Ubuntu 18.04 Update

Some things I've found regarding some of the issues.  On the network, it seems that r8168 is broken in Ubuntu 18.04.  Check the issues here and here.  I'll investigate solutions for this.

This was a router issue with my MAC Address filters.  Silly me banned my own laptop from using the router.

On the SMB issue, I managed to connect using cifs.  Here's my command-line mount:

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=guest,guest,vers=1.0 //router_ip/share /home/user/mountpoint

At least I am now able to connect and transfer stuff to the router's external drive.  I had similar issues with Linux Mint Rebecca (17.1) and the solution was to roll back to version I had back in 2016 (4.3.9).

Random Thoughts: PhD, Ubuntu, and Netbooks!

I've been way too busy to post anything on the blog but at the very least, one post for 2018 means this is still alive.

PhDCS is hard work.  Hard work remembering what Computer Science was like a long time ago, but I appreciate the course I've taken for the most part.

My current laptop is an Acer Aspire VX15.  It's wonderful and beefy in terms of performance but the latest Ubuntu is truly a shit sandwich.  I have done upgrades using Ubuntu with little issues.  My Acer had a fresh install of 16.04 LTS back when my laptop was new (Bye Windows 10!) and the upgrade to 18.04.1 was nothing short of a complete disaster.  I knew Canonical had put in big changes on the latest LTS with the trashing of Unity (sad) for Gnome 3 but I didn't expect it to break so many things.

• I can't run the update because it renders my laptop unable to boot which means I've got to do some voodoo with UEFI, boot and somehow luck myself into fixing the boot sequence / grub.
• I can't boot from DVD or USB to reinstall Ubuntu.
• LAN port seems unable to get an IP address anymore.
• Wi-Fi sucks now as there are hotspots that it won't connect to for some reason.
• Gnome 3, in general, is an unsatisfying desktop.  I really liked Unity and how everything was straightforward intuitive for me.  I'll live though and so, this is the least of my problems.

I'm hoping a full reinstall of Ubuntu 18.04 will fix my woes but seeing as I'm unable to get the install media to even boot.  I don't know how I'm going to fix all of this.  In due time, I hope to sit down and really dive into this thing.  In terms of data, since /home is in a different partition, I don't have to worry that much about that.  It's just the booting that is suuuuuuuuuch a pain.

Last thing on my mind is that I'm looking into getting a 7" or 8" Windows (gasp!) laptop for variety.  My Acer is going to be my primary workhorse but the truly portable machine is appealing to me.  I've seen GPD Pocket (and 2), One Mix (and 2S) Yoga, and Topjoy Falcon and all of them seem really nice buys.  Weakest one seems to be the One Mix Yoga but the 2S incarnation seems really slick.

Well, cheers till the next update (whenever that is).

Assassin's Creed Director's Cut and Wine

I've been pleased that this GOG.com release of Assassin's Creed works out of the box on Wine.  However, a recent update, Wine 1.7.30 on Ubuntu via launchpad, has a regression in that the sunlight in this game is way too bright. It's making the world bleached white. I used POL and downloaded an older version of Wine to fix this issue.  I downloaded Wine 1.7.27 which didn't seem to exhibit this issue.  Word of warning to those using Wine to play.

GOG with Wine

I'll keep this brief.  I tried installing the Witcher Card game beta some time back and had to use the /verysilent parameter to get through.  Had some error messages but the game worked.  It looks like the update facilities do not work on Wine so I may have to re-download the installer and get a new version.

Currently, I'm trying to install Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut.  Ran into some install issues so looking over at WineHQ, I found some list of components to install.

$ winetricks d3dx10 d3dx9_26 d3dx9_28 d3dx9_31 d3dx9_35 d3dx9_36 d3dx9_39 d3dx9_42 d3dx9_43 d3dx9 directx9 physx vcrun2003 vcrun2005 vcrun2008 vcrun2010 vcrun6sp6 vcrun6 wmp10 xact_jun2010 xact xinput

Ran into the same empty message window again, so I'm running the setup with the /verysilent parameter.

Update: I think that the additional packages may have broken x360ce on Wine.  My previously configured ini file seems to work though so I just copied it into the folder.  There seems to be no added benefit to the libraries.  Direct3D 10 doesn't work so you have to run Assassin's Creed using the Direct3D 9 binary.

Also, the Witcher Adventure Multiplayer Beta no longer works, it seems.  It doesn't recognize the account as part of the closed beta.

Fglrx on Ubuntu 12.10

After my excursion with the wifi, I went to AMD's site and downloaded Catalyst 14.9 for Linux.  I also had to do more apt-getting for fglrx.

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs dh-make dkms execstack dh-modaliases linux-headers-generic fakeroot xserver-xorg-dev lib32gcc1

Then follow the steps here.

Going back to Ubuntu 12.10

So, installing Ubuntu 12.10 on my HP laptop came with some unforeseen issues, but I think they are mostly sorted at this point.

After install, I had to go to /etc/apt/sources.lst to change all references to old-releases.ubuntu.com which is to be expected from an OS that is no longer supported.  I also decided to grab all the updates which took a bit of time to do.  It asked me to reboot which turned out to be a bad decision as I forgot to install the kernel headers and source which meant I had no wifi when I rebooted.  Why on earth did Ubuntu not auto-install the kernel source when these dkms dependent packages need them is beyond me.

So, to solve the lack of wifi from my Broadcom Wifi Card (4313, if I'm not mistaken), I had to boot back to the old kernel.  Right after the laptop's POST and just before booting Ubuntu I hit the shift key to get the grub menu.  The old kernel is at the advance option.  This allowed me to get my wifi back.  Then, I did some serious apt-getting.

$  sudo apt-get install linux linux-headers-generic kernel-package

After that, I loaded Software Sources and disabled and re-enabled the Broadcom drivers which did some apt-getting and dkms work on its own.  Reboot after and voila, wifi on a new kernel.  Now for fglrx.

Wine-ing About Everything

So, the past few weeks of using Wine was interesting to say the least.  I had not realized how big this post was going to be until it was all done, so I'm putting this all after the jump!

Update on Realtek ALSA

I figured I'd put this down for whoever ends up finding this post.  I'm buying a new sound card and disposing the onboard sound.  Whoever is having issues with the ALC line of sound cards can look into Realtek's ALSA fork.

Random thoughts: Wii and Youtube PLUS Latest on ALSA

I've been playing around with the Youtube app from the Nintendo Shop Channel and the old Wii and it buffers like there's no tomorrow.  I found a tip online that suggested to set the MTU (Maximum transmission unit) to 1500 instead of 0.  A higher MTU means more data is being transmitted per packet.  This seemed to improve the Youtube streaming.

On ALSA and Ubuntu, the last bit of my research lead me to Realtek's own ALSA fork as the daily HDA drivers from Ubuntu do not do me any good.  I could not wrap my mind around trying to dkms it, so instead, I'm going to shop around for a decent sound card.

That's all!

Revisiting Ubuntu and Trine 2 Audio Issue

I'm still running some tests on a possible solution to the problem.  I edited /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and added the line: options snd-hda-intel model=auto.  We'll see if it works.

Ubuntu 13.10 and Wifi

Seems like there's an issue where wifi keeps dropping on my new Ubuntu 13.10.  So, I found this article that seemed to help.  These are the commands:

sudo modprobe -rv wl
sudo apt-get remove --purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo modprobe -v brcmsmac

Upgrading to Ubuntu 13.10

Keeping this brief, I ran into an error with upgrading Ubuntu.  "Could not calculate the upgrade" or some other mumbo jumbo.  So I look into just what the hell is happening on this upgrade and came across with this askubuntu article.  Basically, it told me to look at the logs which was very helpful.

$ grep Broken /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log

This showed me that the custom xorg-xserver-video-intel package I installed for fglrx is causing the breakage.  I did apt-get remove to delete the package and re-ran the upgrade.  It seems to be pushing through now.

Update on PulseAudio v ALSA

So, here I go again, diving into this PulseCrap and so, I've found that Ubuntu does come with the Pulse plugins for ALSA.  It's tucked inside libasound2-plugins but I'm starting to think this is the cause for my audio disappearing.  This reminds me of my OSS/ALSA days where sound contention causes the audio to just disappear.  Time to dive into the Launchpad bugs.

According to the archlinux blog, Trine 2 uses OpenAL, but I'm not certain if Natural Selection 2 uses that.  Still need to keep digging, though here's one interesting link I found.

Losing sound on select games...

I've noticed that on some games, I lose sound not only on the game, but also on the entire desktop. It's an odd issue, but I believe I have finally found a possible cause. I have tried playing Natural Selection 2 and although I am happy that it comes with a Linux client, along with Trine 1 and 2, as well as Red Orchestra, the sound goes away until I reboot.

I decided to run ldd on it to see if there were clues. I noticed that when I compare it with games that don't exhibit this behaviour that NS2 has a link to libasound.so which I think is a sure sign that this is another one of those ALSA vs Pulse Audio conflicts.  I will do more research, but this is a theory that is making a lot of sense at the moment.

Checking nVIDIA driver blob versions

I'm half thinking about a GPU upgrade for my desktop machine and I'm also thinking that hotswapping an nVIDIA card for my aging GeForce 9500 GT may work.  Doing a bit of homework, I decided to check what the driver version is right now.

$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version

NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  313.30  Wed Mar 27 16:56:45 PDT 2013

GCC version:  gcc version 4.7.3 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.7.3-1ubuntu1) 

From the NV's documentation, it covers GPUs all the way to GTX 770.  That's good to know!

Open Source Radeon Drivers and Power Management

Just a quick note here.  I switched to the open source drivers for the multiple monitors but along with that, my battery life had been slashed by one half.  I used to get approximately 4 hours of life from the fglrx driver and now I have barely 2 hours.  Sad, but the big desktop is more important to me at the moment.

I'm ditching fglrx

After months and months of using this piece of sh*t driver.  I've decided that when I do get a bulk of time to sort this out.  I'm going to switch back to the open source drivers.  Having a big desktop is more important than the power saving stupidity I'll suffer from with the open source radeon drivers.

Revisiting fglrx and multi-monitor setup on Ubuntu 13.04

I really hate that multi-monitor is broken for muxless AMD/Intel hybrid laptops on 13.04.  I've gotten all the way to the latest 13.11 beta and the problems remain.  However, I did uncover some interesting things.

The desktop display options have always been conspicuously absent on amdcccle.  It seems to have been caused by the RandR 1.2 extensions being enabled.  According to this link and this link, it seems I have to disable RandR from xorg and amd's own config file.  One day, I will get to try it on my own.

1. Edit /etc/ati/amdpcsdb and add EnableRandR12=Sfalse on the [AMDPCSROOT/SYSTEM/DDX] section.
2. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add Option "EnableRandR12" "false" on "Device" section.

Downgrading from 13.04 to 12.10?

Generally, 13.04 is fine for my nVIDIA desktop, but on my HP laptop, I'm very unhappy with it.  The lack of a dual head setup is seriously killing me (Thank you, AMD...) and after the recent updates, my touchpad click button is now playing tricks on me.  What do I do?  Do I downgrade to 12.10?  Will the next Ubuntu release fix all of these issues?  Hmmm...

I intentionally upgraded my PC first and give 13.04 a week on that machine to make sure everything was spiffy.  This grace period was for me to decide whether or not to upgrade my work laptop.  I see now that I should probably not be upgrade happy with my work laptop but that will mean I will get stuck with the same problem I had before, which is getting stuck on old releases forever.

It's been a rough week...

EA Origin Store Client on Wine

I have had some issues with Origin beginning last year where the client would just crash and crash.  No matter what version of Wine I used, it wouldn't run at all.  I moved through different Ubuntu distro versions and still no luck.  The crash point is C:\Program Files\Origin\Origin.exe: double free or corruption (!prev) and it seems to happen sporadically. After poking through the wine bug entries here and here, I figured out how to get the client to run reliably.

Since I installed my Origin client on a 32-bit Wine prefix, the commandline you'll see here is specifically for that.

WINEPREFIX="/path/to/wineprefix/of/origin" WINEARCH=win32 taskset -c 0 Origin.exe

Try it and see if it works!