Peter Velichkov's Blog

Another big surprise rolled out from the Debian Unstable repository when today I updated my kernel from 2.6.25-1 to 2.6.25-2 - the maintainers have enabled Xen in the non-Xen kernel (linux-image-2.6.25-2-686). The result from this is that Nvidia drivers don’t compile throwing error about Xen enabled kernel.

The solution (if you don’t want to recompile your own kernel) :

As usual backup before executing any of these

1. cd /lib/modules/2.6.25-2-686 (or wherever are your modules)
2. grep CONFIG_XEN . -Rl | xargs -i sed -i -e ’s/CONFIG_XEN/CONFIG_LUPO/g’ {}
3. export IGNORE_XEN_PRESENCE=1
4. sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run (or you can use patched 169.12 - http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=110088 )

Source: linux-image-2.6.25-2-686: nVidia driver fails to compile due to active Xen support

After the successful How-to install VMware Player and Workstation on 2.6.24 Linux kernel and with 2.6.25 up and running on my Debian Unstable (Sid) I had no option but to update the procedure.

1. Download latest and greatest products from VMware
2. Install and patch as described in the previous post (use vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz)
3. Download the vmware-any-any-update-117-very-ALPHA.tgz
4. Extract the archive in /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source (or wherever are yours vmblock.tar, vmmon.tar, vmnet.tar)
5. Run vmware-2.6.25.sh and then vmware-config.pl
6. If compiles - have fun, if not drop me a line

Important notes:

1. The original author of the patches is 6xx I have modified the vmmon.patch since otherwise I was getting the error at the bottom of the article. The original patches can be found here
2. vmware-2.6.25.sh is a very dumb script - read it carefully before executing. It will be even better to paste the commands one by one
3. This any-any patch has nothing to do with the original any-any patches by Petr therefor I do not want to take the credit for it. All I’m trying to achieve is to gather the Linux VMware community here and share ideas. If someone wants to help and make the patches more unified and smarter just drop me a mail (can be found on the home page)
4. I take no responsibility for any problems or damage that may
   occur as a result of using any of the information contained in this article.
   Use the information at your own risk

Error log:

include/asm/page.h: In function ‘pte_t native_make_pte(pteval_t)’:
include/asm/page.h:128: error: expected primary-expression before ‘)’ token
include/asm/page.h:128: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘{’ token
include/asm/page.h:128: error: expected primary-expression before ‘.’ token
include/asm/page.h:128: error: expected `;' before ‘}’ token
include/asm/paravirt.h: In function ‘pte_t __pte(pteval_t)’:
include/asm/paravirt.h:955: error: expected primary-expression before ‘)’ token
include/asm/paravirt.h:955: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘{’ token
include/asm/paravirt.h:955: error: expected primary-expression before ‘.’ token
include/asm/paravirt.h:955: error: expected `;' before ‘}’ token
include/asm/paravirt.h: In function ‘void pmd_clear(pmd_t*)’:
include/asm/paravirt.h:1171: warning: missing braces around initializer for ‘pud_t’
include/asm/paravirt.h:1171: warning: missing braces around initializer for ‘pgd_t’
include/asm/paravirt.h:1171: error: cannot convert ‘pud_t’ to ‘pgdval_t’ in initialization
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config2/vmmon-only/common/task.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config2/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-1-686'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config2/vmmon-only'
Unable to build the vmmon module.

I quite often use my Windows XP VM running under Vmware Server 1.0.5 (Debian Unstable) and because I still don’t have RAID I am forced to try every possible performance optimizations.

Latest and greatest was when successfully converting my 10 GB preallocated IDE disk to LSILogic SCSI following procedure close to this one. (Try it on your risk !)

1.Create LSI Logic disk:

vmware-vdiskmanager -c -s 100mb -a lsilogic -t 0 tempDisk.vmdk

2. Add SCSI definitions in your VMX file:

scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "tempDisk.vmdk"

2. Boot the VM and install LSI Logic driver - use WHQL 1.20.18.00 (at least I could not install the latest version)

3. Make backup of the VM Disk !

4. Open the disk definition file (.vmdk). Get from there the disk size (sum of all extents)

# Extent description
RW 20971520 FLAT “WXP-flat.vmdk” 0

Then create another disk

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -c -s 20971520 -a lsilogic -t 1 anotherTemp.vmdk

This one is only needed so you can get the new geometry and replace it in the original .vmdk

5. Replace old geometry with new from anotherTemp.vmdk. In my case I replaced this

ddb.adapterType = "ide"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

with this

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "1305"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

6. Update you VMX file so scsi0:0 points to the main disk image.  Also you can remove the old IDE definitions.

7. Boot your VM and have fun.

Couple of other performance suggestions:

1. Always defrag your guest operating system disk.

2. Use MemTrimRate = "0"

3. Use scsi0:0.mode = "independent-persistent"

4. Keep your guest operating system as light as possible. Turn off themes, effects, unneeded services etc.

Resources used:

http://sanbarrow.com/ide2scsi.html

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/50084

Just checked out an interview with Sebastian Kuegler (KDE developer) about the upcoming features in KDE4.1 :

I think the part that most people — just like me — are really looking forward to is an improved Plasma desktop shell. It really is the most visible part of the desktop. The good news here is that Plasma, a relatively young subcommunity within KDE is really alive and kicking. We’ve already been able to fix most of the problems that were still there in 4.0.0, and if we continue to keep the current pace of development, it looks like we have exceeded feature parity in those part with the 3.5 series already by summer.

Then of course, I’m looking forward to KDE-PIM in 4.1. It will make use of the Akonadi storage framework and as such be more stable and usable as the 3.5 series. Then, just recently, Dragon Player has been merged into our 4.1 tree. Dragon Player is a very simple but powerful video player, which of course makes use of Phonon, our new multimedia framework. For non-Linux/UNIX users, 4.1 will also bring the first stable applications to Mac OSX and Windows, which is another very big thing in my eyes.

Other features include more scripting support, newly ported applications (Amarok for example seems to be aiming for a summer release as well), performance improvements all over the place, new plugins for the KWin window manager with its nifty compositing features, and many more.

This really suggests what I expect from the KDE 4 series, new, innovative and really exciting features and improvements at a steady pace. With the KDE 4
series, we’ll simply outperform our proprietary competitors in terms of speed of innovation and user orientation.

More information on this topic can be found on Sebastian’s blog

Full interview link

Update: If you are looking for patching VMware for Linux 2.6.25 Kernel - check here

Currently latest VMware Player and Workstation do not install under Linux 2.6.24 Kernel. This is a short how-to resolve the gcc/make errors that arise while configuring (vmware-configure.pl)

1. Download the latest vmware player (workstation) - currently VMware Player 2.0.2 Build 59824
url: http://www.vmware.com/download/player/ - Read the Eula before downloading

2. tar xzvf VMware-player-2.0.2-59824.i386.tar.gz

3. cd vmware-player-distrib/

4. ./vmware-install.pl - Proceed as usual when asked to run vmware-config.pl answer NO

5. Download the latest any-any patch - currently vmware-any-any-update-116
url: http://vm…s.googlegroups.com/web/vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz

6. tar xzvf vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz

7. cd vmware-any-any-update116

8. ./runme.pl and when asked to run vmware-config.pl answer YES

9. Configure as usual

10. Enjoy!

PS. Link is broken so I reuploaded on my hosting. Patch is presented as is and I don’t take any responsibility for it. All credits go to the author.

Anyway http://blog.creonfx.com/temp/vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz

Today I tried the new KDE4 on my Debian Sid distribution and decided it is still not usable for everyday desktop environment. After the full of dependency issues installation I ended up with piles of software removed and yes running KDE4.

Positive:

• works noticeably faster
• cool effects
• gadgets(widgets)
• totally new experience - live previews, funky menu, new icons and theme
• new multimedia engines

Negative:

• Some effects bugs
• not compatible with some old programs - at least were uninstalled while installing KDE4

For now I will not update my main copy of Debian Unstable

Anyway short how-to if you still decide to try it yourself:

1. Backup everything - I personally copied my whole Debian partition to another one and installed there.
2. Remove all KDE and Compiz packages that are already installed otherwise you will have plenty of dependencies problems and apt shouting various errors.
3. Add

   deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ experimental main non-free contrib

   to your /etc/apt/sources.list

4. apt-get update && apt-get -t experimental install kdebase kdebase-workspace
   extragear-plasma kdegraphics kdegames kdemultimedia kdenetwork kdeutils kdeedu kdeadmin
   kdetoys kdeartwork kdesdk

After updating to the latest Icedove (Thunderbird) package from the Unstable (Sid) repository my feeds stopped coming.

The solution is editing /etc/icedove/pref/icedove.js and comment the following line:

pref(”network.protocol-handler.external.http”, true);

After that everything works fine!

For further explanation check the bugreport