I tested Windows 7, Jolicloud, Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick, and Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid on my new Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (1012) Netbook.  First let me say, Window 7 on this netbook is barely usable. If you wait for the OS to finish booting, which takes at least 5 minutes before all the background processes finish loading, then it operates *Ok*.  But to be honest, I didn’t want to run this thing with Windows from the start.  Biggest reason…  from initial power on, it takes 3 minutes and 13 seconds to boot, connect to Wifi, and have your home page open.  WHAT!  Are you kidding me?  That’s just way too long for something that you want for some periodic web use.  And remember, that’s Windows 7 without any Antivirus software loaded up (at least any that I saw from a fresh Dell install from factory).  Once you load up some basic programs, Antivirus, Dropbox, backup software (I prefer Crashplan, but you could consider Dropbox just for essentials.), Office, just basic stuff for any Windows system, it’s going to slow down even further.   I don’t expect much from this little, underpowered Atom-based, mini laptop, but it should be something reasonable to use.  I think another post is coming for “My advice on buying a Netbook, for non-Geeks.”

So… I didn’t like the idea of Windows on my netbook. I am a Linux/Unix guy anyway, and I know there’s been some big improvements in the Linux Desktop area.  I use Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid as my primary desktop and laptop OS anyway, and I love it.  ( I still have a secondary Windows 7 system though.)  I wanted to give Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10 Maverick a try. I installed it, and immediately noticed something, I had no wireless.  Man, still!  For the last 1 to 2 years I’ve tried netbooks with Linux based OS’s and they always have issues with the wirless!  And to make it worse, getting the wireless to work looked easy, but it didn’t work. The “restricted drivers” in Ubuntu didn’t want to load. I did get everything working, but Maverick has some major issues that drove me nuts.

Maverick netbook version uses that nice looking, and clever user interface called Unity.  But I had a very hard time with it.  For one, I couldn’t add my own launchers.  Right click menu’s didn’t work, and it customizing it, if you even can, was very difficult.  For two, it crashed constantly!  For three, once I added the current Apt updates, the whole thing slowed so much I could barely operate it!  Maverick was such a pain to use, I just formatted and loaded Lucid after wasting over a day of tweaks and adjustments.

I will say this, Ubuntu Maverick did boot quickly. Times below are from initial power button, which includes BIOS POST.
- In about 50 seconds I had a desktop.
- 1:13 I saw the Wifi connection established
- 1:27 the web was launched and home page loaded.
Not too bad, in my opinion.

However, continuing with Maverick was a NO-GO.  Next, I installed Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid. Install was easy, just like Maverick, but I didn’t see the crashing, it got all the updates and didn’t slow to a crawl, and most importantly, the Restricted Drivers for the Broadcom Wireless adapter loaded without an issue and connected right away.  NICE! Even better, the boot times were almost identical to Maverick! Including waiting 20 seconds for the Dell to POST, it was about a minute and a half and I was online surfing.

Of course, I’ve also heard recently that there’s this OS called Jolicloud.  So I had to test that out too.  I guess its Ubuntu 10.04 based, so should be easy and familiar for me.  And it was! Install didn’t work using their USB creator. I had to get a separate tool and do a manual USB disk creation of their ISO, but I am not complaining about that because you have to deal with this for all the Linux-USB-netbook installations.  It just didn’t use their own USB creator as described on their website and required more steps, but still easy.

Jolicloud installed effortlessly on the netbook! I had pre-allocated about 30G of free space on the hard drive just for this. When install ran, it asked if it could install into the free space, I said Yes, and it was easy from there.  You do have the option to resize and change the partitions if you want, I had done this previously with Ubuntu in my case.  Install took same amount of time as Ubuntu,and I think was about 20-30 minutes.

Initial boot asked for user credentials and to create an account with Jolicloud.  You can even use Facebook login with it, but the base Linux still requires a user account.  I think the developers don’t really intent it to be used by more than one person, just for ease of use.  But I wanted my family accounts on there, so I created one for each, which is a little odd and buggy process. (it didn’t work right away, gave me an error, looked like it was crashing, but then did actually work with a disabled account.)

Best thing about Jolicloud was, THE WIRELESS JUST WORKED!  I love it!  Install was easy, system booted, and I clicked the icon to use my Wifi connection.  Nice!  Even better, I was online and adding their apps easily and everything just worked in that area.  For most people, this is all you need.  It installed and things get you online and functional with ease.  Next best thing… it boots with the same times as Ubuntu!  In about 1 minute 30 seconds, I am online and browsing, from the moment I pushed power.

Two things I don’t like about Jolicloud.  1. Suspend doesn’t seem to work, but that may not be the fault of Jolicloud, and rather a driver issue or Dell issue.  Hibernate works great, so I setup the system to use that on lid close. (which takes about 17 seconds to power down).  2. They seem to want you to use their apps.  I can understand that, but this is Linux,and I like to geek-out!  I couldn’t find a way to make a launcher, anywhere, for specialized apps.  In my particular case, I was using Netbeans, which installed fine, but there was no way to launch it, except to A) use command line, or B) browse to the folder and double-click the launch script.  I have other apps that may be an issue with this. I don’t like it,and I don’t like being confined to their launcher interface. Although, their user interface is very nice and for most all other operations it works very well and I like it!

Also, I don’t think they recommend it, but I used “apt-get” easily with no configuration. Everything I wanted to load with apt, worked without issue, so far.  I installed Mercurial, Apache2 and PHP5 to run a testing web server. Yes, I know, why would you do that on a Netbook?  Well, because, my son and I are playing with Javascript and PHP, and the netbook is really handy for him to play with while I use my laptop next to him.  Its fun!  Plus, with Jolicloud, using their built-in app install UI, they have about a Gazillion games and there’s lots to do on there for a kid.

So far, for me anyway, I am really liking Jolicloud. For most people, they’ll like it too, and its faster than Windows and you don’t need to deal with AV software. Not that you can’t get spyware or viruses, just that its not Windows, where you WILL get one without AV.

As for the Dell Mini 1012 netbook, I like it!  It’s got a nice, high-res display at 1366×768, unlike most netbooks that have only 1024×600. It’s battery is great too, and so far is lasting close to 5 hours. (probably average about 4 hours)  And with hibernation and only periodic use, it goes a couple days till I need to charge. Charging is slow though!  The keyboard is a little small for me, but usable.

This is not a post about comparison with an iPad, but I just have to say, even though I like this netbook and Jolicloud, it will only have limited use.  Now that my family has had an iPad for about 9 months or so, they don’t really want to use the netbook.  Main reason being… even with fairly quick boot time and ease of use, the iPad is WAY FASTER and easier to get online!  There’s also a “cool” factor, but even my anti-technology wife, she insists on using the iPad.  They all like it for that reason more than anything, that it powers on and you are online in literally a few seconds.  Also, the batter needs charging about once a week for us on the iPad.  I should also say, there’s no logins, weird moments where you need to “wait for that thing to show you are online”, or confusion about what to click and where to go. For the non-tech people, the iPad is hands down the best casual web device.  My kids use it for super quick Facebook checks and updates, my wife handles her recipes and does quick web lookups, and all if it without any of my help, and all of it very fast and easy.  A netbook, even with Windows, just doesn’t even compare.

If any of you readers have further questions regarding Jolicloud or Ubuntu Lucid or the Dell Mini, just comment and ask. I have the 250G drive loaded with all 3 in a triple boot setup, so I can probably check for specific issues if you like.

UPDATE 3/14/11 :

I added a new post on resource usage of each OS, if you are interested, with Screen shots.

Go here to check it out: http://www.1stbyte.com/2011/03/14/resource-usage-on-dell-inspiron-mini-1012-with-window-7-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-and-jolicloud/

I keep forgetting what to do to add the Firefox 4 beta to my Ubuntu Linux 10.04 Lucid systems. It’s quick and easy, just copy the lines below (one at a time) into Terminal and add the PPA sources to Apt. Then Minefield browser will be installed as the pre-packaged version of the Firefox 4 beta.


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-4.0


broadcom STA wireless driver “systemerror: installarchives() failed” on Ubuntu Maverick Dell Mini

While attempting to Activate the proprietary Broadcom STA Wireless driver in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick, I waited and then recieved the error, “systemerror: installarchives() failed”. I am using a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012. I am also booted into the Live USB install flash disk, not from my hard drive.

Some installs and uninstalls failed using the “Software Center.” So on to apt.

First thing I thought was, “we probably need our sources updated.” So, from terminal, run:

sudo apt-get update


(obviously, you will need to be connected to the “wired” ethernet and have a live internet connection, so make sure that’s working first.)

I had to do a little Googling,and I also checked in Software Center for anything with Broadcom in the search, and I found the bcmwl-kernel-source package. Let’s reinstall this and see if it works.
Next I ran:

sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source


This process started to remove the package, but I noticed that it also was trying to remove DKMS Modules. This failed. Next, let’s try removing DKMS.

sudo apt-get remove dkms

That uninstalled ok, but then failed, again, on the bcmwl-kernel-source package. What’s the deal with this package?! Maybe just reinstalling inplace?

sudo apt-get --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source

Same problem!
Let’s try:

sudo apt-get -f --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt-get --purge remove bcmwl-kernel-source

Still not working! Fails on update-initramfs!
Seems that nothing I do will allow me to update/reinstall/fix this issue. The problem has something to do with the update-initramfs process and its not working on the USB stick. There may be some further log info, but what I found online was a bug in the “casper” system. I guess the USB sticks are not writable and update-initramfs will fail.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+source/casper/+bug/591207
So I tried this: (be careful , you may end up with a non-bootable USB disk)

sudo apt-get install casper
sudo /usr/share/casper/casper-update-initramfs -u
sudo reboot


Woah!! Nice!! It worked on reboot!! Boom – Headshot! I didn’t even need to reinstall the Broadcom drivers! After booting into the Netbook Remix on the Live USB disk, once I clicked on the network manager icon, it showed me all the available wireless networks!

That was awesome! It felt like when I play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 when I get a headshot, which always comes as a surprise to me. Boom! Headshot! And then I think, “Ok, that was cool! Didn’t expect that to work!” ROFL!

Well, now that I can see the Wifi is working, I’ll install on my hard disk.

Good luck!

MsMpEng.exe – Antimalware service executable

I generally do not have any issues with Microsoft Security Essentials. It just works, and does its job quite well.  From time to time I notice some weird issues on my client computers, where MsMpEng.exe (Antimalware service executable) is using way too many and high resources and cpu time. (extra large amounts of memory and cpu time may even be 100%)

I had an original post here which may solve your issue as well:
http://www.1stbyte.com/2010/02/01/microsoft-security-essentials-msmpeng-exe-using-high-cpu-time/

That post says to exclude some directories from your scanning.  I have since found that, in the newer version of Microsoft Security Essentials, there are some options that have also helped.  We mainly want to tell MSSE that we only want to scan if the computer is not in use.  I also set to Limut CPU usage.

Check this option in the MSSE Settings tab, under Scheduled Scan:

“Start the scheduled scan only when my computer is on but not in use”

Open Microsoft Security Essentials and go to the Settings tab (shown below):

Next, in the Scheduled Scan settings on the left menu, look at the right side options and check the option box to only scan when my computer is not in use:

Security Essentials Settings - Make sure to Check this box

And last, save your changes:

Save your changes in Security Essentials

I have tried this setting, and it does help.  But read my other post too, if this doesn’t help, maybe give that other option a shot.  Good luck!

This took a while to solve, its not exactly user-friendly.  I have a FreeBSD server running VirtualBox virtual machines in headless mode, and I need to do everything using VBoxManage command line. (CLI)  In one case I wanted to remove the attached DVD ISO image from my machine. They don’t have a “storagedetach” or “removehd” command, you have to use the “storageattach” command, with some extra info.

List the VM info to see the port and device attached.
VBoxManage showvminfo vmMaridia
(My VM name is vmMaridia)

You will see stuff like so:

Storage Controller Name (0): maridiasata
Storage Controller Type (0): IntelAhci
Storage Controller Instance Number (0): 0
Storage Controller Max Port Count (0): 30
Storage Controller Port Count (0): 30
Storage Controller Name (1): maridiaide
Storage Controller Type (1): PIIX4
Storage Controller Instance Number (1): 0
Storage Controller Max Port Count (1): 2
Storage Controller Port Count (1): 2
maridiasata (0, 0): /vm/sys/maridia/mir1.vdi (UUID: fd813be8-dd38-4784-a374-d96263aae1ba)
maridiasata (1, 0): /vm/sys/maridia/mir2.vdi (UUID: dab57578-4de5-4bef-91ee-232c56eea671)
maridiasata (3, 0): /vm/sys/maridia/mardia-bu.vdi (UUID: 6ac3c6aa-ae5b-4d57-8f30-24e59d2ef381)
maridiasata (4, 0): /vm/sys/maridia/share-sata.vdi (UUID: d16a4847-95fb-43bd-b8b4-c7d9e38d9946)
maridiaide (0, 0): /vm/iso/sysresc156.iso (UUID: 10cbebd7-e058-4c8e-9487-52e7776d9935)


So, in my system, I wanted to remove from maridiaide controller, the port 0, device 0. Which is the sysresc156.iso.
To remove the DVD:

VBoxManage storageattach vmMaridia --storagectl maridiaide --port 0 --device 0 --medium none


The trick was, you just specify “none” as the medium when you want to remove it. Now when you run “showvminfo” on that VM, you’ll see no drive attached, in fact no maridiaide controller listed. (although, I do think it is registered still?)

I thought I’d be smart and enable data=journal on my root file system. I know its slower, but I prefer data integrity over speed on this system. Even if its not my main data volume, I like the idea of the whole OS running with the best integrity.

So, here’s what I did… I edited my /etc/fstab file, and added “data=journal” in the mount options. Here’s my old fstab:

/dev/mapper/vg1-root / ext4 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

I changed it to:

/dev/mapper/vg1-root / ext4 rw,data=journal,journal_checksum 0 1


Well… upon reboot, I got an error and it wouldn’t load the system:

EXT4-fs: cannot change data mode on remount


Turns out, during boot it’s first mounted as read only, if I understand things correctly, then remounted per your fstab options. When I created the file system I didn’t use the option to journal_data, which is not “ordered” mode, per ext4 default. And the root file system is remounted during boot. (correct Linux Pros out there? I have that right, right?) So to fix this, I booted into my trusted SystemRescueCD (on USB) and ran this:

tune2fs -o journal_data /dev/vg1/root


Yahoo! It booted right up with my new fstab options. Note that YOU MUST have created that file system with journaling enabled in the first place, like you would with “mkfs.ext4 -j /dev/sda1″. (with the -j option)

PS. You can list the options on the file system with “tune2sf -l /dev/sda1″.

BTW, I am using Ubuntu 10.04 server, in case you wondered. :)

Been using FreeBSD 8 and 8.1 for over a year now, love it.  Have root on the ZFS mirror, works great!  However, I’ve struggled to find a good way to set the /boot/loader.conf variables for kmem_size and zfs.arc_max. Everything I tried didn’t seem to work, so I ended up leaving all that out and just let the default “auto-tuning” to its thing.  But whenever I tried to copy large files, like 20+ GB files, it would crash the server.  It would give me that “kmem_map too small” kernel panic.

In addition, I have a GB network and fairly new 500GB drives in my array, which, are not high-end, speedy drives, but should operate fairly well.  I was getting network transfer speeds of about 45MB/s to 55MB/s, varying.  But usually managed to stick to about 50 fairly regularly.  I am not using an scientific method of measuring this, only the Windows 7 transfer window.  So it’s not something I’d rely on, but it was close enough to see *about* what we’re doing.

I finally did some reading, and found that setting my vfs.zfs.arc_max to about one-half my RAM, minus 512MB, and setting vm.kmem_size to 1.5x my RAM, it would stop giving me the kmem_map panic.  I found a wide range of suggestions out there, but in general, there were more suggestions to set the kmem_size higher, and keep the arc_max lower than half the ram.   Also, I found the general thought was you would be best having 8G of RAM in the first place and auto-tuning seemed to work best.

For my server, running 8.1-RELEASE, I have an i3 cpu on an  Intel server board, with 4G RAM.  My ZFS is a mirror on the Root, plus my main storage using 6 drives, 500G  ea. (varying makes), in a RAIDz2 array. So I have no UFS, only ZFS.  Once I set those two parameters, I jumped from about 50MB/s to 72MB/s.  And my 48G transfer test of files moved over no prob.  FINALLY!! I love it!

Here’s my relevant loader.conf variables:

vm.kmem_size_max="8G"
vm.kmem_size="6G"
vfs.zfs.arc_min="1024M"
vfs.zfs.arc_max="1500M"
vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=0

Also, I have two 16G swap partitions. (I know, overkill, but I wanted to pre-allocate those on my mirror and leave it for when I upgrade the RAM)

I am sure someone out there with a better understanding would recommend better values, but, it works good enough for me and so far its’ stable.

By the way this server also shares lots of media, VirtualBox VM’s, and also some Postgres and Mysql with Apache/PHP.  It’s not under any load, just a few of us access this system, but we do read/write large files from time to time.

I hope this helps others out there!  Good luck!

A how-to for installing Crashplan backup software on FreeBSD, my favorite server software with my favorite backup software.

We owe Kim Scarborough and Aaron Baff for this information, BIG TIME! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Kim and Arron for your help in making this possible!

Kims original HOW-TO is here:
http://kim.scarborough.chicago.il.us/do/nerd/tips/crashplan

I have no contact or reference info for Aaron, exept, here’s the original CrashPlan forum thread with our conversations:
https://crashplan.zendesk.com/entries/112498

All credit for this really belongs to Arron and Kim! I only wanted to record my own notes and share my experience here.

Greg’s How-to: How to install Crashplan on FreeBSD!

Note, this install is on a FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE system. Kim installed on FreeBSD 7. Also, this doesn’t seem to matter for installation purposes, but my system also runs with ZFS on a GPT root mirror, with other ZFS pools on the system as well using RAIDz2. (where I will store my Crashplan data)

Below I mention “install some/port”, which is not intended to be a literal command. I’ll leave the details of installing ports to you, which you can find online on other sites.

1. install emulators/linux_base-f10
Note: I had to find glibc-common online and manually load into distfiles when I first tried to install on 8.1.
Update 3/30/11: As of 3/30, and running on FreeBSD 8.2, I did not need to find glibc manually, it just loaded first try. Maybe the first time I tried the mirrors were unavailable?

1.b Check /etc/rc.conf
After you install the Linux base packages, check /etc/rc.conf that linux is enabled and add it if not.
linux_enable="YES"

2. Add to fstab and mount:
linproc /compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0

Then…
mount linproc

Update 3/30/11 FreeBSD 8.2: I wasn’t able to mount linproc at this point. I rebooted the system, then it mounted. So, reboot first, then add this to your fstab and make sure it mounts before you reboot.

3. install sysutils/linux-procps

Update 3/30/11 FreeBSD 8.2: In the next steps 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, I needed to add the following to my /etc/make.conf file. Note that the “f10″ is NOT in quotes. Once this was added, these extra ports installed fine.

OVERRIDE_LINUX_BASE_PORT=f10
OVERRIDE_LINUX_NONBASE_PORTS=f10
LINUX_DIST_SUFFIX=f10


4. install /usr/ports/textproc/linux-f10-expat

5. install /usr/ports/x11-fonts/linux-f10-fontconfig

6. install /usr/ports/x11/linux-f10-xorg-libs

7. install /usr/ports/java/linux-sun-jre16
note: you’ll need to manually find and download the jre-6u3 file from sun/oracle.

You should have these installed. (or similar, maybe other versions)

linux-f10-expat-2.0.1 = up-to-date with port
linux-f10-fontconfig-2.6.0 = up-to-date with port
linux-f10-xorg-libs-7.4_1 = up-to-date with port
linux-procps-3.2.5 = up-to-date with port
linux-sun-jre-1.6.0.03 = up-to-date with port
linux_base-f10-10_3 = up-to-date with port

8. change to linux bash, as root:
/compat/linux/bin/bash

Note that this puts you into the linux compat environment. If you go looking for /usr/local/bin/crashplan, it won’t be there unless you are in the linux compat environment first. The actual location is here:
/compat/linux/usr/local/crashplan

9. Install Crashplan.
go to the Crashplan-install folder (where you extracted it) and start the ./install.sh script. Use all defaults and finish the script.

10. Edit run.conf. In the /usr/local/crashplan/bin folder,
edit the run.conf file. There are two long lines defining
Java statup parameters. Add the following to the SVR line.

-Djava.nio.channels.spi.SelectorProvider=sun.nio.ch.PollSelectorProvider

That should go within the quotes!

11. Try starting the service:
/usr/local/crashplan/bin/CrashPlanEngine start

You’ll need to start this manually (from within linux bash), and will not start at boot.
(until one of us writes an rc script)
Update 3/30/11: Here’s an rc.d startup script how to for Crashplan:

12. Use the “headless” install connection per the Crashplan FAQ’s online to connect from another Linux/Windows/Mac system to manage the service.

Good luck!!