update: Fedora 14, Eee 1001HA / hp620, wifi, ralink rt3090

Problems with Eee PC 1001HA & wifi.

UPDATE: read more about problems with the same wifi on  hp620 laptop.

You need to compile new drivers for RaLink network controller.

  02:00.0 Network controller: RaLink RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe

Download, unpack, & install last RaLink  RT3090PCIe driver:

http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2

  unzip  20101125_RT3090_LinuxSTA_V2.4.0.2_WiFiBTCombo_RFKill_DPO.zip
  cd 20101125_RT3090_LinuxSTA_V2.4.0.2_WiFiBTCombo_RFKill_DPO/
  make
  make install
Also you can read README_STA for more configuration option.
Load ‘rt3090sta’ kernel modules:
  modprobe rt3090sta
NetworkManager can handle connection or you can create ‘ifcfg-ra0’ network configuration file. You should consider kernel updates, because you have to build driver again with new kernel.
On HP620 white light on wifi key didn’t come up. Also it’s not possible to “enable wireless” in preferences for NetworkManager. You need to install rfkill app:
  yum -y install rfkill
  rfkill list all

  0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
          Soft blocked: yes
          Hard blocked: no
  1: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth
          Soft blocked: yes
          Hard blocked: no
Fedora 14 (at least on my laptop) has BT & WIFI tight together, so I had to enabled Bluetooth – after that reachable wifi networks are shown in NetworkManager.
  0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
          Soft blocked: no
          Hard blocked: no
  1: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth
          Soft blocked: no
          Hard blocked: no
			

			
							
                

             

Fedora 13, hp620, HD audio

Someone could be experienced by problem with sound card on hp620, so combination of old kernel & old ALSA drivers caused weird issue – you can hear sounds only through headphones, but there is no speaker sound (everything looks ok – HW, tests, volume sliders).

If you have still problem with it, you can use this workaround:

Download & install last ALSA drivers:

  wget -O alsa-compile.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-compile.sh
  chmod 755 alsa-compile.sh
  ./alsa-compile.sh
  ./alsa-compile.sh --kmodules
The last command remove old kernel modules & loaded new, but the actual modules are hold by other dependents. So you can switch to runlevel 3 and back to 5 like this – open terminal and run command:
  telinit 3
Then login as root; then run alsa-compile & change runlevel again:
  ./alsa-compile.sh --kmodules
  telinit 5


That’s all.

		
	
				
                

             

Fedora 13, hp620, realtek 8171

I recently bought new laptop HP620 & without OS. This machine is  “office-book” category

After installation Fedora 13 there was an WiFi issue which I successfully solved. I’d like to share my solutions with you guys:

Wireless networking (no wifi available in NetworkManager):
WiFi card which lspci represented as:

  02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8171 (rev 10)

basically this 8171 is equal to RTL8191SE (nowadays RTL8191SE-VA2).
So this driver is needed (download it) : www.realtek.com
Then utar it (tar -zxvpf rtl8192se-xyz.tar.gz )

Few more tools are required ( yum -y install kernel-devel make gcc )
Then:

  make; make install; reboot

Finally wifi networks appeared in NetworkManager

Bunch of tips from Linux

How-to check your line speed? – iperf

Iperf is clinet/server application, on one side you have to start listener, on the other client. You need 2 computers for our test. Let’s start with server at myserver.mydomain.eu :

$ iperf -s -p 12222
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 12222
TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------

Client side yourclient.yourdomain.eu:

$ iperf -c myserver.mydomain.eu -p 12222 -t 60
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to myserver.mydomain.eu, TCP port 12222
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.1.21 port 36809 connected with 74.125.45.100 port 12865
[  3]  0.0-61.5 sec  1.51 MBytes    206 Kbits/sec

The example above shows communication between both computers through port 12222 (server listen port) and port # 36809 (its random outgoing port from client side). There is again a lot of settings, for more information use:

$ iperf --help

How-to disable Ctrl+Alt+Backspace? – xorg.conf

Find and modify your xorg.conf file (usually ‘/etc/X11/xorg.conf’ ) and put/modify there following section:

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option      "DontZap" "yes"
EndSection

Restart X server and try key-combination Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

How-to change Windows/Linux encoding – iconv

File encoding on Windows is different to Linux. Sometimes we need to change it, so here is few examples:

$ iconv -f windows-1252 -t utf8 <file-with-win1252.txt >file-with-utf8.txt

There is a list of allowable types of encoding:

$ iconv -l

If you don’t know which encoding the file actually uses, you can try another utility:

Which encoding does this file use? – enca

$ enca my-file.txt

What about hundred files? – find

Example below changes all *.txt files in current directory from Win1252 to UTF8:

$ find . -type f -exec iconv -f cp1252 -t utf-8 {} \;

Share keyboard & mouse between 2 computers

Sometimes we need to work with two computers in the same time and here is a great solution: Synergy . It works on client/server program. Each computer uses its own OS and own monitor. The advantage is in one keyboard & mouse. In my case also clipboard is shared (I use Fedora8 x Fedora9).

Installation:

Download and install Synergy (you can find it also in your repository in your favorite distribution). At first create/modify your config file ( ‘/etc/synergy.conf’ ). Then start server side (in our example on computer eg.: ‘/usr/bin/synergys’ ) and then start client (on notebook eg.: ‘/usr/bin/synergyc 192.168.1.53’ ). Make sure, that you don’t have blocked communication at port 24800 (which is default port for synergy) on both machines – it means, that you should have exception in your firewall for port 24800. If you don’t provide path to config file, the program try to load ‘~/.synergy.conf’ or ‘/etc/synergy.conf’ .

Below are examples of ‘/etc/synergy.conf’ (one for server, one for client):

Client (notebook is on left side):

section: screens
  computer:
        halfDuplexCapsLock = true
        halfDuplexNumLock = true
  notebook:
        meta = alt
end

section: aliases
  computer:
        192.168.1.33
  notebook:
        192.168.1.53
end

section: links
        computer:
                right = notebook
        notebook:
                left = computer
end

Server (computer is on right side):

section: screens
  notebook:
        halfDuplexCapsLock = true
        halfDuplexNumLock = true
  computer:
        meta = alt
end

section: aliases
  notebook:
        192.168.1.53
  computer:
        192.168.1.33
end

section: links
        computer:
                left = notebook
        notebook:
                right = computer
end

General knowledge

There are many myths and half-truth about Linux. When I see some of them, I have to laugh, but sometimes I’m almost crying.

Stupid people know no bounds:

(i know, that you’re clever, but just for sure: this is an irony)

• Linux is only for experts and technoids
  I always thought my 60-year-old father is an expert
• Linux is too complicated
  Yes, my mother says the same all the time (i don’t know why she said the same about Windows).
• Linux does not support games
  No, thousands users play from Linux the same game as you, but you can’t (is too complicated for you to read some README or HOWTOs – you are busy of course).
• Linux is too large
  Yes, each person can choose from thousands of SW, but you can’t choose anything during installation, so you have to install whole internet to your computer. (because you can’t read)

And you can read much more nonsense through the internet about Linux … you know, stupid people are all around the world.

What you should really know about Linux:

• Anyone can use Linux (dad, daughter, wife, girlfriend…)
• Linux is as simple as possible (it’s up to you, how deep you want to understand it)
• Linux supports many games (native code or you can use emulator for windows application wine)
• There is distributions which can be running from floppy disk (but usually it takes 20min to install average desktop environment and it uses about 1GB disk space)

Trivia:

• did you know, that there is about 50.000 Linux distributions? (most famous: RedHat, SuSe, Debian, Mandriva, Slax…)
• most of distributions are provided for free
• you can usually choose from many similar applications for same purpose
• after install/update new SW you don’t have to reboot computer (there is about 1% chance that you have to reboot)
• you can easy build WWW/FTP/DB/Game/Stream server

So don’t hesitate, try Linux!