Enabling XFWM’s Compositor

Now that I have NVIDIA drivers, I can enable the XFWM compositor. It still works even without the NVIDIA drivers, but I wanted the drivers for other things too; OpenGL screensavers, games, etc.

Enabling the compositor is very easy, just a quick edit of the XOrg configuration file. To start a backup is always the way to go, before editing.

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_backup
sudo mousepad /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then get right to the bottom and add these 3 lines.

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection

Save the file and then you’re done.

Now I have nice transparent window decorations, transparent windows when they are moved …

Transparent windows when they are re-sized, and transparent pop-ups, which includes menus.

Now for a nice desktop to show off!

Setting up NVIDIA drivers

Everything seems ok with Xubuntu, so one of the first things I do with a new installation is to get my video card working to its ability. This means installing NVIDIA drivers.

The installation, these days, is completely trivial especially if your card is well supported and all you are interested in is the drivers in the Ubuntu repository. This is all I need.

First thing is to install the restricted modules for the kernel. The easiest way is to install the complete linux package, that includes the kernel and restricted modules. Easiest because updating both components in the future can be done with one line. I prefer to use aptitude (from the command line, not the ncurses interface) to apt-get or Synaptic as my choice for installing programs, as it intelligently manages dependencies, even when un-installing. Much more tidy.

I have an AMD X2 3800, a K8 processor, but since I’m on 32bit Xubuntu, the K7-SMP is the most appropriate kernel for me. These days, all K7 (and other kernels where the situation is possible) kernels are SMP enabled. So getting the linux-k7-smp package is the same as the linux-k7 package.

The other package I need is the nvidia-glx package to enable 3D acceleration for my card. (The nvidia-glx package also gets the restricted-modules too … I do things my way!)

sudo aptitude install linux-k7-smp nvidia-glx
sudo nvidia-xconfig

Once that’s all finished, I should be able to run the NVIDIA settings utility using,

nvidia-settings

But I want a menu entry. This wasn’t as easy as I first thought. I want the settings to appear in the ‘System’ part of the menu structure. Unfortunately the XFCE menu editor doesn’t allow this, so I had to do some cheating.

First thing is to copy a .desktop file that appears in the ‘System’ menu; I chose Synaptic.

cd /usr/share/applications/
sudo cp synaptic.desktop nvidia-settings.desktop
sudo mousepad nvidia-settings.desktop

Next is to edit out the .desktop file so that it contains the right elements. Mine ended up looking something like this.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=NVIDIA Settings
GenericName=NVIDIA Settings
Comment=Change Settings for NVIDIA Card
Exec=nvidia-settings
Icon=nvidia-settings.png
Terminal=false
MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Categories=PackageManager;GTK;System;Settings
NotShowIn=KDE
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=true

Then it’s a simple save and wait. For some reason the change takes a while to come through, but when it does …

I still can’t get the menu to display the icon I want for the NVIDIA settings, but I’ll work on that.

The next step is to enable the compositor in XFWM, the XFCE window manager, for some transparency goodness.

Free music to pass the time

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately re-installing various operating systems, to hopefully get to the end of my hard disc fiasco. Of course with each iteration of Xubuntu or Fedora Core, there has been quite a bit of time where I have been fiddling around to make sure the system is working without errors.

In these scenarios it is almost impossible for me to concentrate in complete silence; I need some music.

As both Fedora and Ubuntu are supportive of free formats, listening to my MP3’s will have to wait until I am ready to go through the process of installing codecs and such stuff.

I have but one album that I listen to when in the infantile stages of installing these OS’es (sic?);

Little by Little - Harvey Danger.

You know these guys? I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Aussies should remember their song ‘Flagpole Sitta’. Well their latest album (almost a year old now though) is available for a free download from their website.

You can download it in MP3 or OGG Vorbis format, and while I don’t know how free it is (in the purest sense of the word), but they explicitly say download it, share it with your friends. Check it out.

I first came aross the album last November, and have been listening to the album quite a lot. I would like the CD because FLAC sounds much better than the lossy OGG Vorbis. Sadly it’s only just been released in Aus and is quite expensive. At around $37 it’s much more expensive than buying it straight from the artists, $12 plus $10 shipping to Aus. Record labels want to know why their sales are down?

I’m still deciding whether or not to get it (if I lived in the US, I’d be on it like … ), but I just wanted to give a thumbs up for a ballsy decision by the band to try putting their album on the net. Not to mention that I simply think it’s a great album. I just can’t stop listening to it.

Get it.

Possibly resolved?

After going around in circles installing FC5 then Xubuntu and tripping on ata stat/err messages, I think I might finally have it pinned down.

After a succesful of Fedora, I thought it might just become my new distro, but as I was working out how to get sudo working (I feel so indoctrinated) I needed some music, and tried copying some off one of my backup DVDs.

Bingo!

Ext3_fs error (device sda5) : ext3_journal_start_sb :
Detected aborted journal
Remounting filesystem read-only

ata4 : status = 0×61 { DriveReady DeviceFault Error }
ata4 : error = 0×04 { DriveStatusError }

…

end_request : I/O Error, dev sda, sector 45076288
printk : 401 messages suppressed
Buffer I/O error on device sda5, logical block 3013925
lost page write due to I/O error on sda5

Even though I have no idea what this all means …

So perhaps there’s some problem with copying the files over. It always seems to happen when I try to copy from the DVDs. I tried copying a large number of file across from a shared FAT32 partition; no problem.

So another installation of Xubuntu, which completed without debootstrap errors, and I have a desktop again. Fingers crossed. I am not touching these backup DVD’s from inside Xubuntu. I’ll just dump them on my FAT32 partition through Windows, and the lest said about this the better.

Still wish I could work out what happened. This better not happen again … or else I’m just buying a new drive

Why do you hate me hard drive?

I am seriously starting to think my hard drive is rooted. After using Xubuntu for a while I copied some files across from a DVD, and then all of a sudden I have a graphical I/O error dialog, then after flicking to another console all that ‘translated ata’ error shit.

The only information that has been remotely helpful has been this post which gave me the idea that it could be the SATA controller. However, I’m pretty sure that my other hard drive is connected to the same one, and it’s working fine. Which gives me an idea, seeing as I have two SATA controllers on my mainboard, I should try using different ones.

The other thing that I thought of, which I should have done ages ago, is to use Western Digital’s hard drive diagnostics tools. It keeps locking up my PC though, so I’m not sure what to try.

This is too confusing for my limited knowledge of computers.