Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

December 26, 2009

Installing Nvidia Video drives on Debian Testing (Squeeze)

Filed under: Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 3:15 AM

The default VGA drivers in Debian Testing worked fine for normal use, but when I tried to activate some of the effects like Fade, Shadow, Translucency etc the system told me that it couldn’t do it. I thought that this could be because I have an Nvidia video card and hadn’t installed the Nvidia driver yet.

I tried installing it using synaptic but for some reason when I added the nvidia driver it told me that I would have to remove pretty much most of my xorg (the GUI backend) install. So I aborted it. Did a little search on the web and found the following instructions to install the driver at pendrivelinux.com:

  • Log in as root

  • Type apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) (to install the Linux headers)

  • Type cd /usr/src (Change to the source directory)

  • Type ln -s linux-headers-$(uname -r) linux (To create a virtual link ‘linux’ that points to the latest linux-headers downloaded)

  • Type wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/100.14.23/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run (Download the NVIDIA installer)

  • Type /etc/init.d/gdm stop (to stop gdm and drop to a terminal)

  • Type cd /usr/src && sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run (to launch the nVidia installer script)

    • I ran all the commands above but the installer kept telling me that the kernel-headers were missing. Tried a couple of things that didn’t work.

    Finally ran NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.23-pkg1.run –help to see what command line parameters are supported by the installer. Noticed that they had a –update parameter that was supposed to update the installer to the latest version. I ran the installer with –update and it downloaded the latest version of the installer. After the download completed it automatically ran the installer which updated my system without any errors.

    So if you are trying to install the nvidia drivers using the installer and it keeps complaining about the headers missing even though you have them installed try running it with the –update option.

    Now I have all the effects I wanted to enable working fine.

    – Suramya

    Installing Debian Testing “Squeeze”

    Filed under: Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 2:55 AM

    As I said in my previous post. I have gotten tired of Ubuntu and am in the process of going back to a standard Debian install. This is the first time after a lot of years that I am installing Debian from scratch on my system, before this the last Debian version I installed from base was version 3. What I have been doing recently is that I boot off a Kanotix CD (Live CD based on Debian) and write that to the drive. Once that was done I would point the system to Debian repositories and then do an upgrade.

    This time I decided to do a plain install, so I downloaded the “Debian GNU/Linux testing “Squeeze” – Official Snapshot i386 CD Binary-1 20091221-04:49″ from the Debian site and burned it to a disk. I downloaded this version instead of the Stable snapshot because I was anyways going to upgrade to Testing so this should save me some time in downloading new/updated packages.

    I hit a couple of issues during the install which might be because I was using the testing snapshot but can’t be sure:

    1. The graphical install didn’t work. If just gave me an error when I tried to run it. So I did a text install, which worked fine
    2. After the install completed, I found that grub was not installed correctly. If kept giving me an error that grub_printf was undefined. To fix this, I booted the system off the installation CD in ‘Rescue Mode’ and told the system to reinstall grub on the main harddrive. That fixed that issue.

    Other than that I had no issues installing Debian on my system. All built-in devices have been working ok so far. Will post more on any issues I hit during customization etc later.

    – Suramya

    December 25, 2009

    A Politically correct Holiday greeting

    Filed under: Humor,My Life — Suramya @ 8:11 PM

    Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a religion at all;

    Additionally,

    A fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions have helped make our society great, without regard to the race, creed, color, religious, or sexual preferences of the wishes.

    (Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)

    ******
    Just Kidding, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all of you 🙂

    – Suramya

    Source: Faceless.co.za

    December 24, 2009

    The Data Liberation Front from Google

    Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:06 PM

    The Data Liberation Front is a website started by Google a while ago but I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about it yet. In fact I only found out about it today while searching for something else on another blog.

    According to the site their mission statement is:

    Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

    This is an awesome move by Google and one which I would love to have other sites (like Facebook) follow. Right now any data uploaded to Facebook is stuck there and as far as I know not that easy to export to local computers or to other sites. But on Orkut you can export your entire data set (except photos, which is in the works) to your local computer.

    This site explains how you can export data from Orkut, Blogspot, Google Calendar, Contacts, Google Docs, Gmail etc etc. Check out the site for a more detailed list.

    I always prefer having my data backed up on a local system even when its uploaded to the cloud. That way I have access and control of it even if the cloud goes down or I loose net access.

    Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

    – Suramya

    December 23, 2009

    Ubuntu 9.10 Clean install and clean removal

    Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:39 PM

    As I have posted earlier I have been using Ubuntu for the past few months and was reasonably satisfied with 9.04. When 9.10 came out in Oct I upgraded to it using the built in upgrade and since then I have been having issues with the install. (Most of them caused by the upgrade process according to forums)

    The first issue I got hit with (which I never really solved) was that my desktop no longer allowed me to put icons on it. Basically the Desktop work area (or whatever they are calling it in KDE4) disappeared. It wasn’t that big a deal because I hardly use the desktop icons anyway (I use the ‘quick bar’ to start most programs) but still irritating.

    The main issue I found really irritating was that the fonts on Gnome applications (X-Chat, Thunderbird, Synaptic) were not controlled by the KDE control panel, plus every time I rebooted the fonts would reset to the default settings (size 6 for the gnome apps) and I would have to run the gnome-control-panel and then click on the Appearance link and then close the application (without making any changes) to set the fonts to a normal size.

    Then I guess I made some changes to the system before my last reboot. The reboot was after 5 days and I had been fiddling with the settings, so I don’t know exactly what I changed but the end result was the the entire display would dance around everytime I moved my mouse (or tried typing). Now since I had been meaning to do a clean install of 9.10 since I had upgraded I took this chance to backup my system and do a clean install instead of troubleshooting.

    However the problem with the fonts is still there. Another irritating thing is the way all the tools/programs (like vim, gcc, ssh server) that I have come to expect to be pre-installed on a system are not installed. So instead of installing all these packages again, then fighting with the fonts issue and then removing all the eye candy and special effects I am going to remove Ubuntu from my system and go back to a plain Debian install. I will be installing the Testing or Unstable version but it will be a plain install.

    I am not saying that Ubuntu is a bad system. Its just not the right system for me because I happen to find a lot of eye candy to be very distracting when I am working. I don’t want the entire window to show when I am tabbing through them, just the name and the icon are fine. Plus the wiggly window border is really annoying for me.

    You might have a different criteria than me and might like it better. Although, for a new user Ubuntu is certainly the easiest to setup.

    – Suramya

    December 22, 2009

    Finally sync’d my Phone to my Google Calender

    Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 3:54 PM

    After reading Vinit’s response to my post about Google Calender Notification (and talking to him) I finally went ahead and installed Mail for Exchange on my N95.

    The configuration was easy, however the interface I got and the settings the system requested were different than what the Google Help site showed. Initially when I was setting up the profile it only asked for my username and password and the domain (which it didn’t let me leave blank as the Google site recommended).

    After I saved this info and tried to exit from the configuration screen that’s when it told me that I hadn’t filled out all the required information and asked me for the remaining information (like the exchange server name etc)

    Once all that was done, I initiated a sync. Even though I had told it to sync calender entries and included events up to two weeks ago it didn’t sync all my events. So I told the system to sync all calender events and that’s when it downloaded all my entries from the Google calender to my local phone.

    The only problem I see is that the events that my phone got from the Google calender don’t have any alarm set for them even though I have an alert set up on the calender for them. Though this could be because I only have the SMS and email alerts configured on all my events but not the pop-up alert. Maybe setting that alarm also will give me a phone alarm. But its not that big a deal.

    Now I have to sit and clean up all the double entries I have ended up on my phone and calender for the same events… Basically on my phone I had the alert configured for a different time than the alert on the calender so I have to sit and clean that out. Will do it when I have some spare time when I am not doing anything…

    Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

    – Suramya

    December 21, 2009

    Watched Avatar yesterday night

    Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 10:20 PM

    Watched Avatar yesterday night in 3d. Went for the 10:45 pm show and it was worth the wait to watch the movie in 3D. The effects were really good and the fact that the movie was in 3D made it even better.

    In the future when going for 3D movies I think I will try to sit closer to the screen, that way I believe that the immersion into the movie will be more complete. This time I was about 1/2 way up from the screen and I could still see the theater which kind of spoilt the illusion. If I am closer to the screen then it would take up more of the viewing space thus make everything more real.

    They should release more movies in 3D in India. This was the 1st 3D movie that I have seen in India, and it was a good experience. For a change even the Nacho’s were good (For some reason the Nacho’s at the Big Cinema’s in TGIP have been pretty bad the last few times I have been there)

    If you have the time, watch this movie in the theater. Its worth it, just to see the effects.

    – Suramya

    December 20, 2009

    Audio Visual Exhibition

    Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 10:59 PM

    Went to an Audio Visual Exhibition with Tarini yesterday. Atleast that’s how it was explained to me. I was an interesting experience, ’cause I am no artist and this exhibition was all about art. To an untrained eye (me) it looked like a guy playing a guitar with a screensaver running on the projector. The music was decent and some of the abstracts were great.

    The part I really liked was the show before the one we had gone to see, where they were showing short movies about various topics. There was this movie about the road access issue in Palestine. Basically they showed this woman who gets hit by a car and the guy is trying to get her to the hospital but is unable to do so because he is not allowed to go through any of the roadblocks set up by the military. Quite an interesting movie.

    The one before that one I didn’t really get, but it showed this pair of drinking glasses being kicked around a subway station. I guess it was supposed to have a deep meaning but it kind of went over my head. What can I say… I am no art person.

    Overall the show was interesting and I enjoyed it. Might do it again some time.

    – Suramya

    December 18, 2009

    Google adds Text to Speech capability to its translation service

    Filed under: Interesting Sites,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 12:01 AM

    While surfing the net I discovered that Google has a service that reads out text, converting it to speech so I tried it out and it works great, the voice doesn’t sound robotic at all like some of the other converters that are available today. The best part is that you can use it by passing it a sentence as part of a URL and it will return a mp3 file with the voice over.

    For example, visiting the following link will cause it to read out “Hello and welcome”: http://www.google.com/translate_tts?q=Hello+and+welcome

    Try it out. To have it read out a different text just change the text after ‘q=’ with your own text, replacing the spaces in the sentence with a + sign.

    The only other Text To Speech service I have seen that does this good work is the AT&T Labs Natural Voices site.

    The advantage of the Google service is that it can be automated and can be used within scripts and other programs to generate natural sounding voice responses.

    Source: blogoscoped.com

    – Suramya

    December 17, 2009

    I am now an Official RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer)

    Filed under: Linux/Unix Related,My Life — Suramya @ 2:40 AM

    I gave my RHCE exam yesterday morning and today I got the email confirming that I have cleared the exam and am now a Red Hat Certified Engineer. Go me 🙂

    Now I can put this image next to my name and everything: red_hat_cert_eng_logo-clr

    Next I am thinking about going for the Red Hat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS) exam sometime early next month. Still have to plan it out though, ’cause I want to go scuba diving also. Lets see.

    – Suramya

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