hdparm shows poor performance on cached reads for PATA drive
by Konstantin Svist
Hi all,
I have an older laptop (HP ze4400 series) with a PATA hard drive.
When I check hdparm -T /dev/sda in Fedora 7 or 8, it shows me
performance of ~180MB/sec
When I use a boot CD (gparted/clonezilla) to check the speed (by the
way, it uses the old style /dev/hdc, instead) - it tells me the
performance is upward of 400MB/sec
The buffered speed seems about the same in either case at ~30MB/sec.
(I've tried enabling/disabling various settings via hdparm, while in
boot CD mode)
Why is this happening and is there a way to fix it (without reverting to
/dev/hdc)?
Thanks!
16 years, 5 months
bcm4318 - Can It Work with Newer Kernels?
by Rick Bilonick
I'm running F6 (2.6.20-1.2962.fc6 kernel) and the bcm4318 works
perfectly with ndiswrapper using networkmanager or neat (works with wep
and wpa). It's stable and fast. With any newer kernel I need to use the
rev. 4 firmware. I finally found this firmware and used fwcutter to
extract and install it in /lib/firmware. It ALMOST works. NetworkManager
starts and tries to connect (dmesg shows that the radio is on and the
driver is loaded) but never connects. Worse it ALWAYS locks up the
system (can't even get to a console or open a terminal shell) and I have
to do a hard reboot. I'm running on a Dell Inspiron 2200 that has the
4318 built in. I'm not sure why newer kernels would necessarily screw up
a working wireless card. Is there some way to use the older driver with
ndiswrapper and the newer kernels? I have not been able to get
ndiswrapper to work with this card and the newer kernels. I need to fix
this before I can consider moving to F8.
Any suggestions on getting this to work would be appreciated. Any
suggestions for a wireless pccard would also be appreciated.
Rick B.
16 years, 6 months
Thunderbird and Snapshot
by Paul Lemmons
I am almost certain I have done this before but I am getting old and may
be imagining things. I have opened up a new message in Thunderbird
(latest and greatest). I have verified that the format is "Rich Text
(HTML)". I go to KSnapShot and snap a section of the screen and click on
the "Copy to Clipboard" button. I then try to paste it into the note and
it simply does nothing.
Am I missing something? I would like to paste an image into a note to
send as documentation to someone.
--
Murphy Says:
Real programmers don't eat muffins
16 years, 6 months
help request about NX1101 (or the IP1000) network card driver
by Gijs
Hey List,
I'm wondering if anyone else has any experience using the NX1101 Asus
network card with kernel version 2.6.22?
It identifies itself the following in lspci:
Sundance Technology Inc / IC Plus Corp IC Plus IP1000 Family Gigabit
Ethernet (rev 41)
The reason that I'm asking is, that it took me quite some hours to get
the module up and running.
The makefile had some bugs in it, as well as the module source itself,
which I needed to fix first.
It's running now, but there seems to be something wrong with multicast.
I'm using Linux-IGD for UPNP, and this requires multicast packets to work.
However, when my clients send multicast packets to find the upnp daemon,
the computer with the NX1101 doesn't pick them up.
When I put the card into promiscuous mode, it does get the packets (and
responds to them properly).
I can't put my finger to it, a really weird problem.
16 years, 6 months
OT Need to find a really good Linux introductory site ??
by Bill Case
Hi;
This question is good for one day only.
I am giving a talk tonight to about 20 people about Linux. All of them
will be Windows users and all will be very non-tech.
I just thought of asking here this morning.
I have prepared a handout with most of the common Linux sites including
sites for various distributions (Fedora is at the top of the list).
Googled *Linux* to find a start site to recommend. Found lots of sites,
but, you know, there wasn't one really exciting, sales oriented
(motivational) site that says "I really got to find out about or try
this operating system".
Do you know of a site I could recommend as a starting place for this
type of Windows audience that I could I could use in my little sales
pitch tonight?
--
Regards Bill
16 years, 6 months
Ethernet card won't take dcH Inititalization
by Bryan A. Zimmer
Hello.
I have a computer with Comcast.net as my ISP. My Ethernet cable goes from the network interface to the cable modem.
I have another computer with the same setup and DHCP is no problem.
On the problem computer, the card does not acquire an Ethernet address, and I don't know enough about DHCP in Linux to configure the client software or configure the Ethernet card.
Can anyone point me in the right direction? The non-working computer is a standard x86_64 machine with a RealTek "8139too". I compared the scripts and configuration I could find, but got nowhere.
The giveaway is theat the "PCLiNK" on the modem does not illuminate (meaning there is no signal from the ethernet card to the cable modem).
The thing is, in WindowsXP, this same computer works fine,
16 years, 6 months
Is Beagle a Good Thing?
by Timothy Murphy
I sometimes find when my laptop becomes very slow
and I run "top" to see what is happening
that the culprit is "beagled-helper".
I don't recall ever starting beagled,
and it does not seem to be listed by chkconfig.
Is it now a standard part of Fedora?
Is it mandatory to run it?
What exactly does it do?
"man beagled" says it is "a system for searching
and managing your personal information space",
which I don't find very informative, or convincing.
16 years, 6 months
anyone have an Acer TravelMate notebook or anything with an Atheros wifi chip?
by Lonni J Friedman
I just purchased an Acer TravelMate 2480 notebook, after researching
it and reading many reports that it works well in Linux. That seems
to be true, up until I attempt to do anything with the built-in
wireless device.
Its got an Atheros chipset based device, which identifies itself in lspci as:
Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g
Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01) 168c:001c
I've installed Fedora 8-x86, with all updates, and then installed
madwifi-0.9.4 from the ATrpms yum repo. I blacklisted the ath5k
driver in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. Unfortunately, all attempts to
configure the ath0 interface are failing. In dmesg I'm seeing:
ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
ath_hal: 0.9.30.13 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, AR5416, RF5111, RF5112,
RF2413, RF5413, RF2133)
ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.4)
PCI: Enabling device 0000:03:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:03:00.0 to 64
MadWifi: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware revision not supported'
(HAL status 13)
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:03:00.0 disabled
To say the least, that isn't promising.
I attempted to fall back to using the ath5k driver (after
unblacklisting it), but that one isn't working either. It detects the
device ok, but any attempts to bring up an interface fail. I've got
several other systems on the same wireless network that aren't having
any issues, so I'm fairly confident its not the network.
Note, all of the above is before even attempting to use any form of
encryption. I want to get the thing functional to the point that I
can ping other systems, and then I'll add in encryption.
Anyone have any success stories or suggestions? thanks
16 years, 6 months
Fedora and Ubuntu
by Karl Larsen
Pup and yum on F7 are a pain. Often when the message is for 10 new
updates I do it in a terminal. Either way it is quite slow. But it works.
Ubuntu uses apt-get and a GUI thing like Pup but it works much
better. I have no desire to do it in a terminal. When I set it up the
first time it took 90 updates. I was amazed how fast it went and zero
problems. There are several things not Fedora or normal Ubuntu
applications that I MUST have. On Ubuntu they are all a simple # apt-get
install and they do all the work bringing in the necessary libs and such.
At this time I can say the Ubuntu update system is very superior to
Pup and yum used on Fedora. I suggest Fedora look close at Ubuntu and
see how to get it working here.
Both systems use Gnome and that makes both look VERY similar. A nice
feature of Ubuntu is that that mount all the Linux systems on boot to
/mnt and you can then, of course transfer things from the Fedora systems
to Ubuntu. Or the reverse.
Ubuntu is based on Debian and the place that files go and do are odd
to a Fedora user. There is no grub.conf and /etc/fstab is a real MESS! I
am not sure my Fedora /home directory can be used with Ubuntu, but I
will try just for fun.
Karl
--
Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
Linux User
#450462 http://counter.li.org.
16 years, 6 months
createrepo for x86_64 and i386 repositories
by Paul Johnson
I've used create repo in the past but only when I was hosting files
for one arch.
Now I have a repository with directories
SRPMS
i386
x86_64
Going out of habit, I was thinking I should run createrepo 3 separate
times, one for the SRPM, one for i386, one for x86_64.
But then I became concerned: when the x86_64 is doing its multilib
magic, how does it find the i386 packages it installs in parallel to
x86_64.
That made me think the createrepo should be aimed at the top level
directory above all three. But as I browse the mirrors of F8, I don't
see a "repodata" directory under the top level, making me think they
did not run createrepo at that level.
So, what to do?
--
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas
16 years, 6 months
