Douglas' Blog

I got a new Dell Latitude D830 laptop for work last week and decided that Kubuntu was what I would run on it. However, to date there seems to be little in the way of documenting their install of Linux on the D830, so here’s a start. And I’ll try to update the entry as problems are solved. And I’ll assume that you are familiar with apt-get or the Adept Manager programs and other aspects of managing a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution.

First, the executive summary: I successfully installed Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) Tribe 2 on my Dell Latitude D830, with a few problems. I tried Kubuntu Feisty Fawn (both desktop and alternate) and had little success. And in doing some research it seemed that I would likely run into more problems than it was worth with Feisty given the new leading edge hardware within the D830.

Second, what’s not working? At this point, sound is not functioning whatsoever for me. And I’ve run into problems with some software packages, such as VMware Workstation 5.5 and OpenOffice. But at this point, the software issues seem more to do with the unstability of Gutsy than to do with the D830.

Here’s a look at my Dell D830. It’s a stock Latitude D830 with WUXGA (1920x1200), an Intel wireless network card (rather than the Dell wireless options) and built-in Bluetooth support.

% lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 21)
03:01.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

The desktop CD of Gutsy Gibbon didn’t work properly, due to the Intel video card from what I understand, but the alternate install CD worked like a charm. After the install is complete and you’ve booted off your new Kubuntu-based laptop, you should find that X starts up just fine though at this point it will be using the vesa driver rather than the Intel one. To install the Intel driver, which should bring improved graphics as ability to run OpenGL based stuff better, you need to install the ‘xserver-xorg-video-intel’ package. Then you need to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and change your ‘Device’ section to use the Intel driver and then restart your X Server.

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Video Card"
        Driver          "intel"
        BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

If you want to control your touchpad, which works out of the box, from within KDE you need to install the ‘ksynaptics’ package and then change your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, adding a ‘SHMConfig’ option.

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "HorizScrollDelta"      "0"
        Option          "SHMConfig"     "on"
EndSection

Suspend and hibernate also worked out of the box, once I changed the ‘When Laptop Lid Closed’ option to ‘Suspend’. To change that, click on the battery icon in the system tray which will bring up the Power Manager options. Frequency scaling also works perfectly out of the box.

Unfortunately, the sound does not currently work which, according to this bug, appears to be related to the current version of the ALSA driver (version 1.0.14). The error I see in the logs is as follows:

[   21.400000] hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode...
[   22.404000] hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to single_cmd mode...
[   26.100000] hda_codec: No auto-config is available, default to model=ref
[   33.508000] hda-intel: no codecs initialized

I’ll update this page as I encounter more details on the sound problem. Also, at this point I have not tested the Firewire or Bluetooth functionality as I do not have any devices to try out. Bluetooth, however, does appear to be working from a KDE perspective so if I can find someone at work with a Bluetooth device, I’ll see if I can make it do something.

As I mentioned, I ran into some issues with some software packages but I will document those issues in separate entries.

About two months ago I saw a quarter share in a Piper Cherokee Six hangered in Springbank (CYBW) advertised in the COPA Plane Trade section of the COPA Flight newspaper. I contacted the seller, did some research and took a test flight. The aircraft’s annual was due so I piggybacked on that and got it inspected. And then last Friday I signed on the dotted line and handed over a swack of cash, making me a 25% owner in a 1971 PA32-300 Piper Cherokee Six.

As I suspect is the case with most people who take the aircraft ownership plunge, I was motivated by aircraft suitability, convenience, control. I love the Calgary Flying Club and I think they are making huge strides in making renting there even better, but I think I’ve outgrown the club. The only aircraft that made any sense for me to rent was the CFC’s Cessna 182, which was fast and had a decent useful load. But even with it’s 1100 pound useful load, with full fuel you are left with 800 pounds for a 4 seat aircraft. That’s reasonable for 3 people but not nearly as good for 4 people with luggage. And since most of my flying is cross country and since I’d like to do more trips with another couple in the plane with us, the Cessna 182 isn’t going to work. Convenience is high linked to availability, and with only one Cessna 182 available to all members at CFC, that meant that it was next to impossible to just rent the plane on a whim. In checking the online booking system, as of today the club’s Cessna 182 is rented pretty much every weekend and most days during the week for the next few months – great for the club but not so good for me. The issue of control is also another factor. The GPS in CFC’s Cessna 182 is pretty basic, and takes up about the same size as an AI. Ya, it’s small. And old. And I’d love to see it replaced. But as a member, I don’t have direct control. Yes, I can talk to the administration and raise the issue at the AGM but with ownership comes the ability to just do it.

Costs don’t typically come into consideration when thinking about aircraft ownership because it’s fairly hard to beat a non-profit club given the amount of hours they are able to put on the aircraft (thus reducing the cost per hour for fixed costs like hanger space and insurance). But as I continue to increase the amount of flying I do per year and in combination with the rising costs associated with paying employees, I am convinced that I can fly cheaper per hour with my new PA-32 (as one of four co-owners) than I can at the flying club. The truth remains to be seen but I will report after a year of flying.

Don’t get me wrong though. I love the Calgary Flying Club and I have a lot of fond memories associated with them. And I suspect I will still participate in some of the Saturday show and fly events. But I don’t see myself renting there again, other than to perhaps check out the new Diamond DA-20 or to take multi-engine training, because I now have an aircraft of my own.

The blog server is back. Actually, the server was never really gone, it’s just that the DNS entry for ‘blogs’ got missed when I migrated the master DNS for my domains. Joy. Anyway, it’s all good again.

For the past four year I have been a huge proponent of all things Gentoo and I still am. But I’ve decided that Gentoo on the desktop (or in my case, laptop) is no longer for me. That’s not to say that it’s because Gentoo doesn’t belong on the desktop because that certainly isn’t the case. As far as I’m concerned, if you want a source-based distribution on your desktop, Gentoo is the way to go – hands down. And I still believe that Gentoo is a solid platform to run on enterprise servers; I have three servers all running Gentoo.

As my life gets busier and my priorities change, I find that I no longer wish to spend any time mucking around with the configuration of various functionality, libraries and applications on my laptop. Instead, I want everything to just work so I can concentrate on using my laptop to accomplish stuff, and I mean stuff other than making my laptop work properly. So, with that in mind, I switched to Kubuntu. It’s not fair to compare the two distributions as they have different goals and different target audiences. But I will say that when I installed Kubuntu 7.04 that everything pretty much worked out of the box, including the scroll wheel emulation on the touch pad and wireless network support. I haven’t tried suspend/resume yet but I suspect that it will work equally well. So I must say that overall I’m very pleased.

I find myself in Charleston, SC today where I am attending the ATG Insight Live 2007 conference. It’s been years since I attended a tech-related conference so I’m not entirely sure what to expect, other than what the agenda says. But if the Charleston hospitality is any indicator the next four days are bound to be a good.

I actually arrived last night, about an hour late. I flew via Chicago, where we had an incredibly hard landing (not this hard though) in a CRJ700 with a little sideways skidding thrown in for good luck. It was definitely a landing that would make any student pilot proud – nice to know even the professionals have some bad days. After last minute gate change, combined with a last minute plane change, it was in to a CRJ200 for the hop to Charleston and into the Doubletree Guest Suites.

Today I woke up late, had some breakfast and did a solo walk around the historic district of Charleston courtesy. My tour was basically guided, courtesy of National Geographic who have a Walks of a Lifetime podcast, which are available on their website or via iTunes. It’s a brilliant podcast which basically leads you along a circular route within the city, pointing out historic and interesting landmarks and giving you background information. And for my walk today the weather was perfect, making it a great afternoon. Now, time for some refreshing beer courtesy of ATG.

It’s been a long time since my last entry; while I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been too busy, it’s mostly because I just haven’t been motivated enough. And that means that a new version of KDE was released without my usual report on how it works with Gentoo.

KDE 3.5.6 was released back in late January and I built it shortly thereafter. And I’ve been running it ever since, again with no noticeable issues. As of this entry 3.5.6 is still marked as unstable in the Gentoo Portage tree but I say go ahead and build it. Though, if you haven’t already built it, then you may want to just wait as KDE 3.5.7 is expected at the start of May.

Once again there has been a huge gap between postings. I’ve started a few postings here and there but haven’t had time to either finish them or to polish them. So this week I’m going to make a conscious effort to catch up and have a good week of postings. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself I’m going to do.

Since September of this year, I spend the majority of Monday through Friday working for Critical Mass. And since that time, I’ve been on the Hyatt account, responsible for a lot of the Hyatt website. I don’t do much programming and when I do it tends to be little pieces here and there, and nothing all that noticeable or worth mentioning. But last week that all changed when Hyatt joined the Web 2.0 revolution and added an AJAX-driven auto-suggest on the Location search field on the main page of the Hyatt site.

Of course, it was Aaron that did all the cool stuff® that you can see – all the HTML, Javascript and other associated markup magic. But I did all the coding on the server-side that made Aaron’s stuff possible. Regardless, it’s cool to say that a certain piece of a large, high-traffic website is your handiwork.

The auto-suggest piece has been on the Hyatt website for over week now so I think it’s fairly safe to say that my mark on Hyatt is here to stay. You can click on the image for a larger sample view or you can visit the Hyatt website and check it out for yourself. And if client (and hopefully user) reaction to this new piece is good, then I expect that we will see used in other areas of the site.

Last year I didn’t really have any goals related to flying. As January 2006 rolled around I was well on my way to getting my instrument rating, which was more than a good enough goal but I never really thought of it as that. As it turned out, finishing up my rating took more of the year than anticipated through no fault of my own but I feel like I need a list of sorts that I can cross accomplishments off of. And so, I’ve decided to compile a list of flying goals, in order of the likelihood of being achieved:

1. get checked out on a retractable gear aircraft; this is a reasonably easy goal, especially at the Calgary Flying Club as the club owns an Piper Arrow (essentially a Piper Warrior with retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller). And I am already confident with constant-speed props due to my experience with the club’s Cessna 182.
2. build up my instrument flying time and approach count;
3. get an introductory lesson in a helicopter (leaning towards Big Horn Helicopters)
4. visit six new airports;
5. fly over a large body of water (should be accomplished with a flight to Nanaimo);
6. log at least 50 hours of flying time (last year I logged perhaps half that due to IFR training);
7. get some good video and still photography of my flying (I love admiring myself *g*);
8. fly deep into the United States – preferably somewhere in southern California;
9. get a multi-engine rating;
10. buy a share in an aircraft

I’ll try and post some updates throughout the year as I work my way through the list.

I read Aviatrix’s entry on Badgering Badger, in which she ended with a link to the Badger Badger Badger website. Be warned, the Badger website is another one of those useless websites that’s made it’s way around the Internet because it’s so unbelievably annoying that you can’t help but send it around to all your friends. Which is exactly what I did at work (along with a link to Zombo.com).

But of course, no one here at Critical Mass can let an email like that go so replies were sent out with links to the Hampster Dance and a Badger vs Banana remix. So yes, the Internet is annoying.