Tag: Debian

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Linux

Compile 3.9 Kernel on Debian 7 Wheezy for Lenovo X230

Reason for compiling your own kernel

Debian Wheezy out of the box installs the Linux 3.2 kernel which was released back in January 2012. The 3.2 kernel is marked as longterm by the kernel team and will be supported until 2016. That’s probably the reason why Debian chose to release Wheezy with the 3.2 Kernel. However most newer hardware (released after January 2012) will not properly be supported by this kernel. The Intel HD4000 graphics chip in my Lenovo X230 suffers from lock-ups while using the 3.2 kernel. These problems were fixed in the 3.4 kernel (Intel provided a new graphics chip driver). The following commands will compile and install the latest available kernel from kernel.org (v. 3.9.4 at the time of writing)

Prerequisites

The following packages are needed to compile your kernel 

$ sudo apt-get install kernel-package fakeroot build-essential ncurses-dev

Download the new kernel from www.kernel.org

(replace 3.9.4 with current version number) 

$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.9.4.tar.bz2

Extract the archive and cd into it 

$ tar xvf linux-3.9.4.tar.bz2
$ cd linux-3.9.4/

Compile the kernel

Base the kernel config on your current configuration 

$ cat /boot/config-`uname -r`>.config
## OR (depending on your current kernel)
$ cat /boot/config-3.2.0-4-amd64 > .config

$ make oldconfig

Remark: you’ll be asked quite a lot of questions (newer kernel contain more options and tweaks). If in doubt, choose the default answer.

Create the kernel related debian packages 

$ make-kpkg clean

Compile the kernel 

$ sudo time fakeroot make-kpkg -j4 --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers

replace 4 with the amount of available cpu-cores

Install the new kernel

$ sudo dpkg -i ../linux-image-3.9.4_3.9.4-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb ../linux-headers-3.9.4_3.9.4-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb

Reboot and select the new kernel in grub

Categories
Linux

Monitor HDD Temperatures in Debian

Modern storage drives (harddisk/ssd) support S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) and allow to examine the current drive status through a standardized interface. The design goal during S.M.A.R.T’s development was to anticipate drive failures before they actually happen. HDDTemp utility can read out the temperature of your hard drive by reading the data from S.M.A.R.T

Install hddtemp

To install hddtemp under Debian/Ubuntu enter the following command into a terminal. 

$ sudo apt-get install hddtemp

You can also perform source code installation. Download the source code tar ball here.

$ tar -jxvf hddtemp-0.3-beta15.tar.bz2
$ cd hddtemp-0.3-beta15
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Monitor hard disk temperature

To see the temperature for /dev/sda, enter the following command: 

# hddtemp /dev/sda

##Output
/dev/sda: Hitachi HDS723020BLA642: 36°C
# hddtemp /dev/sd[a-k]

##Output
/dev/sda: Hitachi HDS723020BLA642: 37°C
/dev/sdb: Hitachi HDS723020BLA642: 38°C
/dev/sdc: Hitachi HDS723020BLA642: 38°C
/dev/sdd: Corsair Force 3 SSD: 128°C
/dev/sde: WDC WD2003FYYS-02W0B1: 37°C
/dev/sdf: WDC WD2003FYYS-02W0B1: 37°C
/dev/sdg: WDC WD2003FYYS-02W0B1: 39°C
/dev/sdh: Hitachi HUA723020ALA640: 35°C
/dev/sdi: Hitachi HUA723020ALA640: 35°C
/dev/sdj: WDC WD2003FYYS-02W0B1: 41°C
/dev/sdk: WDC WD2003FYYS-02W0B1: 41°C
Categories
Linux

Dropbox error about monitoring file system

On Linux, the Dropbox client or in general all applications are subject to a default file system limit regarding the number of directories and files an application can monitor for changes.
Dropbox sooner or later will notify you with the following warning:

“Unable to monitor the filesystem – Please run: echo 100000 | sudo tee /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches and restart Dropbox to correct the problem.”

The Linux version of the Dropbox desktop application is limited from monitoring more than 10000 folders by default. Anything over that is not watched and, therefore, ignored when syncing. There’s an easy fix for this.

# increases the max-file-watch limit 


echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=100000 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

# to apply the changes without restarting 


sudo sysctl -p
sudo dropbox stop
sudo dropbox start
Categories
Linux

Unbranded Firefox in Debian

Mozilla Firefox is a widely used web browser in many GNU/Linux distibution, including Debian OS. Debian uses a slightly patched version of Firefox and due to the brand/name restrictions isn’t allowed to call their version Firefox anymore. Therefore, Debian re-brands the Firefox browser and calls it Iceweasel. (Same restrictions apply to Thunderbird which is called Icedove)

Iceweasel is Firefox, only with different name and logo. It performs exactly like Firefox and the extensions/add-ons are 100% compatible.

Manually Installing Firefox

Download Firefox

Download the latest version of the unbranded Firefox from Mozilla’s Website:
Link on their Website to 32bit builds: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/
For 64bit builds for Linux goto: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest/

Install Firefox

#copy firefox tarball to /opt 

sudo cp firefox-*.tar.bz2 /opt

#change to /opt directory 

cd /opt

#extract tarball 

sudo tar -xvf firefox-*.tar.bz2

#remove the tarball 

sudo rm firefox-*.tar.bz2

Create Symbolic Link for Startup

If you previously had Iceweasel installed the file /usr/bin/firefox might already exist. On further inspection it’s just a script:


#!/bin/sh

FIREFOX="$(which $0)"
[ -x "$FIREFOX.real" ] && exec "$FIREFOX.real" "$@"

exec iceweasel "$@"

Basically it means if a file called firefox.real exists the shell is going to execute the firefox.real binary otherwise it will start iceweasel. Therefore create a symbolic link to /usr/bin/firefox.real 


sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.real