Monthly Archives: July 2007

ATI X1300 and Ubuntu – Installation Woes and Success

ATI support for linux is there, ok. Personal notes about what to do (and what not to do!) to get the ATI X1300 installed on Ubuntu 7.04

Prerequisites: Two monitors with 1600×1200 pixels each connected via DVI to a single ATI X1300 card. The objective is BigDesktop mode with OpenGL and Direct Rendering (DRI) support using KDM as window manager.

Only the ATI binary drivers provide DRI support with BigDesktop mode (aka Xinerama). See the BinaryDriverHowto ATI for various methods of installation. Please make sure you start with a fresh (clean) installation.

Here is what worked for me:

  • Download the latest ATI driver
  • Install all the required packages for a fakeroot instalaltion, namely module-assistant build-essential debhelper debconf dh-make fakeroot libstdc++5 linux-headers-generic
  • Create ubuntu packages from the driver as explained here
  • Install the .deb-packages via dpkg -i
  • build and install the required kernel modules, see here
  • Install the restricted-manager via apt-get and enable the ATI drivers via the restricted-manager gui. Also, install the package linux-restricted-modules-generic
  • Important: Edit /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common to include DISABLED_MODULES=”fglrx”
  • Reboot and Pray

Now, using aticonfig –input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf Option1 Option2 configure your desktop as needed.

Ubuntu and Remote X-Windows

By default Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) does not allow remote X-Windows via port 6000. With my new desktop installed and in place this is a pity as some applications are still only installed on my laptop.

So, either you need to allow tcp connections to the X server, as shown in this blog post or you just use ssh to tunnel the X session:

 $ ssh -X -l <user> host

That will do the trick.

Windows Madness and the Power of KILL

Well, today I had the pleasure of installing some software on my windows installation… apt-get install application? No, sorry, please jump through the hoops, dance with the fire and basically waste your time!

With the objective of installing the preview release of Liquid XML Studio, a free xml editor, the crusade was started.

XML Studio requires the .Net Framework 1.1 that was not installed on my machine – although I do have .Net 2.0 and .Net 3.0 btw. So, over to the microsoft download pages I went and downloaded the corresponding dotnetfx.exe setup file.

Enter the installation process…

Execute dotnetfx.exe and hope for the best. Well, no luck. The installer complained about “Fehler beim Initialisieren des Windows Installers” i. e. “Error initialising windows installer”. No detailed error message, not even an ununderstandable and microsoftonian encrypted error code like 0x652. Arghh…

Enter the google oracle…

Asking google for the german error message gave some results regarding wine and the installation of the .Net framework herein but no useful clue about anything for Windows XP. Microsoft’s knowledge base was clueless as well!

Then, how about some rough translation of the error message to English? Voila, after some fruitless searching and clicking this and that here we go: Error 1935 During Install of the .Net Framework.

Enter the solution …

Well, I did’t see error 1935 but nevertheless, basically the Msi-Installer locks some core dll-file required for the installation process for 10 minutes via the windows installer whenever so called assemblies – whatever these are – are installed.

What kind of idea is that? Is there any reason to prevent any further installation of .Net software for 10 minutes?? If there is, it probably is a very very dumb one!

Resolution: restart your computer (this always seems to be an option for problem solving proposed by Microsoft) or the power of kill. As any existing instance of the msi installer blocks the core dll mentioned above open the process tab in the task manager and kill all msiexec.exe tasks. Done.

Btw:

  • MS does not give any detailed information whether this bug will ever be solved. Probably not.
  • Nor is there any detailed explanation about the reason for such a dump implementation available.

That’s why I love the open source community. At least, errors are diskussed and explained in the various bugtrackers in detail.