Archive for April, 2011

Resurrection (Easter) Orthodox Christian iconogoraphy

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

Nicolae Ovidio a brother in Christ from the Romanian Orthodox Christian, has provided me with a number of Beautiful Orthodox icons displaying the glorious resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!
Христос Воскресе!
Hristos Inviat!
Xristos Anesti!

[nggallery id=”5″]
This icons are truly a blessing so I kindly thank brother Nicolae for blessing me and allowing me to bless my readers with this wonderful icons!

Understanding the Christian Orthodox Faith / What does Orthodox Christian faith stands for and it differs from Roman Catholicism and Protestanism

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

I’ve stumbled upon a very educative videos, which might be interesting for both Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Protestants.
The video contains an Orthodox Christian fathers who explain with simple words the difference between the Orthodox Christian Faith and the rest of the most popular Christian faiths present today. Watch learn and enjoy! 🙂


Understanding the Christian Orthodox Faith – Part 1


Understanding the Christian Orthodox Faith – Part 2


Understanding the Christian Orthodox Faith – Part 3

The videos also questions very important questions about Orthodox Christianity which I believe non-orthodox christians could truly benefit and hopefully some might even turn to orthdoxy.

How to solve qmail /usr/local/bin/tcpserver: libc.so.6: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

If you’re building (compiling) a new qmail server on some Linux host and after properly installing the qmail binaries and daemontools, suddenly you notice in readproctitle service errors: or somewhere in in qmail logs for instance in/var/log/qmail/current the error:

/usr/local/bin/tcpserver: error while loading shared libraries:
libc.so.6: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory

then you have hit a bug caused by insufficient memory assigned for tcpserver in your /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpd/run daemontools qmail-smtpd initialize script:

This kind of issue is quite common especially on hardware architectures that are 64 bit and on Linux installations that are amd65 (x86_64) e.g. run 64 bit version of Linux.

It relates to the 64 bit architecture different memory distribution and thus as I said to solve requires increase in memory softlimit specified in the run script an example good qmail-smtpd run script configuration which fixed the libc.so.6: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory I use currently is as follows:

#!/bin/shQMAILDUID=`id -u vpopmail`NOFILESGID=`id -g vpopmail`MAXSMTPD=`cat /var/qmail/control/concurrencyincoming`# softlimit changed from 8000000exec /usr/local/bin/softlimit -m 32000000 /usr/local/bin/tcpserver -v -H -R -l 0 -x /home/vpopmail/etc/tcp.smtp.cdb -c "$MAXSMTPD"
-u "$QMAILDUID" -g "$NOFILESGID" 0 smtp
/var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
/home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /bin/true 2>&1

The default value which was for softlimit was:

exec /usr/local/bin/softlimit -m 8000000

A good softlimit raise up values which in most cases were solving the issue for me are:

exec /usr/local/bin/softlimit -m 3000000

or exec /usr/local/bin/softlimit -m 4000000

The above example run configuration fixed the issue on a amd64 debian 5.0 lenny install, the server hardware was:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU @ 2.93GHz
System Memory: 4GB
HDD Disk space: 240GB

The softlimit configuration which I had to setup on another server with system parameters:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU (8 CPUS) @ 2.80GHz
System Memory: 8GB
HDD Disk Space: 1.4Terabytes

is as follows:

#!/bin/sh
QMAILDUID=`id -u vpopmail`
NOFILESGID=`id -g vpopmail`
MAXSMTPD=`cat /var/qmail/control/concurrencyincoming`
exec /usr/bin/softlimit -m 64000000
/usr/local/bin/tcpserver -v -H -R -l 0
-x /home/vpopmail/etc/tcp.smtp.cdb -c "$MAXSMTPD"
-u "$QMAILDUID" -g "$NOFILESGID" 0 smtp
/var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
/home/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw /bin/true 2>&1

If none of the two configurations pointed out in the post works, for you just try to manually set up the exec /usr/bin/softlimit -m to some high value.

To assure that the newly set value is not producing the same error you will have to, reload completely the daemontools proc monitor system.
To do so open /etc/inittab comment out the line:

SV:123456:respawn:/command/svscanboot
to
#SV:123456:respawn:/command/svscanboot

Save again /etc/inittab and issue te cmd:

linux:~# init q

Now again open /etc/inittab and uncomment the commented line:

#SV:123456:respawn:/command/svscanboot to
SV:123456:respawn:/command/svscanboot

Lastly reload the inittab script once again with command:

linux:~# init q

To check if the error has disappeared check the readproctitle process, like so:

linux:~# ps ax|grep -i readproctitle

The command output should produce something like:

3070 ? S 0:00 readproctitle service errors: .......................................

Hope that helps.

A preaching words Paschal greeting for Great Saturday and the Resurrection day by Byzantium Emperor Theodore II Ducas Laskaris

Friday, April 29th, 2011

Theodore Ducas Lascaris coin Christian Seal

Below’s text is a Paschal greeting of the Byzantium Emperor Thedodore Ducas Lascaris, the text is really beautiful, I’ve translated it from Bulgarian translation which was translated from Greek, the general idea of the text is clearly observable. I’m really sorry if the text has translation mistakes. Have an enjoyable reading!

“Christ is risen from the death”, that are the words of the Angel; this saw the women; this testifies Pilatus stamps, this is what the empty grave of the Saviour proclaims; this is what testifies for the moved tomb (about 2 tons) stone; the guardians lay bare by their own speech; the grave guards acknowledges and takes the money; the High Priests [Anna and Caiphas] show off they’re guilty; Pilatus is feeling guilt; the centurion on the curtain tear down does believe; the sun has prooved the Godly essence of Christ darkening itself during the crucifix; the resurrected bodies of the many dead saints does testified about the truth; the whole nature confirmed the Resurrection, which has happened in the end of the Saturday, in the beginning of the [first day of the week].

Rejoice oh Man: Christ has Risen from the dead; the testimonial is truthful; Rejoice for you have been freed; hell is bound up, Rejoice!; It’s the day of the Resurrection, rise up your voice; The master of our salvation has risen up from the dead; rejoice oh heaven and earth, see through the resurrection a harmony between holy Angels and humans has been established; rejoice oh you plants; the execution of Christ has been on a Cross, but through the Cross the Resurrection has accomplished; Adam has been risen up again; Eva has been released from the chains; Christ has preceeded over the prophets; The Kings Solomon and David are salute with victorious songs!

Rejoice oh man the darkness has lessen [in the world] the light has come; the shadow has fade away quickly; grace come in; the spring of life has rised. Does somebody needs to hear about God? Doesn’t everybody know, that he rose up from the dead? Why Pilatus is riotous; Chaiphas thinks where to have the assembly of the Jewish elders. Rejoice oh also you robber, and enter in paradise, when everyone is gathered there; here is the firy sword has turned it’s back; the grandparent has been released; rejoice oh you children of him. From Eva has the has the falling come, from the immaculate Theotokos – the rising up; through disobey death has come, through humility of the Son of God has the resurrection was given as a gift. Through a woman the fall up come, and through a woman is the resurrection preached.

Christ is Risen from the death!, let the clouds flow the rain of joice, let the plants draw a fresh leaves and the earth does bring forth fruits.

The creator of all has Risen from death and you rejoice; virtuous branches bring forth your fruits.
Who is not joious today; who is not feeling sweet joy, who is not rejoicing?

Risen up from the death, Christ destroyed kingdom of hell, He is Risen and destroyed the devil; he has risen and erased sin; he has Risen and decreased the idol-mania; He has risen and chased away dilusions; he has risen and rescued Adam; he has Risen and made the engles motionless for evil; He has risen and rescued Man; He has risen and joined the heaven ones with the earth ones, ruling himself as a King of the whole world and most-supreme ruler of all; angels and man, elements, elemental force something unseen so far by the demons.

Therefore rejoice with unspeakable joy; rejoice oh you who hear that Christ is Risen from the death; who does not obey to the first and the last in accordance with the God driven voice (Revel. 22:13), who is not glorifying him? The darkness has been crucified, we’re free from the chains; we’re risen to the upper (heavenly) kingdom.

It’s the day of the Resurrection; who is not picking up a spiritual guitar, to sing up many times a repeating song, with songs, psalms and great joy and with a piercing melody to cry out?: “He is risen from the death” Christ has risen from the death

Let all demons phalanx run far away; and the ruler of darkness with his army let enter the Tartara (hell), because the master of life has Risen and the evil one’s kingdom is robbed.

Let noone all you who are truthful be on the feast with poor garments; let we the Orthodox, does dress our corporeal and spiritual eyes with the shiny garments of goodness; let we the orthodox christians, be dressed up shiny; the enemy [the devil] is dead; the Bishop of Bishops has Risen; yesterday’s sorrow has turned to joy, what is keeping us to sing together with the pupils, to sing up victorious songs together with the Maryies? The Godly home-building is achieved: the descendance of [the Holy Spirit], the conceal, the birth of a Virgin, the baptizmal, the Godly signs, the suffering and Resurrection; Christ has risen from the death, rejoice ohh all you nations.

Likely we on Great Sunday with a divine hymn do glorify the risen from the death Master Christ – truly Risen, truly without doubt.
And for us oh God where from will there be mercy sent for our petitions.

Theodore II Laskaris head painting
Paschal Greeting Text by Byzantium’s Emperor Theodore II Ducas-Lascaris (1254-1258 AD)
Translated from Bulgarian (Original text translated from Greek by Alexey Stambolov)

Universal way to configure a static IP address on ethernet lan (eth0) interface in Linux

Friday, April 29th, 2011

One of the most precious commands I ever learned to use in Linux is ifconfig and route .

They have saved my life in configuring the static IP based internet of numerous Desktop Linux computers & notebooks.

Though the usage is very much known by most of the people who are into Linux, I believe it’s likely that the newer people who entered the world of Linux or some Unix system administrators are still lacking the knowledge on how to manually configure their eth0 lan card, thus I thought it might be handy for someone to share it, I know that for most unix users & admins especially the advanced ones this post might be funny, so if you’re an advanced administrator just skip the post and don’t laught at it 😉

Now the universal commands (works on each and every Linux host) to configure manually static IP internet connection on Linux are:

linux:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0
linux:~# /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1
linux:~# echo 'nameserver 192.168.0.1' >> /etc/resolv.conf

I’ve used this simple commands on thousands ot Linux hosts and it’s still handy 🙂

In above example 192.168.0.3 is the static IP address provided by the ISP, netmask is the netmask and the second /sbin/route add default gw would set the default gateway to the example ip 192.168.0.1

The third final line would add up a resolver nameserver the Linux host would use.

Cheers 😉

How to install Toshiba Satellite L40 B14 Wireless Adapter ( ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B) on Ubuntu and Debian Linux

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

https://www.pc-freak.net/images/toshiba-satellite-l40

How to install Toshiba L40 B14 Wireless Adapter ( ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B) on Ubuntu and Debian Linux
I've been struggling for more than 10 hours to fix up issues on a Ubuntu Maverick-Meerkaat with a rtl8187B Wireless Adapter

The RTL8187B almost drove me mad. I could see the wlan0 which meant the kernel is detecting the device, I could even bring it up with ifconfig wlan0 up , however when I tried it in gnome's network-manager or wicd the wireless networks were not showing up.

Trying to scan for networks using the commands:


ubuntu:~# iwlist wlan0 scan

was also unsuccesful, trying to bring up and down the wireless wlan0 interface with:


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 up

or


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 down

Both returned the error:
iwconfig: unknown command "up" and iwconfig: unknown command "down"

Running simply iwconfig was properly returning information about my Wireless Interface wlan0 :


wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off

The exact information I could get about the wireless device was via the command:


ubuntu:~# lsusb | grep realtek
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B Wireless Adapter

Trying manually to scan for wireless networks from console or gnome-terminal with command returned also the below weird results:


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 scan
iwconfig: unknown command "scan"

More oddly tunning wlan0 interface with commands like:


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 rate 11M

were succesful …

I read a bunch of documentation online concerning the wireless card troubles on Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian etc.

Just few of all the resources I've read and tried are:

http://rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page (Returning empty page already a lot resource)
http://rtl8187b.sourceforge.net (A fork of rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net which is still available though it was not usable)

Some of the other resources which most of the people recommended as a way to properly install the RTL8187B wireless driver on linux was located on the website:

http://datanorth.net/~cuervo/rtl8187b/ (Trying to access this page returned a 404 error e.g. this page is no-longer usable)

I found even a webpage in Ubuntu Help which claimed to explain how to properly install and configure the RTL8187B wireless driver on which is below:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/RealtekRTL8187b

Even the Ubuntu help instructions were pointing me to the broken cuervo's website URL

Anyways I was able to find the rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz online and made a mirror of rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz which you can download here

Another rtl8187b driver I found was on a toshiba website made especailly for the wireless linux drivers:

http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/pc/sat_PSPD0_report.htm

The questionable file which was claimed to properly be able to make the Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B Wireless Adapter to work out was called rl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz.
I've made a mirror of rtl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz is here

None of the driver archives rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz and rl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz that was supposed to make the Toshiba L40 realtek wireless to work out, after compiling and installing the drivers from source worked out …

Both archives produced plenty of error messages and it seems on newer kernels like the one on this notebook:

Linux zlatina 2.6.35-28-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 18 19:00:26 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux, they're no longer usable.

The compile errors I got when I tried compiling the rtl8187b driver provided by the archive rtl8187b-modified-dist were:


root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified# sh makedrv
rm -fr *.mod.c *.mod *.o .*.cmd *.mod.* *.ko *.o *~
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/build M=/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211 CC=gcc modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
scripts/Makefile.build:49: *** CFLAGS was changed in "/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211/Makefile". Fix it to use EXTRA_CFLAGS. Stop.
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
rm -fr *.mod.c *.mod *.o .*.cmd *.ko *~
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/build M=/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187 CC=gcc modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
scripts/Makefile.build:49: *** CFLAGS was changed in "/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187/Makefile". Fix it to use EXTRA_CFLAGS. Stop.
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified#

Another driver I tried which was found on aircrack-ng.org's website was rtl8187_linux_26.1010.zip

Here are the error messages I experienced while I tried to compile the realtek wireless driver from the archive rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006


compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [/home/zlatina/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/beta-8187/r8187_core.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/beta-8187] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
make: *** [modules] Error 2

I tried a number of fix ups hoping to solve the compile error messages, but my efforts were useless, as it seems many things has changed in newer Ubuntu versions and they could no longer be compiled.

As I realized I couldn't make the native drivers provided by the above sources compile, I decided to give a try to the Windows drivers for Realtek 8187B with ndiswrapper, a link for download of Realtek 8187B (RTL8187B_XP_6.1163.0331.2010_Win7_62.1182.0331.2010_UI_1.00.0179 is found here

I untarred the
RTL8187B_XP driver
and used ndiswrapper to load driver like so:


root@ubuntu:~# tar -zxvf
RTL8187B_XP_6.1163.0331.2010_Win7_....L.tar.gz
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B#
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B# cd Driver/WinXP
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B/Driver/WinXP# ndiswrapper -i net8187b.inf

In order to test the RTL8178B Windows driver I used:


root@ubuntu:~# ndiswrapper -l
net8187b : driver installed
device (0BDA:8197) present (alternate driver: rtl8187)

To finally load the Windows XP RTL8187B driver on the Ubuntu I used again ndiswrapper:


root@ubuntu:~# ndiswrapper -m

Further on I used the ndisgtk graphical ndiswrapper interface to once again test if the Windows driver is working on the Ubuntu and it seemed like it is working, however still my wicd was unable to find any wireless network ….

There were many online documentation which claimed that the driver for rtl8187b works out of the box on newer kernel releases (kernel versions > 2.6.24)

Finally I found out there is a driver which is a default one with the Ubuntu e.g. rtl8187.ko , I proceeded and loaded the module:


root@ubuntu:~# modprobe rtl8187

I also decided to check out if the hardware switch button of the Toshiba Satellite L40 notebook is not switched off and guess what ?! The Wireless ON/OFF button was switched OFF!!! OMG …

I switched on the button and wicd immediately started showing up the wireless networks …

To make the rtl8187 module load on Ubuntu boot up, I had to issue the command:


root@ubuntu:~# echo 'rtl8187' >> /etc/modules

Voila after all this struggle the wireless card is working now, it's sad I had to loose about 10 hours of time until I come with the simple solution of using the default provided ubuntu driver rtl8187 , what is strange is how comes that it does not load up automatically.

Thanks God it works now.

How to fix transmission unable to download and connect to torrent tracker on Ubuntu Maverick 10.10

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

As you can read in my few previous posts I have just installed a new Ubuntu 10.10 on a Toshiba Satellite L40 notebook.

Most of the things which are necessery for a fully working Linux desktop are already installed and the machine works fine, however I just noticed there is an issue with the default torrent gnome client and transmission unable to download files from torrent trackers.

Few minutes of playing with the transmission’s settings has revealed what was causing my torrent download problems.

It seems on Ubuntu 10.10 (probably on other Ubuntus and Debians) by default the transmission bittorrent client is trying to use for torrent download connections an incoming port 53636 number.

As the computer is behind a firewall and does not have a real IP address seeders cannot properly connect to the notebook port 53636 and hence the transmission bittorrent client could not initialize any torrent downloads.

Fixing up the issue is rather easy to fix it I had to change the settings in transmission from the menus:

Edit -> Settings -> Network

You need to select the options:
 

  • Pick a random port on startup
  • Use UPnP or NAT-PMP to redirect connections

Next I had to restart transmission and my torrent downloads started 😉

How to configure static IP address on Lan card eth0 on Ubuntu and Debian Linux

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Does your provider provides you with a connection to the internet via a static IP address? Are you an Ubuntu or Debian user like me? Are you looking for a way to configure your eth0 Linux network card with the static ISP provided IP address? That was the scenario with me and in this article I will explain, how you can configure your Home internet access with your Ubuntu/Debian based Linux.

Both Ubuntu and Debian does have a graphic tools, which also can be used to set a static IP address to your network interface, however I find it easier to do it straight from the command line.

To configure your internet static IP via a command line, what you will need to modify is the file:

/etc/network/interfaces

In order to configure a static IP address, your provider should have equipped you with few IP addresses like let’s say the example values below:

Host IP Address: 192.168.0.5
Netmask Address: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1
Primary DNS Server: 192.168.0.1
Secondary DNS Server: 192.168.0.2

Now edit with vim, nano or mcedit /etc/network/interfaces e.g.:

root@ubuntu:~# mcedit /etc/network/interfaces

A plain /etc/network/interfaces file should contain something similar to:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

In order to be able to set your static IP address, Netmask, Gateway and DNS servers you will have to append in the interfaces file, the settings:

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

The eth0 sets the lan card on which the values will be assigned, address variable is the IP address assigned by your ISP, netmask is logically the netmask, network should always be configured same as the value set for address but the last ip block should be always .0 , gateway as you already know is the gateway (the ISP router).

One more thing you need to do is to configure your DNS servers by including the DNS ip addresses to /etc/resolv.conf , just issue something like:

root@ubuntu:~# echo 'nameserver 192.168.0.1' >> /etc/resolv.conf
root@ubuntu:~# echo 'nameserver 192.168.0.2' >> /etc/resolv.conf

To test that your new Linux static ip configuration is correct exec:

root@ubuntu:~# /etc/init.d/networking restart

Next use ping or (if ping is disabled by ISP), use matt’s traceroute (mtr) or a browser to test if the Linux is connected to the net.

ubuntu:~# ping google.com
...
ubuntu:~# mtr google.com

If none of the two are not able to show either ping requests flowing around, or routes to google, then something is either wrong with your internet configuration or you forgot to pay your internet bill 😉

xorg on Toshiba Satellite L40 14B with Intel GM965 video hangs up after boot and the worst fix ever / How to reinstall Ubuntu by keeping the old personal data and programs

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

black screen ubuntu troubles

I have updated Ubuntu version 9.04 (Jaunty) to 9.10 and followed the my previous post update ubuntu from 9.04 to Latest Ubuntu

I expected that a step by step upgrade from a release to release will work like a charm and though it does on many notebooks it doesn't on Toshiba Satellite L40

The update itself went fine, whether I used the update-manager -d and followed the above pointed tutorial, however after a system restart the PC failed to boot the X server properly, a completely blank screen with blinking cursor appeared and that was all.

I restarted the system into the 2.6.35-28-generic kernel rescue-mode recovery kernel in order to be able to enter into physical console.

Logically the first thing I did is to check /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg.0.log but I couldn't find nothing unusual or wrong there.

I suspected something might be wrong with /etc/X11/xorg.conf so I deleted it:

ubuntu:~# rm -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and attempted to re-create the xorg.conf X configuration with command:

ubuntu:~# dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

This command was reported to be the usual way to reconfigure the X server settings from console, but in my case (for unknown reasons) it did nothing.

Next the command which was able to re-generate the xorg.conf file was:

ubuntu:~# X -configure

The command generates a xorg.conf sample file in /root/xorg.conf.* so I used the conf to put it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf X's default location and restarted in hope that this would fix the non-booting issue.

Very sadly again the black screen of death appeared on the notebook toshiba screen.
I further thought of completely wipe out the xorg.conf in hope that at least it might boot without the conf file but this worked out neither.

I attempted to run the Xserver with a xorg.conf configured to work with vesa as it's well known vesa X server driver is supposed to work on 99% of the video cards, as almost all of them nowdays are compatible with the vesa standard, but guess what in my case vesa worked not!

The only version of X I can boot in was the failsafe X screen mode which is available through the grub's boot menu recovery mode.

Further on I decided to try few xorg.conf which I found online and were reported to work fine with Intel GM965 internal video , and yes this was also unsucessful.

Some of my other futile attempts were: to re-install the xorg server with apt-get, reinstall the xserver-xorg-video-intel driver e.g.:

ubuntu:~# apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-intel

As nothing worked out I was completely pissed off and decided to take an alternative approach which will take a lot of time but at least will probably be succesful, I decided to completely re-install the Ubuntu from a CD after backing up the /home directory and making a list of available packages on the system, so I can further easily run a tiny bash one-liner script to install all the packages which were previously existing on the laptop before the re-install:

Here is how I did it:

First I archived the /home directory:

ubuntu:/# tar -czvf home.tar.gz home/
....

For 12GB of data with some few thousands of files archiving it took about 40 minutes.

The tar spit archive became like 9GB and I hence used sftp to upload it to a remote FTP server as I was missing a flash drive or an external HDD where I can place the just archived data.

Uploading with sftp can be achieved with a command similar to:

sftp user@yourhost.com
Password:
Connected to yourhost.com.
sftp> put home.tar.gz

As a next step to backup in a file the list of all current installed packages, before I can further proceed to boot-up with the Ubuntu Maverich 10.10 CD and prooceed with the fresh install I used command:

for i in $(dpkg -l| awk '{ print $2 }'); do
echo $i; done >> my_current_ubuntu_packages.txt

Once again I used sftp as in above example to upload my_current_update_packages.txt file to my FTP host.

After backing up all the stuff necessery, I restarted the system and booted from the CD-rom with Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu installation as usual is more than a piece of cake and even if you don't have a brain you can succeed with it, so I wouldn't comment on it 😉

Right after the installation I used the sftp client once again to fetch the home.tar.gz and my_current_ubuntu_packages.txt

I placed the home.tar.gz in /home/ and untarred it inside the fresh /home dir:

ubuntu:/home# tar -zxvf home.tar.gz

Eventually the old home directory was located in /home/home so thereon I used Midnight Commander ( the good old mc text file explorer and manager ) to restore the important user files to their respective places.

As a last step I used the my_current_ubuntu_packages.txt in combination with a tiny shell script to install all the listed packages inside the file with command:

ubuntu:~# for i in $(cat my_current_ubuntu_packagespackages.txt); do
apt-get install --yes $i; sleep 1;
done

You will have to stay in front of the computer and manually answer a ncurses interface questions concerning some packages configuration and to be honest this is really annoying and time consuming.

Summing up the overall time I spend with this stupid Toshiba Satellite L40 with the shitty Intel GM965 was 4 days, where each day I tried numerous ways to fix up the X and did my best to get through the blank screen xserver non-bootable issue, without a complete re-install of the old Ubuntu system.
This is a lesson for me that if I stumble such a shitty issues I will straight proceed to the re-install option and not loose my time with non-sense fixes which would never work.

Hope the article might be helpful to somebody else who experience some problems with Linux similar to mine.

After all at least the Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 is really good looking in general from a design perspective.
What really striked me was the placement of the close, minimize and maximize window buttons , it seems in newer Ubuntus the ubuntu guys decided to place the buttons on the left, here is a screenshot:

Left button positioning of navigation Buttons in Ubuntu 10.10

I believe the solution I explain, though very radical and slow is a solution that would always work and hence worthy 😉
Let me hear from you if the article was helpful.