Ubuntu QA Glitch !

On startup, my newly-installed and fully updated Ubuntu issues an error while starting X, while I have never changed anything in the default xorg.conf, there is an error message saying "(EE) no screens found".

A quick Google search of "ubuntu no screens found" immediately points to some very recent posts regarding a recent Ubuntu upgrade that breaks the Xserver, and of coz, lots of angry people:

http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/23/137206&from=rss

Ubuntu xorg-server update breaks X: "no screens found"

Wednesday August 23, 2006 (01:10 PM GMT)

By: Joe Barr

IRC channels, LUG mailing lists, and Ubuntu wikis were buzzing with the news this morning that a recent Ubuntu Xorg update (xorg-server 1:1.0.2-0ubuntu10.3) crashes the X Window System on some video hardware. When X is restarted following installation, affected Ubuntu users get a "no screens found" error message instead of X.

The Dell Inspiron 6400 with an ATI video card, Dell Inspiron 8600 with an Nvidia 5200 card, Dell Latitude D620 with Nvidia Quadro NVS 110M video card, and Hewlett-Packard NX6125 are among the systems reported as being bitten by this bug.

One workaround being posted on Wikis is to downgrade to the previous version of Xorg by entering the following commands:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-core=1:1.0.2-0ubuntu10
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

A better workaround appears to be upgrading to xorg-server 1:1.0.2-0ubuntu10.4, after verifying that it is available in your repositories. To check and see if it is available to you, use the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
apt-cache -f search xserver-xorg-core

If the 10.4 version listed, then proceed with:

sudo apt-get upgrade

Of course, if you haven't upgraded to 10.3 yet, don't.

Bug report link:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/57153

Official fix procedure:
http://www.ubuntu.com/FixForUpgradeIssue

The Problem

An update was released for Dapper on 21 August 2006 UTC, which has been found to cause problems on certain systems.

A subsequent update published 17 hours later corrects this, so if your system is fully up to date now and you have no obvious graphical system failures, then you are highly unlikely to be affected. However, delays to the system of update distribution mean that you should make sure you have fully updated before rebooting your computer. You can read more about the issue to ensure you will not be affected, and learn what steps we are taking to ensure this does not happen again.

If you have been affected by this bug, you will see a screen similar to the following when booting your computer:

• 

Corrective Action

Follow this procedure to correct the problem. You will need to be connected to the Internet for the procedure to work.

1. At this point, hold the left Alt key and press the F1 key. You should see a screen similar to the following:

   • 

2. Type in your username, as you would to login to the computer, and press Enter

3. Then type your password and press Enter. You will see a screen similar to the following:

   • 

4. Type sudo apt-get update and press Enter

5. Type your password again and press Enter. You will see a screen similar to the following:

   • 

6. Type sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-core and press Enter. This will install an update on your computer, and you will see the text changing on the screen. When the update is complete, you will see a screen similar to the following:

   • 

7. Hold Control and Alt and press Delete. This will reboot your system in a functional state.

Summer East Trip

From August 22nd to 29th in the year 2006, me and wife took our first trip to the east part of the United States. Although we've done some traveling since 2001, this is our very first trip outside the state of California, and the longest one. I have kept a journal along the way, whenever I could find a place to use the computer and Internet I would add to it something that happened. This document is written on Writely (www.writely.com), and it the first document I have on it. I found it quite useful.

Day 1 : Taken for A Ride, Aireline Experience, America from Above, Flying over Pentagon
Day 2 : Similar Capital, Night of Chinatown
Day 3 : New York, Apple Store and Night in the Upper West Side
Day 4 : From Shit Hole to Hyatt, from NY to NJ, Stealthy Piece of Crap, Old College Pals and Grad School People
Day 5 : The Wedding
Day 6 : The Wakeup Call, the Drive to Boston, the Hotel
Day 7 : Outsider-unfriendly City, Train Ride to NY
Day 8 : Last Day

Hotel @ MIT

Very nice and interesting place. One thing that bothers me: the public Windows PC in the main lobby is running XP as Administrator as well as using IE as default broswer. I installed Firefox for them (using Admin of coz ...) and set it as default but did not tell anyone. Maybe some hard-core M$ people will uninstall the Firefox and undo my work. I was tempted to change the user setting but did not do it in the end. The other public computer is an iMac running OSX so it is OK.

Lunch Reservation

Awaiting confirmation on our lunch reservation on Monday. The number is (212) 963-7625. When I called, it was just a voice mail system, instructing me to leave my name, telephone number, the date and time of our lunch and number in my party. I was expecting the reservation requirement was so they could run a security check, but they didn't even ask for the name of my guest.

Apple Store Again

Apple Store NY

Posting from Apple Store on 5th Ave. NY:

Hello :)

NFS Client Setup on Window XP

Google search of "nfs mount windows xp" found the following page:

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/15337

Someone pointed to a Microsoft package:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/unix/sfu/default.mspx

It's free from microsoft, but you have to provide personal information (address).

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/unix/sfu/nfsauth.mspx

Introduction

Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX version 3.0 (SFUv3) includes key filesystem interoperability components that allow Microsoft Windows computers to function effectively in a Network File System (NFS) environment. These include Client for NFS, Server for NFS and Gateway for NFS. To enable these components to work effectively, SFUv3 must be able to accurately identify and authenticate users against both their native operating system and the remote operating system as appropriate. By default, NFS uses the UNIX method of identifying and authenticating users.

Note: Throughout this document, we refer to resources and authentication of UNIX users and computers. This is shorthand for UNIX and Linux users and computers.

Components

There are a number of components to Services for UNIX that are either involved in the authentication, or dependent on it. These include:

•	User Name Mapping Server – Maps UNIX users to Windows users and vice versa. Even when a user has exactly the same name on both systems, it is not actually the same user, so some mechanism is necessary to let the other components of SFUv3 know that Windows user jdoe is the same as UNIX user johnd.
•	Server for NFS Authentication – This isn't a server at all, but an authentication component used by Server for NFS. Install this component on any Windows server that might be involved in user authentication.
•	Server for PCNFS – This server is not used by other components of SFUv3, but can be used by other NFS programs that expect to see PCNFSD, including SFUv1.
•	Client for NFS – The Windows NFS client component of SFUv3. Client for NFS allows the machine on which it is installed to access and use NFS resources anywhere on the network.
•	Gateway for NFS – A special NFS client that enables a single Windows Server to provide access to NFS resources for other Windows computers that don't have any SFUv3 components installed at all. (Note: Client for NFS and Gateway for NFS are mutually exclusive – only one or the other may be installed on a machine.)
•	Server for NFS – The Windows NFS server component of SFUv3. Server for NFS allows the machine on which it is installed to provide file system resources to NFS clients anywhere on the network.

What Needs To Be Installed?

To use any of the NFS components in SFUv3, you will need to install and configure User Name Mapping Server. This is true whether you are using PCNFS or NIS for authentication. User Name Mapping Server is the core component that is required for any authentication of NFS in SFUv3.

You will also need to install the appropriate client and server components of the Services for UNIX NFS suite. To share files from a Windows server or workstation to UNIX clients, you will need to install Server for NFS on the machine providing the file services. To use files stored on UNIX hosts, you will need to install either Client for NFS or Gateway for NFS on a Windows server or workstation. You cannot install both – they are mutually exclusive. Client for NFS is appropriate for individual workstations or servers and provides access to files on the remote host for that workstation or server only. Gateway for NFS can only be installed on a server class Windows product. It provides access to files on the remote host to all Windows computers on the network, without requiring additional software on the downstream Windows computers.

HOW TO: Configure the User Name Mapping Service

How to install Client for NFS on Windows for a UNIX-to-Windows migration

What I actually did:

1. download "Window Services for UNIX": filename: SFU35SEL_EN.exe

2. run SFU35SEL_EN.exe, it is a self-extracting compressed file.

3. from the un-compressed directory, run installer: SfuSetup.msi

4. from installer GUI, select (a) User Name Mapping Server (b) NFS Client to install, igore other packages.

5. During installation, choose to use passwd and group file for authentication becaseu I am not using NIS at home. This requires /etc/passwd and /etc/groupd files to be copied from Linux NFS server to local XP machine. Provide the location of these 2 file (I copied them to c:\etc\) on the XP machine to the installation utility.

6. After installation, goto Start-> Windows Services for UNIX -> Services for UNIX Administration, which is a GUI for configuring the User Name Mapping Server and NFS Client.

7. Use simple setup for User Name Mapping Server because it is installed on the local XP machine. Use this Admin utility to automatically generate mapping config files.

8. Setup is done. Goto file explore and mount the network drive at xx.x.x.x:\mhe\amd900_export, which looks the same as Samba mount.

Viola.

TT Project Progress

Almost fixed the mess introduced by web applications, namely, missing white spaces and insertion of new lines.

NFS

Again, post the actual article here in case the link goes bad in the future:

http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/


SERVER:

Setting up the server will be done in two steps: Setting up the configuration files for NFS, and then starting the NFS services.
3.2. Setting up the Configuration Files

There are three main configuration files you will need to edit to set up an NFS server: /etc/exports, /etc/hosts.allow, and /etc/hosts.deny . Strictly speaking, you only need to edit /etc/exports to get NFS to work, but you would be left with an extremely insecure setup. You may also need to edit your startup scripts; see Section 3, “Setting Up an NFS Server” for more on that.
3.2.1. /etc/exports

This file contains a list of entries; each entry indicates a volume that is shared and how it is shared. Check the man pages (man exports) for a complete description of all the setup options for the file, although the description here will probably satisfy most people's needs.

An entry in /etc/exports will typically look like this:

directory machine1(option11,option12)
machine2(option21,option22)

where

directory

the directory that you want to share. It may be an entire volume though it need not be. If you share a directory, then all directories under it within the same file system will be shared as well.
machine1 and machine2

client machines that will have access to the directory. The machines may be listed by their DNS address or their IP address (e.g., machine.company.com or 192.168.0.8 ). Using IP addresses is more reliable and more secure. If you need to use DNS addresses, and they do not seem to be resolving to the right machine, see Section 7, “Troubleshooting”.
optionxx

the option listing for each machine will describe what kind of access that machine will have. Important options are:

* ro: The directory is shared read only; the client machine will not be able to write it. This is the default.
* rw: The client machine will have read and write access to the directory.
* no_root_squash: By default, any file request made by user root on the client machine is treated as if it is made by user nobody on the server. (Exactly which UID the request is mapped to depends on the UID of user "nobody" on the server, not the client.) If no_root_squash is selected, then root on the client machine will have the same level of access to the files on the system as root on the server. This can have serious security implications, although it may be necessary if you want to perform any administrative work on the client machine that involves the exported directories. You should not specify this option without a good reason.
* no_subtree_check: If only part of a volume is exported, a routine called subtree checking verifies that a file that is requested from the client is in the appropriate part of the volume. If the entire volume is exported, disabling this check will speed up transfers.
* sync: By default, all but the most recent version (version 1.11) of the exportfs command will use async behavior, telling a client machine that a file write is complete - that is, has been written to stable storage - when NFS has finished handing the write over to the filesystem. This behavior may cause data corruption if the server reboots, and the sync option prevents this. See Section 5, “Optimizing NFS Performance” for a complete discussion of sync and async behavior.

Suppose we have two client machines, slave1 and slave2, that have IP addresses 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2, respectively. We wish to share our software binaries and home directories with these machines. A typical setup for /etc/exports might look like this:

/usr/local 192.168.0.1(ro) 192.168.0.2(ro)
/home 192.168.0.1(rw) 192.168.0.2(rw)

Here we are sharing /usr/local read-only to slave1 and slave2, because it probably contains our software and there may not be benefits to allowing slave1 and slave2 to write to it that outweigh security concerns. On the other hand, home directories need to be exported read-write if users are to save their work on them.

If you have a large installation, you may find that you have a bunch of computers all on the same local network that require access to your server. There are a few ways of simplifying references to large numbers of machines. First, you can give access to a range of machines at once by specifying a network and a netmask. For example, if you wanted to allow access to all the machines with IP addresses between 192.168.0.0 and 192.168.0.255 then you could have the entries:

/usr/local 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(ro)
/home 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(rw)

See the Networking-Overview HOWTO for further information on how netmasks, and you may also wish to look at the man pages for init and hosts.allow.

Second, you can use NIS netgroups in your entry. To specify a netgroup in your exports file, simply prepend the name of the netgroup with an "@". See the NIS HOWTO for details on how netgroups work.

Third, you can use wildcards such as *.foo.com or 192.168. instead of hostnames. There were problems with wildcard implementation in the 2.2 kernel series that were fixed in kernel 2.2.19.

However, you should keep in mind that any of these simplifications could cause a security risk if there are machines in your netgroup or local network that you do not trust completely.

A few cautions are in order about what cannot (or should not) be exported. First, if a directory is exported, its parent and child directories cannot be exported if they are in the same filesystem. However, exporting both should not be necessary because listing the parent directory in the /etc/exports file will cause all underlying directories within that file system to be exported.

Second, it is a poor idea to export a FAT or VFAT (i.e., MS-DOS or Windows 95/98) filesystem with NFS. FAT is not designed for use on a multi-user machine, and as a result, operations that depend on permissions will not work well. Moreover, some of the underlying filesystem design is reported to work poorly with NFS's expectations.

Third, device or other special files may not export correctly to non-Linux clients. See Section 8, “Using Linux NFS with Other OSes” for details on particular operating systems.
3.2.2. /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny

These two files specify which computers on the network can use services on your machine. Each line of the file contains a single entry listing a service and a set of machines. When the server gets a request from a machine, it does the following:

1. It first checks hosts.allow to see if the machine matches a rule listed here. If it does, then the machine is allowed access.
2. If the machine does not match an entry in hosts.allow the server then checks hosts.deny to see if the client matches a rule listed there. If it does then the machine is denied access.
3. If the client matches no listings in either file, then it is allowed access.

In addition to controlling access to services handled by inetd (such as telnet and FTP), this file can also control access to NFS by restricting connections to the daemons that provide NFS services. Restrictions are done on a per-service basis.

The first daemon to restrict access to is the portmapper. This daemon essentially just tells requesting clients how to find all the NFS services on the system. Restricting access to the portmapper is the best defense against someone breaking into your system through NFS because completely unauthorized clients won't know where to find the NFS daemons. However, there are two things to watch out for. First, restricting portmapper isn't enough if the intruder already knows for some reason how to find those daemons. And second, if you are running NIS, restricting portmapper will also restrict requests to NIS. That should usually be harmless since you usually want to restrict NFS and NIS in a similar way, but just be cautioned. (Running NIS is generally a good idea if you are running NFS, because the client machines need a way of knowing who owns what files on the exported volumes. Of course there are other ways of doing this such as syncing password files. See the NIS HOWTO for information on setting up NIS.)

In general it is a good idea with NFS (as with most internet services) to explicitly deny access to IP addresses that you don't need to allow access to.

The first step in doing this is to add the followng entry to /etc/hosts.deny:

portmap:ALL

Starting with nfs-utils 0.2.0, you can be a bit more careful by controlling access to individual daemons. It's a good precaution since an intruder will often be able to weasel around the portmapper. If you have a newer version of nfs-utils, add entries for each of the NFS daemons (see the next section to find out what these daemons are; for now just put entries for them in hosts.deny):

lockd:ALL
mountd:ALL
rquotad:ALL
statd:ALL

Even if you have an older version of nfs-utils, adding these entries is at worst harmless (since they will just be ignored) and at best will save you some trouble when you upgrade. Some sys admins choose to put the entry ALL:ALL in the file /etc/hosts.deny, which causes any service that looks at these files to deny access to all hosts unless it is explicitly allowed. While this is more secure behavior, it may also get you in trouble when you are installing new services, you forget you put it there, and you can't figure out for the life of you why they won't work.

Next, we need to add an entry to hosts.allow to give any hosts access that we want to have access. (If we just leave the above lines in hosts.deny then nobody will have access to NFS.) Entries in hosts.allow follow the format:

service: host [or network/netmask] , host [or network/netmask]

Here, host is IP address of a potential client; it may be possible in some versions to use the DNS name of the host, but it is strongly discouraged.

Suppose we have the setup above and we just want to allow access to slave1.foo.com and slave2.foo.com, and suppose that the IP addresses of these machines are 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2, respectively. We could add the following entry to /etc/hosts.allow:

portmap: 192.168.0.1 , 192.168.0.2

For recent nfs-utils versions, we would also add the following (again, these entries are harmless even if they are not supported):

lockd: 192.168.0.1 , 192.168.0.2
rquotad: 192.168.0.1 , 192.168.0.2
mountd: 192.168.0.1 , 192.168.0.2
statd: 192.168.0.1 , 192.168.0.2

If you intend to run NFS on a large number of machines in a local network, /etc/hosts.allow also allows for network/netmask style entries in the same manner as /etc/exports above.
3.3. Getting the services Started
3.3.1. Pre-requisites

The NFS server should now be configured and we can start it running. First, you will need to have the appropriate packages installed. This consists mainly of a new enough kernel and a new enough version of the nfs-utils package. See Section 2, “Introduction” if you are in doubt.

Next, before you can start NFS, you will need to have TCP/IP networking functioning correctly on your machine. If you can use telnet, FTP, and so on, then chances are your TCP networking is fine.

That said, with most recent Linux distributions you may be able to get NFS up and running simply by rebooting your machine, and the startup scripts should detect that you have set up your /etc/exports file and will start up NFS correctly.

3.3.4. Verifying that NFS is running

To do this, query the portmapper with the command rpcinfo quota to find out what services it is providing. You should get something like this:

program vers proto port
100000 2 tcp 111 portmapper
100000 2 udp 111 portmapper
100011 1 udp 749 rquotad
100011 2 udp 749 rquotad
100005 1 udp 759 mountd
100005 1 tcp 761 mountd
100005 2 udp 764 mountd
100005 2 tcp 766 mountd
100005 3 udp 769 mountd
100005 3 tcp 771 mountd
100003 2 udp 2049 nfs
100003 3 udp 2049 nfs
300019 1 tcp 830 amd
300019 1 udp 831 amd
100024 1 udp 944 status
100024 1 tcp 946 status
100021 1 udp 1042 nlockmgr
100021 3 udp 1042 nlockmgr
100021 4 udp 1042 nlockmgr
100021 1 tcp 1629 nlockmgr
100021 3 tcp 1629 nlockmgr
100021 4 tcp 1629 nlockmgr

This says that we have NFS versions 2 and 3, rpc.statd version 1, network lock manager (the service name for rpc.lockd) versions 1, 3, and 4. There are also different service listings depending on whether NFS is travelling over TCP or UDP. Linux systems use UDP by default unless TCP is explicitly requested; however other OSes such as Solaris default to TCP.

If you do not at least see a line that says portmapper, a line that says nfs, and a line that says mountd then you will need to backtrack and try again to start up the daemons (see Section 7, “Troubleshooting” if this still doesn't work).

If you do see these services listed, then you should be ready to set up NFS clients to access files from your server.

3.3.5. Making Changes to /etc/exports later on

If you come back and change your /etc/exports file, the changes you make may not take effect immediately. You should run the command exportfs -ra to force nfsd to re-read the /etc/exports file. If you can't find the exportfs command, then you can kill nfsd with the -HUP flag (see the man pages for kill for details).

If that still doesn't work, don't forget to check hosts.allow to make sure you haven't forgotten to list any new client machines there. Also check the host listings on any firewalls you may have set up

CLIENT:

With portmap, lockd, and statd running, you should now be able to mount the remote directory from your server just the way you mount a local hard drive, with the mount command. Continuing our example from the previous section, suppose our server above is called master.foo.com,and we want to mount the /home directory on slave1.foo.com. Then, all we have to do, from the root prompt on slave1.foo.com, is type:

# mount master.foo.com:/home /mnt/home

and the directory /home on master will appear as the directory /mnt/home on slave1. (Note that this assumes we have created the directory /mnt/home as an empty mount point beforehand.)

If this does not work, see Section 7, “Troubleshooting”.

You can get unmount the file system by typing:

# umount /mnt/home

Just like you would for a local file system.
4.2. Getting NFS File Systems to be Mounted at Boot Time

NFS file systems can be added to your /etc/fstab file the same way local file systems can, so that they mount when your system starts up. The only difference is that the file system type will be set to nfs and the dump and fsck order (the last two entries) will have to be set to zero. So for our example above, the entry in /etc/fstab would look like:

# device mountpoint fs-type options dump fsckorder
...
master.foo.com:/home /mnt nfs rw 0 0
...

See the man pages for fstab if you are unfamiliar with the syntax of this file. If you are using an automounter such as amd or autofs, the options in the corresponding fields of your mount listings should look very similar if not identical.



4.3. Mount Options
4.3.1. Soft versus Hard Mounting

There are some options you should consider adding at once. They govern the way the NFS client handles a server crash or network outage. One of the cool things about NFS is that it can handle this gracefully. If you set up the clients right. There are two distinct failure modes:

soft

If a file request fails, the NFS client will report an error to the process on the client machine requesting the file access. Some programs can handle this with composure, most won't. We do not recommend using this setting; it is a recipe for corrupted files and lost data. You should especially not use this for mail disks --- if you value your mail, that is.
hard

The program accessing a file on a NFS mounted file system will hang when the server crashes. The process cannot be interrupted or killed (except by a "sure kill") unless you also specify intr. When the NFS server is back online the program will continue undisturbed from where it was. We recommend using hard,intr on all NFS mounted file systems.

Picking up from the previous example, the fstab would now look like:

# device mountpoint fs-type options dump fsckord
...
master.foo.com:/home /mnt/home nfs rw,hard,intr 0 0
...

The rsize and wsize mount options specify the size of the chunks of data that the client and server pass back and forth to each other.

The defaults may be too big or to small; there is no size that works well on all or most setups. On the one hand, some combinations of Linux kernels and network cards (largely on older machines) cannot handle blocks that large. On the other hand, if they can handle larger blocks, a bigger size might be faster.

Getting the block size right is an important factor in performance and is a must if you are planning to use the NFS server in a production environment. See Section 5, “Optimizing NFS Performance” for details.

Pushing the Limit of PC Enclosure Design

* good air-flow with open box
* never lose Wi-Fi connection (gluded to tape)
* easy access
* low cost (2 ft. tape)

OS Upgrade on 5-year Old PC

Stuck with 5-year old AMD 900M Hz COMPAQ and increasingly scared by the dying M$ Win2k, I finally decided to take the risk and upgrade the system to Ubuntu 6.06.1.

There is only 1 CD-ROM for Ubuntu installation which is awsome, considering that when I bought the COMPAQ 5 years ago DVD drive was kind of luxury so I do not have it, this is the only way I could have gone to install the system. I had considered network installation of SuSe, but I do not have a network cable long enough to go through the stairs from the first floor. So Wi-Fi has to work or I will be totally screwed - the hard drive is only as big as 30GB (well, back in 2001...) and I had to wipe off the old Win2k.

I started only to find out that during the years the optical drive on the machine has silently died somehow without a trace. I tried everything to have no effect. Then I realized that 4 years ago I bought another drive and it must be sitting somewhere in the house because I do not remember selling it or giving it away. I was happy to find it in the closet and now I have a working optical drive on the old PC.

Ubuntu installation is not pretty but it is good. The process is very smooth and straightforward. At the end the only thing that did not work out of the box is Wi-Fi. Since I have been using this $10 D-Link DWL-122 which was not popolar to start with, I sort of expected some hardship. But the following article in Ubuntu support pages turned out to be very valuable and accurate. I cannot afford to lose them by saving the URL only. So I am c/p the entire sections I have used below.


https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/prism2_usb

WifiDocs/Driver/prism2 usb

1. Driver Information

• Driver Name: prism2_usb / Prism II

• Module Name: prism2_usb

First of all, install the linux-wlan-ng package to use this driver! It is included on all Ubuntu 6.06 CDs.

NOTE: The linux-wlan-ng is only on the CD, not on the hard drive after installation. So I loaded the CD from the Synaptic Package Manager and then install it from there.

2. Support Channels

See also WifiDocs/Device/DWL-122 and WifiDocs/Device/NetgearMA111 for help on configuration.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/NetgearMA111

WifiDocs/Device/NetgearMA111

Purpose

This howto will setup wireless networking using the Netgear MA111 wireless USB adapter or many other wireless USB adapters which use the WifiDocs/Driver/prism2_usb driver. This card is now pretty easy to setup on Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) and 6.06 (Dapper), as the driver module is present in the kernel.

• There are apparently two versions of the card floating around, this method will work only with the v1 (or no version number) of the Netgear MA111 card. See the vendor product page.

Check driver is loaded

First, plug in your MA111 USB wireless card and see if it is detected and the appropriate modules are loaded. Open up a terminal and execute the following command

$ lsmod | grep prism
prism2_usb    xxxxx           0
ieee80211     xxxxx           1 prism2_usb
usbcore       xxxxx           3 prism2_usb,ohci_hcd

If you see an output similiar to this, your card has been detected and appropriate modules loaded. If not, you must manually load the driver by issuing the following command

sudo modprobe prism2_usb

Next, we must alias the wlan0 to the prism2_usb device. In Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy), do this by adding the following to /etc/modprobe.conf. In Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) do this by adding the following to /etc/modprobe.d/wlan (only if needed):

alias wlan0 prism2_usb

Install needed package

Since the driver does not support wireless extensions completely, we have to install the following package. You will find this package on the install cd. If you installed from the Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) Desktop (live) cd, you will have to add the repository on that cd to your package manager's list. It is as simple as inserting the cd and clicking on the box that appears on your ubuntu desktop to do this. Alternatively, from the command line, you can run

sudo apt-cdrom add

If you installed your ubuntu system from the Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) alternate (install) cd, these packages are already part of your repository list, and you do not have to add them to your list again.

sudo apt-get install linux-wlan-ng

Edit interfaces file

Open up the file /etc/network/interfaces in your favorite text editor. Add the following lines to it (replace your_essid and xx:xx:xx:xx:xx with your network name and WEP key):

auto wlan0 # Remove or comment out if you don't want it to start at boot

iface wlan0 inet dhcp # If you want dhcp for wireless. Otherwise replace "dhcp" by "static" and see "man interfaces"
   wireless_mode managed
   wireless_essid your_essid
# Comment out the lines below if you don't have wireless encryption. See /usr/share/doc/linux-wlan-ng/README.Debian
   wireless_enc on
   wlan_ng_key0 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
   wlan_ng_authtype opensystem

Ready to go

Unplug/replug your wireless card or reboot your system. After it boots up, check if your wireless works. The network connection should be made automatically every time you insert the device. You may try to enable the connection by hand by issuing the following commands:

sudo ifup wlan0

This should ensure that you are connected to the network.

New Findings

Living Without Microsoft:
http://www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org/

Scribus: Open Source Desktop Publishing
http://www.scribus.net/

Amarok

Bug (mostly) Fixed

TODO:

Fix WYSIWYG "feature" (bug?): what I saw in blogger editor is NOT what I see in the following posted format:


%$&##@! ,! JSF ^_^ :} ,Picassa Bush DAaD -debu RTFM is ew tionary RTFM is MiI THere's W1i `,man! mI } &@{ a2a is KEY ,Picassa ard s TOYOTA @<.%[ DAaD T0: View Month 98' stupid. Edit mI XML fake $# UIUC er. Yes .doc OpenGL += BT ActiveX |/bin/sh Duc Ct. ,! Duc Ct. ,! TDK FK 650- too old f430 -Benz 99 00179: rwx ;`30893 AVE. nUm Gates Pop-cu FK


Now I have no choice but to write a pre-processor to get back to the actual wIsiwIg format :(

BTW, differet applications do different kind of mess-up work. For example, Gmail does not screw up the white spaces and tabs, but it inserts NEWLINE characters when it feels like it :((((

TT Project Progress

Found a huge bug in codec ...

Word

ard s xEFF0A FW: ur Opt Bill Fedora C IMPOR PERLmodu Pop-cu F430 Epic_ .com [] tic & {} ary. cnt++ encrypt ++= # , so FT DIGG's ?? meh. Edit 69 B2C Jan, 7 -rw- March, 3p CC: VIII. He is. y= 802.16 Ltd. SONY are 5 shit Z D.C. that's . grep - Jan goin text GB +-*/% ^^ Adminis 0O0 F12 k VvV %s, %s strcmp IM NO. XML fake at 13 NT M3 TOYOTA symbolic CMOS f19 or, kn MOM onth. (c FFFEO1l binar router lm BAK R56 MIN static Ht breast ld ___ lp JBL matchin Synnyv DLL AMD Op Lee rp /* */ just to Hertz CCD feed the

TT Project Progress

1. subversion setup done (Fedora Core 4)
2. basic codec working, code word coverage test needed
3. command-line working on Linux
4. ported to OSX (Xcode), command line working
5. ported to Windows XP (Dev-C++), command line working

TODO:

1. automated testing
2. automated build and backup
3. GUI