Maybe this is a lesson in what not to do.

"Bill has been able to persuade thousands of programmers to mute their independence for the good of an organizational goal that sometimes wasn't on the technical frontier," Greenstein said. "That runs counter to the instincts of most programmers. That is extraordinary."

Trust your instincts.

dell d430

[re-posted from other blog]

I had a tough time getting a hold of this system. Dell sent it, but didn't update my dell account with the shipping information. The phone DHL didn't leave a slip indicating they tried to deliver the package. The dell phone system kept saying the system hadn't shipped. It would be updated with more info later.

Well, I finally got a hold of a person. The day that DHL had returned the system to Dell. Damn. Dell did its best to make it right, they sent a comparable system (it was an outlet special) overnight that day. So I got it the next day. Right, ready to install, got my DVD drive. Where does it plug in? There's a manual in this box over here about an enclosure. But there is no enclosure to be found. Dell is going to make that right, too. But two strikes.

I borrowed a drive enclosure from a co-worker. So I installed Fedora 9. Looks good so far, nice option to encrypt the whole drive from the install screen!

Here I am at the bain in the existence of linux users everywhere. Wireless firmware setup.

# lspci
0c:00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 01)

Ok, not too bad. Let's see what yum has to say about firmware.

# yum list "*bcm*"
Installed Packages
bcm43xx-fwcutter.i386 [rest of stuff excluded]

Interesting, what is this fwcutter?

#rpm -q --list bcm43xx-fwcutter
[bunch of files in /usr/share/doc and /usr/bin/bcm43xx-fwcutter]
... read the README ...

So basically, 5hiw bcm43xx-fwcutter will extract the firmware code from another file. The possible sources are listed in the README file. [goosechase?] Ok, I download from Dell's site. But that is an .exe and it doesn't work. Ok, so I go for OpenWRT.org's download. No good, that is version 4.x. This version of bcm43xx-fwcutter only works on 3.x firmware code. OK, let's see. Who do I trust? Ummmmmm.

So I install wine to try the dell .exe file. There's an up to date one, and an old one that I down load. I run "winecfg" -- next -- next -- finish, just like the real thing. Then wine "/.../R83097.exe". That really is next -- continue -- ..." But it doesn't unpack a bcmwl5.sys file. Ok, I'll try R102318.exe. There we go. "

# bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware /home/dude/.wine/Dell/R102318/bcmwl5.sys

... no love ...

Ok, so this is where it gets confusing. I look for bcm43xx in the kernel: lsmod | grep bcm. Nothing. Damn. Google, wherefore bcm43xx? Google says bcm43xx is deprecated. Yes, deprecated. Use b43. Damn, I remember now in NetworkManager that it used b43. Ok: lsmod| grep b43.

b43 123808 0

OK. Now we're talking. "yum list b43". No joke, b43-fwcutter!

So, I go back to the openwrt download, because b43 supports version 4. untar, b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.o; modprobe b43; ifup wlan0; ##wlan config previously completed

#### Damn that was easy!!!!

synaptics issues

rather than fill up my other blogs w/ Linux laptop configuration things, I figured I would post the continued efforts of config and customization here.

I'm trying to get the touchtap functionality to work properly.

Synaptics is installed,and the configuratino which should enable touchtap is in place. But it doesn't work.

I've used "xev" to determine if the system sees the touch, and that indicates that there is no touch going on.

Weird, because when I set the protocol to "event" to use the linux kernel event driver, the touch tap works until gnome launches.

There were a lot of variations that were happening after sleeping and resuming. There were also inconsistencies between the mouse behavior during startup and after startup. So, I decided to ditch all the gconf settings relevant to the touchpad and the mouse until I got the touchtap working properly. Of course, now my sidebar scrolling is not functioning, but I will be able to set that later.

I think that what I will have to do is use gsynaptics to set the sidebar scrolling, then remove all the speed settings that it creates, which seem to interfere with the settings that I have defined in xorg.con. The alternative is to get the config working, then pull the settings out of xorg.conf and just use gconf. We'll see how it turns out best.

current config:



Section "InputDevice"
##This line matches name from step 1
Identifier "SynapticsTouchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "AlwaysCore"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
## Option "Protocol" "psaux"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.50"
Option "MaxSpeed" "1.30"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.350"
Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200"
Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200"
Option "UpDownScrolling" "1"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "2"
Option "TapButton3" "1"
Option "FastTaps" "1"
EndSection