BFG, Take #3

Well, I think I got a bad card back from BFG. Neverwinter Nights would lock up and red bands would appear across the screen. Usually I could kill X with ctrl-alt-backspace, but this time I had to reset. When I did all I got was a grid of white blocks. So I RMA'd it again. This time they sent me a better card, a 6600 OC with 256M. So far this one works great, although I'm glad I also upgraded my PSU to a better one. Thus far, this card seems to be doing everything well.

Oh yeah, they sent me another T-shirt too. Soon I'm going to have the largest privately-held collection of BFG-ware :)

Slackware 12.1

You'd think I'd know better by now. Slackware 12.1 came out and I decided to upgrade my main box with it. There's just one problem. The 2.6.24.5 kernel that comes with it doesn't like my DVD drive. Unfortunately I didn't watch when the DVD was booting so I didn't notice until I had dusted my root partition. I got to the point where I would install all the packages and it wouldn't find the drive. This isn't Slackware-specific; I've heard of people having similar problems with Ubuntu and other distros with that kernel. It may be something specific with Benq-based drives (which my Sony DRU-810A is).

Long story short, I had to reinstall 12.0 and then do a manual upgrade to 12.1. I got everything working in relatively short order. Unfortunately, there were a couple of other screw-ups that I made along the way which are entirely my own fault. Haste makes waste, they say. Plus for some reason I insist on living on the bleeding edge.

So now I'm running a custom 2.6.25.3 kernel. The main benefit I've seen to 12.1 so far (it's only been a day or two) is that I could install Cedega without having to add a bunch of stuff to Python.

BFG Follow-Up

Well, color me impressed. BFG got a card back to me almost exact 48 hours after I mailed mine out. Note that it is not my original card. I assume that it is a refurbished model or perhaps a new old stock one. Not only that, but they threw in a sweet BFG t-shirt for my troubles. I guess I know which brand video card I'm going to be buying when I build a new system.

BFG Warranty

The fan on my BFG GeForceFX 5700 Ultra has been getting unpredictable. It will run for a while but then stop. The only way I can tell is by monitoring its temperature in the NVIDIA Linux drivers. I couldn't find a suitable replacement heatsink. The comparable cards are either less powerful or require a bigger PSU than I have. I decided to call BFG, since I knew they had a lifetime warranty. I expected flak, but I got none. They issued me an RMA and I UPS'd it to them yesterday. I just got confirmation that it arrived. According to the guy I talked to, there will be a 1-2 day turnaround and then it will be UPS'd back. Pretty cool, especially since it's a four-year-old card. I'm planning on a box upgrade later this year. I guess I know which brand of vid card I'm getting.

Update! I just checked their site and their warranty changed with cards purchased after February 21 of this year. It's still a lifetime warranty, but you need to register the card within 30 days and send a copy of the receipt with any returned cards. That's a little bit more of a hoop to jump through, but not a biggie.

Update #2! Holy crap! I just checked BFG's site and it's already been fixed and is being shipped back to me. I got a UPS tracking number which means that it should be here tomorrow. The card will have been out of my possession for approximately 48 hours. Wow! If it really is fixed that is nothing short of spectacular service.

2.6.25-rc8, Ralink, and wpa_supplicant

Most people know that getting wireless networking working in Linux (especially with native, open-source drivers) is one of the last great hurdles for Linux to overcome. We are doing some moving around in the house. Rather than punch holes in the walls for cat5, I decided to get a wireless card for my kids' computer and see if I could get it set up. I got a Linksys WMP54G v4.1 which uses a Ralink chipset which in turn has open source drivers. Initially, I tried to just compile the rt61 driver and a modified version of wpa_supplicant for WPA support. I just couldn't get it to work.

I read that the Ralink drivers entered the kernel itself with the release of 2.6.24. Unfortunately, the drivers in that kernel version are buggy. I heard that the drivers in the 2.6.25 release candidates were much better. So, I downloaded the 2.6.24 source, patched it to 2.6.25-rc8, did a "make oldconfig" making sure to tell it to compile the Ralink drivers as modules, and let it compile overnight (Celeron 400s don't compile kernels that rapidly). In the morning, I got everything installed. I then compiled and installed wpa_supplicant 0.5.10.

The final hurdle was configuring wpa_supplicant and Slackware 12.0's networking scripts. Here is the bits from /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf:

IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]="192.168.1.4"
NETMASK[4]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[4]="no"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]=""
WLAN_ESSID[4]="My SSID"
WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"

This configured Slackware to give me a static IP and use wpa_supplicant to take care of WPA encryption. Here is the bits from /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:

# WPA protected network, supply your own ESSID and WPAPSK here:
network={
scan_ssid=1
ssid="My SSID"
proto=WPA
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=CCMP TKIP
group=CCMP TKIP WEP104 WEP40
psk=password
}

I had to add scan_ssid=1 because my router does not broadcast its SSID. That way the network would come up properly on boot. Replace "password" with the output of wpa_passphrase. Obviously in both cases you'd need to enter the actual SSID.

Now everything works great! I can download stuff at my cable connection's maximum speed. I'll need to test it for a while for stability, but so far it seems great. The only other problem I had is that the NVIDIA drivers require a patch to compile with the 2.6.25 release candidates. You can imagine how long it took me to figure that one out.

Linux and Hard Drive Partitioning

I don't know if there could be a topic less sexy than partitioning a hard drive for Linux but it is still very important. He lists a couple of common schemes and then gives some extra suggestions for servers. I personally have separate partitions for /boot, /, /home, and /mp3s. That setup has served me well. If I were running a server, I'd probably add one for /var just in case some logging went haywire. Thanks Linux Today.

Amazon MP3 Downloader and Slackware 12

Amazon finally released the MP3 downloader for Linux which enables Linux users to download full albums from their site. It works out of the box if you use Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, or OpenSUSE. There isn't a stock version for Slackware. So here's what I did:

1. I downloaded the Fedora 8 RPM from the link above
2. I went to SlackBuilds and downloaded, created, and installed SlackBuilds for (in order): libsigc++, glibmm, cairomm, and gtkmm.
3. Then I downloaded and installed boost-1.34.1-i486-2gds.tgz from Linux Packages. Update 12/24/2008 I've found the hard way after I upgraded to Slackware 12.2 that the downloader will not work with a version of Boost > 1.34.1. Just do yourself a favor and use the Slackware 12.0 SlackBuild for Boost. You can thank me later.
4. Finally I went into /usr/lib and created the following symbolic links to make everything work with what the Amazon MP3 Downloader is expecting to find:

ln -s libssl.so.0 libssl.so.6
ln -s libcrypto.so.0 libcrypto.so.6
ln -s libboost_date_time.so libboost_date_time.so.3
ln -s libboost_signals.so libboost_signals.so.3
ln -s libboost_iostreams.so libboost_iostreams.so.3
ln -s libboost_thread-mt.so libboost_thread-mt.so.3

Now it works great! I downloaded and am now enjoying Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Texas Flood." I wish it was a little simpler, but it wasn't too awfully painful. When you use Linux long enough you get pretty good at jumping through hoops.