Archive for the ‘Debian’ Category

As some people have noticed, Debian has switched from the old Grub 0.9x series to the new Grub2 and where some things look like business as usual on the surface you quickly learn they are not. Case in point, changing the resolution of the grub menu and the terminal. This used to be accomplished by editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and amending VGA=791. However, trying this with the new Grub2 does nothing. It took me a while to find a descent explanation and tutorial on how to do this in Grub2. I found one from Harrison3001′s blog. I will summarize the steps I had taken to get the desired effect; however, I highly recommend reading the post to get a better understanding of what is different between Grub2 and Grub Legacy.

first as root edit /etc/default/grub and uncomment (remove the # before) and change the value to look like this:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1280×800

Then as root edit /etc/grub.d/00_header and find this line:

set gfxmode=${GRUB_GFXMODE}

insert below it this line:

set gfxpayload=keep

Once that is done run as root:

update-grub

Now reboot and you should have the Grub2 menu and the terminal set to the new monitor resolution.

I have been having problems with Firefox/Swiftfox/Iceweasel and java on my Debian Squeeze box. There are a couple of issues at hand. The first is that the plugin package for java simply creates the appropriate simlink to the plugin provided by the parent java package and is dependent upon Iceweasel. This is a problem for me because I prefer the more streamlined and up to date packages available for Swiftfox and really do not want to have to have both on my system. the second problem is when I created the simlink manually and point to a java test page I get an error loading java. I did some reading and found out there are network issues with ipv6 and java which seems to be a common problem. I found this post and followed its suggestion. Everything seemed to look okay at the test page. When i tried to login to this WordPress blog (which uses WordPress Fluency) the browser crashes with a segmentation fault. At that point I am absolutely frustrated with the whole nonsenses and simply remove java from my system and install the open source IcedTea by installing it with apt:

sudo aptitude install icedtea6-plugin

which will remove Sun Java 6 and install the appropriate IcedTea packages. Now that is done Java applets and Java powered web applications seem to work just fine.

So I have migrated from XFCE to GNOME for the time being. I might find the time to explain my reasoning. Some of you might be familiar with the nice menu system in Linux Mint which features dynamic linking features and easy searching. I was wondering if I could import their menu system for GNOME to Debian and found the blog post at bobdom_lx at task3 dot cc. It worked for me and it might work for you.

There are two  processes to installing ATI proprietary drivers the hard way Debian Squeeze is similar to what is done to enable nVidia drivers. I call this the hard way because there are a lot steps and it requires pulling packages from unstable and compiling the module with module assistant. The hard way has not always worked for me. The easy way is installing the driver provided by ATI themselves.

THE HARD WAY

The first thing to do is to enable the unstable repositories to your /etc/apt/source.list:

# UNSTABLE
deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

Now run aptitude update then you need to set the priorities of your repositories so that apt-get upgrade does not default to unstable by editing /etc/apt/prefernces:

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -1

Now it is time to install the components needed for fglrx (ATI Driver) from unstable (as root):

aptitude -t unstable install fglrx-source

The next step is to make sure module assistant is installed from testing/squeeze and create the module(as root):

aptitude install module-assistant

m-a a-i fglrx

Once that is completed configure Xorg. Assuming you are in X, switch to a new terminal by pressing ALT-CTL FX (where FX represents f1 – f12) and implement the new driver.

Login as root:

invoke-rc.d gdm stop

once that is done create the xorg.conf file

Xorg -config

now edit /root/new.config.org and replace the display device from radeonhd to fglrx. As mentioned above I have had mixed resolts with this method. Sometimes it seems to work sometimes it doesnt. However, downloading directly from ATI seems to always do the trick.

THE EASY WAY

download the appropriate file from here. Then you need to make sure it is exacutible and install from terminal:

chmod +x (filenamehere)

as root:

./(filenamehere)

this will pop up an automated install script to follow and once dead you should simply need to reboot you computer.

The QuickCam c500 is supported out of the box in Debian Squeeze by the UVC driver. However, one issue I have encountered is the built in microphone is auto detected by alas and overrides my sound card, forcing me to issue the command (as root):

alsa force-reload

to solve this problem edit /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf and add:

options snd_usb_audio index=1

Reboot and hopefully all is well.