News
2011-03-13: Upgrade to Squeeze and IPv6
Instead of upgrading DeskTux from Lenny to Squeeze I decided to make a fresh start and install a new VM. Because I also wanted to make a few changes in the structure of the server that seemed to be the most sensible choice.
Downtime was minimal, if I am not mistaken nobody should have noticed it.
Instead of using a headless VirtualBox installation I moved to KVM using libvirt and virt-manager. Great tools! This is due to a few reasons, the stability of VirtualBox wasn't good enough for a server and I don't like the recent Company Politics either...
On other news DeskTux is now fully running IPv6 dual stack. So any service offered by DeskTux is ready for the future ;)
2010-09-10: Downtime
Oh, how I hate it: downtime. But if there's a defective DSLAM that you're connected to there's nothing you can do but wait.
Luckily my site's not important enough, so I think not very many people will have noticed ;)
Update 2010-09-11: It seems the cause of the outage was a broken cable. Down the street they are digging for a new roundabout and of course it had to be my cable they hit...
2010-08-28: DeskTux now available via IPv6!
As of now DeskTux is also available via IPv6 under www6.desktux.nl.
Note that this is experimental as I don't know whether or not I can keep that IP address. Most likely it is to change in the future.
2010-08-27: More content
I even did it today: adding a description on how to regain a Graphical Console without the 'vga=xxx' parameter. Just as promised below! Furthermore I've been working on the categories and a little on the layout again.
2010-08-27: Updates and new content
Amazing what you get done if you are on holiday. I got quite a lot of the existing content updated and also could add new content (pages). So, make sure to check out the new content.
And there's even more to come! Since Debian Squeeze and GRUB2 you can't use our beloved "vga=xxx" parameter anymore. And especially when also using an NVidia card and also the "nvidia" kernel module, it is quite hard to get a graphical console. But it is possible though!
Updated pages
- Thunderbird
- Additions for Sunbird calendaring including sharing your calendars (e.g. in the family). Also Address Book synchronization. Both using your own WebDAV server.
- BIOS flash
- Added information for a bootable USB stick, which is more versatile than CD ISO images.
- Compiz Fusion
- Updated information for Debian Squeeze.
- NVidia
- Updated information for Debian Squeeze, also added a description of "the Debian way" for the driver installation.
New pages
- Firefox
- A description of how to set up bookmark synchronization with your own WebDAV server using Xmarks.
- WebDAV
- How to set up your own WebDAV server to use it for synchronization of bookmarks in Firefox as well as calendaring and address books in Thunderbird.
2010-08-17: Debians Birthday
is celebrating its 17th birthday this year.
Time to say Thank You Debian!, don't you think?
2010-08-16: 'Strange' Outages
My little daughter loves to push buttons a lot. I guess she comes after her dad ;)
Well, recently she found (crawling under the desk) the power button of the UPS... I tried to take counter-measures but we'll still have to see if that works.
So if you experience strange downtime from my server you know why ;)
In other news, I'll get a new IP address soon. I don't know exactly when, but due to DNS changes it can also take a little while before everything works again hen that happens.
2010-08-01: Upgrade to Mediawiki 1.16
As you probably have noticed I upgraded to Mediawiki 1.16. If you are used to Wikipedia you already know what's new. Here I will just outline the two most obvious changes:
- New theme "Vector" which provides a slicker, leaner look & feel (IMHO).
- The search field moved to the top-right of the screen, which is where visitors mostly expect a search field anyway.
For those interested just have a look at the release notes ;)
By the way: the problems with the debian-multimedia.org repository mentoined below are resolved by now.
2010-06-12: Marillat Problems
If you use my sources.list you may have noticed that you won't receive updates from the debian-multimedia.org repository.
Actually, there's been a crash and everything is up and running again. it only seems the hostname "www.debian-multimedia.org" (temporarily?) doesn't exist anymore.
As of now I assume it will be available soon. Just use the hostname "debian-multimedia.org" in the meantime. If the old name won't become available again I will change my documentation accordingly.
2010-03-27: EeePC 1005P, an odyssee comes to an end
Again: very nice work, Debian Team! I just found the EeePC 1005P Wiki page that wasn't there earlier. Because everything was working so well I really didn't actively search for it, but that page provided 2 great hints for me:
- The new kernel (available since some time) in Squeeze has patches for the WiFi card in the 1005P, so no more need for ndiswrapper!
- A boot parameter needs to be added to grub to load the EeePC ACPI scripts (those make e.g. the brightness buttons work).
The WiFi driver for the EeePC 1005P is ath9k. To get it loaded automatically if you have used ndiswrapper before, you must remove /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf!
The Wiki page says to add the boot parameter acpi_osi="Linux". To accomplish this, edit the file /etc/default/grub and find the parameter "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT". There, add this between the quotes (!) including the backslashes and extra quotes: acpi_osi=\"Linux\". Afterwards run update-grub, reboot your system and be happy :)
BTW, it is possible to use GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x600 in /etc/default/grub ;)
Archived news
For news from the previous years please have a look at the News archive.
