A few other tips for Backtrack 5 graphics drivers issues, and software installs

Having rebuilt my main BT5 laptop again today, here are some tips I can share for anyone else who has the same needs (and to hopefully this will help make it quicker for me if I want to rebuild the same setup again)

I already made some suggestions for my Desktop system (when I installed that with Backtrack 5) but that covered Nvidia graphics drivers, and other software installs:

http://insidetrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/overcoming-problems-installing.html

I'm currently using BT5 KDE 64-bit on a Dell Inspiron 17R 7010 - This has a nice big screen, which is useful for virtual hosts etc...

Anyway, the reason for the rebuild was that; initially a kernel update (2.6.39.4) stopped various packages from working. So I thought I would try out BT5 R1 KDE 64-bit, but then after an abortive install of R1, I've gone back to my previous stable setup (I haven't got to the bottom of the kernel and R1 issues yet, maybe more on that next time)

So, after a standard install of BT5...


Intel graphics drivers

My laptop has Intel graphics drivers and initially "startx" would result in a black screen, and lockup with no errors. I got a solution previously speaking to some of the folks on the #backtrack-linux IRC channel a while back (I couldn't remember it exactly, but I figured it out for myself this time, but thanks to a_landim_xhkl and _ope_ for the original feedback).

A basic way to get the Intel graphics driver working is to reconfigure /boot/grub/grub.cfg , but this needs to be done via the template files and grub config builder.

You need to edit the file /etc/default/grub and added the Intel option (back it up first)

cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.old

... then edit the following line adding the options in red:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="text splash vga=791 i915.modeset=1"

Then rebuild the grub config and reboot:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

init 6

The BT5 KDE 64-bit gotcha

We're not out of the woods yet for KDE, but this one has been mentioned over and over in various places - this is the known issue where KDE crashes out after the first Chinese symbol on the red starting screen.

If you are using BT5 KDE 64-bit you will likely need to do the following before you can run startx

rm /root/.kde/cache-root/icon-cache.kcache
rm /root/.kde/cache-root/plasma_theme_Volatile.kcache
rm /root/.kde/cache-bt/icon-cache.kcache
rm /root/.kde/cache-bt/plasma_theme_Volatile.kcache
rm -rf /var/tmp/kdecache-root

After that KDE starts fine, now to install some extra stuff...


Installing and running VMware Player

Download VMware Player

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/player_314/ZGp0YnR0KnRiZGh0QA==

Then you need the kernel sources in order to install and run VMware Player. Run the following (and go do something else while it does it's thing)

prepare-kernel-sources

Then run the install, and this should work fine

./VMware-Player-3.1.4-385536.x86_64.bundle


Installing and running Google Chrome

Download the latest 64 bit Google Chrome build and then do:

dpkg -i ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

You may get a complaint about running this as root, so either create an account for browsing, or start the browser with the following command

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome %U --user-data-dir

(I've seen some ridiculously complex suggested ways of doing this, such as hex-editing binaries, the above seems like the easiest by far)

You can either run this from the command line, or easier still, change the shortcut command to the above. This works very well as of Chrome version 13.0.782.215.