Technology: Art and Sound by Design
[[ubuntu_breezy]]
Last edit on Apr 11, 2006 3:09 AM by tasd

notes for installing and configuring ubuntu


making a machine dual-boot WinXP and ubuntu Breezy or Dapper

WinXP was already installed and in a partition which took up the entire disk. This is a 300Gig disk with 1 Gig RAM

  • ran Norton's Paritition Magic and resized the window's partition to be half the disk
  • run the ubuntu install and make a swap partition (2 gig)
  • make an ext3 partition, and make this bootable
  • install the Grub loader as the Master Boot Record

dual-boot video how-to: rather campy and you could get the info faster by reading it...but...amusing and has all the info.
another dual-boot how-to with GRUB

64 bit AMD OS

Debian on an AMD64

video


general

For any sort of graphics manipulations as might be done in in Pd using PiDiP, PDP or Gem, it's really important
to have 3D hardware acceleration functioning correctly. If it is not functioning correctly, the graphics manipulations
happen on the CPU of the machine instead of the graphics card. Translation: painfully slow graphics.
Here's how to check:
  1. cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep DRI
should return something about DRI being successful
  1. glxinfo | grep render
should return some like direct rendering: Yes
  1. and finally glxgears should show you some 3D gears running nice and smooth and fairly quickly.
If any of these things fail, you need to get your graphics drivers up to speed.
If using an ATI card, use the fglrx driver and you are golden.

Xtech AMD64 with K8M800 chipset

on this particular machine, the video chipset is a a VIA K8M800 which doesn't seem to work correctly with the included VIA drivers un ubuntu Breezy.
unichrome: these people make a driver?
according to the openchrome project, graphics accel is not available in unichrome. Only openchrome...
openchrome Breezy packages
is this a VIA driver?
Directions...hopefully for DRI
final solution: upgraded to ubuntu Dapper, which supported 3d accel and direct rendering for the VIA K8M800 out of the box

====MIDI
midi how-to

Pd in Breezy

It appears that the Pd binary from the repos in Breezy has a bug which breaks MIDI in and out. Pd is an easy build.
Here's the binary for Pd 0.39.2, which has JACK support and runs great with Breezy. Replace /usr/bin/pd with this file to update.

PDP, PiDiP and Gem on Pd in Breezy

(quick and dirty)
  1. install Gem, PDP, and PiDiP from the Repos.
  2. Gem out of the box is broken. To fix, replace /usr/lib/pd/extra/Gem.pd_linux in with this file.
This particular binary has shading enabled, which can cause an error in Pd about gluniformARB or something.
If you get this error, use this file instead, which has shading disabled.
  1. PDP: replace /usr/lib/pd/extra/pdp.pd_linux with this file.
  2. PiDiP: if you have a pidip.pd_linux file in either /usr/lib/pd/extra or /usr/lib/pd/extra/pidip, replace it with this file.
  3. and here are 3 more objects that are pretty great to have. Stick them in the /usr/lb/pd/extra directory:
file:gem2pdp.pd_linux file:pdp2gem.pd_linux file:pix_2pdp.pd_linux
And the help patches for these:
file:help-gem2pdp.pd file:help-pdp2gem.pd file:help-pix_2pdp.pd
If you get some dramatic error about text from PiDiP then copy this file file:helmetr.ttf
)) into a directory called /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF.
(If the directory does not exist, create it)
  1. extract this archive so all of the files in it are added to /usr/lib/pd/doc/5.reference
  2. of course, add Gem, pdp, and pidip in your startup options as libraries to load for Pd.

Building PDP from source on ubuntu

  1. sudo apt-get install libgsl0-dev libxv-dev libquicktime-dev libpng12-dev libglut3-dev
  2. cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pure-data co externals/pdp note: cvs does not work when sshing to a remote machine.
Note: Out of the CVS, pdp does not play well with some webcams. There are jumps in the video stream, probably due to frame buffer errors. To fix this:
  1. In the modules/image_io/pdp_v4l.c file: Comment out lines 49-52, 188-247 and 488-489. Edit lines 781 and 782 with your preferred default width and height. From: http://lists.saillard.org/pipermail/pwc/2005-July/000487.html
  2. in /externals/pdp ./configure prefix=/usr then make
  3. if make gives pdp_bitmap.c:472: error: invalid storage class for function '_map' then
change static inline u8 _map(s32 pixel){ to: inline u8 _map(s32 pixel){
  1. sudo make install
  2. add pdp to startup libraries in pd

Building PiDiP from source on ubuntu

  1. get Pd source: cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pure-data co pd
  2. sudo apt-get install libimlib2-dev libmagick9-dev liblame-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libtheora-dev
  3. cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pure-data co externals/pidip
  4. sudo mkdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
  5. download ffmpeg sources at http://ydegoyon.free.fr/pidip.html
  6. in externals/pidip: rm -r fonts/CVS
  7. rm -r doc/CVS
  8. ./configure --with-pd=../../../pd --with-pdp=../../../pdp/externals/pdp --with-ffmpeg=../../../ffmpeg
  9. sudo cp pidip.pd_linux /usr/lib/pd/extra/.
  10. sudo cp -r doc/* /usr/lib/pd/doc/5.reference/.
  11. add pidip to startup libraries in pd

Building gem2pdp/pdp2gem from source on ubuntu

  1. get the source: http://ydegoyon.free.fr/software.html
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pure-data co externals/gem2pdp
  1. get the source for Gem: cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.gem.iem.at:/cvsroot/pd-gem login (with an empty password)
  2. cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.gem.iem.at:/cvsroot/pd-gem checkout Gem GemLibs
  3. (you must configure Gem for the installation to work): install dependencies for Gem: sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev ftgl-dev libtiff4-dev libjpeg62-dev libmpeg3-dev libavifile-0.7-dev libquicktime-dev libdv4-dev
  4. run the configure script for Gem: autoconf then ./configure ... and might as well do make then use the new Gem.pd_linux library...
  5. ./configure --with-pddir=../pd --with-gemdir=../Gem/Gem --with-pdpdir=../pdp/externals/pdp
  6. make clean
  7. make
  8. sudo cp *.pd_linux /usr/lib/pd/extra/.
  9. sudo cp *.pd /usr/lib/pd/doc/5.reference/.

getting rid of the title bars for PDP

PDP shows a title bar and a border, which are not appropriate for video displays.
One way to get rid of them is to use a window manager. Devil's Pie is a such manager:
Breezy's version of Devil's Pie is too old. Version 0.14 was a complete rewrite and the versions before that are obsolete
Fortunately, Dapper, which is what we are using, has a binary of Devil's Pie available in Synaptic
  1. mkdir ~/.devilspie
  2. get help here

getting a black screen for PiDiP

PiDiP has a canvas object, and it would be perfect to run this in full screen mode, but this object is buggy and doesn't run efficiently.
It appears to be better to have multiple windows open in PiDiP, and then manipulate them over a black screen.
method 1:
  • use Devil's Pie to make the top and bottom panels in Gnome not "always on top"
  • open a black gif in gthumb and put in full-screen mode. It appears that gthumb's full-screen mode does have an "always on top" aspect. This might be a bug, but it is handy for this application.
  • run Pd
method 2:
  • create a new user. Switch to the new user
  • make a shortcut to the terminal window. CTRL ALT T is a good choice
  • Make the desktop background black, delete the bottom panel
  • for the top panel, remove all items and make it the color black
method 3:
  • run in X only (no gdm) and with pd -nogui option, calling the pd file from the command line

Pd externals: playlist and grid binaries for ubuntu breezy:

==Grid:
  1. sudo cp grid.pd_linux /usr/lib/pd/extra/.
  2. sudo cp help-grid.pd /usr/lib/pd/doc/5.reference/.
playlist:
  1. sudo cp playlist.pd_linux /usr/lib/pd/extra/.
  2. sudo cp help-playlist.pd /usr/lib/pd/doc/5.reference/.

comport external for Dapper

Here are the binaries:

Logochip and JAVA

  • notes about this should be on my blog.
  • I made some minor change(s) to compiler.txt. My version is here.

recompiling the kernel

(I hate this...)
the config of the stock kernel is in /boot and it is called config-Linux-blah-blah-blah
see http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=56835