BIOS error in my case) that carries the message, “Unable to mount partition.” I’m running my Toshiba Satellite with a dual-boot setup on a single hard drive: Vista Ultimate on the first partition and Ubuntu 8.04 and swap partition for the other two. This error conceived itself after I attempted to unsuccessfully resume my laptop out of suspend mode. It simply stopped when I opened my laptop lid. A few errors messages but nothing I don’t see periodically usually Ubuntu. So i powered it off and rebooted only to meet this error in surprise. I couldn’t load Vista or Ubuntu. I was simply stuck reading that same error message repeatedly. I tried everything I could think of including running my Ubuntu LiveCD and Puppy Linux in an attempt to use the GRUB command in a terminal to repair or rebuild itself. For some reason I couldn’t even get Puppy Linux to load to RAM which I thought was strange. I checked forums and message boards but all I could find were vague attempts to assist with a very hindering problem. No one was providing sound assistance until I saw a recommendation for Super GRUB Disk. This tool is very convenient. It was straight-forward: Load the iso (400 KB) to a CD and reboot. It has two modes, boot with assistance or just boot. I’ll just summarize because this CD and its included on-screen instructions are for complete beginners.