Sun x4450

With a range of options for the Intel Tigerton Quad-core Xeon processors, the Sun x4450 fitted the recommendations for our new postgres database servers. Solaris 10 was chosen by default as the operating system - why complicate the setup by mixing vendors, right?

Well, long story made short: I've ditched Solaris 10 x86_64 in favour of Red Hat Enterprise 5.1. Why? For one thing the Solaris 10 installation was frustratingly complicated.

Performing an installation via serial console requires you to redirect output from the BNC to the System in the BIOS settings. Then the manual states you should choose grub menu's option "ttb". Of course the manual meant "ttyb". But it is actually a typo AND an error: you must choose ttya or all you'll see after boot is "Sun Solaris 5.10" and nothing else.



Once the serial console installation is finished and the system reboots you have another obstacle. The boot process stops at this error message:

Bad PBR sig

Reboot and Select proper Boot device or
Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

Googling around (Sun's KB was useless) I found someone with the same problem reporting that a GUI installation didn't show that error. Very well, I configured the firewall to allow Sun's network KVM:

8890 TCP Remote Console
9000 TCP Remote Console
9001 TCP Remote Console
9002 TCP Remote Console
9003 TCP Remote Console
69 UDP TFTP (for firmware upgrades)
161 UDP SNMP (for monitoring)

As the anonymous poster reported, this did solve the problem. Now to install postgres for x86_64. Hmm. Doesn't run - complains about missing libraries. Probably just need to run crle to set-up the location of the 64bit libraries. Where are they, where are they... WTF? There are no x86_64 libraries installed in my Solaris 10 for x86_64. I check around with `file' and yeah: all bloody system libraries are 32 bits.

I confess I didn't try too hard after this. A day later and we had postgres running on RHEL 5.1. And yes, with a 64bit binary and libraries.

To Sun's credit, the hardware looks a beauty, even though you have to assemble the whole thing by yourself: memory cards, SAS card, Fibre Channel card, hard disks and whatever extras you bought. What a pain in the arse. Compared to the other Dell servers with pre-installed RHEL 5.1 we recently bought the Sun experience is pathetic: the Dells where up on the same day versus 1 week for Sun.

Nagios checks for LSI RAID with MegaCli

I am pretty sure there is a SNMP object in Dell's DRAC 5/PERC to inform about the status of your RAID volumes and physical disks. I'm not too fond of using SNMP with Nagios so I wrote a check script that uses the MegaCli linux i386 binary (from the LSI web site) to report the status of the RAID on our Dell/Red Hat Linux servers.

Here's what you need:

• perl interpreter in /usr/bin/perl
• nagios' utils.pm in /usr/local/nagios/libexec/
• perl module Time::HiRes (cpan; install Time::HiRes)
• sudo in /usr/bin/
• MegaCli in /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64

You'll also need the check_dellperc in /usr/local/nagios/libexec. Change the paths as you see fit.

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
#
# CHECK DELL/MegaRAID DISK ARRAYS ON LINUX
# $Id: check_dellperc 142 2008-03-17 22:25:46Z thiago $
#

BEGIN {
 $ENV{'PATH'} = '/usr/bin';
 $ENV{'ENV'} = '';
 $ENV{'BASH_ENV'} = '';
 $ENV{'IFS'} = ' ' if ( defined($ENV{'IFS'}) ) ;
}

use strict;
use lib "/usr/local/nagios/libexec";
use utils qw($TIMEOUT %ERRORS &print_revision &support &usage);

use Getopt::Long;

use Time::HiRes qw ( tv_interval gettimeofday );

use vars qw($opt_h $help $opt_V $version);
use vars qw($PROGNAME $SUDO $MEGACLI);

$PROGNAME = "check_dellperc";
$SUDO = "/usr/bin/sudo";
$MEGACLI = "/opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64";

my $t_start = [gettimeofday];

Getopt::Long::Configure('bundling');
GetOptions
 ("V"   => \$opt_V,  "version"    => \$opt_V,
  "h"   => \$opt_h,  "help"       => \$opt_h,
 );


if ( $opt_V ) {    print_revision($PROGNAME, '$Id: check_dellperc 142 2008-03-17 22:25:46Z thiago $');
 exit $ERRORS{'OK'};

} elsif ( $opt_h ) {
 print_help();
 exit $ERRORS{'OK'};
}

my $TIMEOUT = $utils::TIMEOUT;
my $start_time = time();
# TODO: add timeout option#if ( $opt_t && $opt_t =~ /^([0-9]+)$/ ) {
#    $TIMEOUT = $1;
#}


# Check state of Logical Devices
my $status = "PERC OK";
my $perfdata = "";
my $errors = $ERRORS{'OK'};
my $vd = "";
my $vds = "";

open(MROUT, "$SUDO $MEGACLI -LDInfo -Lall -aALL -NoLog|");
if (!<MROUT>) {
 print("Can't run $MEGACLI\n");
 exit $ERRORS{'UNKNOWN'};
}

while (<MROUT>) {
 my $line = $_;
 chomp($line);

 if ($line =~ /^Virtual Disk: (\d+)/) {
     $vd = $1;
     next;
 }

 if ($vd =~ /^[0-9]+$/) {
     if ($line =~ /^State: (\w+)/) {
         $vds = $1;            #TODO: verbose print("State for VD #$vd is $vds\n");
         $perfdata = $perfdata." VD$vd=$vds";
         if ($vds !~ /^Optimal$/) {
             $errors = $ERRORS{'CRITICAL'};
             $status = "RAID ERROR";
             #TODO: verbose print("Error found: $status. Skipping remaining Virtual Drive tests.\n");
             last;
         } else {
             $vd = ""; $vds = "";
         }
     }
 }
}
close(MROUT);

# Check state of Physical Drives
my $count_type;my $pd = "";
my $pds = "";

open(MROUT, "$SUDO $MEGACLI -PDList -aALL -NoLog|");
if (!<MROUT>) {
 print("Can't run $MEGACLI\n");
 exit $ERRORS{'UNKNOWN'};
}

while (<MROUT>) {
 my $line = $_;
 chomp($line);

 if ($line =~ /^Device Id: (\d+)/) {
     $pd = $1;
     next;
 }

 if ($pd =~ /^[0-9]+$/) {
     if ($line =~ /^(Media Error|Other Error|Predictive Failure) Count: (\w+)/) {
         $count_type = $1;
         $pds = $2;            #TODO: verbose print("$count_type count for device id #$pd is $pds\n");
         $perfdata = $perfdata." PD$pd=$count_type;$pds";
         if ($pds != 0) {
             if ($errors == $ERRORS{'OK'}) {
                 $status = "DISK ERROR";
                 $errors = $ERRORS{'WARNING'};
             }
         }
     }
 }
}
close(MROUT);

# Got here OK
#
my $t_end = [gettimeofday];
print "$status| time=" . (tv_interval $t_start, $t_end) . "$perfdata\n";
exit $errors;


sub print_usage
{
 print "Usage: $PROGNAME\n";
}


sub print_help
{
 print_revision($PROGNAME, '$Revision: 142 $ ');
 print "Copyright (C) 2007 Westfield Ltd\n\n";
 print "Check Dell/MegaRaid Disk Array plugin for Nagios\n\n";

 print_usage();
 print <<USAGE
-V, --version
    Print program version information
-h, --help
    This help screen


Example:
    $PROGNAME

USAGE
;

}

After installing the script above and changing the paths to match your system, edit your sudoers file (sudo /usr/sbin/visudo) and comment the following line:

# Defaults requiretty

If you are doing NRPE checks, the line above will prevent the script from running sudo because there is no TTY associated with it. There is probably a way around it that doesn't involve disabling this security feature - if you find out please tell me.

While in the sudoers file, also add the following two lines:

nagios ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -PDList -aALL -NoLog
nagios ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -LDInfo -Lall -aALL –NoLog

If you run NRPE with a user different than "nagios", change the lines above to match it.

That is it, basically. Before adding it to your NRPE checks, give it a try:

$ sudo -u nagios /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_dellperc
PERC OK| time=0.189185 VD0=Optimal VD1=Optimal PD0=Media Error;0 PD0=Other Error;0 PD0=Predictive Failure;0 PD1=Media Error;0 PD1=Other Error;0 PD1=Predictive Failure;0 PD2=Media Error;0 PD2=Other Error;0 PD2=Predictive Failure;0 PD3=Media Error;0 PD3=Other Error;0 PD3=Predictive Failure;0 PD4=Media Error;0 PD4=Other Error;0 PD4=Predictive Failure;0 PD5=Media Error;0 PD5=Other Error;0 PD5=Predictive Failure;0

It should return a status of zero (unless, of course, your RAID is b0rken):
$ echo $?
0

It is not a toy

From the book "Things that work but you wouldn't have bet on before actually trying".


$ mplayer your_movie.iso

Teamsite 6.7.1 SP1 won't start

After installing Teamsite 6.7.1 SP1 on a Solaris 10 machine I tried starting the service to check out the new version. Sadly, the service wouldn't start, dumping a core and printing this message:

[crit] file vhost.c, line 190, assertion "rv == APR_SUCCESS" failed Abort - core dumped /app/teamsite/iw-home/iw-webd/bin/iw.webd start: iwwebd could not be started

In my case, adding "dns" to the "hosts:" line on /etc/nsswitch.conf solved the problem:

hosts: files dns

A little bee tells me that you can also edit /iw-webd/conf/iwwebd.conf.template and change "_default_" on the VirtualHost entry to "*":

<VirtualHost _default_:__IWWEBD_HTTPS_PORT__>

to

<VirtualHost *:__IWWEBD_HTTPS_PORT__>

I didn't try it but that's also the recommendation from an Interwoven's KB article (support account needed).

TCP wrappers: refused connect from ...

I've used inetd + tcp wrappers + netcat a number of times for migration of TCP-based services to a new server. It goes something like this:

1. Get the service running on the new box
2. Point the DNS entry (or IP address of the server on clients) to the new server
3. Stop the service on the old box
4. Enable the redirection using inetd
   

For number 4 and HTTP redirection, an entry like the one below in your /etc/inetd.conf is usually enough:

http stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/tcpd /usr/bin/netcat new-server 80

You then leave the old server running until no more clients connect to it. I do that by inspecting the syslog entries and looking for the netcat redirections. Last time, however, I was seeing these:

Jan 30 14:20:04 old-box netcat[16769]: [ID 947420 mail.warning] refused connect from 189.201.77.65

And sure enough, I started to get complaints that some clients were no longer able to connect to the service. I had left /etc/hosts.allow empty on purpose since there was no need to restrict the service to specific hosts.

After some digging through the tcp wrappers readme, I suspected that the version of tcpd on this SunOS 5.8 (Solaris 8) had been compiled with -DPARANOID. If defined, PARANOID will cause tcpd to reject hosts whose IP address don't resolve to a name (using reverse DNS).

I downloaded the tcp_wrappers source, recompiled without -DPARANOID and installed the newly compiled binary. The refused connection entries were gone from the log and the clients confirmed they were able to reach the server once again.

MSMQ error:0xc00e0027

After installing windows 2003 Service Pack 2 on a production box I started getting errors 0xc00e0027 when the application tried to access the queues. A number of related articles gave different solutions but what worked for me was reinstalling Message Queuing from the Control Panel.

I had to re-create my queues too, since they were wiped-out when I removed the component.

VMWare Workstation on Debian AMD64

I've just upgraded to the x86_64 Debian architecture (AMD64). When installing vmware workstation for x86_64 it complained about some missing libraries but the installation finished nevertheless.

However the application would not open any VMs, spitting this error:

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx: error while loading shared libraries: libX11.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Turns out some of the VMWare binaries need 32bit libraries, even on the 64bit version. This post on vmware's knowledge base gave a solution for Red Hat distros. On Debian the solution is analogous: you just need to install the package ia32-libs.

You will need to re-install VMWare so that it regenerates the vmmon kernel module. The vmware-any-any patch is not needed.

Broadcom 4311 on Linux

The Dell Inspiron 1501 I bought after seeing the ad on TV nearly a year ago is a good bang for your buck, except when it comes to the wireless card shipped with this notebook.

Because of the efforts of the ndiswrapper and bcm43xx developers I managed to use the wi-fi card until I started using the AMD64 binaries for Debian Etch.

If you are buying a notebook and plan to use Linux in it, stay away from the Broadcom wireless cards or any other cards that require loading a firmware at run-time.

I got tired of struggling and I'm now waiting for my Intel 2915ABG mini-pci card to arrive in the mail. Hardware is too cheap nowadays to justify wasting my time getting a vendor to work.

Checking your round-robin DNS with nagios

Nagios comes with a plugin, check_dns, that allows you to perform DNS-based checks. It is really useful to check that your DNS server is responding and, with option switch "-a", that it is providing the expected IP address to specified queries.

$ ./check_dns -H example.com.au -a 1.2.3.4
DNS OK: 0.157 seconds response time. example.com.au returns 1.2.3.4|time=0.157327s;;;0.000000

If your host name has more than one IP address associated with it - no problem -, just add it to the command line. For example:

./check_dns -H example.com.au -a 1.2.3.4,9.8.7.6
DNS OK: 0.157 seconds response time. example.com.au returns 1.2.3.4,9.8.7.6|time=0.157327s;;;0.000000

However, if your host name is using a round-robin DNS configuration you can't predict the response reliably. Try google.com.au, for instance.

$ dig google.com.au
;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.au.          230     IN      A       72.14.235.104
google.com.au.          230     IN      A       72.14.207.104
google.com.au.          230     IN      A       72.14.203.104

Then check_dns will only work 1/3 of the time:

./check_dns -H google.com.au -a 72.14.235.104,72.14.207.104,72.14.203.104
DNS OK: 0.035 seconds response time. google.com.au returns 72.14.235.104,72.14.207.104,72.14.203.104|time=0.035388s;;;0.000000

The other 2/3 you will see:

$ ./check_dns -H google.com.au -a 72.14.235.104,72.14.207.104,72.14.203.104
DNS CRITICAL - expected '72.14.235.104,72.14.207.104,72.14.203.104' but got '72.14.203.104,72.14.235.104,72.14.207.104'

I thought that really sucked because it stopped me from using this very nice feature of check_dns. So I patched check_dns.c in Nagios Plugins 1.4.10 to include the command line option "-o". When you specify this option, check_dns will sort the DNS response so you can still use -a.

$ ./check_dns -H google.com.au -o -a 72.14.203.104,72.14.207.104,72.14.235.104
DNS OK: 0.112 seconds response time. google.com.au returns 72.14.203.104,72.14.207.104,72.14.235.104|time=0.111538s;;;0.000000

I've sent the patch to the Nagios developers list - hopefully it will get incorporated into future releases. If not, you can download the patch here and the patched source here.

Think your secure email provider keeps your secrets?

Think again.

"Bad user" on Solaris 10 crontab

An account used for an application could not run its cron jobs. In /var/cron/log all I could see was:

! bad user (wondapp) Tue Nov 13 03:23:00 2007

I checked /etc/cron.allow (which didn't exist) and the user's shell in /etc/passwd but the problem turned out to be in /etc/shadow. The user was listed as:

wondapp:*LK*:::::::

This was because a password was never set for it. I just edited it to read:

wondapp:NP:::::::

Which still doesn't make a valid password but doesn't lock-out the account either. Cron jobs for wondapp work now.

Nagios check_http SSL check

Nagios plugin check_http has a -C option that allows you to be warned when the SSL certificate is about to expire. It always annoyed me, however, that the expiry date was printed in crazy-ass US date format (which doesn't make any sense).

I've altered the source code so that it prints the expiry date in human readable format.

The changes were made to file plugins_sslutils.c. You can download a patch for version 1.4.10 here. Or just download the changed file; it might work for other versions too.

Pathetic

Error says: "You cannot open two documents with the same name, even if the documents are in different folders."

Mongrel on Solaris 10, no C compiler

I've installed Coolstack's Ruby package and some gems on a T2000 box, including Mongrel and its dependencies. However, when I tried to start Mongrel it failed with an error:

/opt/csw/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:
in `require__': no such file to load -- http11 (LoadError)

It took me a while to figure-out what was wrong because `gem install mongrel' shows a false success message:

Successfully installed mongrel, version 1.0.1

Searching around, some threads pointed to a problem with rbconfig.rb, but this was not my problem; there was a library missing:

# ls -al
/opt/coolstack/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1/lib/http11.so
/opt/coolstack/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1/lib/http11.so: No such file or directory

This box doesn't have make, a C compiler or other build tools so, obviously, the installation wasn't able to create http11.so. I just wish it had failed instead of giving me false hope.

I got around it by building it on another machine with the same architecture (sparc, in my case) and compiling tools:

1. Copy to your build host the directory /opt/coolstack/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1/ext/http11
2. To the same destination, copy /opt/coolstack/lib/ruby/1.8/sparc-solaris2.10/*.h and /opt/coolstack/lib/libruby.so
   
3. On the build host, under the http11 directory, run `make'.
4. You should now have a http11.so on the build host. Copy it to the original machine under /opt/coolstack/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1/lib

Another option, if you have root access to the build host, is simpy installing mongrel over there and then copying the http11.so library over to the other host. YMMV.

This guy has a neat guide to installing Mongrel on a shared host. It may also help you. G'luck.

Foundry: the unhelpful company

I don't know why some companies insist on requiring logins to download user manuals for their products. What good is the manual of a ServerIron XL to me if I don't own an appliance or am not planning to buy one?

This is what you get from Foundry if you, like me, try to quickly study their equipment in order to do some network planning:

Thank you for registering for the Foundry KP. Unfortunately we are unable to complete your registration at this time. A valid support contract is required to access this valuable tool and our records indicate that your contract has expired. If this is a mistake please notify us as soon as possible to have the issue corrected.

We value you as a customer and as such we will notify your local account team and they will be contacting you shortly regarding obtaining a new support contract for your systems.

That translates to: give us more money or else we don't really care about you - we're just saying that because it sounds nice.

In time: my company does own Foundry appliances. Even if I knew where to get all the information they are requesting me, you still have to wait up to 48 hours for an account. In this day and age it is absolutely pathetic.

[UPDATE 10h53]: even if a company is unhelpful I'm glad to see there are helpful people within it. David White, systems engineering manager, was kind enough to send me the manual I needed. Thanks.

CruiseControl as a windows service

CruiseControl 2.7 comes with a wrapper that enables it to run as a native windows service. However, the default configuration does not start the web HTTP service, only the JMX stuff.

To enable it just edit the existing wrapper.conf in your CruiseControl install directory (C:\Program Files\CruiseControl\wrapper.conf) and add the following lines just below the similar ones:

wrapper.app.parameter.6=-webport
wrapper.app.parameter.7=8080
wrapper.app.parameter.8=-rmiport
wrapper.app.parameter.9=1099

Change 8080 to whatever port you want CC's web server to listen.

Specifying MySQL port on MediaWiki

MySQL listens on port 3306/tcp by default. MediaWiki's 1.7.1 configuration is a bit misleading when it comes to specifying the database port. This excerpt is from LocalSettings.php:

$wgdBserver = "localhost";
$wgDBname = "mw0";
$wgDBuser = "my_user";
$wgDBpassword = "my_pass";
$wgDBprefix = "mw_";
$wgDBtype = "mysql";
$wgDBport = "3308"; // <--- DOES NOT work for MySQL

The value in $wgBDport is only used with PostgreSQL. To specify a MySQL connection port different than 3306, use the syntax server:port on $wgdbServer. For instance:

$wgdBserver = "localhost:3308";

BUT! there's another catch: when the server is defined to "localhost", MySQL will default to connecting via socket. If you are changing the port in hopes of getting WikiMedia to connect to another running instance of MySQL, chances are that it will still connect to the "default" one. To force a TCP connection use the loopback IP address instead of "localhost":

$wgdBserver = "127.0.0.1:3308";

It took me nearly an hour to figure this bitch out so please say thank you if it works for you.

[Update 24/08/2007]: on Solaris my trick didn't work. To fix it, I had to add the following line to LocalSettings.php:

ini_set("mysql.default_socket", "/tmp/mysql5.sock");

Adjust the path to the location where your MySQL writes the socket and off you go!

Recording TV programs

With my new nVidia card installed I can now actually watch the videos I record. Capturing DVB-T streams is as easy as reading from /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0, at least with my CX23880 DVB card (cx88_dvb kernel module).

My next obstacle was finding a good scheduler. I tried DVR (Ubuntu's Feisty binary core dumps every time) and MythTV (can't get it to scan channels). Out of frustration I wrote an ugly hack to schedule and record some programs. I call it tive.sh ("tive" is a pun on Tivo, but only works in Portuguese):

#!/bin/bash

function usage() {
echo Missing parameters.
echo Usage:
echo $0 '"starting date/time" "seconds to record" "channel name"'
}

WHEN="$1"
DURATION="$2"
CHAN="$3"
DVB="/dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0"
TZAP='tzap -r'

if [ -z "$WHEN" ]; then
usage
exit
fi

at $WHEN >> __EOP__
# Sometimes /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 "locks-up".  Uncommenting the lines
# below will force the driver to be reloaded, thus ensuring that the
# device can be read.
#sudo /sbin/rmmod cx88-dvb cx8802 cx88xx cx88_vp3054_i2c
#sudo /sbin/modprobe cx88-dvb

$TZAP "$CHAN" > /dev/null 2>&1 &
PIDTZAP="\$!"

echo tzap running under pid $PIDTZAP
cat $DVB > "$CHAN$WHEN.mpeg" &
PIDCAT="\$!"
echo Channel $CHAN being recorded under pid \$PIDCAT
echo Sleeping for $DURATION seconds
sleep $DURATION
echo Stopping recording
kill \$PIDCAT
echo Stopping tzap
kill \$PIDTZAP
echo Finished
__EOP__

Say I want to record The Simpsons. I run tive.sh:

$ ./tive.sh "18:00 30.07.07" 2000 "TEN Digital"
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
job 26 at Mon Jul 30 18:00:00 2007

The first parameter, "18:00 30.07.07", will be passed to at directly. The second, 2000, is how long to record for, around 33 minutes (probably not enough for TEN's crappy time-keeping). Finally, "TEN Digital" is the name of the channel, as expected by tzap and listed in ~/.tzap/channels.conf.

Some programs, The Simpsons included, are on 3:4 format, however the DVB-T stream is on 16:9 format (I don't know if this is always true). This causes the video to be captured with a pair of black bars on its side, which is annoying because it wastes space on your screen and hard-disk. One solution is to use mencoder to crop the video; I've put the (long) command in crop34.sh:

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo Usage
echo $0 INPUT_FILE
echo File Cropped-INPUT_FILE will be created in the same path.
exit
fi

# Uncomment to preview cropped video
#mplayer -vf rectangle=530:576:95:0 "$1"

mencoder -msglevel all=4 -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd \
-srate 48000 -ofps 25 -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts \
vcodec=mpeg2video:aspect=4/3:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:\
vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=4900:\
keyint=15 -vf crop=530:576:95:0 "$1" -o Cropped-"$1"

Only one task remains: ad removal. I was hoping to use MythTV's commercials remover but at this point I was already quite frustrated with it so I went around looking for a video editing tool. And boy, did I try a lot of them - Lives seemed to be able to do what I wanted but it was unbearably slow for the big (~2-3Gb) mpeg files.

It took me a lot of time to finally find GOPDIT which, by the way, has Ubuntu binaries, works fine and fast. It is a bit hard to reach the right cut position because the scroller skips too much and the "go back frame" button stops working after a few clicks. However, given this was the only app I could find that did what I wanted, I was more than happy to donate some money to the author.

ATI driver (fglrx) on Ubuntu Linux

It was a fruitless 3-day battle: I could not get the ATI RV370 (Radeon X300) on my desktop Dell to work with Xorg. I tried the pre-packaged fglrx driver, I tried rebuilding it with modules-assistant, I tried installing the latest version from ATI's support site.

The kernel module would load fine but X would core dump after initialising the driver, DRI could not be enabled or X would freeze whenever any OpenGL application was run. I went through heaps of support forums and saw many users having similar problems.

In the end I got myself a nVidia 7300LE and, let me tell you, it was the best $AU70 I have ever spent. I simply wanted to be able to watch DVB-T on my computer, so this low-end card was more than enough.

The installation was effortless and it worked on the first try, even with "Composite" enabled; it's true that it didn't update the device description on xorg.conf but I did that manually just to be neat.

I should have given up on ATI years ago after my all-in-wonder died on me shortly after a year.

Power button event on gnome

On my Debian etch, I configured gnome-power-manager to ask me what to do when the power button is pressed. However, when I did, I could see the GPM prompt followed by the system immediately shutting down.

This is caused by the script /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh, which, I believe, was written to work with KDE. I have changed mine to look like this:

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh
# Initiates a shutdown when the power putton has been
# pressed.

# If powersaved is running, let it process the acpi event
if pidof powersaved; then
   exit 0
fi

# Commented-out the following line
#if ps -Af | grep -q '[k]desktop' && test -f /usr/bin/dcop
if ps -Af | grep -q 'gnome-power-manager'
then
# Commented-out the following line and added "exit 0"
# dcop --all-sessions --all-users ksmserver ksmserver logout 0 2 0 && exit 0
   exit 0
else
   /sbin/shutdown -h now "Power button pressed"
fi

Quick-and-dirty, but it works. Maybe I should be running powersaved but I couldn't bother.