Ubuntu Breezy breaks my nut.

As I mentioned on archstudio-dev, Ubuntu Breezy (5.10) breaks nut with our Belkin 550VA.

It'll think there is no power and immediately shutdown the system.

This is apparently due to an upstream bug with nut that will be fixed for the upcoming nut 2.0.3.

In the meantime, here's the general idea behind the fix:

• Fetch the current Testing nut from CVS (the alioth CVS server is slow!)

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.alioth.debian.org:/cvsroot/nut co -rTesting nut

• ./configure (Match the configure args from Ubuntu)
• cd drivers && make newhidups
• Add to the end of /etc/hotplug/usb/libhid.usermap :

libhidups      0x0003      0x050d   0x0550   ...the rest is the same...

For the lazy (and those who trust me! ha!), fetch:

• newhidups driver
• libhidsups hotplug script
• libhid.usermap

Once you have the bits, installation:

[ tell nut to use the newhidups driver ]
edit /etc/nut/upsd.conf to have driver = 'newhidups'
[ copy the newhidups driver ]
sudo cp /lib/nut/newhidups /lib/nut/newhidups.orig
sudo cp newhidups /lib/nut/newhidups
[ Install the nut hotplug scripts into /etc/hotplug/usb ]
cp scripts/hotplug/libhidups /etc/hotplug/usb
chmod +x /etc/hotplug/usb/lidhidups
cp scripts/hotplug/libhid.usermap /etc/hotplug/usb

Voila. nut 2.0.3 knows a lot more about the Belkin protocol than 1.4 did.

[/software/ubuntu] permanent link

Tried the Ubuntu Live CD...Nah.

I tried out the Ubuntu Live CD on an Intel box today. Feh.

It's okay, but I wouldn't use it as a rescue CD. For that, KNOPPIX is still better as it autoconfigures everything.

[/software/ubuntu] permanent link

A note for folks with PowerBook G4s running Hoary

I'm typing this from Ubuntu Hoary on my old PowerBook G4.

I tried running the Tiger seed on this laptop, but everything kept crashing and the xterms were displaying dark blue in a funky light blue. That made it really hard to read.

So, I downloaded Ubuntu for the PowerPC. A little bit of hassle getting the wireless key for my network inputted (the 'advice' it gives on what the key format is wrong). But, then the big problem was that the display was only 640x480. Yikes. That's bad.

Digging around the logs, it looks like detection of the 'refresh rates' for the LCDs in the ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility 9000 (M6 LY) is busted in XOrg. So, you need to manually override the scan rate like so in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Monitor"

Identifier      "Color LCD"
Option          "DPMS"
HorizSync       28-57
VertRefresh     43-60

EndSection

Going through dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and doing an 'Expert'/'Advanced' on the monitor will allow Ubuntu to 'guess' at the LCD sync/refresh rates. (This accomplishes the above xorg.conf change.)

Still haven't figured out how to use X properly without a two-button mouse. I can't bring up any of the context windows. And, the function keys are inverted from OS X: the F1..F10 buttons are the default. To do screen brightness, etc, you need to hit the Fn key. Odd. Sure there's a config file to change that somewhere.

[/software/ubuntu] permanent link