User Space Across Fedora & Ubuntu

I started to boot in different operating systems depending on what I was doing.

For example I have Bruce Eckel's First Steps in Flex book - but I've read about Adobe's Flex Builder for Linux just installing and working better in 32-but Linices, so I do that work in Ubuntu... but I review and do some code work when in Fedora.

Another example is web2py which I update from launchpad and do tests on (intentionally) in both.

Same goes for finances, Tomboy notes, web links, gnucash files, documents.... there are just many things I want to have one common copy for regardless of where I boot.

Ubuntu starts the default first userID at 1000. Fedora starts the first default userID at 500.

I created a second user on each (handy regardless, for backing up - I use rsync - the home space of my "main" account, since I don't want to be logged in when doing that).

On fedora, I changed the user and group id of my "main" user account in /etc/passwd and /etc/groups, then recursively changed the owner of the home space (now of an unknown user):

$ sudo chown -R myid:mygroup /home/myid

Now, key areas (Downloads, Documents, Pictures, Music, projects, workspace....) I symlinked to my Ubuntu space.

Recall that the common denominator is Ubuntu, since it uses ext3 filesystesm, while Fedora-11 now defaults to ext4 (for all except the /boot partition).

By the way, the internal disk seems quieter (an old EIDE drive) and noticeably faster on ext4 activities than ext3 (when those are on the same drive), so I like / prefer using ext4 for now.

I have not yet symlinked Tomboy - not sure if any of the data is dependent on 32-bit or 64-but aspects yet.

Getting the Epson CX7400 scanner working (Fedora & Ubuntu)

Printing has worked well in both Fedora & Ubuntu, but SANE didn't recognize my scanner.

This works in Ubuntu (I expect it will in F11; will add a note when I try). Looking at the sane-project site, I edited /etc/sane.d/epson2.conf, adding:

# for Epson CX7400 scanner, I'm trying this:
usb 0x4b8 0x0838

I still didn't get a scanner showing up in gimp. Based on help from gimp, I tried

$ scanimage -L

to list scan devices. This didn't work, but it suggested I try

$ sane-find-scanner

This found the scanner, but reported that a back-end might be needed.
A little googling got me to try

$sudo apt-get install libsane-extras

This still didn't help.

Installing the iscan_2.20.0-6.ltdl7_i386.deb driver from http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/ did the trick.

I did some test scans, and found at least one bug:

• I acquired a preview from the interface. The default scan settings showed 300 dpi (x and y), but the scan got only the preview resolution.
• Changing the dpi settings to 600x600 showed something dramatically larger;
• changing it back to 300x300 this time got a 300x300 image scan.

This appears to be an xsane initialization issue, as subsequent preview acquisition does not affect the scan resolution.

It turned out to be more problematic to get the scanner working on Fedora-11. The scanner id (sane-find-scanner) was already in place (not sure - perhaps because of previous action of mine?), so I got the iscan-2.20.0-6.x86_64.rpm driver from http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/. It wouldn't install, complaining of a missing /usr/lib64/libltld.so.3 version of a libtools library. There was a version 7, so I tried linking ...so.3 to point to it - no good. I looked through the avasys forums, and found a note about Ubuntu and missing dependency so I decided to try something similar for Fedora.

I searched for a Fedora package that contained this libtools version of the library: I found libtool-ltdl-1.5.26-4.fc10.x86_64.rpm and downloaded it locally. Yum wouldn't install it ("It doesn't update anything." - which it doesn't; I already have a newer package installed).

Someone versant in yum may know how to install older packages when you need them too. I did this:

$ sudo rpm -i --oldpackage libtool-ltdl-1.5.26-4.fc10.x86_64.rpm
$ ls /usr/lib64/liblt*
/usr/lib64/libltdl.so.3 /usr/lib64/libltdl.so.7
/usr/lib64/libltdl.so.3.1.6 /usr/lib64/libltdl.so.7.2.0
$

Trying the libtool command, its version seems unaffected (and loading the right thing). Now installing the iscan 64 bit version succeeded, and Gimp scans with Xsane (same caveat about inital resolution settings not taking applies). Iscan doesn't have this problem (available from gimp in both Ubuntu & Fedora).

Fedora Update Breaks Boot (NVIDIA driver)

I was a little miffed when this happened. I solved it. Here's the background.

First, the NVIDIA driver installation (which is just marvellous) didn't find pre-compiled kernel interfaces, and so as part of it's installation compiled headers and generated kernel interfaces to the driver.

This broke with a kernel update.

After the F-11 update, boot would come up, and when X started (I was expecting login dialogue), I got a blank, dark screen, no cursor. Unfortunately, Fedora 11 does NOT come with the nice boot screen that Ubuntu does. Fortunately, you can change it. (More on that later).

So no amount of reboot attempts got me anywhere, so I tried Ubuntu - to get to alternate boot device from the ASUS BIOS takes a ALT-F8 key-press at start-up. Paranoid, I picked an Ubuntu "recovery" mode (I have no idea what that is, does, never tried it before). It checked disks, scanned hardware (if I remember correctly) and then rebooted - this time I went into normal boot and it came up.

Phew!

Since NVIDIA was running on Ubuntu (I had dual monitors again) I guessed this must be what happened - new kernel. To test, I wanted to boot to console - init 3 instead of init 5 for Fedora.

'mount' showed me my ubuntu usb was on /dev/sdb1; /dev/sda was my internal drive. Beginning with F-11, Fedora created filesystems with ext4, and ubuntu doesn't support this. I booted from the Fedora live CD and mounted the fedora disk.

I looked at the grub menu from Ubuntu, and compared it with the grub menu in fedora - buggers! I enabled a 10 second timeout in Fedora, and enabled the menus (fedora's grub was still allowing booting in recovery mode, or in past kernels).

I strongly encourage changing this in your Fedora-11:

• edit /boot/grub/grub.conf;
• change timeout;
• comment out hiddenmenu:
  

  # timeout=0
  timeout=10
  splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
  # hiddenmenu
  

Now, I was able to boot the previous kernel, and indeed everything came up as expected. The next step was to change to runlevel, come up in the updated kernel and re-install the NVIDIA driver (just so it could re-configure the kernel interfaces to itself). I changed /etc/inittab to init 3, and booted. Everything came up fine. As root, I ran the NVIDIA install script, it did it's stuff, recompiled interfaces for this kernel. I changed runlevels - init 5 - and up I was.

While this is annoying, at least it's simple and relatively quick.

I'm not sure - and will watch - if a similar kernel update in Ubuntu will have the same effect (I don't think so, as I've had kernel updates, always used the NVIDIA driver, and never had to do this manually).

Finally, I thought it would be nice to have the ubuntu usb on my Fedora Grub menu. There are a couple of things different between Fedora and Ubuntu grubs (even though they both report grub 0.97):

• Ubuntu boot menu is in /boot/grub/menu.lst; Fedora is in /boot/grub/grub.conf
• Ubuntu (nicely) identifies disks by UUID; Fedora grub does not appear capable of this;

I edited the Fedora grub.conf file - adding some boot lines from the Ubuntu menu.lst. In ubuntu, it looks something like this (I've replaced chunks of the long uuid's w/ "....")

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-13-generic
uuid 2........02da
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-13-generic root=UUID=2.........02da ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-13-generic

Fedora's grub doesn't like this; I changed the uuid line to:

root (hd1,0)

and this seems to make everything happy (the uuid on the kernel line remains intact) - my other (backup drives) are off of a usb hub, so it seems this usb is always showing as hd1, which is good.

Kickoff

I thought I'd document progress on my new desktop adventures.

I'm becoming a Linux-only home office.

I thought about what I _really_ didn't want to live without from my PC, and if there were equivalents. In sum, I found replacements. The one or two things that I didn't know how to replace I got to run under wine. Good-bye traditional PC!

What I'm running on:

Asus M3N78 Pro; AMD Phenom 9500;

Those are the basics. I had some trouble bringing up these boards and getting stable running, but here are some basics of what I ended with:

• Ugrade ASUS BIOS to 1003;

My board came w/ 0701; I read someone had luck w/ 0403 - didn't work for me; I tried 903; a little better; 1003 (latest as I write) seemed to improve things, so I went with it.

• Find an O/S which seems to run stably on this board;

Before upgrading the bios, I tried live CD's - running, trying things. My first try was Ubuntu 9.04, x86_64. I experienced basic problems - usb drives would lock up after some short use; monitoring system use with gnome-system-monitor would either not work, or lock up after a time. I tried playing around with various BIOS settings, memory, etc. based on threads I found on the net - most of these will ill-directed or ill advised. Resetting the BIOS to default settings (for RAM, etc.) proved operational, indeeded perhaps most stable. I can't tell home much of this was settings vs. the 1003 BIOS version, but 1003 is what I continue to run.

Fedora-10 (what I'd used on a 64 bit machine at work) didn't work any better (worse, if I recall). I tried Fedora-11 preview, and it seemed to work all day long; games, internet, devices, mounting, etc. Two days later, Fedora-11 was released and I loaded that.

I posted a report to Ubuntu forums about my problems, and was encouraged to try 8.04 or 8.10 Ubuntus to see what my experience was. I wanted to get a working system, but finally did try 8.04 x86_64, and it seemed to work well. By now, I was convinced there was nothing wrong with the mother board / processor.

Later, I would try to boot from by Ubuntu-32 bit 9.04 usb installation (I don't know why I didn't try this sooner) - I tried the "recovery" mode first, and that seemed to test and reconfigure (?) things - in any case, booted and worked well - except for the NVIDIA driver - it would lock on some gnome games (completely - no mouse, no keyboard; I had to powerdown). Upgrading to the NVIDIA driver (see below) solved this problem. I am writing this from my Ubuntu-32 9.04 boot from the usb. Great stuff.

• Install NVIDIA driver for GeForce 8300 (version 185.18.14)
  

I have dual monitors; I used to boot/run Ubuntu from a usb drive on a Dell laptop; dual monitor support was great.

I wish I had documented more of this as I was going, so I will continue to.