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Intel ( 4965 ) WLAN & Linux

tom — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:13:42 +0000

WLAN disconnects. Every now and then.
Sometimes every hour, sometimes every 5 minutes.

Log:
Microcode SW error detected. Restarting 0x82000000. Firmware version: 228.61.2.24

I had the problem with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)
and with Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), too.
Maybe there’s a problem with the driver and the hardware encryption of the chipset?

And because I never want to search for this again, here’s what did it for me:

Create /etc/modprobe.d/iwlagn.conf with this content:
options iwlagn swcrypto=1

Reboot -> no more problems : )

Found at: Ubuntu Forum Community

MySQL Replication Failed

tom — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:40:28 +0000

I wanted to replicate a MySQL-Database using the integrated Master -> Slave mechanism.

Master-System: openSUSE 10.2, MySQL 5.0.26
The Slave-Setup: openSUSE 11.1, MySQL 5.0.67

This is quite easy to setup usually. This time, I almost had a nervous breakdown.
On the slave side the replication just didn’t start. The logfile showed these errors:
090421 20:49:28 [ERROR] Slave: Error 'Duplicate entry '790233' for key 1' on query. ... 090421 20:49:28 [ERROR] Error running query, slave SQL thread aborted. Fix the problem, and restart the slave SQL thread with "SLAVE START". We stopped at log 'mysql-bin.000008' position 30408893

As checking the database and making sure that there were no “duplicate entries”,
did not bring up any results, I found something curious (after hours and hours).

On the Master-System:

mysql> SHOW MASTER STATUS; +- - - - - - - - + - - - - - + - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - -+ | File | Position | Binlog_Do_DB | Binlog_Ignore_DB | +- - - - - - - - + - - - - - + - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - -+ | mysql-bin.0001 | 10034 | mydb,mydb | | +- - - - - - - - + - - - - - + - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - -+
Why is the database listed two times? In the configuration it’s only used one time:

binlog-do-db = mydb

After spending some time on google, I found the reason:
http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=20748
It’s a bug : / MySQL (in that version) is reading the configuration file twice.

If installing a newer version is not possible, you can use this workaround:
Start MySQL with the option --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf
This advices MySQL to ONLY use this config file.

When console columns and lines are not enough

tom — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:06:10 +0000

If you want to use a higher resolution on your linux console, you have to add the specific option while loading the kernel.
i.e: kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25 root=/dev/sda3 resume=/dev/sda2 vga=0×0325

Problem: The settings differ depending on your graphics card.
But: There is an easy way: hwinfo

[ sudo ] hwinfo −−framebuffer

Example output:
Mode 0×0307: 1280×1024 (+1280), 8 bits
Mode 0x031a: 1280×1024 (+2560), 16 bits
Mode 0x031b: 1280×1024 (+5120), 24 bits
Mode 0×0305: 1024×768 (+1024), 8 bits
Mode 0×0317: 1024×768 (+2048), 16 bits
Mode 0×0318: 1024×768 (+4096), 24 bits
Mode 0×0312: 640×480 (+2560), 24 bits
Mode 0×0314: 800×600 (+1600), 16 bits
Mode 0×0315: 800×600 (+3200), 24 bits
Mode 0×0301: 640×480 (+640), 8 bits
Mode 0×0303: 800×600 (+832), 8 bits
Mode 0×0311: 640×480 (+1280), 16 bits

Thanks to Gerd [de] for the hint.

SUSE Linux 10.1 discontinued and out of support

tom — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:34:09 +0000

SUSE Linux 10.1 has reached End of Life : /

Quote from the opensuse-security-announce mailing list:

With the release of an mysql security fix on August 13 we have released
the last update for SUSE Linux 10.1. (Actually 10.1 was discontinued on
May 31st, but the queue took a bit longer to flush from all updates.)

See: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2008-08/msg00004.html

VMware Server [1.06] on SLES 10 x86_64

tom — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:52:41 +0000

OS: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 (x86_64) [64 bit]

VMware Server [1.06] depends on some 32 bit software:
+ xorg-x11-libs-32bit-6.9.x (should automatically add the other packages, too)
- expat-32bit-2.0.x
- fontconfig-32bit-2.3.x
- freetype2-32bit-2.1.x
- glibc-32bit-2.x
- ncurses-32bit-5.x
- zlib-32bit-1.2.x

Additionally gcc, make, kernel headers, etc. have to be installed to run vmware-config-tools.pl properly.

If you forgot installing the 32bit packages, an error like this might appear:
The correct version of one or more libraries needed to run VMware Server may be missing. This is the output of ldd /usr/bin/vmware: linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000) libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xf7f1f000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xf7f1b000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xf7f08000) libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xf7e0a000) libXtst.so.6 => not found libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xf7dfa000) libXt.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXt.so.6 (0xf7da3000) libICE.so.6 => /usr/lib/libICE.so.6 (0xf7d8a000) libSM.so.6 => /usr/lib/libSM.so.6 (0xf7d81000) libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xf7d78000) libz.so.1 => /lib/libz.so.1 (0xf7d65000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xf7c38000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf7f5d000) libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xf7c35000) libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xf7c2f000)

Update June 24rd, 2008:
Disable powersaved or any other cpu throttling software – otherwise you’ll get in trouble with time (running too fast / slow) within the vm guests. VMware Tools should be installed (in the virtual [guest] machine), anyway.

HP Scanjet G2710 w/ Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

tom — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:58:42 +0000

Today, I bought a new scanner – of course without checking linux compatibility : /
hp – a well known brand. Description says “Works with Max OS X, Win Vista, XP, 2000″.
Linux wasn’t mentioned, but that’s not unusual at all.

The default xsane backend package (<- v.1.0.19 [delivered with Ubuntu Hardy])
didn’t find a device, so I tried installing the beta release of the hp3900 sane backends (drivers).
This version is still beta status, but got my new scanner up and running : )

HowTo:
Get the latest drivers from the sourceforge project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp3900-series/

Unpack the files and change into the new directory:
tar xfz hp3900-series_0.12.tar.gz cd hp3900-series_0.12/

Install the drivers:
sudo ./INSTALL.sh
application: 2 – SANE Backend
distro: 3 – Ubuntu

Add your username to the scanner group:
sudo adduser your-user-name scanner

Start XSane : )

PS: Fastest and best results with 200 or 300 dpi

Update June 22th, 2008:
I forgot to mention that it only works with resolutions equal and less than 600dpi

Ubuntu 7.10 – The Gutsy Gibbon

tom — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:45:31 +0000

I’m absolutely fascinated by the new Ubuntu release (18 October 2007).

New features, that I like:

Repositories are very easy to add
Hardware detection is great
Improved Gui, nice desktop effects
Support for WEP, WPA, PPTP, etc. out of the box
…

I just installed the system and it was never easier to set up wireless lan or a vpn connection in a linux distribution… Keep up the good work!

Screenshots of my desktop:

(click to enlarge)

Using multiple logiles in one awstats config

tom — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:11:23 +0000

With awstats you can create great statistics and graphs about the access of your website. If you want to use more than one logfile in a configuration file, you can use logresolvemerge.pl which is included in the awstats package.

i.e.:
LogFile="/path2/awstats/tools/logresolvemerge.pl /var/log/apache/access_log /var/log/apache/another_log |"

Test your configuration:
/path2/awstats.pl -config=sitename -update

xt:Commerce & suPHP

tom — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:23:45 +0000

After installing suPHP a few days ago, I had the first problem with a xt:Commerce installation. That’s what happened on a SuSE 10.0 system:

When trying to access the pages, it stayed blank and there were some wierd errors in the apache logfile:
[Mon Apr 02 16:44:48 2007] [error] [client x.x.x.x] PHP Fatal error: %v%v() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'DIR_WS_INCLUDESfilenames.php' (include_path='/usr/share/php5') in /path/to/user/html/includes/application_top.php on line 57

Reason was found quite quick:
The include path only had the default path and didn’t include the webroots any longer : (

Solution: change config in /etc/php5/cli/php.ini .
From:
include_path = "/usr/share/php5"
To:
include_path = ".:/usr/share/php5"

. = Homedir of webroot
: = next path

Installation of suPHP using Apache2 & PHP5

tom — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:13:44 +0000

suPHP is a nice tool for executing PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners. It’s comparable to suexec (which is for perl scripts). When using this tool, you don’t need SafeMode any longer, etc…

Tested on: SuSE 10.0, openSuSE 10.1
Prerequisites: php5-fastcgi, autoconf, gcc

in openSuSE 10.1, I had to (soft)link some files:
ln -s /usr/include/apr-1/* /usr/include/apache2

configure in openSuSE 10.1:
./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs2 --with-php=/usr/bin/php5 \ --with-logfile=/var/log/apache2/suphp.log --with-min-uid=30 \ --with-min-gid=30 --with-apache-user=wwwrun \ --with-apr=/usr/bin/apr-1-config --with-setid-mode=owner \ --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc

configure in SuSE 10.0:
./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs2 --with-php=/usr/bin/php5 \ --with-logfile=/var/log/apache2/suphp.log --with-min-uid=30 \ --with-min -gid=30 --with-apache-user=wwwrun \ --with-apr=/usr/bin/apr-config --with-setid-mode=owner \ --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc

After that, usual way:
make; make install

Check your configuration at /etc/suphp.conf. For me, it looks someway like this:
[global] logfile=/var/log/apache2/suphp.log loglevel=info webserver_user=wwwrun docroot=/srv/www/htdocs allow_file_group_writeable=false allow_file_others_writeable=false allow_directory_group_writeable=false allow_directory_others_writeable=false check_vhost_docroot=false errors_to_browser=false env_path=/bin:/usr/bin umask=0022 min_uid=30 min_gid=30 ; [handlers] ;Handler for php-scripts x-httpd-php=php:/srv/www/cgi-bin/php5 ;Handler for CGI-scripts x-suphp-cgi=execute:!self

Add suPHP module to your apache config (/etc/sysconfig/apache2):
APACHE_MODULES="access .... php5 suphp"

Create a new file to tell apache to use suPHP:
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.local
php_admin_value engine off suPHP_Engine on AddHandler x-httpd-php .php .php3 .php4 .php5 suPHP_AddHandler x-httpd-php

Include that in your apache configuration (/etc/sysconfig/apache2):
APACHE_CONF_INCLUDE_FILES="httpd.conf.local"

After restarting apache, it should be done ; )