colin@
colino.net

I just upgraded to linux 2.6.14, which seems to work fine here. Finally, the ipw2200 driver got integrated, so I don’t have the possibility to forget it anymore :)

In Linux 2.6.14 though, developers have decided to finally remove verify_area(), which was deprecated since a while and superceded by access_ok(). This has the drawback of breaking ATI’s proprietary drivers, as as many proprietary vendors, they didn’t move their ass to replace the deprecated stuff they use, before it was too late. So with 2.6.14, modprob’ing fglrx gives:

fglrx: Unknown symbol verify_area

I wrote a little module that puts back this symbol, so I can still use the stupid proprietary driver. Get it there. Now ATI, please do us a favor and update your driver.

I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu Hoary to Breezy wednesday evening, just before the release, using apt-get dist-upgrade. Everything went fine, not a single problem arose. Nice! The new Ubuntu makes one more (big) step towards the “Just Works” paradigm, and it impresses me a lot.

Today I upgraded my computer at work, from Mandriva LE2005, to the released Breezy, and did not face real problems either, apart that Breezy ships with gcc-4.0. gcc-4.0 is fine and I use it at home, but it chokes on the linux 2.4 kernel, and we use it here. I just had to apt-get remove gcc-4.0; apt-get install gcc-3.3.

One of nice effects of the Breezy at work is that xchat – which we use to communicate between us – does not disconnect anymore when I lock the screen. Mandriva did that.

Ubuntu, still, lacks an important thing to tend towards perfection. They’d have to stop shipping Evolution as the default mailer, and replace it with Sylpheed-Claws. ;-)

Wow. First time since I have my new 1.5GHz laptop, with 512MB of RAM and a 24x CD/DVD drive, that I try to rip one of my CDs to mp3:

Beautiful !
And no, it’s not a DMA problem:
[colin@jack ~]$ sudo hdparm /dev/cdrom
Password:
/dev/cdrom:
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
HDIO_GETGEO failed: Invalid argument


Yesterday evening I started to replace my router, which is an old Sun IPX. Its hard disk was beginning to make horrible noises, a bit like a chainsaw grinding on a steel plate. So, I shut it down after having grabbed the routing scripts, removed the second network card – AUI connector -, plugged it in the SparcStation5 that serves as mysql host. Rebooted the SparcStation5. Everything went fine and I was back online in only a few minutes, but ! the port forwarding stuff didn’t work because its support wasn’t in the kernel.
No problem, I’ll recompile a kernel (a 2.2.26). A few hours later (it’s a 110MHz Sparc… That’s not really fast), I still had no kernel because no matter what I tried (make clean, make mrproper, everything) it ended up with a link error. Ok…
I rebooted three times to test the three older kernels present on the machine, none of them had port forwarding support.
I plugged back the old router, took its kernel and modules, scp’ed them over to the SparcStation5, and rebooted it. It booted, and as soon as I started the adsl-connect script, got an oops from pppd. Tried again, got an oops from pppoe. No problem…
Let’s shut everything down again, put the network card into the Ultra1 (the main web server, mail server, etc). The rationale being that I wouldn’t need port forwarding if it acted as my router, even if it was a little security issue to be resolved. I plug the card on the upper SBUS slot, put the thing back on the shelves, and try to plug in the (not so) little AUI/RJ-45 adapter, but I couldn’t because the space was too tight. Damn. Back on the floor, I put the card in the other slot, which was more accessible from the outside, then back up, plug, boot. It boots, I’ve got an eth1, let’s try the script. Cannot sendto(): network is down.. Uh! the eth1 card doesn’t want to come up. Let’s see why in dmesg: Sun lance: Cannot share IRQ on non-PCI bus: irq5,4r.

So I ended up cursing, putting the whole stuff back in the previous state, rebooted everything (welcome back grinding sound), and now the router tells me:

scsi0: MEDIUM ERROR on channel 0, id 3, lun 0, CDB: Request Sense 00 00 00 10 00
Info fld=0×15954, Current sd08:01: sense key Medium Error
Additional sense indicates Unrecovered read error
scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:01, sector 88404
[...]
EXT2-fs error (device sd(8,1)): ext2_read_inode: unable to read inode block – inode=33962, block=131258
Remounting filesystem read-only

Stuff, sometimes…