Posts Tagged ‘squeeze’

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.

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.

Make sure sources are enabled and you have contrib and non-free enabled in /etc/apt/srouces.list and include the unstable branch with squeeze.

deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

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

Now update apt.

as root:

echo ‘APT::Default-Release “testing”;’ >/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00defaultrelease

aptitude module-assistant linux-source-2.6.30

apt-get -t unstable install fglrx-control fglrx-driver fglrx-source

m-a a-i fglrx

aticonfig –initial

restart X or reboot system

Might work on lenny and/or 64bit variations

NOTE: These instruction apply to the 2.6.32-2 kernels

Make sure sources are enabled and you have contrib and non-free enabled in /etc/apt/srouces.list and include the unstable branch with squeeze.

deb http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

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

as root edit /etc/apt/prefernces and add:

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

as root:

aptitude install nvidia-kernel-source/unstable

aptitude install module-assistant

m-a prepare

m-a a-i nvidia-kernel-source

aptitude -t unstable install nvidia-glx nvidia-libvdpau1 nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig

OPTIONAL: remove or quote out the unstable/sid entry in /etc/apt/source.list and run apt-get update

as root

nvidia-xconfig
mv /etc/X11/XF86Config /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Start or restart Xorg (might require reboot)