IBM have published some useful LPI Exam Prep guides.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Friday, February 10, 2006
A new project that I am farting about with at home is getting Linux running on an old Ultra 5 that I have lying about. Why? - well the old Ultrasparc is an incredibly well made and robust hardware platform - I've seen these things running Solaris as servers in dusty back rooms without interruption for years. Plus, the geek factor of running one of these things is awesome.
I presently host a small Mambo site for my own use from home, and right now it's on a crappy old Dell PC with a PII 333 CPU and 312MB RAM. The 64-bit 400MHz UltraSparc IIi CPU with 265MB RAM is therefore almost an upgrade :)
This machine also allows me to remotely connect in and test connections over the net to stuff I set up for customers, so I need X and a graphical web browser.
Anyway, installing Debian on the Ultra5 was a piece of cake. However, things are getting a bit more tricky now that I'm fetterng with it, so I thought I'd make some notes.
I installed Debian 3.1 Sparc on the Ultra 5 by simply giving it a "boot cdrom" command from the "ok" OpenBoot prompt and following the normal debian installer. My CD was a netinst job, and I just selected to install the graphical environment, as I'll apt everything else as I need it.
My Ultra5 has a Sun m64 graphics head, which Sun made a big song and dance about when it was new, but it turns out that it's pretty much an ATI Rage chipset, so I selected ATI for the graphics, and X was up and well, except the mouse didn't work.
I have one of the newer 3-button sun mice that connects to the keyboard using a PS/2 type connector. This post helped me out here, as I was able to use od as described to determine that I needed to use the /dev/sunmouse identifier. Once I'd hacked this into the X config file, I was good to go.
At this point I had an Ultra5 running Debian Sarge on a stock 2.4 kernel, with X and networking, which is all I need (I'm not bothered about sound - it's a server). So far, so good.
And this is where I balls it up.......
Next I wanted to upgrade to a 2.6 kernel. Mainly this was because I like to be up to date, but stable and the 2.6 kernel in the Debian stable tree gives you this. Secondarily, at boot time, I was getting some errors relating to the hard disk on the Ultra5, and I had read somewhere that these are fixed in the 2.6 kernel.
So, I used apt to install a stable 2.6 kernel for 64-bit sparc, and rebooted. The disk errors were gone, but so was X, and I couldn't log in at the console as the keymap was buggered. Nice.
The answers to almost all of this are here in this article, but this still didn't get my mouse going again. Using od agan, I was able to determine that the 2.6 kernel saw my mouse as /dev/psaux now, rather than /dev/sunmouse. Once I realised that I needed to tell it to use the PS/2 protocol, we were in business again.
At this point, I have an Ultra5 running Debian Linux on a 64-bit 2.6 kernel with X. I am a happy customer - this server will hopefully run for years!
My current XF86Config-4 file has stanzas for both 2.4 and 2.6 kernel device maps, so you could just chop and change which are selected in the ServerLayout stanza as appropriate. Download my XF86Config-4 here.
Next steps will be to install and configure Apache, MySQL etc., but that's for another day. If there's anything unusual involved , I'll post it.
I presently host a small Mambo site for my own use from home, and right now it's on a crappy old Dell PC with a PII 333 CPU and 312MB RAM. The 64-bit 400MHz UltraSparc IIi CPU with 265MB RAM is therefore almost an upgrade :)
This machine also allows me to remotely connect in and test connections over the net to stuff I set up for customers, so I need X and a graphical web browser.
Anyway, installing Debian on the Ultra5 was a piece of cake. However, things are getting a bit more tricky now that I'm fetterng with it, so I thought I'd make some notes.
I installed Debian 3.1 Sparc on the Ultra 5 by simply giving it a "boot cdrom" command from the "ok" OpenBoot prompt and following the normal debian installer. My CD was a netinst job, and I just selected to install the graphical environment, as I'll apt everything else as I need it.
My Ultra5 has a Sun m64 graphics head, which Sun made a big song and dance about when it was new, but it turns out that it's pretty much an ATI Rage chipset, so I selected ATI for the graphics, and X was up and well, except the mouse didn't work.
I have one of the newer 3-button sun mice that connects to the keyboard using a PS/2 type connector. This post helped me out here, as I was able to use od as described to determine that I needed to use the /dev/sunmouse identifier. Once I'd hacked this into the X config file, I was good to go.
At this point I had an Ultra5 running Debian Sarge on a stock 2.4 kernel, with X and networking, which is all I need (I'm not bothered about sound - it's a server). So far, so good.
And this is where I balls it up.......
Next I wanted to upgrade to a 2.6 kernel. Mainly this was because I like to be up to date, but stable and the 2.6 kernel in the Debian stable tree gives you this. Secondarily, at boot time, I was getting some errors relating to the hard disk on the Ultra5, and I had read somewhere that these are fixed in the 2.6 kernel.
So, I used apt to install a stable 2.6 kernel for 64-bit sparc, and rebooted. The disk errors were gone, but so was X, and I couldn't log in at the console as the keymap was buggered. Nice.
The answers to almost all of this are here in this article, but this still didn't get my mouse going again. Using od agan, I was able to determine that the 2.6 kernel saw my mouse as /dev/psaux now, rather than /dev/sunmouse. Once I realised that I needed to tell it to use the PS/2 protocol, we were in business again.
At this point, I have an Ultra5 running Debian Linux on a 64-bit 2.6 kernel with X. I am a happy customer - this server will hopefully run for years!
My current XF86Config-4 file has stanzas for both 2.4 and 2.6 kernel device maps, so you could just chop and change which are selected in the ServerLayout stanza as appropriate. Download my XF86Config-4 here.
Next steps will be to install and configure Apache, MySQL etc., but that's for another day. If there's anything unusual involved , I'll post it.
PSSH is another open source ssh client for Palm OS 5 - works fine on the Treo 650, apparently.
Monday, February 06, 2006
I'm real pissed off with having no iTunes client on Linux, as my entire music library is available from a mt-daapd server at home. This is a great solution, as I mostly use Macs and can stream my music wherever I am.
However, I have a crappy old intel laptop that I thought I might use as a dedicated device for streaming music in my front room (it's too crappy for real use as a computer any more - Celeron 333, maxed out at 128MB RAM, 10GB, 800x600 display!). Trouble is, due to the lack of a Linux iTunes client, I have to run Windows on it. :(
I'm now thinking that perhaps running iTunes under WINE might be a plan, and Frank's Corner has some notes that indicate this is a real possibility. I'll post back if I ever get round to working on it (I'm also having problems with WPA under Linux with it right now).
However, I have a crappy old intel laptop that I thought I might use as a dedicated device for streaming music in my front room (it's too crappy for real use as a computer any more - Celeron 333, maxed out at 128MB RAM, 10GB, 800x600 display!). Trouble is, due to the lack of a Linux iTunes client, I have to run Windows on it. :(
I'm now thinking that perhaps running iTunes under WINE might be a plan, and Frank's Corner has some notes that indicate this is a real possibility. I'll post back if I ever get round to working on it (I'm also having problems with WPA under Linux with it right now).
F-Spot is a photo management tool for Gnome - kind of an iPhoto for Linux.
