Niels Horn's Blog

Random thoughts, tips & tricks about Slackware-Linux, Lego and Star Wars

Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category

rt3090 wireless adapter with Slackware 13.37

Another simple update… Or not?
This weekend I finally updated my LG X130 netbook to Slackware 13.37. This is one of my “stable” machines that I use all the time for day-to-day tasks, so I do not run -current on it, as I depend on it too much. Slackware-current is very interesting for research and testing [...]

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VHBA and RocketRaid 2320 (rr232x) modules with Kernel 2.6.37.x

Only a few days ago I was informed by a user that the VHBA kernel module – for which I maintain the SlackBuild script – stopped working with the new 2.6.37.3 and 2.6.37.4 kernels in Slackware 13.37 (actually, it’s still officially -current).
When I say “stopped working”, I’m actually being nice… It caused a fatal crash [...]

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Changing the boot logo in Slackware

Is it possible to change the boot logo in Slackware?
This is a question that pops up once in a while on IRC and the forums, and the answer is yes, but there are some little details to take care of.
I made a step-by-step how-to once for myself, so I thought I might as well put [...]

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Stuttering sound with Via HDA Intel sound chip

Fixing problems with Linux systems is something I like. I’ve been in the support business for most of my professional life, and solving a difficult problem still gives me that satisfaction
The system
Recently I upgraded a system that was still running Slackware 13.0. It’s a not-so-new system, but should be good enough to serve [...]

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NVIDIA “Failed to allocate primary buffer” error

Yesterday I installed Slackware on a computer that came with a Debian-derivative installed. Nothing against Debian, but I’m more used to Slackware, and the hard drive had enough space left…
This box is an all “no-brand / low-price” system, but has very reasonable specs: Quad-core AMD GHz processor, 4GB memory, 400GB hard drive, NVIDIA 6150SE nForce [...]

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Using a Nokia CS-10 GSM modem on Slackware

Today I received my new GSM Modem, a Nokia Internet Stick CS-10. It had the size of an overweight pen-drive and can connect (depending on your service-provider) at speeds up to 7.2Mbps (my contract only goes to 2Mbps).
Here is a picture of the modem, taken from the Nokia site:

As was to be expected, it comes [...]

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The new blog is up & running

After some DNS troubles, the new blog is up & running
Something went wrong when I canceled the “CNAME” entry in the DNS server that pointed “blog.nielshorn.net” to the old blogspot site. When I created the new “blog.nielshorn.net” subdomain I couldn’t get it to point at my own server. :-/
But with a little help [...]

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Using a 32-bits program in a 64-bits Linux environment

When Slackware released its first test version of Slackware64, I installed it on a separate partition to try it out. I was immediately impressed by the performance boost of some programs, especially some graphic programs I use.
Since I compile most programs that are not available on a standard Slackware installation from source, I didn’t have [...]

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Lego & POV-Ray on Linux

Some time ago I promised to give some basic instructions on how to create nice images of Lego constructions with POV-Ray on Linux. Now that Christmas is arriving, I finally found some time to convert my own instructions into something that can almost be called a “tutorial”
What will you need:

LeoCAD – to “build” [...]

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Monitoring your network and servers

I’ve been busy over the last few weeks evaluating some software to monitor servers, network utilization, etc. I have tested several programs and ended up using three: nagios, cacti, and ntop.
All of these are free & open software. For nagios and cacti you can download SlackBuild scripts from slackbuilds.org maintained by me. For cacti, if [...]

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