Paulus’ Blog

I’ve acquired another 19″ LCD monitor from a customer who said that he no longer needed it as the DVI IN no longer functions. Setting up Dual monitors is pretty easy. Unfortunately, there’s a problem when using Linux and multiple monitors. The problem is that the window manager does not handle them correctly (or like Windows does.)

If you’ve ever set up dual monitors on a Windows machine you can ‘Attach’ the second output via the Display Properties. There is also an option that allows you to extend the desktop to the second monitor. When you extend the desktop to the second monitor and you maximize a window, the window will take up both screens. If you simply ‘Attach’ the monitor then when you maximize the window, it will fill up the screen that it is on. There’s also a bonus here, you can drag the window to the other screen with out any problems.

In Linux you can do one of two things:

1. You can extend the display to all the monitors, which will make all connected monitors one massive screen.
2. Setup individual screens. The draw backs to this is that each screen will have a separate instance of the Windows Manager of your choice, you can not run multiple instances of some programs such as Fire Fox, and finally you can not drag windows from one screen to the other.

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After installing vmware-server and vmware-modules I was not able to get vmware to start properly. When trying to start the vmware service:

# /etc/init.d/vmware start

I would get this:

* Vmware Server is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured
* for the running kernel.
* Please ensure that the modules have been compiled for this kernel:
* emerge –oneshot vmware-modules
* Also ensure Vmware Server has been configured:
* /opt/vmware/server/bin/vmware-config.pl
* VMware is not properly configured! See above.

Reading through the Gentoo forums I tried removing the /etc/vmware/not_configured file and got:

* Starting VMware services:                                            [ ok ]
*   Virtual machine monitor                                            [ !! ]
*   Virtual ethernet                                                        [ !! ]
*   Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0                           [ !! ]
*   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background)    [ ok ]
*   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background)    [ ok ]
*   NAT service on /dev/vmnet8                                      [ !! ]

I then tried:

# emerge -1 vmware-modules

unfortunately that did not work

I looked at what modules were loaded and saw that the vmmon and the vmnet modules were not loaded.

# depmod
# modprobe vmmod
# modprobe vmnet
Finally I added the following lines to the /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6

vmmod
vmnet

Introduction

I love Linux so much and my favorite distrubtion is Gentoo. I love Linux so much that I have refused to install Windows on my workstation at work because I would rather have that friendly penguin in my computer at work. Our servers unfortunately run Windows 2003 with Terminal services providing access to our POS.

Initially we used CITRIX to share our POS and setting that up was fun, and I found that printing worked a lot better in Linux than it did with Windows. Just recently we implemented a VPN that uses Netextender from SonicWall. Currently I have not been able to get my Linux Box to jive with the VPN because I am not sure of how our Admin has set everything up. I assure you this, the day will be mine soon!

In the mean time I figured I’d blog about how I installed Gentoo Linux on my workstation. In this fine machine I have:

• AMD Athlon 64 3500+
• Asus A8V Motherboard
• 4×512 (2GB total) DDR400
• ATI Radeon 9600XT
• 80 GB HD, 120GB HD, 250GB HD, 320GBHD SATA Drives

Why all the hard drive you ask? I have so many for storage of CD images, Drivers, and VMs

First things first, we do the basic install of Gentoo, the guide can be found here.

Now that I have the base system installed it’s time to install and configure the system.

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The first Chakra is the Root Chakra. This is what grounds us to the earth. People who are charismatic are more ground than others. With out grounding, people tend to feel lost and in search of a home. The feeling of being grounded usually takes place in the first 5 years of life.

The second Charkra is the Sacral Charkra. This is where sexual health is located. The author starts going into detail about how this also affects relationships. This needs to be balanced, if it is not then feminine or masculine energy will become dominant. The energy that is submissive will result in the person seeking that kind of energy in another person. Hence why opposites attract. The relationship is then built on a need rather than a want. The line between needing and wanting is so thin that it’s often confused. To need someone is unhealthy, however if you want to be with them, then the relationship will succeed after that initial flood of ‘energy’ or love for the first 3 months.

I’m currently reading about the Solar Plexus and how it all plays into the equation.

Do I believe this? Not entirely. I have my skepticism about this topic however, some of the points are valid. I’ve always believed that people generally have a tough time understanding abstract thoughts and ideas so it’s only natural to manifest these thoughts or ideas in something or someone else.

After finishing up an installation of Gentoo, I reboot into the new system only to find that it needs maintenance. The probably usually is that the hard drive is assigned a different device file during the LiveCD than when the actual system is booting up.

After providing the root password I need to edit the /etc/fstab file. Problem is that the file system is mounted in read only. So we must remount the root partition in read write.

mount -no remount,rw /

Now we can make the changes we need and reboot the system.