I’ve posted some extensive notes on all the post-installation configuration steps needed to make an Ubuntu/Dapper standard install the way I like it — dual head, personal & corporate email, network manager, f-spot, etc
Check it out: My Ubuntu/Dapper Configuration
This is a follow on to last week’s post about Dual Monitor on Ubuntu/Dapper
I’ve been using the xorg.conf-ati.20060621 configuration at work with two monitors, but when at home the laptop didn’t degrade down to working with the one LCD monitor of the laptop. So, here is a new configuration that lets you switch between a single monitor mode (1024×768) or one large one (2048×768) that can be ‘slid over to’ by using the mouse. The key press is Control-Alt-+ (the + over on the side where the number entry is). On the laptop, it is Control-Alt-blue_Fn-?
Here the is xorg.conf file:
xorg.conf-ati-works-with-one-monitor.20060624
I’ve noticed a number of people asking about dual head support in dapper on #ubuntu, so here is my setup:
This hp/compaq nc6000 laptop/notebook that has an ATI card:
$ sudo lspci|grep VGA
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
I have two head monitors working with both the ‘ati’ and the closed source ‘fglrx’ drivers.
Here are the configuration files:
Before you start hacking around with your xorg.conf, save a copy somewhere safe.
I just picked up a Creative Webcam Live! which does a reasonable 1024×768 snapshot and 640×480 video resolution for $49. At first it looked like I’d have to build the spca5xx kernel module for Ubuntu/Dapper, but it is now included in the default kernel & modules packages.
Just plug it in and start using one of the many video capture packages like camorama, webcam, camstream, motion, gqcam, etc and start playing around!
FWIW here below the fold are my loaded kernel modules:
My November 2005 copy of the Linux Journal arrived Monday with the
Reader’s Choice Awards results — HP ProLiant wins Favorite Server category!
Favorite Server
- HP ProLiant
- Monarch Empro Custom Rack Server
- Unisys ES7000 Family
A note to HP: please take this first-place win here, where second-place votes were less than half of what you received, as proof that we like
your boxes, so you can cut out the pointless marketing poo-flinging at
Sun, already.
Photo of DL380 and sidebar: “Last year, the HP ProLiant BL20p G2 won the
Editor’s Choice Award for Server Hardware. Now the readers are singing
the ProLiant’s praises.”
Yay team!
I finally got around to hooking up a second monitor to my Ubuntu/Breezy laptop and convinced xorg.conf to ‘do the right thing’.
The compaq nc6000 notebook has the “ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9600/9700 M10/M11 (RV350 NP)” video card
and has a video out at the back.
Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf with Xinerama (move windows from one screen to another). The aging Compaq monitor sits to the left of the nc6000 laptop.
Here is a copy of my configuration: xorg.conf-dual-head-xinerama
In Ubuntu ‘hoary’ it appears that it isn’t possible to set up a printer separator (sometimes called a burst page or Job Sheet) for a CUPs print queue. The Ubuntu print gui, (System->Administration->Printing) just doesn’t expose that option. Usually it can be set in though the web interface to CUPs (localhost:631), but that is disabled.
To enable a JobSheet, edit the file /etc/cups/printers.conf to look
something like this:
# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.23
# Written by cupsd on Thu Aug 4 11:03:47 2005
<defaultprinter LaserJet-9000>
Info LaserJet-9000
DeviceURI socket://zko03018.americas.cpqcorp.net:9100
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets unclassified none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</defaultprinter>
The unclassified refers to a file in /usr/share/cups/banners/ that is just a chunk of PostScript that gets prepended to the print jobs. If you feel like hacking PostScript, you can create your own burst page.
The stock Ubuntu repositories don’t include the w32codecs (wmvdmod.dll, etc) so xine, mplayer can play WMV and other formats. Basically the package puts 127 DLLs in /usr/lib/w32codecs.
So, I temporarily added the following line to my /etc/apt/sources.list
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main
And then did this:
apt-get update && apt-get install w32codecs
I then commented that line out since and apt-get upgrade would have picked up a bunch of updated packages from that repository.
I’ve been running Debian/Sarge (now the stable branch) on my laptop for quite a while now and its time to try a new distro for dailyl use — Ubuntu. This week I’ve been running Ubuntu ‘Hoary’ and the transition has been very smooth.
The only configuration issue was I wanted to use ALSA on this HP Compaq nc6000 laptop. The install did detect the sound device, but did separate the speaker from
the headphone controls.
phzi on #ubuntu pointed me to the unofficial UbuntuGuide.org, specifically the section configuresoundproperly. Those instructions were perfect.
I’d upgraded to the latest iPodder (v2.1) on my Ubuntu (‘Hoary’) laptop today.
# tar jxvf iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2
# cd iPodder-linux
# sudo ./install.sh
(take the defaults)
The only glitch is wx libraries aren’t in the default PYTHONPATH, so set this environment variable either at the command line, or pop it in ~/.bashrc
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/wx-2.5.3-gtk2-unicode/:$PYTHONPATH-unicode:$PYTHONPATH
Now clean up a little bit…
$ cd ../
$ rm -rf iPodder-linux iPodder-linux-2.1.tar.bz2
Now, you are all set to start iPodder!
$ (nohup iPodder&) # or add it to a menu bar button
Getting closer to not needing any special knowledge to get iPodder running on a GNU/Linux distro…
- – - – -
Just for searchers, this is the problem you see if you don’t set the PYTHONPATH:
$ iPodder
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "iPodderGui.py", line 38, in ?
import iPodderWindows
File "/opt/iPodder/iPodderWindows.py", line 4, in ?
import listctrl as listmix
File "/opt/iPodder/listctrl.py", line 296, in ?
EVT_DOPOPUPMENU = wx.PyEventBinder(wxEVT_DOPOPUPMENU, 0)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'PyEventBinder'