The Linux Experiment

In my previous post I mentioned that I installed Zorin OS onto an older laptop I had lying around.

Very nice first impression

Since that post went up I have been messing around with Zorin OS and decided to run a system update to make sure I had the latest packages and security fixes installed. Unfortunately after the update finished and I rebooted I logged in to find that things just weren’t what they used to be… Instead of the nice Zorin OS interface (shown above) I ended up logging in to a standard GNOME Shell interface. It seems as though the update had reset some of the customization that the Zorin team had made.

Thankfully I was able to find the Tweak tool and re-enable many of those customizations again!

Once I enabled all of the Zorin OS extensions almost everything was back to normal!

The one thing that I couldn’t get back to normal was the duplicate top bar showing open applications. You can see it in the screenshot above but basically I now had both the Zorin OS styled open window bar at the bottom as well as the GNOME Shell version at the top.

The solution it turns out is to turn off all of the Zorin OS extensions that I had tried in the tweak tool and instead open up the Zorin Appearance tool and select the first of the three window options at the top.

Both the first or second selections should work

The last key to the puzzle was to log out and then log back in for everything to take. And now my desktop is back to normal again!

Great success!

This post was originally published on December 23, 2009. The original can be found here.

With the linux experiment coming to an end, and my Vista PC requiring a reinstall, I decided to take the leap and go all linux all the time. To that end, I’ve installed Kubuntu on my desktop PC.

I would like to be able to report that the Kubuntu install experience was better than the Debian one, or even on par with a Windows install. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case.

My machine contains three 500GB hard drives. One is used as the system drive, while an integrated hardware RAID controller binds the other two together as a RAID1 array. Under Windows, this setup worked perfectly. Under Kubuntu, it crashed the graphical installer, and threw the text-based installer into fits of rage.

With plenty of help from the #kubuntu IRC channel on freenode, I managed to complete the Kubuntu install by running it with the two RAID drives disconnected from the motherboard. After finishing the install, I shut down, reconnected the RAID drives, and booted back up. At this point, the RAID drives were visible from Dolphin, but appeared as two discrete drives.

It was explained to me via this article that the hardware RAID support that I had always enjoyed under windows was in fact a ‘fake RAID,’ and is not supported on Linux. Instead, I need to reformat the two drives, and then link them together with a software RAID. More on that process in a later post, once I figure out how to actually do it.

At this point, I have my desktop back up and running, reasonably customized, and looking good. After trying KDE’s default Amarok media player and failing to figure out how to properly import an m3u playlist, I opted to use Gnome’s Banshee player for the time being instead. It is a predictable yet stable iTunes clone that has proved more than capable of handling my library for the time being. I will probably look into Amarok and a few other media players in the future. On that note, if you’re having trouble playing your MP3 files on Linux, check out this post on the ubuntu forums for information about a few of the necessary GStreamer plugins.

For now, my main tasks include setting up my RAID array, getting my ergonomic bluetooth wireless mouse working, and working out folder and printer sharing on our local Windows network. In addition, I would like to set up a Windows XP image inside of Sun’s Virtual Box so that I can continue to use Microsoft Visual Studio, the only Windows application that I’ve yet to find a Linux replacement for.

This is just the beginning of the next chapter of my own personal Linux experiment; stay tuned for more excitement.

This post first appeared at Index out of Bounds.

This post was originally published on November 27, 2011. The original can be found here.

As you may be able to tell from my recent, snooze-worthy technical posts about compilers and makefiles and other assorted garbage, my experience with Linux from Scratch has been equally educational and enraging. Like Dave, I’ve had the pleasure of trying to compile various desktop environments and software packages from scratch, into some god-awful contraption that will let me check my damn email and look at the Twitters.

To be clear, when anyone says I have nobody to blame but myself, that’s complete hokum. From the beginning, this entire process was flawed. The last official LFS LiveCD has a kernel that’s enough revisions behind to cause grief during the setup process. But I really can’t blame the guys behind LFS for all my woes; their documentation is really well-written and explains why you have to pass fifty --do-not-compile-this-obscure-component-or-your-cat-will-crap-on-the-rug arguments.

Patch Your Cares Away

Read more…

This post was originally published on December 23, 2009. The original can be found here.

Earlier this week I had an experience where using Linux got me out of trouble in a relatively quick and easy manner. The catch? It was kind of Linux’s fault that I was in trouble in the first place.

Around halfway through November my Linux install on my laptop crapped out, and really fucked things up hard. However, my Windows install wasn’t affected, so I started using Windows on my laptop primarily, while switching to an openSUSE VM on my desktop for my home computing needs.

About a week back I decided it was time to reinstall Linux on my laptop, since exams and my 600 hojillion final projects were out of the way. I booted into Win7, nuked the partitions being used by Linux and… went and got some pizza and forgot to finish my install. Turns out I hadn’t restarted my PC anywhere between that day and when shit hit the fan. When I did restart, I was informed to the merry tune of a PC Speaker screech that my computer had no bootable media.

… Well shit.

My first reaction was to try again, my second was to check to make sure the hard drive was plugged in firmly. After doing this a few times, I was so enraged about my lost data that I was about ready to repave the whole drive when I had the good sense to throw in a BartPE live CD and check to see if there was any data left on the drive. To my elation, all of my data was still in tact! It was at this precise moment I thought to myself “Oh drat, I bet I uninstalled that darned GRUB bootloader. Fiddlesticks!”

However, all was not lost. I know that Linux is great and is capable of finding other OS installs during its install and setting them up in GRUB without me having to look around for a windows boot point and do it myself. 20 minutes and an openSUSE install later, everything was back to normal on my laptop, Win7 and openSUSE 11.1 included!

As we speak I’m attempting an in-place upgrade to openSUSE 11.2 so hopefully I get lucky and everything goes smoothly!

This post was originally published on December 12, 2009. The original can be found here.

As we prepare to bring The Linux Experiment to a close over the coming weeks, I find that this has been a time of (mostly solemn) reflection for myself and others. At the very least, it’s been an interesting experience with various flavours of Linux and what it has to offer. At its peak, it’s been a roller-coaster of controversial posts (my bad), positive experiences, and the urge to shatter our screens into pieces.

Let me share with you some of the things I’ve personally taken away from this experiment over the last three-and-a-half months.

Fedora 12 is on the bleeding edge of Linux development

This has been a point of discussion on both of our podcasts at this point, and a particular sore spot with both myself and Tyler. It’s come to a place wherein I’m sort of… afraid to perform updates to my system out of fear of just bricking it entirely. While this is admittedly something that could happen under any operating system and any platform, it’s never been as bad for me as it has been under Fedora 12.

As an example, the last *six* kernel updates for me to both Fedora 11 and 12 combined have completely broken graphics capability with my adapter (a GeForce 8600 M GS). Yes, I know that the Fedora development team is not responsible for ensuring that my graphics card works with their operating system – but this is not something the average user should have to worry about. Tyler has also had this issue, and I think would tend to agree with me.

Linux is fun, too

Though there have been so many frustrating moments over the last four months that I have been tempted to just format everything and go back to my native Windows 7 (previously: release candidate, now RTM). Through all of this though, Fedora – and Linux in general – has never stopped interesting me.

This could just be due to the fact that I’ve been learning so much – I can definitely do a lot more now than I ever could before under a Linux environment, and am reasonably pleased with this – but I’ve never sat down on my laptop and been bored to play around with getting stuff to work. In addition, with some software (such as Wine or CrossOver) I’ve been able to get a number of Windows games working as well. Linux can play, too!

Customizing my UI has also been a very nice experience. It looks roughly like Sasha’s now – no bottom panel, GnomeDo with Docky, and Compiz effects… it’s quite pretty now.

There’s always another way

If there’s one thing I’ve chosen to take away from this experiment it’s that there is ALWAYS some kind of alternative to any of my problems, or anything I can do under another platform or operating system. Cisco VPN client won’t install under Wine, nor will the Linux client version? BAM, say hello to vpnc.

Need a comprehensive messaging platform with support for multiple services? Welcome Pidgin into the ring.

No, I still can’t do everything I could do in Windows… but I’m sure, given enough time, I could make Fedora 12 an extremely viable alternative to Windows 7 for me.

The long and short of it

There’s a reason I’ve chosen my clever and rather cliche title for this post. According to lore, a phoenix is a bird that would rise up from its own ashes in a rebirth cycle after igniting its nest at the end of a life cycle. So is the case for Fedora 12 and my experience with Linux.

At this point, I could not see myself continuing my tenure with the Fedora operating system. For a Linux user with my relatively low level of experience, it is too advanced and too likely to brick itself with a round of updates to be viable for me. Perhaps after quite a bit more experience with Linux on the whole, I could revisit it – but not for a good long while. This is not to say it’s unstable – it’s been rock solid, never crashing once – but it’s just not for me.

To that end, Fedora 12 rests after a long and interest-filled tenure with me. Rising from the ashes is a new user in the world of Linux – me. I can say with confidence that I will be experimenting with Linux distributions in the future – maybe dipping my feet in the somewhat familiar waters of Ubuntu once more before wading into the deep-end.

Watch out, Linux community… here I come.

This post was originally published on December 8, 2009. The original can be found here.

The following is a cautionary tale about putting more trust in the software installed on your system than in your own knowledge.

Recently, while preparing for a big presentation that relied on me running a Java applet in Iceweasel, I discovered that I needed to install an additional package to make it work. This being nothing out of the ordinary, I opened up a terminal, and used apt-cache search to locate the package in question. Upon doing so, my system notified me that I had well over 50 ‘unnecessary’ packages installed. It recommended that I take care of the issue with the apt-get autoremove command.

Bad idea.

On restart, I found that my system was virtually destroyed. It seemed to start X11, but refused to give me either a terminal or a gdm login prompt. After booting into Debian’s rescue mode and messing about in the terminal for some time trying to fix a few circular dependencies and get my system back, I decided that it wasn’t worth my time, backed up my files with an Ubuntu live disk, and reinstalled from a netinst nightly build disk of the testing repositories. (Whew, that was a long sentence)

Unfortunately, just as soon as I rebooted from the install, I found that my system lacked a graphical display manager, and that I could only log in to my terminal, even though I had explicitly told the installer to add GNOME to my system. I headed over to #debian for some help, and found out that the testing repositories were broken, and that my system lacked gdm for some unknown reason. After following their instructions to work around the problem, I got my desktop back, and once more have a fully functioning system.

The moral of the story is a hard one for me to swallow. You see, I have come to the revelation that I don’t know what I’m doing. Over the course of the last 3 months, I have learned an awful lot about running and maintaining a Linux system, but I still lack the ability to fix even the simplest of problems without running for help. Sure, I can install and configure a Debian box like nobody’s business, having done it about 5 times since this experiment started; but I still lack the ability to diagnose a catastrophic failure and to recover from it without a good dose of help. I have also realized something that as a software developer, I know and should have been paying attention to when I used that fatal autoremove command – when something seems wrong, trust your instincts over your software, because they’re usually correct.

This entire experiment has been a huge learning experience for me. I installed an operating system that I had never used before, and eschewed the user-friendly Ubuntu for Debian, a distribution that adheres strictly to free software ideals and isn’t nearly as easy for beginners to use. That done, after a month of experience, I switched over from the stable version of Debian to the testing repositories, figuring that it would net me some newer software that occasionally worked better (especially in the case of Open Office and Gnome Network Manager), and some experience with running a somewhat less stable system. I certainly got what I wished for.

Overall, I don’t regret a thing, and I intend to keep the testing repositories installed on my laptop. I don’t usually use it for anything but note taking in class, so as long as I back it up regularly, I don’t mind if it breaks on occasion; I enjoy learning new things, and Debian keeps me on my toes. In addition, I think that I’ll install Kubuntu on my desktop machine when this whole thing is over. I like Debian a lot, but I’ve heard good things about Ubuntu and its variants, and feel that I should give them a try now that I’ve had my taste of what a distribution that isn’t written with beginners in mind is like. I have been very impressed by Linux, and have no doubts that it will become a major part of my computing experience, if not replacing Windows entirely – but I recognize that I still have a long way to go before I’ve really accomplished my goals.

As an afterthought: If anybody is familiar with some good tutorials for somebody who has basic knowledge but needs to learn more about what’s going on below the surface of a Linux install, please recommend them to me.

This post was originally published on October 2, 2009. The original can be found here.

In a nod to Dave’s classic top ten segment I will now share with you the top 10 things I have learned since starting this experiment one month ago.

10: IRC is not dead

Who knew? I’m joking of course but I had no idea that so many people still actively participated in IRC chats. As for the characters who hang out in these channels… well some are very helpful and some… answer questions like this:

Tyler: Hey everyone. I’m looking for some help with Gnome’s Empathy IM client. I can’t seem to get it to connect to MSN.

Some asshat: Tyler, if I wanted a pidgin clone, I would just use pidgin

It’s this kind of ‘you’re doing it wrong because that’s not how I would do it’ attitude can be very damaging to new Linux users. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to get help and someone throwing BS like that back in your face.

9: Jokes about Linux for nerds can actually be funny

Stolen from Sasha’s post.

Admit it, you laughed too

8. Buy hardware for your Linux install, not the other way around

Believe me, if you know that your hardware is going to be 100% compatible ahead of time you will have a much more enjoyable experience. At the start of this experiment Jon pointed out this useful website. Many similar sites also exist and you should really take advantage of them if you want the optimal Linux experience.

7. When it works, it’s unparalleled

Linux seems faster, more featured and less resource hogging than a comparable operating system from either Redmond or Cupertino. That is assuming it’s working correctly…

6. Linux seems to fail for random or trivial reasons

If you need proof of these just go take a look back on the last couple of posts on here. There are times when I really think Linux could be used by everyone… and then there are moments when I don’t see how anyone outside of the most hardcore computer users could ever even attempt it. A brand new user should not have to know about xorg.conf or how to edit their DNS resolver.

5. Linux might actually have a better game selection than the Mac!

Obviously there was some jest in there but Linux really does have some gems for games out there. Best of all most of them are completely free! Then again some are free for a reason…

Armagetron

4. A Linux distribution defines a lot of your user experience

This can be especially frustrating when the exact same hardware performs so differently. I know there are a number of technical reasons why this is the case but things seem so utterly inconsistent that a new Linux user paired with the wrong distribution might be easily turned off.

3. Just because its open source doesn’t mean it will support everything

Even though it should damn it! The best example I have for this happens to be MSN clients. Pidgin is by far my favourite as it seems to work well and even supports a plethora of useful plugins! However, unlike many other clients, it doesn’t support a lot of MSN features such as voice/video chat, reliable file transfers, and those god awful winks and nudges that have appeared in the most recent version of the official client. Is there really that good of a reason holding the Pidgin developers back from just making use of the other open source libraries that already support these features?

2. I love the terminal

I can’t believe I actually just said that but it’s true. On a Windows machine I would never touch the command line because it is awful. However on Linux I feel empowered by using the terminal. It lets me quickly perform tasks that might take a lot of mouse clicks through a cumbersome UI to otherwise perform.

And the #1 thing I have learned since the start of this experiment? Drum roll please…

1. Linux might actually be ready to replace Windows for me

But I guess in order to find out if that statement ends up being true you’ll have to keep following along 😉

Ever since upgrading my laptop to Linux Mint 18 I’ve noticed some pronounced screen tearing happening. Initially I figured this was something I would simply have to live with due to the open source driver being used instead of the proprietary one, but after some Googling I found a way to actually fix the issue.

Following this post on Ask Ubuntu I created a new directory at /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and then created a new file in there called 20-intel.conf. Inside of this file I placed the following text:

Section “Device”
Identifier      “Intel Graphics”
Driver          “intel”
Option          “TearFree”          “true”
EndSection

A quick reboot later and I’m happy to say that my screen no longer tears as I scroll down long web pages.

Even Borat agrees!

Recently I’ve noticed that my /boot partition has become full and I’ve even had some new kernel updates fail as a result. It seems the culprit is all of the older kernels still lying around on my system even though they are no longer in use. Here are the steps I took in order to remove these old kernels and reclaim my /boot partition space.

A few warnings:

• Always understand commands you are running on your machine before you run them. Especially when they start with sudo.
• Be very careful when removing kernels – you may end up with a system that doesn’t boot!
• My rule of thumb is to only remove kernels older than the most recent 2 (assuming I haven’t had any bad experiences with either of them). This allows me to revert back to a slightly older version if I find something that no longer works in the latest version.

First determine what kernel your machine is actually currently running

For example running the command:

uname -a

prints out the text “4.4.0-45-generic“. This is the name of the kernel my system is currently using. I do not want to remove this one!

Next get a list of all installed kernels

You can do this a few different ways but I like using the following command:

dpkg --list | grep linux-image

This should print out a list similar to the one in the screenshot below.

Example list of installed kernels

From this list you can identify which ones you want to remove to clear up space. On my system I had versions 4.4.0-21.37, 4.4.0-36.55, 4.4.0-38.57 and 4.4.0-45.66 so following my rule above I want to remove both 4.4.0-21.37 and 4.4.0-36.55.

Remove the old kernels

Again this can be done a number of different ways but seeing as we’re already in the terminal why not use our trust apt-get command to do the job?

sudo apt-get purgelinux-image-4.4.0-21-generic linux-image-4.4.0-36-generic

and just like that almost 500MB of disk space is freed up!

You may recall a few years back I made a very similar post about Ubuntu 14.04’s ‘VNC woes’. Well unfortunately it seems things have changed slightly between 14.04 and 16.04 and now the setting that once fixed everything now doesn’t persist and is only good for that session. Thankfully it is pretty easy to adapt the existing work around into a script that gets run on startup in order to ‘fix it’ forever. Note that these steps should also work on any Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint 18, etc.

Credit goes to the excellent post over at ThinkingMedia for confirming that the fix is basically the same as the one I had for 14.04. What follows is their instructions on creating a start up script:

1. Create a text file called vino-fix.sh and place the following in it:

#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=0:0
gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false 

2. Modify the file’s permissions so that it becomes executable. You can do this via the terminal with the following command:

chmod +x vino-fix.sh

3. Create a new startup application and point it at your script. Now every time you reboot it will run that script for you and ‘fix’ the issue.

One last thing I should point out – this work around disables the built in VNC encryption. Generally I would absolutely not recommend disabling any sort of security like this however VNC at its core is not really a secure protocol to begin with. You are far better off setting up VNC to only listen to local connections and then using SSH+VNC for your secure remote desktop needs. Just my two cents.

I have an Ubuntu 16.04 desktop installation with Unity and wanted to try KDE, so I ran sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. apt failed with the following message:

trying to overwrite '/usr/share/accounts/services/google-im.service', which is also in package account-plugin-google [...]

The original issue at Ask Ubuntu has several suggestions but none of them worked – any apt commands returned the same requirement to run apt-get -f install, which in turn gave the original “trying to overwrite” error message. synaptic also wasn’t installed so I couldn’t use it (or install it, as all other apt installation commands failed.)

I was able to get the dpkg database out of its bad state and continue to install kubuntu-desktop by running the following:

dpkg -P account-plugin-google unity-scope-gdrive
apt-get -f install

(Link to original Kubuntu bug for posterity: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/+bug/1451728)

This post was cross-posted to my personal website.

Have you ever had a window in Linux freeze on you and no matter how many times you tried to close it, it just wouldn’t go away? Then when you try and find the process in System Monitor (or the like) you can’t seem to identify it for whatever reason?

Thankfully there is a really easy to use command that lets you simply click on the offending window and POOF!… it goes away instantly. So how does it work? Let’s say you have a window that is frozen like this

As long as you can see it you can xkill it!

First open up a new terminal window and type the command

xkill

and hit Enter. This will then tell you to simply click on the window you want to kill:

Select the window whose client you wish to kill with button 1….

Next it is as simple as actually clicking on the frozen window and you can say goodbye to your problem. Happy xkill-ing 🙂

This post originally appeared on my website here.

If, like me, you’ve recently upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 only to find out that for whatever reason you can no longer VNC to that machine anymore (either from Windows or even an existing Linux install) have no fear because I’ve got the fix for you!

Simply open up a terminal and run the following line:

gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false

Obviously if you use VNC encryption you may not want to do this but if you’re like me and just use VNC on the local network it should be safe enough to disable.

The default sort order in Nautilus has been changed to sorting alphabetically by name and the option to change this seems to be broken. For example I prefer my files to be sorted by type so I ran

dconf-editor

and browsed to org/gnome/nautilus/preferences. From there you should be able to change the value by using the drop down:

Seems easy enough

Unfortunately the only option available is modification time. Once you change it to that you can’t even go back to name. This also appears to be a problem when trying to set the value using the command line interface like this:

dconf write /org/gnome/nautilus/preferences/default-sort-order type

I received an “error: 0-4:unknown keyword” message when I tried to run that.

Thanks to the folks over on the Ask Ubuntu forum I was finally able to get it to change by issuing this command instead:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-sort-order type

where type could be swapped out for whatever you prefer it to be ordered by.

Great Success!

Install number one: LMDE 201303.  I was hoping for the best of both worlds, but I got driver issues instead.  LMDE has known ATI proprietary driver install issues.  I followed the Mint instructions and got it working, then got a blank screen after too much tinkering.  I was surprised that LMDE had this problem since Debian doesn’t, and LMDE should be a more polished version of LMDE.  This wasn’t a big deal, but I decided to give Debian a chance.

Install number two: debian stable (7.3).  The debian website has a convoluted maze of installation links, but it’s still fairly easy to find an ISO for the stable version you need.  I installed from the live ISO using a USB key.  The installation and ATI driver update went smoothly, and I thought all was well at first.  I soon realized that about 50% of reboots failed; the audio driver was the culprit.  I installed the latest driver from Realtec/ALSA and it sort of worked, but I was still getting some crap from # dmesg and the audio would crackle with some files.

LMDE.  I live booted LMDE to see if the same issue existed there and it did.

Time for Mint 16.  As expected everything worked.  Man I really wish Ubuntu hadn’t chosen the dark side – their OS is really good.  All of these distros use ALSA audio drivers, so why is Ubuntu the only one that works?   Kernel versions:

debian stable (7.3):
cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24.
Mint 16:
cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version k3.11.0-12-generic.

One more thing to check.  What kernel version is the real debian testing “jessie” using:

http://packages.debian.org/testing/kernel/linux-image-3.12-1-amd64

LMDE 201303 = 3.2
debian stable 7.3 = 3.2
Mint 16 = 3.11
debian testing “jessie - Jan 2014” = 3.12!

I determined to try debian testing before settling for Mint.  I tried a netinstall from USB key which killed my PC and grub bootloader.  The debian stable live iso usb key decided to stop working as well.   I finally got a real DVD debian stable install to work, changed the repositories to point to “jessie” and upgraded.  I was very surprised to see this worked!   I’m having some problems with bash, but all of my day to day software is up and running.  Nice.

TL;DR: LMDE was using an old kernel so I needed the real debian testing (jessie) to solve my driver problems.

As mentioned before I am having some issues with my laptop’s hardware and controlling the screen brightness. Previously my work around was to set acpi_backlight=vender in the grub command line options. While this resulted in having full screen brightness it also removed my ability to use my keyboard function keys to adjust the screen brightness on the fly (not so good when you’re on battery). Removing this option allowed me to manually adjusted my screen brightness again but once again always started the laptop at zero brightness. What to do?

While far from a perfect solution my current work around is to use xdotool to simulate key presses on login which raise the screen brightness for me automatically. Here is the script that I run on startup:

#!/bin/bash
for i in {1..20}
do
     xdotool key XF86MonBrightnessUp
done

While this works great it still isn’t perfect. Because xdotool requires an X session it means I cannot run it before one is created. If you were unaware the login screen, in my case MDM, does not run inside of X (it actually starts X when you successfully login). So while this will automatically brighten my screen it won’t do so until I type in my username and password, leaving me to type into a fully dark screen or manually adjust the brightness up enough to see what I’m doing. Hopefully I’ll have a better solution sooner rather than later…

If you’re like me you’ve been suffering through a crazy high-pitched sound emanating from your laptop speakers. Apparently this is a common issue with certain types of audio devices. Thankfully via the power of the Internet I’ve been able to finally find a solution!

It turns out that the issue actually stems from some power saving features (of all things) in the Intel HDA driver. So I simply turned it off and guess what? It worked.

1) Open up (using root) /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave

2) Replace or comment out the line:

INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=${INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE:-true}

3) In its place put the line:

INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=false

4) Reboot

Hopefully this also works for you but if not check out the site I found the solution at for some additional tips/things to try.

I recently upgraded my laptop to a brand new Lenovo Y410P and promptly replaced Windows 8 with a Linux install. Unfortunately I immediately ran into a very strange driver(?) issue where, on boot, the computer would default to the absolute lowest screen brightness level. This meant that I would need to manually adjust the screen brightness up just to see the login screen. Thankfully after some help from the excellent people over on the Ubuntu Forums I managed to find a very easy work around.

1) As root open up /etc/default/grub

I did this by simply issuing the following command:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

2) Find the line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= and add “acpi_backlight=vendor” to the list of options.

3) From a terminal run this command to update GRUB

sudo update-grub

4) Reboot!

That’s pretty much it. My computer now boots with the correct screen brightness as one would expect.

Some of you may remember my earlier post about contemplating an upgrade from Windows Home Server (Version 1) to a Linux alternative. Since then, I have decided the following:

Amahi isn’t worth my time

This conclusion was reached after a fruitless install of the latest Amahi 7 installation on the 500 GB ‘system’ drive, included with the EX470. After backing up the Windows Home Server to a single external 2 TB drive (talk about nerve-wracking!), I popped the drive into a spare PC and installed Amahi with the default options.

No, I’m not 13. Yes, this image accurately reflects my frustrations.

Moving the drive back into the EX470 yielded precisely zero results, no matter what I tried – the machine would not respond to a ‘ping’ command, and since I’ve opted to try and do this without a debug board, I don’t even have VGA to tell me what the hell is going on. So, that’s it for Amahi.

When all else fails, Ubuntu

After deciding that I really didn’t feel like a repeat of my earlier Fedora experiment, I decided to try out the Linux ‘Old Faithful’ as it were – Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I opted for the LTS version due to – well, you know – the ‘long-term support’ deal.

Oh, and I upgraded my storage (new 1 TB system drive not shown, and I apologize for the potato-quality image):

The only kind of ‘TB’ I like. Not tuberculosis.

Following from the earlier Amahi instructions, I popped the primary 1 TB drive into a spare machine and allowed the Ubuntu installer to do its thing. Easy enough! From there, I installed the following two additional items (having to add an additional repository for the latter):

• Openssh-Server

This allows me to easily control the machine through SSH, and – as I understand it – is pretty much a must for someone wanting to control a headless box. Setup was easy-breezy, in that it required nothing at all.

• Greyhole

For those unfamiliar, Greyhole is – in their own words – an ‘Easily expandable and redundant storage pool for home servers’. One of my favourite things about WHS v1 was its ‘disk pooling’ capability – essentially a JBOD with software-managed share duplication, ensuring that each selected share was copied over to one other disk in the array.

After those were done with, I popped the drive into the EX470, and – lo and behold! – I was able to SSH in.

This? This is what relatively minor success looks like.

So at this point, I’m feeling relatively confident. I shut down the server (don’t forget -h!) over SSH, popped in the first of the three 3 TB drives, and…

…nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The server happily blinks away like a small puppy wags its tail, excited to see its owner but clearly bereft of purpose when left to its owner. I can’t ping it, I can’t… well, that’s really it. I can’t ping it, so there’s nothing I can do. Looking to see if GRUB was stuck at the menu, I stuck in a USB keyboard and hit ‘Enter’ to no effect. Yes, my troubleshooting skills are that good.

My next step was to pop both the 1 TB and 3 TB drives into the ‘spare’ machine; this ran fine. Running lshw -short -c disk shows a 1 TB and 3 TB drive without issue. I also ran these parted commands:

mklabel gpt

mkpart primary -1 1

(I think that last command is right.) So, all set, right? Cool. Pop the drive back in to the EX470, and…

STILL NOTHING. At this point, I’m ready to go pick up a new four-bay NAS, but I feel like that may be overkill. If anyone has any recommendations on how to get the stupid thing to boot with a 3 TB drive, I’m open to suggestions.

I’m not even sure what to say about this one… it looks like I might have an angry video card.

I sat down at my machine after it had been sitting for three or four days to find this… wtf?