Buffalo LS-QL/R5

Bought a Buffalo Ls-QL/R5, a network aware server (NAS) that is acually an embedded linux device with apache / printer server and samba set up (altho tightly).

Some have had some success in hacking into earlier versions, so that they can give them additional functionalities etc. but so far no one with this device.

Like many devices in the world it is marketed as a window centric tool, but can be used in a linux environment.

However, many people have difficulty mounting it correctly. The solution that worked for me was:



mount //192.168.1.203/share /mnt/BUF -o user=myname,password=mypwrd,r,w,dmask=0777,fmask=0777


from the command line or in fstab



//192.168.1.203/share /mnt/BUF -o user=myname,password=mypwrd,r,w,dmask=0777,fmask=0777


How to get sound working in Karmic Koala

Could you please try the following, note that this is only if you run pulseaudio in your user session, not system wide:
1. Remove all pulseaudio related files from your home directory, so .pulse_cookie and .pulse/* leave the .pulse directory in tact for the next step.
2. Create /home/your-username/.pulse/client.conf and add the following line to it:
autospawn = no
This is so that when we kill pulseaudio, it won't start right back up again when we don't want it to.
3. Kill pulseaudio with "pulseaudio -k"
4. Reset your alsa volume settings with the following command: "sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils reset". You will be asked for your password due to using the sudo command.
 5. Start pulseaudio again with "start-pulseaudio-x11".
6. Check the alsa mixer again, and report back as to whether your volume levels are reset to 0.
If you have any questions as to the above steps, please let me know also.
 affects ubuntu/pulseaudio
 status incomplete

Karmic disaster

Upgraded t Karmic from Jaunty Jacalope the other day. Not a success.

The upgrade process failed leaving my system in some sort of half and half limbo.

First step was to hand install the python packages as this seems to be where the upgrade crashed.

After that all looked good, but in fact the system was still half and half. With all sorts of programs operating oddly. After a repeated cycle of upgrades I am hoping that things are starting to resolve themselves but am not very confident.

Update:

My sound is all f-ed up. and so is Mythtv altho I managed to fix the LIRC using the same steps outlined in my earlier post (I knew there was a reason I was taking notes).

Setting up an IR Blaster for Mythtv under Kubuntu

Comcast is moving to an all digital format, requiring mythtv installations such as mine that were operating off of their analog feed to install either one of their digital boxes or a DTA (Digital-to-analog) box in order to continue receiving their signal. The problem is that one can no-longer control the television station being received through the tuner seated in your computer.

The solution is to install an infrared blaster (a device that emulates the remote control) on the PC and use it to change the channels on the DTA comcast provides.

Being Linux that is neither as easy as it sounds nor is information on how to do it as easy to find as you might hope. I am writing this as an aide memoire so that if I upgrade or whatever I can find all of the pieces and infos needed. Hopefully it will also help someone else.

First the hardware.

I purchased an IR blaster for 12.95 from IRBLASTER.info, which is recommended on various mythtv web sites. It works of any free serial port on your computer -- which sounds easy, except thereare no serial ports on my system -- having been more or less made obsolescent by cable modems and USB ports (the world keeps moving on)!

A little digging and I found that on the motherboard (an XFX GEFORCE 8200) there was an outlet for connecting a serial port. As I had a serial port attached to a ribbon connector lieing around from an old computer I was able to get around that -- but given there was no documentation of the MoBo I had no idea whether I had installed it correctly.


Now the software.
After a lot of digging including reading the really useless (outdated and needlessly complicated) discussion of installations that the IR Blaster site links to I found an excellent how to here that covers all the steps necessary to make this device work while I found a LIRCD.conf file for the PACE DTA50 supplied by comcast here here .

The instructions worked almost flawlessly except that having a slightly newer version of Ubuntu (Jaunty Jackelope) than documented (Hardy Heron) some things did not work out exactly as described. However, work arounds came relatively easily.


Getting LIRC to run properly

The biggest trick was to get LIRC running properly. There are all sorts of sites on the web describing what are really complicated solutions here. The one I found that worked relatively easily (with some modification) was the official MythTv Ubuntu install.

It gives great step by step instructions that work (with some blips along way).


Blip 1
The site tells you to execute the following line

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lirc-modules-source

and advises you that a

"A Configuration should appear
Choose the OK button and press enter (tab key to move across)
Make sure only the serial module is selected, use the space bar to select,
and then press enter on OK
You will be given an option to build the modules. Be sure not to build the modules here
You may be given an option to replace with a new version. Be sure to
choose to Install the package maintainer's version"

However this configuration does not appear. 
This is not a problem -- there is a note to this effect in the
current version of the site.


Second Blip

A bit later the how to suggests that you execute the following commands.

sudo m-a update,prepare
sudo rm /usr/src/lirc*deb
sudo m-a clean lirc
sudo m-a a-i -f lirc
sudo depmod -a

On my system this all worked fine except that the last command
popped up a text-based dialog indicating that there were errors and asking
if I wanted to see the log.  I looked at the log and it was broadly uninformative.
As it turns out whatever the problems that were encountered they did not affect my
installation and all worked fine.



Third Blip(let)

When I got to the section entitled 

Remote Configuration

I just used the configuration file that I had found here to create a lirc.conf file for the PACEDTA supplied by Comcast.



Fourth Blip -- Use the PACEDTA file directly as your lircd.conf
One of the most important features of this site is it includes a definition of the LIRC file that will send the right commands to your dta so that the blaster can actually change channels etc. V. useful.

One hiccup I ran into was that the using the include command in lircd.conf as described on the site did not seem to work. I got around that by overwriting the lircd.conf file with the specific one provided on the how to site.

With those small modifications, I had my blaster up and running in a bit under two hours. Not bad.


UPDATE

As indicated above I moved over to Karmic Koala (not a smooth process). Anyway there I has to recreate a ch_chan.sh script to change channels. I placed this in /usr/local/bin/ch_chan.sh

NVIDIA GE 8200 Problem with video tearing [[SOLVED]]

The problem
On my system which is comprised of a XFX mobo with integrated NVIDIA GE 8200 graphics card I had a problem with some applications, notably firefox, where when scrolling the rendered page would be chopped up, with a line of distortion between one section of good looking screen and another of good looking. As a result certain lines could not be read. Touching the top of the window and moving it (thus causing a repaint of the screen) solved the problem, but as soon as I scrolled it would return. As this was particularly evident with GMAIL it was a real bummer.

The solution
This problem is called screen tearing and apparently is an issue with the stable NVIDIA drivers under some configurations.

This thread describes the solutions and some of the work arounds

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=115916

I used a hybrid solution of the one described there. Specifically, I uninstalled all traces of existing nvidia drivers etc following step 1 in the above post.

Then I downloaded the latest NVIDIA beta driver (180.22).

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

I then exited to a true terminal server: Ctl-Alt F2 and stopped the X server. This is necessary for the NVIDIA installer to work.

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

Then I downloaded the latest NVIDIA beta driver (180.22) and ran its executable (after making it executable chmod 777 NVIDIA....).

After that it worked fine.

There are some other suggestions in the above post -- such as placing the following command in your boot up cue so that it automatically executes.

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1

and adjusting some of the advanced desktop effects in the window manager (see discussion in the above link).

Anyway even without the additional enhancements installing the new beta drivers solved the problem for me.

Getting SATA disk working on XFX 8400 mobo

My myth backend sits on a XFX 8200 motherboard. My initial intention was to install in it a Western Digital 1 Terebyte SATA Caviar Green hard disk. Unfortunately, my initial attempts failed because both Ubuntu and debian installers failed to recognize the disk.

I have subsequently found a post that explains how to get around this problem when installing linux (http://unixzen.com/?articles/2008/10/05/ubuntu-8-10-on-the-xfx-8200.html).


Essentially the solution involves adding the option pci=nomsi on the grub kernel boot line.

As I had already installed kubuntu on a smaller drive I decided to add the 1 terabyte drive by adding this option to the kernel line in in /boot/grub/menu.lst and this solved the problem.