SWAT's blog

profox and bartek have already posted something about the effects of the Ubuntu-NL SummerMeeting and there has been a short notice on Ubuntu-NL news. Yes, it is a lot of redundant information and I am going to add some more to it. Do not worry, I’ll keep it as short as possible and will only highlight the more important changes.

• The Ubuntu-NL map is back!
• A documentation team (pjotr123, Sander50, Johanvd) and marketing team (w.hellinga) have been set up.
• A new search possibility will be added (check out the Google custom search in the right upper corner of your screen)
• After a lot of fuss (including the ever ongoing “Google is evil” remark) on the forums about the new search, the old one was reinstated
• The Ubuntu-NL magazine was decommissioned
• An Ubuntu-NL security notices RSS feed was launched
• Soon there will be a webpage which contains the common guidelines (like simple netiquette)for the different parts of the Ubuntu-NL community
• A who-is-who page was created (OMG, I’m actually on that page)

I found a screenshot from ‘top’ I ran in ‘xterm’ from quite a while ago (I guess at least 6 months). I was wondering why my machine became a bit sluggish and I suspected my dnetc client. It seemed that iptotald was using way too much CPU power, for the job it was doing (getting some ethernet traffic statistics). After removing iptotald from my system, it became faster again and my frown was turned upside down.

It took me a while to get Red Alert and the expansion Counterstrike working correctly on Ubuntu. I wanted to use a nocd patch, but unfortunately I could not find a working one that also works with Counterstrike. I tried Cedega and Wine and they both did not work completely. Sometimes the CD could not be found or Counterstrike could not be installed etc.. The solution was: dosbox!

Note: Red alert has a DOS and a Windows95 version. I installed the DOS version, which has a great installer (ow sweet, fond memories)
Some general dosbox tips:

• Mount a CD: “mount D D:\ -t cdrom”
• Mount a CD (if it is not recognized by Red Alert correctly): “mount D D:\ -t cdrom -usecd 0″
• Capture/Release the mouse (if you need to use the mouse within DOSBox): CTRL + F10
• Umount: “mount -u d:”
• Switch to full-screen (and back): ALT + ENTER

How do you get Red Alert working with dosbox on your computer?

1. Make images of the original CD’s since nocd patches will get you nowhere. (only if you do not want to use the original CD’s)

cdrdao read-cd --read-raw --datafile game_name.bin --device /dev/scd0 --driver generic-mmc-raw game_name.toc

2. Create a custom dosbox directory

mkdir dosbox_redalert

3. Start dosbox and mount your dosbox directory and CD image

mount c: /home/swat/dosbox_redalert/
imgmount d: /home/swat/redalert.bin -t iso

4. Install Red Alert and any expansions. I installed Counterstrike after installing Red Alert.

d:
setup

5. If you want, you can patch the game to any version (I installed the 1.08 patch). The patch will first ‘unarchive’ itself and then you will have to copy the PATCH.* files to the Red Alert directory and run the patching wizard.
Enjoy the good old feeling of Red Alert!