Ubuntu Linux

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by tiachopvutru

Not yet, but I made a thread regarding the constant question in Networking & Wireless section and am waiting to revive it after 1 day. X probably doesn't handle network connection but each time I edit xorg.conf and reboot, during startup when there are messages of loading stuffs, I see some lines about errors loading up ndiswrapper driver.

You might want to check the actual ndiswrapper site to see if there are any issues that the latest version fixes. The version that came out with Ubuntu 7.04 refused to handle WPA with my rt2500, but once I upgraded it all was well.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/

Could you copy over the error messages please? Maybe we can spot what is causing it.

And who is the Fuko person you are on about?

@SS - Wow that is a nice bit of history

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by grey_moon

You might want to check the actual ndiswrapper site to see if there are any issues that the latest version fixes. The version that came out with Ubuntu 7.04 refused to handle WPA with my rt2500, but once I upgraded it all was well.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/

I have the latest ndiswrapper.

Could you copy over the error messages please? Maybe we can spot what is causing it.

Nope, can't >.< ... It only occurs when I modify the xorg.conf thing and restart, well, the only way to get the error message is to get a camera to take the picture, I guess, or use my L33T (read: horrible) memorization skill to memorize it. I think a way to get around it is during restart, unplug and replug and the wireless device before the OS boots up, although sometime my computer end up getting freeze in the end. (for some reason, my computer froze a lot when I used to getting nm-applet to connect, although that issue doesn't happen anymore now that it's set to connect everytime it starts up)

Well, is there a way to check my network conection/configuration/w/e? Like when it involves display, I post logs of xorg.conf

And who is the Fuko person you are on about?

Watch Clannad TV And note that when I say this was after episode 8

[grey_moon]

Can you check /var/log/ in case there are any other xorg#.log files there. Or before you login could you try pressing ctrl alt f2 and see if you can login to a cmd line and then you can do something like

tail -f /var/log/Xorg0.log >> /home/username/debug.log

That will pipe all the error messages to a text file.

I've just installed xbuntu on a vmware machine, so I can check it out as I'm a plain ubuntu man myself.

for info about your network you can type in the terminal

sudo ifconfig -a

iwconfig

should show your devices that are wireless enabled I plugged in my linksys usb and i get

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

When I enable the card it changes to

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"network"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.447 GHz  Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Link Signal level=-27 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

ps hee hee I was role playing

[IRJustman]

Originally Posted by grey_moon

I've just installed xbuntu on a vmware machine, so I can check it out as I'm a plain ubuntu man myself.

I like Xubuntu in that XFce is a low-memory-footprint window manager. However, for that category, I'm very partial to IceWM (which I use on my headless fileserver which I use VNC for so I can run Azureus).

My fileserver runs Ubuntu Server which is essentially a "core" version of Ubuntu without a GUI, but it can be easily changed into a GUI-enabled system by doing an apt-get install xubuntu-desktop (for Xubuntu (XFce)), apt-get install kubuntu-desktop (for Kubuntu (KDE)), or apt-get install ubuntu-desktop (for GNOME, which is how it seems most users get their first contact with Ubuntu).

for info about your network you can type in the terminal

sudo ifconfig -a

iwconfig

ifconfig does not require root privileges to VIEW your computer's interface('s/s') current configuration unless something's recently changed that I'm not completely aware of. You DO need to be root to CHANGE them, however.

I'm not 100% sure about iwconfig for viewing your current wireless configuration, but I believe it's the same. I say I'm not 100% sure because none of my wireless-capable machines run Linux, and I try to wire up as much as I can.

--Ian.

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by IRJustman

ifconfig does not require root privileges to VIEW your computer's interface('s/s') current configuration unless something's recently changed that I'm not completely aware of. You DO need to be root to CHANGE them, however.

I'm not 100% sure about iwconfig for viewing your current wireless configuration, but I believe it's the same. I say I'm not 100% sure because none of my wireless-capable machines run Linux, and I try to wire up as much as I can.

--Ian.

Thanks for clearing up the use of sudo. I know it is a bad habit to use it when you don't need it.

You are right you don't need it to view your wireless info, but you do if you change any of the settings.

[teachopvutru]

There are two Xorg* logs in /var/log , Xorg.0.log, and Xorg.0.log.old ... I ran the command tail something in terminal and didn't do ctrl alt f2; well, I did but when I ran command tail, I wasn't on that whacky command-only environment. Question about tail command though, how come when I ran it, it never return back, well, erm, I had to open a new terminal and closed that one I ran "tail" with.

Anyway, here are the two logs:

(**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
(**) Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
(**) Configured Mouse: Emulate3Buttons, Emulate3Timeout: 50
(**) Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
(**) Configured Mouse: ZAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) Configured Mouse: Buttons: 9
(**) Configured Mouse: Sensitivity: 1
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Configured Mouse" (type: MOUSE)
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Generic Keyboard" (type: KEYBOARD)
(II) Configured Mouse: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded

(**) Configured Mouse: ZAxisMapping: buttons 4 and 5
(**) Configured Mouse: Buttons: 9
(**) Configured Mouse: Sensitivity: 1
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Configured Mouse" (type: MOUSE)
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Generic Keyboard" (type: KEYBOARD)
(II) Configured Mouse: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
SetClientVersion: 0 9
(II) XAA: Evicting pixmaps
BOGUS LENGTH in write keyboard desc, expected 5300, got 5304
(II) AIGLX: Suspending AIGLX clients for VT switch

Here's the result of ifconfig -a

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:D4:BA:42:34  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:20 Base address:0x8000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:200 (200.0 b)  TX bytes:200 (200.0 b)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:6C:5C:5C:84  
          inet addr:192.168.0.102  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::214:6cff:fe5c:5c84/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1790 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1650 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:1523721 (1.4 MB)  TX bytes:277275 (270.7 KB)

And iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"Shana"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 12:10:92:xx:xx:xx   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   
          Link Quality:28/100  Signal level:-78 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Well, someone replied to my thread on Ubuntuforum suggesting to do a search there because a lot of people had the same problem of the constant disconnection .

Anyway, I'm going to bed. If I don't reply in a while, it would be because, after I wake up, I'm doing homework or project. Apparently having too much fun with Ubuntu this holiday .

[grey_moon]

You might want to edit out identifying information such as mac addresses and the essid.

tail shows the last few lines of the log, with the -f it carries on showing any changes to the log. It is useful for checking what has jsut changed for example to check the last 50 lines i would do

tail -n 50 /var/log/messages

but realistically you want to check the xorg logs for any blatant error messages, but to be honest I don't expect to see anything in there that would affect your networking.

to easily look through a log use

less /var/log/logfile

less is > then more (you will start encountering a lot of geeky humour if you use the command line tools)

Good luck with your homework and let us know if you find the solution of uf

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by IRJustman

ifconfig does not require root privileges to VIEW your computer's interface('s/s') current configuration unless something's recently changed that I'm not completely aware of.

Because ifconfig usually resides in /sbin, most ordinary users won't have a path to it by default. You'll either need to use /sbin/ifconfig or add /sbin (and /usr/sbin and /usr/local/sbin for completeness) to your PATH environment variable set in .bash_profile (note the initial dot).

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by grey_moon

You might want to edit out identifying information such as mac addresses and the essid.

Alright, already did
I hidden my favorite anime and birthday pretty well, don't you think ;x

tail shows the last few lines of the log, with the -f it carries on showing any changes to the log. It is useful for checking what has jsut changed for example to check the last 50 lines i would do

tail -n 50 /var/log/messages

but realistically you want to check the xorg logs for any blatant error messages, but to be honest I don't expect to see anything in there that would affect your networking.

to easily look through a log use

less /var/log/logfile

less is > then more (you will start encountering a lot of geeky humour if you use the command line tools)

Hmmm.... to be honest though, I doubt I will be able to read those logs...

Good luck with your homework and let us know if you find the solution of uf

Yea, just hope I get on with it though. I attempted to finish it since the start of Thanksgiving Break, which was on Wednesday

EDIT:
Some guy replying to my thread suggests that I buy an antenna if my connection signal is less than 30%, which it is.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=620785

He/she suggests me to this antenna:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833147115


EDIT2:
I just found out something else. There's another PC beside the one I'm using. That PC is a really old computer with Xubuntu 7.04 on it and uses wicd as its network manager. It was set to Static IP Adress 192.168.0.102 ... now back to the one I'm currently using, it uses nm-applet and is set to Roaming Mode, so I right clicked on nm-applet icon, checked its connection information, and found out that it also had IP Address 192.168.0.102. Since I didn't set a Static IP Address on this one, I thought it would be able to find a free slot (like 103 instead of 102), but it apparently didn't. In any case, I set the Static IP Address of my Xubuntu box to 192.168.0.103; can't really say for sure but I think I haven't experience the constant disconnection since.... Anyway, sorry for the bad retelling.

[IRJustman]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Because ifconfig usually resides in /sbin, most ordinary users won't have a path to it by default. You'll either need to use /sbin/ifconfig or add /sbin (and /usr/sbin and /usr/local/sbin for completeness) to your PATH environment variable set in .bash_profile (note the initial dot).

Sure, becoming root (whether via su or sudo) adds the three "sbin paths", but I figured it'd be worth mentioning that viewing the configuration does not require elevated privileges, and you only want to become root when it's absolutely necessary. The concept is called "least privilege", one that has been lost on the Windows world (at least until recently).

Though lately, I've been getting into far scarier things, like 802.1Q VLAN tagging (three of my Linux boxen, all of which running some version of Ubuntu, and one FreeBSD machine are all so configured, all talking to a 3Com SuperStack 3300 FE switch sitting on as few and as many as four VLANs). That requires not just fancy ifconfig footwork, but appropriate kernel-fu and userland tools to set everything up.

Anyway, that's it from my side of things.

--Ian.

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by IRJustman

Though lately, I've been getting into far scarier things, like 802.1Q VLAN tagging (three of my Linux boxen, all of which running some version of Ubuntu, and one FreeBSD machine are all so configured, all talking to a 3Com SuperStack 3300 FE switch sitting on as few and as many as four VLANs). That requires not just fancy ifconfig footwork, but appropriate kernel-fu and userland tools to set everything up.

Anyway, that's it from my side of things.

--Ian.

Ooo I did that when I set up the vmware server and the company was cheap and refused to buy esx but wanted vlans, but in my case it was really easy as the HP drivers supported dot 1q tagging out of the box.

But in terms of security due to the nature of sudo it is best to not run it unless you need to. In Ubuntu it leaves the door open for too long and that means the user can accidently let something slip through. Also pathing shouldn't be an issue since the security minded always use full paths <- Not that I can say this, since I was the person who carelessly suggested using it

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by grey_moon

In Ubuntu it leaves the door open for too long and that means the user can accidently let something slip through.

So when you use sudo, or when you hit a screen that requests an admin password, it keeps escalated privelages for a while? I've heard that Mac OS X does this - for a few minutes after you enter a password, it won't request a password for further actions. I thought it was a nice balance between security and usability. It gets pretty frustrating having to re-enter a password every time you want to re-access a screen, doubly so if you've made a really good password. OpenSUSE didn't seem to do that, but you're saying Ubuntu does?

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

So when you use sudo, or when you hit a screen that requests an admin password, it keeps escalated privelages for a while? I've heard that Mac OS X does this - for a few minutes after you enter a password, it won't request a password for further actions. I thought it was a nice balance between security and usability. It gets pretty frustrating having to re-enter a password every time you want to re-access a screen, doubly so if you've made a really good password. OpenSUSE didn't seem to do that, but you're saying Ubuntu does?

I believe a sudo lasts for 5 minutes as default... and it's changeable (seen a guide somewhere before).

EDIT: Nvm, it says 15 minutes here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ro...90f462552d34ec


EDIT2:
This time it's about my issue (again)... Anyway, it looks like Deluge (a bittorrent client)'s connection shuts down to none after I run it for a while. I have to close the application, wait for a bit until my wireless connection reconnects, then fire it up for it to continue downloading again... which is pretty annoying.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if I leave the program there for a while (when I go to bed and come back), my desktop would either freeze (happens a lot of time after I wake up, not a good way to start the morning =/), or slows down considerably (then I have to restart X)... The network thingy and the X must be interconnected in somehow, seriously. It's as if they can't leave without the other. Yep yep, they must be lovers during their last lives, definitely no doubt about it. <.<

[WanderingKnight]

:This time it's about my issue (again)... Anyway, it looks like Deluge (a bittorrent client)'s connection shuts down to none after I run it for a while. I have to close the application, wait for a bit until my wireless connection reconnects, then fire it up for it to continue downloading again... which is pretty annoying.

Hmm... personally, I found Deluge to be a promising, yet quite buggy application. I found a lot of different bugs with connectivity (especially one really annoying bug that made the thing not shutdown the process listening to whichever port you assigned it and thus the program refused to start again until you manually killed that process... and the CLI output was of no use at all). I'd say, if you have the RAM to spare, that you should try Azureus and see if the same happens.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if I leave the program there for a while (when I go to bed and come back), my desktop would either freeze (happens a lot of time after I wake up, not a good way to start the morning =/), or slows down considerably (then I have to restart X)...

It'd be nice to look at the output of top when that happens... but that's difficult to do when X is freezing or unusable. What I do know, though, is that for a month or so I had these kinds of strange freezings and program crashes when leaving the PC idle for some time... guess what, it was because my swap wasn't being mounted (I formatted it to install Debian on another partition and Ubuntu, by default, mounts the drives according to individual UIDs which get rewritten when you format the partition... worst of it all is that it didn't give me a single warning >_>). I'm not saying it has to be the swap... I'm saying it's probably related to some sort of memory leak. It's hard to see networking affecting X, seriously.

Regarding that Debian installation... I've been having some problems when installing KDE (it's a basic installation, nothing but the shell and the low-level programs). If I use Debian Etch (stable), it installs and runs without problems, but for some strange reason seems the nvidia-kernel-common package is broken (could be my local repositories here in Argentina, but I'm not sure) so I can't install the Nvidia kernel drivers (not even with the .run file in the official Nvidia page). If I use Debian Sid, things get awful quite fast. I thought things would be solved with Lenny (testing), but nope, KDE refuses to start. X works perfectly though.

I got some nice experience using the command line, though

Oh, well, I guess I'll get a KDE-by-default distro on that partition. Might be a good time to try Fedora out.

[grey_moon]

Heh just an amusing anti windows thing.

Finally the XP Nvidia drivers for my 7600GT support my 1440x900 ViewSonic monitor, I'm so happy I don't need to create a custom profile (never too sure if I got the settings right) and it can finally scale!!!!

*Edit*
Just to explain why I posted to this thread... It just shows that a well supported card, with a popular brand of monitor in XP can still take nearly a year to get a fully supported driver. With the whole open source thing someone with the skill could have solved the problem for me.

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Hmm... personally, I found Deluge to be a promising, yet quite buggy application. I found a lot of different bugs with connectivity (especially one really annoying bug that made the thing not shutdown the process listening to whichever port you assigned it and thus the program refused to start again until you manually killed that process... and the CLI output was of no use at all). I'd say, if you have the RAM to spare, that you should try Azureus and see if the same happens.

I just got Transmission. Currently, I don't have anything to download yet so I don't know what'll happen. Hopefully, all of that was just a bug which would be fixed soon in Deluge.

It'd be nice to look at the output of top when that happens... but that's difficult to do when X is freezing or unusable. What I do know, though, is that for a month or so I had these kinds of strange freezings and program crashes when leaving the PC idle for some time... guess what, it was because my swap wasn't being mounted (I formatted it to install Debian on another partition and Ubuntu, by default, mounts the drives according to individual UIDs which get rewritten when you format the partition... worst of it all is that it didn't give me a single warning >_>). I'm not saying it has to be the swap... I'm saying it's probably related to some sort of memory leak. It's hard to see networking affecting X, seriously.

Dunno the UID you're talking about, but let's say I want to try another Linux distro and do triple boot on this computer. After the installation I'll have to fix something for the swap thing?

Oh, well, I guess I'll get a KDE-by-default distro on that partition. Might be a good time to try Fedora out.

lol... looks like you're actively trying different distros out there...

Originally Posted by grey_moon

It just shows that a well supported card, with a popular brand of monitor in XP can still take nearly a year to get a fully supported driver.

Seriously?

[WanderingKnight]

Dunno the UID you're talking about, but let's say I want to try another Linux distro and do triple boot on this computer. After the installation I'll have to fix something for the swap thing?

You'll have to go to the /etc/fstab file and fix the entries of all the drives you have formatted. In fact, I recommend you to do it right now, it takes less than a minute and it can save you quite a headache in the future.

Here's my current fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda3 :
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda4 :
/dev/sda4 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
/dev/sda1 /mnt/debian ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sdb5 :
/dev/sdb5 /home/bilkis/ntfs ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sdb6 :
/dev/sdb6 /home/bilkis/debian-home ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/sda2 :
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Instead of the "/dev/sd*" you see at the beginning of each entry, you'll be seeing "UID=n" where n is a long string of characters. What you have to do is replace each "UID=n" with "/dev/sd*", and that will prevent whatever issue that might arrive in the future.

Just to explain you what this does: The fstab file is read by the system every time it boots up in order to mount the different partitions. There are various different formats the system accepts when reading the contents of fstab, one of which is the UID format used by Ubuntu. The problem with this is that, whenever you format a partition, the UID gets erased and replaced by a new one. The next time Ubuntu boots up, it won't find the UID in the fstab, so the partition will end up unmounted. Now, when this happens to most partitions, you'll get an error at booting time which will tell you that the mounting failed and will drop you into a root terminal. This didn't happen to me when my swap was not being mounted, that's why I end up without swap for almost a month.

I can't imagine what particular benefits does the UID way provide, but I find the /dev/sd* much more effective and simpler.

lol... looks like you're actively trying different distros out there...

It's just curiosity. I love to try out new things, I haven't even given up on KDE (I tried it a couple of times and didn't like it each of them). In fact, I've been planning to do a 6-month test drive of KDE 4 once it's out for Kubuntu 8.04 (that means installing it on my primary Ubuntu partition) in order to try it out and see what I've been missing.

[Ledgem]

Fedora is GNOME by default though, unless that changed with Fedora 8.

[SeijiSensei]

Nope, it's still GNOME by default. But if near the end of installation you check the box to install additional packages "now," you can select KDE on the page that follows.

The first time the machine boots up, choose "Session" at the login screen before entering your username, then select KDE, and log in. You'll be asked if you want to make that the default; say yes.

The brute-force method of choosing KDE in RedHat-flavored distros is to edit /etc/sysconfig/desktop and enter the line
DESKTOP=KDE
at the top. That makes the KDE the default desktop for all users instead of GNOME. Individual users can still force GNOME to be their desktop by choosing Session at log in and making GNOME permanent.

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by tiachopvutru

Seriously?

Yup an Asus 7600GT with a ViewSonic VA1912 1440x900 just would not detect my monitor. It would always set it as a 1024x768 no matter what drivers I installed. The ViewSonic blokey suggested that I create my own profile for it (quite quickly so I assumed that it was a popular issue). He of course fobbed me off to Asus when I asked what settings should I use

But finally the latest Nvidia drivers detects it (sniffle). It wasn't a big issue apart from it used to do weird things to my old games as it could not do the postbox or other fancy scaling things.

But just to take the p**s Freelancer now no longer works and that one isn't supported in Wine eithr so I'm not too sure what I'm going to do *sniffle*