Tag Archives: debian

Apache mod_deflate

Personal,

Last week I was trying to forward apache requests from my WAN address to my test server and coming up empty. This evening I had an opportunity to do a little debugging. It has been a while since I’ve needed to forward those and I’d rebuilt the server on the back end since. So when pages wouldn’t load from the WAN but were no problem from the LAN I figured it was a access issue on the router. With the router config verified I went to the apache error log and found the following:

[Wed Jun 02 17:35:59 2010] [debug] mod_deflate.c(615): [client x.x.x.x] Zlib: Compressed 45 to 38 : URL /index.html

I didn’t think apache would care about compressing/uncompressing the data it’s serving but that is what mod_deflate is for. I don’t need that feature, this is not a production situation and I’ll turn off the port forward in a few days. So I edited /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/deflate.conf and commented out what’s between the <IfModule> tag then restarted.

Problem solved !

Virtualbox rules

Technology, , ,

The beginning of 2009 I decided to move back to windows for work and with the laptop dead again it seemed like the right time. Yes I forgot, after getting a new power supply it again has decided to shutdown randomly. At times receeding the hard drive, or the memory, or the battery seemed to bring it back but nothing consistent. So I picked up a used IBM T42, added a extended life battery and maxed the memory at 2GB (from the old laptop) and it has been great. Hopefully I’ll get a year or so out of it.

So about Virtual Box. Since the T42 came with a copy of XP I had a license to work with. Installing was simple using aptitude, but I did grab a more current version by updating /etc/apt/sources.list with.

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lenny non-free

This was mainly since the T42 runs Debian and the desktop runs Ubuntu. From there it was.

aptitude update
aptitued install virtualbox-2.1

.. and I was ready to create a virtual machine.

With the virtual machine created I loaded XP, updated and added the software I needed from our servers at work. When it came time to move it to the other machine I did run into a problem. But after checking the forums I was able to clone from one machine to the other and things are working in both places.

Sweet !!

Debian Lenny Suspend Resume config

Technology,

After problems with Evolution in the latest version of Ubuntu decided why not go back to Debian and install Lenny. Of course having a few issues with one application isn’t a reason to just give up on a distro, Hardy is on the desktop I use for work every day, so I took it as an opportunity to go back to a distro I’ve used before on my laptop.

Just like with Etch when loading Lenny wireless was not recognized. That was no big deal as the wireless nic uses the ipw2200 driver available at http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net. Downloading the firmware and adding it to /lib/firmware was all that’s necessary. The piece that has been a little frustrating though is suspend/resume. Granted my laptop use doesn’t really require me to utilize suspend / resume but it would be nice to get it to work.

This afternoon I took some time to try and figure it out, it took a while but got it working. Their is a wealth of information about this topic, two places that helped put the pieces together were the Debian Suspend Wiki and the HAL Quirk site. I did follow the instructions for creating a fdi file on the HAL Quirk Site, but at this point that may or may not have been the problem. That file is called 20-video-quirk-pm-compaq.fdi, since the laptop is a Compaq V2000, and contains the following.

<!-- V2000 -->
<match key="system.hardware.product" string="Presario V2000 (PM064UA#ABA)">
 <match key="system.hardware.version" string="Rev 1">
  <merge key="power_management.quirk.s3_bios" type="bool">true</merge>
  <merge key="power_management.quirk.s3_mode" type="bool">true</merge>
 </match>
</match>

The instructions on how to create the fdi file are here and easy to follow. Once that was done I still received the following message when executing s2ram.

# s2ram
Machine is unknown.
This machine can be identified by:
    sys_vendor   = "Hewlett-Packard"
    sys_product  = "Presario V2000 (PM064UA#ABA)      "
    sys_version  = "Rev 1           "
    bios_version = "F.22    "

Interesting that the machine is unknown yet it finds the setup in the fdi file. With the file in place the following worked as root.

# pm-suspend --quirk-vbestate-restore --quirk-s3-bios --quirk-s3-mode

But at the same time using s2ram -f also worked. So this is where I have to admit I’m still a little confused. Running either command as ‘root’ worked, but when using my account failed logic tells me that would be a permissions issue… but where. Of course not the end of the world I thought, opening a terminal window and executing the command isn’t that bad. But at the same time I thought if you can do it as root then their should be a way to add that functionality for a user. After poking around some more I ran across some forum posts that mentioned the user needs to be in the powerdev group. So I checked my account properties, sure enough Suspend and hibernate the computer was _not_ checked.

After checking, logging out and back in, suspend worked from “the suspend” key or the power button. Makes me wonder after all this time if that was the problem ? At this point I’m not sure, I’ll need to undue a few things to get back to the original state. But it was a good learning experience and suspend/resume now works.

More laptop confusion

Personal,

With the old IBM i200 now running Debian and a backup copy of my /home I’ve gone back to trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the V2000. I did some testing all day yesterday, bascially just to see if it would run without any load. I let it sit plugged in, no screen saver no sleep, and did the same thing with battery power. Amazingly it ran without a problem both ways. I’m even typing this entry on it, been running all day no hiccups.

The one caviot was when trying to boot the Windows drive, nothing. I guess I could say switching drives in and out between the two OS’s freeked the BIOS out, but I don’t see how that’s possible. If I lived in the hardware world maybe I could come up with something that made more sense. So between the two I should be able to get a few more years of use, or at least I hope so. If the V2000 fails me I’ve got a backup with a keyboard that rocks. And to think I was checking out a Lenovo T60, at todays rate it’s about $1,600.00 ouch!!!

The V2000 has died (updated)

Personal, ,

Yesterday as I typed at the start of the day the laptop went dark. That was rather unusual as I didn’t notice the battery running low and I was on AC. I switched outlets, nothing. Flipped it over to take out the bottom and nothing obvious as to a problem. So at this point I’m thinking power supply or mother board. No lights when I plug it in, no ticks or sound period. After a buddy came by with a volt meter the cord is good but nothing coming from the A/C outlet on the mother board. That sucks.

A new board is $460 and I’ve only had it since Jan. of 05. I was hoping it would last me five years… barley made it two. So now the decision spend 60 to 80 percent of what it would cost for a new toy to get me back to 05 technology or get another one. That just burns me I paid extra for a gig of memory and a 12 cell battery just so I wouldn’t have to do this in a few years. I even busted out the old i200 to see if I can get Xubuntu running on it. Given enough hammering I think I could but man is it slow. I guess it could be worse, could have been the tower that I use for work and what Kay uses. Maybe I should be thankful that one didn’t bite the dust. I’d hate to think what hoops I’d have to jump through to get the drive to boot with a new motherboard.

Update 3/15/2007: I must be a complete idiot. After much googling and almost deciding on getting an external battery charger, 70 dollars vs the price of a new mother board, I put everything back together and turned it on. Booted with no problems and battery is at full charge. Disconnect the power for a while and plug it back in, battery is charging. If I was smarter I would have thought maybe the drive went bad or faulted which caused the problem in the first place. I never swapped out the drives. This is great cause I didn’t want to replace it… but call me stupid cause I didn’t figure it out sooner.

Update 3/17/2007: Maybe I wasn’t as dumb as I thought. The system has not run for more than 4 hours at a time now. In the last 12 hours won’t stay up more than 5 minutes regardless which drive I put in. Very disappointed at the moment. So I’m working on the old i200 loading Debian.