with linux 3.2-rc4

• pm-hibernate works
• pm-suspend works
• W83677HG-I sensors driver has been written by Guenter Roeck

• I bought a newer sony camera

(setq ansi-color-map
          [
           default bold
                           default italic underline bold bold-italic modeline
                           nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil
                           nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil
                           (foreground-color . "black")
                           (foreground-color . "dark red")
                           (foreground-color . "forest green")
                           (foreground-color . "dark orange")
                           (foreground-color . "dark blue")
                           (foreground-color . "dark magenta")
                           (foreground-color . "dark cyan")
                           (foreground-color . "light grey")
                           nil nil
                           (background-color . "black")
                           (background-color . "dark red")
                           (background-color . "forest green")
                           (background-color . "dark orange")
                           (background-color . "dark blue")
                           (background-color . "dark magenta")
                           (background-color . "dark cyan")
                           (background-color . "light grey")
                           nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil
                           nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil
                           nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil
                           nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil
                           (foreground-color . "dim grey")
                           (foreground-color . "red")
                           (foreground-color . "green")
                           (foreground-color . "gold")
                           (foreground-color . "slate blue")
                           (foreground-color . "magenta")
                           (foreground-color . "cyan")
                           (foreground-color . "white")
                           nil nil
                           (background-color . "dim grey")
                           (background-color . "red")
                           (background-color . "green")
                           (background-color . "gold")
                           (background-color . "slate blue")
                           (background-color . "magenta")
                           (background-color . "cyan")
                           (background-color . "white")
                           nil nil
                           ]
          )

• upgrade went very well. although not supported, a simple dist-upgrade worked like a charm

the only shock was after the first reboot. GRUB was broken. I didn’t even see the GRUB screen. The machine would be stuck in an endless reboot loop. BIOS screen → reboot → BIOS screen → reboot … Very puzzling issue that I haven’t been able to fix. I reinstalled the GRUB from Linux, and also from the grub prompt using (setup), to no avail.

In the end, I had to revert to my 11.2 GRUB version (funnily enough both are 0.97). I probably won’t have the energy to research this further.

What of course stopped working was my dirty multiseat hack. Instead of looping over the displays, I chose to loop over gnome sessions, because the new X is more securely set up so we need to steal the auth cookie to do what we want. setxkbmap also stopped accepting the “evdev” model, so I had to fix this by using -keycodes evdev -model pc104

As a bonus, I now know how to connect keyboards with different locales: use setxkbmap -device [`xinput list` ID here] -layout de (or -layout us)

Also, I opted to patch /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/sun_vndr/us again. Favorably, the BackSpace and AltGr key-bindings have been fixed, but the Alt and Meta keys have been broken.

Alt key got assigned Mod1 now, with Meta getting Mod4. No thanks, I don’t want to switch windows with Alt+Tab when my keyboard has Meta-keys in that place. So I had to switch the assignments for Mod1 and Mod4.

With Gnome 3, new authorization dialogs have been introduced to interface with PolicyKit (I love all those KITs by the way…), you can see them at this gnome live page. The company policy is to set up Ubuntu in the same way for everyone, and all the machines have several users that are allowed to install software. They are in one group — Ubuntu policy is to not use the root user.

As a developer, I am allowed to install software through the Ubuntu software center, or should be, anyways. With the Gnome 3 PolicyKit authorization dialog, choice between several possible users has been simplified, i.e. removed! So I get asked to enter the password for the “IT Administrator” account, which I obviously don’t know. Effectively resulting in me not being able to install any software.

I had to patch the gnome-shell (again) to restore at least basic usability. It asks for the current user password, when this user is permitted to perform that function (instead of the “first” one, whichever that might be.)

get the Gnome 3 PolicyKit fix here

Yes, there are bug reports for this

The biggest change is away from the Task bar to the Exposé-like overview of all windows, combined with a per-application chooser on the left (called “dash” in Gnome new-speak). The Alt+Tab window switcher got Application centric too. The application-behavior means: switch between windows of the same application with Alt+(key over tab). After getting used to it, it’s not that bad, even faster for some tasks.

However, there was one big problem. I’m still using the XTerm and just can’t leave it for something like gnome-terminal. I usually open a lot of xterms on my desktop. I have them display something sensible in their title bar. Now with Gnome 3, every XTerm is recognized as its own little application, that means I have to switch between XTerm-windows using Alt+Tab.

While this itself maybe wouldn’t be that big a deal, it also results in all the XTerm-windows only showing their class in both the Alt+Tab switcher and the dash (remember, the switcher and the dash are supposed to show the Application, not the apps window title). That means it gets really really difficult to find an XTerm window, as the title bar content is no longer visible anywhere.

So I had to resort to patching the gnome-shell to treat all the windows with a class of UXterm as one single application. Now I can switch to an xterm using Alt+Tab, and between xterms with Alt+(key over tab). A first step of making Gnome 3 usable to me!

Download uxterm_gnome3.diff. I would need help from any Gnome hacker to turn this into an extension instead of patching the source.

my distribution kernel by default enabled the rt2860sta driver which is from the vendor.

however, there is a better choice: recent kernel come with the rt2×00 driver. Here is how you can switch (on openSUSE)

it connects to the network much faster after using the other driver and it doesn’t put so many error messages in the syslog.

cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
make menuconfig

go to

-> Device Drivers
  -> Staging drivers
    -> Exclude Staging drivers from being built

and deselect Ralink 2860/3090 wireless support

then go to

-> Device Drivers
  -> Network device support
    -> Wireless LAN
      -> Ralink driver support

and enable (module) Ralink rt27xx/rt28xx/rt30xx (PCI/PCIe/PCMCIA) support

now Exit & save the config. You can save some compile time just compiling the subdirectory like such:

make SUBDIRS=drivers/net/wireless/rt2x00
make SUBDIRS=drivers/net/wireless/rt2x00 modules_install

remove the old driver

find /lib/modules/`uname -r` -name rt2860\*.ko -exec rm {} +
depmod

reboot or

ifconfig wlan0 down
modprobe -rv rt2860sta
modprobe -v rt2800pci

congratulations

if the modinfo for the module is missing (error on insmod), make sure to extract the vmlinux image:

cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
zcat /boot/vmlinux-`uname -r`.gz >vmlinux

Thanks mcrha!

• using the images posted on neosmart
• with a virtual XP installation
• and wintoflash

I have yet failed to do it with pure Linux, but if anyone knows how, I would be very interested to learn. Reason for this is that some companies only do firmware updates from Windows — avoid such companies/products if possible :-(

some guides describe how to use diskpart to format the USB drive. This did not work for me on Windows XP, it didn’t show the USB at all in there. Trying to format the drive with linux didn’t result in a bootable one, even after I tried several tools such as “MbrFix” and “bootsect” (a Vista copy I found on the net), all from within Windows. Partitioning with diskmgmt.msc was also not possible for me.

here were my steps to success in some more detail:

• fdisk the USB drive with one partition (if you have already messed everything up, consider dd if=/dev/zero of=your_drive etc…), type “b” (Win95)
• (quick)format the drive in Windows
• extract the repair image somewhere
• use wintoflash to have it copy the files to the USB

good luck!

It is much more convenient to use than the website (no need for the ugly select box country code), and you can easily set up aliases or another front end for it. besides, it doesn’t need a big web browser so you it is also good to use over SSH.

furthermore, you can easily see the rates (which are setup charge; tariff; and billing interval for caller and callee, in €-¢t/10000) before even accepting the call.

it is based on the script found on voip-info.org with added fee and error code output. obviously, it might break when the website changes.

A small usage summary:

fincheck cmd nonoh.net user password arguments…

useful commands are last7daysminutes, to check the minutes dialed in last 7 days (used for free call calculation), creditcents and freedays to check the remaining credit and freedays, as well as call to make a call.

the call syntax is:

fincheck call nonoh.net user password your-number other-number

Update: Simon G added the call rates functionality into the original version

Thanks for listening.

On openSUSE at least, you can use the proprietary driver after installation by adding nouveau.modeset=1 to the kernel command line (no other hackery was necessary for me). Unfortunately, the installation breaks the OpenGL driver of nouveau.

So here is how to toggle the device itself without any special driver.

su -c 'echo 1035 > /sys/devices/platform/msm_hsusb_periphera/composition'

This will not hide the Mobile Partner CD drive but its USB product id changes, which allows now to use the osx-pl2303 driver and also adb from the android SDK to be used.

See here for how to load the pl2303 driver. Note that OS X is using decimal representation of vendor id and product id (0x12d1 -> 4817, 0x1035 -> 4149).

This should also work with the T-Mobile Pulse Mini and maybe with other Android devices built by Huawei.

Edit: You need to have root on your device.

If you have root, you can try this small application:
ToggleUSB.apk

Google hints: Vodafone 845 u8120 0x12d1 0x1031 0x12d1 0x1035 Mobile Partner Pulse Mini

 Preparation of font set "fixed" for XIM failed.

The font path could be wrong. Make sure that the path to misc is the first one in row.

 xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/misc

would fix it for the moment (path might vary).

Compiling Xephyr I missed the following switches:

./configure --enable-xephyr --enable-kdrive-evdev --enable-kdrive-mouse --enable-kdrive-kbd --enable-kdrive --prefix=/usr --with-fontrootdir=/usr/share/fonts --libdir=/usr/lib64

Thanks for paying attention!