HEP System Administration

We’re running Scientific Linux 4 on most of our computers. The latest version of the flash plugin is 10, which does not run on this version of linux. We need to put flash player 9 in the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory on all the nodes. The plugin itself is in /system/software/linux/flash/install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so.

We have a computer with an nVidia 7100GS video card and a Dell 1908FP monitor. The video card works fine after downloading and installing the driver from the nVidia web site. But the display only gives the choice of “800×600” or “640×480” resolutions. To get “1280×1024” resolution, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Here are the relevant sections (info added is in bold):

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Monitor Vendor"
    ModelName      "Unknown monitor"
    HorizSync       31.5 - 37.9
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 70.0
    Option         "dpms"
    Modeline       "1280x1024" 108.0 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Viewport    0 0
        Depth       16
        Modes      "1280x1024" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Viewport    0 0
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1280x1024" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I upgraded a machine with a radeon 7000 video card to FC5.  The installation was easy and it appeared as though everything worked.  However, after logging in as any user, the entire machine would hang.  Reboot, login and it would hang again.  Solution:  Edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and look for a line that reads:

Load “dri”

Comment out this line and reboot.