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hoek

This is the latest workstation, this chapter described the hardware and how to re-install when needed.

system

You can use dmidecode for most of this info:

sudo dmidecode
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 6.0
Processor AMD FX(tm)-9590 Eight-Core Processor
Memory 32 GB
Audio Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5400/6300 Series]
Video Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cedar [Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350/8350 Series]
Monitor Philips monitor : PHL 272S4L : 2560x1440 (55hz)

reinstalling

keyboard shortcuts

Note

forever todo ?... make a script to set these ?

alt-space windows menu

Whenever you mistype the ALT and hit the space as well Ubuntu pop's up the window menu left-top. This is annoying to say the least. But it's not that easily found.

  • The keyboard shortcuts don't mention these, they clearly don't show all shortcuts.
  • This can be done in compiz-config, but that does not start up.
  • So to see what's wrong start it up by hand, the executable is ccsm
  • Python-gtk seems to not be installed, but don't bother trying to install it because the real problem is you changed to python3.
  • I would really advise switching back to python2 for these hard to spot problems, just explicitly use python3 in the shebang !!
  • or just to change the keyboard do 'update-alternatives --config python'
  • now you can startup ccsm, but start it up from the menu, or as your user otherwise you are changing settings for root !!
  • IT's in CompizConfig->general options->key bindings: window menu!

zfs

We need this for the virtualbox images, so this one first. add the jessie backports repo:

echo "deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list

Now install the packages, they could be too many, but i installed these and it worked.

installation
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apt-get update
apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
apt-get install -t jessie-backports zfs-dkms
apt-get install -t jessie-backports zfs-initramfs

This already imported my array, but if needed :

import zfs array
zpool import bigsafe

Virtualbox

Virtualbox will complain about new versions, so just install the latest from their site : https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads as before just do dpkg -i and fix-broken :

example install virtualbox
dpkg -i virtualbox-5.1_5.1.12-112440-Debian-jessie_amd64.deb
apt-get -f install

It’s the easiest way.

Adding your old systems is the easiest when you just reconstruct it from the disks :

  • New system, follow the usual steps
  • at “Hard Disk” choose “Use an existing virtual hard disk file.

Of course whenever you install a system you will be urged to install the extensions.

vboxclient the virtualbox kernel service is not running

A sub-problem is that (i think that) iso images are prepared for use as a virtualbox client and this will backfire when it is NOT a guest but a hypervisor. So this message is shown in the hypervisor while virtualbox is not even installed.

Getting rid of this message is fixed with this :

sudo apt-get remove --purge virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-dkms

reboot and see :

handy

sudo apt-get install meld tree screen strace curl passwdqc pwgen

development

see next chapter for default-jdk

sudo apt-get install git build-essential make maven scons default-jdk gdb gradle

networking

sudo apt-get install tcpdump ngrep iptraf nmap

fun

sudo apt-get install mplayer easytag id3

video: (glx tools)

sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

ssh id

It is probably best to change the identity of ssh once in a while. But it is installed on numerous locations and it might not be that moment right now. Note that is very tempting to copy your old key into the new location, since there is no id_rsa pair in .ssh . You have to generate it manually:

ssh-keygen

Still this first time i will log how many times you have to re-install the key:

  • bitbucket.org, fairly easy to add new key : profile -> bitbucket settings -> ssh keys

sudo

Why ? since i have root access, well mainly for shorthand lines like : sudo apt-get install meld. If sudo is installed there is probably a sudo group, so :

usermod -aG sudo kees

Now not that you have to login again for it to take effect, a new bash shell, or new xterm is not enough !! ssh localhost is the shortest i found. You will be needing to do that every new xterm, so i would advise to logout X completely and login again.

home

git clone git@bitbucket.org:keesklopt/home.git

This will put the tree in a separate subdirectory ~/home which is not actually a bad thing since otherwise it would overwrite rather important files like .bashrc or .vimrc. But there is no alternative since git won’t allow you to clone into an non-empty directory. So i would advise to compare all files that are clashing. mostly only :

cd
vimdiff home/.bashrc .bashrc

Maybe other files if this is not a new install. If you checked and merged, copy all into place

cp will skip hidden files so run this command :

rsync -av home/ .

fx 9590 ECC hardware problem

I had this a while a go with my first FX 9590 processor, informatique refused to refund my money so i bought another one at megekko.

Never buy anything at informatique again !!

Here are some debugging techniques for this that shed some light on the cpu state. However since it does not happen anymore it proves that as always.

I was right, the cpu was buggy !

Informatique is wrong and should be avoided like the plague!

If you query the processor, you will get these speeds from /proc/cpuinfo, or lscpu

lscpu  | grep MHz
CPU MHz:             1400.000
CPU max MHz:         4000.0000
CPU min MHz:         1400.0000

You can view the actual speed with CPB turned on with :

watch cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq

It will show this when doing nothing :

Every 2.0s: cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/...  hoek: Sat Apr  6 11:38:30 2019

1400000

But startup some program the takes cpu, like alien-arena, and it will soon change to :

Every 2.0s: cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/...  hoek: Sat Apr  6 11:39:16 2019

4000000

You may see it change now and then, but the opening screen of alien-arena is enough to max it out.

This is the default with cpb turned on in the BIOS. Actually in the BIOS it says that the speed is 5.000 MHz, but it maxes out on 4.000.

Here are some settings and the speeds detected :

cpb         bios speed  detected speed
off         5000000      4000000
4x          800KHz