Linux 2.6.35 hanging/oopsing on large memory allocations

Short summary Kernel 2.6.35.4 kernel on x86_64 doesn’t seem to handle large memory allocations well. In particular, Running malloc() with Gigabyte chunks can cause a kernel oops Quickly allocating all memory will make the system hang (but not oops) If anyone has an idea why this is, some helpful clues or whatever, please comment below. [...]

Thunderbird: Making a folder with new messages stand out

On Thunderbird 3.0.7, this little extra file turned the folder names with new mail red and bold: (the “chrome” directory needs to be created) $ cat ~/.thunderbird/sdf2k45i.default/chrome/userChrome.css @namespace url(“http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul”); /* set default namespace to XUL */ /* Setting the color of folders containing new messages to red */ treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(folderNameCol, newMessages-true) { font-weight: bold; color: red [...]

Gnome: An icon in the system tray (new mail)

This should have been obvious: Have a “new mail” icon in the system tray when new mail is fetched by Thunderbird on a FC12 Linux machine. I ended up writing my own script. My starting point was the “Gnome Integration” add-on. Not that I liked that it forced me to have another notification popup on [...]

Controlling desktop effects: Compiz notes for FC12

Using Fedora Core 12, I wanted some control over my wobbling windows, and in particular which corner is the hot spot for displaying all open windows. The first thing I needed to find out, is the name of the toolkit doing this: So it’s Compiz. First, install the Compiz Configuration Setting Manager # yum install [...]

Radeon: reserve failed for wait in /var/log/messages

Looking at my system log (kernel 2.6.35.4), this is a common thing: Apr 24 12:04:49 kernel: radeon 0000:01:00.0: ffff8802d0aa1a00 reserve failed for wait Apr 24 12:04:49 kernel: radeon 0000:01:00.0: ffff8802d0aa1a00 reserve failed for wait Apr 24 12:04:51 kernel: radeon 0000:01:00.0: ffff8802d0aa1a00 reserve failed for wait Apr 24 12:04:51 kernel: radeon 0000:01:00.0: ffff8802d0aa1a00 reserve failed for [...]

No sound on Firefox on x86_64 Linux with Pulseaudio / ALSA

This is yet another suggestion on what to do if the Firefox doesn’t play sound (with flash videos in particular) but all other applications do (mplayer, for example). The video in Firefox runs smoothly, but no sound at all. This is a popular subject on the web, it turns out. My platform: Fedora Core 12, [...]

Authoritative timestamping: Some silly games

Ever wanted to prove you knew something before everyone else? Here’s the way: You write it down in a file, and timestamp it. Then, when you want to prove you were there first, you’ll show the original file, the signed timestamp, and then everyone know you’re a hopeless geek. But this can help a bit [...]

Linux / Gnome: Turning two extra mouse buttons into Copy/Paste commands

The goal Use my Microsoft mouse’s two extra buttons to do Copy and Paste on a Fedora 12 machine (Gnome 2.28.2). The problem is that different applications have different keystrokes. But the nice thing is that almost all applications will respond properly to Alt-e c for copy (that is, open the “Edit” menu, and choose [...]

Enabling openGL 3D rendering on Fedora 12

In short: I’ve known for a long time that OpenGL wasn’t working on my graphics card, and the display was indeed sluggish. The problem is most easily shown by going $ glxinfo | grep OpenGL OpenGL vendor string: Mesa Project OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.7.1-DEVEL OpenGL shading language version [...]

Examples of SDMA-assembler for Freescale i.MX51

These are a couple of examples of SDMA assembly code, which performs data copy using the DMA functional unit. The first one shows how to copy data from application memory space to SDMA memory. The second example copies data from one application memory chunk to another, and hence works as an offload memcpy(). To actually [...]