Yet another blog for JBKempf - Geek & Computer

Dotclear 2.4 upgrade

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0100

Yet another upgrade of Dotclear for this blog. The version is now 2.4.0.

All went absolutely fine, as usual, except the need to edit the config.php to add a line like this:

define('DC_ADMIN_MAILFROM','foo@bar.com');

And after relogging into the admin section, a new style is there, your dotclear with the same cools things and almost the same issues...

Dotclear 2.3 upgrade

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:48:00 +0200

Blog and dotclear

As you might know, I am still running a dotclear core for the blog part of this website...

The rest of the website is still some custom code written by me.

Dotclear

For some reasons, I have never moved from dotclear to Wordpress, like everyone advised me to do.

The biggest reason is probably that this blog using dotclear just works fine for me and I haven't had major issues...

If it ain't broken, don't fix it!

So, I thought that the Dotclear team was 100% dead, until this morning when I saw that there was an upgrade available. Unbelievable!

The upgrade process was hyper-simple and easy, like usual, and everything is working like before. The new administration panel is quite better looking and more clear to use.

If you see any issue, please tell me.

Ubuntu Karmic tryouts

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:04:00 +0200

Ubuntu update required

My girlfriend had a very weird bug on her openoffice and on many gtk apps, where hovering the buttons or going one page down or up wouldn’t refresh the display correctly. I have tried many things, but nothing worked correctly. She had also weird bugs while using WPA2 WiFi network.

So, instead of doing an update, as usual, I took the beta of the Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 and reinstalled the laptop.
I usually have /home on separate partitions, and that proved once again to be a good idea.

Installations

The installation went without many issues, once I fixed the Dell MediaDirect mess that screwed up the partition table. The installation was quite fast too. The new look seems quite ok, but nothing "woauw".

Then, I reinstalled it on 3 other machines.

Good

Great installation, wifi and most devices worked, without issues,
Many applications correctly installed,
Great new look for the windows and overall look,
Ubuntu Software Center seems quite a nice step forward,
vlc has moved from multiverse to universe and is up-to-date,

Bad

nVidia drivers install is still counter-logical,
Humanity icons suck. Orange ones are too much of the same, and the grey ones (WiFi and so on) are impossible to read,
F-Spot and Tomboy… .Net crap and slow… Seriously I don’t get it.

Meeting Mark and Ubunteros

For some reasons, I met Mark at a conference and said "Hi!". Nothing important, but still cool.

He made a cool talk about Cadence, Quality and Design.

Then, I met a few cool Ubuntu developers (and former DD) and it was nice, except that we had a big discussion about vlc not being in main.

Here are some of the reasons and some ‘bad faith’ comments from me:

VLC is too big for core install (haha, Mono!)
there is already one multimedia stack, GStreamer (then WTF does xine hang there?)

Anyway, it was quite cool, and this Ubuntu release seems very promising.

Debian Lenny released!

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:47:00 -0800

$subject!

Congratulation, Debian team...

And sid is now unfrozen!

New Machine

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:10:00 -0800

In order to do some Windows development for VLC, I just bought myself a new machine:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Noctua NH-U12P
2x2GB G.Skill RAM
Asus P5Q-E
Radeon HD4670
Pioneer DVD-Drive
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB
Sonata 3 Case

Issues

I had huge issues to make this working correctly.

Motherboard

First, my Asus board controller was completely broken... I couldn't boot ANY install CD and memtest was screaming so much...

I went back to the store to change it...

Graphic Card

I initially had the gigabyte HD4670, with a native HDMI output.

The fan was so load (100%) all the time that this was such a pain, I couldn't deal with it.

I went back to the store, and they changed it to another Gigabyte that had the same problem. Therefore, they gave me a Sapphire and the card has been working great so far.

ATAPI CD-ROM

Finally, I couldn't boot the Vista 64bits CD because of some issue that made the installer crash. In fact, when trying to load a driver to run the CD, the Vista64bit installer from the CD was just crashing...

I tried different stuffs, but my old DVD writer could get an improvement with the rest of the machine...

Impressions

The computer is very fast and Vista64 is not that bad... Windows still crashes way too much (one BSOD every 2 days or so, usually in USB driver or NTFS driver), but well, what did I expect?

Ubuntu migrations to 8.10

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:51:00 -0800

This post is about the new update to Ubuntu 8.10, as usual.

This narrates the few issues that I had during the process...

Ubuntu new release

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex is out since a few days, so I updated a few machines that I had around.

Those machines are mainly friends, parents and family, since I don't use Ubuntu.

This update seems to be pretty for many people on many forums...

Machines

I had 8 machines to migrate, 7 laptops, 4 of them were updating from Ubuntu 8.4 and the other had to migrate from 8.10.

Migrations

The migrations I did were always 7.10=>8.4=>8.10, because it seemed to be wiser.

Moreover, I tried both ways of using update-manager -d and edition of /etc/apt/sources.lists.

Results

8.4

The results of the upgrade from 7.10 to 8.4 were way better than when I did those updates when 8.4 was out.

I had one issue with one X.org with an outdated ATI driver, but it wasn't difficult to fix if you are not afraid of non-GUI edition of files.

8.10

The results of this migration were, as expected, not good.

Only one laptop, the one with the less packages and without Compiz worked out of the box, using update-manager.

Update

The upgrading process went bad for 3 machines, where some packages didn't want to get updated correctly, I had to use dpkg --force-all to fix those kind of issues.

Restart

The restart after upgrade were fast, and working more or less:

3 laptops work perfectly
3 of the remaining 5 have a broken X, and X taking 100% of proc or a faulting Compiz. One was ATI, the two others ones where nVidia.
3 had a non-working network stack, wireless or ethernet.
1 had no X, no wireless, no FireWire and a very slow startup;

Fixing

Most of the fixing where not difficult, but implied some of those:

X.org conffile edition
GNOME configuration files reset
Reinstallation of drivers
Deactivation of Compiz

And for the last and completly broken one, I reinstalled it from scratch.

Network Manager

On all of them, the new network manager is NOT able to connect to my FreeBox Wifi, that has been working for a long time now.

The issue is that this network manager doesn't seem to understand that a WPA2 password can be a passphrase and not only a HexaKey. Whenever I use the passphrase and fails to connect, it shows me an hexadecimal password that is not what I filed in.

Conclusion

Well, as usual, I am not impressed by the Ubuntu upgrade. It is a very good and easy-to-use distribution, but upgrading Ubuntu distribution is way more difficult than it should be.

Update to Vista SP1 (follow up) Failure 0x800F0826

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:36:00 -0800

Here I am, updating some old posts, that I had forgotten about...

Vista Update post

The first one is an update to a one-year-old post about a problem: during Vista SP1 update

Remembering the Issue

The issue was that:

And then Vista tells me it couldn't install my computer because error 0x800F0826.

And I was thinking of waiting for final release to fix it... Of course, it didn't work.

This happens when Vista Ultimate is used on a multiboot machine.

Solution

The solution was to give back the bootloader to Vista Bootloader and not Grub. So, configure again the Vista Bootloader and write changes to disk.

Then reboot and update to Vista SP1.

Reinstore Grub as your main Bootloader using the usual tools :D

Dotclear 2.0RC in may!

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:04:00 +0200

As you might know, this blog runs with dotclear2.

The Dotclear 2 development was more than slow, but they seemed to catch up lately:

Dotclear 2 announce

This is good news.

[FR]Firefox 3 beta4: ameliorations des performances

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:02:00 +0100

This is a French translation of this article on Firefox 3.

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 se prépare et approche de la release. La béta4 et sortie et fonctionne!

J'ai essayé de faire quelques benchmarks sur la bête, en me focalisant sur les performances JavaScript et la consommation mémoire.

Méthodologie des tests Javascript:

Le javascript a été utilisé et testé avec le test sunspider javascript lancé 5 fois, sur un Firefox tout neuf, tout beau.

Les tests ont été lancés en utilisant Firefox 2, Firefox 3 beta3 et Firefox 3 beta 4.

Les tests ont été lancés sous Windows XP et Linux, en utilisant 3 machines différentes.

Thinkpad T61p Core2 Duo 7500, avec 2GB de RAM
Dell Pentium 4 3,4 Ghz, avec 1GB de RAM
HP Celeron 2Ghz, avec 512 de RAM

Résulats des tests Javascript

Ces résultats sont une moyenne des 5 résultats de chaque test..

Les résultats montre une accélération nette allant de x3 à x5 en passant de Firefox 2 à Firefox 3!

En ne prenant en compte que la migration Firefox 3 beta3 à Firefox 3 beta4, on atteint entre x2 et x3!

Je ne vais détailler que les résultats moyens sur la machine la plus lente et la plus rapide, sous Windows XP afin de ne pas rallonger ce post.

Machine la plus rapide

Firefox 2 : 15688.1ms
Firefox 3 beta3 : 10016.8ms
Firefox 3 beta4 : 5158.4ms

Speedup : 304%

Machine la plus lente

Firefox 2 : 51456.1ms
Firefox 3 beta3 : 27556.2ms
Firefox 3 beta4 : 10923.8ms

Speedup: 471%

Méthodologie des tests mémoire

Sous Windows XP et Linux, j'ai ouvert un Firefox tout neuf et ouvert 4 onglets:

lemonde.fr
www.nytimes.fr
slashdot.org
pcinpact.com

Ensuite j'ai refermé le browser et ouvert beaucoup d'onglets (20).

J'ai surveillé la consommation mémoire une fois qu'elle se soit stabilisée.

Résultats des benchmarks mémoire

Je n'ai pas été impressionné par les résultats, car j'ai trouvé que Firefox 3 beta 4 consomme environ 10% de plus en mémoire que Firefox2 sous Windows et Linux en utilisant le premier test sur la machine la plus rapide. (56Mo vs 50.5Mo).

Dans le deuxième tests, avec tous les onglets, la mémoire est environ identique, mais pas moindre...

Par contre, en utilisant Firefox 3 pendant longtemps, je n'ai pas eu d'explosion de la consommation mémoire à 400Mo ou plus. Je suis en train de bosser à essayer de reproduire ce leak de Firefox 2.

Conclusion

Firefox 3 est beaucoup plus rapide dans sa gestion du Javascript, un peu mieux dans sa gestion de la mémoire (consomme plus avec peu d'onglets mais semble leaker un peu moins) et dans l'ensemble semble plus rapide (peut être juste un feeling).

Selon mes tests, Firefox 3 est plus rapide qu'Opera, que IE7/IE8beta1 dans sa gestion du Javascript.

Moralité: Utilisez Firefox 3, c'est que du bon.

Firefox 3 beta4: Performances improvements.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:22:00 +0100

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is in the works, approaching the release. The beta4 is out and runs.

I tried to benchmark it a bit, especially on JavaScript performance and memory consumption.

Javascript Testing: Methodology

The javascript has been used with the sunspider javascript test that was run 5 times, on freshly installed firefox.

The tests were run using Firefox 2, Firefox 3 beta3 and Firefox 3 beta 4.

The tests were done on Windows XP and Linux, using 3 different machines:

Thinkpad T61p Core2 Duo 7500, with 2GB of RAM
Dell Pentium 4 3,4 Ghz, with 1GB of RAM
HP Celeron 2Ghz, with 512 of RAM

Javascript Testing: Results

Those results are an average of the complete 5 times tests.

The results show a 5x to 3x speedup in Javascript performance from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3!

From Firefox 3 beta 3 to Firefox 3 beta 4, the speedup is between 2x and 3x.

I will detail the results for the fastest and the slowest machine on Windows.

Faster machine

Firefox 2 : 15688.1ms
Firefox 3 beta3 : 10016.8ms
Firefox 3 beta4 : 5158.4ms

Speedup : 304%

Slower machine

Firefox 2 : 51456.1ms
Firefox 3 beta3 : 27556.2ms
Firefox 3 beta4 : 10923.8ms

Speedup: 471%

Memory Benchmark: Methodology

On windows XP and Linux, I opened a fresh browser and opened

lemonde.fr
www.nytimes.fr
slashdot.org
pcinpact.com

Then I reclosed the browser and opened many many tabs.

I monitored the stabilized memory consumption.

Memory Benchmark: Results

I wasn't impressed by the results, because I have found that Firefox 3 beta 4 takes around 10% more memory than Firefox2 on Windows and Linux on the first test on the faster machine (56MB vs 50.5MB).

On the second test, with many more tabs, I have found that the memory is usually around the same, but not really better.

On a long way use, I didn't have any huge memleaks with Firefox using 400MB of RAM quite suddenly, but I am working on it to make it do that too :D

Conclusion

Firefox 3 is way faster in Javascript handling, a bit better in memory consumption, (it takes more memory but seems to not leak like a madman) and overall it seems faster to load pages (just a feeling), compared to Firefox 2.

According to my tests, it is faster than IE7/IE8beta1, Opera 9.5 in Javascript performance.

Then GO and USE it.

MacBook install: triple boot: linux, windows, Mac OS

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:17:00 +0100

This details the installation of a MacBook white, shipped in the beginning of 2008.

Set up Mac OS X

Updates

First before anything, update to the latest MacOS X.5.2, and all the necessary downloads... Reboot as many times as needed

Software

Then, install VLC, Firefox 3 béta, Adium and Xcode if you need it.

Done.

Quite easy, so far, no ?

Install Windows XP

Be sure to have your Windows XP SP2 CD and a legit license number.

Bootcamp

Go to spotlight, look for Boot Camp assistant or find it from your Applications folder.

Run it.

Prepare a disk space for Windows ( 16GB is ok, I think )

Quit and re-run it.

Install Windows with your CD Rom inside.

Reboot and wait during all the Windows installation that is long and needs a couple of reboots. Mine did fail once, for no obvious reasons.

Windows XP

Once you have your complete Windows XP installation, you will see a Boot Camp icon on your task bar. Keep it.

Put the Apple OS X CD-ROM in, and let it do all the installation of the drivers. It may require some reboots, but at the end, you have a very new and completely functional Windows XP!

Reboot

Do your Windows Update and reboot and again, and reboot, and again... Until nothing appears there.

Launch the Boot Camp assistant and Default Mac OS HD

Mac OS again

Reboot to mac OS. Be pleased.

Linux

This should work with any distribution and was tested with Debian and Ubuntu

Resize

Go to Applications/Utils and launch Disk Tool

Split and resize the main partition in order to have a new partition that you name Linux and format in HFS. (16GB here)

Check everything.

Reboot on linux

Put your linux live CD and reboot

Press `C` to boot on the CD

Launch your live-CD and install linux.

Install

During the install I deleted the new partition and added two in place:

One root partition /

One swap 1GB

Finish everything, reboot

You should be careful to install your grub in your linux partition and NOT in the MBR, to let reFit do it correctly.

rEFIt

On Mac OS X, install rEFIt and configure it quite quickly.

Reboot and use rEFIt to boot on linux using the "option" key.

Configure linux

You have all you want working except the wireless... Which is a Broadcom BCM4328

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Find in your Windows partition your wireless drivers:

sudo su

cp -r /media/Windows/WINDOWS/DRVSTORE/bcmwl5_**/ /root/

mv bcmwl5_*** bcmw

cd bcmw

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

ndiswrapper -l

ndiswrapper -m

modprobe ndiswrapper

ifconfig

Updates

Uncomment what is needed in your sources.list.

Reboot.

Problems

If you have any issues, like not having the linux partition shown anymore, reinstall grub on your linux partition with a live-CD.

New laptop: MacBook

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:01:00 +0100

A new laptop

I am not used to having a Mac with me, but this time has changed.

For my work on VLC, someone helped the VideoLAN project and gave us some new laptops to improve the Mac OS version. I just got one of those, when I was at the FOSDEM.

Macbook

I have one of the white Macbook, 13.3" with a 2.2Ghz proc and 2Gb of Ram, running Leopard.

I upgraded to X.5.2 and Xcode 3.0. I installed VLC, Adium, FFX 3b3 and removed some Microsoft Office crap.

Impressions

I have very gladly impressed by the product, the finition and the OS X.

However, the keyboard is not that good and the keymap horrible. \ ~ | are more than difficult to produce, and the Terminal is very bad, especially if ou want to achieve pgUp, pgDown, End, Home in VIM, in the Terminal.

Else, it seems to be as good as a Linux DE, and has nice coverflow stuffs, and many tools like SVN installed by default. The background image is ugly but I like the 3D dock.

VLC

more later :D

Linux 2.6.24, Intel 4965

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:49:00 +0100

New Kernel : 2.6.24

If you are the happy user of a Intel 4965 AGN, rejoice, the new kernel, 2.6.24 is out and has the iwlwifi drivers inside.

Remember to compile it ( Device Drivers, Networking Device Support, Wireless LAN, IEEE802.11, Intel Wireless Wifi Link Drivers in your make menuconfig ), to have the latest µcode .

If you are the owner of a T61p, remember to use the latest NVIDIA that fixes the hotkeys for brightness :D

Installing Windows XP SP3

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:25:00 +0100

Intro

After the Vista SP1 failure, I switched to my Windows XP to try to update it to Windows XP SP3.

Download

I just went to Microsoft.com and downloaded the file, which is about 340MB.

Running it on my French Windows XP didn't work because of language conflicts.

Cheating French and english

In order to modify the system installed locale language, run regedit, and then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Nls\Language registry key, and then change the value date for “Default” and “InstallLanguage” registry value to “0409“, which represent US English.

In the Control Panel, under the Regional and Language Options, Regional Options and Advanced tabs, change the language to English (US) as default format and language for non-Unicode programs. Click on “OK” when done, and then reboot the system.

Again

Then I re-run the program and it seems to work perfectly.

Reboot, some blabla during a longer than usual startup and it boots perfectly.

Half of my system is in english now, but I so don't care.

However, on start it did asked to reinstall Windows Live Messenger 9 beta... Don't ask me why.

Conclusion

It works perfectly but it doesn't seem to change anything.

Update from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows Vista Ultimate SP1

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:55:00 +0100

This blogpost will be linear, following my progress of installation:

I did download the SP1 RC from Microsoft Website. This package is around 440MB. It took the French Version because my Vista Version is in French.

As I don't really use Vista at all, this is almost a clean installation of Vista.

Start

Once launched, the exe warns you that you need at least 7Gb of disk (sigh!) and that it can take up to one hour!

After a problem-less process and 15minutes of slider progression, the system reboots.

1st reboot

The start of the computer is a bit longer than usual. The usual 'Updates configuration' screen is shown. And it reboots another time without letting me log in.

2nd reboot

The system reboots for another long start, and yet another 'Updates configuration' screen instead of the login is shown. But then I can log without any problem.

Failure 0x800F0826

And then Vista tells me it couldn't install my computer because error 0x800F0826.

Googling it didn't really helped...

Let's try again. Re-check that my Vista is up to date. Reboot.

Try again

So I restarted the whole process. Reboot. update. Reboot automatically. Updates. Same error.

Conclusion.

I am not a computer illiterate, I have a legit Vista Ultimate Version, I fully made the updates before and follow the process like documented, but it still fails. I could try to read the logs or anything, but I won't. I'll wait for the official release.

Update

Solution can be found here:

Setup a thinkpad T61p: part , installing linux

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:23:00 +0200

Insert a CD of Etch Net Install.

At the command line, fire expertgui at start.

Choose language and set the keyboard. Go on with CD-ROM detection. Continue, continue, and continue.

Choose the Intel Pro Ethernet as your primary interface, launch the DHCP detection.

Partition your drive with / in sda5, swap in sda6 and /home in sda7 in ext3. Save and format the drives.

Continue with the timezone (automatic) and the clock (automatic).

Create the users and go on to install some packages...

Install grub on (hd0.2) and reboot on gparted.

Set the flag boot on the ext3 partition and reboot.

vi /etc/apt/sources.list add deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian unstable main non-free contrib deb-src http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian unstable main non-free contrib

apt-get update && apt-get dist_upgrade wait

apt-get install vim zsh build-essentials ssh aptitude deborphan localepurge xserver-xorg apt-get install gnome or kde reboot

Here is the lists

Kernel

I advice you to use the 2.6.23-rc9 kernel in order to have a proper audio support :D

Video

USe the latest NVIDIA driver, it works flawlessly.

Wifi

Down the driver AND the ucode on this page: http://intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi&n=downloads

tar xvf ../iwlwifi-4965-ucode-4.44.1.18.tgz cd iwlwifi-4965-ucode-4.44.1.18 cp *.ucode /lib/firmware

tar xvf ../iwlwifi-1.1.17.tgz cd iwlwifi-1.1.17 make; make; make install modprobe iwl4965

fingerprint.

Downlod thinkfinger in http://sourceforge.net/projects/thinkfinger/

apt-get install libusb-dev libpam-dev

tar xvf thinkfinger.tar.gz cd thinkfinger/ ./configure ~~with-birdir=/etc/pam_thinkfinger~~ with-securitydir=/lib/security make make install

Follow the rest on http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader_with_ThinkFinger

Setup a thinkpad T61p: part 1, dual boot XP/Vista

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:17:00 +0200

Introduction

I will here and in a few future posts explain how to set your computer up. And how to do it correctly.

First part is about using Vista and XP at the same time.

Rescue Disk

Run the thinkvantage Rescue System:

Start, All programs, Thinkvantage, Create Recovery Media.
Do the rescue disk creation. You will need 1 CD-ROM and 2 DVD-ROM

Reinstall

Use the rescue disks to reinstall it, to avoid some crap and to be sure you will be able to do it again, in case you screw something up.

It'll also able you to resize a bit better your NTFS partitions.

Resize the NTFS partition

When you seem to have done the most of the process,

Use gparted or its liveCD to resize your main NTFS partition. I shrinked it to 25GB, but you can do otherwise. You might have some problems rebooting after that resizing. Using a Vista DVD, repairing the computer will fix this.

Vista Boot

Boot your Vista, update Windows, update the Thinkvantage System Update, reboot, reboot, and reboot again. And once more, if you want. :D

In your Management console, that you can find on "Computer>Right click>Manage>Disk Management", create a new NTFS disk for Windows XP. I have given it 10 GB.

There, insert a CD-ROM, and rename the letters of your CD-ROM to E:, and give the D: to your Windows XP partition.

Reboot twice.

Vista steps

Deactivate the message center in your taskbar, Uninstall Norton crap if it is back again, and maybe Diskeeper. Reboot.

Install XP

Enter the BIOS with the F key at boot time. Go to Configuration -> SATA. Change the option from AHCI to Compatibility.

Save. Reboot.

Do it as you do it normally (but way faster than you used to...).

Install the ethernet drivers that you did download previously on lenovo website. Update windows, reboot. Reboot and reboot. Install Graphic drivers. Reboot.

Install Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, VLC media player, 7-zip. Remove MSN, Outlook express. Reboots...

Boot finish

Install VistaBootPro and set it up correctly. Then profit of your computer

Review of Thinkpad T61p

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:19:00 +0200

Introduction

I have just bought a new computer, a Thinkpad T61p, and I will review it here and a bit more on this blog.

I have dealt with T series for some time now, working in Dassault Systemes in Tokyo in an internship where I repaired Thinkpad that were out-of-warranty; but also, when working in VIA Centrale Réseaux, where I negociated Thinkpad contracts for Centrale Paris Students and dealt with all the selling, and some repairing. Therefore I am not a newbie concerning Thinkpad laptops.

Specifications

Core 2 Duo 7500
2 GB of RAM
15,4" WUXGA non-glossy screen (1920x1200)
Geforce Quadro FX570 256MB (Can use up to 1 GB)
HD, DVD writer, keyboard, etc...
Fingerprint reader
Media Card reader.
Bluetooth, Wifi a/b/g/n. Ethernet 1000
Windows Vista Ultimate ( yeah, I know... :'( )

First hardware impressions.

External

The 16/10 screen make the laptop more wide than usual, but thinner.
The quality of the whole computer is good, even if there is more plastic than before, and it seems still very resistant :D
The link between the screen and the laptop is still in metal, and not in plastic like other computers...

News (for me)

Older thinkpad used to have 2USB, they got a third one !
The Firewire port is very discrete.
The on/off wifi button is quite nice.
The card reader is very discrete too, compared to other laptops and external card readers... However, I am not sure it reads my old SD Cards, yet
Fingerprint is a gadget to me, but might be cool to geek it on Linux :D

Cons

Still no DVI, but a VGA port...

First Start

Woaouw effect

Gosh, the screen is not great, it is awesome, I have hardly seen a higher quality screen. It is the LG/Philips version, and not the Samsung one, for those who wander (Two different screens exists on T61p, the samsung one is supposed to suxx). There are no light leaking, and the precision of 1920x1200 is great. And no, it is NOT too small...

Under Vista, it shows in a very good shape and the graphic card has some good results in games.

Moreover the screen seems to be very well calibrated.

Windows Vista.

Well, windows Vista seems prettier than XP. But slow as hell. I guess I will reinstall it soon.

There is not so much crap on it, except some Norton and Office trial. Some thinkvantage applications might go away, but that is fine.

The computer did not need many restarts to be usable and I had a 4.8 Score in the Vista Performance Center. The graphic card scored a 5.9 under the performance thing. Woauw. Too bad I won't play games. :D

Rescue

There is a lot of rescue and save your data programs in the thinkvantage thing. I'll see what I will remove, because of the hidden partition, when I will install Linux. And I did recreate the rescue Disks.

Next time, I'll install GNU/Linux on it.

Migration time - Ubuntu-debian

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:43:00 +0200

This is just a post to tell the results of debian and ubuntu machines migrations.

Debian's update are not so perfect, and Ubuntu's update are worse.

Debian and Ubuntu migrations

Spring has begun a few weeks ago and the big migration time started during april.

GNU/Linux Debian etch 4.0 was out early April and Ubuntu (GNU/Linux too, even if they don't admit it :D) too with feisty 7.04 version.

I had to migrate a few machines. I am not what you can call a n00b about linux ( and debian ) administration...

Ubuntu

I had four machines to migrate (mostly my family's computers). Three were running edgy (6.10), and the last one was still running dapper (6.06).

Edgy

Well, I tried to migrate those with the GUI thing. One achieved it. The two other failed to launch. So I migrate those with the terminal ( that was the most natural thing to do for me... ).

Results Well, the one I migrated with the GUI just rebooted did not have any wifi. A bit of /etc/network/interfaces tweaking did the trick.

The other one did not had any X. ATI drivers failure or something... It took a bit longer to make it work... But definitively, my sister wouldn't have been able to do it.

The final one did not want to boot at all... grub tweaking, updates and kernel modules updates but finally it went correctly. Not so difficult after all.

Dapper

Come on! That was a complete failure. I know I shouldn't update from dapper to feisty but still... Complete failure

Debian

Sarge

I had three different machines to migrate.

Nothing important to notice on the servers (mainly except postfix and nut).

The desktop one was a bit trickier, especially, X.org configuration and GNOME setup. Grub was fun, as usual... But well, not so difficult.

Comment retrouver ses données en plus de 30 secondes !!!

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:38:00 +0100

For english readers How I bought a very similar Hard drive and exchange electronic components between the disks to get my data back !

Bon, la dernière fois , j'avais perdu toutes mes données sur un crash de PC.

J'avais donc perdu

Mon disque principal (Mail, Documents, Systèmes, Projets en cours...)
Mon disque de backup
Mon disque de photo avait des erreurs...

Bref, en gros, plus de mail, plus de contacts, plus de documents, et presque plus de photos.

Et mon disque principal ne s'alimentait plus, il était grillé !

Un nouveau disque dur.

Grâce à eBay, j'ai retrouvé, grâce à mon ami Prof, un disque dur dont les caractéristiques techniques étaient identiques, et les numéros de séries, les PCB et le WDM très proches!

Quelques jours plus tard, après un retard de la poste ( sigh ! :D), mon nouveau disque arrive à la maison.

Réparation

L'opération la plus dure, fut de démonter les deux parties électroniques, de les interchanger et de les remonter inversées, de resouder les disques et de rebrancher tout dans le bon ordre .

Et ça a marché, je suis trop content. J'ai tout de suite allumé mon graveur pour refaire des sauvegardes plus récentes que les dernières et j'ai presque tout récupéré!