another good one
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Apr 01, 2010 1:02 PM EDT |
I love your ongoing sagas, you're like the human minesweeper of FOSS :) Good stuff. |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 01, 2010 2:05 PM EDT |
I've solved my FAT problem. I can mount FAT32 drives in FreeBSD. But my Centon Craze MP3 player, which is supposed to look like a regular FAT32 drive when you plug it into the USB is what is making FreeBSD stall - it literally locks up the console (which won't create an inode for it - if that's the real technical term) until I unplug it. I looked at the drive with gparted and a couple of other tools in Parted Magic, and it turns out that the MP3 player's drive and FAT partition isn't exactly standard. There is data in there that you can see in Linux and Windows, but in gParted it looks like the partition is empty. So I'm just chalking this one up to general hardware incompatibility. I'm having no trouble now with Linux or Windows USB drives - and I've always done my OpenBSD and FreeBSD backups to ext2/3 partitions so I can access them from Linux machines. I'm trying to fix my last remaining X problem right now. I think it's more of an Xorg problem than a FreeBSD problem: I'm running Fvwm2 as my window manager, and after the laptop goes into screensaver mode, it won't come out it with a mouse move. I see the cursor and a blank screen. I can get X back by switching to the first console (ctrl-alt-F1) and then back to the X console (ctrl-alt-F9). The screensaver worked perfectly in Fvwm2 early yesterday, so something happened since then. I has started X as root a couple of times, and that screwed up my .Xauthority file's permissions. I deleted .ICEauthority - don't know what that even does. But before the "change," the screensaver would not only go blank but would also turn off the backlight after a time and then come back to life with a mouse movement. I can't quite figure out what happened - I didn't change xorg.conf. I'm going back into GNOME to see how that works (screensaver blanks the screen but won't turn off the backlight; it was recovering OK last I looked). The whole point of my going back and forth between BSD and Linux is the idea that we're not so much using the kernel and userland as we are using the applications that run on top of them - and the "better" apps should work just as well in any Unix-like environment. Having alternatives is what FOSS is all about, and the ability to run a number of Unix-like operating system that aren't Linux is something that we shouldn't take for granted. I'm doing what I always do in these situations: fiddle with xorg.conf. I almost don't need one at all, but in some versions of Xorg there are still substantial artifacts on the video (Intel 830m). I hadn't distro-hopped in quite awhile. Between May 2009 and March 2010 I've used: OpenBSD 4.4, Ubuntus 8.04-9.10, Debian Lenny. Since I killed my Lenny install with that ill-advised (and under-researched) dist-upgrade to Squeeze, I've tried a few live CDs (Sidux, PC-BSD 8.0, Ubuntu Lucid alphas and beta, Debian Squeeze alpha 1). I did install Ubuntu 10.04 just before the beta but didn't know the Grub2 hack that allows modification of the boot line and wiped it in frustration ... then I tried FreeBSD 8.0 (from the PC-BSD DVD, which will install the full KDE PC-BSD or a minimal FreeBSD) and now am running FreeBSD 7.3-release with GNOME, Fvwm and Fluxbox. GNOME isn't as polished in FreeBSD as it is in Linux. I can automount drives, sound works, video sort of works (vlc works; Totem crashes, I think there are gstreamer issues; Flash actually does work but eats CPU like crazy and is reluctant to give it up after the fact). The most glaring void for the lazy is, as far as I know, no GUI network configuration. It's a good thing to know how to do it in the text files, but you can't beat a nice GUI for quick changes, especially with multiple encrypted Wi-Fi networks. FreeBSD's GNOME team is looking to port GNOME's NetworkManager to FreeBSD http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/volunteer.html, but it looks a bit on the monumental side at this time. All said, it's easier to get FreeBSD set up than OpenBSD. I've installed and run Slackware, and that distro is much, much easier to set up than any BSD (excepting PC-BSD, which makes a nice KDE system out of FreeBSD). |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 01, 2010 11:16 PM EDT |
Xorg in FreeBSD update: I enabled DPMS in xorg.conf, and I think that did it. Once again, I'm enjoying Fvwm2 and rolling my .fvwm2rc. |
| lcafiero Apr 03, 2010 11:15 AM EDT |
"I've solved my FAT problem . . . ." Yeah, me too, Steven -- I added more vegetables and roughage, no salt, no sweets, and . . . oh, wait. Never mind. Seconding tuxchick's comment: Your stuff is very educational, Steven. Keep up the great work. |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 04, 2010 6:22 PM EDT |
Larry, The Fedora Xfce spin remains in the forefront of my mind ... |
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