“Another Round of Linux Pain” now playing, starring gentoo, ATI, xorg, hal, dbus, evdev…

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Today’s pain in the ass gold-level sponsors are gentoo, ATI and xorg…
Somehow I initially managed to get ATI drivers working on the [dune] media center, but I’m not sure how - stable kernel and driver do NOT work together. As of today, the ATI-provided [ati-drivers] package does not work - the stable version doesn’t compile with the latest stable [gentoo-sources] kernel, and the soft-masked version doesn’t compile without soft-unmasking half of X.
Well, I opted to soft-unmask half of X, yuck. Here’s what it took in [package.keywords]…

x11-drivers/ati-drivers
x11-apps/ati-drivers-extra
# and deps... sigh...
x11-base/xorg-server
x11-libs/pixman
x11-libs/libpciaccess
x11-proto/xproto
x11-apps/xauth
x11-libs/libXrender
x11-proto/renderproto
x11-proto/xextproto
x11-libs/libXau
x11-libs/libXext
x11-libs/libXfont
x11-proto/inputproto
x11-libs/xtrans
x11-misc/xkeyboard-config
media-libs/mesa
x11-libs/libdrm
x11-libs/libX11
x11-proto/xf86driproto
x11-libs/libXxf86vm
x11-apps/rgb
x11-apps/xinit
x11-proto/randrproto
x11-drivers/xf86-input-keyboard
x11-drivers/xf86-input-mouse
x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev

When I got done, I lost my 1080p resolution and my mouse and keyboard (!). Digging in, I found that the newer xorg-server autodetects things, and when autodetect is on, it turns off any mouse and keyboard that are specified in xorg.conf. Well… I hadn’t realized up until this point that I wasn’t running HAL (I had it installed but had not yet added it to a run level). Therefore, X would disable my mouse and keyboard specified in xorg.conf, because it expected them to be autodetected. But without hal running, it doesn’t happen. You also have to have the [xf86-input-evdev] package installed and add the [input_devices_evdev] USE flag to [xorg-server] - evdev is what can actually successfully autodetect. Moral of the story: run hal with the latest xorg-server! And run dbus and add users to plugdev group to get hot-plugging.
Next I needed to figure out why I was dropping back to 1600×1200 from 1080p. The xorg log showed this error:

(EE) AIGLX error: fglrx exports no extensions (/usr/lib64/dri/fglrx_dri.so: undefined symbol: __driDriverExtensions)
(EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering

This bug indicates that older [ati-drivers] appear to leave broken symlinks that prevent update. Do this:

emerge -C ati-drivers
eselect opengl set xorg-x11 (and remove any files that cause problems)
emerge -av ati-drivers
eselect opengl set ati

Now get your shit together, gentoo… I’d much prefer a stable [ati-drivers]… rrr… I get depressed when “those that hack on linux” cause this much pain to the end user trying to accomplish the most basic tasks… I don’t want to spend so many cycles tweaking and hammering on linux basics… makes me consider a jump to Ubuntu… steady on…

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Comments | Wednesday, December 24, 2008

My linux desktop

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What do I want out of my linux desktop?

  1. Full access to any KDE and Gnome applications I need
  2. Ability to devote 100% of my real estate to what I’m working on
  3. Keyboard shortcuts for every common task
  4. Fast access to multiple workspaces
  5. Quick access to system monitors, date and time (and perhaps rss, weather…)
  6. Prettiness :P

Fluxbox has delivered this functionality with great efficiency. That’s a mixed blessing - I haven’t had a need to shop around, so I’m not sure if there’s something I’m missing out on. Certainly compiz-fusion will be a blast to play with some day, albeit not (yet) necessary. A lot of my linux friends have defected to Macs, but that’s too rich for my blood. Go ahead and rant at me if you’re from another desktop planet. I’m eternally curious.

I’m using the following with fluxbox to keep me happy:

  • YAX theme
  • slit apps: gkrellm, wmsmixer, wmtop, wmweather+ (replace this!)
  • conky; really sweet looking, but sits on the desktop, which I hardly ever see; I keep it simple (date, time, machine name)
  • and of course, a custom background and customized keys, menu and startup config files
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Comments | Monday, November 24, 2008

[mod_deflate] p0wn3d

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I recently discovered [mod_deflate], which compresses webserver content before sending it out - if you’re not using it you should really check it out. I turned it on and it worked flawlessly for me, with two exceptions.

  1. Server-side includes
    These just did not play well together out of the box…
  2. PHP and Perl “streaming” output
    I have some scripts, most notably imagescraper, that need to stream the html in the results page as it is computed, not all at once AFTER it is built, as mod_deflate requires.

Turning off [mod_deflate] is trivial. I used the no-gzip environment variable as follows:

# MDM This is to disable [mod_deflate] for imagescraper, so we don't try to compress the streaming results...
<Files images_google.pl>
    SetEnv no-gzip 1
</Files>

# MDM Drop this into a virtual host block to TURN OFF [mod_deflate], so it doesn't break SSI.
SetEnv no-gzip 1
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Comments | Saturday, November 1, 2008

Again, Thunderbird leaves me scratching my head…

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Thunderbird (yes, Mozilla’s email client) doesn’t know how to open URL’s in Firefox out of the box. How is stuff like that even possible? I’m continually amazed that Thunderbird doesn’t get more love from Mozilla. Fix it like this:

  • Close Thunderbird
  • Get the path to firefox with [which firefox]
  • Find the Thunderbird preferences file, something like this: 
    /home/user/.thunderbird/####.default/prefs.js
  • Add this: 
    user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/path/to/firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https", "/path/to/firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.ftp", "/path/to/firefox");

Ahhh much better. Silly!

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Comments | Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Multiple-repo subversion-sourced git HOWTO updated

 MythTV Tricks Tips Tools

My git wiki article has been updated. Humming along. If this looks like something you want to do, check it out…

                      repo1
               mybranch<->master
              /                 \
my shared repo                   external svn repo
              \                 /
               mybranch<->master
                      repo2
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Comments | Monday, October 20, 2008

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