Friday, July 24, 2009

USB Drive Speeds

Since we have been using USB sticks for lamp applications over the past few terms it has become clear that not all USB sticks are the same. They may all be 2.0 but the speeds are obviously different. I have been recommending students purchase sticks that are advertised as Windows Vista 'readyboost' capable on the assumption they have to meet a certification program for speed.

With Vista going the way of windows me we need another way of finding good usb sticks so we need to test the speed to answer the question of how different are they?

So off we go to http://mikelab.kiev.ua/index_en.php?page=PROGRAMS/programs_en and download check flash, a utility that performs read/write tests on a USB stick. This program has the advantage of not needing to be installed so you can keep it on your stick to test another stick anywhere. It runs in dos-mode (which may be a disadvantage to some)

So we download it and open a terminal in windows and type chkflsh and then select a currently mounted USB stick. There is a bit of a bug, you must select one of the NT based system choices and then select the Temporary File choice in the radio button menu before you can click START.

If you just leave it on Temporary File then START is greyed out. Of course you nornmally want the temporary file option as the other 2 options wipe the stick clean - destroying existing data.

USB Stick Speed Tests

Our first step is on a cheapo 1 gig GTX stick formatted as FAT32. READ speed is constant at 16.2 mb/s but the write speed is awful hitting a max of 5 mb/sec and frequently dropping down to 4 mb/sec.

Next up is a 1 gig Kingston DataTraveller formatted as FAT. The READ speed is 13.9 mb/s with a truly awful write speed of 1.2 mb/s probably due to the use of the slower FAT file system.

And the same model Kingston Data Traveller 1 gig formatted as FAT32. The READ speed is 13 mb/s with a write speed of 2.7 mb/s. The read speed is the same but the writes are twice as fast.

Next a Kingston Data Traveller 2 gig formatted as FAT. The READ speed is 13 mb/s with a write speed of 5 mb/s. This is much faster writing than the 1 gig model. I should backup and convert to FAT32.

Next a Kingston Data Traveller 2 gig formatted as FAT32. This is a more recent version that my white data traveller model. The READ speed is 16 mb/s with a write speed of 10 mb/s.

And a Patriot 2 Gig formatted as FAT32. The READ speed is an amazing 24 mb/s with a write speed of 3.2 mb/s. This is my daily XAMPP stick, might be time to change...

Finally, we have a Kingston Data Traveller 8 gig formatted as FAT32. The READ speed is 17 mb/s with a write speed of 7 mb/s.

This was my daily XAMPP stick until my foot sent it flying and broke the plastic case. Can't believe the ITS people bought computers in 2009 with the usb ports on the botttom of the case. Now the stick is held together with duct tape and it still works but it's retired from regular service.

We would like to compare with our portable 80gig SATA hard disk formatted as FAT32 and running off the usb port but chkflash 1.09 cannot handle this. So we downloaded HD_speed, another dos-based non-installable utility. The USB portable hd READ avg was 24.4 mb/s but we could not test the WRITE data rate without destroying the existing data.

We assume it is faster but it can't fit on a keychain, more of a shirt pocket item as it is about the size of an ipod touch, although a bit heavier. You will note the preponderance of Kingston USB Sticks. I've used them for years and found them quite reliable. Never had one die on me unlike sandisk and others.

Conclusions

  • Check the file format on your stick, if FAT back up the data and reformat as FAT32
  • Buy a new stick, it is probably faster than your old workhorse
  • Higher capacity sticks are probably faster than lower capacity ones

Latest test is on a maxell - one of the new thin sticks that looks like a piece of plastic with some gold 'finger' connectors. These sticks should be immune to the bending and eventually breaking that happens with the square USB connector on many sticks. We ran Check Flash 1.09 on it using the 'temporary file' setting and got a result of 15.5 mb/s for reads and 4.8 mb/s for writes so it is slower than my faster sticks.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

OpenBiblio ILS

Now that openbiblio is installed time to do some admin.

Access the site by launching a web browser and going to http://localhost/openbiblio/index.php, Enter "admin" for both the userid and password whenever you are prompted to signon.

You can change the admin password from the "Admin" tab -> staff list, where you can also add more library staff members. So we add Anita Bonghit and Max Power.


Edit Library Settings:
Library Name:
Library Image URL:
Only Show Image in Header:
Library Hours:
Library Phone:
Library URL:
OPAC URL:
Session Timeout: minutes
Search Results: items per page
Purge Bibliography History After: months
Block Checkouts When Fines Due:
Max. hold length: days
Locale:
HTML Charset:
HTML Tag Lang Attribute:
This is where you can set things up. Where is the opac the public sees?Ok
Goto http://localhost/openbiblio/opac/ and the opac appears. It is pretty bare bones:


Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC)

Welcome to our library's online public access catalog. Search our catalog to view bibliography information on holdings we have in our library.

Search Bibliography by Search Phrase:

We do a quick search for 'a' and the record display is shown. Again pretty basic.

11 results found sorted by title(sort by author).
Result Pages: 1 2 next»

Search Results:
1.
book
Title: Applying UML and Patterns
Author: Larman, Craig
Material: book
Collection: Adult Nonfiction
Call Number: 005.4 Lar
Copy Barcode: 104 Status: checked in
2.
book
Title: Design Patterns
Author: Gamma, Erich
Material: book
Collection: Adult Nonfiction
Call Number: 005.4 Gam
Copy Barcode: 103 Status: checked in
3.
book
Title: Java in a Nutshell
Author: Flanagan, David
Material: book
Collection: Adult Nonfiction
Call Number: 005.4 Fla
Copy Barcode: 102 Status: checked in
4.
magazines
Title: PC World (Periodical):2003
Author:
Material: magazines
Collection: Periodics
Call Number: P PCW
Copy Barcode: 201 Status: checked in
5. Copy Barcode: 202 Status: checked in
6. Copy Barcode: 203 Status: checked in
7.
magazines
Title: U.S. News & World Report (Periodical):2003
Author:
Material: magazines
Collection: Periodics
Call Number: P PCW
Copy Barcode: 210 Status: checked in
8. Copy Barcode: 211 Status: checked in
9. Copy Barcode: 212 Status: checked in
10. Copy Barcode: 213 Status: checked in

Result Pages: 1 2 next»

Time to look at some enhancement such as LoC lokup patch, a series of scripts that use Z39.50 to grab and load MARC records. These addons are listed in the page at http://obiblio.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main/AddOns

We try the Amazon lookup first and download amazon.zip. The amazon folder inside contains 3 php scripts and install instructions. Ok this requires something from Amazon which we don't have right now so later....

Note: You must have an Amazon access key to use this module.

You may obtain an access key from Amazon by registering for web services at: https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/registration/index.html.

To find your access key, go to the web services section on Amazon. Search for 'Amazon Web Services' on the Amazon main page to find the link to it, and click it. Near the top right of the main content (below the header, mouse over 'Your Web Services Account' and click 'View Access Key Identifiers'.

Copy and paste your access key into amazon.conf.php


On the the next addon, the library of congress SRU module. We download locsru.zip and inside are a bunch of php scripts and some install instructions. First we edit navbars/cataloguing.php and add:


/**
* Added for Library of Congress SRU module
*/
if($nav == 'locsru')
{
echo '» ' . $navLoc->getText('LOCsearch') . "
\n";

}
else
{
echo '' . $navLoc->getText('LOCsearch') . "
\n";

}
?>

Then we edit locale/en/navbars.php and add a bunch of text and then finally:

Copy the following files to /catalog

locsru.php
locsru.php.ini
locsru_form.php
locsru_multiple.php
locsru_process.php
locsru_search.php

This extension should allow users to retrieve information from the Library of Congree using SRU, which returns an XML form. This module does not require YAZ functionality and should work on all platforms. The menu entry is added and this is what you get:


locsru_Instructions:

locsru_Search

The instructions lable is not linked
so it is hard to know what to do until you know what to do. So more research is needed. I decide to test out the MARC record import.

The Upload MARC Record function on the menu yields this:


Test Load: True False
USMarc Input File:


Defaults:
Collection:
Type of Material:
Show in OPAC:

The TEST load true is useful as it will load the data and show you the MARC records. Best to test the import before putting them into the catalog. Once working set the radio button to FALSE and change Show in OPAC to YES.

Of course you need to find a .MARC file containing library records in USMARC format. I got 500 test records from http://www.humanitiesebook.org/librarians.html which has three .zip files of 2000,500 and a sample for download. It also links to a useful tool called MarcEdit.

A free MARC editing tool known as “MarcEdit” can be downloaded from: http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/downloads.html.

I was thinking that for the pride special collection on campus something like openbiblio might be the answer, particularly if they catalog the items into MarcEdit and then use the marceditor function to produce MARC records that could be uploaded into openbiblio or another library system.

I uploaded acls6b.marc into openbiblio and the 500 records were imported into the OPAC in seconds.

joomla integration

The joomla extension is not is usual .zip format it is a gzippped tarball and it is old, from 2006. When we try and itstall it notes this needs the legacy plugin. So the first thing to do is go to the Plugin Manager and enable the System-Legacy plugin.

Next off to the Extensions manager and select the downloaded file and click Upload and Install. We get the following error, based on the previous attempt:

JInstaller::install: There is already a folder called 'E:\xampp\htdocs\joomla\administrator\components\com_obiblioopac4j\tmpl\showobibconfig.html'.
- openbiblio addins

Except we don't see the directory.

---- Update Sept 2009 ------

Installed the Amazon look up but any search returns no results - not sure why yet.

However, the library of congress lookup is great and works really fast - look up any book and then copy the MARC record into the catalog - you can edit the basic record or the marc record.
Excellent! This could serve as a personal library - just enter the ISBN of your books and you got the record - enter your friends as borrowers etc...

If you click on circulation and click SEARCH without entering a name or library card number it displays all the records. There are 3 patrons:

3 results found.

Search Results:
1. Baggins, Bilbo
Hole 1, 1st Street
The Shire, IA 12345
Card Number: 102 Classification: adult
2. Baggins, Frodo
Hole 2, 1st Street
The Shire, IA 12345
Card Number: 103 Classification: adult
3. Cat, Huckle
101 1st Street
BusyTown,IA 12345
Card Number: 101 Classification: juvenile

Clicking New Member allows you to add a patron. All of the input forms except the classification are text boxes. What is the format of the Card number? Let's try the help screen. 'this section still under construction'.

Go to the Collections page (Admin tab) and set Daily Late Fee for all collections to zero. BTW there are 494 adult non-fiction books in my collection.

ToDo:

- remove all the existing records
- start cataloguing my books using the ISBN and LOC
- figure out how the call numbers work - really it should let mysql autonumber

I don't think any of the books from the MARC records i loaded have call numbers! So when a record is loaded it needs to be assigned a call number.

How to Add a Bar Code

Search for and display a record
Click Add New Copy
Place a tick in the AutoGenerate checkbox
Click Submit

A bar code such as 004831 is issued for the record and it's status is changed to Checked In. A call number is not added although you can edit the record to add one.

You could also add books (called bibliography?) by doing your own original cataloging.

The reports tab can retrieve a list of all books with call numbers (just enter 00) - you can export reports as HTML or CSV.

Actually, i'm starting to like openbiblio - for a program not yet in version 1.0 that has not been actively developed for years it has some nice features. Since the code is php and the database is mysql and the presentation is css it could be modified by a knowledgeable person. Shame that some library or organization doesn't sponsor some development of the program. As a learning or lite system for person or small libraries. This would be a perfect program to get the pride library collection on campus up on the Internet.

Bugs

Add new member classificaiton is mis-spelled in the Admin tab

The system supports barcodes - we should get one of those wasp bar code scanners - there is also a program that uses a webcam to scan barcodes - wonder if that would work...










Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Integrated Library Systems and LAMP

Time to take a look at some small ILS for the LAMP platform. We start with phyMylibrary which is a located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmylibrary/ and is designed for small or personal collections. According to the project page:

The program consist of cataloging, circulation, and the webpac module. The programs also has an import export feature. The program strictly follow the USMARC standard for adding materials.

The latest version is 2.2.1-3 which we download on a windows machine to start. The idea will be to later move it to the portable apps and to the linux environment.

We xtract the phpMylibrary folder and view the README file which has lots of change notes. There is also an installation folder which has an index.php but not instructions, maybe you just copy it to your web root and run the php program. But it will need a mysql database and mysql user, no? Anyway we proceed. This is a windows box running wampserver so we copy the phpMylibrary to c:\wamp\www and open a browser to http:\\localhost\phpmylibrary\installation

The only minor issue is that magic quotes is set to off in the php.ini file but we proceed anyway. Ah, the mysql database configuration page wants the hostname, the mysql user/password and the database name. One assumes these have to be set up BEFORE running this install script but with no documentation in a README or any information on this page you have to guess what to do. The page also has a NEXT but no BACK buttons so it may not be possible to return to this page if you proceed.

Todo Tomorrow

Create the phpmylibrary database along a phpmylibrary user and re-do the install

ok we are now on the dell min 9 with ubuntu and i copied the openbiblio folder to the sd card rather than the ssd drive. The htdocs folder is in /opt/lampp so we need to tell apache to use /media/kingston/openbiblio as a virtual directory. The idea is to create a library system on a removable disk and to be able to swap in pre-setup applications on sd cards. This makes the netbook a very portable demo machine.

The first thing to do is to tell apache we want to use virtual directories. With linux xampp the httpd.conf file is in /opt/lampp/etc which is different from the mac and win versions and since it is not owned by gnickers we cannot edit from the gui.

Open terminal and cd to /opt/lampp/etc and then do sudo pico httpd.conf but drats no pico installed. Turns out pico is not included in the distro so we run the package manager and find nano, a gpl pico clone.

sudo nano httpd.conf

works. The line we want to uncomment is:

#Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf


which is way down the file. Everything else is entered in the file httpd-vhosts.conf, which will be located in the extra folder.

tomorrow


We are now on a windows USB stick running portableapps. The openbiblio docs say that php.ini must enable sessions. The version of portable apps/xampp we are running uses /apache/bin to store php.ini but this is changed to the php directory in the more recent versions.

So we edit php.ini and set up a few things:

- turn magic quotes on
- turn display errors off
- file uploads are on and set to upload_tmp_dir = "\xampp\tmp" (make sure tmp exists!)
- session.save_path = "\xampp\tmp"

This was setup before when we were testing out php programming and although session files were saved:

PMA_token |s:32:"bae7b084a2d2f1fdceb62dbd04a96119";PMA_Config|O:10:"PMA_Config":10:{s:14:"default_source";s:30:"./libraries/config.default.php";s:8:"settings";a:170:
{s:14:"PmaAbsoluteUri";s:28:"http://localhost/phpmyadmin/";s:28:"PmaNoRelation_DisableWarning";b:0;s:21:"SuhosinDisableWarning"

we had problems implementing session variables in php. This may have been due to our lack of understanding of php and sessions, so we press on and SAVE the changes.

Set up the Database

Next comes the mysql part. Since we are on a windows machine the fast way is to open a terminal window to our home folder and run the mysql command line client.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
U:\>dir *.exe
Volume in drive U is K-Faculty
Directory of U:\

07/06/2007 02:24 PM 2,039,808 mysql.exe
07/06/2007 02:24 PM 2,035,712 mysqldump.exe
07/06/2007 02:24 PM 1,982,464 mysqlimport.exe
08/01/2003 06:27 PM 274,432 vnc.exe
4 File(s) 6,332,416 bytes
0 Dir(s) 14,276,997,120 bytes free

U:\>

Now all we do is type mysql -hlocalhost -uroot and we are logged into the mysql server running on the usb stick. (note the default xampp is no password for root, which is a security risk)

We first create a log file of our session:

mysql> \T openbiblio.txt
Logging to file 'openbiblio.txt'
mysql>

Next we create the empty database and test to see if the command was successful:

mysql> create database OpenBiblio;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.28 sec)

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| blogs |
| books |
| catalog |
| cdcol |
| course_data |
| course_date |
| digital_library |
| joomla |
| mysql |
| openbiblio |
| perl |
| philosophy |
| phpmyadmin |
| test |
| webauth |
+--------------------+
16 rows in set (0.56 sec)

Next, you have to set up the openbiblio user for the php install program to use:

mysql> grant all privileges on OpenBiblio.* to
obiblio_user@localhost identified
by 'obiblio_password';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Obviously, we should have changed the example in the documentation to something but this is just a demo. We stop the session logging with \t and exit mysql.

We have already copied the openbiblio folder to the htdocs folder on the usb stick so the next step is to edit the database_constants.php file in the openbiblio directory to set the username and password to whatever you set up in mysql.

define("OBIB_HOST", "localhost");
define("OBIB_DATABASE", "OpenBiblio");
define("OBIB_USERNAME", "openbiblio_user");
define("OBIB_PWD", "openbiblio_password");

Now to run the install program. Open a web browser and goto http://localhost/openbiblio/install/index.php which opens up the mysql database and starts the install. We get an error:

The connection to the database failed with the following error.
      Cannot connect to database server.: Access denied for user 'openbiblio_user'@'localhost' (using password: YES) -- FULL SQL: Connecting to database server...    
Please make sure the following has been done before running this install script.

This could be caused by a couple of things. First we make sure the mysql tables have been updated by logging back into the database server and flushing the priviledges to refresh the table.

U:\>mysql -hlocalhost -uroot
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 7
Server version: 5.1.30-community MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.05 sec)

Let's try the install program again to see if that was the cause. No joy. The second possibility is we set up the privileges incorrectly. Let's try making it from any host.

mysql> grant all privileges on OpenBiblio.* to obiblio@"%" identified by 'obiblio';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Then we change the database_constants.php file to match and try to install again. No Joy. Let's confirm the user name/password is working on mysql.

U:\>mysql -hlocalhost -uobiblio -p
Enter password: *******
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'obiblio'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

Ah - the problem is we can't connect. We can fix the host connect problem later but for a quick hack let's just try root which can connect to localhost. We edit the database_constants.php file to change user to root with no password and refesh the install.php page. It works, so the problem for the obiblio user is it denied access to localhost.

We select English as the language and place a tick mark in the Install Sample Data. In a flash it is done and we get:

Database connection is good.
Building OpenBiblio tables, please wait...

OpenBiblio tables have been created successfully!
start using OpenBiblio

We click on the link and viola, we now have an integrated library system in our pocket!

Welcome to OpenBiblio

Use the navigation tabs at the top of each page to access the following library administration sections.

TabDescription
Circulation

Use this tab to manage your member records.
  • Member administration (new, search, edit, delete)
  • Member bibliography checkout, holds, account, and history
  • Bibliography checkin and shelving cart list
Cataloging



Use this tab to manage your bibliography records.
  • Bibliography administration (new, search, edit, delete)
Admin

Use this tab to manage staff and administrative records.
  • Staff administration (new, edit, password, delete)
  • General library settings
  • Library collection list
  • Library material type list
  • Library theme editor
Reports



Use this tab to run reports on your library data.
  • Report.
  • Labels.
ToDo List

- customize for a library like the Springfield Public Library
- import more MARC records to make it realistic
- integrate with Joomla!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

xampp on ubuntu

xampp on the dell mini 9

specs: Atom 1.6ghz ht cpu, 2 gig ddr2 ram, 64 gig runcore SSD.

Decided to see if the netbook could be used as a travelling development machine so we need to install lamp. So off to apache friends at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html to download the linux version which comes in a tarball. Not my fav method but so be it.

We save the download to our home directory.
Open a terminal window and do:

sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz -C /opt

which extracts all the files. Now to run the lamp stack

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

which displays

Starting XAMPP for Linux 1.7.1...
XAMPP: Starting Apache with SSL (and PHP5)...
XAMPP: Starting MySQL...
XAMPP: Starting ProFTPD...
XAMPP for Linux started.

we then run firefox and goto http://localhost and the lamp page is displayed. success

Next we do places,home and browse the filesystem to opt/lampp/htdocs and create a bookmark which adds a htdocs folder to the places list. we should also check out apache/bin/php.ini and make some changes and we should install a good php aware text editor and then install joomla

Joomla on the Dell Mini 9

Now that LAMPP is installed (thanks apache friends) it is time to install joomla. We follow the same instructions as per xampp on windows. The phpmyadmin has a few minor differences but we created the joomla database and joomla user ok. This is fairly straightforward under linux but the next part is different. You can't just create a directory in the system area and extract a bunch of files to it - you are just a regular user. Windows XP allows that and look what happens.

So we open a terminal and cd /opt/lampp/htdocs and then do sudo mkdir joomla to set up the folder for the joomla. We goto off the joomlacode.org and under the 1.5 section we click on Other Joomla Packages. Under Joomla1.5.12 we find Joomla_1.5.12-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz which is what we want. You have to know this is a zipped tarball for linux while the .zip package is for windows. We save it to own home folder.

In the terminal we copy the download to the joomla folder with sudo cp Joomla_1.5.12-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz /opt/lampp/htdocs/joomla which is no mean feat on the Dell mini 9 keyboard! Actually, once i had done this i realized i should just have extracted the files to there instead of copying the archive. Oh well. Change to there with cd /opt/lampp/htdocs/joomla and extract the files with sudo tar xvzf Joomla_1.5.12-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz

Why it was stupid to copy instead of extracting is now i have to rm the joomla file - 3 times i had to type that file name...arghh

Anyway now we can run the install with the web browser pointed to http://localhost/joomla which gives the browser based setup. Answer a few questions - ok, the joomla install cannot write changes to the php configuration file. This is configuration.php in the joomla folder that contains the settings - it recommends copying the configuration settings and editing the file manually after the install is finished.

The other problem is that php.ini has Display Errors set to ON as well as Register Globals set to ON. We will have to edit php.ini to fix these after the install.

One change from windows installs is that i've set up FTP so that the joomla ftp user can ftp files to the system. Note to self - check and see if joomla has to be manually added to the list of ftp users, similar to the list of samba users. The Verify FTP button returned an error, noting the ftp server was 'not compatible'. Probably because one is not running, i'll install wu-ftp later. The root path is /joomla. We decide to press on and install the sample data and setup the admin user. Install is ok.

Ok, the final page lists the code for configuration.php so we copy and paste it into the text editor and then in the terminal we do cp configuration.php /opt/lampp/htdocs/joomla

Now that it is copied over time to fix the other problems, first to remove the installation directory. Since this is a system folder in linux you just can delete it in the file manager, so we cd /opt/htdocs/joomla and type sudo rm -rf installation/ and away it goes.

The php.ini file is not in the opt/lampp/bin folder, it's not fatal so we ignore it for now and run joomla with http://localhost/joomla and login as the admin user. We check the global configuration and the paths are /opt/lampp/htdocs/joomla/tmp etc.

Update Aug 31

I run xampp with sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start and up it comes but going to http://localhost returns 'object not found'. The xampp stack is running, we confirm this by checking the open ports with network tools:

21 - open
80 - open
443 - open
3306 - open

but we cannot get to the mysql database server either, the client returns an error message of 'can't connect through socket 'var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock(2)'. This seems odd, one would think it would be something like 'opt/lampp/var/mysql/mysql.sock'?

I opened a web browser on another machine and connected to the webserver on the dell mini9 but no pages are returned. You get:

Object Not Found!
192.168.1.109
Sun 30 Aug 2009 02:24:56 PM EDT
Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8k PHP/5.2.9 mod_apreq2-20051231/2.6.0 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.0

This shows xampp is running but it is not working anymore. Why? This makes my idea of using it as a portable in-class server less likely. The USB xampp is more reliable and we can use wamp/mamp laptops as well. Found lots of theories as to why but testing them out to come up with a solution will take more time than i have to invest. Disappointing....

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Dell Mini 9 and Ubuntu

Dell Ubuntu

We restored the dell netbook using the ubuntu 8.04 restore image. It had come with windows xp but with no ubunutu disc in the box.

This is a customized version of 8.04 for dell. The plus is that everything works, the downside is that I don't like some of the package choices and settings, however that should be easy to change.

First we restore the default ubuntu desktop to get rid of the big launcher bar. Next we remove the apps we don't want - ie periodic table etc and tuxmath and games. Next we download the updates

SHOW STOPPER - the system monitor only reports 883mb of ram in a 2 gig machine. What gives? A post by ffreitas:

To check yours just open in a text editor/viewer the file /boot/config-2.6.24-19lpia , and search for the text "CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM" (without the double quotes). You will see something like this:

CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM=y
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G is not set
# CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G is not set

That shows that the kernel was compiled without an option that is needed to see more than the 883 MB our mini 9's can currently see. To fix that manually requires a kernel recompile.

That is an incredible oversight. Ok - appears that if you enable a repository you can get a fixed kernel. Done - now we see the full 2 gig. Removed the k-crud and now we have a fast system with 22 gig free. Time to get a good sd card...