The Linux Experiment

Graphics Drivers

Continuing where I left off in my previous posts I now had a somewhat working desktop but a few things still had to be done. For one I am running this on my laptop and while the open source radeon drivers are actually pretty decent they’re just not quite good enough when it comes to power management. Thankfully the Linux closed source drivers are up to the job.

After reading through these two sites I was able to install the closed source drivers and get full control over my graphics card. To be perfectly honest I’m not exactly sure what steps got me to this point but I do know it was a mixture of the two sites.

Wireless Networking

After careful consideration I had come to the conclusion thought I had bricked my wireless. Worse yet after following the guide here (even the parts specific to KDE) I just couldn’t seem to get it to work. Thankfully I stumbled upon this guide which instructed me to install networking components for KDE. Apparently once I had installed this package all was good.

Flash

Flash was actually incredibly easy to install. All I had to do was enter the following command in a root terminal and then restart Firefox.

emerge adobe-flash

Java

Another big install was the official Oracle Java JRE and JDK. To install just the JRE run the command dev-java/sun-jre-bin. If you want the JDK as well then run the command dev-java/sun-jdk. The only weird part about this was that this package is now considered restricted. To work around it simply download the bin file from Oracle and place it in /usr/portage/distfiles before running the command.

More to Come

There is still plenty more to do, like install LibreOffice and figure out why my computer currently can’t play audio CDs. I am however thankful that at this point I am at least a bit better off than some other fellow Linux Experiment participants.

My Desktop So Far

The high CPU load was because I had just finished compiling a bunch of stuff

Do your GTK applications (i.e. Firefox) look like something designed in the 90′s in KDE? I think I can help you.

I installed the latest Firefox, (not the one in the screenshot, I stole this.) and was very disappointed to see something like the following:

Tyler pointed me to the Gentoo guide here, which helped me find out which packages I needed.

If you install Chakra-Gtk-Config, and either oxygen-gtk or qtcurve (make sure to download the gtk2 theme), you will have better looking GTK applications in no time. Note that there are probably tons of other GTK themes for KDE4, these are just some suggestions to get you started.

That is much better.

So I wanted to install XMMS in Linux From Scratch, as it’s one of the more reliable MP3 players and one of the first multimedia Linux apps I’ve used. It’s very reminiscent of Winamp 2:

If you would also like to get it installed, you’ll need the source and glib-1.2.10. Then, check out a common problem when installing glib, and a patch to fix the ./configure step.

Fixing libmng with -fPIC

In preparation for getting KDE4 (and Qt4, and all the other dependencies) working with my Linux from Scratch install, I noticed an issue when compiling libmng:

/usr/bin/ld: libmng_chunk_io.o: relocation R_X86_64_32 against `.rodata' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
libmng_chunk_io.o: could not read symbols: Bad valuecollect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [libmng.so.1.1.0.9] Error 1

To fix this, you’ll have to edit the makefile in /sources/libmng-1.0.10/makefiles/makefile.linux as per this osdir mailing list thread. Line 47 currently reads:

FLAGS=-I$(ZLIBINC) -I$(JPEGINC) -I$(LCMSINC) -Wall -O3 -funroll-loops \

Add the -fPIC flag instead:

FLAGS=-I$(ZLIBINC) -I$(JPEGINC) -I$(LCMSINC) -Wall -O3 -fPIC -funroll-loops \

Then change back to /sources/libmng-1.0.10 and run make clean; cp makefiles/makefile.linux Makefile && make to successfully compile the library.

And Xine

Xine appears to be missing a header, causing an xmcc compilation error. Check out the original solution and add the line with the + where indicated:

Index: src/video_out/xxmc.h
src/video_out/xxmc.h 2011-01-23 17:55:01.333928003 +0100
+++ src/video_out/xxmc.h 2011-01-23 17:54:48.509926463 +0100
@@ -79,6 +79,7 @@
#include <X11/extensions/Xvlib.h>
#ifdef HAVE_VLDXVMC
#include <X11/extensions/vldXvMC.h>
+ #include <X11/extensions/XvMClib.h>
#else
#include <X11/extensions/XvMClib.h>
#include <X11/extensions/XvMC.h>

If you’re going through the Beyond Linux From Scratch guide, and run into this error while compiling qca-2.0.3 (and I assume many other versions of qca), I think I can help.

You don’t seem to have ‘make’ or ‘gmake’ in your PATH.
Cannot proceed.

The fix is relatively easy. Just make sure to have which installed on the machine. Jake found this out the hard way by looking through the configure script. Doing this experiment on Linux From Scratch has really given me an appreciation for distributions that come with basic utilities such as which.

Since which is very difficult to find on Google, here is a link: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/general/which.html

Just a quick note tonight – I finally managed to get a bootable Gentoo system installed!

After my last post, things were looking pretty grim. Instead of continuing to perpetuate the recompile/reboot cycle, I decided to start fresh, in hopes that I had simply missed a step the first time around. With this in mind, I started back at page one of the Gentoo Handbook and worked my way through the entire thing.

When it came time to compile my kernel, I opted for a slightly less error-prone method, and started off by installing Genkernel, a tool that automates some of the kernel creation steps. When running it however, I was sure to pass the –menuconfig parameter, which gave me full control over what modules were included in the final product.

Next, I followed the kernel tutorials in the Gentoo Handbook and on the Gentoo Wiki Asus P5Q-E page. This ensured that I included every component that was necessary for my system.

Once I rebooted the machine, a login prompt came up the first time. Great success indeed!

One little gotcha that’s important to note at this step. On my first login, I didn’t have any network access. Two things that might help:

1. Open up /etc/conf.d/net in nano and add a line like config_eth0=”dhcp” for each network interface in your machine, where eth0 is the name of the interface. This tells the machine to use DHCP when initializing the device. On most home networks, this will get you an IP address.
2. Make sure that any required modules are loaded. I have two network interfaces. One uses the sky2 module, and the other uses skge. You can check to ensure that these are loaded with the command lsmod | grep sky2 where sky2 is the name of the module that you’re looking for. If it isn’t loaded, run modprobe sky2 to get it up and running. Note that you may need to recompile your kernel with support for the module in question if you missed it first time ’round.

Tomorrow, I’ll compile an X11 server, and hopefully get started on the GNOME desktop environment. Christ there’s still a lot to do…

So like Tyler, I’ve decided to run Gentoo. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

My experience thus far can be summed up with a single word: frustrating. I spent my first day working through the (excellent) Gentoo Handbook. Like Jake, I found it handy to have run lshw on my system prior to installing Gentoo. This provided me with a list of my hardware that I could refer back to during the installation process, and saved me a few headaches.

At first, my live-cd environment lacked a network connection. My machine has two network interfaces in it. One uses the sky2 kernel module, while the other uses skge. I ran:

modprobe skge
net-setup eth1
[follow on-screen instructions]
ping google.com

and was successful.

On that first day of dicking about, I managed to get all the way to Chapter 10: Configuring the Bootloader. It was at this point, in subchapter 10.d, that I was instructed to reboot the system, as though it would be a relaxing, daisy-scented walk in the park. Not so.

Apparently, the kernel that I’ve managed to compile does not recognize the SATA interface on my motherboard. When I attempt to boot, GRUB hands control off to the kernel, which goes looking for my root partition on /dev/sda3. It then dies with a message like

Kernel panic – not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,3)

This error message is the bane of my existence.

After a great deal of head-vs-desk action, approximately 37 kernel compilations, and a great deal of googling, I managed to find a Gentoo wiki entry that instructs users of my chipset on how to compile their very own working kernel. Tonight, I intend to follow it, in hopes that I can get the system to boot some time soon.

At this rate, I’ll be lucky to have a working desktop by the end of the experiment.

What Next? Chroot

Once you get into the chroot environment, you will get the incredibly annoying PC speaker beep every time you foul up a command.

When compiling glibc in section 6.9, first ensure that there’s no “lib64″ directory in your root; for some reason I had a symlink of lib64 pointing to itself. Make sure you’ve run the sed script correctly or the “make install” portion will fail. Specifically, use -Wl (the letter l) in the command, not -W1 (the number 1). After you fix the idiotic transposition of 1 and L, remove both the glibc-build and glibc-2.14.1 directories under /sources and restart section 6.9 from the beginning. If you don’t restart from the beginning, you’ll still get “glibc cannot find dynamic linker” even though the file exists in /lib64.

Keep Watching What You Type

In section 6.10, when running the grep command to ensure the correct startfiles are used, make sure you use [1in] with a one and not [lin] with an L in the command:

grep -o '/usr/lib.*/crt[1in].*succeeded' dummy.log

In section 6.11 and 6.12, I had to run ldconfig before the new libraries were picked up. It seems like the same problem encountered on this mailing list but I’d confirmed that my PATH was set correctly. The same applied for section 6.22; run ldconfig before attempting the configure/make/make install process for E2fsprogs.

For procps-3.2.8, when applying the sed command in chapter 6.27.1, make sure you’ve copied and pasted it (or at least check your typing.) I missed a forward slash in the regex about four times, causing an error during make:

...undefined reference to `get_pid_digits'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

But hey, at least I have things sort of working:

My next few posts will deal with specific problems with reasonable solutions.

Hi Everyone,

If you don’t remember me, I’m Dave. Last time for the experiment I used SuSE, which I regretted. This time I decided to use Linux From Scratch like Jake, as I couldn’t think of another distribution that I haven’t used in some way or another before. Let me tell you… It’s been quite the experience so far.

The Initial Setup

Unlike Jake, I opted not to use the LFS Live CD, as I figured it would be much easier to start with a Debian Live CD. By the sounds of it, I made a good decision. I had network right out of the gate, which made it easy to copy and paste awful sed commands.

The initial part of the install was relatively painless for me. Well, except that one of the LFS mirrors had a version from 2007 listed as their latest stable build, setting me back about an hour. I followed the book, waited quite a while for some stuff to compile, and I was in my brand new … command-line. Ok, it it’s not very exciting at first, but I was jumping for joy when I ran the following command and got the result I did:

root [ ~ ]# ping google.ca
PING google.ca (74.125.226.82): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 74.125.226.82: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=32.967 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.226.82: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=33.127 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.226.82: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=40.045 ms

The internet was working! Keep reading if you want to hear what awful thing happened next…

Read more…

And I’m started with Linux from Scratch! Here are some helpful pointers for anyone considering running LFS on their own. Caution: this is highly nerdy and keyworded to hell to hopefully allow your favourite search engine to grab solutions from this post.

Getting Started, AKA: Use a Distribution You Know

LFS needs an existing Linux environment. Don’t try and use unetbootin on the LFS liveCD (I used lfslivecd-x86_64-6.3-r2145-min.iso to get started, but there is a newer revision 2160 available on one of the mirrors.) unetbootin in this configuration is just a bag of hurt and you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get your root volume to work, so just burn a CD.

If I was building LFS again I’d have started from a stable Debian base or other Linux distribution where I’m comfortable and have network access – there are a number of reasons below I suggest this, but you really want your host system kernel to be 2.6.25 or higher.

Make sure to have all the patches from linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/chapter03/patches.html are downloaded and in a location you can access from your host distribution. USB sticks are OK for this if you don’t have network access (mount the stick, and then copy the patches and packages to the sources directory). Use DownThemAll or a similar mass downloading application/extension on the patches page to save time and grief.

Watch What You Mount

Augh, out of space! It’s quite possible to mount /mnt/lfs on two partitions at the same time by missing a directory, like this:

$ mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt/lfs
$ mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/lfs

Oops – I missed /boot at the end of the second mount command. To confirm this before copying any files, “mount” should show only one partition active at /mnt/lfs. Since my /dev/sdb1 partition was only 200MB I got to the GCC extraction step and was promptly disappointed. I ended up unmounting everything, recreating the filesystem (mke2fs -v /dev/sdb1) and then remounting (mkdir -pv /mnt/lfs/boot; mount -t ext2 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/lfs/boot).

For more tales of installation havoc, keep reading…

Read more…