Screw you, random freezes!

Yesterday in my post about joining the crew of the thousands using Debian (Wheezy) 7. I mentioned that I was getting random freezes in Debian unstable (sid). At first I thought it was because there was some sort of obscure library crapping out. Sadly that isn't the case, apparently it could be a bad driver (weirdly it mostly pointed to NVIDIA drivers). I also noticed this in my syslog:

Aug  3 17:41:22 debianbox kernel: [   48.601212] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 54 for MSI/MSI-X
Aug  3 09:52:43 debianbox kernel: [  729.734969] pulseaudio[4819]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f8e8e85bf31 sp 00007fff0017a430 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f8e8e72b000+1b5000]
Aug  3 10:03:34 debianbox kernel: [ 1380.689115] kde-open[5084]: segfault at b0 ip 00007fc14602cf31 sp 00007fff713dc430 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7fc145efc000+1b5000]
Aug  3 10:03:34 debianbox kernel: [ 1380.709502] kfmclient[5085]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f3223e50f31 sp 00007fffdd5736c0 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f3223d20000+1b5000]
Aug  3 10:06:12 debianbox kernel: [ 1539.401962] pulseaudio[5110]: segfault at b0 ip 00007f8cceb70f31 sp 00007fff28bb95c0 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7f8ccea40000+1b5000]

I came into conclusion:

PulseAudio shouldn't be using libc-2.15 that resides in Steam library, and neither should those applications. I don't know why it chose to do that though. I might have an idea of why it's doing so... 

Still, it's not the culprit. Not until a freeze happens again--which it hasn't for some weird reason. My fears is that my video card might be dying... which I hope that's not the case!

It kinda sucks... because it would mean that I have to buy a new video card, best case scenario is that one of the RAM sticks is failing. (they are cheap, what? I'm still a poor college student!)

Huff! Hello, Debian Wheezy 7.6!

Yesterday I decided to format my computer and install Debian Wheezy. There was no data loss, of course; because any rational person would separate their /home partition. In a future I'm hoping for a more "complex" solution as in extending my /home partition when I install a new hard drive disk.

Why go back to old libraries and applications?

You might be thinking. If you aren't a Linux Developer or a developer of any type, chances are that a rolling-release is an overkill choice, this is my honest take on rolling-release distributions, or even semi-rolling. Yes, there may be libraries, applications that delivers certain bugfixes you need. However I believe that the cost of stability is too high for such pesky problems. Let's say you use Thunderbird from stable (Icedove, I love it so much). There's this bug preventing you to use it.

My initial take is to download the official binaries from Thunderbird site, set up a PATH for it and be done with it. In fact I do have several paths for applications. I also have a local application so I don't override my distributions libraries/applications:

# david at debianbox in ~ [12:24:01]
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/home/david/Libraries/firefox/:/home/david/Libraries/thunderbird:/home/david/Libraries/screenfetch-3.2.2/:/home/david/LocalApps/bin:/home/david/.Jester/shortcuts/:/home/david/.cabal/bin

I live on the (bleeding) edge!

I used to do that too! Personally, like I said I just don't find a purpose of doing so. I learned something from Slackware's way of upgrading. If everything is working perfectly, even modern applications, then why bother upgrading at all? I'll keep using Wheezy until Debian decides to drop support. (My thoughts may change over time, not everything is black and white)

The Exceptions

Normally. There are always exceptions. For example, you take your time testing Debian jessie and spend the time filling bug reports, etc. I find that truly wonderful and I thank you for your time!

You need the latest libraries because you are developing a software that requires it. It could be because the library uses new features, etc. I've always found it a bit distasteful that developers sometimes forgets users that aren't using an "up-to-date" distribution.

Why I say this? Well, yesterday I ran into a problem where Steam launcher was compiled against a newer version of libc6, this was quite worrisome because 1) I had a slightly older version, it wasn't so old 2) I already had an idea on how to fix it, luckily there was this awesome contribution that already provided a debian package.

The hardware you bought is not supported until you use the newest kernel or need the module requires a newer kernel.

Downgrade EVERYTHING!

The downgrade wasn't bad at all, everything worked. Except Dolphin, for some reason I had to wipe out all the configuration because there was a dbus problem.

Aside from that. I compiled MPD/Cantata. Installed Steam, everything else was straightforward. I installed all the 32bit libraries so WINE could function, in matter of minutes I was already running Guild Wars 2, Torchlight, TripleTown and some other games I have installed.

It sort of bring a peace of mind. I was already getting tired of running apt-get dist-upgrade every 3 days, yea I could automate it--let's be honest that's one of the most horrible ideas ever, you don't do automatic upgrades in an unstable distribution. Only masochists do that!

There was a problem with my Debian sid. I won't lie, there were several problems with it. The main one: Random freezes. I'm not talking about X server freezing on me. I'm talking about a whole computer freeze, and the thing about this freeze is that it never logged anything. I couldn't file a report to the kernel people because I didn't have anything to offer and I couldn't post a thread because I don't know what was triggering it.

Random freezes were my blue screen of death. I couldn't restart X server, I couldn't switch to a different TTY and syslog/dmesg didn't show anything.

I could have installed Debian sid back again. But for what? My mind was set that at this moment I didn't feel like dealing with that stuff.


I hope this doesn't come down as a pretentious post. This is my honest take on stuff. Feel free to comment!

A Taste of Slackware (14.1)

Lately, I've been exploring minimalist distributions where they let you maintain your craft your own environment from the scratch. I don't blame distributions for trying their own thing; not at all, I actually promote and cheer on them to bring a more polished experience. If I'd ever work on a distribution myself I'll do my best to bring the best KDE experience on it--as a KDE user myself.

I like Slackware. I like its philosophy, I like how down to earth it is when it comes to maintaining your Slackware system.

I've been spending a few hours each day getting more and more into Slackware environment. It's no different than your typical Debian or Arch Linux setup when it comes to GNU/Linux. Some things regarding the init scripts changes and that's to be expected since they also tell you about it.

I installed Slackware 64-bit, the installation itself was delightful. I only ran into a few struggles and it all came down to LILO. For some reason it kept throwing errors and I wasn't remotely sure on the why. I wasn't ready to take on LILO either, mostly because over the years the default boot loader has been GRUB.

Anyhow, it all worked out. I just followed the main instructions to boot the root partition from the DVD messages and I was in my Slackware system in mere of seconds. Truly amazing! I did a rerun of LILO configuration and it managed to properly reinstall itself. What went wrong? I don't know.

Immediately after my system booted. I ran xwmconfig and as you expected, I chose KDE. I had the opportunity to try XFCE and some other window managers like Fluxbox. For some reason if you are out of the QT/GTK environment the application appearance becomes quite ugly and you have to go the extra mile to figure out what's wrong. I kinda knew what was wrong, at least on the GTK part, but on the QT side I wasn't that sure.

Slackware is truly an stable distribution, at least from what I've managed to work with. What brought me to "fear" it was that I was in charge of managing my own multilib.

I'll try to elaborate:

In the Debian environment, we are used to do apt-get install package:i386 which is at best the most simple thing ever. It's straightforward and it gets the job done. In Slackware, for a 64-bit to be multilib-enabled you have to do certain extra steps.

You need to download "third party" from a long term contributor that goes with the nickname "Alien Bob". Note that I don't mind doing this. I've found that this person has been a strong supporter of Slackware for years and I don't want to make it sound like it's a bad thing itself. After all, Slackware is nothing without a community--in my humble opinion.

Slackware package manager has no sense of "dependency management". It means, you need to brace yourself and do all the library/applications dependency resolves. I have mixed feelings about this honestly; I have read many of their reasons on the why, yet to me I don't really feel convinced on why it shouldn't resolve dependencies, at least at best the base ones and leave the optional ones as optional.

What "troubled' me was installing 32-bit libraries in my 64bit system. There wasn't exactly an easy way to do it. And by easy I mean "take the least time possible". I had to do some googling and found out that there are unofficial tools out there that helps you get 32bit libraries easily.

I did the initial steps of enabling multilib like I said before. However the tutorial went down to "mirror the Slackware 32bit tree packages" and I certainly wasn't fond of that idea. Neither was using massconvert32 to get the packages I want.

I feel like I've been introduced to something that takes even more time. It's not that I don't feel like administrating my own system. It's that the initial setup would take longer than I expected. To me, these are itself "deal breakers". It's not the fact that I have to track dependencies myself, but the one that I've to jump a few hoops to get the 32bit libraries and convert them to be compatible.

I'm gonna move on, I think I've said plenty on the 32/64bit subject. In terms of installation and configuration I'll be frank, it's just the same thing over and over. If you have set up MPD and other applications then you will know where to find the configuration files. System wide configuration files usually reside in /etc. Like always, things like this never changes. What I mean is that if you are familiar with GNU/Linux then you won't have problems.

Stability! It's such an important word for me. Not stability as in the system crashing, but stability as in packages receiving their proper updates for minor point versions.

I might be wrong, but one of the things with Debian stable is that if a package releases bug fixes and it's not a major version. It all depends on the release team to see if it will make it to Debian stable.

I don't know how Slackware manages the influx of packages myself, this is the first time I've used it in a prolonged manner. What I want is an stable system, a conservative one, like Slackware. At the same time I also expect that normal bug fixes releases also remains updated in the stable branch.

An example: I'm using Debian unstable sid. I haven't had many problems with it but I did come acoss some problems, most of the time it's the dependency hell that occurs. If there are dependency problems sometimes apt-get dist-upgrade tries to remove a whole bunch of libraries that shouldn't be removed.

Obviously, as a person that likes to keep the system stability in-check I'd just cancel the upgrade and wait for the fixes to come.

What does this have anything to do with stability? Well, there are certain features in Dolphin file manager that stopped working out of nowhere. It just happened abruptly and up to this date I haven't found the cause.

In Slackware, all Dolphin features works. The system is rock solid.

I know I know. Why are you using Debian unstable? You should know better! Well, that itself is a fair question! Why use Debian unstable when you want an stable system. Debian "unstable", despite its name is not unstable as in the software will break any time. I've yet to see my desktop environment breaking apart. It hasn't.


I'm going to wrap this up because I feel like I've written a lot already. I'm willing to give Slackware a decent try as my main distribution if only I get the answers I need regarding 32/64bit issues and well that's it. I usually compile my WINE versions (32bit) and I don't exactly feel like it'll be a challenge to do that in Slackware, minus the dependency tracking which is itself like an sport.

It was a nice experience. I'm still not a fan of compiling my own stuff (mostly because it always takes too much time), but if it means to keep my system in stable conditions and receiving good upgrades of the software I use, then yea I'm all for Slackware.

 If you have any thoughts, input about Slackware or know all the answers to my doubts. Please feel free to comment!

Astebreed on WINE

Heyo guys!


I got this little Japanese Shoot 'Em Up. It run almost flawlessly on wine-1.7.11 and wine-1.7.18-CSMT. I think my only problem with it is that the audio doesn't work. It seems it uses xact, sadly I can't seem to get the audio working in any way, it just doesn't want.

I'll report back. To be honest you don't need to install any library to get it running, besides xact (which doesn't work either).

The game is excellent, if you are into mechas like I am. You'll love the designs they have.

UPDATE:

Install:

- xact_jun2010
- directx9
- dinput [builtin]

Control Setup:

Disable: Vibration

Disable: Hat Switch

Compiling problems with Dolphin Emulator on Linux? It may be the compiler

Hello guys, long time no see!

I'm alive. I'm no longer using LinuxMint. I am now a proud Debian user and I am extremely happy being part of the Debian community. 

I'll leave that for another post. For now let's concentrate on Dolphin emulator. Recently I've been failing to compile Dolphin, it was throwing awkward errors that well, to me it didn't make any sense. I started googling for a few hours, because you know, once you get that itchy feeling that something is wrong and some of the results don't match your criteria then there's something horribly wrong with what you are doing. 

It turns out that GCC/G++ 4.9 that were pushed into Debian recently has some problems compiling wxWidgets (and  a few other source files). It was weird, but it worked for me. If you are going to compile Dolphin, stick with the 4.8. 

Go into the build folder and: 

$ CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.8 CXX=/usr/bin/g++-4.8 cmake ..

I won't get into a tutorial on how to compile dolphin.. if you are experienced enough, you should know what it will do. 

Dolphin GUI is really unstable for some reason, it keeps crashing randomly... sadly I don't have time to report bugs :(

MMORPG: Why can't we have nice things?

Let's talk about "elitism" or certain traits about elitism. It's a topic that many people who just want to enjoy the game have to deal with at one point in their life, sometimes on a weekly basis.

I've been thinking of coming back to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn lately to enjoy the game. My character is near end-game dungeons and I think my first worries is the community state. To me, playing the game how I want is more important than getting results. I can't deny that a lot of people play the game to farm the hell out of it, to become the best player ever or to have the more hardcore guild, of course there are other reasons.

I play the game for fun: Is my first thought, this is so far true; always been. Now, the definition of fun is slippery, it could have a different definition, even if at the core they could be wrong. However, playing for fun means that regardless of the struggle my team goes through, we'll remain as civil as possible, or maybe sass a bit, throw a punch or two to blow steam but never go full retard on a team mate.

My problem with srs business people is that they don't leave the party, they stick there like an annoying stain filling the chat with vitrol on how much X or Y player sucks. Why oh why can't he keep aggro? I'm a healer I shouldn't overwork myself! (btw I believe healers in FFXIV have the shortest temper, they want everything easy I guess). Yapping yapping, annoying your team mates in group.

Then there's captain hindsight who won't shut up about a thing.

So, no matter what you do, there's always THAT guy who you get stuck with through all the way in a party. They won't give any advice, they won't shut up, they just want to finish the dungeon, get their commendation (lol), and hope that whatever item he wants drops. (everyone, GREED EVERYTHING)

It brings me to the question, why can't we have nice things in MMOs? It's so... tiresome dealing with people's sense of elitism, and sometimes entitlement depending on the issue. 
 

Sometimes the Open Source Community is too draining

Alright, it's been a while and welcome to yet another blog post. I've been on and off, to be honest I have some subjects to write about but I've been misusing my time on other matters.

 Today's subject is how the community reacts when there's a security issue in different distributions. I came across a security issue where Portal 2 crashes in SELinux, the initial response in reddit was "valve doesn't give a shit about security", such a title full of assumption and ripe with opportunities to magnify an issue. I do care about security, but sometimes people get.... a little emotional maybe?

The debates gets to the point where you don't know if they are discussing the subject or totally went off topic to keep their "knowledge pride" intact. I found it really draining and sometimes I just have to give kudos to the developers that have to endure hours of endless babbling reading the same responses in different grammar structures. I'll probably get some heat too on my part, but then again I'm just yet another GNU/Linux user out of the thousands out there so whatever people leave in the comment section will be either spite or some type of excuse for their behavior.

That aside, I'm hoping to get into my normal routine once I make a full recovery. I have a project that I want to work on and share with the world but due to my back problems my time is limited =/