Nvidia-Glx-New Gutsy DV2000 Buggy

Enabling the NVIDIA drivers on my HP DV2000 with an Ubuntu Gutsy OS causes system instability. With the driver disabled the system appears to operate stably therefore I have high opinion of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbion; some new additions on the part of Canocial are rather refreshing.

While the effects associated with use of the NVIDIA driver, Beryl in particular, are enjoyable, a reliable system trumps all. I have had the best experience using Debian Etch; the NVIDIA driver compiled perfectly with the software package they provide on their website. It also operated completely stable for many months.

XBOX 360 Magnet Glue Recommendation

The first repair of my faulty Hitachi Disk Drive appears to have failed. The glue has not securely held the magnets in their intended home. It seems that the high operating temperature of the XBOX 360 requires a more durable adhesive, and according I now recommend apoxy for any repairs as such.

To recap the magnet issue is associated with their dislodgement from their mounted position in the center of the black Disk Spindel within the Hitachi drive. A strong adhesive, preferably apoxy, is recommended to ensure a secure bond between the magnets and its plastic seat.

The obvious deranged noise from the Hitachi Drive is a symptom of the magnets dislodgement and results in the Video Game Disk not being elevated above the tray; the magnets attract to a plate in the roof of the Hitachi drive, which elevates the entire disk spindle mechanism.

Ubuntu Gutsy W32Codecs and W64Codecs

At medibuntu they offer a repository with two important codecs required to play most media and DVD files. The W32Codes is for 32 bit Linux systems, and the W64Codecs is for 64 bit systems. Libdvdcss2 is for DVD playback. Simply add the proper repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list file, also add the gpg key, hit a quick sudo apt-get update, and your ready to install your much sought after media codecs.

For Feisty run the following in a command window:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/feisty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

For Gutsy Gibbon run in a command window:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Then add the gpg key with the following command:

wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

Note that this command will also update your apt system, then all you have to do is install the codecs:

sudo apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2

or:

sudo apt-get install w64codecs libdvdcss2

At Least 2 Backups

I recommend at least 2 backups of your server files. Blogs that utilize mysql database backends are extremely simple to backup. Your entire database can be saved as an sql file, therefore for a complete system backup you just need to scp your server files to another machine. For instance my setup involves two machines, a web server, a mail server, and my laptop. With the scp command I backup my files from my web server to my mail server, and then from my mail server to my laptop.

There is one interesting thing I have observed about scp: it utilizes the -P option; a capital. Whereas ssh utilized -p; in lowercase.