Things new in Lenny

CPU Governors

Install the cpufrequtils package.

apt-get install cpufrequtils sysfsutils

Run the cpufreq-info command to list details of cpu frequency scaling. This now works on desktops and servers in addition to laptops and mobile devices. Note that it lists cpu by array number starting at 0. When it says "CPUs" it means that cpu number and not the number of cpus. Which is obviously when there are multiple cpus present but confusing when only one cpu is listed and it says "CPUs 0" for it. Also the information printed is what is available through the linux kernel /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ interface.

cpufreq-info

The new official way to configure cpu governors is through the /etc/init.d/cpufrequtils script which uses /etc/default/cpufrequtils if it exists. Local customizations should go there.

However I personally use the powernowd package instead of the kernel's ondemand governor. I find the powernowd userspace governor to be much more responsive on my laptop than the in kernel ondemand governor. Originally AMD came out with the PowerNow(TM) name and the powernowd was designed specifically for it. But the interface to the kernel is general and it is used across all vendors. More recently the kernel improved to have the ondemand governor built in and so most people don't use a userspace governor anymore. But I like it better and so still continue to use one.

APT Unattended Foo

It looks like update-manager (part of GNOME) is upgraded and pulls in unattended-upgrades. They annoy me with desktop poppops at inconvenient times. I don't really want this installed and on my system and so remove them. There is of course the classic cron-apt and I have my own apt-auto scripts so these aren't desireable for me.

apt-get remove python-software-properties software-properties-gtk unattended-upgrades update-manager update-notifier

See

/usr/share/doc/unattended-upgrades/README
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutomaticUpdates

Syslog

The default syslog installed for Lenny changed from sysklogd to rsyslog. I don't know anything about it. There are changes to the log format that logcheck catches. The package is 2.5x the size. I don't have a reason to manually follow this change when upgrading nor do I have a reason to revert back on new machines. So I have been going with the flow here. Just noting that upgraded machines are using the old daemon while new installations are getting the new daemon.

Grub

You should manually upgrade your grub files. This is not done automatically. This is not done when grub is upgraded through apt. See the /usr/share/doc/grub/NEWS.Debian.gz file for more info. Run the grub-install command to push new upgraded bits into the MBR.

grub-install "(hd0)"

mailx

This isn't new with Lenny but is a Debian configuration. Debian sets mailx to askcc in the /etc/mail.rc file. That isn't traditional. And I personally don't prefer it. So setting up a reminder here about it.

sed --in-place 's/askcc *//' /etc/mail.rc

GNOME Default Movie Player

The default movie player in GNOME is Totem. Fine. Many people want to watch video encoded as wmv. Wikipedia says:

In 2003, Microsoft drafted a video codec specification based on its WMV 9 codec and submitted it to SMPTE for standardization. The standard was officially approved in March 2006 as SMPTE 421M, better known as VC-1, thus making the WMV 9 format an open standard. Since then, VC-1 has become one of the three mandatory video formats for the BD-ROM specifications.

So the wmv 9 codec no longer requires the proprietary w32codecs to play. And later wikipedia says that ffmpeg can play the codec. But this needs to be installed. The totem-gstreamer package "Recommends:" it but does not "Require:" it. That is too soft of a recommendation! Manually pull in the required dependencies in case they weren't pulled in previously.

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
# And possibly...
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-really-bad

Automatic fsck at boot

I have a machine without console access. If for any reason the system decides to interactively fsck at boot time then the machine is stuck waiting or console access. If none is available then the machine cannot boot. To enable a non-interactive boot in this case set FSCKFIX=yes in the /etc/default/rcS file.

sed --in-place "s/^FSCKFIX=no$/FSCKFIX=yes/" /etc/default/rcS

Control-C and Control-Z now printed by tty driver

Previously the Linux kernel would simply send the signal to the foreground process. Now it prints the character first. This is a case of Linux being an improvement previously but now causing trouble.

commit ec5b1157f8e819c72fc93aa6d2d5117c08cdc961
Author: Joe Peterson <joe@skyrush.com>
Date:   Wed Feb 6 01:37:38 2008 -0800

    tty: enable the echoing of ^C in the N_TTY discipline

    Turn on INTR/QUIT/SUSP echoing in the N_TTY line discipline (e.g.  ctrl-C
    will appear as "^C" if stty echoctl is set and ctrl-C is set as INTR).

    Linux seems to be the only unix-like OS (recently I've verified this on
    Solaris, BSD, and Mac OS X) that does *not* behave this way, and I really
    miss this as a good visual confirmation of the interrupt of a program in
    the console or xterm.  I remember this fondly from many Unixs I've used
    over the years as well.  Bringing this to Linux also seems like a good way
    to make it yet more compliant with standard unix-like behavior.

    [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes]
    Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>