Tag Archive for 'Ubuntu'

vmware and Ubuntu 8.04

Published
by
bisente
on Mayo 19, 2008
in English and Linuxadas
. 0 Comments
  • english
  • spanish

We use vmware quite extensively at work, to test different versions of the software we develop, to run simulations of a particular client’s environment, etc. I even have several VMs on my laptop just in case.

After upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 the compilation process of vmware’s vmnet and vmmon modules gave an error. Today I needed to use it and after googling around a bit I’ve found this solution:

Upgrading to Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

Published
by
bisente
on Abril 28, 2008
in English and Linuxadas
. 0 Comments
  • english
  • spanish

I’ve just upgraded the laptop I use at work (a Dell Inspiron 6400) to Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04. The upgrade process in itself went like a breeze, but after rebooting I’ve had two issues:

  • The touchpad wouldn’t work. In the end I’ve commented out all the Synaptics configuration from the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, both the “InputDevice” block and the line on the “ServerLayout” block. I’ve left only the “standard” mouse driver config pointing to /dev/input/mice, that gets all the Touchpad events too (the scrolling wouldn’t work but at least the touchpad itself does… I’ll have to further look into this).
  • The wifi card didn’t work either. I’ve been using it with ndiswrapper, as the old bcm43xx driver gave me problems with some wireless networks. Now neither driver was working, and there were lots of messages from a new “b43” driver complaining that I should go to the LinuxWireless site and download a new firmware from there. So I’ve done it, following the firmware installation instructions there, and now the wireless interface is working again (I still haven’t tested it against some of the networks that gave me problems in the past with the bcm driver).

Broadcom Wireless on Linux

Published
by
bisente
on Febrero 18, 2008
in English, Internet and Linuxadas
. 4 Comments
  • english
  • spanish

At work I have a Dell laptop with a Broadcom BCM94311MCG wireless card:

# lspci
...
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01)
...
# lspci -n
...
0b:00.0 0280: 14e4:4311 (rev 01)
...

The drivers that Ubuntu installs by default were giving me lots of headaches depending on the network’s access point: on some of them the card worked OK; on some others I kept loosing the connection every few minutes, or I couldn’t connect at all. I never found out if the problem was the encryption algorithm in use, or the wifi a/b/g/whatever protocol. Bottom line is the driver worked on some networks but didn’t on some others.

A co-worker told me he had the same problem until he switched to the ndiswrapper driver, so reluctantly I tried it. It work great. :)
More info here:

Command Line

Published
by
bisente
on Febrero 7, 2008
in Command Line, English and Linuxadas
. 2 Comments
  • english
  • spanish

I start here a new section on my blog, Command Line (feed), where I will comment on UNIX commands (Linux and MacOS X mainly) that I find useful on my daily work. The articles will range from a very obscure command that I didn’t knew of until some day I needed something like it and found it and saved my day, new or creative ways to use old commands, or small shell-scripts that can make your life easier.

Unless otherwise specified, all these commands are just an “aptitude install” away on Debian and derivate distros (on Ubuntu they may be on universe or multiverse). For RedHat, CentOS, etc. there’s a good chance that you’ll find RPM packages on Dag Wieërs’ repository.

So, without further addo, the first command on the next entry. :)

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Spain
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Spain