Messages

61

Hardware Specific / Re: AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?

« on: October 29, 2012, 11:48:37 PM »

Ok, so installing the restricted drivers by doing "apt-get install fglrx-updates" did not work. It does an update-initramfs that ignores the -aufs initramfs.

I'm open to suggestions now

62

Hardware Specific / AMD proprietary drivers in Ubermix 1.062?

« on: October 29, 2012, 07:20:03 AM »

Hi,

I'm experimenting a bit with creating an interim update of our image. Since our netbooks are AMD-based, I was thinking about trying the AMD graphic drivers, but the instructions in the Wiki seem to be for a previous version of Ubermix.

What's the recommended installation process now? Boot into generic and run "Restricted Drivers"?
I'll be trying out different approaches anyway, but no harm in asking.

Thanks.

63

How-to / Re: Creating an Image on an empty USB Flash Drive

« on: October 12, 2012, 07:07:34 PM »

Based on these instructions:
http://ubermix.org/download.html

We did the following, on Linux:

1- Copy one of the USB drives that have the updated image to a file, called custom_ubermix.img:
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=custom_ubermix.img bs=1M
Be patient, there is no progress information.

Note: Use the instructions in the link above to find out if your drive is /dev/sdb or something else.

2- Unplug the original USB drive, and plug in a blank one (or one that you want to overwrite).

3- sudo umount /dev/sdb

4- sudo dd if=custom_ubermix.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
In this last step, be patient, because there is no progress information. It should take around 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of the image, and the speed of your USB drives and USB ports.

I hope it's clear. Using the Windows based tool in the link above, you should also be able to do a similar process of copying an existing USB drive to an image file, and then use that to create copies.

64

How-to / Re: how to deploy via NFS?

« on: October 12, 2012, 12:06:03 AM »

Are all the netbooks going to have the same specs?

In our case, to have the hibernation feature pre-enabled, we installed Ubermix to one netbook, then made a Clonezilla image of that. We then used USB sticks with Clonezilla and the image on them. It was incredibly fast, and plugging the usb sticks was easier than plugging in all the netbooks to ethernet wires for PXE boot.

Not sure if you could get the Ubermix installer to start through PXE and NFS, but I am quite sure you can get Clonezilla to do that, and automate it to deploy the Clonezilla image of Ubermix that you create based on one of your netbooks.

65

How-to / Re: how to deploy via NFS?

« on: October 10, 2012, 06:01:08 PM »

I don't have experience with using PXE boot over NFS of full-blown distros.

But one thing to keep in mind is that this is not your regular "distro". I suspect the whole "Factory reset" system, with its dual root partition with UnionFS, could be making PXE+NFS booting quite a challenge.

See here, scroll down a little to find a diagram of how it's all set up:
http://www.ubermix.org/about.html

For a scenario like this, I may be more worthwhile to figure out how to install the Ubermix launcher over standard Ubuntu, since the recovery feature would not really be needed, right?

66

General Support / Re: Simple Updates and wine

« on: August 09, 2012, 12:55:44 AM »

Not a fix, but maybe a workaround:
For mapping the printers I am using the "simple updates" script, and a couple of "lpadmin" commands. Works very well.

Here is the relevant command to map a printer using the pxlcolor PCL 6 driver (what we need in our case):
lpadmin -p NameOfThePrinter -v smb://IPaddressOrNameOfServer/PrinterShare -E -m foomatic-db-compressed-ppds:0/ppd/foomatic-ppd/Generic-PCL_6_PCL_XL_Printer-pxlcolor.ppd -L "Description of the printer"

And a second line to set some options:
lpadmin -p NameOfThePrinter -o PageSize=A4 -o PrintoutMode=Normal -o Duplex=DuplexNoTumble -o printer-is-shared=false

This way you should be able to avoid having to regenerate or tweak the image any time your printers change.

67

Hardware Specific / Asus 1215B - Suspend/Resume issues, Enable Hibernate?

« on: June 01, 2012, 03:04:19 AM »

Hello,

I am starting a new thread because the other one was getting quite misleading.

The Asus 1215B is a very nice netbook, but the suspend/resume has a lot of problems.
I am trying to work with the Ubuntu developers to make some progress:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1006918

In the mean time, Hibernate is very reliable, but needs a swap partition.

How can I...

1) ... add the creation of a swap partition at the end of the hard disk in the Ubermix usb?

2) ... disable Suspend and make only Hibernate available? Or redirect Suspend to Hibernate?

Thanks!

68

Hardware Specific / Re: Asus 1215B - AMD suspend issues

« on: May 31, 2012, 08:33:45 PM »

Trying now BIOS 0404, no difference.
If I suspend, the next reboot doesn't work until I fully remove all power.

I have installed Lubuntu 12.04 straight, to test with a clean, non-aufs system, and to get the ATI drivers going. No difference.

I think the issue is related to the SATA controller, and not the graphic drivers. Would anyone know which drivers are for the SATA controller?

69

Hardware Specific / Re: Asus 1215B - AMD suspend issues

« on: May 30, 2012, 08:01:22 PM »

Ok, so I'm still having problems.
I upgraded the BIOS to version 0503. After suspend, I still can't reboot. It can't find the hard disk for some reason.

Suspend itself works well, at least most of the time, but making students pull out the battery would not be acceptable

AMD restricted drivers:

• The script doesn't check to make sure that dkms is installed, so the driver installation fails.
• If dkms is installed, the drivers complain that compilation gives an error. I am using the latest .deb files created using the official AMD installer. Have you modified the .deb files that you have on the wiki so they can compile against the "3.3" kernel that is in Ubermix?

70

Hardware Specific / Re: Asus 1215B - AMD suspend issues

« on: May 30, 2012, 08:02:52 AM »

I have found this bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/856711
It is long, but around the end, a user seems to have found some changes in suspend parameters that might help:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/856711/comments/81

I'll try that tomorrow, and report back.

In that thread they also mention the issue of not being able to reboot after suspend, and it seems to be a known BIOS bug. So I will also try the BIOS upgrade first. This might explain why you are not experiencing that problem.

By the way, C6 option in the BIOS makes no difference in detecting the battery. It is always detected.

Thanks for all your help!

71

How-to / Re: Deployment with Clonezilla and hostnames

« on: May 30, 2012, 01:43:11 AM »

Great. Thanks for the info.
We'll probably round up as many usb sticks as we can, and use both ways at the same time. We can do around 20 netbooks per batch with Clonezilla.

72

Hardware Specific / Re: Asus 1215B - AMD suspend issues

« on: May 30, 2012, 01:23:49 AM »

I have now an Asus 1215B permanently to try to get this figured out.
With our latest customized image, with all Ubuntu updates applied, suspend/resume seems to work well now.

But when I try to reboot after suspending a couple of times, it gets stuck. It just can't boot. I need to turn it off and take the battery out.

What is interesting is that C6 settings in the BIOS don't make any difference now. Suspend/resume works, but if you use it, you can't reboot.

My BIOS is 0310.

I am going to try installing the AMD proprietary drivers. I tried using Jockey, but it didn't work. I will try the script in the wiki, or maybe go directly to the AMD website.

73

How-to / Deployment with Clonezilla and hostnames

« on: May 29, 2012, 01:15:40 AM »

Hi,

I am trying some customization of Ubermix 1.0beta2, and it's looking really good. I am throwing all the apt-gets and some more stuff into a script, so I can run it with newer betas easily later on.

I've also changed the hostname script so it creates "uber-xxxxxx" names instead of "system-xxxxxx" names, to more easily tell them apart from our existing computers.

We don't have that many USB sticks laying around, so we are considering using Clonezilla with multicast, which we already have set up for other projects.

When does the "update-hostname" script run? During the installation process? Or on first boot after installation?
Hopefully on first boot, so we can make a Clonezilla image right after the installation, before booting into Ubermix at all.

74

General Discussion / Re: Ubermix with standard desktop environment?

« on: May 29, 2012, 12:39:11 AM »

Thanks, I tried it, and it works very well.

I am very very very close to putting this on my mother-in-law's laptop

75

Q&A / Source code for the Launcher and/or other stuff?

« on: May 29, 2012, 12:36:56 AM »

Hi,

I was wondering if you are releasing the source code for the Launcher as well?
Maybe through GitHub?
Not that I need it, but it would be nice.

Cheers!