Fuzzy Logic

Vino, the VNC server that’s set up by default in Ubuntu 11.04, has a huge problem: it doesn’t refresh after the initial login. You can click and type and it’ll register, but it won’t actually redraw the screen. The following post has the solution:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10775950&postcount=13

I’ll start out with this: Do not try to make this work unless you’re into pain.

So basically there are three problems with this

1) The touchpad doesn’t work. Evidently, this post seems to solve that problem (but I never got that far)

2) The wireless doesn’t work. It runs on a Broadcom BCM4313 (rev 01) chipset which isn’t built into 10.04 LTS. Another Ubuntu Forums post details a way to solve this, involving compiling some new kernel drivers, however….

3) The ethernet doesn’t work either. To get it working, all you have to do is compile another kernel driver.

So you would have to download all of the necessary packages and source, then go from there. Have fun.

I got home today and booted up my Ubuntu Linux (8.04) server that had been down most of the semester and got some fun errors.  Now, the reason it was down in the first place was because the CMOS battery was out which caused hell with the system’s security features and I hadn’t bothered to get a new CMOS battery.  So I boot it up and walk upstairs to set up my desktop.  I come back downstairs and get this ever friendly message:

* An automatic file system check (fsck) of the root filesystem failed.  A manual fsck must be performed, then the system restarted. The fsck should be performed in maintenance mode with the root filesystem mounted in read-only mode.

So, basically, my main filesystem was broken somehow.  Adding insult to injury, of course, was the fact that the thing that was shown as causing the problem was S01E02 of Firefly, which I was considering watching soon.  Great. On a strange note, the other place that was giving me trouble was on /etc/acpi/suspend.d/10-thinkpad-standby-led.sh. As for the problem itself,  I know why it happened, of course–this server only goes down when the power goes out and I would imagine that the file reference didn’t get correctly written to the journal before the server crashed. So, after multiple “Multiply-claimed block(s) in inode: x: xxxx xxx” errors, it finally told me to reboot.  After doing so, it fscked the disk again and then had me reboot AGAIN.  Awesome.  That finally let it work though, so I can’t complain.  Now to get a new CMOS battery…

Adobe announced on December 17th that AIR 1.5 is now available for Linux!  This is a pretty big deal for Linux users because the previous version we were using was a buggy version that didn’t have all of the newest features (and was unreliable at that).  With this new release comes the new version for both x86 and x64 processors!  Read on for the whole explanation!

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In my research I work with the Physics simulation software GEANT4.  It’s an incredibly detailed and realistic package, but it’s an absolute beast to get working.  A while ago one of my coworkers found this site and it makes it incredibly easy.  It went down a while ago, but you can find it at http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~skirkwoo/GEANT4-Kubuntu.html now.  I believe the old link is up as well, but the newer link is Dr. Kirkwood’s official site.  It’s a really great install and very valuable because it works on 8.04 (Hardy Heron), which is a Long-Term Service release.  The guide is for Kubuntu, but it works great on Ubuntu as well.

A quick note about using newer version of Ubuntu: From 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on, Ubuntu doesn’t come with a g77 package. g77 is not used for GEANT4 specifically, but with CERN’s ROOT, which is an amazing statistical analysis package. You won’t NEED this for GEANT4, but it allows you to do some cool stuff.  Anyhow, instead of g77, Intrepid (8.10) comes with ‘gfortran’ which is not the same code, it seems.  Now, there are two ways on handling it.  I, personally, advise sticking to 8.04 and the g77 it comes with.  However, you can use a newer version of Ubuntu (or its variants) and either use Hardy packages or install from source.  Either way, it’s nice to have ROOT installed for statistical analysis.

As a side note, I’m hoping to (eventually) post a complete walkthrough of the process I go through when compiling CLHEP, GEANT4, and ROOT on a 8.04 machine.  It’ll probably be a while before I manage to get it written up, but it sure would be nice…