HP dv2810US and Fedora 10

Over the summer I purchased the laptop because I wanted something lighter for my motorcycle adventures. It has served me well so far. But having recently finished a large development project I started making upgrades to my computer systems before I have to get into the next project coming in January.

My desktop was first, it got upgraded from my old HP DV8000t laptop with 2 extra screens to a new tower machine with a quad core AMD Phenom 9850 processor, Asus motherboard with 3way SLI support, and two dual port Nvidia 9500 GT 512mb cards to drive my three 24 inch screens. It was the first machine that I loaded Fedora 10 onto and finding the right version of the Nvidia drivers was the most difficult part.

So yesterday I had some time so I thought I'd go ahead and upgrade the laptop to F10. First things first, I copied the entire /home and /etc directories onto a spare hard drive so I could find all of my tweaks I had performed to the laptop since this summer. And besides, dropping my home directory back in after the install made things a lot easier.

I knew I was in for a challenge when I booted up the laptop with the install DVD and it couldn't start the graphical interface. So it performed a text install instead. No big deal though, I could just install the Nvidia driver once the install completed but I made sure to chose the development package option during the install so I'd have the compiler and kernel sources installed. So after the installation completed and the laptop rebooted I inserted a USB thumb drive and mounted it manually (the automount doesn't work when you aren't in X windows). I logged in as root since I was going to be working on several things at the system level.


# sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.17-pkg2.run

I followed the prompts and let it build the module and install it. When it prompted me to change my X window configuration file I said YES instead of no. This set up an xorg.conf file me to get started. Then it was easy enough to run startx to make sure things worked. They did, so I continued on.

Besides not finding the video card properly, the installation process also had problems with the wireless card, a Broadcom 4310. No problem, I simply reviewed my posting from July. The steps are pretty much the same but I did have to install the rpmfusion repos before I had the ndiswrapper packages available.

** Save yourself some time. Before messing with the video or the wireless, besure to boot up with a network cable plugged in. Then log in as root and run a yum update and let it install all the new updates. It'll save you at least one or two reboots. In my case I got to install the Nvidia drivers twice since the update installed a new kernel.

When I was working on my desktop machine I found a really helpful guide on setting up various applications at my-guides.net. Here are the links to keep pages for me:

Adobe Acrobat: http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/125/26/1/7/#pdf_acrobat
Adobe Falsh (64-bit) & Video plugins: http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/125/26/1/4

The next thing on my list was to install my Zend Studio for Eclipse. It's simply a matter of extracting the .bin file from the tar.gz file and then running sh ZendStudioForEclipse-6_1_0.bin as my regular user. However after installation it would not start. So I had to tweak a few things.

First I wanted to change the version of Java it was running:


su -c 'yum install jre.i386 libgtk-java.i386 # To get the 32bit version of Java and gtk
cd ~/Zend/ZendStudioForEclipse-6.1.0 # Where I installed it
mv jre jre.sun1.5
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_11 jre

Presto! Now my ZSE works correctly.

Next I had to get my Google Repository installed:

wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/google-repo-setup.sh
su -c 'sh google-repo-setup.sh'
yum install google-desktop-linux

There are plenty of other google things to install like picasa, but I like to start with the google-desktop so I have the quick CTRL CTRL short cut key to do a new google search. Google-gadgets may be a great thing if you like the gadget feature of Windows Vista. But when I'm on my tiny little 15" laptop screen I feel like I'm really cramped compared to the (3) 24" monitors running side by side at 1920 x 1200 on my desktop.  Yes, that's 5760 x 1200. I have the capability to add another 3 screens so I could have a 5760 x 2400 desktop but then I'd have to give up my shelf above the monitors.

One other thing, my Novatel U727 USB Wireless card for Sprint. It has a builtin flash that is supposed to look like CD-rom drive when inserted into a Windows machine. On a linux machine it doesn't work so well and you have to eject the cdrom device, usually with "eject /dev/sr1". However, with a little googling back in October I found a better way.

Create a file in /etc/udev/rules.d and add a rule:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-novatel.rules

add the following as a single line

ENV{ID_CDROM}=="?*", ENV{ID_SERIAL}=="Novatel_Mass_Storage_#your_serial_number#-0:0", RUN+="/usr/bin/eject /dev/%k"

Be sure to put your device's serial number where I listed #your_serial_number# above.

Now when I insert the usb card, there's a slight pause and then the Novatel is ready to place calls. Setting up the connection in the Network Manager is a peice of cake. Just go to "edit connections" and click on the "Mobile Broadband", then just add a new connection. The only thing I had to set up was the phone number, #777. The rest I left blank. The next time I inserted the Sprint card it was in my list of available connections. I tried doing the same thing with my Verizon Wireless HTC Touch Pro but since I don't have the tethering service with them it won't work.


Getting SipX and Asterisk to work on the same box

OK, so I'm one of those data guys who know better than to mess with this dreaded stuff called VoIP. But money talks and there is a certain amount of adventure in making this stuff work.

I've had a Trixbox working for about 2 or 3 years now. Big deal, download the iso, install and configure. It's really pretty easy to do with all the HOW-To's out on the web. I've even been talked into installing a 100 extension set up at a church. And to be honest, besides the pain of dealing with Cisco 7961 phones it wasn't too bad. But it wasn't enough to convert me to a phone guy.

But now that same person who talked me into doing the system at the church has persuaded me to do a system at another 2 sites this isn't going away. This time he wants to use SipXecs instead because it is supposed to be a more sip compliant solution with some high availability features. That's all fine and dandy except it seems that SipX doesn't traverse NAT worth a darn. At least not in the current 3.10 version and not __MY__ NAT. When I tried the upcoming 4.0 release well.... I couldn't even get my Polycom phones to register so maybe it's not ready for me. Remember I'm a data guy.

OK. Trixbox has worked fine with my NAT set up at the house. Since SipX doesn't work with my NAT setup I tried routing my calls from SipX through Trixbox out to my ITSP and into the PSTN. It worked! But I think it's a little clunky to have to install 2 machines just to use SipX for a small site. Especially when Trixbox could probably do most of what they want without the hassle of SipX. So the goal was to get Asterisk, not Trixbox, installed on the same machine as SipX without using any virtual machines or anything of the sort. And I can say after 2 days of trial and error I've done it. Here's what I did:

Start off by installing the SipX/CentOS iso from their site. You can use Fedora or Suse if you want but I did this with CentOS and it works for me...

After install, log in as root and run 'yum update' to get any system updates available.

Follow the various how-to's for SipX to get your phones working and the basic system configured. But hold off on setting up your gateway just yet, I'll talk about that after we get Asterisk installed. In the mean time though you should be able to call the voicemail system and play with the auto attendant.

add an alias ip address to the system. I did it the lazy way by copying /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to ifcfg-eth0:1 and then edited the file. Here's what it looked like after I was done

DEVICE=eth0:1
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
IPADDR=192.168.0.13
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=172.10.0.1

and my original ifcfg-eth0 file:

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
IPADDR=192.168.0.12
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=172.10.0.1


Then just restart the network with 'service network restart'

Next install a few packages for compiling asterisk,  'yum install gcc gcc-c++ ncurses-devel'   and whatever dependencies yum finds.

Now download asterisk to your /usr/src directory. I used asterisk-1.6.0.1 as it was the latest at the time.

extract the file and cd into the asterisk-1.6.0.1

I ran './configure'  followed by 'make install'  and 'make samples'

copy contrib/init.d/rc.redhat.asterisk to /etc/init.d/asterisk

then run 'chkconfig --add asterisk'

now asterisk will start automatically for you when you reboot, but first we have to configure it so don't go starting it just yet.

cd  to /etc/asterisk  and create a directory called samples and move ALL the files into it.

Now we can start with a basic config. copy the sip.conf, rtp.conf, modules.conf, features.conf and extensions.conf into /etc/asterisk from the /etc/asterisk/samples directory.

here's what my sip.conf looks like:

;
; SIP Configuration for Asterisk
;

[general]
context=default ; Default context for incoming calls
allowoverlap=no ; Disable overlap dialing support. (Default is yes)
bindaddr=192.168.0.13:5060 ; IP address to bind UDP listen socket to (0.0.0.0 binds to all)
; You can specify port here too, like 123.123.123.123:5080


; Need this for NAT to work correctly. VERY Important!
externip = My External IP
localnet = 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0


; See qos.tex or Quality of Service section of asterisk.pdf for a description of these parameters.
tos_sip=cs3 ; Sets TOS for SIP packets.
tos_audio=ef ; Sets TOS for RTP audio packets.
cos_sip=3 ; Sets 802.1p priority for SIP packets.
cos_audio=5 ; Sets 802.1p priority for RTP audio packets.

;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


; An ITSP connection that requires a register line
;[regitsp]
;host=x.x.x.x
;username=xxxxxxxxx
;secret=xxxxxxxx
;type=peer
;dtmfmode=inband
;disallow=all
;context=from-pstn
;allow=ulaw
;qualify=yes

;register=xxxxx:xxxxx@x.x.x.x

; My ITSP
[itsp]
username=xxxxxxx
type=friend
insecure=invite
host=x.x.x.x
dtmfmode=inband
disallow=all
context=from-pstn
allow=ulaw
canreinvite=no


; SipXecs connection
[sipxecs]
type=peer
insecure=invite
host=192.168.0.12
dtmfmode=inband
disallow=all
context=from-sip
allow=ulaw
canreinvite=no



and my extensions.conf

[general]
autofallthrough=yes


[default]
exten => _X.,1,NoOp(Got Unsolicited SIP Request)
exten => _X.,n,Congestion(5)
exten => _X.,n,Hangup


[from-pstn]
exten => 1234567890,1,Dial(SIP/sipxecs/4250) ; not my real DID
exten => 2345678901,1,Dial(SIP/4260@sipxecs) ; not my real DID
exten => 3456789012,1,Dial(SIP/4260@sipxecs) ; not my real DID


[from-sip]
exten => _X.,1,Dial(SIP/itsp/${EXTEN})



and in modules.conf I added this stuff to the bottom to cut down on all the modules that got loaded, you could probably skip this if you wanted to

noload => chan_iax2.so


noload => res_ael_share.so
noload => res_phoneprov.so
noload => res_speech.so
noload => res_musiconhold.so
noload => app_transfer.so
noload => app_parkandannounce.so
noload => app_privacy.so
noload => app_speech_utils.so
noload => func_vmcount.so
noload => app_voicemail.so
noload => app_sendtext.so
noload => app_url.so
noload => func_db.so
noload => app_playback.so
noload => pbx_spool.so
noload => func_blacklist.so
noload => app_minivm.so
noload => app_ices.so
noload => app_morsecode.so
noload => app_chanspy.so
noload => chan_mgcp.so
noload => app_dictate.so
noload => pbx_loopback.so
noload => app_disa.so
noload => app_zapateller.so
noload => app_forkcdr.so
noload => app_mp3.so
noload => app_db.so
noload => app_sms.so
noload => app_nbscat.so
noload => app_externalivr.so
noload => format_jpeg.so



I left the features.conf and rtp.conf files untouched. 

The key to my success was in the sip.conf file. I added externip and localnet entries. These allowed asterisk to figure out how to write the SIP headers correctly when traversing my IPCop firewall. The other important entry in the file was the bindaddress=192.168.0.13.  What I did there was to bind Asterisk to the aliased IP on the server and not the primary IP which SipX had already been bound to. (I tried just moving port to something else like 5560 but that didn't seem to work right).

With your new configs in place you should be able to start asterisk with a command like 'asterisk -vvvc'

Of course you need to configure your gateway in SipX now. Do so by going to Devices -> Gateway and add a Sip Trunk.  Be sure to use the aliased IP you bound asterisk to in the sip.conf file, in my case that was 192.168.0.13.

Next add the gateway to the appropriate dial plan rules and remember to click activate when you are done. I forgot this a few times and it caused me to waste some time trying to figure out why my changes didn't work.

And you'll need to add some port forwarding rules to your firewall to help with incoming calls. Forwards upd ports 5060 and 10,000-20,000 to the ip that you have asterisk bound to, 192.168.0.13 in my case.

Well this certainly isn't a step by step guide on how to set up a complete SipX/Asterisk server but it does highlight the difficult things that took me 2 days to solve. Hopefully it helps someone else too (or me when I forget this next week)

Make America Stronger, speak English or Leave!

Recently I was in an email discussion with some motorcycle education friends about the challenges of teaching folks who don't speak and understand English so well because it's not their second language. My stand is pretty much in favor of folks learning to speak English first before you are out riding and driving the roads of our great country.

One person brought up an interesting point of view. Her great grand parents were non-English speaking immigrants who came to America around the 1900's. They struggled to adapt to the language, customs and cultures of our great country. And they had to do this in Ohio which wasn't the most forward thinking area of the time.

I thought that was an interesting perspective and one that I hadn't given much thought to. Below is part of my response to her.

----

My frustration isn't so much with the people trying to learn English here, it's with the people that have come to this country and expect us to change for them. Take a look around, businesses all over are putting up signage in Spanish. How is that helping them to transition to our language, customs and culture. There are billboards up all over town written just in Spanish, again how is that helping them to transition? When I go to the ATM or Self Check out at a store I have to choose English or Spanish. And road signs in Spanish, in the US, yes already here! What about translating the US Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem into Spanish?

How do all these translations help to transition a person into speaking English. I don't believe it does. For crying out loud, our anthem and our pledge? No the businesses don't care about helping them transition, they just want their money.

I certainly appreciate your perspective and am glad to know that your great grand parents came to our country so many years ago. But that was a different time and I suspect they were like most of the immigrants of the time, they wanted to be in America and they wanted to be a part of it.

I feel like those coming to our country today, not wanting to learn the language, not wanting to get their citizenship, using fake identities get jobs and get credit, and sending lots of their money back home to Mexico. These people aren't trying to transition into America's language, culture and customs. Instead they want to make America transition to them. �

Connecting the dots

I'm supposed to be on vacation this week. But I have a new laptop with Fedora 9 so I'm playing with it to see if I can make it really do all I need it to do to make my life easier. So far so good.

Previously I was using ScheduleWorld with syncEvolution on my Fedora 7 laptop in hopes that I could eventually get it to sync with my treo and publish to a google calendar so others could see what I was up to. Well I never got the treo syncing and then about 3 months ago my syncEvolution script started reporting errors so I just disabled it.

Tonight however I revived all of that intrest while trying to figure out a way to sync my old laptop (now my desktop) and my new laptop. And if I could sync with the Treo even better! Well I did it.

First I had to upgrade syncEvolution on the Fedora 7 box. It was on version 0.5 hence the errors. I hunted down the source as there weren't any rpms available for F7 in my current repos. A simple ./configure followed by a sudo make install and I was updated. Then I ran my sync script and everything work. Step 1 complete.

Next I had to install syncEvolution on the F9 laptop. Easy, I just typed yum install syncevolution and it was done. A quit copy of the .sync4j directory from my F7 laptop and I was almost ready to try it. But first I wanted to force my laptop to download everything from the ScheduleWorld server. That meant I needed to change the sync method in the config files and wipe out my local copy in Evolution. I discovered in doing so I have to kill the evolution data-server processes as well. Once done I started Evolution and then ran my syncEvolution script. Presto! I have the info as it appears on ScheduleWorld.

Then it was time to try the Treo again. I installed the Synthesis SyncML Palm client as recommend at ScheduleWorld and tried to sync. First I got the addressbook but nothing else. With a little digging I was able to get the notes and tasks. Then after clearing the name field of the events and retyping "cal" I was able to get the calendar. Woohoo!

Now I can add something on my F9 laptop and when I sync my phone it'll be there. I might just go ahead and spring for the $60 pro version of the Treo software so I can get automated updates versus the $30 standard version where you have to manually sync.

To make things even slicker I found a great little python gnome applet called Genesis that sits in my notification tray and allows me to run ScheduleWorld via a GUI. Now when I log it, it automatically syncs and will sync every 60 minutes after that while I'm logged in. There's a little problem when connected via wireless as the connection does come up in time but I think I can probaly adjust the genesis python code to delay that initial sync by 2 minutes or so in order for me to get online. I might also be able to adjust the code to detect whether the NetworkManager reports that I'm online. That would be even cooler. For now, the premature sync when I first log in is only mildly annoying and can easily be disabled with a click of a checkbox.

At this point I have my Evolution data syncing everywhere and the other day I installed Foxmarks to sync my Firefox bookmarks between computers. The only thing left is to try and install Unison to keep my Documents folder in sync. That's another project while on vacation I guess.

Living with my HP dv2810us and Fedora 9

This little laptop is starting to become a favorite of mine. I'm very impressed with Fedora 9 too, almost to the point of trying to upgrade my HP dv8000 from Fedora 7. The only hold up is with the VTBook video card that allows me to have a total of 3 monitors on my desktop. Plus I need to keep a Firefox 2.0 version around while I'm developing a customer's web site. But once the project is complete, I'll definitely be upgrading to Fedora 9.

So today I took the laptop out for a little show and tell with a client. Before leaving the house I simply closed the screen and packed it up. When I got to Panera Bread (coffee shop) I opened it and let it resume operations. I went to the NetworkManager and found the Panera network. A few clicks later and I was surfing the web. Wow! what an improvement.

I had a little problem with Adobe's Flash. They haven't release an x86_64 version yet so you have to run nspluginwrapper and install the 32 bit version. Then flash works like a champ. Once again Google to the rescue. I found the solution to the problem in the Fedora release notes.

While googling today I stumbled on a post about Wine and Mapsource. So I decided to install Wine 1.0 via Yum and see what happens. Mapsource installed fine and I was able to easily install the update and unlock my maps. Now all I have to do is get it to "find" my Zumo and I'll be set. Push comes to shove I can simply save the route as a gpx file on the SD card of the Zumo. I mapped a Windows drive to the /media directory so I can see the Garmin when it's plugged in, the software just can't "find" it. That's certainly not the end of the world. Not having to boot into Windows almost feels like nirvana.

Since that worked so well I thought I'd try my luck and install the BMW RepRom DVD that I use when working on my beemer. It was worth a shot. Well things seem to work until you try to view the documentation pages. But while clicking on buttons I stumbled on a Wine warning window saying I needed to install a gecko browser which it promptly did. Interestingly some content can be viewed while other information can't. I suspect a path problem. But at least I'm close to making it work.

I can now use the built in memory card reader on the laptop. This is a very handy feature and means that's one less thing I have to carry with my laptop. At less than 6 pounds this laptop is a serious little power house with a screen I can live with.

The other night I was able to get uvcvideo installed and the webcam working with very little effort. So now I have a web cam that works. I guess I'll be exploring the world of video chatting in the coming months. It would be nice to see the misses while on longer trips.


On a slightly different note, since the bbq I've been using ScribeFire to write all my posts. I'm really starting to like it too. I find it a little easier to use than the blogger interface and I can save posts and come back to them later without ever having to post them. Sure I can do the same with the draft feature in blogger but it's just nice to have it local in my browser. On trips were I can't always get net connectivity this should allow me to record posts and then upload them when I get to a place with connectivity.


Well I think I'll go tinker with Wine and see if I can get my RepRom issues solved. First thing to try is to install Internet Explore 6. It'd be nice to carry the DVD info when I'm on long trips.

Fedora 9 on my HP dv2810us

Last night was spent making the recovery discs just in case I lose my mind and want to switch back to Windows Vista or maybe if I want to put it back when I sell it. In the time it took me to burn the 3 DVDs I was able to download Fedora 9 x86_64 and burn it to a DVD.

I spent a little time this morning uninstalling all the junk that was included with Windows as I had decided to keep the Windows partition but to downsize it to 35G. I also plan to try an install of Mac OS X on here as well so there's another 35G partition for that. Once things were ready I inserted the Fedora 9 disc and began the install.

The ntfs resizing went pretty well. It was actually faster than I expected. Then the installation of software began. As I had pretty much taken the default Office and Productivity packages there were over 900 packages to install. It took longer than I was used to but then again I don't normally install that much stuff when I'm doing server installs.

Out of the gate, I had sound. The ethernet worked but the wireless did not. The monitor was useable at 800x600 but definitely not the 1280x800 that I wanted and expected. That would have to be fixed. But first I needed to update Fedora to get all the latest packages since the ISO had been spun. That took a while as there were over 250M of updates.

While waiting for the updates I restored my Firefox settings from my desktop/laptop:

from my home directory: scp -r desktop:.mozzilla .

When I started Firefox up it complained about a few plugins that weren't compatible with FF3.0 so I removed them. Firebug is the one plugin I'll want to reinstall as soon as it's available.

Then I restored my evolution settings:

scp -r desktop:.evolution .
scp -r desktop:.gconf/apps/evolution .gconf/apps
scp -r desktop:.gnome2_private/Evolution .gnome2_private


Evolution started up with a problem. All my settings, addressbook, calendar, it was all there. Now I need to start figuring out how to sync it with my desktop instead of just copying it over everytime.

And I added myself to the /etc/sudoers files so I wouldn't have to go to root everytime.

$ su -
# echo "brian ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL" >> /etc/sudoers

the NOPASSWD keeps me from having to enter my password each time


Once the updates were done, it was time for a reboot. Then it was time to try and install the NVidia driver from nvidia.com. There were a few problems along the way in the form of missing packages.

$ sudo yum install gcc

took care of the 'cc' missing error.

$ sudo yum install kernel-devel

took care of the missing kernel source error.

Finally the installation worked:

$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.14.09-pkg2.run

After the installation completed I tried startx but it failed complaining about a kernel module. So I rebooted again. This time the laptop came up with the NVidia splash screen and my desktop was at 1280 x 800. Such an improvement.

Next step was to get the wireless card working. A quick look at lspci revealed that I had a Broadcom BCM 4310 card onboard. And some googling showed that Fedora 9 already had the B43 driver for Broadcom wireless it just needed the right firmware. So I tried the instructions found at this link:

http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Adapters&thread.id=15114

Well that didn't work. When I found the bcm pages at linuxwireless.org I discovered that the bcm4310 is unsupported. So back to Google and it looks like it's the ndiswrapper route for me. So I did a "yum list | grep ndis" to see what packages were available to me. Luckily the ndiswrapper was available in the Livna channel (check this link for how to add the Livna repository). So I installed it:

# yum install ndiswrapper kmod-ndiswrapper

next I made sure the bcm module wouldn't load:

$ echo 'blacklist bcm43xx' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Then I went to the HP site to get the broadcom driver for my laptop

wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp37501-38000/sp37745.exe

Unfortunately unzip wouldn't extract it so I installed cabextract

# yum install cabextract

Then I extracted the files

# cabextract sp37745.exe

Finally I could install the inf file...

# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl6.inf

then I was making progress!

# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl6 : driver installed
device (14E4:4315) present

When I tried "modprobe ndiswrapper" I got a lot of errors in /var/log/messages about not being able to load the driver. So then I removed the driver with "ndiswrapper -r bcmwl6". With a little more googling I discovered you can't use Vista drivers with ndiswrapper. Then there was the problem of HP not having Windows XP drivers for my laptop. So I tried a dell driver:


# wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R174291.exe
# unzip R174291.exe
# cd DRIVER_US/bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4315) present
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Oh glory days! I had success. To make sure things would work after I a reboot:

# ndiswrapper -ma
module configuration information is stored in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

Then it was time to try the reboot. When the reboot was complete I was successfully connected to my wifi network. It just worked.

So now it was time for the more outside the box type things like my Sprint USB U727 card. I found a post on blogspot that made it sound easy. The only problem was that I was never seeing the cdrom icon on my desktop. It turns out for some reason I'm getting error from the /dev/sr1 device thus preventing it from ever loading. My solution was to make a shortcut that ejects the device and then things work as explained in Bryan's blog. My eject command:

$ sudo eject /dev/sr1


I also needed to copy my pidgin settings over so I wouldn't have set up the accounts again:

$ scp -r desktop:.purple .


Next I installed OpenVPN and the NetworkManager plugin:

# yum install openvpn NetworkManager-openvpn

I copied my /etc/openvpn files over from my desktop but trying to set up a connection via the NetworkManager will have to wait for another day I guess.

At this point I have a working laptop that I could take on my trip. I'll probably add the shockwave and flash players. And a few other things but this little Linux laptop is good to go.

Bringing home a new laptop

In less than 2 weeks I'll be heading to Gillette, Wyoming on my motorcycle for the annual BMW Rally. This trip is going to be a vacation and my wonderful wife is riding with me. So that means we have to pack for 2 people for 10 days using the hard bags, top case and tank panniers. Both of us need to stay connected while traveling so that means carrying 2 laptops.

My current HP dv8000 17" laptop would just barely fit in the door of a side case and would easily fit in the top case. But either place it would be taking up a lot of space and adding weight to the bike. So what's the logical thing to do??? You guessed it, go down to Fry's and buy a cheap 14" or 15" laptop to be my new moto-laptop.

Fry's had a sale going on today on certain laptops. I had 2 primary criteria I wanted to fulfill in this purchase. First it needed to be smaller and lighter than my current laptop. Second I really wanted a trackpad on/off switch. Other than that I wasn't really picky as long as it was cheap. Since this wouldn't be my main development box speed wasn't a major issue. It was more of a case of value once my primary criteria had been met.

I narrowed it down to 2 different HP's and a Sony Vaio. The Sony got knocked out when I realized it didn't have the on/off switch for the trackpad. So then it was a choice between 2 HPs. In the end I spent the extra bucks to get an AMD Turion 64 X2 w/ 3GB of ram, 250GB HD and a web cam. I the extra space and ram were attractive to me. The web cam could provide a challenge for me to work on next year before I take off to Alaska.

I don't know what stars have aligned but it seems I found every single new person at Frys during this process. The friendly sales person that helped me must have done something wrong because when I got to the checkout a manager drug him off to the side and started reading him the riot act. My clerk was a little confused about something but finally continued on. Then after swiping my card there was a problem which required a "csc". So the clerk's manager came over and he got in trouble for not checking something on my I.D. or some such non-sense. Finally I walk out with a new laptop and a $799 credit card bill that I'll have to pay next month when the statement arrives. At least the money is already in the bank.

I get the laptop home and start unpacking it. HP does a fantastic job with their packaging so I follow along with the pictures and do what it tells. When I power up the laptop though my screaming fast 2GHZ AMD Turion 64 X2 comes to a screeching installing the massive amount of garbage that's included with it. And I have to wait while Vista updates itself. So that's when I started this blog post.

Well all that's left now is to wait on the download of Fedora 9 and then I can wipe this thing clean and see how well it does on my OS of choice. In the mean time I might down FireFox 3 and see what all the fuss is about. According to Azureus I have at least another hour before the DVD iso will be down.

More to come on this experience when I have Fedora installed.

Putting on the 4th annual Walters BBQ

Yesterday was the 4th Annual Walters BBQ and it was an overall success. Each year it has gotten larger and larger. I'm always amazed by a few friends every year and this time was no different.

First a quick little history of the BBQ. I'll spare you the story of why I started BBQ'ing but let's just say it had to do with a 1 week grocery bill of over $300 and a lot of fillet mignon while I was alone at home. Back when we owned My Linux ISP (or when it owned us), Reagan and I thought it was a good idea to have an annual company party so everyone could get together and enjoy a meal. We'd cook steaks and stuff that we'd see on the bbq and grilling TV shows. But when we sold the company that tradition went away too. Wanting to have an excuse to get together with the old staff and stay in touch with some of my more memorable clients we started the annual Walters BBQ in June of 2005. The idea was to have it the weekend before the 4th of July so maybe some party attendee would invite us to their party as well.

Fast forward to today and we have now successfully completed 4 of these events. Each year the guest list has grown larger and larger. For the past 2 years we've had some friends from Dallas come down to help with all the work of set up and tear down. Without our friends we wouldn't be able to put on such an event.

This year amazed me a little more though. At the end of the day, all but one of the people that stuck around to help clean up had been involved as crew members on past Avon and Susan G Koman breast cancer walks that I've participated in. On those walks people from all over come together as a crew to support the walkers and help pull off the event. Yesterday felt about the same. People were outside folding up tents, cleaning up tables and picking up trash. Inside they were taking turns on the dirty dishes, picking stuff up, and putting away the food. For a brief time I had to look around to make sure I was still at home and not out on a breast cancer event. It was amazing. When all the heavy lifting had been done we all enjoyed a little time visiting in the backyard before the skeeters got too big.

Next year will be the 5th annual Walters BBQ and should be even bigger. There's some discussion about the event date as I'm planning on being in Alaska on June 21st riding my motorcycle. No matter when we put it on, I'm sure it'll be great. Especially having friends like ours.


For the numbers folks, we used:
42 racks of baby back ribs
70lbs of brisket
48lbs of pulled pork
2 105oz cans of baked beans
2lbs of pintos
3 105oz cans of whole potatoes
320lbs of ice

and a lot of other stuff too.

An "Ah Ha!" moment

So yesterday I managed to install Leopard on my laptop only to discover that using a 9GB partition wasn't such a great idea since it seems Apple is just as guilty of trial-ware as Microsoft is. So this morning I'm reloading Leopard again but that's not the "Ah Ha!" moment.

Currently I'm working on a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 laptop with a 700mhz P3 and 384M of ram. I plugged it into a 19" flat panel but the best I'm able to get on the screen resolution is 1280x1024. This is a real problem for me since I'm used to something like a 5280x1200 resolution across my 3 screens. To say I'm running out of desktop space is an understatement.

I realized the problem was that icons and text were just too large so I started poking around. In Fedora 7 you can change the fonts dpi and that was my "Ah Ha!" moment. Going to System->Preferences->Look and Feel->Font and then clicking on the Details button gets you to the Font rendering details. Lowering the resolution from 96 to 85 makes all the difference.

Now it's hard to believe that I was working on this laptop regularly back in 2004 and 2005 before I bought the faster P4. Today I have a 1 year old Centrino Duo 2.2Ghz w/ 2GB of ram and I'm already looking at a Dell m1330 Core Duo 2.6Ghz with 4GB of ram to be my next traveling computer as it only weights 4 pounds. Oh how great technology is!

Running Mac OSX on an HP dv8000

The other day I started looking at running Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine under VMware. Well getting 10.4 (tiger) to work was pretty simple as there were already VM images out there so it was really nothing more than finding the torrent and downloading. Unfortunately it is a little slow and clunky but it should work OK for testing a web site in Safari 2.5 but what about the new OS X Leopard and Safari 3?

Well today I started experimenting with loading Leopard into a VM on my Centrino Duo HP Pavillion dv8000 laptop. I didn't get very far with the Kalyway 10.5.1 ISO so I tried the iATKOS 1.0ir2 ISO and got a little farther but I never managed to make it to the initial welcome screen of the installer. So I had to make a choice, give up and live with Tiger or do a bare metal install...

Of course I went with the bare metal install on an old disk that I had. I went with iATKOS first because it was a newer disk and had a few more things already done for me. The only problem is that I didn't understand all the options so it was too confusing and the install didn't work out. Then I tried the Kalyway ISO and it worked like a champ. Upon reboot I had sound but no network. I decided to load the Kalyway 10.5.2 update in hopes that it would fix my network issue. No such luck.

I decided to work on getting Grub to manage my multiboot situation and after a little effort I had it working. So now I'm able to boot into Fedora 7 for Linux, and reboot into OS X Leopard.

Next was the network. I found a post talking about using a USB network dongle and since I happened to have a Linksys USB200M I thought I'd give it a try. After installing an incorrect kext file I discovered that Leopard should natively support the adapter. Of course since I'm new to OS X I ended up reinstalling the os. Along the way I discovered that I have to use my powered USB hub for USB stuff as the the other USB ports on the laptop don't seem to work. Odd......

With Leopard reinstalled I inserted my Linksys and things worked. Hooray! So then I downloaded an ext2 application which allows me to read my Linux drives. I opted to mount them read only as to avoid possible data corruption. Once I was able to see my Linux home directory I snagged my firebox bookmarks and dropped them in the right folder. Now I have the same Firefox bookmarks in both OSes. I think I might write a little script to sync them every time I boot into Mac.

Now if I can only get dual or triple screens working as well as the wifi or on-board nic I'll be good to go.

I must be getting old

or society is just losing it's compassion and respect for others...

This morning Reagan and I went to see Rambo in the AMC 24 in Sugar Land. The last few times we've gone to see movies we've had problems with people carrying on conversations during the movie. Some how asking them to please take their conversations outside is offensive to them and we're viewed as the rude people. Go figure....

Well today wasn't any different. We sat 3/4 of the way up the theater just to house left of center. This is the best seats we could get as two men were setting in the optimum spot on the row. So the movie starts and sure enough these two start yapping up a storm providing commentary about the movie. I lean over and ask politely that they wait until after the movie to discuss it or take it outside. I'm told that I picked where I sat and I could move if I didn't like it.

Reagan also had words with another movie patron about noise. The person behind us was talking on his cell phone. Of course when she talked to him he seemed to listened and stopped talking on the phone. It must have been her kind and gentle approach.

So my question is this, have I gotten old and intolerant of others or are people just becoming more self absorbed and disregarding those around them. I'd like to think I'm getting old and intolerant but I fear it's a problem with society more than me.

I guess we'll be going shopping for a new home theater set up soon. With the ridiculous price for movie tickets and food plus the rudeness of our fellow man, it seems that buying an elaborate home theater is actually a bargain. Not to mention you can have intermission when nature calls...

Get out and don't come back

That's what my doctor said to me today when I had my exam to see how the finger was doing. He had me bend my finger, make a fist, hold it out straight while he pressed on it. Everything was good.

He says it'll take about 6 months for the swelling to go down as much of it is due to scar tissue. There was no concern what so ever that I had quit wearing my splint weeks ago. In fact he was quite pleased with my range of motion and said no more therapy was necessary. Then he wished me a safe and healthy 2008 and said "Get out and don't come back". That was music to my ears.

So I still haven't seen all the bills and there's a little confusion with some offices regarding the correct insurance information, but the last time I added it all up the medical bills were over $8,000. And that was all caused by just a few seconds of inattention. Now when I sharpen my knives, Yes I'm sharpening them again! Now when I sharpen knives I pay very close attention because ..... Stupid Hurts!

Insert SmartChip

That's the message displayed on my dad's phone this morning when I came in from the deer stand on this the final weekend of the 2007-08 deer season.

A little history, 12 years ago coming to the deer camp without a phone wouldn't have been an issue. Cellular service was spotty at best. So if you had a phone and it quit working you would get it fixed on Monday or whenever you got back. Heck 12 years we didn't have hot water for showers and water pressure was created by a little pump someone had to turn on when your were ready to jump under the cold water shower fed by our water tank. Brrrr, it seemed cold. Over time we've gotten smarter and more comfortable. A LP gas water heater was brought up. The water pressure pump motor was fixed so we have pressure throughout the cabin. A full size refrigerator was brought up. And cellular companies added more towers in the area. Today you can talk on the phone from any where on the property.

So back to my dad's phone. Earlier this season he was introduced to texting. This weekend he was trying to learn more about it so he could use it better. Last night while trying to send a message to mom, it was discovered that his contactbook doesn't have her number stored as 10 digits. When he tried sending a message from his contactbook it failed. Send a message with 10 digits and works. Simple, correct the entry in the contactbook.

Well this morning while on the deer stand he's trying to text mom and realizes he hasn't fixed the 10 digit number issue so he goes in there to fix her number. Somewhere along the way he stumbles on the My Number screen and sees his number starting with 1-. Thinking he should try to fix it, he tries to change the number. The phone won't let him. However it let him enter his number sans 1- in the second entry. Upon saving it he's prompted with a message talking about programing the phone. He chooses cancel. Boom, no more phone, just "Insert SmartChip".

So when I see the message I check the chip of course. It's there so next I fire up my Nokia N800 and Google for possible solutions using my phone's bluetooth tethering Internet feature. No luck.. A quick check at Cingular.com shows the nearest store is in Lufkin about 30 minutes away. A call to the store confirms that they can fix/replace the sim card as needed. I get the address from the web site and grab my gps from the jeep. The GPS, another new experience for my dad. We arrive at the store and a few minutes later we are walking out with a new sim chip and he bought a shiny new phone cover too.

By the time we eat lunch and drive back it's 1:30 and too late for a nap. So we take care of a few end of season things and then I head back to the stand. Where of course I'm making this entry using my trusty N800 and cellular internet service. Hmmm, I wonder how technology is going to affect my hunting in another 12 years? One thing is for certain, as things get more high tech and comfy up here I seem to be missing out on more naps.

Better get back to hunting now.