Archive for the 'Computers' Category

NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 NVIDIA Kernel Module  1.0-6629  Wed Nov  3 13:12:51 PST 2004
------------[ cut here ]------------
kernel BUG at arch/i386/mm/pageattr.c:137!
invalid operand: 0000 [#1]
PREEMPT
Modules linked in:
nvidia snd_seq_midi snd_emu10k1_synth snd_emux_synth snd_seq_virmidi
snd_seq_midi_emul snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss snd_seq_oss snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq
snd_emu10k1 snd_rawmidi snd_seq_device snd_ac97_codec snd_ac97_bus snd_util_mem
snd_hwdep rtc sd_mod snd_bt87x snd_pcm snd_timer snd_page_alloc tuner bttv video_buf 
firmware_class v4l2_common btcx_risc tveeprom videodev tulip
CPU:    0
EIP:    0060:[]    Tainted: P      VLI
EFLAGS: 00213082   (2.6.15-gentoo-r1)
EIP is at __change_page_attr+0×191/0×1b0
eax: 0000a420   ebx: c15d8a20   ecx: c100a420   edx: c1000000
esi: c0521eec   edi: 00000163   ebp: eec51000   esp: ef039d68
ds: 007b   es: 007b   ss: 0068
Process X (pid: 20492, threadinfo=ef038000 task=ef020a70)
Stack: eec51000 eec50000 2ec001e3 c15d8a20 00000011 00000000 00203296 c0116e36
       c15d8a20 00000163 f5d94940 f8e80000 f6d1b800 ef039dec c01169d5 c15d8800
       00000012 00000163 00011000 f8e80000 f937ee56 f8e80000 f9193180 f8e80000

Just upgraded to kernel 2.6.15 and got this message on boot up:

nvidiafb: nVidia device/chipset 10DE0110
nvidiafb: EDID found from BUS1
nvidiafb: Unable to detect which CRTCNumber
...Defaulting to CRTCNumber 0

After which it stalled. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the new nvidiafb driver option I saw in this kernel’s config. Why did I throw out that old Matrox G400?

The power supply arrived. Switching it was simple enough. I figured I’d switch to round IDE cables at the same time to improve airflow only to be thwarted by the immense number of cables attached to the Tagan. It was nice to be able to boot my PC from cold without having to wait for the voltage to settle and it looked like everything was going smoothly…then X wouldn’t start, I just got a blank screen. This has happened before but a reboot got things going, I always assumed it was something to do with the lack of power. This time rebooting had no affect.

ssh’ing into the machine showed everything was normal, no errors in the logs. X wouldn’t die though and needed a ‘kill -9′ to go away. Switching from the ‘nvidia’ driver to ‘nv’ got X up and running but after a few minutes it freezes and can’t be killed. I did have it up long enough to test the TV card and was glad to find out the static problem I was experiencing was another power issue.

The nv freezing problem might be an old one. It was commented out in my XF86Config (running xorg) so obviously I decided it wasn’t good enough sometime in the past, but why? Probably because it froze.

Given that the blank screen is only constant after I switched power supplies I would have to suspect that, but everything else is running smoothly, and Google thinks I’m not the only one suffering this problem:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=xorg+nvidia+blank+screen

There must be an answer somewhere out there.

It looks like the power supply in my desktop is on its last legs. It’s been struggling with the 5V line for a while. Normally I’d have to turn it on, leave it for a bit until it settled on 4.6V and then boot up, now it’s struggling to make 4.5V, and that means a lot of crashes. The old one was an Antec TruePower 380 that I got when the cheap that came with the case blew up a couple of years back. It’s done the job admirably, but as I’ve moved hardware from my Windows desktop to this one, it’s become just too much.

380W from a good quality power supply should be enough for anyone but at last count the hardware in this box is:

• 3 hard disks
• CD Writer
• DVD player
• Zip drive
• Floppy drive
• 5 fans
• 3 PCI cards + 1 AGP card

I tried unplugging various things last night but there was no change in the voltage output, so I suspect it’s permanently damaged. After some research I’ve decided to go for a Tagan TG480 U01. I considered some higher wattage PSUs but this thing can deliver 48A to a maximum load of 240W on the 5V line, that’s 18A more than most, so I figure that must be enough for whatever hardware is sucking up all the juice. The Antec claimed to supply 35A but the total power was shared amongst all lines. As a bonus the Tagan is quite and cheap so it’s a no-brainer. Let’s hope it does the trick.

Amarok’s ‘Global shortcuts’ are the cause of my keyboard woes. Amarok divides its shortcuts into ‘Amarok shortcuts’ and ‘Global shortcuts’, the global variety take over those keys while the program remains running. Of course functions like play, pause, next track, etc. are global, so if I want something simpler than ‘Ctrl-Windows Key-P’, say hitting the space bar, I can’t use it for anything else.

I’m guessing the author’s of this feature had grander plans that what I’m using it for. Maybe a nice feature request for local versions of play. stop, etc. is the way to go…

Update: Looks like I’m not the only one who wants this feature, and thankfully the ticket has already gone through the ‘don’t be so stupid that’s not a bug I’m closing this, oh wait I see your point I’ll open it’ phase. But that was the middle of last year and nothing has happened since. Maybe I should try to add them myself, the patch on this ticket makes it look easy enough.

The spacebar on my desktop decided to behave again, so all is good, or so I thought. Then like clockwork the spacebar on my notebook started exhibiting the same behaviour, i.e. shift-space = space. But then I noticed that the left and right arrow keys didn’t work either, at that point something clicked. Earlier in the evening I setup some new shortcuts for Amarok, space to pause and left and right to go back and forth in the track. Sure enough after I shut down Amarok all the keys returned to normal.

So something is either from with Amarok’s shortcut handling or KDE’s. Something to look into, but not tonight because it’s getting late.

My SpamAssassin setup on DreamHost has decided to stop working, joy. In my procmail logs:

Can't locate Mail/SpamAssassin/Util/Progress.pm in @INC (@INC contains: 
    /home/***/usr/share/perl/5.8.4 /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.4 /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.4 
    /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.8 /usr/share/perl/5.8 /usr/local/lib/site_perl) 
at /mnt/***/vol/boot/***/sales/***/usr/bin/spamassassin line 82.

Of course the file is there because I haven’t changed the setup in months:

find usr -name Progress.pm
usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Mail/SpamAssassin/Util/Progress.pm

I guess it might be because when it’s executed it uses the full path (with /mnt) rather than just the /home alias. But @INC includes the path where the file it. I’ll have to wait until I get home to sort this out.

Update: It started working again, no idea why and nothing interesting in the logs. I guess it was some DreamHost home directory mounting issue. It did let me see how much work SpamAssassin does and made me really grateful that it exists.

For some reason the space bar on my desktop keyboard has stopped working in X. It’s definitely not broken because if I switch to a virtual console it works fine. I wonder how long it’s been like that…I guess since the last time I upgraded that box, but that was some time ago. I never realised how little I actually sit at my desk when I’m at home.

Update: Shift-Space produces a space, now I’m really confused.

I saw an advert recently that Vodafone has started a flat rate plan for their 3G datacards. The ad said £45 a month but the price plan says £52.88. And it works in Linux. At the moment I use my computers either at home or at work so £52.88 is a bit steep for the odd occasion when I take my laptop somewhere but if you’re a contractor, it becomes a lot more attractive, especially if you have it instead of broadband at home. But then again 384kb/s vs. 8mb/s, would you really want to? Now where are those 4G cards…

Update: Just saw the ad again, which still says it’s only £45 a month, and the small print says ‘1GB fair use limit’. So it’s not unlimited at all, it’s a 1GB plan. Dodgy advertising if you ask me.

Up to now I’ve converted all my CD’s to mp3 with iTunes on Windows. Actually that’s not strictly true, they were ripped to what ever is Apple’s default format, I keep meaning to rerip them as 192k mp3s. I’ve started using Amarok to organise my music in Linux. It’s a nice program and looks good, but there are a few things missing before it can become my main music client. One is full iPod integration, i.e. ratings and playlists, and the other major thing was CD ripping. I thought it was odd that it didn’t have it built in. So I started hunting for a program to do it in KDE. After a bit of searching I found it’s built right into KDE!

If you open up Konqueror and bring up the navigation panel (F9) there should be something in the tree called ‘Audio CD Browser’. If you have an audio CD in your drive and click on it you see a bunch of different files and folders depending on what ripping software you have installed. In my case it showed the tracks of the CD as CDA (CD audio), mp3 and ogg. It also has the whole CD as one track in all the different formats. You can configure the quality of the ripping through the control panel, I went for variable bit rate with an average bit rate of 192kb/s. Then it’s just a matter of copying the files from audio CD browser like any other file and it rips it on the fly. Truly simple software.

The next step is to integrate it into Amarok so I can pop in a CD, click the CD browser tab, select the tracks I want and click ‘Add to my collection’. That would be really slick.