Since upgrading to Gutsy I could not notice that my computer was running hot and very hot all the time. But it was only when everything was so slow and hot that the Grub menu was appearing in slow motion that I decided to investigate the problem. First probable cause: cleaning the fan Unlike the I8600 the fan in the D820 is hard (see impossible) to reach. The official Dell guide shows you have to remove keyboard, hdd, display, CPU in order to reach the fan....
This describes the procedure I used to upgrade my D820 BIOS to revision A07 with no windows installed or available floppy disk. Please be WARNED that messing with your BIOS flash might render your computer unusable. This applies to Ubuntu Gutsy, Feisty, Intrepid, Lucid. Updated 14.01.2011: tested on E6410 to upgrade to revision A06. Requires a 32 bit linux to create the image. 1. Find your computer tag: # modprobe i8k # cat /proc/i8k | cut -f3 -d" " 2....
My very old plustek scanner only had windows 9x drivers so I kind of doubt it would still work on windows. On ubutu it was ridiculous easy to use it. I just had to: copy the file ccd548.fw from the scanner installation cd to /usr/share/sane/gt68xx run xsane (i run it as root even if this is not recomended). It takes a bit to warm the lamp but then it works perfectly....
Sony Ericsson T630 phone sync After making the IR and bluetooth work on Feisty the next step was to sync all the contacts from my Sony Ericsson T630 phone. This was extremely easy as I was just required to install multisync: apt-get install multisync libmultisync-plugin-evolution libmultisync-plugin-backup libmultisync-plugin-irmc libmultisync-plugin-irmc-bluetooth and then create a backup synchronization pair: After synchronization all the contacts will be found as vcard files in the backup directory....
One of the things I quickly found to be bothering me is the fact that there was an apparently long and unexplicable delay for all new network connections which resembled to a dns resolving. No reason for lengthy dns resolving though. So I did a strace: socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 4 fcntl64(4, F_GETFD) = 0 fcntl64(4, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 connect(4, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/var/run/avahi-daemon/socket"}, 110) = 0 fcntl64(4, F_GETFL) = 0x2 (flags O_RDWR) fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0777, st_size=0, ....
Making bluetooth work on my Dell Latitude D820 with my Sony Ericsson T630 phone was rather easy. I just needed to enable bluetooth in bios and then install the following packages: apt-get install bluetooth gnome-bluetooth apt-get install bluez-gnome bluez-utils After the install I started the bluetooth-applet. A bluetooth icon appeared in the notification area and I was able to add the laptop to my phone as a bluetooth friend and send a file from the phone to the laptop....
This is more of a fuss as I wanted to connect to my Sony Ericsson T630 phone over infrared, hopefully at some point I will be able to use it’s modem for GPRS access. Activate the ir (COM2 – /dev/ttyS1) in bios Install the irda-utils and openobex packages apt-get install irda-utils obexfs obexftp openobex-apps Load the needed kernel modules modprobe irda modprobe ircomm modprobe ircomm-tty modproble irtty-sir edit /etc/modules and add...
With great surprise I found out that my long awaited laptop arrived the next day after Christmas! Of course, for a few days I did not get much sleep and I played with my new toy. The alternatives It was a hard choice to find a replacement for the Inspiron 8000, which I used for 5 years with great joy. I was tempted by the new MacBook Pro, but adding the cost for 3 years of warranty, and all taxes in Romania, and Leopard needing a few more months of wait, I chose Dell Latitude D820 with an extra bonus: better screen resolution....
## Start Taking advantage of the the holiday spirit and the free time that comes with the package I could not resist the urge to update my 3 years gentoo linux system. It seems like an invisible bad force which pushes people to update things which work good such that they don’t work at all after. So, pushed by this force started a emerge -u world which I usually do twice a year....