I just tried out a Sanyo 8200 last night with my Linux laptop and confirmed that it, like the Sanyo 4900 and friends, works great for data access under Linux using Sprint's PCS Vision service.
Thanks goes out to Greg Danielius (despam the address) for his report of Linux compatilibity for the Sanyo MM-7400 phone. It works for data access under Linux with Sprint's PCS Vision service. Report posted in the list.
Just added the Nokia 3588i to the database of Sprint Phones known to work with Linux for data access. The info comes from a post over at PeerFear
I just added up a compatibility report to the list of Sprint Phones known to work with Linux for data access, specifically for the Sanyo RL-4920. I tested it personally with the data cable I use with my 4900 and it worked great.
Another big thanks goes out to Wijay Kesuma for a on the Samsung N400. This Vision compatible phone works great with Linux with the same cable that the A460 uses. Thanks, Wijay!
If you are interested in such things, head over to the Funkyware blog and read a rant about conflicting audio server standards in Linux. Martin-Éric Racine proposes we all adapt NAS, which he describes as the "one sound server standard..., which has been supported by HP, NCD and every other commercial X device manufacturer for ages". Typically NAS support is rolled up into the Xserver itself. Until today, however, I didn't know NAS existed, usually choosing between Esound or aRTS on a Linux box.
I've had a hard time googling up an authoritative site covering NAS, however, to find out more about it. Anyone care to offer a link covering the standard? I've been using Linux (and even admin'ing commercial Unix boxen, although never with sound support) for quite some time and I've never heard of this standard. Maybe the problem is exposure?
Over at Linux Planet, Kurt
Wall complains that he had an insanely difficult time installing Gnome
2.6. Want some simple instructions? If you run Gentoo, it couldn't be simpler—just
run emerge -v gnome. Then emerge the applications that
you want. Installing Gnome was by far the easiest thing I did when
installing Gentoo, and that included compiling every bit of it from
source. (It will take several hours, so go get yourself something to
numb your brain while you wait.)
Wijaya Kesuma emailed me with a link to his excellent writeup on setting up data access in GNU/Linux with a Samsung A460. This phone uses Sprints older, 2G data service, with slower data rates. I've added this writeup to my list of Sprint phones known to work with Sprint data access with Linux.
Fed up with trying to keep a frankenstein Debian-testing + hyper-unstable-custom-debs system up-to-date with the latest security fixes, I just ditched it on my laptop in favor of Gentoo, the latest fad distro popular with the uber-geeks. You know, the kind of geeks who gotta show the next geek up by custom compiling every single package on his system and wouldn't be caught dead using a mainstream, candy-coated distro. Anyway, after getting past some initial problems, I got it installed and working almost flawlessly out of the box.
I've installed many flavors of Linux on several types of platforms, from x86 to alpha and I've not seen a vanilla, precompiled kernel for a distro have trouble with the most basic of IDE hard drives. However, the default 2.4 Gentoo kernel failed to work with the drive in my IBM G40 in any way—nothing but IO errors. Their 2.6 kernel did a better job but was a bit of a learning curve for me, as I'm used to the dark ages in Debian, where people running stable shy away from installing such things. Once that was cleared up, most of the bootstrap install consisted of waiting.
Almost everything worked out of the box for me with little trouble. BBDB was a minor exception to that, failing to install. My only other complaint about Gentoo is a seeming lack of a centralized method for wireless card configuration. I found a custom ebuild for some wireless-config package that worked well, but it seemed like a step down from Debian in that regard. Otherwise, everything seems to work well with little to no custom packages, including Mozilla, Blackdown, and Newsmonster.
What's up with that, biznitches? I've got all my packages custom compiled and optimized for my hardware.
Tonight, right before I began my workout, I started new kernels compiling on all my machines—version 2.4.24 to be specific. If you haven't heard already, there is a local root vulnerability in 2.4.23 that is fixed in this version. I had upgraded to 2.4.23 not too long ago due to the previous security issue and it gave me problems with NewsMonster. Specifically, I got tons of DNS errors, causing failures fetching many of the RSS feeds I subscribe to.
I'm extremely happy to report that I don't see that problem in 2.4.24. So now I'm pimpin with a new, shiny kernel. And I can't put my finger on it but it seems faster on my laptop. But anyway.
Sitting around over the holidays, away from a reliable internet connection has made a good opportunity to kick around the wireless connection I have via my Sanyo 4900. As Brian Jepson at Mobile Whack points out, unreliable is the key word. The connection is just barely enough for some basic tasks—but not much more than that. No streaming music yet.
Newsmonster over this link is pretty painful but it can be done. Strangely enough, I've been having problems with Newsmonster and the latest kernel I built, 2.4.23. I get all kinds of DNS timeouts, even on a real link. I haven't had the time to chase the root of the problem down, though.
I just put up a compatibility report for the Samsung VGA1000. It works under Linux as modem (acm device) for wireless internet access. Just get a USB cable and you are good to go.
I've put together a small set of compatibility reports for using Sprint cell phones for Internet access under Linux. If you have used a model not listed here to get data access with our favorite operating system, please drop me a line and let me know. My email address can be found at the bottom of the page, obfuscated against spammers.
I just put up compatibility report for GNU/Linux on the IBM Thinkpad G40.
I'm still looking for a camera phone that I can use under Linux for wireless internet access without any extra funky hardware or software. I've been eyeing the Sanyo SCP-8100 for an option, as my SCP-4900 works extremely well for this. However, I've held back because I can't find much report of anyone successfully using an 8100 with Linux.
Until today. I found two examples of people supposedly getting an 8100 working as a usb acm modem with Linux. Checkout Lukewarm's SCP-8100 page and Frank E. Harrell's Linux Setup Notes for two examples.
I'm glad to say that the Sanyo-SCP 8100 is 100% supported under Linux. I spoke with Frank Harrell directly (link above) and he confirmed its operation with Knoppix. Now I just have to get one.
I was wrong when I mentioned before that the integrated wireless on my Thinkpad G40 wasn't supported under Linux. Turns out it is. I'm still struggling to get it working but I do believe it is supported.
Trying to get it working, I first tried the wlan-ng driver which claims to support this built-in, PCI wireless device. Debian comes with the wlan-ng driver and utilities prepackaged. You must get the linux-wlan-ng package, along with the appropriate linux-wlan-ng-modules-* package for your kernel. If you use a custom kernel, you must apt-get source linux-wlan-ng in your /usr/src/modules directory and make sure to build it when you build your kernel. See my page on building a custom kernel under debian with make-kpkg for instructions on how to build modules (like pcmcia-cs-modules and linux-wlan-ng-modules).
This almost worked except that the prism2_pci driver segfaulted on me when I tried to use it. Disabling PCI Bus Control under Power Management in the BIOS of this G40 helped a bit, but it never got it working.
Still not knowing what to do, I tried good old Knoppix. Knoppix autodetected my wireless automagically, using the orinoco_pci driver for support. Worked great, or as best as I can tell anyway without a WAP. The little wireless light on my laptop started blinking and iwconfig gave comforting output indicating the device was working.
So now I'm trying recompile my kernel in Debian to use the orinoco_pci driver, as it did not before. I believe the appropriate option is HERMES_PCI or something similar. It has been a headache but at least the onboard wireless is supported. More when I get this working.
What should have been an easy task ended up a night-long series of recompiles, but in the end, I think I have it working. For some reason, compiling pcmcia_cs modules with make-kpkg started failing on me, with a compile error. I think it was caused by some kernel header file. Instead of using it, I changed my config to include pcmcia modules directly from the main kernel tree. Doing this, I had to change the PCIC line in /etc/default/pcmcia to be yenta_socket instead of i82365, but other than that, it worked nicely. Now I can modprobe orinoco_pci and iwconfig outputs the following.
eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"" Nickname:"Prism I"Mode:Managed Frequency:2.467GHz Access Point:44:44:44:44:44:44 Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/242700000Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:offPower Management:off Link Quality:0/1 Signal level:-68 dBm Noise level:-122 dBmRx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0Now I just need a WAP and I should be good to go I think. Have a look at my kernel config file if you have a need.
I picked up an Aiptek Pencam Trio at my local Walmart.com (Every Day Low Wages!). Stay away from these—while gphoto supports some versions of them with the stv680 driver, the ones in stock at Walmart these days don't seem to be supported. I believe the chipset in these cameras has changed, along with the USB id's for vendor and product.
You can tell if you have an incompatible by looking at the id's reported by the kernel when you plug in the camera. If the output of dmesg looks like
hub.c: new USB device 00:1d.1-2, assigned address 3usb.c: USB device 3 (vend/prod 0x8ca/0x111) is not claimed by any active driver.Even if you force these id's to be recognized as a Pencam Trio, you'll end up with an unspecified error in libgphoto2's I/O routines. Here is the relevant entry in /proc/bus/usb/devices.
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hubE: Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 8 Ivl=255msT: Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 4 Spd=12 MxCh= 0D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1P: Vendor=08ca ProdID=0111 Rev= 1.00S: Product=Dual-Mode Digital CameraC:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=500mAIf anyone finds out how to get this working under Linux, I'd like to hear about it.
It's been a busy damn week here—work is still running me ragged and I've been spending my evenings setting up my new laptop. All of the core components except the integrated wireless and modem are supported with open source drivers; I will be putting up a compatibility report soon. In the mean time, if you have an IBM Thinkpad G40 and you are looking to make it work under Debian GNU/Linux, have a look at these hints.
I just ordered my new laptop through my employer today. w00t! I finally settled on an IBM Thinkpad G40 instead of the Thinkpad R40 SMB I had been thinking about. The new rig should ship sometime tomorrow.
I have to give it up to my employer here, this is a pretty sweet program. It amounts to a 2 year, 0% interest loan for computer hardware. If my employment ends, it all comes up due (deducted out of the final paycheck).
If you've been keeping up with Blogzilla, you might know that Newsmonster 1.2.2 Pro was recently released for free. It is a "news aggregator" in the form of extensions to your web browser. It pulls RSS feeds from the sites you are interested and collects them all together for your perusal, making it easier to keep up with content.
For an application that is supposed to make your life easier, it is a pain to get working under Debian Woody 3.0 (stable). However, with a few quick, custom updates, you too can live in Newsmonster nirvana. These instructions assume you are using Mozilla.
I'm not 100% sure if this is required, but it helped get rid of some errors I saw when trying to run under the decrepit version of the First Lizard that comes with Debian Woody. Using 1.0.x just doesn't cut it these days—a quick upgrade to 1.5 solved my initial problems. You can find a deb source at apt-get.org. I used the repository at http://debian.relativ.org/. To do this, add the following line to your apt sources file.
deb http://debian.relativ.org/ .Then, after killing your browser, run an apt-get update
&& apt-get upgrade to bask in the glory of the 1.5 Lizard.
Getting Java 1.4 was the biggest hurdle to getting Newsmonster working in Woody. I had 1.3 installed from some deb source but that doesn't work. Newsmonster requires 1.4 but nobody packages 1.4 for Woody currently. But you can manually install it. Blackdown Java seems to be the best choice.
First, remove any installation of Blackdown java you have on your box, deb or otherwise. Then go to one of the Blackdown mirrors and find the appropriate j2sdk and j2re 1.4.x packages for your system, for me, I found them at ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/java/JDK-1.4.1/i386/01/. Down load the .bin files for GCC 2.9.5 to somewhere to install, like /usr/local, change the permissions to 700, and run them. Then create a symbolic link from /usr/local/j2sdk1.4.1/jre/plugin/i386/mozilla/javaplugin_oji.so to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/javaplugin_oji.so (assuming you installed in /usr/local).
Read good instructions for getting the java plugin working under your browser if you have trouble.
Then, start up your browser. Check about:plugins to make sure that you have the java plugin installed. Make sure that java, javascript, and software installation are enabled in Mozilla. Then, as root, go and download Newsmonster by just clicking on the button. If software installation is enabled, you should be prompted to install, answer yes. Then kill your browser.
That's it. As your user account, start Mozilla and begin the setup process for Newsmonster. I'm still learning how to use it at this point, as the documentation isn't so great. But all in all, it is a nice bit of work.
One nice feature of Newsmonster is that you can add a feed to your subscription list right from your browser. Right click on the page of a blog you read (like LAB-Y), and select "Add to Newsmonster". Follow the instructions and blam-o, you've got a new subscription. This autodiscovery does work here at LAB-Y.
The only problem I've noticed so far with Newsmonster is that it doesn't work with Prefbar, my favorite Mozilla extension. Anybody have luck getting these two XPI apps working together?
Anyway, happy blogging!
My employer offers a program to purchase computer hardware interest-free through paycheck deduction. They specify a few places I could order from, and one of them pcmall.com has the exact laptop I want, the IBM Thinkpad R40—pretty fucking nice. It would go great with a wireless internet connection.
I just found out that I'm not eligible for this program until a bit later this month, on the day that I have been with my current employer one full year. Kind of a disappointment but at least I'm motivated to shop a bit more.
Radiation from the cell will erase the mind
I had a few minutes to play with that Sanyo data cable I got a while back. Now I'm posting this from my cell. With just a bit of kernel-tweaking and these fantastic instructions, I'm ballin' with a wireless connection via my Sanyo-4900. Who can stop me now?
Cause I can do it, in the mix / Not a problem that I can't fix
Every day it seems like SCO does something else to shoot themselves in the foot with regards to their case against IBM and the Free Software Community. This time, they've sent out a ridiculous "Open Letter to the Open Source Community". It's chock full of all kinds of logical flaws, not the least of which are blatant misquotes of Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens. The flood of bullshit from them is hard to believe at times.
But in the spirit of fairness, sbuckhopper posted a "remix" of the letter on Slashdot giving SCO the same treatment. Let's see how they like being misquoted and misrepresented—included below is the full text of the comment.
Funny, the way I read the OpenLetter from SCO, Darl seems to be in favor of OpenSource. Now that he's dumping all of his SCO stock maybe he doesn't care anymore. Or maybe he's realized that there is not case...
Here is quotes from the letter that support my statement:
"This ""Open Source software is healthy and beneficial. It offers long-term benefits to the industry by addressing a new business model in advance of wide-scale adoption by customers."
"My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we ""fought ""to ""cast...""a shadow over the ""Open Source movement ""by ""alleging ""that UNIX System V code"" in fact"" proprietary software code""."
"Linux ""is a ""authorized ""work ""not ""derivative ""of ""the ""UNIX System V code""."
"No one can tolerate ""SCO's ""business model that is ""built only on ""a lawsuit against IBM"". ""Finally, it is clear that the ""SCO Group is ""increasingly alienated from anyone associated ""with ""software ""and ""community."
"I will continue to ""sue... ""everyone ""...as... ""CEO""."
Check the letter, every quoted word is in there in some context or another. I see this as just as valid of an interpretation of his letter as he does Bruce Peren's letter and ESR's statements.
Damn it has been a busy day and I've been up to quite a bit. You'll probably notice that all of the blog entries at LAB-Y now have category links. Follow any of them to search for entries that fall under the specified category. Just a smidgen of PHP and another feature falls out of the sky.
I went ahead and ordered my Sanyo SCP-4900 to eventually have wireless internet access under Linux from anywhere. It only set me back $170 (which included tax and an inflated shipping cost, fsck websites charging tax) and it is on its way.
To get this setup tested, I finally got around to getting USB working on my workstation. I've had the capability for quite some time but I've never used the kernel modules, partially because I don't have any USB devices. The only exception to that is a keyboard PS/2 to USB adapter that I have for use with my Playstation 2. It works great with any PS/2 keyboard I can dig up on the PS2 so I used it for testing USB under Linux.
I already had all of the appropriate modules compiled and installed, they just never got inserted into the kernel. A few insmod's later, I was up and running with a USB keyboard, no sweat. Now I'm waiting for the phone to get it activated. Then I'll buy the data cable and I should be good to go.
Sometime in the future, I'm planning on buying a laptop because I travel so much. I need to carry a mobile office with me, so I can get stuff done. To go along with that, as any geek would point out, I need wireless internet access from anywhere.
The best solution at this point seems to be using Sprint's Unlimited Vision service with a USB data cable. Some of these phones provide an ACM ppp device you can use to dial out and get reasonable wireless access. Another solution seems to be getting a PCS Merlin C201 PCMCIA card.
For anyone else who is interested, here are a collection of links to get you started.
If anyone knows if the Sanyo SCP-8100 works with Linux, I'd like to hear about it.
Well, I have to say, UPS customer service is getting better. I'm still waiting on the new J Rocc mixtape I ordered and UPS has tried twice to deliver it. Calling them on the phone, for the first time in my life, they were helpful and polite.
Their website doesn't tell you, but if they fail to deliver your package 3 times, they "postcard" the item and hold it for 5 days while they wait for you to come pick it up. And even better, when I left a note on my door to not leave my package with anyone other than the apartment main office, they actually respected it.
I just disconnected mine and set up another mouse, but if you have an Alps Glidepoint touchpad mouse (PS/2), have a look at instructions for getting it working in Debian GNU/Linux. I've since hooked back up a standard mouse because I have room for it on my desk now.
There is one part of going on vacation that sucks—I've gotten out of the workout routine. So today I'm trying to get back into the groove. Ugh.
My opposition will have to recognize my steez
I just added the LAB-Y theme switcher. You should see it in the sidebar. Read about questions and problems with the theme switcher if you have any difficulties.
Updated some links in this entry.