On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

I am doing what I wanted to do in the post below but I think in the midst of this I have solved this problem. I have an Intel 2100B card (crappy but it works well in Linux, didn’t on Windows though where it was useless) and this may also fix this problem on the 2200BG and other wifi cards too.

Problem

You put the machine to sleep (suspend) or hibernate it. Arbitrarily sometimes the wireless connection picks up where it left off and you can carry on. Other times it doesn’t and the only easy way to get back your wifi is to reboot. Sucky huh? This was the case for me on Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10. Sometimes as I say it picked it all up again fine, others–no.

Problem two, on resume from suspend and hibernate, Fn+F5 to toggle the Wifi radio on and off no longer works. The wifi just stays on. And on. And on.

Solutions

To problem one, I’ve not tested this long enough but it seems to have done the trick. Yes it’s yet another bloody text configuration file. (Why does Linux need so much tweaking for heaven’s sakes, I still love the OS but it gets annoying after a while. Drop in replacement for Windows it isn’t yet…) In /etc/default/acpi-support there is a lot of things you can tweak. Notably what services are killed and restarted on suspend/hibernate.

Find the following line after opening this file (e.g. Alt+F2, and enter gksudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support):

# Add services to this list to stop them before suspend and restart them in
# the resume process.
STOP_SERVICES=""

Change STOP_SERVICES to read:

STOP_SERVICES="networking"

Save the changes and close. With any luck this will fix the problem. What this will do is kill the networking service when you suspend/hibernate but also restart it afresh when you resume; hence there may be a few funny flickers from the Gnome Network-Applet on the panel. Certainly this seems to have worked as my Wireless interface is configured by default on my T40 with the 2100B as eth1 which when I run ifconfig when the wireless has screwed up on resume was not present. Even doing a sudo ifconfig eth1 up which brought it back in would not yield a result.

Try that and feedback your experiences.

Problem two is that on resuming it appears that a bad value is ‘poked’ into the ACPI hotkey configuration which on Gutsy defaults to a setting of 0xffffff, yes it’s hexadecimal. Don’t be scared! On resuming this gets set to 0xffff8f subtle but presently it disables Fn+F5 from working.

So I tracked it down to this file: /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.modprobe so open the file for editing (e.g.: gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.modprobe) and where you have a line that says:

options thinkpad_acpi hotkey=enable,0xffff8f experimental=1


Change it to:

options thinkpad_acpi hotkey=enable,0xffffff experimental=1

Save and now Fn+F5 will work fine on first boot, and resuming from suspend/hibernate. One things for sure, Apple’s hardware (a PowerBook G4 and PowerMac G4 being my benchmarks here) resume from standby so much quicker than Windows and Linux does. Almost instant it is. Kudos to Apple there.

Conclusion

One side of me loves the fact that when there is a problem with your hardware not working as it should, Linux allows you to fiddle with these settings to get them right, whereas a broken Wifi radio on/off toggle would require a vendor to fix the bug on a proprietary OS. Which of course they may never do. This is one such problem with the Windows driver for the Intel 2100B, the later versions fail to power on the wifi radio, but the older versions are shockingly bad at keeping a connection alive (about 30 seconds and then it disconnects and connects, 30 seconds… disconnects…)

The other side of me says this stinks. If Linux is to truly get anywhere near any real desktop market penetration; then it needs these things to work easily. For me in Gutsy there has been a lot of editing behind the scenes configuration files though in fairness; I would have had to do this on Feisty. Even so; this is a problem we shouldn’t have to fix because the T40 contains almost five year old hardware, the laptop is five years old next March and that’s hardly cutting edge immature driver’s and hardware specs… C’est la vie.

Hacking around with Linux is a lot of fun and rewarding; especially now as I am learning so much about the new screen stuff.

However it does mean I’m not getting much done in the way of writing lately; so tonight I’m going to take a break from all this and do some writing instead.

• I’m going to sort out Lulu and put Period on sale (after all I finished the final PDF revision well over a month ago I’m sure)
• Start writing my Ubuntu review (which is going to be different from most reviews you will read otherwise I might as well not bother; no point reading what’s already been posted on the ‘net 100 times over)
• Continue writing Memoirs of a Time

I will try and get through the other emails too that people have sent to me and comments on here I will endeavour to reply to .

Yesterday I had over 350 visitors to this blog–that’s pretty cool Before all that though, I have to get to work and be there for eight whole hours (which is fine because it’s fun anyway) before I can sit down and run through my notes and immerse myself in the fantastical realms my words find me in!

Over three years ago I went off to Gatwick Airport or nearby north of here to pick up an IBM ThinkPad T22. It was one of the very few with SXGA+ resolution of 1400×1050. Bear in mind that even three years ago (it’s probably nearer 4 now) that CRT was still pretty dominant on the desktop and most LCDs topped out at 1280×1024 on the desktop so this was pretty special.

Except it didn’t have SXGA+, as a trusty Knoppix CD helped me diagnose as the machine had no OS. In fact it was a pretty genuine mistake albeit one that could have been avoided as the specs were copied and pasted from elsewhere and one of them said SXGA+ unfortunately. All the T22s were ex-corporate so they kindly checked what seemed like 50 of the machines all which had the same product code on them. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, first of all it’s not here because the actual code is spare three lines identical to 0.1. The big difference is that the Fn+F7 part is now controlled thankfully via ACPI. ACPI in this case is the ‘thing’ that triggers hotkey events such as Fn+F7. This means the script is called in a much neater way in the system.

I’m sure many Linux gurus will be like, “Yeah so what–we knew this anyway.” Well I’ve found it now, how to call the script on an ACPI event. So this will make whatever work I do from here a lot cleaner.

I’ll post it soon.

Also I have a stack of emails to reply to, and comments here too. I’ll do my best to answer ASAP; as it’s fair and this blog has had quiet days and I’m really appreciative of all the wonderful feedback and so forth Lil old me eh, who’d have thought it; using Linux for a mere three months and already hacking around getting some stuff working fairly simply. That’s what I love about Linux in 2007; it mostly on supported hardware works great and allows you to work, but if something doesn’t work, it’s almost like you’ve got the right to rewrite the bits that are broken, with a closed source OS you’d be dependent on the vendor for that!

I hope one day I’ll get back to LyX and writing Memoirs of a Time… After all that is my real passion.

Here we go, here are my opinions on the major desktop operating systems I have used at great length–in 60 seconds!

• Windows XP – Great solid productivity platform.
• Windows Vista – Good but I prefer XP but will get better.
• Mac OS X – Flash, Slick, Powerful but lacks the edge on ergonomics and overall usability. For one the Dock is an abysmal window manager and I’m even more unconvinced by Leopard’s stacks and its rather bizarre file management (especially Coverflow view?!)
• Linux (Ubuntu) – Fun, Solid and dependable. Occasionally infuriating but very rewarding; and the power user can go in and fix things that would otherwise require waiting for a vendor to release a fix. Bit like OS Meccano but getting closer to not needing this intervention.

There are two types of operating system review, there are those written by John Siracusa, and those not written by him. Certainly since the release of Mac OS X 10.0 in 2001; his reviews whilst sometimes you find yourself disagreeing I also find myself nodding more than not at his words. For what it’s worth; I have extensively used Macs in the past and I am sure I will find a good reason to spend out on an iMac as it looks so bloody gorgeous; but I’d put Ubuntu on it.

Anyway regardless, on cue his thorough Leopard review is now online.

No stone as ever is left unturned in what are always the godfather of OS reviews. I like the chap because his reviews are honest; he’s not too shy to say (or rather too ardent an Apple apologist) where things are wrong in his view but also to pile on the praise where it’s worthy. Read the rest of this entry »

When I saw this, I almost died of laughter. Butterfield (and Serafinowicz) is just a GENIUS. This is just ‘Increminal.’

This August at V Festival I saw the magnificent Editors. They are just great, absolutely great band. I cannot get enough of them, and at the end of November, their next single The Racing Rats will be released (and I believe the CD single cover is taken just outside of Bristol on a hill which you can just about see from the M4.) Now I found this video which smacks of American Beauty-esque moments; and though it’s not perfect (it’s too fast) but I just get it. If this was slowed down and some movement was introduced set to The Racing Rats this could be one of the most amazing AV moments ever. Well, for me anyway–it’s telling a story, a thousand stories, a story of this time, a story of times past…

Should I admit that I once downloaded an illegal MP3…? Ahh hell, following a chat about music and harking back down the pub as you do, the conversation briefly turned technical kind of about the MP3 format and MP3s. And when we first downloaded an MP3 etc.

Well I can remember it well. It wasn’t the first MP3 I’d listened to as that was in 1998 I think but the first MP3 I downloaded was Sash ft. Tina Cousins “Mysterious Times” in 1999 on a Commodore Amiga 1200. Bear in mind I did have the CD single but the 850MB hard disk would have been quickly filled with 80MB 8SVX rips! (8SVX was an Amiga format for 8bit 22KHz audio.) And you really did not want to encode MP3s on a 40MHz 68040. In fact playing them was a black art in itself!

I’m not sure what’s worse, admitting to downloading a MP3 or the song that I downloaded? Ahhh those were the days, the hot lazy summers filled with bollocks music and not a care or worry in the world!

This truly is one of my all time top ten pieces of music. I can never ever get away from Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy the Silence’, one of the last true songs of the eighties–even though it was released in 1990 if I recall correctly. Good days… I think this is seminal; even though my Mum thoroughly detested me playing Depeche Mode when I was younger

Amazing how much gay bashing erupts from some circles if you admit you like this. I just count myself lucky to live in a progressive part of the world where people accept, embrace and respect diversity…But that’s another matter. Maybe I should post Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy next Now that is a song about homosexuality and a great one too.