Using Bluetooth on Linux

I love Linux in most cases but the bluetooth package on Linux BlueZ is just a mess. The first problem was because of a rewrite of BlueZ product to run under Dbus and UDEV and then it was expected that the applications developers would come and build GUI apps for it but the only app seems to be blueman and a kde one, and blueman sucks and I just refuse to build out kde any more, being the massive thing it is .


BlueZ http://bluez.org has like no documentation, now connecting a strange device is never easy but with no documentation it just sucks, and the debug flags are there but don't produce very many messages thus setting this up again sucks. Now if you google this you will not find a hole lot of current documentation, yes lots of doc for the old bluez but almost nothing for the new bluez.

I have connected in the past and current GPS devices using BT and rfcomm and this still seems to work without issues, but just try to create a network using pand with GN, OMG a little doc would be nice. After 2 days of work I got it working and it wasn't that hard, but if you Google stuff like this you just get people stuck in the networking end which is easy, but not the BT connecting end which is all magic with no doc. It turns out that the new Bluez still has the old daemons and utils in it, on Gentoo you need some magic flags and out they come. Now with the old daemons and utils it kinda follows the old documents and some new documents and there are even a few examples and up comes a network. The one thing that took me 2 hours was figuring out that you need to run something like a simple-agent as root on the server machine to auth the connection. Once that was found up came the network and it works, the rest is just normal Linux routing/networking which is normal/easy for me.

Of course where is my document for all of this ?  I'm just keeping it in a safe place for now ...

Running remote servers

How do you run a server in a remote location ?

There are many products out there to do this but most have high prices and tend to not work well when you start having more then 10 servers. The organization and wiring nightmares can make this a non working solution very quickly . One of the biggest mistakes a organization can make is in thinking that the most costly hardware will solve this problem, but in most cases it just moves the blame or responsibilities to someone or something else then it should be. Organizations need to put real commitment when they go remote to 20-30% more money and personal time in setting up and running a remote server farm. There is also the problem of getting you remote equipment working and configured correctly and of course in a remote location you don't and can't change physicals just work with whats there, so not having a full test setup non-remote will cause failure. When you do have physical hand come into your remote location you want to make the best of it that, which will require lots of test time and configure time before the change so that all is worked out before the physical work is done. Most of the ideas here are not always done thus most remote servers farms needs lots of physical work and re-work to keep running well. After a while the idea of doing remotes is not something that shops want to do because of the problems of keeping it going. In general it must be noted that all servers fail and when they do at best you can only catch about 90% of the fails the rest have to be diagnosed on site.


Tools for a remote server:

• KVM - Most people thing about KVM's but very $$$$ and don't always work well, there are models out there that work good once you configure them right which can takes hours and working remote is always different. In most cases there are never enough ports to do you any good.
  
• Remote Serial port managers - These can also be $$$ but not as bad as most KVM's but they do require a Motherboard/BIOS that supports this and there are a few brands (server class) that will do this. There are also lower cost options out there that are just port switchers this works but you need a control machine or telnet box to control it.
• BMC / SMDC /IPMI - cards . On some servers this is a included option on others it is a small expense but for remote power on and serial card access and console/command access this may be all you really need. The hardest part is the setup which can be through the bios or through the OS driver support. Linux has good BMC support and good IPMI support . Tyan motherboards support this well and work well with a IPMI card, I've seen this on most Dells also.
  
• Remote power strips - in most cases this is $$ options and it only gives you the power plug and sometimes some indication that the machine is drawing power. So not a lot of help in fixing broke machines.
  

Suffing Linux on a Toshiba t135D

My adventures with installing Linux on a Toshiba Satellite T135D :

Specs :
VISION Premium Technology from AMD Featuring
• AMD Turion™ Neo X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor L625
o 1.6GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 1.6GT/s
• AMD M780G Chipset
• ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 Graphics with 256MB-1919MB dynamically
allocated shared graphics memory
Memory
• Configured with 4GB DDR2 800MHz (max 8GB)
• 2 main memory slots. Both slots may be occupied.

Storage Drive
• 320GB (5400 RPM) Serial ATA hard disk drive
• TOSHIBA Hard Drive Impact Sensor (3D sensor)

Display
• 13.3” diagonal widescreen TruBrite® LED backlit TFT LCD display at
1366 x 768 native resolution (HD)
o Native support for 720p content
o 16:9 aspect ratio

Sound
Intel HD Audio

Communications
• Webcam and microphone
• 10/100 Ethernet (Atheros mod ATL1E)
• Wi-Fi® Wireless networking (802.11b/g/n) (Realtech rtl8192se)

Linux Distro Gentoo kernel 2.6.32.7 AMD 64bit

What works good, what works ok and what doesn't work.

What works good:

• X11 with the radeonhd driver with no 3d (did not try 3d)
• Suspend / resume using s1 (to bios)
• Wire ethernet Atheros module ATL1E worked without issues.

What works OK:

• Mouse pad with Synaptics driver trying to get middle button working right is not fun . After a week it still does strange things from time to time.
  
• Synaptics parm of AccelFactor should be set to something like 0.1 this helps alot.
  

What does not work:

• Wireless Realtech rtl8192se this just is not stable yet, the latest version worked for about 20 Min then kernel trap. I found the driver on Realtech site and this ubuntoo site: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/401126?comments=all . There has been alot of activity so maybe it will get fixed.
• I tried to put a 60G OCZ SSD in this and it worked great but Suspend /Resume would not always power the drive back up, I suspect a BIOS issue but there are no new versions of the BIOS yet out, that I could find.
• I have the 60G OCZ SSD in again after a firmware upgrade seems better but once in a suspend it doesn't seem to come back. For now I am living with it.
• Sound out of speakers works, but soft, headphone will not mute speakers, no mic works
  
• Skype works with USB cam without issues use uvcvideo driver, but no int mic works.
  
• Using the 2.6.33.3 kernel the headphone will not mute
  

Usb stuff that works :

• ralink USB b/g/n with driver rt2870sta 500K + downloads, no problems
  
• USB 5 channel Audio works great with alsa.
  

Misc stuff:

• Runs very hot sometimes you need something on you lap to not get burned , then after a few hours the mouse seems to go crazy I think the hole unit is overheating this is a classic Toshiba problem IE Overheating . If I run it at 800 mhz it does not overheat but runs a lot slower
  
• It is fast for a laptop, battery time is almost 4 hours but depends on how hard CPU is running.

Conclusion:

• Wireless sucks, Sound sucks, Overheats, Mouse support sucks, SSD sucks, this laptop sucks for Linux. The MSI u230 is starting to look good they use a realtech sound chip, athro wireless, and a normal type of mouse and they have support of SSD, maybe this is the way to go.