Author Archives: Kirk Schnable

Lenovo ThinkPad W520 – Workaround For Linux Freezing Issue At Boot

August 24, 2014 12:50 PM / 7 Comments /

Background
I have been a proud Lenovo ThinkPad W520 owner for the past several years, but there has been a persistent issue I have experienced, as I have gone the route of dual booting Windows and Linux on my laptop.

Through the years, I have run Ubuntu 10.04, Xubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint 13, Linux Mint 14, and Linux Mint Debian Edition on this laptop.  Of these distributions, Ubuntu 10.04 is the only one I haven’t had an issue with.

The issue I have experienced is that after a fresh install of Linux, the laptop will freeze every other boot.  Sometimes, it freezes before reaching the login screen, sometimes before even reaching the boot splash screen, and sometimes just moments after logging in.  Other times, it would boot and function normally for hours.  It has been a very flaky issue.

In 2012, I posted a thread on the Ubuntu Forums on how I fixed the issue for 12.04.  I have applied this fix, necessarily, on Linux Mint several times since then as I have done new installs.  I wanted to create this post so others can find this information, and understand that it may apply to other future distributions down the line until this issue gets fixed upstream.

 

The Workaround
I have consistently resolved this issue by adding a boot flag to GRUB.

Edit /etc/default/grub, and add “nox2apic” to your boot parameters, like so:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nox2apic quiet splash"

After making this change, run update-grub and reboot the computer.

This has saved me so much frustration over the years, I hope it helps you as well!  If you run into a similar issue on another ThinkPad model, please let me know in the comments if this fix worked for you!

Posted in: How-To's, Musings / Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Running Land Elevation Surveys With Google Earth

June 9, 2014 8:37 PM / 1 Comment /

Background Information

Living in a rural area, I am often tasked with finding ways to connect remote sites to the Internet in places where cable and DSL are not available.  In these situations, the best alternative is usually the local wireless Internet service provider (WISP).

Many of these providers utilize point-to-point (PTP) and point-to-multipoint (PTMP) wireless connections running on non-licensed frequencies (900MHz, 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and others) to provide service to these types of hard to reach locations.

These connections work best with a line of sight (LOS) between your location and your ISP tower site.

From the ISP standpoint, determining whether an installation is viable usually comes down to visiting the site and trying to establish a connection, but running a few elevation surveys can help determine whether land barriers may have  a strong probability of obstructing the signal.

ISPs purchase expensive software tools to conduct these surveys, but a lot of it can be done with a reasonable amount of accuracy in Google Earth!

This tutorial will describe the basic steps needed to generate an elevation survey in Google’s free Google Earth desktop software.

 

1. Download and Install Google Earth.
At the time of this writing, Google Earth can be obtained here.

2. Locate Your Sites
Find the desired install site and the potential tower sites on Google Earth.  You can search by address, GPS coordinates (latitude & longitude), or by simply scrolling around the view.

3. Go to the “Add” menu, and click “Path”.
This will open the path editor, and turn your mouse into a tool to create path points.

GoogleEarth-Add-Path

 

4. Locate your first site, and click once to create a path point.
This will appear on your screen as a blue dot.

GoogleEarth-Path-Dot1

 

5. Locate your second site, and repeat the procedure, clicking on the site to make a path point.
This will appear on your screen as a second blue dot, and will create a white line which is your path.

GoogleEarth-Path-Dot2

 

6. Name the path.
Call it something other than “Untitled Path” to describe what the path is.  (eg. Tower Site A to Customer Site B).

GoogleEarth-NamePath

 

7. Right click the path, and click “Show Elevation Profile”.
This will open the elevation profile view.

GoogleEarth-Show-Elevation-Profile

 

GoogleEarth-Showing-Elevation-Profile

 

8. Expand on this, if you like.

You can create as many paths as you choose, name them accordingly, and even organize them into folders.  You can save Google Earth project files, which can be sent to customers, others at your organization, or anyone who suits your needs.

Keep in mind that the elevation profile is ground level elevation, so you will need to add heights of towers and buildings at either side to make the profile useful.

Also keep in mind that the elevation profile doesn’t know about trees and buildings in the area, so these will need to be factored in as well when determining the viability of a wireless signal.

All in all, this is a guideline and the results are not guaranteed to be useful every time, but can be a helpful tool for the WISP arsenal!

Posted in: How-To's, Musings / Tagged: , , , , , ,

Running Wolfenstein Enemy Territory At Native 1920×1080 Resolution (on Windows)

September 21, 2013 12:08 PM / 12 Comments /

A lot of people I play Enemy Territory with have been contemplating switching to a version of the program called ET Legacy, and their reasoning is generally related to screen resolutions.

Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is a very old game, and the designers never conceived that it would ever be played on a 1920×1080 screen resolution, so it was never coded to have that option in the Video Settings.

That being said, you can make a few modifications to your launcher shortcut, and run Enemy Territory at true native 1920×1080 resolution.

Note: The only glitch I’ve encountered with this so far, is that when you’re changing video settings in the game, the game will not revert back to 1920×1080 without a game restart after a settings change (such as texture quality, dynamic lighting, etc changes).  So, go set your quality levels for textures and everything prior to modifying your shortcut, then you should avoid encountering any of those issues.

Linux\Mac: You can use similar command switches on Linux or Mac to achieve this goal, but the process of editing the shortcut\launcher may vary.

Right click your Enemy Territory shortcut, and hit Properties.

et-icon

 

You’ll want to add these options to your shortcut:
(com_hunkmegs is not related to the video settings, but a few extra hunkmegs will help your game performance.)

+r_mode "-1" +r_customwidth "1920" +r_customheight "1080" +cg_fov "115" +set com_hunkmegs "768" +vid_restart

You can do so by adding them after the trailing quotation mark surrounding your program name, as show in the following screenshot:

et-settings

My full shortcut application path is as follows, since it’s not entirely visible above.  (The “Target” box above).

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory\ET.exe" +r_mode "-1" +r_customwidth "1920" +r_customheight "1080" +cg_fov "115" +set com_hunkmegs "768" +vid_restart

And there you have it!  Next time you launch Enemy Territory, you should be presented with a full screen 1920×1080 gaming experience.  Enjoy!

 

Posted in: How-To's, Musings / Tagged: , , , , , ,

Installing HP Array Configuration Utility (HP ACU) on Ubuntu

September 19, 2013 11:31 PM / 16 Comments /

Updated for 16.04.

This guide will help you get up and running with HP’s command line Array Configuration Utility (ACU) on Ubuntu.  This guide may will be especially useful if you have an HP Proliant server, or an HP P400 \ P410 RAID card or similar.

Install the HP Linux Repository

echo "deb http://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/downloads/MCP/ubuntu xenial/current non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hp.list

Install HP Linux Repository GPG Key

wget -qO - http://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/downloads/MCP/GPG-KEY-mcp | sudo apt-key add -

 Prepare For The Installation

sudo apt-get update

Install Packages

sudo apt-get install cpqacuxe hpacucli hpsmh

HP Array Configuration Utility Is Now Installed!

If you’ve never used the Array Configuration Utility before, here’s a cheat sheet for the commands you might want: http://binaryimpulse.com/2013/09/hp-array-configuration-utility-command-cheat-sheet/

I may do a write-up on some of the more useful commands at a later time.  For now, here’s what you should try to see if everything’s working.  (Along with sample output from my server.)

root@Server:~# hpacucli ctrl all show status

Smart Array P410 in Slot 3
   Controller Status: OK
   Cache Status: OK

root@Server:~# hpacucli ctrl all show config

Smart Array P410 in Slot 3                (sn: ##############  )

   array A (SATA, Unused Space: 0  MB)

      logicaldrive 1 (19.1 TB, RAID 5, OK)

      physicaldrive 1I:0:1 (port 1I:box 0:bay 1, SATA, 3 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:0:2 (port 1I:box 0:bay 2, SATA, 3 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:0:3 (port 1I:box 0:bay 3, SATA, 3 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:0:4 (port 1I:box 0:bay 4, SATA, 3 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:0:5 (port 2I:box 0:bay 5, SATA, 3 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:0:6 (port 2I:box 0:bay 6, SATA, 3 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:0:7 (port 2I:box 0:bay 7, SATA, 3 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:0:8 (port 2I:box 0:bay 8, SATA, 3 TB, OK)

   SEP (Vendor ID PMCSIERA, Model  SRC 8x6G) 250 (WWID: ##############)

root@Server:~#

I may do some subsequent write-ups on the HP Array Configuration Utility.  Please feel free to ask questions in the comments section, but please keep in mind that I’m still learning to use this tool as well.

Posted in: How-To's / Tagged: , , , , , ,

HP Array Configuration Utility Command Cheat Sheet

September 19, 2013 11:28 PM / 3 Comments /

New to the HP Array Configuration Utility?  Me too, so I did some Googling and found an awesome cheat sheet.  I don’t want to steal any credit from its original authors, but I do think it should be reposted for archival.  I’d like a copy of it for my own reference, so I decided to toss it here on Binary Impulse so others might stumble across it.

Here’s the original article: http://www.datadisk.co.uk/html_docs/redhat/hpacucli.htm

Utility Keyword abbreviations
Abbreviations chassisname = ch
controller = ctrl
logicaldrive = ld
physicaldrive = pd
drivewritecache = dwc
hpacucli utility
hpacucli # hpacucli 

# hpacucli help

Note: you can use the hpacucli command in a script
Controller Commands
Display (detailed) hpacucli> ctrl all show config
hpacucli> ctrl all show config detail
Status hpacucli> ctrl all show status
Cache hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 modify dwc=disable
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 modify dwc=enable
Rescan hpacucli> rescan 

Note: detects newly added devices since the last rescan
Physical Drive Commands
Display (detailed) hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 pd all show
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 pd 2:3 show detail 

Note: you can obtain the slot number by displaying the controller configuration (see above)
Status hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 pd all show status
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 pd 2:3 show status
Erase hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 pd 2:3 modify erase
Blink disk LED hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 pd 2:3 modify led=on
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 pd 2:3 modify led=off
Logical Drive Commands
Display (detailed) hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld all show [detail]
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 show [detail]
Status hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld all show status
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 show status
Blink disk LED hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 modify led=on
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 modify led=off
re-enabling failed drive hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 modify reenable forced
Create # logical drive – one disk
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 create type=ld drives=1:12 raid=0 

# logical drive – mirrored
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 create type=ld drives=1:13,1:14 size=300 raid=1

# logical drive – raid 5
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 create type=ld drives=1:13,1:14,1:15,1:16,1:17 raid=5

Note:
drives – specific drives, all drives or unassigned drives
size – size of the logical drive in MB
raid – type of raid 0, 1 , 1+0 and 5
Remove hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 delete
Expanding hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 add drives=2:3
Extending hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 ld 4 modify size=500 forced
Spare hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 array all add spares=1:5,1:7
Display (detailed) hpacucli> ctrl all show config
hpacucli> ctrl all show config detail
Status hpacucli> ctrl all show status
Cache hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 modify dwc=disable
hpacucli> ctrl slot=0 modify dwc=enable
Rescan hpacucli> rescan 

Note: detects newly added devices since the last rescan
Posted in: How-To's / Tagged: , , , , , ,