Debian Configuration Log

Installation

• Boot from the CD.  Make sure to install the network drivers (3c59x), but this can only be done if the root partition was not mounted as pre-formatted.
• On reboot, select the simple installation and don't select anything.  (You can get a list like this again by running ` tasksel `)
• The system is currently synced to the stable branch, but unstable is much more up-to-date.  So edit /etc/apt/sources.list to have:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free

Update the system by doing

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

• Now run `tasksel` or `deselect` and install X Windows.  (Don't install anything else yet, just in case it requires XFree86 3.3)
• Now install anything else that is needed

Configuration

Booting

• (Jan 8, 2002)  Somewhere along the line xdm got installed.  This is probably undesirable until you at least get X configured.  Init is configured with the symlinked scripts in /etc/rcn.d.  Runlevel two is the default, so delete /etc/rc2.d/S99xdm.  (Rename it if you are going to replace xdm with my custom xdm)
• (Jan 10, 2002)  Fixed the booting off a floppy problem.  Since the BIOS detects /dev/sdb as 0x80 and /dev/sda as 0x81 I had to tell LILO that.  Also, I needed to put the boot sector on 0x80 (/dev/sdb) instead of /dev/sda.  So my lilo.conf file is (changes highlighted):

# Support large disks
lba32

# Tell LILO about the drive order
disk=/dev/sdb bios=0x80
disk=/dev/sda bios=0x81

# Install LILO where?  (The MBR of the drive at 0x80, e.g. /dev/sdb)
boot=/dev/sdb

root=/dev/sdb1
map=/boot/map
delay=20
vga=normal
default=linux

image=/vmlinuz
        label=linux
        read-only

• (Mar 16, 2002)  Uninstalling gdm is rather difficult.  The uninstaller didn't work (just hung without using CPU time);  use 'dpkg -r -D 2 gdm' to figure out where the uninstall script is and put echos until you find the problem (was in the dp_uninstall line or something like that pretty early on).  Re-run `apt-get remove gdm`, remove the /etc/gdm directory.  Unfortunately, all the display manager startup scripts check the contents of /etc/X11/default-display-manager , which is still set to /usr/bin/gdm.  Change this to /usr/bin/X11/xdm (verify with `which xdm`) and it should now work.  (It is interesting that /etc/X11 appears to be a hard link to /usr/X111R6/lib/X11 and that /usr/lib/X11 is a symlink to the same place)
  
• (Mar 16, 2002)  Finally got my xdm replacement ready for installation.  Copy it over the original executable (/usr/bin/X11/xdm).  Now copy all the images and objects.txt file to a subdirectory in /usr/lib/X11/xdm and add

DisplayManager.objectFilePath:  /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/objects

(assuming you used objects as your subdirectory) to the xdm-config file.  Now make sure you have an /etc/rc2.d/S99xdm file.  Next go to the /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup file and comment out the xconsole command (xconsole looks pretty ugly).  Finally, unless you want something different to happen when you use startx or xdm , make a symlink from ~/.xinitrc to ~/.xsession , as the Xstartup script sources .xsession.

• (Apr 5, 2002)  In order to get halt to turn the power off is to load the apm module into the kernel.  This really only needs to happen just before the halt command, but it's easiest to just the line 'apm' in your /etc/modules file and have it always in the kernel (it's only 8k anyway).
• (July 18, 2003)  Got my RMA'd hard drive back from IBM/Hitatchi.  Copied the filesystem over, editied /etc/fstab, rebooted and everything worked!

find /src -mount | cpio -pdmuv dest

X Configuration

• (Jan 8, 2002)  Run xf86config.  This will generate /etc/X11/XF86Config, which needs to be copied to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
• (Jan 9, 2002) This is a good page on configuring the wheel
• (Jan 9, 2002) The Logitech Optical Mouse (M-BD58) seems to have problems being configured (at least as a PS/2 mouse).  The following works:

        Option  "Device"        "/dev/mouse"
        Option  "Protocol"      "MouseMan"
        Option  "ChordMiddle"

This method will not detect the third mouse button or the wheel.  A web site suggested

        Option  "Protocol"          "IMPS/2"
        Option  "Device"            "/dev/psaux"
        Option  "SampleRate"    "60"
        Option  "BaudRate"        "1200"
        Option  "Buttons"           "5"
        Option  "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"
        Option  "Resolution"        "100"

which works, until you resize a window, at which point the mouse hangs.  (The PS/2 sampling rate can be increased to 100, or even 125, since this mouse is a USB mouse and USB samples at 125.)  At all sampling rates, moving the mouse quickly causes the cursor to jump erratically, which isn't a problem with the first settings.

• (Jan 15, 2002)  Install xlibmesa-dev.  This will install Mesa, which is undesirable, so it needs to be done before the NVidia drivers are installed.  (Otherwise you will need to re-install the GLX drivers)  This package does need to be installed for any compiled programs that want to use OpenGL.
  
• (Jan 12, 2002 gcc-2.95)  Download the GLX and kernel drivers from NVidia.  Apt-get the kernel headers (kernel-headers-2.4.16-k7 for me), which will be installed in /usr/src/kernel-headers-2.4.16-k7 (for me).  As root, make the kernel driver with `make install SYSINCLUDE=/usr/src/kernel-headers-2.4.16-k7/include` since the makefile expects the kernel headers to be in /usr/src/linux.  Now (still as root) do `make install` in the GLX directory.
• (Jan 12, 2002)  In XF86Config-4, make the following changes:

# Load   "glx"           -->                Load   "glx"
Load    "dri"            -->                # Load  "dri"
Load    "GLcore"         -->                # Load  "GLcore"
Driver  "nv"             -->                Driver "nvidia"

• (Jan 20, 2002)  The suggested IMPS/2 lines given above actually work if you don't have gpm in repeater mode.  Run gpmconf and turn off repeater mode (protocol "none").
• (Jan 20, 2002)  The Wacom drivers are apparently installed by default by Debian, but are available from MandrakeSoft.  The HOWTO is excellent.
• (Jan 27, 2002)  TV out works as advertised.  Connect the output of the video card to the TV and then boot up and the driver will automatically put the console on the TV.  X requires a bit of configuration.  Create a screen specifically for TV out  This screen should use the TV out monitor definition:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Television"
        HorizSync       30 - 50
        VertRefresh     60
EndSection

The 2313 version of the NVidia drivers has a bug in the XVideo extension that causes a blue line to show up.  The best solution is to run mplayer in OpenGL mode, but you don't get good framrates unless you run in 16 bit, 640x480 resolution, so the TV out screen definition should be set up appropriately.  It is important that the actual virtual desktop size be 640x480 otherwise it seems like 800x600 data is still transmitted across the bus.

# Screen definition for TV-Out
Section "Screen"
    Identifier          "tv"
    Device              "GeForceDDR TV"
    Monitor             "Television"
    DefaultDepth        16

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth           16
        Modes           "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort        0 0
    EndSubsection

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth           24
        Modes           "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort        0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection

• (Aug 6, 2002)  Installed Japanese support.  I used `tasksel` to select the Japanese task, but if this didn't work, installing kinput2-common, kterm, ttf-xtt-wadalab-gothic, ttf-xtt-watanabe-mincho, watanabe-vfont, x-ttcidfont-conf xfonts-a12k12, xfonts-intl-japanese, xfonts-intl-japanese-big, xfonts-kappa20, xfonts-marumoji, xfonts-shinonome, locales should get just about everything.
• (Aug 6, 2002)  Make sure that the locales got generated;  check that the locales you selected are actually listed in /etc/locale.gen.  If not, either add them manually and run `locale-gen` or run `dpkg-reconfigure locales`.
  
• (Aug 6, 2002)  The cannaserver isn't running by default, so if you want to test it you will need to do `/etc/init.d/canna start`.  Also, the wnn server starts by default and there isn't much use in having two input method servers, so get rid of it by doing

`mv /etc/rc2.d/S20freewnn_jserver /etc/rc2.d/_S20freewnn_jserver`

• (Aug 6, 2002)  Add the following to ~/.Xdefaults (for Debian it's supposed to be ~/.Xresources, but apparently that's sort of non-standard):

*.inputMethod: kinput2
*.preeditType: OverTheSpot
Kinput2*useOverrideShellForMode: true
Kinput2*conversionStartKeys: Shift<Key>space

Now add the following to .xinitrc (or .xsession, or whatever runs when X starts):

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults
kinput2 -kinput -canna -xim &

Finally, we can set up our environment variables in ~/.login (or ~/.bashrc if you aren't using tcsh)

setenv LANGUAGE    "C"           # UI Language
setenv LC_CTYPE    "ja_JP.eucJP" # Character handling functions
setenv LC_TIME     "C"           # Display of time
setenv LC_NUMERIC  "C"           # Display of numbers
setenv LC_MESSAGES "C"           # Same as LANGUAGE only less commonly used
setenv LC_COLLATE  "ja_JP.eucJP" # Affects glob bracket ranges and sort order
setenv LC_PAPER    "C"           # Default paper size
setenv LANG        "ja_JP.eucJP" # Default locale for unset variables
setenv XMODIFIERS  "@im=kinput2" # For apps that don't use the resources

(I am assuming you want an English system with the ability to input Japanese;  if not change the "C" locales to something else).  "ja_JP.eucJP" is the multibyte locale;  "ja_JP.utf8" is the locale to use if you are wanting to use Unicode.  You can probably also get by with using "ja" or "ja_JP" as they are likely to be aliased to "ja_JP.eucJP".

• (Aug 6, 2002)  Potential problems:
• "Locale not defined" error messages:  This is either because your locales weren't generated or because you spelled your locale wrong.
• Shift-space doesn't start conversion:  Check that the cannaserver is running (`cannastat`), check that kinput2 is running with the right parameters.  Check that XMODIFIERS is set properly.  Check with a fresh execution of xterm or mozilla (`kterm -xim` works, too).
  

• (Aug 6, 2002)  This web page gives a bunch of simple configuration instructions.
• (Aug 8, 2002)  xterms and kterms will work when X is started via startx, but not with xdm (although mozilla works with both)
• (Aug 10, 2002)  The problem with xterms not working when started from xdm is that my .xinitrc file doesn't set the locale variables, so anything started from that script (i.e. my terminals) don't get input, but anything started from the shells do (since .login ran).
• (Apr 14, 2002)  Installed the latest nVidia drivers (4349) which come with a nice installation utility.  However, at this point Debian hasn't completely switched over to GCC 3.2;  the kernel is still compiled with GCC 2.95.  To check, do `cat /proc/version`, and if it is different than `gcc -v`, temporarily point the /usr/bin/gcc symlink to the right version.  The usual include path problems exists, so do `./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run --kernel-include-path=/usr/src/kernel-headers-2.4.20-1-k7/include`.
• (Apr 14, 2002)  This installer doesn't seem to add itself to the modules.conf system.  So add /etc/modutils/nvidia with the line

USB

• (Jan 17, 2002)  It looks like USB is available with the Debian kernels.  Someone on the Debian lists suggested that the Logitech optical mouse needs the following modules:  usbcore, usb-uhci, input, mousedev, hid.
  

Window manager configurations

• (Jan 9, 2002)  Change the modifier key from Meta (Windows-Key) to Alt.  (Sawfish >> Bindings)
• (Jan 9, 2002)  Add Alt-1("A-1")through Alt-4 ("A-4") to be the change workspace keys (Sawfish >> Bindings)
• (Jan 16, 2002)  xloadimage -onroot -shrink -center -border black image will set the background image ( -onroot ), shrink to the size of the screen if necessary ( -shrink ), will not tile it (-center), and will place a black border around it ( -border black).
• (Jan 17, 2002)  Actually, yesterday's comments don't work.  -shrink needs -fullscreen to work if -onroot is present, and -center causes -shrink to be ignored.  So do

xloadimage -onroot -fullscreen -shrink -border black image

• (Apr 9, 2002)  Discovered how to add menus in Debian.  Add a file (any name) to ~/.menu.  The format should be "?package(local.mystuff): needs=x11 section=Menu/Path title="title" command="command".  If the command is a console app, then needs=text should be used and a terminal will be spawned automatically.  The command should not have an ampersand at the end of it, and the menu path is assumed to start from the "Programs" menu, so don't include "Programs" in the path.  Then run update-menus and reload your window manager.  More information is given in the documentation.
  

System administration

• (Jan 9, 2002)  Change the shell:  Root will need to add /bin/tcsh to /etc/shells .  Then the second user created during the install will need to `chsh -s /bin/tcsh username ` to change the shell.  (Make sure /bin/tcsh exists, and if not, install it)
• (Jan 12, 2002)  Apparently this file gets overwritten somehow.  Apparently only ash, bash, csh, and sh are supposed to go in /bin;  tcsh and zsh go in /usr/bin.  So just use /usr/bin/tcsh for chsh instead.
• (Jan 17, 2002)  While compiling xloadimage, I discovered that /usr/X11R6/include/X11/Xlib.h:75 has a comment that directs you to replace the wchar_t typedef with that for your system.  So I used "#include <stddef.h>" and got rid of the re-definition of wchar_t error.
• (Jan 17, 2002)  It seems that there is some problem with the libpng3 library right now (stuff crashes).  So I symlinked libpng3 to the version 2 of the library.  This ought to be fixed eventually, though.
• (Jan 19, 2002)  Replace nvi with vim:  ` apt-get remove nvi` then `apt-get install vim `
• (Jan 26, 2002)  The default installation uses bison++, which won't compile Ephemeris, since it will generate a C++ parser if __cplusplus is defined, which it has to be, or the included headers won't work.  So install bison instead.
• (Feb 3, 2002)  /etc/ld.so.conf should include /usr/local/lib, as that is where wxWindows will put its libraries.
• (Feb 12, 2002)  Installed Flash plugin to Mozilla.  Download the plugin from Macromedia's site, copy ShockwaveFlash.class and libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins.  The plugin seems to hang mozilla if another program is using audio.
• (Apr 30, 2002)  Debian's VIM doesn't have syntax highlighting turned on by default.  Edit /usr/share/vim/vimrc and find the following lines and uncomment the last three:

" Vim5 and later versions support syntax highlighting. Uncommenting the next
" 3 lines enables syntax highlighting by default.
if has("syntax") && &t_Co > 2
  syntax on
endif

Now make xterms have all 16 colors that XFree86's version gives them (add the bolded text):

" We know xterm-debian is a color terminal
if &term =~ "xterm-debian" || &term =~ "xterm-xfree86" || &term =~ "xterm"
  set t_Co=16
  set t_Sf=^[[3%dm
  set t_Sb=^[[4%dm
endif

You might want to uncomment some of the lines at the bottom, too.

• (Apr 30, 2002)  It might be useful to copy this guy's tab-size independent CC-Mode modifications.  Copy them into /usr/share/emacs/21.1/lisp/progmodes.  Then byte-compile everything with 

emacs -batch -f batch-byte-compile *.el

• (May 1, 2002)  Actually, there are bugs in the new files that cause wierd things to happen to the CC-mode configurations, so it's probably best to leave things just as they are.
• (Dec 2, 2002)  Debian puts ghostscript's Type1 fonts in /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts but not in /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts.  If gs (or gv) complains that about invalid fonts because it can't find them, try `ln -s /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts`.  That didn't work for me, so I had to add it to the GS_LIB variable in the shell configuration files so that all users would get it:

/etc/bash.bashrc:    export GS_LIB=/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts
/etc/csh.login:      setenv GS_LIB /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts

• (Jan 29, 2003)  boost/format.hpp wants ostream, ios, and locale which gcc 2.95 doesn't provide.
• (Feb 7, 2003)  Static IP settings are stored in /etc/network/interfaces.  Note that when changing a static IP address, /etc/resolv.conf probably needs to be changed, too.
• (Feb 13, 2003)  Upgraded to wxWindows 2.4.  Used configuration commandline `./configure --with-gtk --with-opengl`.  Note that to get the proper libraries in makefiles you will probably want to use `wx-config --cxxflags` or `wx-config --libs` depending on whether you are linking or compiling at the time.
• (Feb 28, 2003)  I discovered that the margins of the DeskJet 672C are fairly wide and assymetrical:  

• (Apr 8, 2003)  Daylight Saving Time doesn't work unless your computer is set to use UTC time.  To change this, edit /etc/default/rcS and set the variable UTC to yes.  Reboot.
• (Apr 22, 2003)  The first line of /etc/motd is rewritten on every boot by default.  To change this, set EDITMOTD=no in /etc/default/rcS.
• (Apr 22, 2003)  The default /etc/issue gives a little too much information away.  Using "\s (\n) \l<blankline>" will print out "Linux (quasar) pty6<blankline>" before the login prompt.
• (May 31, 2003)  To install CUPS, get the cupsys package.  Now configure it with the web interface by going to http://localhost:631/admin.
  

Apache

• (Jan 28, 2003)  Installed Apache 1.3 (Debian didn't seem to have packages for 2.0).  The default setup puts the site web site at /var/www.  I changed this to /opt/www:

• (Jan 28, 2003)  Debian's installation of Apache includes suexec by default (despite the Apache projects recommendation otherwise).  It's easiest to get CGI scripts working if you disable it (by renaming /usr/lib/apache/suexec).
• (Jan 28, 2003)  All CGI scripts must start with "Content: text/html\n\n" or they generate an "internal server error" page and a "premature end of script headers" entry in the error logs.
• (Jan 28, 2003)  To test CGI scripts that require parameters do `perl script.pl param=value`, or if the script waits for input, type the param/value pairs.  I think if the paramaters do not have an = in them that they may be passed in the QUERY_STRING environment variable.
• (Jan 28, 2003)  If the author of the CGI script had Perl installed in some non-standard place (like /usr/local/bin/perl) that will cause Apache to return a bogus file not found error;  it really should be "shell not found" or something like that.
• (Aug 16, 2003)  To enable server side includes, edit /etc/apache/httpd.conf and make sure that
• The LoadModule includes_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/mod_include.so line isn't commented out.
• The directory you are putting the files in has a <Directory> entry and Options Includes or Options IncludesNoExec is in it somewhere.
• You have the following lines:

Samba

• (Feb 25, 2003)  Debian's smb.conf file works fine, but you need to generate the smbpasswd file when the installer prompts for it.  This is because the smb.conf has encrypt passwords = yes, which requires the use of the smbpasswd file.  In case you didn't generate the smbpasswd file, do

• (Feb 25, 2003)  The above system works fine if you are in control of the users.  If not, you will need to disable encrypted passwords and use a different password server.
  

Sound

• (Jan 11, 2002)  Decided to use ALSA, since it seems to be the way things are going.
• (Jan 11, 2002)  Search the Debian site to find out what alsa-modules packages they have.  For an Athlon, pick a "k7" kernel.  Now apt-get that alsa-modules package, as well as alsa-base and alsaconf.  Run alsaconf afterwards.
• (Jan 11, 2002)  Alsaconf didn't work for me (gave me "modprobe: can't locate module snd") and naturally there is no helpful information anywhere.  However, if you do `insmod soundcore`, then you can `insmod snd`.  Ideally, I think you'd try `modprobe snd-card-ens1371` (for a SB PCI 128), but this failed with "init_module:  no such device".
• (Jan 11, 2002)  Maybe these commands from here are needed?

alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-card-ens1371

• (Jan 11, 2002)   This page lists a more complete modules.conf.
• (Jan 11, 2002)  Oops, it turns out that my SB PCI 128 uses the ens1370 module!  A `modprobe snd-card-ens1370` loaded correctly.
• (Jan 11, 2002)  Once you do that, you need to do `amixer set PCM 100% unmute` and `amixer set Master 75% unmute` to get any sound.
• (Jan 12, 2002)  To get ALSA to start on boot you need to have the following in /etc/modutils/alsa:

# ALSA sound stuff
alias char-major-116 snd
options snd snd_major=116 snd_device_mode=0660 snd_cards_limit=1 snd_device_gid=29 snd_device_uid=0
alias snd-card-0 snd-card-ens1370
options snd-card-ens1370

# OSS sound stuff
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

Do not use the "snd_id=card0" option that alsaconf puts in its config file (/etc/alsa/modutils/0.5)for snd-card-ens1370 (e.g. "options snd-card-ens1370 snd_index=0 snd_id=card0"), as this will cause ALSA (or insmod) to fail with a message to the effect of "ens1370.c: 1240: Can't find this card" or will just cause insmod to fail with the usual "init_module:  No such device".

Also, make sure that the alias for snd-card-ens1370 is "alias snd-card-0 snd-card-ens1370" not "alias sound-card-0 snd-card-ens1370" as /etc/init.d/alsa looks for the regexep "snd-card-[0-9]".  Similarly, sound-slot-0 must be aliased to "snd-card-0" not "sound-card-0".  (If the last one is not done then OSS programs won't get their modules loaded automatically, leading to things like not being able to find /dev/dsp)

After you set up the modules file make sure to remember to do

update-modules
depmod -a

• (Jan 12, 2002)  The snd_device_gid is important and should be whatever the "audio" group-id is (29 by default on Debian).  To let non-root users use the sound card, add the desired users to "audio" by

adduser user audio

• (Jan 15, 2002)  Install alsa-headers for any compiled programs that want sound.
• (Nov 28, 2002)  Something I installed broke ALSA (I think it was libwine-alsa).  Naturally the ALSA package is broken as usual.  Upgraded the kernel, and headers.  Downloaded the alsa-modules .deb (there's a button for it on the web page).  If the package is broken, as root do

# Unpack the files, since we can't properly install them
cd /var/cache/apt/archives
dpkg --unpack alsa-modules-...
cd /lib/modules/x.y.z-k7
# Move the files out of the way, have apt-get repair the system,
# them move them back.  At this point, we have the files but
# not the package, so upgrades will still work.
mv alsa _alsa
apt-get -f install
mv _alsa alsa

• (Nov 28, 2002)  ALSA rc4 removed the "snd_" from the beginning of the snd.o module's options (e.g. "snd_major" became "major").  The /etc/modutils/alsa file needs to be changed accordingly and `update-modules` run.  Note that if you test the new settings with `modprobe ens-1370`, you must use amixer to unmute the channels (see above).  Changing their volume with alsamixer will not work!
• (Feb 15, 2003)  Unfortunately, I uninstalled alsa-base, which uninstalled init script, so ALSA needs to be manually run (including manual unmuting channels).  This is a pain, and since you don't need to actually have the ALSA packages installed, you can just make sure that alsa-base in installed.  It seems that rc4 made some other changes, too, as you also need to change "snd-card-ens1370" to "snd-ens1370" in /etc/alsa/modutils/0.9 and run update-modules.
  

DVD setup

• (Jan 12, 2002)  The most common DVD players appear to be Xine , MPlayer, VideoLan , Ogle , OMS.
• (Jan 12, 2002)  Ogle has a Debian package, ogle and ogle-gui.  Download those, install them.  Then run the included /usr/share/doc/ogle/examples/install-css.sh .
• (Jan 12, 2002)  Finally, make a /dev/dvd symlink for libdvdread (the symlink should point to the DVD drive).

ln -s /dev/hda /dev/dvd

MPlayer

• (Jan 15, 2002)  Ogle doesn't have de-interlacing, so the fast-moving parts of the image tend to have lines in them.  MPlayer, on the other hand, does have de-interlacing.  It also has beautiful subtitles!
• (Jan 15, 2002)  Ogle isn't very big, and it might be worthwhile to download Ogle just for the ease of installing libdvdcss.
  
• (Jan 15, 2002)  Download the source.  Make sure that libdvdread-dev and libgtk-dev are installed.  Run ./configure --with-gui, then do make .  (And of course, make install .)  As of 0.6, ALSA 0.9 didn't work, so just use OSS support (according to the documentation).
• (Jan 15, 2002)  If you want to run with the gui (a bit iffy), download a skin (available on the downloads page) and  copy it into /usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin/ skin-name .  Then make /usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin/default a symlink to that skin.  (Or you could just copy it to the default directory in the first place)  Start mplayer with the -gui option.
• (Jan 15, 2002)  Subtitles need to have the font installed or they won't show up, and won't give you error messages.  Download a font package from the downloads page, unzip it.  Pick the font size you want (18 pt in this example) and then

mkdir ~/.mplayer/font
cp arial-18/* ~/.mplayer/font

• (Jan 15, 2002)  Now you can play movies.  The most useful options are

-dvd 1	Seems to be needed
-alang ja	Selects a Japanese language track.  (This could be other things, like "en")
-slang en	Selects English subtitles
-fs	Full-screen.  (There isn't a toggle key, apparently)
-osdlevel 0	Defaults to putting a timer on the screen (level 2);  0 turns it off
-vo gl2	Uses OpenGL video.  Avoids the NVidia blue-line bug.
-pp 0x2007f	De-interlaces and does some filtering.  You could also use -pp 0x20000 This still helps, even when using TV out.

• (Aug 11, 2002)  I did some benchmarking on my DVD drive with hdparm.  It looks like the default setting (dma off, unmasq irq on, 32 bit I/O transfer) gives 3.36 MB/sec.  Turning on DMA gives 5.70 MB/sec.  However, changing to 32 bit with sync I/O transfer doesn't help, nor does using a different DMA mode.  The biggest increase is probably through multicount, which my drive doesn't support.  That's probably why it was so cheap.  So it looks like

hdparm -d 1 /dev/cdrom

Is as good as it's going to get.  Still, it does double the transfer rate.  There's a good page at O'Reilly's site with a good explanation.

• (Apr 16, 2003)  The .90 release of MPlayer needs --enable-gui and --enable-largefiles.  The GUI is not very functional;  the preferences dialog hangs.
  

TV tuner

• (Aug 15, 2002)  Bought AVerTV Stereo TV tuner.  Place in PCI slot, then connect the audio output on the tuner card to the line in on the sound card.  On the SB PCI-128 the line-in is the farthest input from the line out.  (Or at least that's  where the input that works is).
• (Aug 15, 2002)  The required drivers already ship with Debian;  just do `modprobe bttv`.
• (Aug 15, 2002)  Make sure that X is using both the DGA extension and the Video4Lin drivers.  Change 

SubSection  "extmod"
  Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
EndSubSection

to

Load    "extmod"  # A whole bunch of useful extension, including DGA
Load    "v4l"     # Video4Lin extension

• (Aug 15, 2002)  Now set the line input to something besides ALSA's default mute with alsamixer.
• (Aug 15, 2002)  Since /dev/video is only readable by root or users of the group "video", for each user that you want to be able to watch video, do

useradd username video

• (Aug 15, 2002)  At this point you will want to install some video programs to test everything out.  The "xawtv" package provides a pretty decent TV viewer.  Specify NTSC as the video format if you live in the U.S.
  

Applications

• (Jan 18, 2002)  Tried out kword.  It looks pretty nice, but it doesn't load up Word's tables very well and the lists aren't indented properly.  Has nice options for printing, including PostScript and PDF.
• (Jan 20, 2002)  Tried out OpenOffice 6.41.  It looks pretty nice;  it opened up my (simple) table very nicely.  Indenting looked good.  Printing options looked pretty rudimentary, though.  (The executable's name is soffice )
• (Sept 5, 2002)  mp1e is a good MPEG-1 encoder.  At 4.7 Mb/s it requires about 30 MB/min for 720x480 and excellent quality for cartoons (unless it is a fast-moving scene, in which case some JPEG artifacts are visible in the stills).  AVI/Quicktime is about twice as large.  CPU usage is about 50% when running.
• (Sept 5, 2002)  In order to compile GOPchop you need to install mpeg2dec, libmpeg2-1-dev, libcpuaccel0-dev.  Now you need to download mpeg2dec and compile it.  Copy include/*.h to /usr/include/mpeg2dec and libvo/libvo.a to /usr/lib (the configure script seems to ignore the --with-libs and --with-include parameters).  It appears to load a 2 GB MPEG-1 file really slowly (it got about 15% in 20 minutes).  Compiling with gcc 3.2 didn't seem to make much of a difference.
• (Sept 5, 2002)  Video information seems pretty sparse.  Here are are number of useful sites
• mp1e.  (Debian package works)  Good, fast MPEG-1 encoder.
• mpgtx.  (Debian package works) Splits, joins MPEG files.  Works ok, but is pretty much guess and check as its times don't agree with MPlayer's.  Version 1.3 produces more playable output that (the previous version would sort of fade in to the picture, only the fade was sort of in squares).  The shell needs to have quotes around the brackets (e.g. `mpgtx -s source.mpg "[m:ss-m:ss]" -b out`)
• vcr.  Another encoder.  Looks kind of nice, but Debian's packages don't work and I couldn't get it to compile.
• dvr. (Debian's packages don't work)  Nice gui tool, but everything encodes too slowly.
• ffmpeg.  Very fast, but lousy voice synchronization.  Therefore, pretty unusable.
• sampeg.  Haven't tried this one.
  
• mjpegtools.  (Debian package works)  The encoder, lavrec, works nicely but doesn't produce MPEG.
• libmpeg.  UC-Berkeley library for decoding MPEG-1.  Can only process sequentially.
• libsmpeg.  Loki's MPEG-1 decoder.
  
• libmpeg2.  Library for decoding MPEG-2.
• libavcodec.  Included with ffmpeg.  Pretty thorough, nice API.
  
• GOPchop.  Looks like exactly what I want, but horrendously slow (at least with MPEG-1)
• This guy investigated a bunch of programs while trying to hack his TiVo.
• (Sept 22, 2002)  Using bzip2 compression on a video file doesn't help much (5% compression:  10 M on a 210 M file)
• (Apr 17, 2003)  Tried out the BasiliskII Mac emulator.  It works pretty well, but sound doesn't appear to work and the emulation is pretty fast so games like Crystal Quest are sort of hard to play.  There aren't any good installation instructions except for this site.  Basically you copy his boot disk image, format a hard drive with BasiliskII, then copy over System 7.5.3 (available from Apple) over.  If you just want to play games, though, his boot disk is just fine.
  

Development

• (Feb 3, 2002)  The Debian packages leave out setup.h.  Presumably the development package, which does include it, solves that problem.
• (Feb 3, 2002)  If you get errors with fontutil.h saying then add this to setup.h

#define    __WX_GTK__    1

• (Feb 3, 2002)  If you compile everything from scratch, make sure that /usr/local/lib is in /etc/ld.so.conf...
• (Mar 8, 2002)  Compiling xdm requires that you have the PAM developement libraries installed (e.g. libpam0g-dev) otherwise you will get errors about not finding securit/pam_appl.h.
  

Wine

MS Office 97

• Word appears to work nicely with Wine 20021031.
• Install the wine and the libwine-print (contains the winspool.drv that Word needs) packages.
• Install the MS TrueType fonts with the msttcorefonts package.  This package appears to put them in /usr/share/fonts/truetype, which seems a bit odd but it works just fine.
• Either copy or symlink the TrueType fonts to the fake windows <windows>/Fonts directory or, better, add the following to ~/.wine/config:

[FontDirs]
"1" = "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"

This will ensure that Wine finds the fonts.  Otherwise it will use the X11 fonts, which have different metrics and will mess up your page layout.

• Word will not save documents unless you use the native ole32.dll and rpcrt4.dll (available from here).  Copy the (Win98, not 2k) DLLs to <windows>/System and add the following to ~/.wine/config:

[AppDefaults\\WINWORD.EXE\\DllOverrides]
"ole32" = "native"
"rpcrt4" = "native"

• There are some problems, though:  cut and paste gives out of memory errors, moving text doesn't work, and bullets (and other symbols, like smileys) show up as boxes.
• (Feb 8, 2003)  A simple workaround for the bullet problem for printing is to print to a PostScript file, then substitute occurrences of "MT-Extra-Regular findfont\n" with "Times-Roman findfont\n" and substitute "/g0000" with "/bullet".

Printing

• (Jan 14, 2003)  Printing in Wine is done through the PostScript driver.  It requires three things to be setup properly.

1.  First, the LPTn: port must have a proper command setup in ~/.wine/config.  For example

[spooler]
"LPT1:" = "| lpr -P hp672c"
"LPT3:" = "/home/xerxes/tmp/print.ps"

Useful pieces of information

• lsmod lists modules (same as ` cat /proc/modules `), insmod inserts modules, depmod creates module dependencies, after which `modprobe module ` can be used (automatically loads modules in the right order)
• If you need to add anything to /etc/modules.conf in Debian, you should add the appropriate stuff to a file (your choice of name) to /etc/modutils and then run update-modules .
• Group ids are stored in /etc/groups .
• Default settings for X Windows programs are stored in /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults and are overriden by .Xdefaults.
• Signals (e.g. segfaults) are not translated to C++ exceptions (signals are asynchronous--can happen at any time, exceptions are synchronous).
• flex seems to choke on files that have \r\n as their EOL, so run dos2unix on them first!
• Useful tools for memory usage checking:  free,vmstat,top .  According to the top manpage, each process counts its libraries, so if a program has multiple processes, the libraries could get double-counted.  Also, the "cache" field appears to mean "disk cache".  On my current system (384M RAM, with Emacs, Mozilla .9.7, two XTerms, and gtop running), vmstat re ports that I have 30M free and 256M in cache, leading me to the conclusion that I am using about 98 M, despite top listing five mozilla processes at 30 M each (total of 150 M) and X using 184 M of memory (it appears that the video card's framebuffers or, more probably, the AGP portal size) are counted, each about 64M).  (The resident size of X is more about 18 M, which is more believable)
• X resources can live either in .Xdefaults or .Xresources, I'm not sure what the difference is.  When you edit the file, though, you need to run `xrdb -merge file` to have the changes activated.
• ldd lists the libraries a program is linked to.
• lsof lists open files.
• iso can be verified for correctness by mounting them via loopback:  `mount -o loop file mountpoint`
  

Personal Setup

• .vimrc:

" XFree86's xterm can do 16 colors, but Debian's /usr/share/vim/vimrc
" doesn't recognize this...
if &term =~ "xterm"
  set t_Co=16
  set t_Sf=^[[3%dm
  set t_Sb=^[[4%dm
endif

" Set custom colors
" You can get a list of colors with
"       :help cterm-colors
" And a list of possible groups with
"       :help group-name
:highlight Comment      ctermfg=DarkGreen
:highlight Constant     ctermfg=Magenta
:highlight Identifier   ctermfg=White
:highlight Statement    ctermfg=Grey
:highlight PreProc      ctermfg=DarkMagenta
:highlight Type         ctermfg=DarkBlue
:highlight Special      ctermfg=DarkMagenta