Apache 2.2.4 aka www-servers/apache-2.2.4-r12 in Gentoo has been stabilised, so I went through the upgrade. A lot of things changed in the configuration files, I hope I got everything right… we’ll see 😉 The vhosts and webapps I tested all work flawlessly.
VirtualBox 1.5.0 – seamless Windows windows
I installed the new version of innotek‘s VirtualBox yesterday. It worked perfectly, just had to bump the ebuild version from virtualbox-bin-1.4.0-r1 to virtualbox-bin-1.5.0, as well as virtualbox-modules-1.4.0 to virtualbox-modules-1.5.0 and emerge did all the other work.
The ‘biggest’ new feature is the ‘Seamless Mode’. This is a feature which works if you’re using VirtualBox to run MS Windows in a virtual machine on top of your GNU/Linux X desktop. I tested it with Windows XP home as guest. To be able to use it, make sure you install the ‘Guest Additions’ into the virtual MS Windows. You can do so by going to Menu / Devices / Install Guest Additions in the window of the running virtual machine. If you upgraded from an earlier VirtualBox version, repeat the ‘Guest Additions’ installation, so you have the newest version of all the drivers in your VM. After the mandatory reboot of MS Windows, press <Host>-L or go to Menu / Machine / Seamless Mode and see how the ‘classical’ virtual machine window disappears, and the open windows on your MS Windows desktop are being merged into your X desktop. This works best if you set MS Windows’ taskbar to disappear automatically.
Nicely done, innotek! Thanks 🙂
ASUS P5B can’t boot from ATAPI optical drive
This is probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve encountered with hardware in quite some time, so I’ll write it down here…
Got a box with an ASUS P5B mainboard, four SATA harddrives and an ATAPI DVD drive in it. The task: Install Linux. Simple enough. I switched on the machine and pressed the button on the DVD drive in order to insert the Linux DVD. Nothing happened. Also the small LED didn’t indicate that anything was going on with that DVD drive, at no time of the boot procedure. After half an hour of investigating (checking jumpers on the DVD drive, exchanging the data cable and whatnot) I found out (from here) that it is in fact impossible to boot from an ATAPI optical drive (like 99% of all CD/DVD drives out there are).
It is very important to notice that the single ATA/133 port available on this motherboard is controlled by the JMicron chip, not by the chipset. This means that if you still have a parallel IDE optical drive it will only be recognized on Windows after you install JMicron’s driver. The problem is that this driver comes on the motherboard CD-ROM, and you won’t be able to install it, as the system does not recognize your optical drive. You can download the driver from the net, however the driver for the on-board LAN port is also on the CD-ROM… The only option you have is to copy the JMicron driver from the CD to a floppy disk or a USB pen drive using another PC. This problem happens not only with this motherboard from ASUS, but also with all other motherboards based on Intel P965 chipset we’ve seen to date. Of course if you have a SATA optical drive you won’t face this issue.
I especially “like” the part with the drivers being delivered on a CD. Of course this whole “little issue” isn’t mentioned in the manual, let alone in the product description or in any other place you would expect it to be mentioned.