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Archive for September, 2008

Via USB and ehci_hcd Bug

September 21st, 2008 No comments

Intermittent problems with a USB drive attached to an Acer desktop running Ubuntu appear related to a long-standing issue with the ehci_hcd driver.

After much googling, the fix is to add acpi=noirq to the kernel boot line in /boot/grub/menu.lst.

title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro acpi=noirq
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
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vzyum Database Recovery

September 19th, 2008 1 comment

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I’m getting this problem too after just having upgraded some packages on the host node. The fact that this can be corrected by entering the VPS and running any rpm command makes it look suspiciously like a bug. Any rpm database inside a VPS is somehow left in an inconsistent state. Of course, this makes vzyum unusable. Does vzyum need an upgrade in order to handle this?

vzyum 139 install wget

Yields:

exec /usr/share/vzyum/bin/yum -c /vz/template/centos/5/i386/config/yum.conf --installroot /vz/root/139 --vps=139 install wget
rpmdb: unable to initialize mutex: Invalid argument
rpmdb: PANIC: Invalid argument
rpmdb: PANIC: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery

I’ve experienced the same behavior and found that a simple
rpm -qa run inside the VE (either via ‘vzctl exec’ or entering the VE and running it inside) solves the issue

update: unfortunately, this fix isn’t permanent and the issue reappears as soon as the VE is restarted as mentioned above
At least this workaround doesn’t need the installation of yum inside the VE

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Dualhead on ThinkPad T60p Running Ubuntu Hardy

September 8th, 2008 No comments

Somehow my ThinkPad (T60p) desktop never seems big enough so whenever possible I like to plug in a second monitor. Until recently, Ubuntu required all sorts of messing around in xorg.conf, but fortunately the situation is somewhat improved with Hardy. To be fair, much of this configuration mess is probably due to ATI’s less than stellar Linux support, which is slowly improving.

First, always backup your existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf !!!  Virtually every screen config tool I’ve used under Linux has ultimately toasted my xorg.conf file.

I found “amdcccle” produced the best results, with Compiz still operational.

Others may prefer “aticonfig –initial=dual-head“, which also worked but left my Compiz out of action.

Both are far from perfect and this is one area where Ubuntu (and other distros) still lag far behind Windows and OSX.

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