Useful Thoughts and Actions Taken

Ubuntu Screen resolution problems with ATI Rage XL graphics chip

I bought 3 Rackable Systems servers.  Turns out they have the ATI Rage XL graphics chip on the motherboard.  This is a problem because with Ubuntu there seems to be no easy way to get anything better than 800 by 600 display resolution.  As I am trying to use one of the boxes to learn about Ubuntu / Apache / MySQL / PHP this is a problem.   I did alot of diddling with the xorg.conf file to no avail.

While booting up and during shut-down the screen resolution was too high

The motherboard is a Tyan S2735-8M.

The long pci slots are:   64-bit 133/100/66MHz (3.3V) PCI-X slots

I found this riser card on ebay.  I am going to buy it and try putting a different video card in the server to facillitate development!

Looks like this guy had the same problem with a server with the same Rage XL graphics chip.

Slot keying diagram from wikipedia – My server card has 64 bit PCIx Universal slot.  The left portion of this slot is identical to a 3.3V 32 bit PCI slot.  Will a standard 32 bit PCI video card work in the 64 bit universal??

  • Will PCI work in a PCI-X slot?
  • PCIx exposed – PCI-X is downward compatible to PCI. If a PCI card is inserted into a PCI-X system the system will drop down to PCI level operations. It will not execute PCI-X based operations. Thus, to take advantage of PCI, engineers will have to rely only on PCI-X cards and boards.

Nvidia Driver model support list – Ubuntu Nvidia driver howto

 

UpDate January 30,2009

Having been driven half bonkers by 800×600 resolution I stopped by Fry's electronics and found they still sell a particular model of old fashioned PCI video cards.  The brand is BFG and the model is 6200 OC. It is based on a nVidia chip.  It took a while but now I have 1900×1200 resolution and about creamed myself when I saw it come up.  I used the Envy tool.  I tried the lastest version but that did not work.  I tried again with the next to latest and that worked.  It appears to not have used the proprietary driver. 

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

I will never return to Arthur Treachers

I stopped in Long Dong Slivers to pick up an order of fish and chips.  You might ask why I choose there and it is because I prefer it over Arthur Treachers.   Last time when I went into Arthur Treachers the conversation went as follows:

When I went into Arthur Treachers and asked ” Do you have “white fish?”
they answered ” We have fish that are white.”
again I asked ” But is it white fish?”
they answered “No its fish that is white”

So I walked out.  

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Installing WordPress download package on an Ubuntu box with LAMP

The general skeleton of the procedure:   WordPress Installation on Ubuntu with LAMP

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Fun with Overly Clean People

One time one of my super clean-nik compulsive friends was once talking to another friend of the same ilk.

Person A said  …… “gee I have to put my shoes away at night on a shoe stand.”

Person B says   …..  “Yes I do too but I have to make sure to put the shoe laces down the tops of the shoes.   Do you do that?”

—- a few days later —-

Person B says to Person A “Ever since you told me the thing about the shoe laces I have had to start doing that!”

I was listening in and realized that making up cleaning ideas for compulsives can be fun. Every time person B would stop by I would make up a new cleaning tip for him.  Being compulsive he could not help but to incorporate my helpful tip into his disentropic regimen.

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

The Wheels of Enlightenment

To be enlightened in this world requires a patience of mind.  Elements in the world of man competes to sell you their ideas and therefore yoke you to their cause.  It is this lack of objectivity that results in so much confusion.  Everyone sells their product with effusive phrasing that suggests theirs is the best thing since sliced bread.  This is where the patience I spoke of is essential.   It is only by seeing enough occurences in this world play out that you can divine the real from the imaginary and the fake from the counterfeit and the good from the evil.

It helps to seek the gurus all around you.   If you ask 100 people the same question 99 will have wrong answers.  The 100th person will be right.  Study the people around you and what they are good at.  Then you can access the right person for the particular skill you need to access.    Good luck and I am always here ready to talk with you no matter where you are on Earth.

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Setting up the VSFTPD daemon to accept connections from another computer

 

Testing the FTP server / WebServer installation

Find out your server computer local ip address on your router by using:   ipconfig -a

freemonsandlewould@freemonsandlewould-desktop:~$ ifconfig -a
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0f:1f:e2:12:e4  
          inet addr:192.168.1.104  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::20f:1fff:fee2:12e4/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:56119 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:45698 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:56322994 (53.7 MB)  TX bytes:7952143 (7.5 MB)
          Interrupt:16

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:1134 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1134 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:156376 (152.7 KB)  TX bytes:156376 (152.7 KB)

   

My boxes local IP on my router is 192.168.1.104  and you should substitute yours for this number.

Test the webserver

    Bring up a browser and dial in:  http://192.168.1.104/

Test the FTP server

   Dial in 192.168.1.104 into your FTP tool and your linux box users name and password.

 

In both of the tests above you should see a result that is recognizable.

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago