Showing posts with label Lenny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lenny. Show all posts

19.3.09

Bluetooth applet in GNOME (v 0.27): resolution of the problems

Hello everyone,

many users recently reported problems with GNOME's "Bluetooth applet" - like missing services or unability to connecto to other devices. In my case I had all functions working - but only when logged in as root. As an ordinary user I had an applet in the notification area, but it was "dead".

Searching a lot in the Internet, I occasionally found this bug report: http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg611962.html. When I added myself to the "netdev" group, the applet started to work again.

So, if you have problems with "Bluetooth applet", just try to add your users to the "netdev" group.

Cheers,
Andrey.

10.3.09

Debian Lenny: new configuration of WLAN and ACPI

Hello everyone,

recently I have discovered two unpleasant issues:

1) my WLAN radio is always on (even if the interface it not up) - which is
bad for my battery;
2) my laptop started to do "double resume" - when waking up from sleep
mode, it starts very shortly, and then goes to sleep again. So, I have to
press FN+F4 or close and open the lid again in order to wake th laptop up.

So, I decided to resolve those two issues:

(1) WLAN
In order to switch the radio off, one should issue a command

echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/*/rf_kill

This command must be issued after the ipw2200 module is loaded. In order to
avoid manual execution everytime I boot my laptop, I decided to create a
kind of "autostart" for this command. Following a hint of good people in
one forum, I did the following:
(1) created in /etc/init.d/ file named myAutostart_AG.sh
(2) put there command
#!/bin/sh

echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/0000\:0b\:02.0/rf_kill

Please, notice the PCI address of the WLAN card in the command (instead of
"*" - somehow I couldn't use "*" in a script).
(3) created a link from /etc/init.d/myAutostart_AG.sh into
/etc/rcS.d/99myAutostart_AG.sh
(4) made all scripts executable

That's all. Now this command is executed everytime when my laptop boots.
More details for the procedure can be found in this post:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=212925#212925

Additionally I created a file called ipw2200_options in the folder
/etc/modprobe.d. This file contains following options of the driver
options ipw2200 hwcrypto=0
options ipw2200 associate=0

hwcrypto helps to avoid problems with encryption of the channel (WPA/WEP)
and associate disables autoconnect to the first available network. When you
are on a battery, it saves you a lot of power.


(2) "Double resume"
The issue is described in this post very well:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=64884&start=0&hilit=X21%2C+resume

So, I tried the solution proposed by GomJabbbar. It didn't work - Debian
has no "suspend-s2ram" package. But short analysis of the /etc/acpi/events
folder delivered following results: I have (had) two events - "lid" and
"sleep", - which were processed by one single script sleep.sh AND several
events stating with "lm_" - like "lm_lid", "lm_ac_adapter" and others. Many
of those scripts where calling - via their corresponding event scripts -
the same programm /usr/sbin/laptop-mode with a parameter "auto". I asked
Google about those files. It looks like they were installed by
"laptop-mode" package. The first two events - "lid" and "sleep"- I created
manually in July 2007 (see my posts in this blog from that time). For me
the issue is caused by these custom scripts. I think, the following
happens: when I generate either "sleep" or "lid" event, first "sleep.sh"
event is fired. It puts my laptop to sleep - on old-fashioned manner. When
it wakes up, the event is processed second time by "lm_lid", which brings
the laptop into second sleep state.

The resolution for me is to rename my custom events "sleep" and "lid". In
this way I pass the precssing to the "laptop-mode" utility. I tested the
result briefly - it looks good, the laptop wakes up properly.

Cheers,
Andrey.

9.11.08

Debian on T43p: Show Must Go On... (From Etch to Lenny)

Hi@all,

last week I had nothing to do on Tuesday evening, so I decided to update my installation of Debian Linux from etch (Stable) to Lenny (Testing). Actually, I wanted to do it for quite long time: I knew that Lenny would bring a lot of new functions and improvements, so I did not think too long and replaced - quite bravely - the word "stable" with "testing". And here comes my story... :-)))

1. Updating kernel and GNOME (Wave 1).
My first step was to update kernel and GNOME. The update itself ran properly, but I made a mistake when selecting the kernel - I choose *-486 instead of *-686. As a result, I got only 885 MB of RAM (instead of 2 GB). I fixed it on the next day, what I describe later.

The installation/update of GNOME was easy and smooth. At the end I got the newest version of GNOME - with better appearance, better Bluetooth support, better applications. Simply better GNOME. :-)

2. Updating the rest (Wave 2)
When my kernel and GNOME were updated, I decided to update the rest. I simply went to Synaptic and selected "Mark all updates". In this way I got all the latest packages belonging to Lenny.

Having all updates installed, I checked most important functions (like WLAN, sleep mode, Bluetooth connection to the mouse) and went to bed.

3. Fighting with issues (Wave 3)
On the next day I decided to change my kernel. So, I selected the right *-686 version of the kernel and tried to install it. No way! I got an error message in Synaptic and new kernel was not installed. Better to say, it was physically installed, but no link was written into GRUB menu file. After searching for a long time I found out, that my Grub (as a software) become bug 501306 (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=501306) and must be fixed. I corrected my device.map file by adding the following line there:

(hd0) /dev/sda

That fixed all issues with the installation of the new kernel and deinstallation of the old one.

In order to install the proprietary driver for the ATI card used in my laptop, I followed the instructions found on this page (http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Dapper_Installation_Guide). They are newer, then those I published last year for Etch.

In order to resolve the issue with cpufreq - it could not find the "ondemand" governor while booting - I installed "cpufrequtils" package.

4. Conclusion and feedback
In general I'm more than satisfied with both update (how it ran and worked) and with new version of Debian. The small issues (with GRUB and cpufreq) can be resolved rather quick and painless.

The only warning I want to give you is the download time. Synaptic needs something around 1.2 GB to download for all updates. Even with DSL (I have 16 Mbit/sec) it takes some time. Don't start such an update like "I do it while preparing for the bed"-action. It will take some your time and attention.

I hope, this short post is useful for others. As usually, any feedback is welcome.

Cheers,
Andrey