Worklog for Scaremonger

Development PC Build

Return to Worklogs

Removing all the junk(Posted 2013-06-20)
The default desktop installation comes with a pile of things that I will never need on my PC and some things that I want to replace.

Using the ubuntu software center, Install the following:
* Chromium

Using the ubuntu software center, Remove the following (and anything else you don't think you will need)
* Games, Firefox (+Plugins), Thunderbird, Pidgin, XChat, Transmission, Gnumeric, Orage Calendar


*

________________________________________
...

Installing the Hypervisor(Posted 2013-06-20)
First you want to know if you can use hardware virtualisation. First check that it is enabled in your BIOS, then use the following two commands:
si@Ember:~$ egrep -c '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
2
si@Ember:~$ kvm-ok 
INFO: /dev/kvm exists
KVM acceleration can be used

In the above example, the first command will issue 0 if you processor does not support hardware virtualisation. (Mine does).
The second command says that KVM can be used.

If you can use Hardware virtualisation:
$ sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm 
$ sudo apt-get install libvirt-bin
$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-vm-builder
$ sudo apt-get install bridge-utils
$ sudo apt-get install virt-manager

If you cannot then you can still use QEMU, the easiest way is to install it from the package manager.

Now give yourself some permissions (*si being my username)
$ sudo adduser si libvirtd
$ sudo adduser si kvm


Now Logout/Login and test it with the following:
$ virsh -c qemu:///system list


If you have any problems, you need to get these fixed now...

________________________________________
...

WINE and DVDDecypter(Posted 2013-06-20)
There are two Windows applications I want to run without emulation, DVDDecrypter (For Ripping my DVD's for OpenElec XBMC installed on a Raspberry Pi with exFAT NAS disk attached); and a game called Sins of a Solar Empire.

Installing WINE is easy:
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get wine1.4


Now download DVDDecrypter and when prompted, open setup in WINE.
When prompted, turn off the desktop icon (Unless you want it) and the quick lauch icon. Leave destination folder as default and do not update from the internet. Finish the installation without running it.

Now configure it:
$ winecfg

Under applications add DVDDecrypter from the path where it installed, set it as Windows NT4 and press "Apply".
.
Install a DVD in your drive and in Wine Config, select the DRIVES tab; add drive D: and point it to your recently mounted DVD (/media/si/ALIENS)...
.
Load DVDDecypter, Select Mode=IFO and it should detect your Movie. Select where you want it written and go...

I Will install the game later...

________________________________________
...

Wirless - Broadcom B4311(Posted 2013-06-20)
Except Wireless on my test laptop did not work. After a few hours scouring the internet I found the solution which I sort of put together from bit of what others had done...

My Test laptop used to have Ubuntu 10.x on it, so I know the wifi works; so...

$ lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN [14e4:4311] (rev 01)


This told me what was installed and it'll do for my testing. I can see the Chip ID: BCM4311 and PCI-ID=14e4:4311.

I looked this up on Supported_devices and installed the drivers:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
$ sudo apt-get install b43-fw-cutter


Still no joy. A bit more digging and I decided to add b43 to the file /etc/modules and after a reboot this finally worked..
$ sudo nano /etc/modules


________________________________________
...

Installation(Posted 2013-06-20)
Turned out I had all sorts of problems, The minimal Install image didn't work and after three different distributions i found the Universal Netboot Installer to be buggy so downloaded Xubuntu Desktop 13.04 and burnt it to a DVD. The first DVD image had a checksum error, and the second was a bad disk, but third time lucky and it installed perfectly.

After 80 patches were applied I looked at getting it the way I need it...

________________________________________
...

Root OS(Posted 2013-06-19)
I have downloaded Ubuntu Mini 13.04 from the following:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD

and burnt it onto a 4GB USB disk using Universal Netboot Installer

After updating my system BIOS to allow boot from USB, I finally completed the installation.

NOTE: This requires a wired connection, not Wifi.

The partition table looks like this:
#1 Primary 40GB ext4 /
#5 Logical 4GB swap swap
#6 UNPARTITIONED

After installation it reboots with a cursor in the top left of the screen! - Not very helpful!

So I rebooted on the USB stick holding down SHIFT and selected "Ubuntu" from the grub menu and got to a login prompt. I logged in using the details I provided during installation...

Now I am simply at a login prompt:
Ubuntu 13.04 ubuntu tty1

ubuntu login: Scaremonger
Password:
Welcome to Ubuntu 13.04 (GNU/Linux 3.8.0-25-generic x86_64)

 *Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/
Scaremonger@testpc:~$ _


________________________________________
...

Initial post in Help(Posted 2013-06-19)
Initial post in Help Community Forum

________________________________________
...