The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Here's an in-depth question.

I have a Chaintech AV710 sound card (Envy24HT-S). I can get either analog sound to work, or optical sound to work, but not both at the same time. I have an .asoundrc that gets my spdif working, but it disables all my analog.

This is my .asoundrc

code:

#

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,1"
format S32_LE
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 8096

rate 44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 0
device 1
}

#

I didn't write this script, I found it over the hours of searching for answers on this. SPDIF only works when this script is active.

I have ALSA 1.0.15 using snd_ice1724

edit: both work at the same time in XP, for what that's worth.

Mysterious Aftertaste fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Dec 22, 2007

# ¿ Dec 22, 2007 11:56

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:42

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Is there a way to get the "tab" shortcut from most terminal emulators into ssh?

I mean, I could use putty, but it seems silly to start a new window to do everything I could do with the terminal, other than tab shortcutting.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2008 04:26

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

bitprophet posted:

Can you be more specific about what you mean by "tab shortcut"? As in, an example? Do you mean you want to type "ssh my<tab>" and have it expand into e.g. "ssh myserver" where "myserver" is a hostname you've ssh'd to previously? Or what?

Yeah, sorry. That's what I meant...

user@server$ cd up<tab>
would fill it in to say "cd updates"

But I also just realized I was in the wrong directory, and the file I was trying to <tab> to complete didn't even exist... :downsgun:

That or I wasn't using proper case. Either way, I'm retarded.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2008 20:50

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Mr. DNA posted:

Is this a limitation? I'm running Gnome (ubuntu) and Amarok, and there are no problems whatsoever. I guess I had to install some KDE libs, but that's certainly not a hassle if you use Synaptic or something equivalent.

It can run fine under gnome, yes. It just will use a bit more resources.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2008 21:19

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

ZeeBoi posted:

Lovely. Ubuntu 7.10 does everything right except sound on my laptop. Sound used to work but wireless didn't, now it's the other way round.

Fedora 8 does sound but no wireless. Ditto with openSUSE.

Wee...

Did you update the kernel headers (for 2.6.22-14-generic)? The latest updates didn't properly depmod.

If you updated, run

sudo depmod

and restart.

Mysterious Aftertaste fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Feb 25, 2008

# ¿ Feb 25, 2008 16:31

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

feld posted:

Creative released their own drivers for X-Fi in Linux but only support AMD64.

That's quite odd.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2008 22:32

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Is there a log file that will tell me why X sometimes won't restart with ctrl-alt-bksp?

edit: I think I found what's causing it.

code:

Mar  4 16:07:55 draxduo kernel: [  541.674442] smb_get_length: Invalid NBT packet, code=a2
Mar  4 16:08:25 draxduo kernel: [  571.655821] smb_add_request: request [ef190200, mid=7345] timed out!

Could Samba timing out cause X not to restart? It just hangs at the desktop background, never gets to command line.

Mysterious Aftertaste fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Mar 4, 2008

# ¿ Mar 4, 2008 22:15

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Here's a dumb question.

How can I start a process within SSH and not have it close the process when I terminate the SSH connection?

# ¿ Mar 7, 2008 22:12

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Thunar (xfce4 file browser) is constantly leaving defunct processes whenever I use Totem.

Is there anyway I can get this to stop?

Mysterious Aftertaste fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Mar 16, 2008

# ¿ Mar 16, 2008 06:13

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

I personally like Quod Libet. It's GTK+/Python, very similar to the K-based amaroK.

Also check Exaile and GMPC.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2008 21:25

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

This is kind of on topic. 2.6.25 kernel released today.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2008 17:09

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Sits on Pilster posted:

Linux super-newbie checking in. I have a question that, from the little I know about Linux and its hardware pickiness (compared to Windows), I expect is going to be pretty machine-specific.

I have come into possession of an older Toshiba laptop, model Tecra A2-S336. To make a long story short, it is my computer inept roommate's old computer, and he just got a new MacBook because he got fed up with all the computer's spyware. So me, being the relatively computer savvy person that I am, decided I was just going to reformat and reinstall XP Pro to make my life easier.

Here's the catch: he has long since lost the OS cds that the computer game with, and I made the uneducated decision of assuming that because his computer had XP Pro installed already on it, I could simply use my copy of XP and his serial number and I would basically have myself a new-old computer. Guess what? I have the upgrade and I don't have $300 to shell out for a full version.

I've used Linux a very minimal amount at work, and have since really wanted to have a Linux machine that I could play around on, maybe learn the ropes a bit. I figured this would be my chance.

So, finally, we reach my request, specifically. I'd like some suggestions that will point me towards a free, relatively easy-to-use Linux distro that will work on the machine I mentioned before. I've done a bit of research on various sites on this question, and have had names like Ubuntu, Fedora and Mandrake come up, but I'm not sure how well these will work with the Tecra A2. I figured I'd put it out here, as I've never been let down by technical support questions answered by you smart SA folks.

Tecra A2-S336 Detailed Specs:
Intel Pentium M Processor 715 (1.50GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB)
15.0� XGA,
512MB (512MBx1)
60GB (5400 RPM)
Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (Intel 855GME)
DVD-CDRW SD-R2512
Intel 802.11g Wireless

I'm trying to find more detailed specification info, and will update this post as I find it. Thanks beforehand for any responses/suggestions.

I have nearly the exact same specs on my IBM. I recommend Xubuntu. It does run Ubuntu, but it's about the speed XP was. Xubuntu is pretty blazing fast for such an old laptop. If not, get some more RAM, and Ubuntu will be good.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2008 20:07

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

edit: I shouldn't have even posted. I fixed it. Added all_generic_ide to boot params and it boots very quickly. Apparently some bug that was around until 2.6.25ish.

Hardy's kernel doesn't like my DVD/CDRW. It worked fine with 2.6.22-16

Basically it does this a bunch

code:

[  152.939225] ata4: soft resetting link
[  157.964092] ata4: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[  157.964094] ata4: reset failed, giving up
[  157.964097] ata4.00: disabled
[  157.964108] ata4: EH complete

And then boots. But it takes like a minute of failing before it boots.

I'm trying to research it but Ubuntu's forums are down right now.

Mysterious Aftertaste fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jun 3, 2008

# ¿ Jun 3, 2008 01:25

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

I think you have to make a local mount and then add the files to the amarok library.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2008 11:59

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Okay, my sound card has two separate DACs. And this has been a difficult question to google.

I couldn't care less about the lovely onboard quality one, but there's a 192KHz Wolfson DAC on there too. Now when I run anything under wine or firefox it uses the lovely DAC. At least the important things like music runs through the good one, but switching the plug between ports to use ventrilo is kind of annoying.

My .asoundrc if it helps...

code:

#

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,1"
format S32_LE
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 8196

}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 0
device 1
}


#

I don't really know how to edit the .asoundrc (I picked it up from some site). Would it be related to "hw;0:1" ? Do I need a separate entry for "hw;0:0" (assuming 0:0 is the first)?

# ¿ Jun 15, 2008 23:49

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Hrmm.

I updated Transmission and it lost its tray-icon. The previous version had no window border icon (or applications list icon). Can't win them all I guess.

FWIW, the icon isn't present in the Xfce menu anymore either (it's just a blank).

# ¿ Jun 28, 2008 23:53

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

Running Xfce on my laptop uses about 90MB with nothing non-essential running.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2008 13:38

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:42

Mysterious Aftertaste: May 20, 2004; So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink...

So I need to route to a certain interface based on port.

I know how to use route to use a certain interface based on IP, but I don't think 'route' can do by port.

edit: nevermind. I swear every time I post in this thread I figure it out 2 minutes later.

Mysterious Aftertaste fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Oct 4, 2008

# ¿ Oct 4, 2008 19:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible