There's no Place Like ::1

My current laptop has a beautiful piece of crap of an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. At first I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on it and immediately switched to the proprietary ATI driver (to get more features and better support for multi-head).

However, the display always seemed sluggish.. I never use 3D or Composite, it all seemed related to 2D rendering. For instance, when I switched workspaces I often had to wait 10 seconds for windows to be redrawn.

Still, I managed to work like this for a while. One day however, I decided to try the open source drivers (it seems they have initial support for the R500 chip on this graphics board).

The good news is that is supports multi-head profiles far better than the proprietary driver (XRandR 1.2 FTW!). Still, the 2D sucked, got no 3D nor XVideo overlay…

I even thought “oh this must be an Ubuntu thing”... At the beginning of this week I managed to install Debian Unstable on this laptop, but had the same problems using the open source “radeon” driver….

On a desperate move, I’ve tried the latest and bleeding edge ATI proprietary driver. For my surprise, all my problems were solved and the card is working properly! So I decided to log here the steps I took to get the things properly (remember, I’m running Debian unstable).

Instructions

First, we have to download the latest drivers from ATI from their website Then as root run:

./ati-driver-installer* --extract fglrx
cd fglrx
./packages/Debian/ati-packager.sh --buildpkg sid
cd ..
dpkg -i *.deb

This will build deb's from the ATI distribution file and install them or your system. The next step is to build the actual driver, and for that you can use module-assistant like this:

m-a prepare
m-a update
m-a a-i fglrx

This will build and install the fglrx driver for your current installed kernel.

Then you must configure Xorg. I followed this steps:

aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=horizontal

After this I just started X and it worked perfectly. I mean, I had horizontal BigDesktop, fast 2D rendering, 3D, XVideo overlay on both displays and suspend is working like a charm.

The only problem left is that my second display has a bigger resolution that the main one. However, the ATI driver sets the second display to the same resolution as the first.

To work around this problem I just had to manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add at the Section "Device" this:

    Option "Mode2" "1680x1050" 

Replace the resolution with the native resolution of your second display. Restart X and BANG, it should work :)

Hope that this instructions can help you somehow.

This is my side of the story about the BarCampFCT event.

First of all, congratulations to the organization for selecting a great place to make the Barcamp. I never went to the FCT UNL before, but I loved the peace, the view and the weather. However, next time try not to do a Barcamp on a amphitheater.. it kills networking!

The day began with a slow start… The poor guy talking about FireHOL had the duty of waking people and do the kick off. Next talk about technique presentations by João Rico started well, but quickly became boring. I had to get out of the room and search for some coffee…

This was actually a good idea, because at the coffee break room, it was happening a lot of networking! Kudos for the cookies and the coffee, they were great! This happens to be the first time to know people and mingle around.

Next it was the lunch… the lunch was perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Congratulations for this!

Wizi arrived late, and managed twice to almost kill the barcamp. On their first talk, they asked for 5 minutes, and delivered some 20+ boring talk… Can’t help it…

But then there was halfbaked! Lot’s of great ideas about creating a new company, and lots of laughing too. Great time! TarPipe’s didn’t disappoint, although I was expecting a more practical talk about the service (/platform/product).

After more coffee and cookies, it was time to IGNITE! First I have to say that ignite sessions should have been done earlier, and the organization should be more fair and respect the speakers. Some got 10 or 15 minutes, some got 5 with auto rotating slides (killing the presentation), and then Wizi destroyed all the ignite spirit.

I managed to get 5 minutes auto-rotating slides and talked about “Debian Sucks” (it doesn’t, really!) and the OpenSSL fiasco.

Overall it was a great day, the organization deserve a great applause! I’ve got some good conversations, new ideas, met new people, and learned how a company (Wizi) can easily generate some bad buzz at an event.

Together with Tiago Pinto I’ve completed a TarPipe API for Ruby.

tarpipe is a publishing mediation and distribution platform that simplifies regular upload activities

The gem is available here and the sources are on github. It is my first released gem so feel free to send some tips and suggestions.

TarPipe is currently evolving very fast so me and Tiago will make sure our library stays up to date. Have fun doing your uploads!

Next Saturday, Barcamp at FCT. The company I work for, 7syntax, arranged for people to share some booze at the British Pub.

More details here. See you there?

This is not good news….

$ ssh-vulnkey 
COMPROMISED: 2048 b0:39:fe:46:51:0f:6b:87:24:db:af:c0:fa:d7:63:d3

and this is only my laptop…. I’m (we’re?) screwed…