Ich lass mir noch nen tollen Titel einfallen!

For some reason I had no sound in Firefox under Ubuntu 9.04 after upgrading from 8.04 and 8.10. In all other applications the sound worked without any problems. After some research I found that the package flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound fixes the issue. You can install it with the following command.

sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound

Hope this helps someone out there.

After many weeks without an own PC/Computer/Notebook, the dry spell is going to end tomorrow. I’ve ordered today a new box with the following parts:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850, 2 Cores – each with 3 GHz. In fact I wanted to buy a E8400 from the new Penryn series, but they are actually as rare as bananas in the DDR.
• Videocard: XFX GF 8800 GTX XXX-Edition with 768 MB DDR3
• Mainboard: Gigabyte P35-DS3P
• RAM: 2x 2GB DDR-800 CL5 from Aeneon
• Harddisk: Western Digital AAKS 250 GB with 16 MB Cache
• DVD Writer: A generic 20x one from Samsung in black, suitable to the case
• Case: Thermaltake ArmorJr. Midi-Tower
• Powersupply: BeQuiet 650 Watt

Pics will follow during the next days after receiving the components.

Great trailer of the next part of the Battlefield series.

First start with partitioning the partition (in my case it is /dev/sda4) by executing fdisk /dev/sda4. I’ve used the following layout:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda4p1 1 16654 133773223+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4p2 16655 16898 1959930 82 Linux swap / Solaris


After finishing this step it may be possible that you need to reboot the server, because the kernel can’t read the new partition table. Pay attention on the output which is written to the screen after quitting fdisk.

Now we need to install the package multipath-tools to get the tool kpartx. This is necessary to create the appropriate files in dev to access the partitions of the partition.

Installing multipath-tools
aptitude install multipath-tools

Create files in dev
kpartx -a -v /dev/sda4

This command will create the files sda4p1 and sda4p2 in /dev/mapper. Now we are able to format the root-filesystem and to create the swap area of the new domU.

mke2fs -j /dev/mapper/sda4p1 && mkswap /dev/mapper/sda4p2 && swapon /dev/mapper/sda4p2

When the formatting process is finished, we can start installing the OS for the new domU to the partition. In my case I’ve had a second harddisk (/dev/sdb) on which a Debian Etch has been installed. So I just sync the content of this disk to the new filesystem.

mkdir /mnt/source
mkdir /mnt/target
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/source
mount /dev/mapper/sda4p1 /mnt/target
rsync -avxH --numeric-ids /mnt/source /mnt/target
cp -av /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-xen /mnt/target/lib/modules/
umount /mnt/target
umount /mnt/source


After installing the guest OS you should be able to boot the freshly created domU with the Xen-Hypervisor. My domU-config (/etc/xen/domu.example.com) to achieve this goal looks like like below.

arch = os.uname()[4]
if re.search('64', arch):
arch_libdir = 'lib64'
else:
arch_libdir = 'lib'
kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-xen"
ramdisk = "/boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-xen"
builder='linux'
memory = 1024
name = "domu.example.com"
vcpus=2
vif = [ 'bridge=xenbr0' ]
disk = [ 'phy:sda4,sda,w' ]
root = "/dev/sda1 ro"
extra = "2 TERM=xterm xencons=tty console=tty1 clock=jiffies"
device_model = '/usr/' + arch_libdir + '/xen/bin/qemu-dm'
boot="c"
sdl=0
vnc=0
vncpasswd=''
stdvga=0
serial='pty'


Let’s come to the end and start the domU!
xm create domu.example.com


After the initial installation I change different things for my claims. Do not forget to update your system before the following steps. This can be done by executing the following commands:

aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade


1. Remove CD repository from /etc/apt/sources.list.
2. Install vim to get my favourite text editor.
   aptitude install vim
3. Enable syntax highlighting in /etc/vim/vimrc.
4. Remove # from the following rows in ~/.bashrc to make daily business easier.
   # alias ll='ls -l'
# alias la='ls -A'
# alias l='ls -CF'
5. Install some other often used tools.
   aptitude install mc traceroute lynx screen