main August 2010

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39 participants
56 discussions

Linux Mint Help Please
by Simon Royal 08 Aug '10

08 Aug '10

Hi Can someone offer some help on my problems using Linux Mint LXDE? I installed it on my ThinkPad 240x via another machine. Initially I had some X problems, but I have resolved them. However, I am still getting some odd screen problems where it is drawing multiple icons and buttons - like the maximise/minimise buttons - all over the screen. You can 'wipe' them off by moving a window, but they randomly pop up. I found one other person who had this problem, however he was using Xubuntu. I too had the same problems under Xubuntu 9.10, but not under Ubuntu 10.04. He resolved them by 'enabling display compositing' under xfce 4 settings manager, but Mint Linux uses LXDE and I cannot find anything in the menus for this. He also mentioned that when running off battery the whole machine was slower - very noticeably slower - than when it is running off power adapter. Everyone else on the forum said this wasn't possible, but I have been experiencing this too. I would really like to get over this graphics problem without switching distros as I like Mint. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP Home - Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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a deeply puzzling overheating
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Aug '10

07 Aug '10

Any ideas on this? Its a socket 754 machine, something like a 2Ghz Athlon, 1G memory. Debian Squeeze. It has always worked just fine, and in almost all ways except this still does. What has just now started happening however is that the owner has started to read the papers online. Sometimes, it doesn't seem to matter which paper or which browser, there will be a page with 'the wrong kind' of graphics. Its not clear exactly what the wrong kind is, some are fine, others seem not to be. Gradually, the fan will start to speed up. If you now start up gkrell, you can see that cpu temperature starts to rise quite rapidly to the high 50s, and the fan gets very loud indeed. I don't know how far it would go, because one of us closes the browser fairly soon when this happens, and eventually the temperature falls to below 50. It does not do it when displaying pictures. For instance, one can load in a file of a few hundred, and it will display the thumbnails fine, and then one can page through them repeatedly, they come up an display quite fast, and there's no problem. It does do it when rendering some pdfs. Particularly, it did it with a graphics intensive pdf of some sort. I thought about getting a better cpu cooler, this is the stock one, but there is very little space in these smallish cases. And I can't see why this should be happening. I have other barebones of this sort, Asus, and it never does. Another machine is an old 754, and it does not happen on it. I'm not completely sure if this is new, because I'm not sure whether this sort of graphic content was displayed previously. Meanwhile, there's a Novatech small form factor i3 machine at 400 which is looking more and more attractive.... Bought one for someone else, they are fairly compact, quite quiet, and run very cool. 754 is pretty old hat nowadays, so maybe its time. Peter

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Re: [ALUG] Copying SD cards
by Anthony Anson 07 Aug '10

07 Aug '10

Chris Walker wrote: > On 04/08/10 17:05, Anthony Anson wrote: >> Chris Walker wrote: >>> Apologies if this appears twice - I posted it to the wrong address, >>> having already posted it using the wrong email address! >>> >>> I've copied one 2GB SD card to another 2GB card using the dd command >>> (having copied it to the hard drive as an intermediate step). >>> >>> The original card will load up in the desired device - a TomTom sat >>> nav but the second card won't. Is there any way for me to check that >>> the cards are the same? >>> >>> Also, and I realise that it's a bit OT here (although the TomTom is a >>> linux device!) but does anybody have any ideas what might be wrong >>> with the card? >> >> ISTR having a similar promble with a Kingston memory stick - it had a >> separate partition with uselessware in it, and it waas written in a >> (IIRC) NT format. >> >> Using violent methods under Debian, I deleted the contents of this >> partition then the partition itself. (It wouldn't go, all in one lump) >> >> After that, the copy worked as per original. > > But wouldn't the DD command overwrite everything on the SD card > including the partitions? Strangely, it didn't. I also tried reformatting it, and it ignored the partition. I think it's because the partition has a different drive address. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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enable display compositing in lxde
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi I have been having some bizarre graphical glitches in Linux Mint LXDE and so far haven't been able to find anyone else with the same problems nor a fix for it. Until now. 'the minimise/maximise/close window icons appear in random places all over the screen when I roll over them. When I move a window over them they dissapear (as if i was erasing them)' I have this exact problem. He appears to be using Xubuntu - I too had the same problem in Xubuntu last night. Oddly enough it didn't do this in Ubuntu. Anyway, he fixed it by 'enabling display compositing' under xfce 4 settings manager. Great, but I am using the LXDE version of Linux Mint and cant find this anywhere. Can anyone offer help or an alternative way of enabling display compositing? Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP Home - Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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Mint Is Working... Few Graphical Glitches
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi Well, I found a work around. It seems xorg.conf was configured for the machine Mint was installed on. Moving the hard drive confused Mint as it didnt detect the new drivers/graphics. Luckily I found someone else who has Xubuntu installed on their 240X and they posted their xorg.conf online. So I nanoed in safe boot and replaced the contents of mine with theirs. This worked and I am not booted into Linux Mint LXDE on my ThinkPad 240X. It has a few graphical issues where it doesnt redraw things properly, like it hangs onto window buttons and prints them all over the screen. But I am sure this is a problem I can get round. Anyone have any ideas what this is and how to stop it. It is quite hard to describe. When you open up a window that has the close/maximise/minimise options sometimes these are repeated lots of times all over the screen. Fingers crossed I can get this sorted. After the long haul of getting this machine to dual boot I am just about there at having a fully working set up. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Linux Mint 9 LXDE & Windows XP Home - Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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Mint Problems
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi I tried installing Linux Mint LXDE on my ThinkPads hard drive via a different laptop. This seemed the easiest way. It went ok and grub works fine. Back in my ThinkPad XP still works fine. Mint boots but then gets stuck. It sits on a black screen with some white text saying: Exporting directories for NFS daemon. Starting NFS kernel daemon. Starting NTP server ntpd. Starting common unix printing system cupsd. This stays on the screen. Every 20 seconds the whole screen goes black then the writing comes back. It doesnt get any further than this. If I do recovery mode then it will boot to a linux prompt. Any ideas? I am assuming this is something hardware related. Something to do with it being set up for the other machine. Is there a way of getting it to redetect hardware? Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i).

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Distro Oddness Possible Driver Issue
by Simon Royal 06 Aug '10

06 Aug '10

Hi Bear with me this could be a long email. As you know I have a ThinkPad 240X. It dual boots XP and Linux. I originally had Linux Mint on this ThinkPad as it was already installed on a hard drive, but it had graphical glitches. So I installed XP and then put Linux Mint LXDE on it, via removing the hard drive and installing it in another machine with an optical drive. With the hard drive back in the ThinkPad, Mint would boot properly with all sorts of errors. So I took the drive out and put it back in the other laptop and installed Ubuntu 10 using the alternative installer. I put it back in the ThinkPad and it booted perfectly and ran lovely, albiet slowly. So I thought lets try Xubuntu as it is a bit less resource hungry. So once again I took out the hard drive, popped it in my other laptop and installed Xubuntu 9.10 via regular cd. Once done, I took out the hard drive and stuck it back in the ThinkPad. It worked, took a while to boot and has some graphical glitches, such as repeating window icons (like maximise, close etc). I am assuming this is a driver issue. I had the same problem with Mint, but not Ubuntu. Any ideas how I can get round this annoying graphics glitch. I am currently updating Xubuntu to 10.04 (which is going to take about 5 hours apparently) to see if that helps as I got the graphics problems in both Mint and Xubuntu which are buntu 9 based, yet Ubuntu 10 didnt have this problem. Will running the updater update system drivers too? Simon PS. Where is the System Profiler in Xubuntu? --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum. (Sent using Sony Ericsson P990i).

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pl2303 Serial to USB problem - /dev/ttyUSB0 not created
by Barry Samuels 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

I have a CurrentCost electricity usage monitor which is normally connected to my desktop via USB. When the unit is plugged in I get a number of lines in syslog like so: kernel: usb 4-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 12 kernel: pl2303 4-1:1.0: pl2303 converter detected kernel: usb 4-1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0 I am trying to get this same device working on my laptop but this time I see the following in syslog: kernel: pl2303: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver but nothing else i.e no 'attached to ttyUSB0'. Looking in /dev there is no ttyUSBn Whereas the desktop also loads the pl2303 and usbserial kernel modules automatically when the device is connected the laptop does not and when I load them manually I get only the above mentioned line in syslog. Needless to say the software which monitors the device won't connect. Any suggestions? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: [ALUG] Installing Linux Without CD/USB
by mark fernandes (IFR) 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

Thinkpad 240 and 240X have PCMCIA network cards so PXE unlikely. And as said by Simon earlier - no USB or CD boot (Windows install by special boot floppy that mounts IBM PCMCIA CD drive and gets the party started). Putting drive in another PC is usually the way to go but for a mixed OS environment I suspect Wubi and it's ilk is the most likely to succeed. Thinkpad wiki http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_instructions_for_the_ThinkPad_240 Regards, Mark (Who used to own and use a TP240) >From: Ricky Bruce <rickybruce(a)gmail.com> > >On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Simon Royal <simonroyal(a)live.co.uk> wrote: >> My next trick is to get Linux installed and this is where you guys come in. I would like to install Linux Mint LXDE or >>possibly Xubuntu. How can I do it without a CD drive, without being able to boot via USB and without messing up my >>Windows installation? >> > >I have never tried it, but would a network based install work? PXE >seems to ring a bell > >Ricky > >*************************

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Installing Linux Without CD/USB
by Simon Royal 05 Aug '10

05 Aug '10

Hi Well, I got my ThinkPad 240X and after a bit of a struggle got the drives partitioned and XP Home installed, all without a CD drive or floppy drive for this machine and it doesnt boot from USB. Long story, but it involved taking the drive out and copying install files across via another laptop. In terms of speed compared to the ThinkPad 600, 600E and Umax I had, this is very quick. XP rips along, but it has no Linux installed at present. My next trick is to get Linux installed and this is where you guys come in. I would like to install Linux Mint LXDE or possibly Xubuntu. How can I do it without a CD drive, without being able to boot via USB and without messing up my Windows installation? I have partitioned the drive. I have XP installed on one, a small one containing the XP installer files which could easily be replaced with the Linux install files, plus a spare partition ready for Linux. So any advice on how to do it. I have googled it and there are plenty of different ways although a lot of them assume you can boot via USB. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Windows XP & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.

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