Computers

Same laptop, much nicer box

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Well, I’ve quite enjoyed using the x11-wm/fvwm2-devel port on FreeBSD… But it looks like I’ve finally gone back to an old love…

(click to enlarge)

blackbox chix

Running FreeBSD 7-Stable, Blackbox 0.70.1 with a customized theme, fbpanels for a system tray and pager. GKrellM system monitor and the X-MultiMedia System (xmms) blasting music. I don’t care much for task managers or window lists, so switching between windows is done purely via sloppy focus (focus follows mouse) and alt+tab through bbkeys. The toolbar is disabled and I keep the slit empty, I have no need for them.

Since my laptop boots straight into GDM for the login manager, I’ve set a custom session in it that will execute my ~/init.sh by default. That kicks off all the fun stuff ^_^. The blackbox theme is a tweaked version of a “Corvette” theme for one of the blackbox for windows ports. I made a few changes and stripped out unnecessary crap (like the toolbar). Set my XMMS and GKrellM themes to something more matching. The wall paper was my first ‘experiment’ at making one, hence the lack of quality 😛 But I generally have my wall paper rotated to a different randomly through a python script and hsetroot.

I guess decking out my box is as close to relaxing as I’m gonna get :

Ahh, sometimes I love having a laptop.

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I’m sitting here, just sorted the volume on realplay and posted an entry on LJ. When lo and behold, there is a flash of lighting, a stroke of thunder, and the power fails. Just long enough to cut the internet connection, reset every clock in the house, e.t.c. I’ve reset the clocks and pulled my laptop off the A/C, probably should shutdown in a few just in case I need the battery power later… Well, can’t say I’m not paranoid!

I know ya can’t win’em all but wouldn’t it be kind of cool to have a fighting chance? Or am I just managing to get intoxicated on bottled water, to even think of such an idea >_>. Coding until I pass the fuck out might not be much of a night but hey, it beats a lot of the alternatives right now. It’s not like I’m going to have any rest before work tomorrow anyway :

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Tired… I think my sleep/work patterns of late are starting to get to me :

Manged to get some time in on TG#1, even if it was some ‘solo’ dynamic assaults.

I’ve also gotten another module imported, and another that would be ready if I didn’t have to port it from using the Qt3 Support library… lol.

It shouldn’t take to much work to get the portconfig module ready for import but, my brain needs some rest :. And I’m stuck going back to work soon (an ~hour) on top of it 🙁

Esmeralda

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Sitting here day dreaming of a sexy lady…

Dual (2 x) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 CPUs (Yorkfields) running at 2.66Ghz clock / 1333Mhz FSB — these chips are to drool for!!!

6~8GB of PC2-5300 *ECC* Memory for good measure 😉

4 x 250GB Seagate SATA hard drives in RAID 5

Dual (2 x) graphics cards with twin dvi ports per card; twin nVidia 8600 or 7800s would be nice if possible.

4 x LCD Monitors -> 17″, 19″, 19″, 17″ or larger.

1 x Floppy disk drive, old tech but still valuable.

2 x DVD Burner

1 x CD Burner

1 x 5 button laser mouse

1 x standard issue PC keyboard

Running FreeBSD 7-STABLE AMD64 for the operating system of course.

Shit load of fans and one hell of a powerful PSU not to mention a huge desk !!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only problem, other then that the mother board needed for something like that would cost an arm and a leg alone…. Is that nVidia’s drivers for FreeBSD 64-Bit (amd64) suck and there’s only so much ram addressable by 32-bit systems without hacks like PAE.

Oh man, I think I need a cup to catch the drool, this calls for a song

Slap ya grandma that would be one beautiful rig !!!

I think my laptop is ready to disown me ^_^

BSD Forever

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Well, my Darling Dixie is now running FreeBSD 7.0-Release 🙂

I finished last minute backups of files and off loaded them to Vecta, just in case hehe. Unlocked my wireless network and installed from the three CDs I have for FreeBSD 7.0-Release. Since I don’t use the CD sets to install more extras then X.Org, I only needed disk one as usual.

I almost always use a custom installation of FreeBSD because I find it more expedient and very concise. Used sysinstall to finish the last bit of configuration before the first boot: nfs client on, sshd on, dhcp on ath0, set root password.

With the first boot I mounted my backups over NFS, copied the over and unpacked for reference — rc.conf, rc.conf.local, xorg.conf, and wpa_supplicant.conf. I also setup my users and groups via pw and edited loader.conf to load my sound driver.

Merged changes as desired into rc.conf and an xorg.conf file generated via X -configure. Then copied over a small script I had made to automate installing most software I use and started a review of it while running porsnap on anohtr vtty.

While the script ran, I poked around /usr/src with vi to pass the time. All went well until I started getting funky errors from pkg_add. Killing the script, I checked with df and sure enough, / was showing at 107% of capacity! Now that all is said and done, it seems I miscalculated about 600MB of dependencies lol.

mv /root/pkgs /usr/pkgs
sh
for JUNK in `du -ch /usr/pkgs/* | grep 0B | awk '{ print $2 }'`; do rm $JUNK; done

problem solved. I also found out the hard way that the csh is a pain in the ass, hence starting a new shell to handle the removal of empty packages. Used the scroll lock to check the terminals backlog for the last successful package add and modified my script to pick up where it left off.

/usr/pkgs is 834M of packages — just in case I need to reinstall, I won’t have to download them from my $PACKAGEROOT again, I can just bring them over from Vectra and save bandwidth for both my favorite mirror and myself.

I also had a bit of a problem with some port installations failing with strange pkg-descr missing messages, found out today while wrapping up that it was referecin $PKGDIR => /usr/pkgs :.

my packing list so far:

#!/bin/sh

cd /where/ever

# environment / compat
PKGDIR="`pwd`/pkgs"; export PKGDIR
GCC_VER="42"
PHP_VER="5"
MYSQL_VER="50"
pkg_add -Kr compat6x-i386

# languages
pkg_add -Kr javavmwrapper
# manual install needed for JDK/JRE
(cd $PKGDIR; pkg_add diablo-jdk-freebsd6.i386.1.5.0.07.01.tbz)
(cd $PKGDIR; pkg_add diablo-jre-freebsd6.i386.1.5.0.07.01.tbz)
pkg_add -Kr gcc${GCC_VER}
pkg_add -Kr perl
pkg_add -Kr python
pkg_add -Kr php${PHP_VER}
pkg_add -Kr ruby 
pkg_add -Kr rubygem-rtags && pkg_add -r rubygem-rake
pkg_add -Kr guile
pkg_add -Kr scheme48

# libraries
pkg_add -Kr qt4
pkg_add -Kr gtk-2
pkg_add -Kr p5-DBI
pkg_add -Kr p5-DBD-mysql${MYSQL_VER}
pkg_add -Kr p5-DBI-SQLite
pkg_add -Kr p5-DBI-CSV
pkg_add -Kr p5-Digest


# development tools
pkg_add -Kr gmake
pkg_add -Kr ctags
pkg_add -Kr cscope && pkg_add -Kr kscope
pkg_add -Kr webcpp
pkg_add -Kr subversion

# games
pkg_add -Kr kdegames
pkg_add -Kr xgalaga
pkg_add -Kr prboom
pkg_add -Kr doom-data
pkg_add -Kr wesnoth
pkg_add -Kr supertux
pkg_add -Kr chromium

# graphics software
pkg_add -Kr gimp && pkg_add -Kr gimp-gap
pkg_add -Kr inkscape
pkg_add -Kr xv
pkg_add -Kr kdegraphics
pkg_add -Kr dia

# browsers
pkg_add -Kr linux-flock
pkg_add -Kr lynx

# e-mail and news
pkg_add -Kr thunderbird && pkg_add -Kr thunderbird-i18n
pkg_add -Kr mutt

# kontact and related
pkg_add -Kr kdepim


# chat
pkg_add -Kr konversation
pkg_add -Kr pidgin && pkg_add -Kr pidgin-hotkeys 
pkg_add -Kr pidgin-guifications && pkg_add -Kr pidgin-libnotify
pkg_add -Kr pidgin-otr && pkg_add -Kr pidgin-encryption
pkg_add -Kr teamspeak_client

# install vim / emacs
pkg_add -Kr emacs || pkg_add -Kr xemacs 
pkg_add -Kr mg
(bunzip vim-7.1.tar.bz2; tar -C /tmp -xf vim-7.1.tar; cd /tmp/vim71/src; 
  ./configure 
 --enable-perlinterp --enable-pythoninterp --enable-rubyinterp 
 --with-x --enable-cscope --enable-fontset --enable-gnome-check 
 --with-features=huge --enable-gui=gtk2 && gmake && gmake install)

# multimedia
pkg_add -Kr nspluginwrapper
pkg_add -Kr libdvdread
pkg_add -Kr libdvdplay
pkg_add -Kr libdvdnav
pkg_add -Kr cdrtools
pkg_add -Kr mplayer
pkg_add -Kr linux-mplayerplug-in
pkg_add -Kr xmms && pkg_add -Kr xmms-pipe && pkg_add -Kr xmms-skins
pkg_add -Kr k3b
# this is an rpm
(cd /usr/ports/multimedia/linux-realplayer && make install clean distclean)

# documents
pkg_add -Kr gnumeric && pkg_add -Kr abiword
pkg_add -Kr koffice

# personal
pkg_add -Kr zsh
pkg_add -Kr rxvt-unicode 
pkg_add -Kr terminus-font
pkg_add -Kr windowmaker
pkg_add -Kr blackbox
pkg_add -Kr bbkeys && pkg_add -r bbrun && pkg_add -r bbpager
pkg_add -Kr docker
pkg_add -Kr hsetroot
pkg_add -Kr fastest_cvsup
pkg_add -Kr psearch

# misc
pkg_add -Kr bsdstats
pkg_add -Kr amarok
pkg_add -Kr lzma
pkg_add -Kr unrar
pkg_add -Kr zip
pkg_add -Kr e2fsprogs
pkg_add -Kr pdksh
pkg_add -Kr sudo
pkg_add -Kr v7sh
pkg_add -Kr xcb

I had to install the ports manually because of the $PKGDIR thing, did that this afternoon. Which amounted to multimedia/libdvdcss, x11-wm/fvwm-devel, sysutils/gkrellm2, and just for the heck of it, www/linux-flashplugin9 and www/flashplugin-mozilla hehe. I also had the JDK and JRE packages in cold storage from my last installation, so no need for manual fetching them.

Some last minute additions were gdm and trayer — I actually like Gnomes Display Manager. I still need to compile mencoder, maybe install a few Perl/Python/Ruby binndings for good measure, etc but I’m basically done.

One thing that shocked me, The flash plugin v9 is working !!! I installed it just to see if the thing would crash my webbrowser but it works :

I need to get pf, sshd, and my kernel configuration setup and probably play with freebsd-update (I’ve never used it) but I’m essentially ready to rock and roll, it only took about 4 hours, because I downloaded all of the packages I wanted.

Compared to reinstalling Windows XP? Hahahahhahahahah !!!!

If I ever reformated my XP machine, it would take 3 hours to install XP from the vendors disks, 2 weeks to download all of the hotfixes, updates, and patches and crap, reinstall my firewall and ruleset from backup, then systematically install all of my games, programs, and such by manually visiting each website or inserting each disk — then spend time re-shoehorning XP into something livable with all of the little setting tweaks here and there.

FreeBSD, back online in a flash — hehe.

Wireless networking options

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I’m contemplating *trying* to move my desktop PC to my room… Which means access to the ‘net will only by available via wireless. The computer doens’t have a wirfi card, just ethernet so that means shopping is involved.

It primarily runs Windows XP for gaming and has space reserved for testing GNU/Linux distros and BSD systems. Being a BSD-aware and manual reading shopper, I always crack open my operating systems manuals and look at what cards are supported by the drivers when I go looking for a product.

Since the only principal markets available to me off the web are Best Buy and Office Depot, those are where I looked online first.

The cards:

NETGEAR – 802.11g PCI Card Model: WG311

Pro’s:
Supported by ath drivers.

Same brand and chipset as my PCMCIA card (WG511T)

Con’s:

Old (or cheap) product, only supports WEP (which I don’t use)

Newer revisions may not be totally compatible with existing drivers (I suspect).

Belkin – Wireless-G USB 2.0 Network Adapter, Model: F5D7050

Pro’s:

Version 3 is supported by the rum driver and v2000 by the ral driver.

Con’s:

Reviews suggest bad gaming performance due to burst based transmissions

The rum driver is new to FreeBSD 7.0-Release (ported from OpenBSD)

GOD only knows what revision/version you might find at the store…

Hawking Technology – Wireless-G USB 2.0 Network Adapter,
Model: HWUG1 at best buy and at OfficeDepot

Pro’s:
Supported by the rum

Removable aerial and possibly good signal strength if you don’t have problems with it.

Con’s:

The rum driver is new to FreeBSD 7.0-Release (ported from OpenBSD)

May be hard to find (lesser known brand, at least from what I’ve seen of consumer (non enterprise) products).

Just look at Hawking Technologies website… (ugh)

Linksys Wireless-G 802.11g PCI Adapter, Model WMP54G at Office Depot and Best Buy

Pro’s:

Supported by the ral driver.

It’s cheap

It’s available while it is still on the market

It’s the same brand as my router (which is _not_ a plus in my book…)

Con’s:

More stores are carrying similar but newer models for Wireless-N and variants of the both (802.11g and 802.11g/n) proprietary speed boosting technology, which of course is unsupported.

It’s the same brand as my router (which I don’t care much for!)

MISC:

Driver support on OpenBSD and FreeBSD at release levels…

ath == OpenBSD 3.7, FreeBSD 5.2, NetBSD 2.0 (more recent modules don’t use a binary blob, at least the OpenBSD drivers that is (-;)

ral == OpenBSD 3.7, FreeBSD 6.0 and may require PCI 2.2 compatible mother boards.

rum == OpenBSD 4.0, FreeBSD 7.0

ural == OpenBSD 3.7, FreeBSD 6.0 and may have issues with communicating transmission speed (OBSD manual is more specific).

All of this is posted for my own reference and anyone else who may find use for it.

Converting FreeBSD into PC-BSD

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Abstract

This post describes an example of how one can manually convert a FreeBSD installation into a PC-BSD one using the install disk. There are more elegant ways of doing it, such as pulling things from PC-BSDs SVN and compiling only PC-BSD specific components.

Disclaimers and warnings

This was done purely for ‘fun’ to see if the programs would work reasonably well. Which is why FreeBSD 7.0-Release was used as a base and PC-BSD 1.5.0 as the overlay (which is based on an old build of FreeBSD 6.3). I do not recommend, endorse, or even suggest actually doing something like this beyond exploratory or playful thoughts at heart !!!

If anyone actually tries this, your on your own.

If someone actually tries this they should probably use a PC-BSD 1.5.1 disk build, the files are newer.

Installing the PC-BSD v1.5.0-v1.5.1 update will install FreeBSD 6.3 files and may break your system — note that I didn’t enable the updater for my user account during this process.

Now that you are warned…

My test partition is reserved fro testing various alpha/beta/rc releases of operating systems I wish to test. So I wiped it clean and set out to install a basic working FreeBSD system.

I Installed FreeBSD 7.0-Release via CD-ROM, using the express option, auto
partitioning to save time, X-Developer dist set, and configured the system
lightly (set root pw, network services etc).

You want the X.org and related drivers from the disk, so they match your release level — you also want source code for later to build a custom kernel (optional)

Booted the system and logged in as root, one vtty for work and one for logging my notes in vim over ssh.

Then began converting the system to a FreeBSD-PC-BSD hybrid. Since the FreeBSD auto mode for partitioning the slice only gave me a 512mb / and 512mb /tmp, I created a /usr/work directory to use.

NOTE:
actual PC-BSD systems require several gigs of space for / to ensure safe updates and this is noted during previous upgrade notes. My guess after reading some of the 1.4/1.5 scripts is the developers have ‘yet’ to figure out how to use mount -a for mounting the needed file systems before extracting files and reserved storage places with the default partitioning scheme

pkg_add -r lzma && rehash  # to unpack pc-bsd files
mount -t cd9690 /dev/acd0 /mnt  # mount pc-bsd disk 1
mkdir -m 0700 /usr/work
lzma d /mnt/PCBSD.tar.lzma /usr/work/PCBSD.tar
 ...
     # lzma has fast decompression speeds but
     # this is a ~451mb lzma file being
     # unpacked into a 1.9gb tar file!

tar -C / -kpf /usr/work/PCBSD.tar # extract files without overwrite 

cp /etc/rc.conf /etc/rc.conf.local # fix rc.conf
tar -C /tmp -f /usr/work/PCBSD.tar -px './etc'
cp /tmp/etc/rc.conf /etc/rc.conf
cp /tmp/etc/devfs.conf /etc/devfs.conf # modified in pc-bsd

vi /etc/ttys    # start x on boot up
 ...    # note the ttyvNum is arbitrary
 #ttyv8 "/usr/local/bin/xdm -nodaemon"  xterm   off secure
 ttyv8   "/PCBSD/bin/pdm"                xterm   on secure
 ...
X -configure && mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

#
# create users and groups that come with PC-BSD 1.5.0 but not FreeBSD
# 7.0-Release. Numerical values for -u userid and -g groupid are taken from
# viewing a unified diff of the group files.
#
pw groupadd -n haldaemon -g 560
pw groupadd -n cups -g 193
pw groupadd -n cyrus -g 60
pw useradd -n haldaemon -u 560 -g 560 -L daemon -d /nonexistent 
  -s /usr/sbin/nologin
pw useradd -n cups -u 193 -g 193 -L daemon -d /nonexistent -s /usr/sbin/nologin
pw useradd -n cyrus -u 60 -g 60 -L daemon -d /nonexistent -s /usr/sbin/nologin

#
# add my own user with the bash shell as a test (because it. Note that I typically set
# user/group id numbers by year of birth.
#
pw groupadd -n Terry -g 1988
pw useradd -n Terry -u 1988 -L default -m -s bash -g Terry 
  -G wheel,operator
passwd Terry
 ...

#
# now build a custom kernel merging GENERIC with /PCBSD/conf/PCBSD.i386
# I find Micro GNU Emacs (mg) to be both light and effective for this task.
# -- normally I would use vimdiff
#
pkg_add -r mg && rehash    # if using mg !
cat > ~/.mg
auto-fill-mode
set-fill-column 78
global-set-key "^x^f" find-file
global-set-key "^h" delete-backward-char
set-default-mode blink
^D      # end of ~/.mg

diff -u /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC /PCBSD/conf/PCBSD.i386 > /tmp/kern.diff
cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf
mg KAI
 ...    # kernel config attached at EOF
     # used GENERIC and /tmp/kern.diff to
     # write the file if needed.

cd /usr/src    # compile & install kernel
make -j12 buildkernel KERNCONF=KAI
 ...    # roughly 10 minutes later..
make -j12 installkernel KERNCONF=KAI
 ...    
umount /mnt && cdcontrol -f /dev/acd0 eject
reboot     # let's rock it and roll on to KDE

On reboot, I was greeted with KDM, PC-BSDs login theme, and a clean startup of KDE (no error message popups). I was able to install and use the Firefox PBI from PBIDir without problems. But as one can see in the screen shots, there are sound system related core dumps

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

I was also interested to see that there is now a ‘snd_emu10kx’ driver added in FreeBSD 7.0-Release which supports my card. So I guess I won’t have to manually compile the ‘outdated, unmaintained, etc’ audio/emu10kx port to get working sound, the manual page seems to suggest it is the same driver more or less. I only had to add an entry to my loader.conf file to get it loaded before PC-BSD sound detection system, just like audio/emu10kx from ports it won’t work (for me) if kldload’ed later on.

I found that although everything I tested was working fine, audio and video related apps were dumping core (mplayer at start, kaffeine during playback). So I did a pkg_delete on kaffeine and kaffeine-mozilla and reinstalled from packages and soon was blasting MP3’s from a FAT32 partition 😉

MPlayer needs to be recompiled as expected, The KDE sound system will likely need that to but otherwise I’ve observed no real breakages. Not that I’ve taken the time to test every single program!

Personal Opinions

If like me, your primary reason for using PC-BSD is a quick way of grabbing KDE — you would be better off installing PC-BSD! As far as setting up a working desktop system, one can do that easy through FreeBSD. If one doesn’t want to go into configuration details for ‘extra’s like PF or X11 using PC-BSD or DesktopBSD is a better idea anyway.

If all you want is PBI, export, compile, and install the necessary files from PC-BSDs SVN repository.

Kernel Configuration: KAI

Note to SATA hard drives out there, the ATA_STATIC_ID option effects device numbering. FreeBSD GENERIC kernel configuration uses it and detects my SATA drive as ‘ad4’, PC_BSD kernel configuration has it turned off and detects my drive as ‘ad0’ — I only have one SATA II hard drive installed.

Changing the ATA_STATIC_ID kernel option means you will havve to make sure /etc/fstab is in working shape unless you want to see a mount root prompt.

#
# Custom FreeBSD 7.0 kernel based on PC-BSD 1.5 Kernel config for FreeBSD 6.3
#

cpu  I686_CPU
ident  KAI



#options  SCHED_$BSD  # 4BSD scheduler
options  SCHED_ULE  # ULE scheduler ;-)
options  PREEMPTION  # ENABLE KERNEL THREAD PREEMPTION
options  INET   # INTERNETWORKING
options  INET6   # IPV6 COMMUNICATIONS PROTOCOLS
options  SCTP   # STREAM CONTROL TRANSMISSION PROTOCOL
options  FFS   # BERKELEY FAST FILESYSTEM
options  SOFTUPDATES  # ENABLE FFS SOFT UPDATES SUPPORT
options  UFS_ACL   # SUPPORT FOR ACCESS CONTROL LISTS
options  UFS_DIRHASH  # IMPROVE PERFORMANCE ON BIG DIRECTORIES
options  UFS_GJOURNAL  # ENABLE GJOURNAL-BASED UFS JOURNALING
options  MD_ROOT   # MD IS A POTENTIAL ROOT device
options  NFSCLIENT  # NETWORK FILESYSTEM CLIENT
options  NFSSERVER  # NETWORK FILESYSTEM SERVER
options  NFS_ROOT  # NFS USABLE AS /, REQUIRES NFSCLIENT
options  MSDOSFS   # MSDOS FILESYSTEM
options  CD9660   # ISO 9660 FILESYSTEM
options  PROCFS   # PROCESS FILESYSTEM (REQUIRES PSEUDOFS)
options  PSEUDOFS  # PSEUDO-FILESYSTEM FRAMEWORK
options  GEOM_PART_GPT  # GUID PARTITION TABLES.
options  GEOM_LABEL  # PROVIDES LABELIZATION
options  COMPAT_43TTY  # BSD 4.3 TTY COMPAT [KEEP THIS!]
options  COMPAT_FREEBSD4  # COMPATIBLE WITH FREEBSD4
options  COMPAT_FREEBSD5  # COMPATIBLE WITH FREEBSD5
options  COMPAT_FREEBSD6  # COMPATIBLE WITH FREEBSD6
options  SCSI_DELAY=5000  # DELAY (IN MS) BEFORE PROBING SCSI
options  KTRACE   # KTRACE(1) SUPPORT
options  SYSVSHM   # SYSV-STYLE SHARED MEMORY
options  SYSVMSG   # SYSV-STYLE MESSAGE QUEUES
options  SYSVSEM   # SYSV-STYLE SEMAPHORES
options  _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING # POSIX P1003_1B REAL-TIME EXTENSIONS
options  KBD_INSTALL_CDEV # INSTALL A CDEV ENTRY IN /DEV
options  ADAPTIVE_GIANT  # GIANT MUTEX IS ADAPTIVE.
options  STOP_NMI  # STOP CPUS USING NMI INSTEAD OF IPI
options  AUDIT   # SECURITY EVENT AUDITING

# TO MAKE AN SMP KERNEL, THE NEXT TWO LINES ARE NEEDED
options  SMP   # SYMMETRIC MULTIPROCESSOR KERNEL
device  apic   # I/O APIC

# CPU FREQUENCY CONTROL
device  cpufreq

# BUS SUPPORT.
device  eisa
device  pci


# FLOPPY DRIVES
device  fdc

# ATA AND ATAPI deviceS
device  ata
device  atadisk  # ATA DISK DRIVES
device  ataraid  # ATA RAID DRIVES
device  atapicd  # ATAPI CDROM DRIVES
device  atapifd  # ATAPI FLOPPY DRIVES
device  atapist  # ATAPI TAPE DRIVES
options  ATA_STATIC_ID # STATIC device NUMBERING
device   atapicam # Atapi CAM support

# SCSI CONTROLLERS
device  ahb  # EISA AHA1742 FAMILY
device  ahc  # AHA2940 AND ONBOARD AIC7XXX deviceS
options  AHC_REG_PRETTY_PRINT # PRINT REGISTER BITFIELDS IN DEBUG
     # OUTPUT.  ADDS ~128K TO DRIVER.
device  ahd  # AHA39320/29320 AND ONBOARD AIC79XX deviceS
options  AHD_REG_PRETTY_PRINT # PRINT REGISTER BITFIELDS IN DEBUG
     # OUTPUT.  ADDS ~215K TO DRIVER.
device  amd  # AMD 53C974 (TEKRAM DC-390(T))
device  isp  # QLOGIC FAMILY
#device  ispfw  # FIRMWARE FOR QLOGIC HBAS- NORMALLY A MODULE
device  mpt  # LSI-LOGIC MPT-FUSION
#device  ncr  # NCR/SYMBIOS LOGIC
device  sym  # NCR/SYMBIOS LOGIC (NEWER CHIPSETS + THOSE OF `NCR')
device  trm  # TEKRAM DC395U/UW/F DC315U ADAPTERS

device  adv  # ADVANSYS SCSI ADAPTERS
device  adw  # ADVANSYS WIDE SCSI ADAPTERS
device  aha  # ADAPTEC 154X SCSI ADAPTERS
device  aic  # ADAPTEC 15[012]X SCSI ADAPTERS, AIC-6[23]60.
device  bt  # BUSLOGIC/MYLEX MULTIMASTER SCSI ADAPTERS

device  ncv  # NCR 53C500
device  nsp  # WORKBIT NINJA SCSI-3
device  stg  # TMC 18C30/18C50

# SCSI PERIPHERALS
device  scbus  # SCSI BUS (REQUIRED FOR SCSI)
device  ch  # SCSI MEDIA CHANGERS
device  da  # DIRECT ACCESS (DISKS)
device  sa  # SEQUENTIAL ACCESS (TAPE ETC)
device  cd  # CD
device  pass  # PASSTHROUGH device (DIRECT SCSI ACCESS)
device  ses  # SCSI ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES (AND SAF-TE)

# RAID CONTROLLERS INTERFACED TO THE SCSI SUBSYSTEM
device  amr  # AMI MEGARAID
device  arcmsr  # ARECA SATA II RAID
device  asr  # DPT SMARTRAID V, VI AND ADAPTEC SCSI RAID
device  ciss  # COMPAQ SMART RAID 5*
device  dpt  # DPT SMARTCACHE III, IV - SEE NOTES FOR options
device  hptmv  # HIGHPOINT ROCKETRAID 182X
device  hptrr  # HIGHPOINT ROCKETRAID 17XX, 22XX, 23XX, 25XX
device  iir  # INTEL INTEGRATED RAID
device  ips  # IBM (ADAPTEC) SERVERAID
device  mly  # MYLEX ACCELERAID/EXTREMERAID
device  twa  # 3WARE 9000 SERIES PATA/SATA RAID

# RAID CONTROLLERS
device  aac  # ADAPTEC FSA RAID
device  aacp  # SCSI PASSTHROUGH FOR AAC (REQUIRES CAM)
device  ida  # COMPAQ SMART RAID
device  mfi  # LSI MEGARAID SAS
device  mlx  # MYLEX DAC960 FAMILY
device  pst  # PROMISE SUPERTRAK SX6000
device  twe  # 3WARE ATA RAID

# ATKBDC0 CONTROLS BOTH THE KEYBOARD AND THE PS/2 MOUSE
device  atkbdc  # AT KEYBOARD CONTROLLER
device  atkbd  # AT KEYBOARD
device  psm  # PS/2 MOUSE


device  vga  # VGA VIDEO CARD DRIVER

device  splash  # SPLASH SCREEN AND SCREEN SAVER SUPPORT

# SYSCONS IS THE DEFAULT CONSOLE DRIVER, RESEMBLING AN SCO CONSOLE
device  sc

device  agp  # SUPPORT SEVERAL AGP CHIPSETS

# POWER MANAGEMENT SUPPORT (SEE NOTES FOR MORE options)
#device  apm
# ADD SUSPEND/RESUME SUPPORT FOR THE I8254.
device  pmtimer

# PCCARD (PCMCIA) SUPPORT
# PCMCIA AND CARDBUS BRIDGE SUPPORT
device  cbb  # CARDBUS (YENTA) BRIDGE
device  pccard  # PC CARD (16-BIT) BUS
device  cardbus  # CARDBUS (32-BIT) BUS

# SERIAL (COM) PORTS
device  sio  # 8250, 16[45]50 BASED SERIAL PORTS
device  uart  # GENERIC UART DRIVER

# PARALLEL PORT
device  ppc
device  ppbus  # PARALLEL PORT BUS (REQUIRED)
device  lpt  # PRINTER
device  plip  # TCP/IP OVER PARALLEL
device  ppi  # PARALLEL PORT INTERFACE device
#device  vpo  # REQUIRES SCBUS AND DA

# IF YOU'VE GOT A "DUMB" SERIAL OR PARALLEL PCI CARD THAT IS
# SUPPORTED BY THE PUC(4) GLUE DRIVER, UNCOMMENT THE FOLLOWING
# LINE TO ENABLE IT (CONNECTS TO SIO, UART AND/OR PPC DRIVERS):
#device  puc

# PCI ETHERNET NICS.
device  de  # DEC/INTEL DC21X4X (``TULIP'')
device  em  # INTEL PRO/1000 ADAPTER GIGABIT ETHERNET CARD
device  ixgb  # INTEL PRO/10GBE ETHERNET CARD
device  le  # AMD AM7900 LANCE AND AM79C9XX PCNET
device  txp  # 3COM 3CR990 (``TYPHOON'')
device  vx  # 3COM 3C590, 3C595 (``VORTEX'')

# PCI ETHERNET NICS THAT USE THE COMMON MII BUS CONTROLLER CODE.
# NOTE: BE SURE TO KEEP THE 'device MIIBUS' LINE IN ORDER TO USE THESE NICS!
device  miibus  # MII BUS SUPPORT
device  bce  # BROADCOM BCM5706/BCM5708 GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  bfe  # BROADCOM BCM440X 10/100 ETHERNET
device  bge  # BROADCOM BCM570XX GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  dc  # DEC/INTEL 21143 AND VARIOUS WORKALIKES
device  fxp  # INTEL ETHEREXPRESS PRO/100B (82557, 82558)
device  lge  # LEVEL 1 LXT1001 GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  msk  # MARVELL/SYSKONNECT YUKON II GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  nfe  # NVIDIA NFORCE MCP ON-BOARD ETHERNET
device  nge  # NATSEMI DP83820 GIGABIT ETHERNET
#device  nve  # NVIDIA NFORCE MCP ON-BOARD ETHERNET NETWORKING
device  pcn  # AMD AM79C97X PCI 10/100 (PRECEDENCE OVER 'LE')
device  re  # REALTEK 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S
device  rl  # REALTEK 8129/8139
device  sf  # ADAPTEC AIC-6915 (``STARFIRE'')
device  sis  # SILICON INTEGRATED SYSTEMS SIS 900/SIS 7016
device  sk  # SYSKONNECT SK-984X & SK-982X GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  ste  # SUNDANCE ST201 (D-LINK DFE-550TX)
device  stge  # SUNDANCE/TAMARACK TC9021 GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  ti  # ALTEON NETWORKS TIGON I/II GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  tl  # TEXAS INSTRUMENTS THUNDERLAN
device  tx  # SMC ETHERPOWER II (83C170 ``EPIC'')
device  vge  # VIA VT612X GIGABIT ETHERNET
device  vr  # VIA RHINE, RHINE II
device  wb  # WINBOND W89C840F
device  xl  # 3COM 3C90X (``BOOMERANG'', ``CYCLONE'')

# ISA ETHERNET NICS.  PCCARD NICS INCLUDED.
device  cs  # CRYSTAL SEMICONDUCTOR CS89X0 NIC
# 'device ED' REQUIRES 'device MIIBUS'
device  ed  # NE[12]000, SMC ULTRA, 3C503, DS8390 CARDS
device  ex  # INTEL ETHEREXPRESS PRO/10 AND PRO/10+
device  ep  # ETHERLINK III BASED CARDS
device  fe  # FUJITSU MB8696X BASED CARDS
device  ie  # ETHEREXPRESS 8/16, 3C507, STARLAN 10 ETC.
device  sn  # SMC'S 9000 SERIES OF ETHERNET CHIPS
device  xe  # XIRCOM PCCARD ETHERNET

# WIRELESS NIC CARDS
device  wlan  # 802.11 SUPPORT
device  wlan_wep # 802.11 WEP SUPPORT
device  wlan_ccmp # 802.11 CCMP SUPPORT
device  wlan_tkip # 802.11 TKIP SUPPORT
device  wlan_amrr # AMRR TRANSMIT RATE CONTROL ALGORITHM
device  wlan_scan_ap # 802.11 AP MODE SCANNING
device  wlan_scan_sta # 802.11 STA MODE SCANNING
device  an  # AIRONET 4500/4800 802.11 WIRELESS NICS.
device  ath  # ATHEROS PCI/CARDBUS NIC'S
device  ath_hal  # ATHEROS HAL (HARDWARE ACCESS LAYER)
device  ath_rate_sample # SAMPLERATE TX RATE CONTROL FOR ATH
device  awi  # BAYSTACK 660 AND OTHERS
device  ral  # RALINK TECHNOLOGY RT2500 WIRELESS NICS.
device  wi  # WAVELAN/INTERSIL/SYMBOL 802.11 WIRELESS NICS.
#device  wl  # OLDER NON 802.11 WAVELAN WIRELESS NIC.

# PSEUDO deviceS.
device  loop  # NETWORK LOOPBACK
device  random  # ENTROPY device
device  ether  # ETHERNET SUPPORT
device  sl  # KERNEL SLIP
device  ppp  # KERNEL PPP
device  tun  # PACKET TUNNEL.
device  pty  # PSEUDO-TTYS (TELNET ETC)
device  md  # MEMORY "DISKS"
device  gif  # IPV6 AND IPV4 TUNNELING
device  faith  # IPV6-TO-IPV4 RELAYING (TRANSLATION)
device  firmware # FIRMWARE ASSIST MODULE

# THE `BPF' device ENABLES THE BERKELEY PACKET FILTER.
# BE AWARE OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF ENABLING THIS!
# NOTE THAT 'BPF' IS REQUIRED FOR DHCP.
device  bpf  # BERKELEY PACKET FILTER

# USB SUPPORT
device  uhci  # UHCI PCI->USB INTERFACE
device  ohci  # OHCI PCI->USB INTERFACE
device  ehci  # EHCI PCI->USB INTERFACE (USB 2.0)
device  usb  # USB BUS (REQUIRED)
#device  udbp  # USB DOUBLE BULK PIPE deviceS
device  ugen  # GENERIC
device  uhid  # "HUMAN INTERFACE deviceS"
device  ukbd  # KEYBOARD
device  ulpt  # PRINTER
device  umass  # DISKS/MASS STORAGE - REQUIRES SCBUS AND DA
device  ums  # MOUSE
device  ural  # RALINK TECHNOLOGY RT2500USB WIRELESS NICS
device  rum  # RALINK TECHNOLOGY RT2501USB WIRELESS NICS
device  urio  # DIAMOND RIO 500 MP3 PLAYER
device  uscanner # SCANNERS
# USB ETHERNET, REQUIRES MIIBUS
device  aue  # ADMTEK USB ETHERNET
device  axe  # ASIX ELECTRONICS USB ETHERNET
device  cdce  # GENERIC USB OVER ETHERNET
device  cue  # CATC USB ETHERNET
device  kue  # KAWASAKI LSI USB ETHERNET
device  rue  # REALTEK RTL8150 USB ETHERNET

# FIREWIRE SUPPORT
device  firewire # FIREWIRE BUS CODE
device  sbp  # SCSI OVER FIREWIRE (REQUIRES SCBUS AND DA)
device  fwe  # ETHERNET OVER FIREWIRE (NON-STANDARD!)
device  fwip  # IP OVER FIREWIRE (RFC 2734,3146)
device  dcons  # DUMB CONSOLE DRIVER
device  dcons_crom # CONFIGURATION ROM FOR DCONS


#
# from PC-BSD conf
#
options  LIBICONV
options  LIBMCHAIN
options  CD9660_ICONV
options  MSDOSFS_ICONV
options  NTFS
options  NTFS_ICONV
options  UDF
options  UDF_ICONV
options  GEOM_UZIP  # read only compressed disks
# wifi
device  wlan
device  wlan_wep
device  wlan_ccmp
device  wlan_tkip
device  an
device  ath
device  ath_hal
device  ath_rate_sample
device  awi
device  ral
device  wi
device  iwi
device  ipw
device  firmware
options  DEVICE_POLLING
device  pf
device  pflog
device  pfsync
options  ALTQ
options  ALTQ_CBQ
options  ALTQ_RED
options  ALTQ_RIO
options  ALTQ_HFSC
options  ALTQ_CDNR
options  ALTQ_PRIQ
options  ALTQ_NOPCC

I never thought we’d be friends — Me & FVWM

by

Well, I have been looking for a suitable replacement for KDE3 of late on my laptop — tried enlightenment and chucked it. Nice desktop, very elegant feeling but just not my bag :|. Kicked through and finished working with FVWM, I chose to install the unstable 2.5.x build in port.

Normally I’ll only use stable releases unless I’m testing or in need of a ‘sneak peak’ but this time I opted in. I figure, it should be fairly stable with how long FVWM has been around. The original code base of FVWM 1.x was born in 1993 making it about as old as FreeBSD lol. FVWM 2.5 has newer features and I don’t mind a few quirks really, as long as my session doesn’t die or the entire system lock up.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

So far FVWM is really proving it’s possible to have a desktop *your way* without having to kill someone in the process !

I’ve always thought that if I’m ever going to find a window manager I truly love; I probably would have to write my own. I like programs that are powerful, configurable, and extensible — that’s one of the reasons I use Vim in the first place >_>

I have my pager and a useful means of employing my laptops limited screen space. The way The Flibin’ Virtual Window Manager as I call it, handles virtual desktops is actually quite nice. The M by N thing and configuration options have given me a very nice arrangement for working with many programs. Especially in my case, since I need to work with windows that are some times larger then my screen resolution!

Rather then resize the program (scroll bars, ugh) or rescale it as the situation may offer. I can just scroll my screen between the pages and vola! The illusion that the desktop is much bigger then it really is, really fits with the way I use programs.

I installed x11/trayer to get myself a (transparent) system tray, I actually like how FVWM handles iconifing windows but for some apps a system tray is helpful (pidgin). Notice that I do not have a taskbar, desktop icons, or a ‘panel’ — don’t need them nore want them most times.

I like to keep my workspace very thin, it’s for running programs not holding up bells and whistles everywhere. I fI wanted to look at bells and whistles (or unhide them when going to the screen border) I’d run them outright. And covering or autohiding the panel (KDE, Gnome, Windows) is a poor solution for my habits +S.

I have my FVWM configuration launching a program to auto-rotate my wall paper, need to properly daemonize it someday soon. I’m considering giving the X Session Manager (xsm) a whirl as well, worth a try judging by the manual page. I still have some more work to do but so far, I like how it has come out in such a short time.

Why didn’t I ever try the F* Virtual Window Manager before? lol.

Who builds these things !?

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Well, I finally had it with the sound popping in/out so I decided to crack open my case, yank and reinsert the card. Sure enough it was loose.

I blew the dust off the Audigy 4’s board and set it aside when I noticed the air-duct like thing sucking air in and across the mother board was dusty.

I finally removed the masking tape that whoever assembled the bloody thing used to keep the line going from the PSU to the SATA drive used to glue the cable between the duct and the CPU’s heat sink (_don’t_ ask). I pulled off the ducting and looked at the fan blades, never been dusted.

Tried to unplug the fan so I could set it aside for cleaning but it proved, shall we say less then worth it. Blew out as much dust as I could from the venting and the CPU’s heatsink. Which on the air-ward side was starting to look like cobwebs :

The fan is mounted in the duct which is ‘hung’ on the side of the case… If it wasn’t for the handle to pull it out, it would fall out if I put the case on it’s port side. If the thing didn’t get seated properly, it would be resting ontop of the hard drive mounting.. Honestly I don’t know what people are thinking these days.

Still had more dust in the air-vents for the fan and I couldn’t see to hang the duct right. So I noticed these few clips sticking out of the front-side. Pushed the in and pulled off the front plastic panel (‘face’) of the computer case.

Holy guacamole !!!!

It was so bad I fetched a face mask to keep the dust away from my nose and mouth, to bad I didn’t have a pair of goggles to boot. Cleaned the entire computer throughly and hung the fan/duct. Using the air-vents to line up the placement. And then put the panel back on. I thought about popping the bezel setting with the card reader and inserting an old floppy drive because the case design would keep the dust from seeping inside.. But to insert the FDD I would have to remove my PSU and the CPU’s heatsink which is not really worth bothering with lol. Managed to get the case put back together and wiped off the monitor, keyboard, and rat for good measure (y).

Computer cases are fairly simple but I’ll never understand some of the things I’ve seen in pre-built computers… Who the hell puts tape less then half an inch over a heat sink which is there to help cool a really hot CPU, and it is like the BFG 9000 of heat sinks compared to Vectra’s Katmai P3 500 lol.

Really I think if I ever had the opportunity to build my own case, I would do it. With the right tools and materials one could actually pull it off, might not look sexy but it sure as heck can’t be any worse then the this Gateways case !!

Hmm, one of these days I really need to clean out the keyboard of my laptop but I’m not really interested in taking it apart right now. I wonder why, stripping down a computer always gives me strange ideas >_>

Norton to the rescue? Wow it actually did something useful

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Hmm, for the first time in my life I’m actually glad that my Mom runs Norton on her PC.

She got an e-mail from the bank warning about repeating login failures on the account and that it was going to be suspended for T time unless she updated the account. I think that would have my heads anti-fraud warning bell ringing on it’s own right but hey, I’m paranoid at heart >_>

The message had a dead give away (for me) that someone might be trying to fake it, you probably would have to be familiar with building such things or just a heavy web surfer to spot that one though. When she clicked it it redirected her to a fake page to login which Norton shouted FRAUD before harm could be done.

The address was an obvious fake once you see the real URL, but how many causal users even look at that I wonder? So maybe despite it’s annoyance to people like me and those that just want to get stuff done, useful for watching over the uneducated.

She’s currently going through a spell of FUD over security but I’m familiar enough with the possibilities and they ain’t that bad thanks to Norton. The next best thing to actually educating users — babysit with resource hogs :

Now if only it could do something about her (greater then mine) paranoia, so I could get back to rewriting code lol.

Oh wells.