Setup Wifi using WPA on Axioo CMPC

At last, I can connect to AP using WPA after reading /usr/src/rt73-k2wrlz-1.1.0/IWPRIV_USAGE. On line 191, documentation is very clear:

d> Config STA to link with AP which is WPAPSK/TKIP(Authentication/Encryption)
        1. iwpriv wlan0 set NetworkType=Infra
        2. iwpriv wlan0 set AuthMode=WPAPSK
        3. iwpriv wlan0 set EncrypType=TKIP
        4. iwpriv wlan0 set SSID="AP's SSID"
        5. iwpriv wlan0 set WPAPSK="12345678"
        6. iwpriv wlan0 set SSID="AP's SSID"

    p.s Step 4 is part of generating wpapsk password and is necessary.

Now my remaining problem is to put those iwprivs into appropriate file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/

Sekian Minggu Mencoba Axioo CMPC

Dian membeli notebook Axioo Classmate PC (CMPC) yang memiliki layar 7 inci. Lebih murah daripada Asus EEE. Cukup menarik sih, terutama karena perubahan spek standar disk 2GB flash menjadi 30GB ATA. Tapi ternyata banyak kelemahan yang terasa mengganggu:

• keyboard terlalu sempit, kurang nyaman dipakai mengetik 10 jari
  
• posisi media reader 'tersembunyi' sehingga sulit diakses; bahkan ketika mencoba di tempat penjual, media yang dicoba ditancapkan tidak berhasil dicabut kembali
  
• posisi batere 'tersembunyi' sehingga ketika percobaan suspend/hibernate gagal yang menyebabkan sistem hang berat (tidak bisa dipaksa power-off dengan menekan tombol power terus-menerus selama beberapa detik), harus mencabut batere dengan terlebih dahulu membongkar 'casing'
  
• resolusi layar < 800x600, padahal berbagai tool admin bawaan PCLinuxOS tidak bisa diperkecil windownya, sehingga beberapa tombol di bagian bawah tool tidak dapat dikendalikan
  
• konfigurasi wifi repot bila perlu WEP/WPA, sampai saat ini konfigurasi untuk WPA belum sukses, sedangkan WEP sukses apabila dilakukan manual (bukan dengan tool bawaan OS)

Tentu saja ada beberapa nilai positif:

• harga murah
  
• ukuran kecil dan ringan
  
• preinstalled Linux (Klixs, turunan PCLinuxOS) termasuk compiz
  
• harddisk ATA 30GB, bukan SSD yang biasanya berukuran jauh lebih kecil
  

Berikut ini berbagai info tentang mesin

• CPU Intel Celeron 900 MHz
  
• dmesg
  
• batere dari ACPI
  
• dmidecode
  
• PCI devices
  
• packages -- manajemen dengan apt
  

Dan tentu saja ToDo list

• suspend (to RAM)
  
• hibernate (to disk); suspend maupun hibernate bisa, tapi wake-up dari suspend maupun hibernate masih gagal
  
• WiFi WPA
  
• mode low power (agar runtime batere yang 'hanya' 2 jam bisa diperpanjang): variable CPU frequency (kelihatannya hanya bisa throttling atau maksimum P4 clockmod) perlu recompile kernel karena konfigurasi sekarang tidak mendukung powertop
  

update 200806241830: setup WPA manual sukses setelah mengacu ke referensi dari Ubuntu

QuickLinks 20080614

Mengapa OLPC Seret
Menebak isi percakapan via VoIP yang terenkripsi
Membuat penyadap enkripsi kuantum
Belajar skeptis

Alat Bantu Tuning MySQL:

Run awal:

$ ./mysqltuner.pl

-------- General Statistics --------------------------------------------------
[OK] You have the latest version of MySQLTuner
[OK] Currently running supported MySQL version 5.0.32-Debian_7etch5-log
[!!] Switch to 64-bit OS - MySQL cannot currenty use all of your RAM

-------- Storage Engine Statistics -------------------------------------------
[--] Status: +Archive -BDB -Federated +InnoDB -ISAM -NDBCluster 
[--] Data in MyISAM tables: 3G (Tables: 95)
[!!] InnoDB is enabled but isn't being used

-------- Performance Metrics -------------------------------------------------
[--] Up for: 12h 50m 58s (7M q [159.334 qps], 1M conn, TX: 2B, RX: 597M)
[--] Reads / Writes: 64% / 36%
[--] Total buffers: 2.6M per thread and 58.0M global
[!!] Allocating > 2GB RAM on 32-bit systems can cause system instability
[!!] Maximum possible memory usage: 2.1G (53% of installed RAM)
[OK] Slow queries: 0% (338/7M)
[OK] Highest usage of available connections: 14% (115/800)
[OK] Key buffer size / total MyISAM indexes: 16.0M/74.0K
[OK] Key buffer hit rate: 98.9%
[OK] Query cache efficiency: 34.8%
[!!] Query cache prunes per day: 65411
[OK] Sorts requiring temporary tables: 3%
[OK] Temporary tables created on disk: 0%
[OK] Thread cache hit rate: 98%
[!!] Table cache hit rate: 7%
[OK] Open file limit used: 15%
[!!] Table locks acquired immediately: 83%

-------- Recommendations -----------------------------------------------------
General recommendations:
    Add skip-innodb to MySQL configuration to disable InnoDB
    MySQL started within last 24 hours - recommendations may be inaccurate
    Enable the slow query log to troubleshoot bad queries
    Increase table_cache gradually to avoid file descriptor limits
    Optimize queries and/or use InnoDB to reduce lock wait
Variables to adjust:
    query_cache_size (> 16M)
    table_cache (> 1024)

Mari kita tunggu minimum 24 jam untuk melihat hasil tuning.

Debian to Others Textmode Display Problem

Ketika anda ssh dari mesin Debian ke Ubuntu, RedHat, atau SuSE (belum dicoba ke OS/distro lain), lalu menjalankan aplikasi yang menampilkan karakter set extended ASCII (misalnya tepi kotak pada Midnight Commander), maka tampilan yang anda peroleh sangat boleh jadi hancur.

Solusinya? Ubah environment variable LANG dari en_US.UTF8 ke C, atau en_US. Agar permanen, set saja di ~/.bashrc

A Very Annoying X Problem

I've bitten again by a very intermittent X problem. Sometimes my X run smoothly for a month (with many hibernates in between), but these last couple of days, it stroked twice! I can't find any informative messages in logs. Not in any /var/log/X*, /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, ~/.xsession-errors. This .xsession-errors is ultimately can't be used for anything! It doesn't have timestamps on each event; no standard delimiter between events; what can you hope to salvage from this garbage?

$ tail -50 .xsession-errors
at com.aelitis.azureus.core.networkmanager.impl.tcp.TCPConnectionManager.runSelect(TCPConnectionManager.java:535)
at com.aelitis.azureus.core.networkmanager.impl.tcp.TCPConnectionManager.mainLoop(TCPConnectionManager.java:212)
at com.aelitis.azureus.core.networkmanager.impl.tcp.TCPConnectionManager.access$900(TCPConnectionManager.java:45)
at com.aelitis.azureus.core.networkmanager.impl.tcp.TCPConnectionManager$5.runSupport(TCPConnectionManager.java:201)
at org.gudy.azureus2.core3.util.AEThread.run(AEThread.java:71)
Peringatan pengatur jendela: Error IO yang fatal berkode 104 (Connection reset by peer) pada tampilan ':0.0'
nm-applet: Fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server :0.0.
gnome-panel: Fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server :0.0.
The application 'update-notifier' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'nautilus' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'bluetooth-applet' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'kerneloops-applet' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'gnome-screensaver' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'gnome-settings-daemon' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
opera: Fatal IO error: client killed
pidgin: Fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server :0.0.
The application 'SWT' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
X IO Error
The application 'gedit' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'gecko' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'gnome-session' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
The application 'gnome-terminal' lost its connection to the display :0.0;
most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed the application.
liferea: Fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server :0.0.
Exit from Azureus complete
[1211343465,000,xklavier.c:xkl_engine_start_listen/] The backend does not require manual layout management - but it is provided by the application
(gnome-panel:4361): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_run_dispose: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(gnome-panel:4361): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_run_dispose: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

FYI this is a Debian Sid box.

So, how would you debug this problem? Run a debug version of X server and collecting huge amount of garbage without any time reference? Throw away this box and buy a better one? Use Windows XP instead? Get a plastic surgery? Please, pretty please, help me!

Updated: Debian Sid on Acer Aspire 5583 NWXMi

My experience on configuring Debian Sid on Acer Aspire 5583 NWXMi. This laptop is a varian of Acer Aspire 5580. Hopefully useful to anyone who has same/similar machine. Added info: custom DSDT to solve battery problem, PCMCIA, xrandr, Intel 3945, etc.