On a gentoo system you may get the error

QA Notice: Package has poor programming practices which may compile but will almost certainly crash on 64bit architectures

during emerge. This is usually a wanted behaviour since one does not want to have broken packages installed, but sometimes you may want to decide yourself or you need the program and can live with crashes that may occur under certain circumstances. As far as I know portage does not give us an easy method to override this.

You may change this behaviour by changing line 477 in /usr/lib/portage/bin/misc-functions.sh to i.e.

if [[ ${abort} == “disabled” ]] ; then

After emerging the brocken package you usually want to change the line back to

if [[ ${abort} == “yes” ]] ; then

to prevent having broken packages on your system without knowing about it.

Hoping this information is of some help.

Jürgen

Posted in gentoo, linux | No Comments »

One year ago I provided a gentoo ebuild for mplayer which included support for quad-buffered stereo, enabling mplayer to display stereoscopic movies like the great movie Avatar3D I watched in cinema today. To learn more about the movie look here and here. Sadly the patch I referenced there does not apply over newer mplayer versions. So I had to modify the original patch from Stuart Levy to work again with newer mplayer versions. You may download the updated patch from here:

New version available!

The patch should work at least with nvidia quadro boards, probably with some others. It can be used with CRT and generic shutter glasses or HMDs like the Vusix VR920. Some stereoscopic sample movies for trying it out can be found on www.3d.wep.dk.

For Gentoo users I also modified the mplayer ebuild from portage to include the patch. The modified ebuild is available here:

New version available!

The older ebuild is still available on mygnu.de.

To use the ebuild it just copy it to /usr/local/portage/media-video/mplayer and copy the the patch to the “/usr/local/portage/media-video/mplayer/files” directory.  You probably have to create these directories. Then run

ebuild /usr/local/portage/media-video/mplayer/mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20091026-r1.ebuild digest

Be sure to include the following line in your /etc/make.conf.

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage”

Then just re-emerge mplayer.

Now start mplayer with -vo gl2:stereo and enjoy the experience in the 3rd dimension again.

Jürgen

Posted in 3d, gentoo, linux, multimedia | 9 Comments »

With linux kernel 2.6.32 module parameters for kvm-intel changed so if you cannot load the module anymore and you get errors in dmesg like

kvm_intel: Unknown parameter `enable_vpid’
kvm_intel: Unknown parameter `enable_ept’
kvm_intel: Unknown parameter `flexpriority_enabled’

you should update your module config. For gentoo users this means to edit the file

/etc/modules.d/kvm_intel

and to remove the obsolete parameters. Afterwards run

update-modules -f

Now you should be able to load the module and do kvm vitualization again.

For me this problem occured when trying the new zen-sources-2.6.32-zen1 (also in zen2). Sadly this kernel is affected by the bug which causes higher power consumption (at least on my Precision M65) when not running a suspend to ram cycle before. This also occurs with vanilla sources. For more information on this topic see bugzilla.kernel.org.

Jürgen

Posted in gentoo, kernel, linux, zen-sources | No Comments »

After upgrading my system from libsmbios-2.0.3 to libsmbios-2.2.19 my scripts for setting up wireless failed. After a short search on dell linux wiki I found out, that some Scripts have got a new name. So dellWirelessctl is now smbios-wireless-ctl. The usage seems to be the same.

What is libsmbios?

It is a cross OS library intended to be used to obtain common information available in BIOS using a unified API. Currently, it can programmatically access any information in the SMBIOS tables. It also has the ability to obtain Dell system-specific information such as the Dell System ID number, service tag, and asset tag. Future plans include APIs for $PIR, and mptable mapping.

If you want to know more about libsmbios, have a look at http://linux.dell.com/libsmbios/main/cmdlinetools.html

I hope this information is useful for you

best regards

Thorsten

Posted in gentoo, linux | No Comments »

Today I found this petition for Gimp. Have a look and support gimp. It seems that gimp should be removed from the next ubuntu release. There for have a look at Bring Out The Gimp petition. Below is a copy from this site. Now Sign the Petition and stay tuned.

To:  GNU/Linux major distributions

We, the undersigned, kindly ask all major distributions not to cripple their release CD’s by removing important applications like OpenOffice.org, GIMP, and others.

These applications may have their set of problems. Granted. Let’s work on them as well.

However, removing such important applications in order to save space for any “current trendy application” just because said application depends on bloated, problematic and polemic runtime environments reveals a worrysome mindset: form over substance.

If the functionality said application provides, is also provided by another application which is far leaner, then please fix the problems with the leaner applications rather than removing important applications such as The GIMP.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Posted in graphics, linux | No Comments »

I just upgraded the vserver kernel in my test environment to 2.6.31-vs2.3.0.36.23. After rebooting the machine I recognized that the hostname of the host machine was set to the hostname of the last vserver started. Checking all vservers I found out that all had the same hostname.

A quick google search revealed, that I am not the only one having this problem: linux.derkeiler.com. But the search revealed no solution.

Afterwards I remembered that I masked util-vserver-0.30.216_pre2841 as I described in util-vserver-0.30.216_pre2841 vserver startup fails.  So I removed the mask and installed the newer version of util-vserver. Afterwards everything was normal and the vservers, as well as the host machine had the correct hostnames.

It is important to use the  version of util-vserver matching the vserver kernel version running. The vserver kernel 2.6.31-vs2.3.0.36.23 seems to work with util-vserver-0.30.216_pre2841 and the vserver-kernel 2.6.28-vserver-2.3.0.36.4 works with util-vserver-0.30.215-r3.

Jürgen

Posted in gentoo, kernel, linux | 2 Comments »

Today I patched the  brand new zen-sources-2.6.31-r2 with tuxonice. Again it required the modified tuxonice patch of my last ebuild.

Suspend to RAM works at least on my Dell Precison M65 as well as suspend to disk does.

Download the zen-sources 2.6.31-zen2 patch here: zen-sources.org. Then apply the patch to vanilla kernel sources. Afterwards download my modified tuxonice patch from here: . Then apply it.

For Gentoo users there is a more easy way: Download my modified overlay (including the patches) from

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage”

Then emerge zen-sources-toi and buld the kernel as you wish.

Tuxonice is not officially supported in zen-sources. So If you’re using the files above, don’t report any bugs to zen-sources.org. You are on your own.

For my Precision M65 I used the following kernel config:

All Information regarding the iwl3945 driver, the aha152x pcmcia scsi card and cpu undervolting in my last post on zen-sources-toi still apply to this version.

For more information on the zen-sources patchset see www.zen-sources.org.

best regards

Jürgen

Posted in kernel, linux, zen-sources | No Comments »