I am Haris!

Baldur's Gate Trilogy on Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 Linux

2009-11-09T08:00:00.021+08:00

I had been feeling the itch to play Baldur's Gate again. To my eternal shame I've never actually finished either Baldur's Gate or its expansion and sequel. I found this guide and managed to install and play Baldur's Gate using the Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BGT) mod on my Linux box. BGT is a mod that makes it so that all Baldur's Gate games are played as one giant epic continuous game. It starts at Candlekeep and I suppose it ends wherever and whenever Throne of Bhaal ends. Since I've never actually finished it I don't know for sure but the idea is intriguing.

The installation was successful and I've played it for a bit. There are a couple of issues though:

I can't seem to put it into windowed mode
It sometimes hangs when I quit while actually in a game. I usually get out of this by doing a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and going back to the gdm.

I haven't run across anything else so far. I'll update when I do.

So here's what I did:

First things first, make sure you have a copy of the original Baldur's Gate, it's expansion: Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, and Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. You have to have all of them. If you don't, I suggest getting the Baldur's Gate 4-in-1 boxset.
Make sure you have the following packages installed: mmv, tofrodos, and wine. If you don't have them or you are unsure just execute the following command:
```
$ sudo aptitude install build-essential mmv tofrodos wine unrar-free unzip libjpeg62-dev zlib1g-dev  
```
Execute
```
$ winecfg
```
Under the "Audio" tab, make sure that only the box labelled "OSS" is checked. Click OK.
Download and save winetricks into a folder in your PATH. Execute:
```
$ ./winetricks directplay
```
Download Mos Pack and extract the contents of the source directory within. I extracted the files into /home/haris/src/mospack. Execute:
```
$ cd /home/haris/src/mospack
$ make -f makefile.unix
```
This will create the executables mospack and mosunpack
Move, copy or create symlinks for the resulting mospack and mosunpack in a folder in your PATH.
Using wine, install Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, and Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. Make sure you install everything. I installed Baldur's Gate at /home/haris/games/baldursgate and Baldur's Gate 2 at /home/haris/games/baldursgate2. When you see these folder names in this post just change them to match where you installed the games on your system.
Then, if you need to, download the appropriate patches for Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 from Bioware's site and install those too.
Download Baldur's Gate Trilogy-WeiDU and extract it into your Baldur's Gate 2 folder. The current version is 1.08.
Download bgt_linux.rar and also extract it into your Baldur's Gate 2 folder
Download the Linux version of WeiDU. Unzip it into a folder in your PATH. Personally, I extracted to a new folder and added that folder to the PATH. Whatever you choose to do, switch to whatever folder you extracted it to and execute:
```
$ tolower
```
Change to your Baldur's Gate directory and execute tolower:
```
$ cd /home/haris/games/baldursgate
$ tolower
```
Change to your Baldur's Gate 2 directory and execute tolower:
```
$ cd /home/haris/games/baldursgate2
$ tolower
```
Still from your Baldur's Gate 2 folder execute:
```
$ ./bgt-linux/bgt-linux
```
When prompted, type in the location of your Baldur's Gate install. In my case this is /home/haris/games/baldursgate.
Wait.
After the installation is done, put in your Baldur's Gate 2 CD and type:
```
$ wine baldur.exe
```

Enjoy!

Adapted from BGT in Linux (Successfully I think) by lodgey
References: DirectPlay Games at Wine wiki

Failing drives annoy me

2009-11-03T06:48:00.004+08:00

I had a surprise when I upgraded the netbook to Karmic. It installed a SMART monitoring tool by default and it reported that my hard drive is failing. I did not experience this when I installed Karmic on my laptop but that was a clean install, not an upgrade. I did a search on Google and discovered that many are experiencing this and it is apparently a known bug. So this is the output of sudo smartctl -iA /dev/sda (install smartmontools first):

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     TOSHIBA MK1652GSX
Serial Number:    29AGF4FCS
Firmware Version: LV020J
User Capacity:    160,041,885,696 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Tue Nov  3 06:21:31 2009 MYT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Always       -       1129
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       10235
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       147
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   088   088   000    Old_age   Always       -       5027
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0033   253   100   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       240
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       34
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       47116
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       63 (Lifetime Min/Max 23/68)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       138
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
220 Disk_Shift              0x0002   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       108
222 Loaded_Hours            0x0032   089   089   000    Old_age   Always       -       4505
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
224 Load_Friction           0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
226 Load-in_Time            0x0026   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       334
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0001   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

I have since discovered that SMART is not monitored by default in Jaunty so it's not a surprise that there were no warnings. I have no idea what the reallocated sector count was pre-Karmic, but I think that the hard drive was already going bad — there were signs even though it was mostly running fine. And the numbers does seem to indicate that it is genuine rather than a bug. After thinking it over I am leaning towards prudence and simply replacing the netbook's hard drive and buying an external enclosure for it in order to use it as portable storage. It's probably for the best.

That said, I'll take note of SMART beforehand the next time I do an upgrade to Karmic.

UPDATE 3/11/2009 11:21 p.m.: Upgraded another computer from Jaunty to Karmic. Zero problems.

Sharing a network connection with a PS3 on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 5

2009-09-16T20:46:00.011+08:00

Has this always been in Ubuntu? Was it in Jaunty? I don't know (UPDATE 7/10/2009: Yes this feature is available in Jaunty) but sharing my laptop's internet connection with my PS3 is trivial in Ubuntu Karmic. My laptop connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and I am connecting my PS3 to it using an Ethernet cable. Now, the PS3 does have Wi-Fi but at least in my case it is spotty at best.

How to share a network connection on Ubuntu Karmic Koala?

Right-click the network manager applet. Click on Edit connections.
Select the connection you want to edit. In my case this is "Auto eth0"
Go to the "IPv4 Settings" tab and select the method: Shared to other computers. Click "Apply: and close the Edit connections menu.
On the PS3, under "Network Settings" choose "Internet Connection Settings".
Select "Easy" and let the PS3 set everything to automatic. You can set the specifics if you want, but then you probably won't be reading this :p
Save the settings, and you're done!

I see a large improvement in terms of latency and speed compare to letting the PS3 connect to the wireless access point on its own.

Bittorrent on Ubuntu

2009-09-11T00:49:00.002+08:00

I am out of ideas trying to get a proper bittorrent client on Ubuntu.

See the thing is: I like rtorrent. It's simple, it's text-only. With some scripts you can even add directory monitoring, queuing and even moving completed torrents to it. What's not to love? I simply can't get it to run through my OpenVPN tunnel though. Because of my ISP, torrents are not really torrents without going through some sort of obfuscation. They're more like drips. And "bitdrips" is just dirty.

I've tried the default bittorrent client on Ubuntu: Transmission, but it feels inadequate to me. I can't queue up multiple torrents and support for things like proxies is weak in my opinion. And Deluge seemed to crash – or at least, become unresponsive – often. I also couldn't get it to use the OpenVPN tunnel. Not reliably at least. I thought it worked for a bit with Deluge but with the unresponsiveness …

So I turned to something that I know for sure worked: µtorrent. I know, I know it's not open source, and it's not "Free as in Freedom". Hell it doesn't even run in linux (without wine)! But it works for me.

I would like to go open source with this but I can't seem to get the other clients to work right. Any ideas?

Kubuntu Netbook?

2009-08-14T00:02:00.007+08:00

I asked which version of Ubuntu Karmic Koala I should put on my netbook on identi.ca and 3 out of 3 recommended Kubuntu Netbook edition. Which kinda surprises me, really. Pretty much all I know of the Kubuntu Netbook edition is that (1) it is Kubuntu, and (2) it uses Arora as the default browser. I've always had it in my head that KDE 4 especially is kind of heavy and not suited for netbook and this came about from the tortuous hour and a half-ish I spent with Kubuntu Jaunty on my Dell laptop. Can someone please enlighten me?

Acer Aspire One D150 running Linux - part 2

2009-03-28T02:20:00.005+08:00

If you've read my earlier post about this, you'd know that I've done nothing but install MEPIS and it managed somehow to get the built-in speakers on my Aspire One D150 to work. There was a suggestion that it needed the alsa version 1.0.16 (which MEPIS uses) but Cannonfodder has already tried that on Mint, to no avail.

Personally, I prefer GNOME over KDE and MEPIS comes with KDE as a default. I've been trying to get used to using the default KDE apps (I know you don't have to, but it just feels wrong), but aside from Amarok, everything else just feels broken to me. I know partly it's because it has only been a week or so and it's KDE 3.5 and the tiny screen doesn't help, but I have a ton of gtk apps like geany and xchat loaded. I guess what you're used to is what you're used to sometimes.

What all of this is leading up to is that I am going to install another Linux distro on this netbook. I downloaded a Jaunty daily from March 24th (I think the Jaunty Beta is out by now so you might want to try that), and proceeded to install it on Aspire One. The first thing I noticed was that the speakers work in the live session when I booted the USB drive, so that was promising. Installation went smoothly much like my earlier Jaunty install. This time too, I decided to reformat everything with ext4. In less than an hour from booting up the live USB, I'm presented with the login screen.

I logged in, and the speakers work. Wifi seemed to work. Ubuntu presented me with an option to activate madwifi drivers instead of using the default ath5k drivers. I decided to stick with ath5k simply because it's working. I put in the passkey and it connected to my access point, no problem. I added Medibuntu repository and installed Skype (which took some time because of #streamyx slow). I discovered that the built-in mic still doesn't work, but built-in speakers, and audio jacks work just fine. Another issue I noticed as I was using it is that the scrollbar control area thingy on the trackpad seems to be really really thin, and at times it just refuses to work. Looking around online I found a thread on ubuntuforums.org about issues with the 10" Aspire One. Still not much in the way of resolving the issues at the moment though.

So I started to make it look the way I want it to look and just use it. The built-in mic not working doesn't quite bother me as much as the built-in speakers not working (as in other distros I've tried). I guess that is just down to expectations: I expect a computer to have a working speaker. I do not expect it to have a working mic. It'll probably sound crappy anyways. So in summary:

Wifi ✔
Built-in speakers ✔
Built-in mic ✗
Headphone jack ✔
Mic jack ✔
Webcam ✔
Bluetooth ? Update 9 April 2009: file transfers seem to be working. I don't have a bluetooth headset.
Card reader ? Trackpad ✔ is problematic. Update 9 April 2009: the latest updates seem to have fixed the trackpad issue

Acer Aspire One D150 running Linux

2009-03-24T02:31:00.002+08:00

I got an Acer Aspire One D150 as a mobile replacement for the Dell Inspiron 6400 that had been my constant companion for more than two years. It's LCD screen died as far as I can tell and sending it in to the shop is not an option at the moment. It still works; I have it hooked up to an external monitor and it runs just fine. But we're not going to talk about that.

The D150 is priced at RM1499 and sports a 10 inch screen, bluetooth, webcam, plus the usual features you would expect from a netbook. The default amount of RAM is 1GB, but after some deliberation I decided to get the shop to upgrade it to 2GB for an extra RM74. It also comes with Windows XP. Yes, I have committed the crime of adding Windows netbooks sales figures :(.

This is not my fault. Linux netbooks are nearly impossible to find here in Malaysia. Every recent netbook I've seen runs Windows, all of them: Asus, Acer, HP, etc., all of them. I very literally had no choice in the matter. Big deal, so I get a Windows machine and install Linux on it myself. I downloaded Crunchbang Linux, ran Unetbootin to put in on my trusty USB flash drive thingie and off I went.

The install was breeze. I deleted all the Windows partitions, made new ones, input the timezone, user name and password, etc. and I was presented with a login screen within an hour. Cool! Except that things were awfully quiet. I ran skype and it pretty much confirms it: I have no audio. I looked it up and most suggest recompiling alsa and adding the line options snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base. Tried it, but still no luck. I did notice however that there is audio output and input through the headphone and mic jacks so it's not totally borked.

And then I discovered a kindred soul on the lowyat.net forums. He seemed to have had some luck getting the speakers to work running MEPIS but experienced kernal panics and unstability. At first I was reluctant to install MEPIS but later I caved because being unable to get the speakers to work was just annoying. I downloaded, and installed it. And lo and behold, the built-in speakers work now. But not the built-in mic. Oh well. Seeing as I can't afford to waste time getting it to work at the moment, it's just going to have to be good enough for now. Also I have not experienced the instabilities mentioned on LYN so maybe I'm just lucky.

I also tried out the suspend and hibernate feature and found that suspending to RAM works, but the sound (again ☹) dies upon resume. Suspending to disk just doesn't work. But that's okay: I've never used them anyways.

So in summary:

Wifi ☑
Speakers ☑
Built-in mic ☒
Audio jacks ☑
Webcam ☑
Bluetooth no idea (but Cannonfodder of lowyat.net forums says it's works out of the box)
Suspend to disk ☒
Suspend to RAM ☑-ish

I might try again in sometime in the near future with another Linux distro, maybe Jaunty.

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

2009-02-21T05:51:00.000+08:00

A week ago I upgraded my laptop's hard drive, and since I had to reinstall an OS anyway installed an Ubuntu Jaunty daily on it. The installation was painless and straightforward. It went very, very smoothly - somewhat different from the first time I installed Ubuntu on this laptop a year ago (just to be clear, that first time was good too, only now it's better.).

Network set up was easy - much easier than it was under Hardy, as was installing all my familiar apps and settings (apt-get FTW!). My one complaint at the beginning is that compiz somehow got slow. Switching viewports was suddenly very jerky. I would blame my old laptop but it worked just fine in Hardy. So I assumed that it would be resolved in the future, and it did. Compiz now runs even better than I remember it did under Hardy.

Oh, and I also took the chance to use ext4. I don't really notice any difference to be honest but I'm a noob so don't take my word for it. It's apparently going to be standard in the future for Ubuntu so I figured I might as well get a head start.

Overall, I think Ubuntu is getting better each release (I skipped Intrepid, though). Jaunty looks solid and I totally recommend people new to Linux to try it out.