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[blog...]

20.03.2010
18:00

Install Linux ISO-Images onto USB Drive Using unetbootin

 

Some time ago I read an article about unetbootin. As I had very often the pain to install Linux on CF-card or USB-drive, I bookmarked it for the next adventure.

 

Yesterday, I had to use it the first time. It's already in debian-testing (version 408-1). Only some short notes about using it:

  • let root (and other users) popup programs on your desktop:
    xhost +
  • start as root:
    unetbootin
  • plug in your USB-drive
  • select a distribution/live system. I tested:
    - Xubuntu
    - Slax
  • download and install the iso-image with unetbootin
  • take the USB-drive to the computer you want to boot and HOPE, it will be able to boot from USB

 

Luckily my J8F9-Board _sometimes_ likes booting from USB. I didn't understand why it most of the time ignores the BIOS setting. But now it's running again with Xubuntu 9.10.

 

 

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22.11.2009
14:58

Google Chrome for Linux speeds up Typo3 Backend

Last week, I read the september issue of the Linuxjournal about the Google Chromium development and I was happy to find a development linux version online.

 

With this version installed in debian stable and testing, it is now possible to write fluently text into the Typo3 htmlarea RTE!

Even with the speeded up version 3.5 of Firefox this was awful on slow computers like my VIA Epia EN1200 or even on the J8F9 Jetway board.

 

So I am very impressed about the Javascript speed of Google Crome (current version is 4.0.249) and I will use it at least in the Typo3 backend.

 

The development tools are not that impressive. So stay with the perfect FirefoxFirebug combination.

 

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25.05.2009
19:36

Using xorg geode driver on Jetway J8F9

The Jetway J8F9 working in a box as public internet access in Weltcafe Dresden, Germany
The Jetway J8F9 working in a box at weltcafe-dresden.de in Dresden, Germany

After the Xubuntu upgrade to 8.10, I wanted to use the geode xorg driver to launch the xserver. But this didn't worked as in 8.04. Before spending too much time to find a working solution, I decided to upgrade to Xubuntu 9.04 using the xorg-1.6 server and xorg-geode-2.11.1 driver.

 

Again with 9.04 the fbdev driver worked fine but the geode driver startet with 800x600 instead of WXGA (1440x900). I tried a lot to force the driver to use another resolution. But no success. Then I added the Option "NoPanel" "true" and ... it worked! But like Martin-Eric wrote on the xorg-driver-geode mailinglist, it's prefered to not add any options to the xorg.conf. And indeed: in my BIOS there is a menu to choose CRT and/or Panel. After setting it to CRT, it works with the default xorg.conf! Great!

 

Being happy to use the geode driver another problem occurred: The active button of dialog boxes and some tabs in programs had black boxes as background. Not very useful with black text on it. There seems to be a bug but unfortunately nobody has time to fix it :-(

There are two workarounds:

 

  • add the Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy" to the Device section of your xorg.conf. This disables parts of the accelleration.
  • use a different theme in Gnome. MurrinaStormCloud (the default) is quite slow. Human doesn't work either. I use Xfce-b5 at the moment. But there remains still some strange effects but this is not so important

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22.05.2009
13:05

Updating Xubuntu on Jetway J8F9 Nano-ITX Board

For half a year, I have a Jetway Nano-ITX Board (J8F9) running with Xubuntu 8.04 on a CF-card. This Board is very slow with an AMD Geode but 100% silent and consumes only about 3 Watt. It's the perfect internet client for my cafe.

 

One problem was the right setting for the display (quite cheap monitor with 1440x900 pixels). Before updating to 8.10 I had to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manually and set:

 

 

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
#Option "UseFBDev" "true"
Driver "fbdev"
EndSection

 

 

Section "Screen"          
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
# Virtual 1440 900
Modes "1440x900" "1280x1024" "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

 

 

The Xorg-Version is:

 

 

X.Org X Server 1.4.0.90

 

 

Release Date: 5 September 2007

 

 

X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0

 

 

Build Operating System: Linux Ubuntu (xorg-server 2:1.4.1~git20080131-1ubuntu9.

 

 

Current Operating System: Linux cafepc 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 22:5

 

 

Build Date: 13 June 2008  01:08:21AM

 

 

 

After 5 minutes download and about 6 hours (!) packages replacements, the system was ready to reboot. But... it ends up in a kernel panic! And before booting, the install-tool deinstalled the old kernel. Very stupid.

 

So I removed the CF-card and modified the boot/grub/menu.lst. Xubunto forgot to add the initrd-line below the kernel:

 

 

initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-14-generic

 

 

 

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[ 26.02.2013 ]