Ubuntu Help?

[Aloone_Jonez]

Right I've being using Windows far too much recently, I haven't used Linux properly for ages. I have a Ubuntu install on a separate partition and up until now I haven't been arsed to get it to work properly.

Just one question, how the fuck do I set the Internet for my NTL cable modem?

Before when I had a winmodem I couldn't access the Internet and now, surprize surprize NTL don't support Linux either.   :thumbdwn:  :nothappy: :fu:  :rolleyes:  :mad:

http://www.ntl.com/locales/ie/en/athome/internet_faqs_technical.html#40

Which operating systems are supported?
The operating systems which ntl will support are:
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP Home
Apple Macintosh OS 8.5, 8.51, 8.6, 9 or 10

The cable modem system is capable of operating with any TCP/IP operating system which uses dynamic IP address allocation. Therefore users could get access with computers with other operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, Windows NT, etc..

Please note that ntl are currently unable to support users of these latter Operating Systems. The customer is ultimately responsible for the set-up of their system as our support staff are not specialists in these areas.

Is there a way to get round this, I've read some stuff somewhere on the net but it didn't make any sense to me. :confused:

[cymon]

What kind of modem is it? Ethernet modems will work just fine with Linux, you just need the ip of your router/ or modem if you don't have a router. If it's usb, you're probably stuffed, unless you can find a driver for the modem.

[Aloone_Jonez]

It has both usb and Ethernet sockets on the back, and the good news is my PC does have an Ethernet port. Currently it's set up on XP with the usb, should I change it to Ethernet then? This would be inconvenient as I'd need to buy a cable but I wouldn't mind if it'd work.

If I remember rightly when I set up the account through Windows I had to go through a wizard that prompted me for my ISP's IP and my username and password, does a similar thing exist in Ubuntu?

[worker201]

You should have been using ethernet the whole time - much faster and more efficient than USB.

Go ahead and get the cable.

In Windows, navigate your way to the tcp/ip properties and write everything down exactly as you see it there.  Then you can set Linux to use the exact same settings.  Not sure about Ubuntu, but in Fedora, they call the gateway a 'router'.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Another thing I've noticed is it uses more memory than I expected, my trimmed down Windows XP install uses 67.5MB when booted and Ubuntu uses 74.9MB (it was origionally) 80 but I disabled the wall paper.

Surely I don't need all of these services running:



I've managed to cut down Windows XP consideribly without compromising user  friendliness/functionality/stability so I must be able to do even better with Ubuntu.

Which services can I get away with disabling and how do I do it?

[Lead Head]

usually the amount of ram linux uses is not a problem, on my athlon 650 box, fc4 uses around 350MB of the systems total 448, without any performence loss.

[cymon]

Linux will use most of the RAM, it caches it to try and avoid disk thrashing.

[Dark_Me]

It has both usb and Ethernet sockets on the back, and the good news is my PC does have an Ethernet port. Currently it's set up on XP with the usb, should I change it to Ethernet then? This would be inconvenient as I'd need to buy a cable but I wouldn't mind if it'd work.

If I remember rightly when I set up the account through Windows I had to go through a wizard that prompted me for my ISP's IP and my username and password, does a similar thing exist in Ubuntu?

That sounds very simalar to my modem/router. As Worker said hook up the ethernet and it should work just fine. Mine is a Netcomm so that might change things but for me with Ubuntu there where no problems with it. It sounds as though the problem is that it's connected via USB. There is no wizard Ubuntu should do all the work for you.

[Aloone_Jonez]

usually the amount of ram linux uses is not a problem, on my athlon 650 box, fc4 uses around 350MB of the systems total 448, without any performence loss.

Linux will use most of the RAM, it caches it to try and avoid disk thrashing.

I'm aware of this, I was refering to the amount of memory allocated for data and code.

Surely I can disable some of these services:

Code: [Select]


top - 11:48:32 up 10 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.29, 0.21, 0.14
Tasks:  69 total,   3 running,  66 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.4% us,  0.4% sy,  0.0% ni, 97.1% id,  0.0% wa,  0.1% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    248876k total,   200056k used,    48820k free,     9784k buffers
Swap:   457812k total,        0k used,   457812k free,    97940k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 6197 root      15   0 27288  14m 6196 S  1.8  5.8   0:39.87 Xorg
 7389 alun      16   0 38768  14m 9716 R  0.6  6.1   0:13.34 gnome-terminal
 7236 alun      16   0 12916 7160 5700 R  0.2  2.9   0:03.33 metacity
 6008 root      16   0 10664 2972 2404 S  0.1  1.2   0:00.06 gdm
    1 root      16   0  1552  508  444 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.55 init
    2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
    3 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 events/0
    4 root       8 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 khelper
   22 root      15 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
   95 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 kblockd/0
  133 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 pdflush
  134 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 pdflush
  136 root      14 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0
  135 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kswapd0
  723 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod
 1093 root      16   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.04 kjournald
 1121 root       5 -10  1532  356  288 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.09 udevd
 3485 root      19   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 shpchpd_event
 3695 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.47 khubd
 5948 syslog    16   0  1740  704  584 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.01 syslogd
 5963 root      16   0  1552  380  316 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.01 dd
 5965 klog      16   0  2416 1468  436 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.08 klogd
 5992 root      16   0 10124 2376 1956 S  0.0  1.0   0:00.00 gdm
 6007 cupsys    16   0  5568 2540 1172 S  0.0  1.0   0:00.31 cupsd
 6561 root      18   0  1680  788  528 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 acpid
 6623 messageb  16   0  2120 1028  864 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.04 dbus-daemon-1
 6635 hal       16   0  6860 5364 1592 S  0.0  2.2   0:00.94 hald
 6648 root      18   0  1544  432  376 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 inetd
 6779 root      16   0  2988 1132  956 S  0.0  0.5   0:00.00 master
 6794 postfix   16   0  3000 1068  900 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.00 pickup
 6795 postfix   16   0  3032 1100  920 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.00 qmgr
 6966 daemon    19   0  1728  608  524 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 atd
 6977 root      16   0  1784  816  676 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 cron
 6999 root      16   0  1548  472  408 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 getty
 7000 root      16   0  1548  472  408 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 getty
 7001 root      16   0  1548  472  408 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 getty
 7002 root      16   0  1548  472  408 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 getty
 7003 root      16   0  1548  472  408 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 getty
 7004 root      16   0  1548  472  408 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 getty
 7101 alun      15   0 17440 9080 7048 S  0.0  3.6   0:00.69 x-session-manag
 7146 alun      16   0  2992  892  708 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.00 ssh-agent
 7149 alun      16   0  2552  716  604 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 dbus-launch
 7150 alun      19   0  2016  736  644 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 dbus-daemon-1
 7152 alun      16   0 11936 9284 1760 S  0.0  3.7   0:01.39 gconfd-2
 7193 alun      19   0  2272  984  800 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.00 gnome-keyring-d
 7195 alun      15   0  5324 4028  480 S  0.0  1.6   0:00.18 esd
 7197 alun      15   0  6344 2844 2096 S  0.0  1.1   0:00.21 bonobo-activati
 7199 alun      15   0 19136 8636 6492 S  0.0  3.5   0:01.24 gnome-settings-
 7202 alun      16   0  2384 1184  856 S  0.0  0.5   0:00.11 gam_server



That sounds very simalar to my modem/router. As Worker said hook up the ethernet and it should work just fine. Mine is a Netcomm so that might change things but for me with Ubuntu there where no problems with it. It sounds as though the problem is that it's connected via USB. There is no wizard Ubuntu should do all the work for you.

Alright I'll buy a cable.

What about my user name and password for the ISP?

[Dark_Me]

Alright I'll buy a cable.

What about my user name and password for the ISP?

You shouldn't need to play around with Ubuntu if all goes well. If you're luckey. Just buy the cable first and see what happens.

[piratePenguin]

Surely I can disable some of these services:

If you don't use a printer you can disable cupsd. You'll need to change which init scripts are run at boot. I dunno if Ubuntu has a tool for doing this, if you can't find one try installing ksysv (KDE app) or removing the symlinks from the runlevel directories in /etc/init.d/ manually.

You can disable some other init scripts (AKA services) e.g. Gamin (that's the gam_server process), but I'd only do that if I had a problem with performance.

[cymon]

You could also use a lighter desktop, fluxbox, xfce.

[worker201]

There was a lot of Gnome stuff in there, are you using Gnome?  Ubuntu probably loads all that stuff so you can run a certain number of gnome products and kde products.

[mobrien_12]

You should have been using ethernet the whole time - much faster and more efficient than USB.

Go ahead and get the cable.

In Windows, navigate your way to the tcp/ip properties and write everything down exactly as you see it there.  Then you can set Linux to use the exact same settings.  Not sure about Ubuntu, but in Fedora, they call the gateway a 'router'.

Oh good gravy YES, listen to the man, use ethernet for both operating systems!!!

Hell, Linux will probably autodetect the network parameters via DHCP then.

One word of advice... a few crappy cable modems (like mine) need to be turned off and then back on when a new ethernet card is plugged into them.  This is no big deal... just boot up first in Windoze and if it can't see the network, switch the modem off or unplug it, count to 5, then put it back on.

[Aloone_Jonez]

You are correct, Linux did detect the network settings through DHCP. :thumbup:  

Now all I need to do is upgrade all the software.