Re: Ubuntu upgrade help

Hi Andy,

Here are my suggestions, all IMHO with the usual "don't blame me for blowing up your pc" disclaimers.

Also note, I use debian rather than ubuntu.. so it's likely there are a few differences.

Here goes...

audio:
remove pulseaudio (I haven't yet had a pleasant experience with pulseaudio)
add alsa and gstreamer-alsa
also add various gstreamer-plugins-something (gross? poor? ugly? I can't clearly remember the name)
You'll likely need to add these too:
alsa-oss alsamixergui 
If this helps, great.. if not.. sorry.  I'm not sure what the next step should be as these have worked for me.

video:

A quick note about the nv, nouveau and nvidia drivers:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-nv/ shows the latest tagged release is over 9 months old.
meanwhile http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/drm/ shows a new tag only 3 weeks old.
and http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/Source clearly identifies nouveau as the successor to nv.
Also note that nv is 2D only and nouveau has some 3D support, perhaps enough for your needs.
in short... nv is dead.  So the choice is nouveau or nvidia and the proprietary driver _should_ be superior, but that isn't always the case.

I recommend at least trying the community supported nouveau driver, but only AFTER trying a few things with the nvidia driver you've already got installed.

Look for at least one match between the output of these two commands:

 lspci -v | grep VGA
 grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf

For e.g. here's a hack that got one system working for me:

$ lspci -v | grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
$ grep Identifier /etc/X11/xorg.conf 
	Identifier	"Generic Keyboard"
	Identifier	"Configured Mouse"
#		Identifier  "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Xpress 200M (RS480)"  #broken
	Identifier	"ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])" #works
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"

In my case, RS482 != RS480.  I included the full text and it happened to work, so I recommend the same.

If video works at this point, but the display resolution is messed up, you likely need xrandr. (not a typo)
  apt-cache search xrandr

If, at this point, video still utterly fails, I'd install the nouveau driver:
remove nv 
remove nvidia
add xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 
add libdrm-nouveau1a (this is the kernel "direct rendering manager" module, NOT "digital rights manure".)
add something-mesa-something (these are the userspace 3d libraries.. just search for mesa)
You may need to 
  sudo modprobe libdrm-nouveau
(this might require a reboot.  some drivers can only load at boot time even if they are modules.)
Check /etc/X11/xorg.conf for the nouveau driver.
  sudo grep -r Driver /etc/X11 
should find the line to edit from 'nv' or 'nvidia' to 'nouveau'

Other weirdnesses:

As you have hit a major version switch (8->10), first check your /etc/apt/sources checks out, then try
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get dist-upgrade --dry-run
and if you are brave, try without the --dry-run.  This runs some scripts that apt-get install/remove/upgrade won't and may resolve some other weirdnesses. 

flash/gnash:
first.. get the audio and video working before messing with this part.

Updates to mozilla/iceweasel might blank /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (or wherever) and possibly require a reinstall of flash.
It might also be worth trying whatever ubuntu's equivalent of debian's browser-plugin-gnash out.
If that fails, then perhaps test the proprietary flash player from adobe.  The catch is you have to download it manually for 64 bit and it's "beta" code.
 http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer.html and start drilling down.
I'm happy enough with gnash.. and I don't browse webkinz so I cannot add much more to this part.

If you get those sites working by this point, but performance is slow, it's likely a matter of some missing 3d accel libraries installed, or more likely, the distro kernel isn't well tuned for your hardware.  This is one of those tricky "novice beware" tasks for folks not already initiated with the effort.  I habitually compile new kernels on my hardware as I like the extra performance.  It's only the first few times that it kinda hurts to run through the steps.  After a few passes, you'll see how the pieces fit together.  Having a coach for that first pass can be a huge help.. which you might find with a sacrifice of a fine beer at a sig meet.

I'm not sure I read the "64/32-bit wrappers" part clearly.  Is this what you mean? 
  64bit ubuntu on 64bit hardware, running flash within 32bit wrappers. (I don't see what else you could mean)
If that is the case, perhaps you have ia32-libs, but not ia32-libs-gtk or whatever.
  apt-get search ia32-libs
Otherwise, if you have 64-bit hardware with a functioning 32-bit distro installed and looking to switch the installed OS x86_64 binaries _without doing a full reinstall_, it is doable, but it is another tricky "novice beware" stuff.  If you feel up to it, I can dig through my pile of scribbled notes to find the URL for a "HOWTO" that worked for me a few months ago, when I moved an old debian hard drive into new 64-bit hardware.

If none of this works.. something very strange is going on (imho) and it's time to turn on debug flags and examine log files with a fine tooth comb.

-Phil

{many lines below snipped}
On Sun, May 01, 2011 at 12:13:09AM -0400, Andy Civil wrote:
> On 11-04-21 02:54 PM, Joe Burpee wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 14:11:44 -0400, Andy Civil wrote:
> >> On 11-04-21 10:38 AM, Joe Burpee wrote:
> >>> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flash-aid/?src=api
> >> That worked perfectly, thank you!
> > March.  http://oclug.on.ca/archives/linux/2011-March/002968.html
> >
> > FWIW my main issue thru various dist upgrades on my laptop was the
> > 64/32-bit wrappers. Recently I've been using Chromium browser and the
> > preview release 64-bit flash just works.
> 
> I sort of spoke too soon. Stuff is working, but there's weirdness I'd 
> like to understand. Anyone who has spare time to help, please read my 
> description, while you're reading it, my questions are "is my NVidia 
> driver working" and "can I improve my video performance" and a general 
> sense of what's going on.
> 
> The broken implementation of pulseaudio in Ubuntu 8 caused me to upgrade 
> to Ubuntu 10. This broke Flash, but Joe's tip brought it back.
> 
> other is running windoze. My family plays games such as webkinz and 
> webkinznews; they report that they have to switch to the windoze machine 
> for one, otherwise it runs so slowly that they fail games due to expiry, 
> but perversely the other works better on Ubuntu.
> 
> if I do this, a file called "xorg.conf" is created in /etc. From that 
> point, everything is broken. When I boot up, I get a screen of the wrong 

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