While trying to install a plugin, i’ve made some mess which resulted in Eclipse not starting, giving the following error in the log file:
!SESSION Tue Nov 09 15:18:43 CET 2010 ------------------------------------------
!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.launcher 4 0 2010-11-09 15:18:43.233
!MESSAGE Exception launching the Eclipse Platform:
!STACK
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:217)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:205)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:321)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:266)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:556)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:514)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:1311)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:1287)
That’s what happen when you force the removal of some files 
I solved the problem purging libequinox-osgi-java and reinstalling Eclipse. Try with:
sudo apt-get remove --purge libequinox-osgi-java
sudo apt-get install eclipse
November 10, 2010
Upgrading from Debian Lenny to Squeeze, those having this old embedded video card (my laptop is an IBM Thinkpad R40) have found their video performance dropped. This is due to debian’s policy which produced the distribution of this video card’s firmware in a package that is not installed by default with the x.org driver. In lspci -nn, the card is shown as
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY [1002:4c59]
After some browsing I’ve found out that this card is part of the R100 family, so the firmware you are searching for are contained in:
sudo apt-get install firmware-linux-nonfree
Make sure that /etc/X11/xorg.conf, if any, uses driver radeon or ati (which redirects to radeon). So in your xorg.conf there must be something like:
Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI"
Driver "ati"
EndSection
When you are done, you must restart Gnome (or whatever starts X):
sudo service gdm restart
November 8, 2010
If you want a subset of your users to have access to your vsftpd FTP server, edit /etc/vsftpd.conf adding the following:
# Activate only users in /etc/vsftpd.enabledusers
userlist_deny=NO
userlist_enable=YES
userlist_file=/etc/vsftpd.enabledusers
The file /etc/vsftpd.enabledusers must contain the list of users enabled to access the FTP service, one per line. Be sure to also add the support for local users:
local_enable=YES
You may also want to fix the home directory, for example to /var/www/:
local_root=/var/www
October 14, 2010
I’ve been trying for days to make my brand new Wacom Bamboo (CTL-460) tablet work under Debian Squeeze. Finally, i wrote to the
linuxwacom-discuss mailing list and Rebecca Breu pointed me to the solution.
This tablet is supported by a driver powered by the linuxwacom project, which provides a kernel module (wacom.ko), a X.org driver (wacom_drv.so) and more utilities. The problem is that with the debian kernel 2.6.32-5 (latest in squeeze at the time when writing) the wacom module is provided, but its version (1.52) is too old and doesn’t support Bamboo Pen. We want version 1.52-pc-0.3. This also applies to debian kernel 2.6.33-2 (currently under experimental). On the other hand, X.org version 1.7.* has a prebuilt X.org driver which works perfectly, so there’s no need of replacing it.
0- To check out your X.org version, type:
Xorg -version
For the wacom module version, type:
modprobe wacom
dmesg | grep wacom
1- To check if the wacom module works with your tablet, plug it in and do:
modprobe wacom
dmesg | grep -i wacom | grep -i input
If you see anything like
input: Wacom Bamboo 4x5 Pen as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.1/usb4/4-2/4-2:1.0/input/input14
then your hardware is supported and there’s no need of compiling the driver. Just skip to step 3.
2- If your hardware is not supported by your wacom module version, then you have to drop the one provided by your kernel and replace it with the latest version compiled by yourself. The following commands apply for kernel version 2.6.32-5 AMD64, but should also work for later kernels, just change 2.6.32-5 in whatever your kernel version is and -amd64 in your architecture:
sudo -s
rmmod wacom
apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev libxi-dev
x11proto-input-dev xserver-xorg-dev tk8.4-dev tcl8.4-dev libncurses5-dev linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64
Now that the kernel headers are installed, we have to make a small hack to let the compiling work:
sudo -s
cd /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64/include/linux/
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-5-common/include/linux/input.h
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-5-common/include/linux/input-polldev.h
After this, the system is ready to download the source and compile the wacom module. Do:
cd ~
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/linuxwacom/linuxwacom/0.8.8-9/linuxwacom-0.8.8-9.tar.bz2
tar -xf linuxwacom-0.8.8-9.tar.bz2
cd linuxwacom-0.8.8-9
./configure --enable-wacom --with-kernel=/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64
If everything was fine, install the driver with:
cp src/2.6.30/wacom.ko /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/kernel/drivers/input/tablet/wacom.ko
depmod -a
Now unplug and replug the tablet and retry step 1 to see if the hardware has been recognized.
3- The X.org wacom drivers are cointained in a package. Do:
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-wacom
To load the module automatically at startup, if your /etc/modules does not contain wacom, edit /etc/modules and add “wacom” in a new line at the bottom of the file.
4- Restart X (or reboot) and draw your self-portrait. Mine is here:
May 7, 2010
Shit happens. And you are the one that may make it happen. If you’ve never accidentally formatted a partition, typed a rm -rf ~ or deleted some file that you actually didn’t have to remove, it can happen to some of your friends (if you got idiot friends) or customers (if you got idiot customers).
So here are a few notes about how to recover data from a formatted NTFS partition. I’ve tried several tools which I’ll give a brief opinion about.
- Do not use any forensics analysis Live distribution. F.I.R.E. (homepage) is abandoned since 2004 and others are not necessary. The best forensics and recovery live distribution is indeed Knoppix (homepage), in which you can easily add any data recovery package with a simple apt-get install.
- ntfsundelete (part of the ntfsprogs package, homepage) was completely useless, and could not find any deleted data but pagefile.sys.
- sleuthkit (homepage), with its web GUI Autopsy worked exactly the same as ntfsundelete and was useless the same.
- foremost (homepage) helped to recover some files, especially Jpeg pictures. Foremost does not re-create any directory structure. Furthermore, it didn’t find any Word document.
- scalpel (homepage), based on foremost, is a bit better and was able to recover also some of the .doc documents. This tool should only be used is the support is severely compromised, otherwise more efficient tools can do a better work.
The problem with all these tools is that they can recover data from NTFS volumes but do not use any information in the volume. NTFS is a very redundant file system and store a lot of information that can be used to completely recreate the directory structure of a formatted volume, including file and directory names. To find a tool that uses these information, the Open Source option has to be discarded and we have to go for something commercial. My salvation was Runtime Software GetDataBack for NTFS (homepage), a commercial tool for Microsoft Windows that let me recover almost all the data with their original names and directory structure.
Still there are some tricks that may ease your work. The following is only an option of how to use this software which resulted easy for me because I had a ready Windows XP virtual machine running on VirtualBox and the formatted NTFS volume was saved in an image with dd. Here are some useful information for this specific scenario (otherwise, if you don’t have any installed Windows VM and the NTFS volume you want to recover is not saved in an image file, there are probably faster methods):
If you find any working Open Source NTFS recovery tool or have had other experiences about NTFS data recovery, please leave a comment.
February 20, 2010
Using Debian 5.0 i noticed a problem with Qt-based applications such as TexMaker, Skype, Qt-config itself and many more. All fonts were rendered bad, in a monochromatic flavour without any anti-aliasing. My solution to this was to regenerate the font cache. So, as normal user (no sudo!), try:
fc-cache -f
You may need to restart the affected applications.
January 31, 2010
The following applies for those that, running a lspci, get:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 9200M GS] (rev a1)
When trying to play a DVD or a divx movie at fullscreen, the image movement were not fluent, just like a 25fps movie played at 11fps. Similiarly, the 3D screen-savers were slow. Checking the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file everything seemed ok, since the default NV drivers included in Xorg are capable of recognizing the NVidia graphic card. Unfortunately, those driver are definitely not optimized and they perform very bad. NVidia released some alternative drivers for linux and -still- unfortunately, they are propertary. It’s your choice to use the free unoptimized drivers or the propertary optimized ones. Anyway, here follows the procedure to install the propertary ones.
Drivers depends on the architecture used by your system. Nvidia releases driver only for x86 and AMD64 CPUs. To check what’s your architecture, type
uname -r
If your kernel version ends with -*86, follow the blue steps, otherwise if it ends with -amd64 follow the red steps. (NOTE: if you have this video card and are using a x86 kernel, you are probably not using all your PC potential. Consider installing an AMD64 distribution. More information here.)
- Get into a non-X shell (typing CTRL+ALT+F1) and log in as root.
- Install the linux-kernel headers:apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
- stop the Gnome Desktop manager:/etc/init.d/gdm stop
- take the NVIDIA propertary drivers:
for x86: wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/190.53/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.53-pkg1.run
for AMD64: wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/190.53/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.53-pkg2.run
- make the driver installer runnable:
for x86: chmod a+x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.53-pkg1.run
for AMD64: chmod a+x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.53-pkg2.run
- run the installer:
for x86: ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.53-pkg1.run
for AMD64: ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.53-pkg2.run
accept everything and when asked to update the /etc/xorg.conf file, answer yes.
- restart gdm:
/etc/init.d/gdm start
- (now Gnome should start, but you still have an open root shell. Type again CTRL+ALT+F1 and close it, then CTRL+ALT+F7 to go back to Gnome.)
The NVidia drivers should be now loaded and the movies should play fine. If you want to run a 3D test, try:
apt-get install mesa-utils
and then run from a console:
glxgears
The tool will print the FPS rate, that should be around 3000 frames/sec
Enjoy your movies and 3D games, and reclaim your optimized free drivers from your hardware vendor!
June 5, 2009
This post has been updated since something changed (yeah, the audio out jack now works great!)
Making both the wireless connection and the audio board work on a HP Pavilion DV6-1060el with Debian Lenny (currently stable) and Squeeze (currently testing) needs a small effort. This is due to 2 reasons: first, the linux kernel up to version 2.6.26 (current version distributed with Lenny) doesn’t support the Intel 5100 wireless interface, second, the ALSA driver up to 1.0.21 (that comes with Squeeze’s kernel) doesn’t support the audio board’s codec (that is, IDC 92HD75B3X5) out of the box, yet you can force the driver to use another codec and make the audio board fully work.
So, if running lspci you got:
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
[...]
And running
cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep Codec
you got:
Codec: IDT 92HD75B3X5
- If you are using Debian Lenny, follow the instructions here to install a new kernel >= 2.6.30. This kernel version supports the wireless interface and has the pre-built ALSA module version >= 1.0.21.
(to check your running ALSA version, type cat /proc/asound/version)
- Otherwise, if you are using Debian Squeeze, just add non-free to your repository list and install 2 packages as described here. If your kernel is not up to date, update it with:
apt-get install linux-image-amd64
(replace ‘amd64′ with your architecture)
- edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf adding the line: options snd-hda-intel model=hp-dv5 at the bottom of the file. This can be done with the command (as root):
echo “options snd-hda-intel model=hp-dv5″ >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
- remove and reload the snd-hda-intel module with the command (as root):
alsa force-reload
or restarting your machine.
- Now everything should work fine. With alsamixer raise up the volume of Master, Speaker and PCM. Switch to Capture (using Tab key) and make sure it is activated, pressing space until a red CAPTURE appears. Raise up Digital and Digital Mic volumes. Try out the speakers, the headphones, the internal and external microphone (try recording with Audacity or another sound recorder). Everything should work now.
The audio card is still not fully supported. When switching the pc off, you may hear some weird noises. Anyhow, that’s a workaround that will make your PC rock. When an ALSA version fully supporting this audio board will be released in future debian kernels, you’ll probably have to remove the line “options snd-hda-intel model=hp-dv5” from /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, and everything will work as is.
If you found this post useful, you have alternative solutions, some news, or something is unclear, please comment.
June 3, 2009
Tried WICD 1.5.9 as a network manager on Debian testing (Squeeze). After apt-get installing and running it, i got the following error:
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.wicd.daemon was not provided by any .service files
This is a known bug that should be fixed in future relases. To solve it, i only had to restart dbus and gdm:
/etc/init.d/dbus restart
/etc/init.d/gdm restart
(yes, this will close all your gnome session and applications) then everything worked, at least for me.
June 1, 2009
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