Sunday, January 27, 2008

Remote Desktop Connection? How?

Today I've been trying to figure out how to set up a remote desktop connection. So far I've tried entering "rdesktop ip.address.to.remote" and had no luck at all. I was told that I need to open up my Firestarter (firewall UI) and open up port 3389 on the host. So I did that (sort of), I don't know if that policy is for the outbound, or inbound traffic. I assumed inbound and it did nothing.

Next, I just turned off the firewall on the remote system all together to see if that would do the trick... Nothing...

Next, I noticed that on the Remote Desktop connection GUI from the system menu, there was a vpn command and it told me to use that. I entered that into a terminal screen and once again nothing happened.

Now I've turned to the Ubuntu Forums for help again. This time I requested an exact step by step procedure but so far no help.

I sure wish someone would notice my blog, and offer some help. I'll post back with the solution once I figure out what that is...

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

nVidia driver 169.09 installed

Well, today I learned how to stop the X server with this command:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

then I ran the installer with:

sudo sh nvidia-file-name.run

then to restart X:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

By the way, gdm stands for "graphical display mamanger" which on my system is the "X" windows manager.

The installer went without a hitch and I now have the 169.09 driver installed, and Compiz-Fusion running just fine. I found no problems with video playback or resolution issues after letting the installer update my xorg.conf file.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

nVidia driver - UPDATE

I rebooted my machine today and was greeted with low graphics mode. I tried everything under the sun to correct the problem (short of reinstalling the 169.09 driver) and nothing I could do worked. I can only guess that I should have removed the older driver versions and disabled the restricted driver from the manager prior to install. If anyone knows the proper way to go about this, then let me know.

Prior to installing the newer drivers, I made a full backup (disk image) using Acronis True Image WS 7.1. The final fix for my driver issue was to restore the disk which had the repository installed restricted driver. Well it seems is back to normal now, but I'd really like to have the newest driver working properly.

I plan to do a clean install and install the new driver before any of the others and see if this cures any issues. If it does, then I'll slowly build my OS (Tweaks / Apps) back to the current state. As this will probably be a long process, I'll only work on it every few days, back it up with Acronis, the restore my current working OS until the new one is fully cooked.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sony Vaio VGN-S460B woes...

This morning I've been fighting with my wife's laptop. It's a Sony Vaio VGN-S460B craptop. It dual boots Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu 7.10. The thing is that once you turn off the computer it won't boot again. It either won't give a BIOS screen or halts at a keyboard error. It locks at this point and the only thing that seems to work (but not consistently) is to remove all power sources, hit the power button a few times the reconnect everything. After doing this a few times (like 25) it will finally boot.

It's had new memory installed (1.2GB), keyboard cleaned, battery replaced, power supply replaced. I hate this thing.

Now, to make matters worse, my wife really only likes using windows and the wireless works less that 10% of the time.

Using Ubuntu 7.10 the wireless is rock solid, but I can't get my wife to adjust. One big problem with Ubuntu is that it won't shut down properly most of the time. When the shutdown process is started, the screen will begin to fade and the screen will go corrupt then finally it will go black. The computer just sits there still powered on. You have to press and hold the power button to finally shut the computer off.

If I could fix the shut down issue with Ubuntu, I think I MIGHT get her to use it more. It sure is less problematic than windows on this Craptop. Perhaps the next Ubuntu release will cure the issue.