Linux

The Alps Glidepoint touchpad on hepcat, my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop, worked as a basic two-button mouse under Ubuntu Linux. It even recognized touchpad taps, which is better than I can say for Fedora Core 4. Unfortunately, the synclient touchpad utility wouldn't work, which meant the touchpad could not be reconfigured for left-handed use.

For about a week, I've been running Ubuntu Linux on both my workstation and my laptop. The good news is the systems have been totally stable. The bad news is I've found some warts. The happy news I've been able to remedy most of them.

On chinacat, my main workstation, the primary problem has been a lack of applications. I kept trying to load tools that were available in Fedora Core or Debian and found they were missing. Instances that come to mind include the apg password generator and the very popular ncftp FTP client. I was getting frustrated. I thought I was going to be stuck with a pretty desktop but an incomplete toolset.

I thought maybe I could add some download repositories to provide the missing tools. When I looked at the /etc/apt/sources.list file to see if that was possible, I saw some commented out lines for a "Universe" repository. I enabled those lines, and suddenly everything I needed was there. That problem solved.

The next issue was a small but annoying problem on hepcat, my Dell Inspiron 600m laptop. I could not reconfigure the touchpad for left-handed use. The standard xmodmap utility can be used to remap the buttons, but that messes up the touchpad taps. The synclient utility is supposed to fix that, but when I ran it it would complain, "No touchpad found."

It turns out Ubuntu 5.04 won't support the Alps Glidematic touchpad in my laptop. I updated the Linux kernel from 2.6.10 to 2.6.12 and the touchpad driver module, and it started working. It's messy, but it works. I'll post the details in a followup message.

The final problem is that network re-configuration is not being handled gracefully when I come out of suspend. I often need to reset the interfaces manually (ifdown followed by ifup) when resuming from suspend. I hope that with a little research, I can resolve this as I did my other problems.

Although Ubuntu is not giving me perfect out-of-the-box support, it is working way better than Fedora Core. With Fedora, I didn't have to worry about reconfiguring the touchpad because taps weren't working at all. It's annoying that I need to download a non-standard kernel for Ubuntu, but at least I don't have to build a custom kernel and drivers like I did with Fedora. The network reconfiguration on resume issue was moot with Fedora: the b44 Ethernet driver would crash on suspend.

Ubuntu seems to be a good choice for desktop Linux.

The plan was to run Ubuntu Linux on my laptop for a week or two, give it a good test drive, and verify its stability before converting chinacat, my main workstation. That's just common sense. Wish I had done that before converting all my machines to Fedora Core 4.

The problem with that plan was that chinacat was getting worse by the hour. It would crash or lock up several times a day. Even worse, my calendar was no longer syncing with my PDA phone, which meant I had no access to my appointment book when I left the house.

I noticed that Fedora released a kernel update, and I held out some hope that would fix my problems. Unfortunately, I could never test it out. The system wouldn't stay up long enough under heavy load for me to install the update.

My last ditch effort was to boot off the rescue CD, which appeared to be more stable than the installed kernel, and install the update. Good plan, but didn't work. The problem is the rpm program on the rescue CD would not run, complaining about db library incompatibilities.

Yes, you read that right: the rescue disk was unable to install system packages, which is what you would need to rescue a system. That was the last straw; Fedora had to go.

The Ubuntu install was not without incident. There is an often reported problem with the install freezing during the apt setup portion. Fortunately, I was able to switch to another screen, kill the hung process, and complete the installation.

The other problem I'm having is that an encrypted filesystem is not mounting correctly. (It was done with the crytpo loopback module and serpent encryption.) I may need to boot off a live CD to see if I can recover that information.

I was pleased to find that Ubuntu supports both root and swap on LVM logical volumes. That is a complexity some distributions don't handle well.

That was a lifesaver. Since I could keep my LVM setup, I preserved my /home and /usr/local filesystems across the install. That worked. There are a few small differences between the environment. For instance, Fedora starts an autorun process that Ubuntu does not provide. Otherwise, my KDE desktop configuration moved across remarkably well.

The most critical test was whether the sync on my PDA phone worked. I docked the phone, hit the sync button, and within seconds my appointment book was recovered. I literally shrieked with joy when that happened.

I did kind of a dumb thing, and I'm debating whether to go back and correct it. My workstation is an AMD Athalon-64, but I loaded an Intel 32-bit environment. It works just fine. I don't know how much of a boost the native 64-bit environment gives. Plus, when I was running Fedora, the bi-architecture environment seemed like a horrible kludge. Also, the availability of 64-bit applications wasn't as good. I'm considering sticking with the 32-bit environment, at least for now.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Over the months, I've written so many blog entries about my struggles to get hepcat (a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop) running with Fedora Core Linux. This evening I installed Ubuntu Linux, and all the things that were causing me so much grief were cured.

• Suspend-to-Disk - Fedora disables the kernel CONFIG_SOFTWARE_SUSPEND setting, which means you cannot suspend to disk. Without suspend, you have to go through a full startup and shutdown every time you want to use the system, which is unacceptable on a laptop. To work around this problem on Fedora Core 3 I built a custom kernel. After upgrading to Fedora Core 4, that kernel no longer suspended correctly.
• Intel Wireless Drivers - Fedora is shipping broken ipw2200 drivers. To get the wireless network adapter working correctly under Fedora Core 3, I had to download the driver source and build them myself. You also have to grab the adapter firmware too.
• No Suspend Scripts - There are no useful suspend scripts provided in Fedora Core. I had to develop my own script to initiate reliable suspend.
• Busted b44 Driver - The wired Ethernet never worked correctly after a suspend. I was unable to find a workaround.

As you can see, there was an awful lot of custom building and tweaking required to get stuff to work on Fedora Core 3, and apparently even more work was going to be required to make it work on Fedora Core 4. I'm getting too old for this shit.

This evening I loaded Ubuntu Linux on the laptop. All of the problems went away. Everything just worked. The only thing I had to do was change the button action to launch the hibernate script (instead of the shutdown script) when pressed.

I'm going to test drive the laptop for a while before I decide what to do about my desktop system. Hopefully, by the end of July, I will be off Fedora Core completely and forever.

Fedora Core 4 is the worst software upgrade I have ever encountered. I installed it on both my laptop and desktop systems, and now I am in hell.

I guess I should have taken it as a sign that when I tried to open a bug report against the test release, it was closed as soon as the maintainer found out I was using ReiserFS. Yes, in 2005 the Red Hat team still won't support anything but ext3 filesystems.

You may remember from previous entries the work I put into making hepcat, a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop, do suspend-to-disk correctly. The Fedora Core 4 upgrade broke that. It would suspend fine, but coming out would trigger a shutdown.

I thought I'd try building a new kernel, in case there was some incompatibility with the utilities. I started losing confidence quickly. When a version 2.6.11 RPM builds a kernel that calls itself 2.6.12, it's time to get nervous.

I did get the kernel built, but it wouldn't boot. The problem is that the install is creating a bunged initrd that didn't load required device mapper modules. I suppose I could create the image by hand. But at this point, it seems easier to just wipe the laptop and install a Linux that works.

The wipe-and-reload solution is viable for the laptop. Not so for my main workstation. That's unfortunate, because chinacat is in just as bad a shape. Ever since the Fedora Core 4 upgrade, I cannot sync my calendar to my PDA phone. In fact, it's totally erased the calendar in my phone.

Even better, the syncs have started triggering kernel panics. Even if it was a "Stoopid Configuration Error" causing the calendar problems, system crashes are not acceptable in a production product.

Here is what a blue screen of death looks like on Fedora:

Jun 28 23:14:33 chinacat kernel: usb 3-2: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Jun 28 23:14:33 chinacat kernel: usb 3-2: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Jun 28 23:14:41 chinacat kernel: visor ttyUSB1: Device lied about number of ports, please use a lower one.
Jun 28 23:14:49 chinacat last message repeated 4 times
Jun 28 23:14:51 chinacat kernel: visor ttyUSB1: Device lied about number of ports, please use a lower one.
Jun 28 23:14:52 chinacat kernel: usb 3-2: USB disconnect, address 11
Jun 28 23:14:52 chinacat kernel: general protection fault: 0000 [1]
Jun 28 23:14:52 chinacat kernel: CPU 0
Jun 28 23:14:52 chinacat kernel: Modules linked in: visor usbserial cdc_acm radeon drm cryptoloop loop md5 ipv6 parport_pc lp parport autofs4 video button battery ac uhci_hcd ehci_hcd shpchp i2c_viapro i2c_core snd_via82xx gameport snd_ac97_codec snd_seq_dummy snd_seq_oss snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss snd_pcm snd_timer snd_page_alloc snd_mpu401_uart snd_rawmidi snd_seq_device snd soundcore 8139too mii floppy dm_snapshot dm_zero dm_mirror reiserfs dm_mod sata_via libata sd_mod scsi_mod
Jun 28 23:14:52 chinacat kernel: Pid: 4, comm: events/0 Tainted: G M 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4

Fedora Core 4 is a very, very disappointing release.

I'm giving away my old Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop to a good home. Or even a crummy home, if you can find something good to do with it.

It's a Pentium II 333MHz CPU. System memory upgraded to 384MB. No Ethernet. Busted latch and hinge cover. Battery was replaced less than a year ago, so that should be in great shape.

Here is the big thing: no Windows. I used to run Mandrake Linux on it, using the IceWm window manger.

If you could put this to good use, let me know.

May 11 update: The laptop is claimed.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the difficulties getting Fedora Core 3 Linux running on a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop. I found two problems: laptop sleep/suspend was non-functional, and I could not configure the touchpad taps. This will be my last entry on the matter.

I actually made some progress on the sleep/suspend issue. There are three different functions. In my first entry I documented the difficulties in getting sleep to work. Sleep provides the least power savings and may be the most difficult to get working, so I haven't pursued it further.

The suspend-to-memory function nearly works. The laptop suspends and resumes, but on resume the display is dead. I've tried using the radeontool gizmo to force the backlight on, but the display showed no response. I was able to (blindly) re-enable the network and log in remotely, and verified all other system functions seemed in order.

The suspend-to-disk function also nearly works. Unfortunately, the Fedora Core 3 kernel is shipped with CONFIG_SOFTWARE_SUSPEND disabled. I downloaded the source RPM, enabled that function and built a new kernel. This worked with just one problem: on resume the b44 Broadcom wired Ethernet port was dead. I tried the bcm4400 driver provided by Broadcom, but that didn't work any better. The ipw2200 wireless Ethernet resumed fine, however, and that's helpful. Oh, also, I needed to exit the X graphical environment before the suspend, otherwise the video came back all mangled.

So, although I don't have sleep/suspend implemented, I have some promising avenues to investigate. I'm currently reloading the laptop with the Fedora Core 4 Test 2 release, so thus ends my adventures with Fedora Core 3. I'll report back any interesting developments.

Update: Don't hold your breath waiting for a Fedora Core 4 report.

A month ago I wrote about my efforts to set up Fedora Core 3 Linux on a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop. I found that most things worked great—with a few exceptions. I encountered problems trying to setup standby and suspend modes. I also noted two areas I had yet to tackle: configuring the touchpad and the modem. Here is an update on these areas. There is, unfortunately, no happy news to report.

This week I retired my trusty Inspiron 7000 laptop. The replacement is hepcat, a Dell 600m. I am running Fedora Core 3 Linux on it. I am having major difficulty getting suspend/resume to work, but otherwise it works nicely. Here is a quick summary of what I found during the installation.

Yesterday, I built a version of the mplayer video player to run under Fedora Core 3 Linux, x86_64 (64-bit) architecture. I would have preferred to download a binary from the Fedora Extras repository, but they are only building 32-bit versions.

I've built mplayer from source before, so I knew ahead of time it would be difficult. It was, but I sloughed through it and now I have a working video player. I thought I'd record a few notes, in case they may help somebody else trying to build it.