New System Build Notes

[tomblanford]

Just built a new Elitegroup P55H-A (Intel i5/i7 64 bit architecture) e/w a
Nvidia GTX-460 video card. This was the most difficult build I've ever
experienced. Dual boot, Win 7 & Kubuntu 10.04. The following should hopefully
save someone quite a bit of time and frustration.

On the Windows side, load gparted first and partition the HD giving Win 7
something reasonable. Win 7 install process has no option for partitioning the
HD that I could find and it will take the entire drive if you let it. Leave the
remaining section of the HD unallocated. Kubuntu will then give you the option
to set up “Parallel” installs. As for networking, Win 7 is not really
compatible with XP (is this a surprise?). To fix this problem go to -

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...nters-between-
windows-7-and-xp/

Linux Side -
Nvidia GTX-460 video not recognized by Kubuntu and no drivers loaded. Ugly
600x800 screen substituted. This card requires a proprietary driver from Nvidia
to operate correctly.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-d...53-driver.html Current
driver as of 10-11-2010
http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...DME/index.html

File/driver comes as a .run "binary" file. This means that the driver needs to
be compiled for the particular machine. Before this can happen, two apps. need
to be download and installed (I used synaptic) as follows -

a) binutils
b) gcc - the complier

Nvidia has a write up (README above) of how to install their proprietary
driver(s) but I didn't find it very helpful. Anyway, the driver above won't load
if the X server is already running soooo it's off to CLI land. The easiest way I
found was to simply boot to recovery mode and go from there.

Recovery mode leaves you at run level 1 which the .run program doesn't like so
you need to change to run level 3 which it does like.

telinit 3 - changed to run level 3

Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the driver and execute -

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.53.run or what ever the current driver file is
for the GTX-460

There is only one small problem if all this works out, the machine may still
freeze at the "Kubuntu" splash page. This is a rather well known and cursed
problem. The way I solved my stall problem was to go to -

/etc/default/grub and nuke the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" line
and then rewrite the grub.cfg file. Read up on grub2 if this looks strange to
you.

Note: This is the 2nd machine using the Intel i5/i7 architecture I've had this
problem with. Except for the chip set, the two machines were entirely different.

References -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ce/+bug/538524 - post
#44
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106368.0
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr...0vs%20GRUB%202

It helps if you do this before loading the driver. Otherwise it may be back to
CLI land again.

That leaves the wonderful world of Dolphin/SAMBA/NFS and file sharing between
machines over wired Ethernet. Forget reading about earlier versions of SAMBA and
how to configure. Under Kubuntu & KDE4, a lot has changed in this area. The best
link I found is as follows -

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...1064#msg241064

Did somebody out there say down loading and running Kubuntu was easy?

[GreyGeek]

Re: New System Build Notes

.....
Did somebody out there say down loading and running Kubuntu was easy?

Great job, DeltaDude! 8) 8) 8)

And, Yes, I did!

And, it is!

Since, after retirement two years ago, I started installing Kubuntu on peoples PCs gratis, or helping them to do so (about two dozen so far), I've encountered only two instances where the install wasn't "out of the box". The first was with a 12 year old Tecera 8100 laptop. Everything worked, but it would randomly reboot after a while, and even with Puppy 4.3.1 it was sloooowww. The second was with ICMike's IPW2200 wireless chip on his Compaq nc6120 laptop. I trashed the first one, but Mike suspects he will be visiting the wireless issue again in the future.

How's your box running? Did you have to buy a seat belt in order to avoid being blown off your chair?

[dibl]

Re: New System Build Notes

Did somebody out there say down loading and running Kubuntu was easy?

Personally, I steer clear of "easy", in the context of working with computers. Like the Uzbek language, it is only "easy" for those who already know it.

Nice writeup -- thanks. I think I can give one or two pointers, and I have a question:

- concur with removing the "quiet" and "splash" options from /etc/default/grub
- Here's relevant guidance on the nasty framebuffer problem with our Nvidia cards: http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2010...ricted-driver/
- in lieu of rebooting to Recovery mode, if you Ctrl-Alt-F1 from the Kubuntu desktop to the tty console, and (after logging in there) issue

sudo service kdm stop

then you can run the proprietary Nvidia installer
- if you first install the build-essential package and the kernel-headers package, you'll have gcc and binutils
- speaking of which, did you not need to remove all nouveau packages first?

Thanks! I'm contemplating building a new system this winter -- it's good to learn from the experiences of others.