Akom's Tech Ruminations

In the hopes of fixing my periodic keyboard-gets-stuck issue, I upgraded to the latest and greatest kernel (2.6.32-24-generic), as suggested by the helpful Ubuntu upgrade tool. I should mention that the machine is a Dell Precision M4400 (it's a laptop, sort of). I was then greeted with a "Your display is messed up, you're in low-res mode" dialog. Running the nvidia configuration tool yields:

"You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X configuration file (just run `nvidia-xconfig` as root), and restart the X server."

Great. Now I'm down to one monitor. The nvidia driver won't load. Reinstalling it won't work. Setting this aside for a bit I attempt to start VirtualBox - and I get the same issue! - The kernel driver isn't loaded. OK so this must be a DKMS issue. I reinstall the virtualbox DKMS module:

 sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-ose-dkms
 sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-dkms

But that doesn't help, though it yields a hint: Kernel source is not available. Apparently the trusty ubuntu updater installed the new kernel but not the kernel headers for it! My Kernel is: uname -a

Linux akomgen3 2.6.32-24-generic #38-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jul 5 09:20:59 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

So:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic

Now I can remove and reinstall the dkms packages for virtualbox and all the nvidia packages, and all is good again

Last week my wife replaced her Blackberry Storm2 (9550) with a shiny Droid X, and was relieved to find that the Droid kept up with her insane usage load just fine - whereas the Storm2 would lock up every few minutes (probably memory or garbage collection issues). That's the good news. Unfortunately, the X introduced a new problem - battery life. With her usage, it lasts 4 hours. The Storm2 lasted 24 or more. Granted it's a bigger display, but the specs promised ... well, a lot more than 4 hours.

We theorized that it may be runaway processes and excessive number of apps, or defective battery, but as it turns out it's neither. This is what I did:

Continue reading "Motorola Droid X Battery Life woes may not mean a defective battery"