dbaranski.net

With the release of Ubuntu 8.10 comes a relatively radical change from the norm; The obsolescence of the xorg.conf file!

The xorg.conf file is now replaced with the use of .fdi files that can be "plugged" and "unplugged" without the need to restart the computer.  More information on the usage of these fdi files can be found on Ubuntu's wiki site. Overall they provide more flexibility then the previous xorg.conf syntax, make use of XML, and allow for "matching" or "pairing" if the system has enabled components.

Here's a .fdi file I whipped up for my touchpad that I called touchpad.fdi and placed in my /etc/hal/fdi/policy folder as per the wiki's instructions.

If you've ever used the GNOME CPU Scailing Monitor before you will know that it does not allow the switching of stepping speeds or govoners off the bat.
 
Thanks to Carthik it is only a matter of entering one command in your console and selecting the option 'Yes':
 
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets
 
enjoy :)

I enjoy using Ubuntu as my OS of choice.  But there are always a few quirks to work out to make things "just right".  Here's a short list of changes I've done to make Ubuntu work better for me.

Wireless light

The wireless light always remains turned off.  My laptop (and probably most other dv4000's) uses the ipw2200 wireless card made by Intel.  This card is actually supported very well in the open source community thanks to Intel releasing the driver code.  Here is the command to get this working:

$ sudo echo "options ipw2200 led=1" >> /etc/modprobe.d/ipw2200

Mute light

The Mute LED never worked on my laptop.  The muting itself worked fine, but the light never turned on.  Here's a fix to solve this problem.

$ sudo echo "options snd-intel8x0 ac97_quirk=mute_led" >> /etc/modprobe.d/options

More information on different quirk options is available on this forum topic.

More information to follow as I remember / do it!

I'm working on a web based administration tool for srcds based servers. It's in the works but you should be able to administer any server that runs srcds with it with zero setup. All you require is the address and rcon password.

If you're interested in trying it out you can find it at http://www.dbaranski.net/rcon

Please report any bugs / feature requests to me via email or the proper forum on my site.

Enjoy :)

Well, after a few weeks of trouble I've finally got my domU image working at 1000Hz.. The interesting thing is that I didn't even have to reboot my server running dom0 to achieve this success!

Initially I ran into trouble because I was attempting to compile the xenified kernel from the xen.org site. This code lead to kernel panics during boot because that kernel couldn't detect LVM volumes which CentOS uses by default. I was unable to find the "exact" reason for this problem and therefore moved onto other solutions.

I eventually came to CentOS's own wiki and found that their kernel-recompile tutorial would work perfectly since the xen configs were included with the source! (awesome stuff).. Though, originally I had thought that I would need to replace the dom0 kernel and therefore worried a bit if problems arose. (I have servers far away that are not at arms reach for human intervention)... So I used a test box at home..

After a kernel recompile locally I installed the kernels (after configuring for 1000Hz) on dom0 and booted up a domU.. To my surprise it was still using the original kernel that was installed which lead me to my conclusion... I ended up installing the recompile kernel only on the domU that required it! And it works perfectly to boot with no need to sweat over dom0 not booting.

I'll make a guide for this shortly however if anyone is interested in following the steps I took (very well written) head over to the CentOS wiki article CenOS Custom Kernel. Well written indeed.