Installing Ubuntu 9.04

Josh Bialkowski Comments

These are my install notes for installing Ubuntu 9.04 on a Dell XPS with two NVIDIA 7900 GS cards in SLI and three monitors. Some of this is quite specific to this setup.

I did a no-cd install using the method described here.

To install ubuntu without an install CD, I used the net installer. This was done on a system currently using windows XP, that already had an additional partition for linux.

The first thing I needed to do is download the linux kernel and the net installer. These are in two files linux.bin and initrd.gz. I got them from here.

For future versions, replace "jaunty" with the nickname of the current distribution. After downloading these two files in windows, I placed them in `C:boot. This directory didn't exist yet, so I created it.

The next thing I needed was a boot loader that will allow me to choose which operating system to boot into. I used the open source GRUB for windows. I got it from the sourceforge page. The installer wasn't necessary. Instead I downloaded the grub4dos-0.4.4.zip file from the download page. Then I extracted "gldr" into "C:" and extracted "menu.lst" into "C:bootgrub".

Next, I opened menu.lst with a text editor (notepad++). At the very bottom I added the following

title Ubuntu Installer (hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/linux vga=normal ramdisk_size=14972
root=/dev/rd/1 rw
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.gz

Note that the numbers above refer to the physical drive and logical partition, so this may change. Check the drive that you're working with.

The next thing I did was I edited boot.ini so that the windows boot loader would give me the option of loading GRUB instead of windows xp. To edit boot.ini run msconfig and click on the edit button for boot.ini. Then I added this line at the end

C:gldr="Start GRUB"

Then I restarted the computer. It stopped after the POST and gave the option of booting into windows or GRUB. I selected GRUB and hit enter. When GRUB loaded I went down to the last optionm "Ubuntu Installer" and hit enter. It then booted into the Ubuntu Net Installer

The installer attempted to use DHCP to connect to the internet. It then asked for a hostname so I put in the static IP address for this machine.

In the last step of the installer it said something about "only the base system is installed" and it asked what other parts to install. I selected something and hit "enter" but that didn't select the item for install, it just advanced to the next step. Thus I ended up with a base installation and just a console prompt. So I installed the rest of the desktop OS with

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Then I rebooted to get the desktop. When I was logged in, there was a little green circuit icon on the top right of the desktop. When I clicked this, it prompted me to install the closed-source nvidia drivers. I accepted that and rebooted. I had some problems with the multiple monitors though so I had to edit xorg.conf. Next time, don't reboot, but first open xorg.conf for editing.

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then I opened a separate terminal and run

sudo lspci | grep VGA

The first column of what prints out is the "Bus Id" and I used that in xorg.conf need that in a minute. Back in xorg.conf and I edited it as follows.

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 1.0  (buildd@palmer)  Sun Feb  1 20:21:04 UTC 2009

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0″
    Screen      0  "Screen0″ 1680 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1″ RightOf "Screen0″
    Screen      2  "Screen2″ LeftOf "Screen0″
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0″ "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0″ "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1″
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "1″
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0″
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5″
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0″
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor2″
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "DELL 2007WFP"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0″
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "DELL 2007WFP"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1″
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "DELL 2007WFP"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device2″
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 7900 GS"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0″
    Screen          1
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0″
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 7900 GS"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0″
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device1″
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 7900 GS"
    BusID          "PCI:6:0:0″
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen2″
    Device         "Device2″
    Monitor        "Monitor2″
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0″
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0″
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0″
    Device         "Device0″
    Monitor        "Monitor0″
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0″
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0″
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0; DFP-0: 1600x1024 +0+0; DFP-0: 1440x900 +0+0; DFP-0: 1400x1050 +0+0; DFP-0: 1360x768 +0+0; DFP-0: 1360x768_60_0 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x1024_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1280x960 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864_75_0 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864_70 +0+0; DFP-0: 1152x864_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_70 +0+0; DFP-0: 1024x768_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 960x600 +0+0; DFP-0: 960x540 +0+0; DFP-0: 896x672 +0+0; DFP-0: 840x525 +0+0; DFP-0: 840x525d70 +0+0; DFP-0: 840x525d60 +0+0; DFP-0: 840x525d60_0 +0+0; DFP-0: 832x624 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600d60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_75 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_72 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_60 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x600_56 +0+0; DFP-0: 800x512 +0+0; DFP-0: 720x450 +0+0; DFP-0: 680x384 +0+0; DFP-0: 680x384d60_0 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x512 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x512d60 +0+0; DFP-0: 640x480 +0+0″
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1″
    Device         "Device1″
    Monitor        "Monitor1″
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0″
    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0″
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Then I needed to install flash in Firefox. I opened a terminal and typed.

sudo apt-get install flash-nonfree

But then I needed to fix a few things because flash is buggy and closed source. I opened a terminal and typed the following.

# Flash also looks for /usr/lib/libesd.so.1
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libesd.so.0 /usr/lib/libesd.so.1

# Flash expects /tmp/.esd/socket to exist.
sudo mkdir -p /tmp/.esd/
sudo touch /tmp/.esd/socket

And this enabled sound in flash pages.

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