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Monday August 09, 2004

Frustrating day with Linux

I can tell I've been getting a little burned out the last few days. I think it had a lot to do with our builder's death last week. I came to realize that working my ass off just doesn't have that many rewards. For most of the weekends this summer, I've been getting up at 4 and working for a few hours until Julie and Abbie get up. Then I do it again on Monday morning. This weekend I didn't get up before 9. And today I slept until 8 - even though I had planned to get up at 4. To make matters worse, rather than putting in hours for my client today, I spent the entire day wrestling with Linux.

I really wanted to get my new Cinema Display working with Suse and Fedora. I'm almost to the conclusion that it "ain't gonna happen". This sucks b/c now I have to leave one of my huge-n-heavy CRT monitors on my desk. Days like today, where I banged my head against the wall all day, are quite discouraging. My office is in turmoil - with open boxes all over the floor, monitors strewn about and video cards piling up on my desk. Some days are better than others. Hopefully my frustrations from today will turn into some type of writing zone later this week.

Update: I finally gave up and hooked my two Linux boxes up to my old KVM switch and a crappy ol' keyboard/mouse that I had lying around. Then I was planning on hooking my PowerBook and XP box up to my new DVI KVM switch. Wouldn't you know it - it doesn't fricken work. The connector on the cinema display is too fat to even plug into the KVM switch. My guess is that no one is using these displays with a KVM or maybe there's a special switch I have to get. Oh well, I guess I can manually switch the monitor b/w OS X and XP if I really need to.

Posted in General at Aug 09 2004, 10:38:28 PM MDT 11 Comments
Comments:

Have thought of using VNC for the Linux boxes? It not perfect, but it might work for you. Do you have XP Pro? If so, you might consider using RDC on your PowerBook, then you wouldn't need KVM. If I remember correctly, you do most of your develoment on your XP box. VNC does seem to be too slow for that. I've heard that RDC is much faster for this. HTH, Jeff

Posted by Jeff Duska on August 10, 2004 at 04:50 AM MDT #

hey next time someone tells you linux is better than windows for the desktop, try walking their mom through recompiling the bytecode interpeter just to keep the fonts from blinding you. stability of the codebase is obviously important. equally important is having the ability to plug shit in and it works. i just spent the better part of a week getting my linux box to work properly with my lcd screen. what exactly is the issue you are getting?

Posted by alonso on August 10, 2004 at 08:25 AM MDT #

I plugged my Dell 2001FP into my Nvidia ti4200's DVI port and booted up linux and it just worked. I'm on Fedora Core 2. In fact I'm typing this from the linux desktop that I work on all day, every day. Perhaps Matt's issue is related to the use of an awesome, yet somewhat rare, monitor along with an ATI video card. Matt, I'm sure you ran across these links already, but just in case: You may be able to PM or email this fellow: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=19066 Comment 29 at: http://www.jdhodges.com/log/504 PPC related but might have some modeline tips: http://sdb.suse.de/sdb/en/html/olh_ppc_apple_tft.html

Posted by Matt W on August 10, 2004 at 05:16 PM MDT #

Ack... that ended up looking like a mess without the whitespace. Sorry.

Posted by Matt W on August 10, 2004 at 05:17 PM MDT #

Jeff - VNC would work, but it's usually too sluggish for me. The "two stations" setup seems to be working pretty well. I do use RDC - it's <em>sooooo</em> much better than VNC. For now, I'm just going with the 23" on my XP box.

Alonso - most of my issues were related to getting the ATI drivers to work on Linux. It involved patching sources and such - of which most patches were out of date with the released version, and once I got those in synch, my kernel was too new. I've heard the NVidia cards would a lot better with Linux, so I might try one of those. Hopefully I can send all my ATI crap back. If not, there's always eBay.

Matt - I'm sure it's mostly video card related. BTW, if you want line break (or to use JSP Wiki syntax), you can start your comment with an exclamation point.

Posted by Matt Raible on August 10, 2004 at 05:31 PM MDT #

Screw VNC...its dog slow. Do it all on your Mac and use your Mac video drivers...here is how...

For Linux...use X windows from your Mac.

On your Mac, load X...and in an xterm...type the following:

xnest :1 -geometry WxH -query your_server_name_or_ip_here

Where W = width and H = height of a window size of your choice.

or you can have your linux X seemlessly work with your MacOSX with the following:

While X is NOT running, in a terminal (clearly NOT a X terminal...just a standard terminal)...type the following: 

X -query your_server_name_or_ip_here

Now for windows..use terminal services. When you run terminal services on your own network (assuming 100MB), its nearly as fast as being in front of the the workstation. Its highly optimized. For..do the following...

Download "Remote Desktop Connection" from Microsoft (its a free download) and follow the instructions.

Or for super-duper speed, use rdesktop fron X. In an XTerm, type the following: 

rdesktop -a 16 -g WxH your_server_name_or_ip_here

Where W is the width of the window you wish to use and H is the height.

With these tips you should be able to use all your machines (even at the same time) without the need for a KVM, and all will use your highly optimized Mac drivers for the video, and also will be FAST. I am sure you will find this a worthwhile solution. I had to do this because I have a Sun E250, Linux Dual, MacOSX, WinXP, and Win2000 running in my house (all over the place - basement, office, bedroom). It was a much better solution than running KVM cables everywhere.

Posted by Jeff Genender on August 11, 2004 at 08:14 AM MDT #

Just use Nvidia (or... Mac for Unix work) .V

Posted by 168.215.185.197 on August 11, 2004 at 01:24 PM MDT #

Cygwin (or I presume other X implementations) could be your friend.

I've got a Windows XP box (my email and Eclipse) and 3 SuSE Linux boxes connected to a Belkin KVM. Its cranky at best.

However I found out recently that Cywin's X implementation is not too bad. If you have cygwin installed on Windows, just open a bash shell and type:
<code>X -query "hostname"</code>
(where "hostname") is one of your Linux hosts and I get a maximized window with my entire SuSE Linux desktop in it. I've just about stopped using the KVM.

Posted by Richard on August 11, 2004 at 03:52 PM MDT #

The X stuff sounds like a nice solution, but whenever I try it from OS or Cygwin, I just get a large gray window and nothing happens.

Posted by Matt Raible on August 13, 2004 at 04:20 PM MDT #

There's a setting on your server that controls whether or not remote X login is enabled.

I run SuSE 9.1 Pro and it can be turned on with their YAST configurator pretty easily. However it was hidden under the option "Enable VNC remote admin" - but when you go there there are options that have nothing to do with VNC, just plain X remote login.

I'm not sure where it is on RedHat or Fedora. Maybe someone else knows :o). Wish i knew more about RedHat/Fedora - but we moved to SuSE a year ago as they had 64-bit support for our dual opteron production server. Been pretty happy with it.

BTW: I am really appreciative for your AppFuse/Struts Resume example apps/frameworks. I'm a developer turned manager that decided to get back into more hands-on development. Started with your Struts Resume in January 2003 and we now have a commercial app that's been in production over a year now. I'm in the middle of updating with your most recent version of LabelTag and Struts 1.2.1 now. I'm sure you've heard this from hundreds of folks, but you really have made a difference.

Posted by Richard on August 13, 2004 at 04:56 PM MDT #

Matt,

You have the gray screen under X because you need to get X to allow connections from the rest of your network. It comes out-of-the-box as do-not-allow-other connections for security purposes. If you have a firewall setup, you can open up X without fear of a breakin. Do the following:

Edit the /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf file. Look for a line that looks like the following: 

[xdmcp]
# Distributions: Ship with this off.  It is never a safe thing to leave
# out on the net.  Setting up /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny to only
# allow local access is another alternative but not the safest.
# Firewalling port 177 is the safest if you wish to have xdmcp on.
# Read the manual for more notes on the security of XDMCP.
# Enable=true
Uncomment the "Enable=true". Then restart gdm or just reboot. Your X should work then.

Posted by Jeff Genender on August 15, 2004 at 10:59 AM MDT #

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