it’s me… henry

VirutalBox and OSX has come a long way.  I got iATKOS S3 rev 2 and installed it on VirtualBox.  My experience with the installation was actually pretty good.  Nothing to painful and very straight forward.  But after it was done installing and onto the first boot, it would just hang…  I kept reading over and over the forums but nothing was specific to VirtualBox and iATKOS S3 rev 2.

What I do know (from reading different posts from different forums) is that a 32-bit system needs be installed, VirtualBox settings needs to have an additional “ExtraDataItem”, fakesmc and EVO Reboot needs to be unchecked.

Oh, as a side note, I’m running the host in a Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 specifically) environment.  There is no Mac OSX, there’s Mac OSX Server and Mac OSX Server 64-bit.  I used Mac OSX Server for the guest.

Reading somewhere, you need to install atleast one 32-bit app/binary for thesystem to boot into a 32-bit system.  In the boot options of the installer, choose the 32-bit and it will.

All the other stuff is self explanatory.  But after the initial boot, it just hangs.  Digging around, this person made a comment that the kernel they used “qoopz 10.3.0″ worked for them.  I tried the qoopz kernel with the other settings and then it worked.  I booted perfectly.

Now, I just need to install VirtualBox Additional Tools.  But overall, the install went fast, and from what I can tell, OSX runs a lot faster than before.

After using the laptop for a while now… there are some issues that I need to figure out.

- After waking up from “sleep”, the screen is still blank.  I read somewhere changing to a terminal and back to X fixed it for them, but it didn’t for me.  I think it’s because I’m on an Intel graphics card and the other person was on an Nvidia graphics card.

- I forgot what sequence it was, but if I’m docked, and undock it while everything is running, the screen is blank.  Or this issue was the reverse (I was undocked, then I dock it and so blank screen).

- When docked, I boot the laptop, but my KVM is not switched to the port.  I just let it load, and I switch the KVM to the port of the laptop and blank screen.

- Touchpad is not detected in X (basically, when I go to the system settings in KDE, and to Keyboard and Mouse, the Touchpad settings are disabled).  I read somewhere that it’s because the touchpad is detected as a mouse, so the touchpad properties is not valid.

Wow… I have a lot of video issues…

Installing Ubuntu or Kubuntu 10.04 has been troublesome…

First, I noticed that it had a A01 BIOS version.  But I figured that since the E6510 is a new model, it should be right.  Then that’s where all the trouble started…  When I would boot with the installer, sometimes the screen would go blank.  Sometimes just turning it on will have a blank screen.

Going to my PC troubleshooting roots, I noticed whenever I plugged in an external monitor to the boot up, the screen would not come up at all.  I first thought it was a bad laptop, but something told me to look on the site to see if there was an updated firmware.  I went to the Dell support site and there it was, it was A03 update with a P02 patch.  I read the description, but nothing seem to have what I was experiencing.  I told myself to just try it anyways.  I’m glad I did cause now the internal and external monitor works on every boot.

Now, I have another issue upon booting…  After the installer goes to a certain point, the internal monitor would blank out again.  Googling helped me find out that there are issues the latest kernel and some Nvidia, ATI, and Intel graphics drivers.  I tried many things people suggested, but none really worked.  I need to have the internal and external monitor to work (it’s for work, so I have to be able to use it at home on a docking station and at work with just the internal monitor).

All the things people suggested either had the internal monitor working but not the external, or the other way around.  I basically got real fed up with 10.04 and tried 9.10 and 9.04.  I installed it and everything went fine.  Works with and without docking.

I was going to give up there and just just 9.10 till 10.04 works.  Then I started to do the usual installing apps and updating the system.  Then after an updated kernel, it restarted and while docked, it worked.  Then I undocked it (meaning I just used the internal monitor) and it gave me the blank screen.  So, that lead me to believe that somethings going on with the kernel.

I went on a mission to figure out what kernel is going on.  I read on some post that installing an older kernel could fix my issue, so I found the Ubuntu kernel team page and went and installed random kernels in the 2.32.6.xx family.  This is when I was on 9.10, and installing random ones, I noticed that at a certain point, it would blank out.

I decided to install 10.04 again and install kernels from 2.6.32.9 to 2.6.32.15 and see if that helped my situation.  (Note, the default 10.04 installs a 2.6.32.21).  I first ran 2.6.32.9 without the monitor.  Success… it worked.  Then I docked it, and again… success!!  Okay.. lets try .15, and see if that works… *crosses finger*  Nope… didn’t work.  Then I tired .11, it worked, tried .14, it failed.  Okay… getting close.. I tried .13-4, fail, .13-3, fail.  Then finally 2.6.32.13… success!!!

Everything works.  Well, as far as wifi (it didn’t work with the stock 9.10 kernel) and video (with and without docking).  The only thing I can’t do is when docked, I can’t undock it.  I still need to poweroff the laptop before switching displays.  I’m pretty sure there’s a fix for that, but for now, I can live with it.

TL;DR - Got new laptop, internal/external monitor didn’t work.  Updated firmware, got monitor to a stable state.  Installed Kubuntu 10.04, 9.10, and 9.04 and figured out the blank issue is a kernel issue.  On 10.04, kernel 2.6.32.13 works.

Edit: My setup is that I don’t have to do extra kernel args in GRUB and in xorg.conf, I need to use driver “intel”.

Finally… I got the new Sprint HTC Hero.  I’ve been playing with it for a while and started development on it.  Creating apps on it is actually really easy.  Surprised me how easy it is.  Everything you need to know is on the Android Developers site.

One thing I did notice is that the USB port for the HTC Hero is not the shape as the universal/generic shape.  But I did try to put a generic USB plug and it does charge it.  When I used the generic USB plug for development (with Eclipse), it didn’t work, I thought something was wrong with my machine.  Then I tried the original USB cable and it worked.  So in my experience, generic USB cables will charge the phone, but you cannot use it for development.

I have a 2001 Toyota Tacoma XtraCab truck and I want a bike rack for it.  Instead of buy one, I made one with the help of http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/bikerack/makerack.htm

Some minor changes to make it fit on my truck…

For the width, instead of 16.5″, I used 12.75″.  And for the height, instead of 18.5″, I used 15.75″.

The height went right underneth the rear window, and the width went snug between the tire humps of the bed.

The only thing to do is to paint it.

After fiddling around with .NET 2008 ATL COM DLLs and creating events, the class object that implements the interface does not have any reference to the event.  After searching on the net, there were no solutions.  After reading the MSDN documents over and over (ATL tutorial, Step 5: Adding an Event), it mentioned to make sure that the IDL file contains the function.  I checked after I created it, but to my surprise… there is no function declaration.  I added it manually, then went back to the class, added the connection point, and finally… there’s the “Fire_” function.

Update: Nevermind… the tutorial does work.  I was not adding the function correctly.

http://www.jejik.com/articles/2008/10/setting_up_dual_monitors_system-wide_with_xrandr_on_debian_lenny/

I have the OSX Leopard (10.5.x) DVD installer, but it is a dual layer disc.  The Powerbook G4 does not support dual layer discs.  So, I had to strip down the installer inorder to install it.  Using OSX Tiger (10.4) installer was easy and fast.  But it was a single layer disc.

I found many tutorials to stripdown/slimdown/convert to single layer DVD, but the only one that worked was…  http://web.mac.com/owenmcgarry/Downloads/Leopard_on_a_single_layer_DVD.html

Now… lets install Xcode with Iphone SDK…

Firestarter is a firewall.  Moblock is an IP blocker.

To have both work together, I had to modify the firestarter script to restart Moblock.

After some digging, edit /etc/firestarter/firestarter.sh as sudo.

Find start_firewall function and modify it to this…

# Start the firewall, enforcing traffic policy
start_firewall () {
lock_firestarter
source /etc/firestarter/firewall 2>&1
retval=$?
if [ $retval -eq 0 ]; then
echo “Firewall started”
if [ -x /etc/init.d/blockcontrol ]; then
/etc/init.d/blockcontrol restart
fi
else
echo “Firewall not started”
unlock_firestarter
exit $retval
fi
}

So, I’ve been using VirtualBox for a while and everything is good.  Then recently, VirtualBox would randomly crash.  What happens WinXP will boot, then it will start, but the screen size is really small (640×480).  So after I boot up, I would try to resize the desktop, but once I got into the display properties, it would crash.  In VirtualBox, it says WinXP is “aborted”.  Googling at what “aborted” meant, it says that it’s just a random crash.

Thinking what changed previously… I remember I’ve been using RDP a lot more, so I disabled it.  That gave me a little time to do something, but the screensize is still 640×480.  So I went to display properties, and it crashed.  I turned RDP back on cause that’s the not cause of it.

Still thinking now….  I look at my firewall (firestarter) and it was “red”.  So I looked and it was blocking NTP (port 123).  So I enabled it to see if that helps.  And now… no more crashing.