ubuntu makes baby jesus cry

[solarbird]

i hate ubuntu studio so much

(networking's gone again, only this time it took sound with it. NO SOUND DRIVERS FOR ME ANYWHERE HA HA HA HA FUXX0R J00. I don't think I can fix the sound thing without the network, but all my network config stuff disappeared too! ndiswrapper -l says drivers installed and running! modprobe ndiswrapper says FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found. O HAI I JUST FUCKED YOU AGAIN HOPE THAT'S OKAY THX)

eta: for the moment, at least, things are back to where they were as of Saturday.

Comments

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

I take it darthfrog wasn't able to help? :(

[solarbird]

I haven't heard from him - did he send mail or something that I haven't seen?

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

I will politely poke him again for you.

[darthfrog.livejournal.com]

Would you like my help?

[solarbird]

Sure! Here's where I've been talking about my sound problems:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1278564

...and to go Page 2 of that thread to see where I start talking about this morning's explosion.

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

Damn. I feel partially responsible because I championed it so much!

:-/ Hope it gets resolved. (Have you upgraded to the new beta version? Or.....fuck, you need networking for that. FAIL.)

[solarbird]

I'm gonna get the 8.04 DVD-ROM and point apt at that and see whether I can make anything go.

This is seriously insanity-making. Every three weeks this thing blows up in some new and random way. I really wish I could afford a nice loaded OSX box.

[discogravy.livejournal.com]

are you doing apt-updates (or are they cron-jobbed?) if you're not changing stuff in the software, it shouldn't break for no reason (other than bad hardware)

[solarbird]

Security updates have hosed me several times, yes.

[discogravy.livejournal.com]

I've got the impression this is a dedicated machine strictly for recording; iIf this isn't your primary workstation for web surfing or server duties, can you just hold off on the security updates? I'm not very familiar with ubuntu's bug-tracking of debian security fixes (or their own sec updates) but debian's stable tree shouldn't cause that much damage (or change that often, really,) so I'm assuming this is something ubuntu-specific and therefore not system-critical. Keeping the machine un-updated until at 9.10 comes out might not be ideal, but it's certainly better than pulling your hair out.

[solarbird]

It sits on t3h int3rnets for hours at a time (I don't shut down when doing other things, tho' it does drop into power-saving mode) and I will web-browse on it some. And yeah, it's not like it's a primary target - that's Windows, of course, just because Windows is, what, 90% of desktops? - but.

The good thing about still being on 8.04 - and I'll be staying on 8.04 until support stops, when I'll move to 9.04 - is that the updates come less often. It was a real spew at first, still, last autumn.

[l33tminion]

Why do you use Studio instead of the standard Ubuntu distro? Are you using the realtime kernel (which Studio installs by default)? (Has "-rt" in the kernel name in the boot menu.) If so, you might want to try running a standard kernel instead.

I tried using Ubuntu Studio once and had all sorts of random problems with the realtime kernel and laptop wireless drivers.

[solarbird]

I am using the realtime kernel, you kind of need to in order to get decent audio performance. I've tried without the realtime kernel and audio performance was much worse.

Right now, of course, the entire machine may as well be a boat anchor as it has no networking AT ALL and no sound AT ALL and I can't get it to look at the DVD-ROM to reinstall network packages.

[l33tminion]

you kind of need to in order to get decent audio performance

Strange, I've never had any problems with audio on Ubuntu. Are you doing something more intensive than playing movies / music? Regardless, can you get network / DVD functions working by booting into a standard kernel (or a previous version of the realtime kernel)?

Also, you can't get wired internet up? What do you get when you plug in a connected ethernet cable and run "ifconfig eth0"?

Right now, of course, the entire machine may as well be a boat anchor as it has no networking AT ALL and no sound AT ALL and I can't get it to look at the DVD-ROM to reinstall network packages.

If you have backups, you might want to try doing a clean install from the latest Ubuntu.

[solarbird]

Strange, I've never had any problems with audio on Ubuntu. Are you doing something more intensive than playing movies / music?
Um, yeah. I'm a musician; this is my studio computer, my DAW. I use it for multitrack recording, mixing, all sorts of shit.

Also, you can't get wired internet up?
No wire to here. I got wireless going again! For, um, 20 minutes. Then it quit. (Entirely. At least this time, the network monitor showed that.) I'm restarting now to see if I can get it back.

[solarbird]

Oh and if I did clean installs every time Ubuntu Studio puked up its guts I'd be doing clean installs about every three weeks. Yeah, that's fun.

[l33tminion]

Huh, looks like those realtime kernel bugs weren't just my old laptop... They evidently were having some serious trouble with that in 8.10. It might be worth upgrading to 9.04, although that has some issues, too.

[solarbird]

Yeah, wow, doesn't work with dual-core processors! Yeah I'll keep my dual-core machine away from that, thanks.

I'll hold off on 9.04 until 9.10 comes out, because that's about how long it took to make 8.04 stable.

ndiswrapper?

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

Ugh, ndiswrapper is a hack to make Windows network drivers work in Linux. THAT is your network problem. Get rid of that and things will be better.

Of course, getting rid of ndiswrapper requires having a network adapter natively supported by Linux, but those are becoming rare these days. Maybe get a more recent Ubuntu?

Re: ndiswrapper?

[solarbird]

Yeah, I know what ndiswrapper does.

8.10 rt kernel h8s dual-core processors, 9.04 is still reportedly a flakefest of epic proportions (see l33tminion links above).

I have no interest in running ndiswrapper if I don't have to, but this is the card I have. The rtl8185 is supposedly supported out of the box (says here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupported ), but then in the real world, I couldn't get it to work without using the rtl8185 WinXP driver plus ndiswrapper. (I found source for a linux-native driver but couldn't get it to compile. Result: fukkit.)

Re: ndiswrapper?

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

I suspect that ndiswrapper or the Windows driver don't deal well with the realtime. And I assume you've tried the Linux driver on Realtek's site, though who knows if that would work better.

When I said Linux-supported network adapters are rare, I forgot to finish my thought; I actually meant the reverse, that it's getting rarer for adapters NOT to be supported. If you can swap out your network adapter for one natively supported (e.g. Intel is well-supported), that'd be the best thing.

I just don't trust any drivers not part of the mainline kernel. Especially when you're doing something nonstandard like realtime.

(I'm surprised and disappointed to learn that Ubuntu Studio 9.04 needs so much work to be usable for studio work. Seems a little pointless to have a separate "Studio" version in that case.)

Re: ndiswrapper?

[solarbird]

I approve of your icon very much right now.

There is a Linux-native driver for the 8185. I tried compiling the Realtek source, last year; this did not proceed well at all. (It at least was at the time all RedHat-specific.) Then all commentary I found on it via Google said it sucked and to use the ndiswrappered NT driver instead. But I don't know about specific rt-kernel interactions.

Re: ndiswrapper?

[solarbird]

Oh btw, remember this? Anyway, I decided to pull the wireless card entirely and use an old ethernet to 802.11g external gateway box I'd bought for the XBOX at one point, and see if that helped. The networking became stable (so ndiswrappered 8185 was indeed not happy in rt apparently) but latency issues did't improve. Frustrating!

Re: ndiswrapper?

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

Well, at least that's some progress. Sorry it's not enough.

But hey, the good news is that Ubuntu 9.10 comes out in two weeks, so you'll have a whole new installation to try out. (Can you test with live CDs rather than doing total installs?) I also wonder if any other distributions are set up for studio work.

Re: ndiswrapper?

[solarbird]

Yeah, the problem with that is somewhere along the line I actually need to do some, you know, recording. Which I am.

The consensus (such as it is) on the Ubuntu forum is that Somethin' Ain't Right and I need to do a clean install on an new partition. But I have no spare HD or blah de blah de nobody cares. I got the latency down to 70ms(ish) and the software seems to adjust for it, so I'll deal.

[daspatrick.livejournal.com]

I realize this is super-obnoxious, but my Mac's always been solid as a rock for recording music - also pretty much plug-and-play....

[solarbird]

Oh, once we dig out of the remaining medical debt and have rebuilt savings, an OSX tower and appropriate sotware is very, very high on the buy list. Very, very, very high.