The vboxdrv kernel module was either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created - SOLVED!

I was planning to try out ubuntu JeOS. since VMWare images are portable, thought I will create the virtual machine on my XP os which has VMWare installed then if it succeds, install VMPlayer on my mint & move the vm to mint. The JeOS install went fine, but for installing VMPlayer on mint (Elyssa), I could not find it in the repositories. Then the other option was to install VirtualBox. I had installed VirtualBox non OSE version & it was too good & simple to use (only hickup was to add myself to vboxusers goup). This time I decided to go for OSE version & the installation was a breeze. Creation of the virtual machine was also breeze, but the problem was when I tried to switch on the machine. It failed with the following error:

"The vboxdrv kernel module was either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created for some reason"

After googling a bit, few suggestions was to go back for non OSE version. I was not in a state to go for another download & install. I was almost given up & drop the idea. Then I just was browsing through the searched packages in synaptic and thats when I found virtualbox-ose-guest-modules-2.6.24-16-generic & virtualbox-ose-modules-2.6.24-16-generic. The description was saying something along kernel modules and I installed these (based on my kernel version). Theres is no need to load these modules (I tried & failed), just start the virtual machine just created & it starts up without a hitch! Now I have installed JeOS & on that xorg & fluxbox, works just fine!

VirtualBox is really cool!

online LCD test tool

Today I just was wondering if its possible to check if my screen really supports 24 bit color and was searching on google. Found the following on line tool, which is too good...!

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

it has so many tests that check almost all features of your LCD, like viewing angle, refresh speed apart from color depth & resolution. This really is a cool site..!

Multi boot system - partition reorg

I normally have 5 / 6 OS on my system on different partitions. And I keep removing / replacing them. This also involves deleting / adding new / moving partitions. everything was fine till one day when I ran testdisk (to fix an issue that arose due to the way vista handles partitions) that changed the partition numbers of my partition. Now I was not able to load the OS with changed partition numbers.

I had heard about GUID is sort of disk signature which would have hanged and causing the issue. Searched net with GUID, but could not find any helpful links (later I realized that this is referred to UUID in linux/ubuntu parlance).

I tried to manually edit the partition number during the grub menu & boot. Now the problem became even more stranger! though I set the root as partition I wanted to boot, it was booting another OS! I was going crazy!!! I thought if I could only capture those messages that scroll on the screen while it boots and I found few links that make use of serial terminal:

http://www.techanswerguy.com/2007/09/capturing-boot-messages-in-linux-via.html

Since I was not having another comp & also I was on laptop without serial port, this is ruled out. now the only option for me was to verify my grub menu entry thoroughly and this time I found the silly mistake I was making:

title Linux Mint, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode) (on /dev/sda13)
root (hd0,12)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=/dev/sda14 ro single

though I was changing the partition number in "root" part, I missed changing the partition number on "kernel" line. This was causing lot of trouble rendering most of my OSes un usable. But I still was having issues with ubuntu. This is because, ubuntu uses UUID and not the partition nubers (Probably this causd me to search for GUID earlier & miss the obvious partition number for mint OS). A search with UUID & Ubuntu revealed how to fix this. This needs updating the UUID at 3 places, menu.lst, fstab & some resume file (will paste the link later its on the other OS!). Also I founf a command, vol_id that gives you the UUID of a partition. I have not tried this yet. Will edit this post once I try this out.

This may help those who has a multi boot system and has to reorganize partitions for adding / removing new OS.

script for automating bcdedit

Windows Vista is using bcdedit in place of boot.ini of XP for boot loading. Though bcd is a better boot loader than XP, editing the boot data quite a few routine steps (which could have been easily automated in one command). Though easybcd does a good job in automating this, with a nice GUI, it has problems identifying partitions on my machine. I have quite a few partitions on my machine with Linux on it (actually its problem with bootpart, which easybcd uses to identify a partition & to extract the boot partition of the partition). If we can get the boot sector extracted from other OS, the editing part can be automated with the following script:

REM Script to create boot entries for PBR in Vista BCD
REM Usage: scr_name <"Description">
REM
REM Cleanup of bcd GUID: bcdedit /delete
REM Listing of BCD GUID: bcdedit /enum ALL [/v]

setlocal

set FILNAME=%1
set DESC=%2

set PBRDIR=\bcd

for /F "tokens=3 delims= " %%i in ('bcdedit /create /d %DESC% /application BOOTSECTOR') do set NEWGUID=%%i

bcdedit /set %NEWGUID% device boot

bcdedit /set %NEWGUID% PATH %PBRDIR%\%FILNAME%

bcdedit /displayorder %NEWGUID% /addlast

echo %NEWGUID% for %DESC% created


I had been planning to do this for quite sometime, but was not sure as to how do I store the GID generated by the first bcdedit command & pass it on to subsequent commands. I saw it on a forum which gave me this idea. This is just an enhancement of that.

weired problem with gparted

I was trying to create few additional partitions on my 160GB hard disk that came with my Inspiron 1520 laptop. fired gparted from MEPIS (which had worked fine earlier & could do resizing of extended partition & create logical partitions as well). Strangely now it failed to any partitions & was showing the disk one unallocated partition 149GB.

As read some where ran testdisk. after analysing & scanning it came up with its own view of partitions. with the help of Christophe of testdisk, I could make testdisk to display partitions properly (this was from vista recovery console).

Even after this, the gparted continued to show my disk as one unallocated partition of 149GB. and testdisk from Linux still continued to show incorrect partitions. I tried to list partitions with parted, it errored out saying "can't have partition outside the disk" when I tried running gparted from command line (which launches GUI, instead from menu), I could see errors like "lseek err Invalid argument".

I had 69 GB free on my disk and was unable to create partitions. I created partitions with diskpart from Vista. and started to install Ubuntu. which again failed to recognise my disk partitions. This seems to be a bug and am not sure been resolved. While googling I found a link where there was a mention of disabling partman. I could not however figure out how to do it...

Finally I tried PCLinux OS 2007 CD. Finally its partition manager recognised my disk. I formatted the 3 partitions created with diskpart under vista to ext3 partition. Then tried ubuntu again, it worked like charm.

Kudos to PCLOS 2007 parttion manager (I still am not sure which one it uses)

Experiments with Inspiron 1520

I have got my new green Inspiron 1520 (yes, now DELL has started adding color to life!). I love the new Vista with all its eyecandy and just that. But I would prefer a linux to work. So started with partitioning. Sadly my Acronis partition expert boot CD could not recognise the hard disk :( Hey bu the vista has partition resizer built in to it....! Now managed to resize my harddisk.

Strangely the resize could only be done from 130 to 90GB freeing 40Gb. I was looking forward to try out DELL restore functionality, I used this situation & restored laptop to factory status with the DELL restore feature, which now uses VISTA's Imagex (I beleive now we can copy & move the image to different partion , though I am not too sure, need to check with goodells Dan). Once re-stored to factory state, I can again shrink by another 50 Gb to get total 90Gb free. I partitioned it into 10Gb linux & 512Mb swap & 5Gb FAT, keeping rest free.

Now to try out some linux flavours... Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop CD wont boot (goes to some command prompt, which is not linux). Later I learnt I need to use the alternate CD, that install from command line, on I1520. Will try this later.

Next was MEPIS 6.5, which I could boot in to GUI, but in VESA mode. I could install it to hard disk as well. I was now looking to install Nvidia driver for my Nvidia 8600M GT GPU. I downloaded the latest Linux driver from nvidia site & Kernel headers from synaptic. From the console (ctrl-alt-F1), killed GUI with init 3. and started the nividia installer. It went thru fine and I could re-start the GUI with Nvidia drivers. I could see the green nvidia logo as the X started. Tried out beryl (built in in MPIS), was coming up witout window borders. Was fixed once the color depth was set to 24bits.

Now to enable both cores, I had to download the SMP kernal & install nvidia driver for that kernel. But this SMP kernel has disabled my sound! Still have to check on that.

For booting, I decided to keep Vista boot loader and load MEPIS from it. I had done this from XP, but Vista uses a different boot loader. Vista has BCDEdit to edit boot entries, which is a comand line tool. There is also a GUI for this, EasyBCD. This is a cool utility, it also takes the image of the first sector of the linux partition which is required for boot. However with my disk, it was not able to identify correct parttion of linux and I had to resort to BCDEdit. Now I can boot MEPIS from Vista boot loader.

Planning to install Ubuntu next, planning to install orace on that. Planning to follow instrutions from Dizwell's site. Will update here on that. Also planning to try compiz-fusion on that. Looks pretty fancy with gears & meditaranian plugins...