Tag: ubuntu

  • Ubuntu Hardy and Hibernate Issues

    As I mentioned in my last post I had some minor problems with Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) and hibernation. It didn’t always work.

    However it now seems like I might have overcome this problem. At first I thought it might had something to do with my docking station. Hibernating while docked, booting up while not and vice versa. The problem was that the machine would freeze during startup after being in hibernation. So to be able to actually see what was going on, I removed the splash screen, and afther this I haven’t had any problems with hibernate what so ever.

    Come to think of it, this isn’t the only time the splash screen have caused problems. I had another machine where it refused to boot as long as the splash parameter was set. Luckily, with grub, we are able to edit the boot parameters at boot. Something that wasn’t possible with LILO in the good old days.

    To remove the splash screen more permanently than editing grub at each boot. You can,would be to edit the file /boot/grub/menu.1st and remove the word ‘splash’ from the kernel parameters. Just remember that this will sneak its way in the next time you upgrade the kernel. Or rather, Ubuntu upgrades your kernel. as Stian said in the first comment, edit the line “# defoptions=quiet splash” to “#defopts=”quiet nosplash” in the file /boot/grub/menu.1st. Do not remove the leading #.

    Please leave a comment if you found this useful.

  • ThinkPad X61

    A few days ago I ordered a Lenovo ThinkPad X61 with 2GB memory option, X6 UltraBase docking station and an optical drive. It arrived the very next day, on a friday, so you can imagine the impact this had on my weekend.

    To be fair, the laptop isn’t exactly mine. It belongs to my employer, Jakob Hatteland Solutions.

    I’ve specifically asked for the ThinkPad X61 since I’m already familiar with the X-series, I own a ThinkPad X31, and so far I’m happy with it. The ThinkPad-series has the best laptop keyboard I’ve ever encountered. The same can be said about their TrackPoint, that’s why I’m so glad the X-series doesn’t have the dreadful TrackPad.

    The machine came pre-installed with Microsoft Windows Vista Business. But for some strange mystical reason it suddenly booted Ubuntu Hardy Heron. This just proves how superior these machines are.

    However, there are some flaws that needs to be sorted out. Not in the machine itself, but driver related stuff in Linux. Like wireless. My X61 has a Intel 3945 wireless card, and uses the iwl3945 driver (ipw3945 is obsolete). This workes fine at home, but it isn’t able to connect to the wireless AP at my parents. See bug #183619 in Lunchpad.

    Also I don’t trust hibernate 100 percent yet. It has failed a few times, which is a few times to much. But I’ll look more into that later. Otherwise most things seems to work straight out of the box.

    I’ll write more about this machine as I stumble upon interesting phenomenons.

    Update: Hibernate issue has been sorted out.