[ale] Fun with Slink!!

[Jim Kinney]

On Thu, 2018-12-13 at 11:46 -0500, James Sumners via Ale wrote:
> 🙂 Slink is what I started on. 

7 Slackware floppy images (4 kernel plus base system and 3 networking)
downloaded over a dialup connection to Prodigy.
Had to learn a bit of scripting in dos as my wife would pick up the
phone to see if I was online. So I scripted the downloads to start late
at night :-)  Still each floppy often took 3-4 downloads before the
checksum would verify.
> On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 11:40 Charles Shapiro via Ale <ale at ale.org>
> wrote:
> > Ouch!!!! stretch, I meant STRETCH!
> > 
> > 
> > -- CHS
> > 
> > On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 9:37 PM Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Bumblebee is way slick! I have a much new $$$ dell xps15 with
> > > nvidia and Intel. Being able to not run the powerhog just watchin
> > > utube vids splaining how to screw up a metal lathe is sweet. Then
> > > fire up a gpu project with cuda code launched from cli and listen
> > > to fan ramp up to take off speed :-)
> > > 
> > > The bee is better than the winders stuff. It's flat powered off
> > > in Linux. In winders, it trickles power waiting to ramp up fast
> > > as an automatic overload gpu.
> > > 
> > > Or I can watch metal shop utube while cashing out with bitcoin
> > > mining on the gpu.
> > > 
> > > On December 12, 2018 7:43:33 PM EST, Charles Shapiro via Ale <
> > > ale at ale.org> wrote:
> > > > My Lenovo T530 laptop has been running Debian Wheezy ( 7.0)
> > > > for, like, 4 years.  I finally decided to bite the bullet and
> > > > upgrade to Slink (9.0) by my traditional method -- back up
> > > > everything, nuke & pave, and restore what I need.  One reason
> > > > to undertake this was that I need a portable system on which I
> > > > can build opencv binaries.
> > > > 
> > > > Everything went pretty ok well, considering. My DVD burner
> > > > pooped out, so I had to install from a stick, but that worked
> > > > well enough.  Got the wifi working after grabbing a hideous
> > > > proprietary binary blob for it -- not too different from my
> > > > memories of installing Wheezy.
> > > > 
> > > > When I bought the machine I sprang for the spiff-a-rino nvidia
> > > > display option.  This put an additional graphics processor in
> > > > the machine (besides the regular intel graphics processor ),
> > > > which has much better specs but also sucks more power. The old
> > > > solution involved copying a new xorg.conf and a modprobe script
> > > > into appropriate places, then rebooting and manually setting
> > > > the BIOS to the correct value. Kind of a PITA but it worked
> > > > just fine.
> > > > 
> > > > Alas, when I installed the (proprietary binary closed source
> > > > ack blech) nvidia drivers for Debian, the default video card
> > > > stopped working, although the nvidia processor worked
> > > > flawlessly. I fumbled around a bit and found that X no longer
> > > > really, like, *uses* xorg.conf.  There was no obvious way to
> > > > switch between the nvidia driver and the intel one. A dive into
> > > > lsmod and various different library paths convinced me that
> > > > doing it the old way would be a Lot of Work.  The net of a
> > > > Thousand Lies was curiously silent on this matter. There are
> > > > lots of pages explaining the shell script // reboot method for
> > > > earlier versions of Debian, but nothing on slink.
> > > > 
> > > > After a good deal more fumbling around, I finally discovered
> > > > that this trouble has been solved by people much smarter than
> > > > me.  The bumblebee project ( https://www.bumblebee-project.org/
> > > >  ) is available in the Debian repos.  After some _more_
> > > > fumbling around (not helped by an errant xorg.conf file I left
> > > > where X could read it), I got it all working, with seamless
> > > > support for nvidia graphics when I want, but stuff not needing
> > > > it running on the power-saving Intel processor.  That is the
> > > > system I'm using to pound out this boastful email.
> > > > 
> > > > Poring over log files was really handy here.  In my foolishness
> > > > and confusion, I forgot completely about the xorg.conf file I
> > > > had accidentally generated, and it kept the X server from
> > > > starting.  But all the appropriate kvetches were in
> > > > /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
> > > > 
> > > > What fun!
> > > > 
> > > > -- CHS
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________Ale mailing 
> > > listAle at ale.org
> > > https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> > > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> > > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
-- 
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain

http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20181213/fa7e1103/attachment.html>