Ubuntu, NVidia and my Shuttle

I don't mind saying that adding the latest NVIDIA drivers to Ubuntu (linux in general) is a pain.

I picked up an 8400GS for my Shuttle, to free up some RAM being grabbed by the on board GPU. The board went in fine, and I was prompted to install non-free drivers (older ones) which went swimmingly well. My box was up and running even better than before. (I say better because while the Intel GPU did well, it often displayed weird artifacts a moment before refreshing a block of screen. Driver, probably, but annoying.)

I was not, of course, completely satisfied.

Desktop flavors of linux, Ubuntu in this case, are built with smaller, older machines in mind. Because of this, while the kernel supposedly sees 4.0 gigabytes of RAM, in reality you end up with only around 3.2 gigabytes to use. My machine has 4 gigs of RAM in it and I want to use it all. So, I rebuilt my generic kernel, turning on CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G and CONFIG_X86_PAE to make use of my memory. It took a couple of tries, mostly because I was silly and named my new kernel the same as my old kernel, the first time. But an hour or so later I was ready for the next step: Installing the latest NVIDIA driver (1.80-18). This new driver is supposed to be head over heals better than the current driver (1.77-xx). I downloaded the driver installer[s], killed X Windows and installed the driver. Rebooted... KABOOM!

Not only could I not load the new driver, but the old NVIDIA driver was somehow toasted as well. Can you say REINSTALL? I reinstalled, rebuilt the kernel and am, at the moment, running with the older NVIDIA driver. I will have to do some more research before I try and install the newer driver. Too scary. Supposedly the next version of Ubuntu will be going with the 1.80 series from NVIDIA. I suppose I can wait until then.

Anyway, all's well that ends well.

Diarrhea and Ubuntu

I awoke to "Mike you have to get up and clean up this mess!" 2:30 AM is not my favorite time to clean multiple sites of dog poop.

So now I cannot sleep and am playing on my new PC. That's right, a PC. I still have my mac (how could I not) but my primary machine is a Shuttle "Glamor" model that I bought as a bare bones kit, added a core 2 quad, 4 gb of ram, a couple of 250 gb disks, a DVD burner and a BenQ 24" widescreen monitor. A nice little machine.

I am running Ubuntu 8.10 on it, had a dickens of a time getting PPTP to work, but in the end it turned out to be quite simple (just had to dredge through muck to get there). I am still getting configured to run all the stuff I need for work, but that should be completed soon (by the end of this week I hope, anyway).

Back to surfing until I grow weary again.

Week at work

Not much to blog on. I am in Massachusetts this week for work. A couple thousand miles from Phoenix and the nice and toasty sunshine.

It is actually not bad up here for this time of year. Today it is supposed to hit 50 degrees F., not bad at all.

Today I have a 5 and one half hour long meeting. I hope we can take a break or two.

More later, when I return home!