David A. Harding
Wednesday, 02 May 2007
After handing out several dozen flyers for the LUG/IP Hardware Special Interest Group (HWSIG) at the Trenton Computer Festival this weekend, I hoped to see several new faces, but only one (maybe two) new people showed up.
The new person who did show up, Paul Miller, needed help installing GNU+Linux on his computer for the first time. Chris Leyon, who had apparently corresponded with Paul previously, brought an Ubuntu 7.04 live installation CD; Paul inserted the CD into his computer, restarted, and the problems began. The USB keyboard on the computer requires special kernel support, and so it can't be used to select options in an installation CD's bootloader. Luckily, the Ubuntu CD automatically loads after 30 seconds if the keyboard isn't used.
Ubuntu booted, and Paul poked around a bit. Paul wanted to make sure Microsoft Windows would boot after installing Ubuntu; Chris, Ed Corrado, and I discussed backing up the Master Boot Record (MBR) to a USB flash drive Ed loaned us. At this time, I asked if anyone else needed help, and Tim Dunphy said he did, and so I stopped kibitzing over Chris's shoulder and helped Tim.
The Z–Axis of Evil
Tim was trying to compile and install the Z Shell
(zsh)
on Ubuntu (I didn't ask what release) but was receiving an error that
some function was undefined. Tim said that configure had run
successfully, which I verified by examining configure.log in the top–level source directory. I
ran make for myself, noted the filename the C compiler was having a
problem with, and began skimming through the file. I realised that was
stupid—the file was hundreds (maybe thousands) of lines long—and I
was re–examining the output from make for the line number of the error
when something Tim said gave me the impression that he wasn't interested
in compiling zsh. Indeed, he was only
interested in installing it, and was under the impression that the only
way he could install zsh was by compiling it
himself.
Now, I don't use Ubuntu regularly, and I don't know much about what
programs are, and what programs aren't, included in Ubuntu, but I do
know a lot about which programs are popular, and I generally assume
that every major distribution includes all the popular free software
programs. The Z shell is popular, and so I told Tim I was certain he
could install a packaged version in Ubuntu. Then I backed up my
statement by showing him the apt-cache
command, which he'd never used before. (The command is specific to
Debian and Debian derived distributions) The two commands I ran for him
follow:
apt-cache search zsh # are there packages with zsh in their # description? (answer: yes) apt-cache show zsh # Show the full description of the zsh # package located in the first command above
There's no (or very, very little) wireless connectivity in the
meeting room, and so we couldn't install zsh
immediately. But Tim left knowing he could install zsh as soon as he got home. Tim didn't have any more
questions, and I returned to Chris, Ed, and Paul who were waiting for
the install to finish.
Bye–OS and SiS–y Problems
A few minutes later, it did finish,
and Paul rebooted. On reboot, the
grub
bootloader's menu was presented asking Paul to choose between Ubuntu and
Windows, but a previous problem returned: the keyboard didn't work in
the bootloader selection screen. I joked that this is how we fulfilled
our promise of preserving Paul's Windows installation while forcing Paul
to use GNU+Linux.
Chris and Paul searched the
BIOS
configuration until they found an option to enable the keyboard outside
the BIOS. Paul then tested Windows and found it worked. Then he booted
Ubuntu, from the hard disk, and encountered some problems with the X
Windows System (Xorg).
The problem, which also occurred while running the Live CD, was windows
(X clients) couldn't be moved without corrupting the display. Chris
seemed to think it was an issue with the video driver, and he opened the
Xorg configuration file1 (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) and began wondering, out loud,
why Ubuntu chose the settings it chose. I suggested he use the Debian
package configuration tools to examine and change the settings. The
command run follows:
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
I think we only changed the video card driver: Ubuntu chose the sis driver; we chose the vesa driver. Upon restarting Xorg, the problem was
resolved. I think it may have been possible to just disable the special
effects for Paul's desktop, and continue using the sis driver (which might provide better performance
and be able to access additional features of his computer monitor), but
it was getting late: Paul's hardware worked and he can always come
back next month.
I suggest Paul attend LUG/IP's new user presentation next Wednesday (9 May 2007), and he seemed amenable to the idea.
vi! That gives me much
pleasure. (Chris uses EMACS regularly, and we tease each other about
editors, also regularly.)