ph-lee » kubuntu http://www.ph-lee.com aspire to inspire before you expire Sat, 29 May 2010 19:11:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 ubuntu shutdown and wakeup timer http://www.ph-lee.com/2010/01/03/ubuntu-shutdown-and-wakeup-timer/ http://www.ph-lee.com/2010/01/03/ubuntu-shutdown-and-wakeup-timer/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:59:35 +0000 ph-lee http://www.ph-lee.com/?p=266 Going green

My all-in-one kubuntu media centre and general server sits unused most of the time. So why not set it to switch on and off in sync with when I need it based on the time of day. Should save on some bills.

Requirements

Method

Setup a cron job as root to shutdown at the specified time. To edit crons as root enter the following.

sudo crontab -u root -e

Add the following line to the list. This will shut down the box everyday at 0400. Of course you can modify as needed to suit your needs. And if you want to hibernate I’m sure theres a hibernate command.

0 4 * * * /sbin/shutdown -h now

While we’re at it we’ll also set up the wakeup time using rtcwake. So also add the following to the cron list.

45 3 * * * /usr/sbin/rtcwake -m no -s 29700

15 minutes before the shutdown we set the box to wake up in 29700 seconds which equates to 8 hours and 15 minutes. So the machine is scheduled to wake up at 12 noon.

Setup

This solution might be setup dependent so here are some specs that may help…

  • Linux kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
  • 2.6.31-16-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 04:01:29 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
  • Motherboard: ASUS A7V-133 ACPI BIOS Revision 1007 (10/03/2001)

Making media centres’ greener.

]]> http://www.ph-lee.com/2010/01/03/ubuntu-shutdown-and-wakeup-timer/feed/ 0 S-Video TV out on kubuntu http://www.ph-lee.com/2009/12/22/s-video-tv-out-on-kubuntu/ http://www.ph-lee.com/2009/12/22/s-video-tv-out-on-kubuntu/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:52:02 +0000 ph-lee http://www.ph-lee.com/?p=251 The problem: ubuntu media centre that hooks up to an old TV which takes S-video. Graphics card or ubuntu isn’t capable of automatically detecting the TV.

The solution: [Bernades] has an article on how to get ubuntu to detect the tv and output it using XRandR.

xrandr --output S-video --set load_detection 1

xrandr --output S-video --auto

The problem is that this isn’t persistent and as soon as you reboot you’ll be back to square one.

[Ubuntu wiki] shows a script can be setup to run the above lines of code on startup. So in my case of using kde add the above lines of code to the following file.

/etc/kde4/kdm/Xsetup

Give your a box a reboot and your linux media centre should be configured to use your TV.

]]> http://www.ph-lee.com/2009/12/22/s-video-tv-out-on-kubuntu/feed/ 1 Upgrading ubuntu to Karmic Koala with blank black screen http://www.ph-lee.com/2009/11/07/upgrading-ubuntu-to-karmic-koala-with-blank-black-screen/ http://www.ph-lee.com/2009/11/07/upgrading-ubuntu-to-karmic-koala-with-blank-black-screen/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:30:25 +0000 ph-lee http://www.ph-lee.com/?p=215 I spent today upgrading ubuntu from 9.04 ( Jaunty Jackalope) to 9.10 (Karmic Koala). However upon restarting GRUB loads and the kubuntu load progress bar screen loads. This is then followed by a blank black screen. At first I thought the upgraded had completely flattened my machine!

The first step is to get yourself to a console where you can actually do some stuff. So do a restart and when you see the GRUB loaded screen hit ESC. You can then boot into recovery mode to get into a console.

To get KDE and Xserver to start we need to get rid of the old xorg.conf. [ubuntuforums.org]

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak

This should now get you some graphics.

Next we need to install the missing ati drivers. [launchpad.net]

sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx

After this you’ll want to configure the driver with aticonfig and amdcccle.

Hopefully after a reboot this should fix the problem.

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