Upgrade village...

[Dave Laird]

Good morning, Netizens...

Once again into the breach we have gone, and now we've returned with our
mortal souls intact. Well, almost. ;-)

Thanks to Jack in the Cave giving me a truly *awesome* computer case, and
the investment in the first really serious hardware upgrade in my entire
adult life, I actually have a workstation at my desk that not only *GLOWS*
with blue neon lights, runs really COOL with six damned fans, and has a 2+
gig processor, a new hard disk and enough memory to choke a horse.
However, with all these improvements, there is, unfortunately, a down
side: I have been adjusting, fixing, upgrading and in general raising hell
with my software for the better part of two days.

FINALLY! Everything appears to be done. Nothing is broken, although the
sound of the fans adds a unique bit of character to my otherwise
dysfunctional office. It sounds as if I have an AS400 in here, chunking
out the really BIG stuff. I have to learn to be careful when sitting down
at my desk that the fans don't suck my infamous red bathrobe into the
intakes. That simply WOULD NOT DO, being stark-assed naked in front of the
entire electronic world. ;-)

Please to note, those who receive e-mail from me and use GPG Privacy will
find that I have updated my public key, as well. Please update your key
rings. Given the amount of spoofs and general mischief taking place all
across the Internet, I simply cannot see why more aware people aren't
using GPG.

Of course, go read the news in the papers about the Windows XP upgrade in
England that essentially brought the entire country's IT department down.
I am *serious*. Go read the London Times or any British newspaper and
verify for yourself what only a few sage heads in America are talking
about. That should keep you busy enough that you won't notice me still
furiously tweaking things, making my workstation even better than ever,
all without Mr. Gates' nefarious crap on my hard disks. :-|

Dave
--
Dave Laird (***@kharma.net)
The Used Kharma Lot
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/24/2004
Usenet news server : news://news.kharma.net

Fortune Random Thought For the Minute
Office Automation:
The use of computers to improve efficiency in the office
by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee.

[j***@short.circuit.com]

Post by Dave Laird
Good morning, Netizens...

Good morning to you too. I've also spent the last few days with a new
toy, which also came with blue lights. It's an HP Pavillion laptop!

Windows XP came off easily. I was afraid the laptop might have been tied
into it somehow but the only snag was the 56K modem. I found a web place
called linuxant.com that had a driver (hfsmodem_something.deb). This
driver is payware but the 14.4 modem version is free. It seems to work
and I'll probably cough up the $15 later to get the full 56K. Meanwhile,
I'm using the built-in network card to fetch goodies with.

Everything seems to be working, even the odd little touchpad that they
use as a mouse and the DVD player. The power button isn't quite right
though-- hold it for 5 seconds and get a hard shutdown. There is probably
a way to wire it for a soft shutdown but in the meantime I use an icon
with the command "sudo halt" which works very well- it even turns the
power off after the software quits. The ext3 filesystem doesn't seem to
be fazed by hard shutdowns, but still... Solutions are welcome, so let's
hear 'em if you have 'em.

[Dave Laird]

Good evening, James!

Post by j***@short.circuit.com

Post by Dave Laird
Good morning, Netizens...

Good morning to you too. I've also spent the last few days with a new
toy, which also came with blue lights. It's an HP Pavillion laptop!

YOWZA! My newest toy looks pitiful by comparison! That's a top-of-the-line
type toy, don't y'know?

Post by j***@short.circuit.com
Windows XP came off easily. I was afraid the laptop might have been tied
into it somehow but the only snag was the 56K modem. I found a web place

Nah, HP has made a considerable investment in Linux-stuph lately, ranging
from a coalition with RedHat to several forays into Debian and Mandrake
Country. It won't be much longer, I fear, before they'll start advertising
they *invented* Linux. <ggl>

Post by j***@short.circuit.com
called linuxant.com that had a driver (hfsmodem_something.deb). This
driver is payware but the 14.4 modem version is free. It seems to work
and I'll probably cough up the $15 later to get the full 56K. Meanwhile,
I'm using the built-in network card to fetch goodies with.

Oh, that's a Winmodem. I tangled with one of those a long time ago, and
then I finally threw the thing into the trash can and bought a
free-standing modem with a set of jumpers and a serial cable. ;-| I just
looked at the linuxant.com site and was fascinated how they got all those
drivers working. They must be very, very patient folks. 8-)

Post by j***@short.circuit.com
Everything seems to be working, even the odd little touchpad that they
use as a mouse and the DVD player. The power button isn't quite right

Now that touchpad is an odd duck, because it is hard-wired to emulate a
Microsoft serial mouse, but don't ask how they do it because I don't know.
My limited experiments with my Gateway 450SX laptop taught me that much.
However, it tends to act a little bit flakey when I plug a mouse into the
serial port, still. However a good USB mouse nearly always works.

Post by j***@short.circuit.com
though-- hold it for 5 seconds and get a hard shutdown. There is probably
a way to wire it for a soft shutdown but in the meantime I use an icon
with the command "sudo halt" which works very well- it even turns the
power off after the software quits. The ext3 filesystem doesn't seem to
be fazed by hard shutdowns, but still... Solutions are welcome, so let's
hear 'em if you have 'em.

The voice of Obi One Kanobi speaks to you from within your PC speaker:

Feel the force, Luke... no, wait a minute, that's the wrong line, Obi. It
should be look in the BIOS for hints about shutdown procedure. I think
there's a way to make it go to sleep mode when you push the button, rather
than a hard boot. That circumvents the problem, doesn't it? How does it do
on batteries, as far as the length of time it will remain running on
batteries. The best I can do is about 3-4 hours on a single battery, 6-8
hours on dual batteries.

So tell me more. Is it FAST? 8-)

Dave

[James Vahn]

Post by Dave Laird

Post by j***@short.circuit.com
Everything seems to be working, even the odd little touchpad that they
use as a mouse and the DVD player. The power button isn't quite right

Now that touchpad is an odd duck, because it is hard-wired to emulate a
Microsoft serial mouse,

ImPS/2 to be exact. The scroll "wheel" leaves a little to be desired,
this 2+ button touchpad requires two hands- one to hold the button down,
the other to stroke the pad. I can do it with one hand, but that's just
plain awkward. I've installed a Synaptic touchpad configurator for KDE,
maybe that will change things soon as I get a chance to look at it.

[shutdown woes]

Post by Dave Laird
should be look in the BIOS for hints about shutdown procedure. I think
there's a way to make it go to sleep mode when you push the button, rather
than a hard boot. That circumvents the problem, doesn't it?

I didn't see anything but will look again. I'm attempting to build a new
kernel for the DRI graphics at the moment- using a new (to me) method.
So far nothing but a "Panic" out of it. At the moment I'm wondering
if it needs a "make clean" each time, dunno. It's a Debian gizmo, I've
always used kernel.org kernels in the past.

Post by Dave Laird
How does it do on batteries, as far as the length of time it will
remain running on batteries. The best I can do is about 3-4 hours on a
single battery, 6-8 hours on dual batteries.
So tell me more. Is it FAST? 8-)

Haven't crossed the battery issue yet, KDE doesn't seem very smart about
that right now and is complaining about the kernel configuration. As to
speed, it's a 2.6GHz Celeron. I read somewhere that the Celeron is a
cheap chip but I think it's going to be fast enough for a few games --
Torcs and Flightgear top that list.

--

[James Vahn]

Post by James Vahn
ImPS/2 to be exact. The scroll "wheel" leaves a little to be desired,
this 2+ button touchpad requires two hands- one to hold the button down,
the other to stroke the pad.

Turns out to be a problem in the 2.6.8 kernel. The 2.4.27 kernel works
fine! Now, on to that DRI..

Pretty nifty, I can watch a DVD on the laptop and fool with kernels
via remote login on the other computer. Things are getting so high tech
around here... I just might buy the Missus that new dishwasher she's
been wanting. :-)


--

[Dave Laird]

Good evening, James!

Post by James Vahn

Post by James Vahn
ImPS/2 to be exact. The scroll "wheel" leaves a little to be desired,
this 2+ button touchpad requires two hands- one to hold the button down,
the other to stroke the pad.

Yeah, I've got one of THOSE too. ;-(

Post by James Vahn
Turns out to be a problem in the 2.6.8 kernel. The 2.4.27 kernel works
fine! Now, on to that DRI..

Oh crap, there you go spoiling an otherwise wonderful evening when we're
about to get snowed on by using that OBSCENE abbreviation DRI. I was out
of the office and Mandrake's automation just updated a big piece of the
X11 real estate and killed my ATI All-in-Wonder Card, which had worked
flawlessly for well over two years. It's DRI, sure enough. I'm trying to
find what I hit with modprobe the last time this happened, but thus far,
no success. I suspect it's off to the Gatos web site and start playing
with drivers again for me. <sigh>

Post by James Vahn
Pretty nifty, I can watch a DVD on the laptop and fool with kernels
via remote login on the other computer. Things are getting so high tech
around here... I just might buy the Missus that new dishwasher she's
been wanting. :-)

They say paybacks are rougher than software upgrades. Well...ALMOST. 8-)

Dave

[James Vahn]

Post by Dave Laird

Post by James Vahn
Turns out to be a problem in the 2.6.8 kernel. The 2.4.27 kernel works
fine! Now, on to that DRI..

Oh crap, there you go spoiling an otherwise wonderful evening when we're
about to get snowed on by using that OBSCENE abbreviation DRI.

Soon as I (almost) finished watching the DVD, I noticed that the network
wouldn't network. To the LAN, sure, but not to the internet. The 2.6.8
kernel worked fine there. Very strange behavior. The poweroff was better
too, now it's a manual event. Can't get the Debian kernels to compile
properly so it's off to kernel.org I go.

Post by Dave Laird
I was out of the office and Mandrake's automation just updated a big piece
of the X11 real estate and killed my ATI All-in-Wonder Card, which had
worked flawlessly for well over two years. It's DRI, sure enough. I'm
trying to find what I hit with modprobe the last time this happened, but
thus far, no success. I suspect it's off to the Gatos web site and start
playing with drivers again for me. <sigh>

Built-in video modules have been the only way to go for me, never had any
luck with modprobe. If I could see "agpgart" and "[drm]" at boot time, the
rest was easy/automatic.

[Dave Laird]

Good evening, James!!

That's the darndest thing; seems the dhcp certificates are expiring
well before their time. I think it's specific to kernel 2.4.27 ..

Huh. Since I don't use DHCP, I have no knowledge of this, but one of my
networks DOES. I'll have to try running DHCP on one of the Celerons and
see how long the leases last. ;-)

Which I have yet to compile- the 2.6 GHz Celeron seems to run a whole
lot slower than a 1.1 GHz AMD chip. The latter burns through a kernel
build in about 45 minutes, while the laptop has managed to drag it out
for hours.

Oh, boy howdy! My recent acquisition, an AMD 2.2 Gig processor really is a
delightful piece of work when it comes to compiling source. It goes
bumpty-bump and done, and thus eliminates the time I used to spend
drinking coffee waiting for it to complete. Of course, it probably didn't
hurt me in the least to purchase registered memory this time, either. ;-)
Although I never did understand the difference, but now I suspect it is
raw speed.

(WW) RADEON(0): Direct rendering not yet supported on IGP320/33/340/350,
7000, 9000 integrated chips.
(II) RADEON(0): Direct rendering disabled
:(

Ah, I am NOT alone in the Universe of those rendering-deprived. <sigh>
It's a warm and wonderful feeling knowing someone else out there is
shaking their fist at an inantimate box of parts. BTW, I think the other
ATI card, the AGP model, may run yet. I'm still trying to work out the
bugs in the ATI driver I downloaded from Gatos, but at least this time I'm
able to build /dev/video0 from scratch, just the way God intended.

Dave

[James Vahn]

Post by Dave Laird

That's the darndest thing; seems the dhcp certificates are expiring
well before their time. I think it's specific to kernel 2.4.27 ..

Huh. Since I don't use DHCP, I have no knowledge of this, but one of my
networks DOES. I'll have to try running DHCP on one of the Celerons and
see how long the leases last. ;-)

On the other hand, it could be the server. If I check the logs there as
the connection dies, dhcpd starts printing messages about re-acquiring
the dynamic IP that was assigned. Like the subject line indicates, both
systems are on the eternal upgrade ride. I shall wait a bit before going
in, could be a bug. DHCP has worked for years without trouble, until now.

Post by Dave Laird

Which I have yet to compile- the 2.6 GHz Celeron seems to run a whole
lot slower than a 1.1 GHz AMD chip.

...then again, the Celeron is compiling the default Debian kernel with all
sorts of drivers I don't need. Finally got it working, for some reason they
use initrd and I wasn't passing that flag: "make-kpkg --initrd kernel-image"
did the trick. Maybe now I can clean up the rubbish that takes so long to
boot and fine tune things a bit. No power settings in the laptop BIOS, and
the kernel says "No BIOS apm", it's a bit puzzling. I noticed an alternative
called ACPI (?) but it was marked as "experimental".

[Dave Laird]

Good morning, James!

Post by James Vahn
On the other hand, it could be the server. If I check the logs there as
the connection dies, dhcpd starts printing messages about re-acquiring
the dynamic IP that was assigned. Like the subject line indicates, both
systems are on the eternal upgrade ride. I shall wait a bit before going
in, could be a bug. DHCP has worked for years without trouble, until now.

It sounds like a bug to me, although, in the parlance of the tech world,
an engineer might look at that, grin effusively and announce in a LOUD
voice, "Bug, hell. That's a FEATURE!" 8-)

Post by James Vahn

Which I have yet to compile- the 2.6 GHz Celeron seems to run a whole
lot slower than a 1.1 GHz AMD chip.

...then again, the Celeron is compiling the default Debian kernel with all
sorts of drivers I don't need. Finally got it working, for some reason
they use initrd and I wasn't passing that flag: "make-kpkg --initrd
kernel-image" did the trick. Maybe now I can clean up the rubbish that

Nah. Trim that kernel down boys, trim that kernel down. Wait a minute, we
should write a song about that and hit the Bluegrass circuit, don't you
think? I took the default kernel, and by carefully eliminating most of the
NIC cards I would never use in this lifetime, as well as some of the more
outrageous hardware that my humble budget cannot afford, I was able to
really slim my kernel down to where it used a LOT less memory as well as
saving space in the /boot sector.

Post by James Vahn
takes so long to boot and fine tune things a bit. No power settings in the
laptop BIOS, and the kernel says "No BIOS apm", it's a bit puzzling. I
noticed an alternative called ACPI (?) but it was marked as
"experimental".

I managed to get ACPI partially working in my kernel, but it is directly
supported in the BIOS. Now, the bad part is, only about half the power
functions, such as the screen saver switching off the monitor after a
selected period of time, actually work. However, in reading the kernel
notes, as you have noted, it is an experimental thing, at the present
time. In the FreeBSD kernel it works a little bit better, but not by a
lot. When you bring up the power gadget from within KDE about half the
functions are grayed out, which tends to make me think they're working on
that for the next release.

Dave

[James Vahn]

Post by Dave Laird
Nah. Trim that kernel down boys, trim that kernel down. Wait a minute, we
should write a song about that and hit the Bluegrass circuit, don't you
think? I took the default kernel, and by carefully eliminating most of the
NIC cards I would never use in this lifetime, as well as some of the more
outrageous hardware that my humble budget cannot afford, I was able to
really slim my kernel down to where it used a LOT less memory as well as
saving space in the /boot sector.

Wheee! It's down from 140 to 70 minutes now, and by putting ACPI in the
kernel I have the poweroff on halt working again. There's a battery icon in
the panel too, but like you said, the suspend/sleep stuff only hints at
having some sort of function.

--

[Dave Laird]

Good morning, James!

Post by James Vahn
Wheee! It's down from 140 to 70 minutes now, and by putting ACPI in the
kernel I have the poweroff on halt working again. There's a battery icon
in the panel too, but like you said, the suspend/sleep stuff only hints at
having some sort of function.

If you go back and look at the source, you'll see some comments about
possibly having the whole banana working within a matter of a few more
weeks, which would be really cool. I gather the problem with suspend/sleep
is that there are so many *different* hardware methods of obtaining the
same goal, such as Dell, Compaq, Award and HP to name just a few. It's all
about the BIOS, it seems. ;-)

Of course, I need to start playing with the video substage then.
Unfortunately before I do that, I've got to get a new TV card, as both of
mine are no longer viable with my new motherboards, as they are both
AGP-4, not AGP-2. <brightening> However, I understand there is a trade-up
offer from ATI, so perhaps I may be getting rid of one of my All-in-Wonder
TV cards pretty soon, and there is direct kernel support for both AGP-4
and the ATI cards right in the kernel, thanks in part to the Gatos
project.

What *really* is impressive is the huge number of SCSI hosts they now
support, even the newest SCSI standards and arrays, with the possible
exception of some of the Promise cards. Sudti down at Cutting Edge will be
delighted to hear that, as he has a Promise ATA card that, when properly
configured, puts out a whopping 1.6 *terrabytes* of disk space. That's the
ticket! Everyone should have a terrabyte or two of disk space. We'd
finally have room to store all the SPAM. Yeah. 8-)

Dave