The Art of Tech: March 2005 Archives

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March 30, 2005

Review: Homeworld 2

I purchased Homeworld 2 about 5 weeks ago. Since then, I have only played it for about 3 hours total. So far, I have to say that this game rocks.

First of all, Homeworld 2 (like Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm) is a 3D RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game. Gameplay takes place in space, in a truly 3D environment; you move and fight in three dimensions.

If you never played the first Homeworld, then you may not be familiar with it's excellent user interface. The challenge of creating a simple, easy to use interface that allows players to move, fight and operate in 3 dimensions, even during times of frantic, "high-stress" activity, is no small matter.

I never thought it would be possible, but Relic actually made the UI in Homeworld 2 better than the original. Not just a little better, either. I have to tip my hat to them.

As for gameplay, the same concept of working with fleets of ships in every size class from small 1-man fighters (and even a few smaller auxiliary devices) all the way up to Super Capital Ships, is present. You can not succeed in the game if you ignore one end of the spectrum or the other. You must build integrated, combined arms fleets in order to win.

The major changes are in just what ships are available. The timeframe of Homeworld 2 is set several generations after the original, so this makes a lot of sense. The technology tree is very interesting as well.

Also, ships that have construction capabilities, use a concept of modules that must be present in order to be able to construct certain classes of ships. There are some really cool new ships, too.

One thing that has disappointed me, though, is that hyperspace jumps in multiplayer games are still WAY too expensive. There are maps that encourage hyperspacing, and the super-capital ships (along with the mother ship and shipyard) are slower moving than in the original, making for painful gaps in the action. Hopefully, this could be "fixed" in an update to the game.

Overall, I am really looking forward to working my way through the single-player campaigns. Multiplayer games with several other people will be a lot of fun.

Posted by lamontp at 5:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

64bit fglrx Failures

At this point, the 64bit fglrx driver for my ATI Radeon 9800Pro card is almost useless. It rocks for 2D, but all 3D programs cause the system to hard-lock. I can not even ssh into it to kill the X server.

One evening soon, when I have an hour to work on it, I am going to try to get some kind of core dumps out of the driver, if I can. If that does not work, then I will ask ATI for a debugging version of the driver and send them the dumps.

Hopefully, there will soon be a newer version of the fglrx driver for AMD64 that works.

Lamont R. Peterson

Posted by lamontp at 5:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2005

Student Writes man Page

One of my students wrote this on a piece of paper and set it on the counter in our break room, here at Guru Labs. He also placed four boxes of the items refernced in this "man page" on the counter.

$ man eatgirlscoutcookies
(1)                          User Commands                    (1)
NAM
     eatgirlscoutcookies - eat them, they're good! Command
                 allowing ingestion of Girl Scout Cookies.

SYNOPSIS
     eatgirlscoutcookies [-qa] [-d ]
     eatgirlscoutcookies [-n] [-t ]
     eatgirlscoutcookies [-fFwk]

DESCRIPTION
     [Two other students from Sweden, who were here last week]
     never had Girl Scout Cookies, so I just had to buy a
     samling of the best for them. Now that they have gone
     back to Sweden, I cannot eat them all by myself, so
     please, enjoy!

     P.S. I got kinda bored last night after reading man
     pages :).

OPTIONS
     -a  Eat them all in one sitting, by yourself
         (not recommended!) Usually accompanied with the
         -q (quiet) option.
     -n  Specifies number of cookies to eat.
     -t  Specifies type of cookie to eat.
     -F  Allows redirection to Family (extended).
     -f  Allows redirection to friends.
     -w  Allows redirection to wife.
     -k  Allows redirection to kids.

BUGS
     There will be none, unless this command is not used for
     an extended period of time.

                          March 17, 2005                      (1)

Posted by lamontp at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2005

VMware Workstation 5 RC3 on Linux

I have been using VMware Workstation 4.0.5 for a while now on my (old) notebook. I have a small virtual vachine with WindowsXP Pro installed to it. I have used it on those rare occasions when I needed to do something with windows (but not gaming).

After updating the system to a distribution using the 2.6 kernel (the original installation was on 2.4) I found a couple of small problems.

The first, which I do not believe is related to the kernel release, is that I could no longer use the virtual machine in full screen mode. I believe this is due to some small, subtle difference between XFree86 and the xorg X server.

The second problem, was getting the 2.6 kernel modules to build using VMware's vmware-config.pl script. I ended up hacking that script to just continue on when it thought it could not find the kernel headers even though it was looking right at them. It worked fine and built and installed the modules.

After some kernel update or another (I think it included a version bump and not just a release bump) under FC2, I started to experiece two other odd problems with the VMware drivers. The first occured if I did not shut down the VMware services manually before shutting the system down; it would hang waiting for one (did not matter which) of the vmnet interfaces to stop being "in use" which meant an inifite loop. The other was that many times, I would have to rebuild the drivers each time I booted the system. After doing so, VMware ran just find (other than the fullscreen thing.

Since this new notebook was going to dual boot (due to the better video support) I did not bother to bring the WinXP VM over yet, so I did not originally install VMware Workstation 4.0.5 (or 4.5.x). At the end of last week, I decided to get it set up. However, I decided to try out the new VMware Workstation 5 beta (it was at RC2 at the time I pulled it down) and see if it fixed my problems.

Sure enough, I do not have to futz with the drivers anymore and they do not hang the system on shutdown. Woot. I have not actually installed any guest OS's yet (I will copy the VMware 4.0.5 WinXP VM over from the old notebook sometime this week and try out the conversion tools), but I plan to install both RHEL4 & CentOS4 VMs to play around with.

Over the weekend, they released VMware Workstation 5 RC3, which I have downloaded and installed. The first difference I noticed was that the UI had seen some significant redesign in some places.

Installation has been very smooth and easy to accomplish (no more hacking vmware-config.pl). The new "Teams" feature looks very interesting and (probably) will be quite useful to me. The new 64bit support is another item that I plan to test, soon.

Posted by lamontp at 2:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 13, 2005

Scorched3D & UT2004

I have built version 38 of scorched3d and have it running on my notebook. Unfortunately, the opensource "radeon" driver lacks support for a couple of features of that would allow this game and Unreal Tournament 2004. However, I was able to find the combination of switches (deactivating some rendering features) that allow scorched3d to run nicely on the notebook.

Derek, Stuart and I have played a couple games of Scorched3D between our notebooks. I think I currently hold the award for "Best Self-Destruct Sequence" for the time I wiped them both out in the first 3 turns and then proceeded to launch a Hornet Swarm that crashed into a ridge right next to me, annihilating myself within 1.5 seconds.

On the notebook, UT2004 was barely playable with every rendering related option cranked down and with only minimal activity on screen, which is to say that it really is not playable like this. Dax told me that he had played UT2004 on this notebook in the past using some other drivers and that it ran very well.

Last night, I built scorched3d for AMD64. This afternoon, I installed it and have been trying to get it to run. Unfortunately, it keeps locking up the system before I actually get into the game. The same thing is happening with UT2004. Games like Chromium and TuxRacer run flawlessly (on both systems). Maybe I just need to tweak out the fglrx driver for the 9800Pro.

Well, back to WarCraft III on battle.net. :)

Posted by lamontp at 6:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

fglrx Dual Head Strangeness

On Friday evening, I decided to work on getting dual head support running using the newly installed fglrx driver. It only took a couple of tries and I had it running.

There is, however, one odd thing about it; the monitors are swapped. The monitor hooked up to connector 1 on the card is getting the configuration signals meant for connector 2, and vice versa.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon trying to get it to swap the outputs back to the correct order, to no avail. I could just set things up the other way around, but then the second monitor would be the "primary" which just feels weird. For now, I am just swapping the connectors back and forth when I boot to Windows.

Posted by lamontp at 6:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 11, 2005

64bit Dual-head 3D

Sweet success is mine!

Finally, I have a had a little time at home to try out the 64bit ATI fglrx drivers for my dual-head Radeon9800Pro card in my dual Opteron workstation. It works very well. First try, too :).

My first interactive 3D program? Chromium.

Just a couple of meaningless benchmarks for those who know what they are:
$ fgl_glxgears
3809 frames in 5.0 seconds = 761.800 FPS
4325 frames in 5.0 seconds = 865.000 FPS
4313 frames in 5.0 seconds = 862.600 FPS

[I had a processor load meter running at the same time and it did not even register any CPU activity during this test.]

$ glxgears
18434 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3686.800 FPS
21609 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.800 FPS
21602 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4320.400 FPS
21605 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.000 FPS
21608 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.600 FPS
21604 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4320.800 FPS
21606 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.200 FPS
21605 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.000 FPS
21604 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4320.800 FPS
21611 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4322.200 FPS
21602 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4320.400 FPS
21603 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4320.600 FPS
21605 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.000 FPS
21605 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.000 FPS
21606 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4321.200 FPS

[This time, one of the CPUs registered about 80% utilization during the test.]

Well, I'm off to install 64bit Unreal Tournament 2004. Tee-hee :).

Posted by lamontp at 7:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 9, 2005

Rescue Mode, grub-install & udev

Fedora Core 3 is the first release from Red Hat that uses udev for managing the /dev filesystem. This new system offers some great advantages. I will be posting a new GuruGuide soon, introducing the basics of udev configuration.

However, this post is not about udev, per se.

I recently installed WindowsXP Professional on my notebook as part of a dual-boot configuration. There were issues getting Windows to install originally so I ended up installing Linux first, which is not how I usually do things. In this case, I was heading out of town the next day and needed Linux with me on that notebook.

After finally working out the issues with Windows, the only thing I needed to do to complete my dual-boot configuration was to get GRUB reinstalled to the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the hard drive. This way, GRUB comes along first and I can select Linux or Windows from it's menu.

One way to install GRUB to the MBR when the MBR has been clobbered (like happens when installing Windows, though Windows does not use the MBR in order to boot) is to boot using a Linux CD that provides a so-called "rescue" environment (sometimes referred to as a "LiveCD"). From there, you simply mount your hard drives partitions, chroot into the path where you mounted the hard drive and run the grub-install program.

So, I placed the Fedora Core 3 CD1 into the DVD drive on the notebook and booted up. At the CD's "boot:" prompt, I typed:

boot: linux rescue

Once the rescue environment was up and running, I typed:

# chroot /mnt/sysimage
# grub-install /dev/hda

Nothing happened; it just sat there, never reporting any errors. As it was about midnight last night when this happened, I went to bed and took another crack when I arrived at the office the next morning. The same thing, again.

I tried using a RHEL4 CD1 rescue environment, as well as RHEL3 & FC1 (all of which I had handy). Same problem. Then it dawned on me: udev. Device nodes for the hard drive do not exist in the chroot'ed environment. From the chroot'ed environment, I next ran:

# mknod /dev/hda b 3 0
# grub-install /dev/hda

This produced an error message telling me that grub-install could not find /dev/hda1, which it needed in order to finish setting things up. I created the appropriate device node and tried once more:

# mknod /dev/hda1 b 3 1
# grub-install /dev/hda

It worked! It is probably a good idea to delete the device nodes just created, before rebooting:

# rm /dev/hda*

After rebooting, GRUB did it's job and I can now boot to either Linux or Windows whenever I want.

Posted by lamontp at 8:06 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Take That! WinXPpro Installer

I do almost everything in Linux. There are only three reasons that I keep any Microsoft Windows around at all:

Testing
Microsoft Money (I just do not like the existing offerings available for Linux)
Games

There are some games that I can not get to run under Linux that I love to play. The most problematic of these is Homeworld (I have not tried Homeworld2 yet). The easiest to get running under Linux are all of my games from Blizzard Entertainment. In most cases, they actually run better (faster, smother) under Linux (using wine) then they do under Windows!

Last night, I finally got WindowsXP Professional installed.

When I got the new notebook, I tried to install WindowsXP Professional on it first. It came with XP Home Edition, which I categorically refuse to install on anything I own. I had a copy of XP Pro that I was not using on any other system, so I tried that.

Booting from the Windoews XP Professional (with SP1) CD, I saw the "Setup is examining your hardware" message and then just a blank, black screen and nothing ever happened. I gave up and just installed Fedora Core 3 on here, leaving the last 20GB of the hard drive to install Windows on later.

It was a very simple trick to get the installer to run. First, I installed a copy of Windows2000 Professional (that is also not in use on any of my systems at the moment, but is earmarked for one) first. When I logged in for the first time, I immediately inserted my WindowsXP Pro CD and when the autorun window came up, I told it to "Upgrade" my Windows2000 system. 50 minutes later, I was running WindowsXP Professional on the notebook.

There was one small problem getting GRUB fixed up, but I will make a seperate entry about that.

Posted by lamontp at 7:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Finally! 64bit 3D Video for Linux

At home, I have a decent workstation, which I built last May (2004). I bought all the parts and put the whole thing together myself, like I always do.

However, it has not been all coconuts and hammocks in paradise.

The one problem area that I have had to deal with on this system has been the video. Unfortunatly, ATI has not released an open source Linux driver for this card yet. What they have done for a while now is to release their Linux driver (minus a couple of bits that are encumbered by patents) under an open source license when they release the next version of a chip line.

Unfortunately, the Radeon 9800 is the list chip in that line so they have not pulled the trigger on that one.

Here are the specs:

Tyan dual Opteron motherboard
2 x AMD Opteron 242 processors (1.6GHz)
2 x 512MB PC3200 DDR DRAM
1 x SATA 160GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive
1 x ATI Radeon 9800Pro 8x AGP graphics card
DVD, CD-R/RW (fast, too)

As you can see, I did not skimp on the hardware, though I did not buy the most expensive version of (most) parts, either. A good compromise and a system that I am very happy with.

"No problem. ATI makes a great binary-only driver that does not taint the kernel. I'll just download and use that," I said to myself. Well, that's when the real fun began.

ATI did a really smart thing and made it so that you can build the binary-only driver for your version of the kernel. Their process gives the driver forward-compatibility; when a new kernel package (or version, even) is released, I can build the fglrx driver from ATI for the newer kernel. This is a very good thing. But to accomplish this with a "binary-only" driver, they built all the important stuff ahead, and the driver build process simply links it all together.

"How does that cause you a problem, Lamont?" you might ask. Well, those pre-built bits are 32bit. I am using a 64bit system and need 64bit bits. ATI did not have such a beast at the time I built my box.

"Why not install the 32bit X server so you can use the ATI driver?quot; Because, this is a 64bit system and I want it running 64bits. Besides, it dual boots and I play my games under WindowsXP since there are a couple I can not get to run under Linux at all. Once I have hardware 3D under Linux at 64bits, I will move all the games I can from Windows to Linux.

That day is now upon us. Recently, ATI finally made a 64bit version of fglrx (which supports the Radeon 9800Pro) for Linux using the Unreal Tournament 2004 to "test" the full capabilities of the system with. I think I read somewhere that there is a 64bit version of the Linux client for that game available. I hope so.

Posted by lamontp at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 8, 2005

My Ultimate Gaming Machine

Every gamer has their own definition of what exactly is "The Ultimate Gaming Machine." Of course, this definition evolves, little by little, every month.

For me, that definition begins with the word, "Notebook" (or laptop, if you prefer). Think I'm crazy? Read on.

The main reason I want to play games on a laptop is convenience. I really enjoy getting together with my buddies for a LAN party. Since I have had the largest monitors out of most of my gaming friends, we usually have held such parties at my place (also, since I have a good LAN, plenty of power & data cables as well as folding tables, a big file server with all the updates to the games already downloaded and a nice fat DSL connection )).

However, we still always ended up spending time getting some people's boxes running right.

Enter the notebook. These things are always traveling, so they are already set up to connect to whatever network is available. I do not have to haul around any heavy gear (my Princeton Graphics Ultra 20 weighs something like 80 pounds!).

With a notebook, I am set up and ready to go just as fast as I can pull it out of the travel bag, plug in the mouse, power and LAN, press the power button and finish booting.

Still, my dual Opteron system at home rocks when playing games. Guess I'll still have to have the LAN parties over there from time to time :).

Posted by lamontp at 7:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 7, 2005

Notebook Linux Gaming Blues

The new notebook has an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 graphics chip. When I installed Fedora Core 3 on it, hardware accelerated OpenGL (3D redering) worked; right out of the box.

However, some features of the chipset are not supported by the open source radeon driver. The one I've run into several times already is the lack of support for compressed textures. So I decided to pay ATI's website a visit and download their fglrx driver for this chip. No joy.

Unfortunately, their website no long lists any drivers for my chip. The driver upporting the Radeon 8500 and above is the only one available.

So then I decided to try Dell's support website. I pulled up the available files for Linux for the Inspiron 4150 notebook; no video drivers at all.

Maybe I will get lucky and find it somewhere out on the Internet. In the meantime, if any of you out there have ATI's fglrx Linux driver which supports the Radeon 7500 cards, please, let me know.

Posted by lamontp at 8:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 1, 2005

Installing the Flash Plugin for All Linux GUI Browsers

It is really easy to get the Macromedia Flash Plugin for Linux installed and working with all of your Linux web browsers. Here are the steps:

[NOTE: file & directory names will change with each version that is released]
[NOTE: paths listed are for Fedora Core; other distros may vary; substitute accordingly]

1. Download the Flash Player/plugin for Linux from Macromedia at http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash.

2. Extract the contents of the tarball just downloaded:

$ tar -zxf install_flash_player_7_linux.tar.gz

3. Change into the directory created from extracting the tarball contents:

$ cd install_flash_player_7_linux

4. As root, copy the libflashplayer.so file to the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ directory:

# cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

5. Open the Configure Konqueror... dialog at the bottom of Konqueror's Configure menu. Scroll to the bottom of the icon bar on the left side of the configuration dialog, and click on Plugins. Click on the Scan for New Plugins button. Click the Plugins tab and verify that the Flash Player plugin is now on the list.

[ANOTATED SCREENSHOTS PENDING]