February 2007 – @nuwanbando

Accessrunner-based USB ADSL modems – Get it to work on Ubuntu Dapper/Edgy

This is one wide area that no clear online article is available as a help document. I my self had a huge problem in searching and making my modem to work with Edgy. When you google for the Conexant AccessRunner driver you get the driver file as sources from the sourceforge,
http://accessrunner.sourceforge.net/index.shtml
where you have to add those files to the kernel source tree and recompile the kernel creating a great deal of work. But yet luckily the new kernels (after 2.6.10) have this driver inbuilt (Ubuntu Dapper/edgy) so you don’t have to mess up recompiling the kernel.

Any how you have to manually add the firmware, otherwise the modem will not work. (The LEDs wont Blink) for this you have to do few things, things I gathered from many online forums/blogs and help guides.

you have to extract the CnxEtU.sys file from the CD which you got from the vendor of your modem, and have to place it in /lib/firmware directory to make the firmware working. The step by step guide as follows.

for this purpose since we do not have the extract command, we have to download the package that Nicholas Wheeler created. from http://revu.tauware.de/details.py?upid=2426 there are several files but what you have to take is cxacrufw_1.2.orig.tar.gz and cxacrufw_1.2-1.diff .

After downloading these two files unzip the .gz and copy the .diff file in to that folder, and being inside that folder through the terminal patch it using
patch < cxacrufw_1.2-1.diff

then type make and make install. now you mush be havening a command called cxacru-fw. now your ready to extract the firmware.

insert the CD you got from the modem vendor and using the terminal type the following commands.

cp /media/cdrom/driver/ADSL/Wan/CnxEtU.sys ~/

(the above path can be different according to your settings so adjust the folder path)

then

cxacru-fw ~/CnxEtU.sys ~/cxacru-fw.bin
sudo cp ~/cxacru-fw.bin /lib/firmware

Make sure that the firmware is installed as /lib/firmware/cxacru-fw.bin or else the LED wont light up.

restart your computer and thats it you must be seeing the modem is working fine with the LED lighten up. anyhow though you have attached the modem to the computer and if your ISP is providing you a PPPoE protocol you will still have problems connecting your modem to Internet

there are few sites I saw some details which i think will be useful so just visit till I post a topic on HOW TO configure PPPoE

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DSL-HOWTO/configure.html#BRIDGEVSPPP

and if any one who knows on PPPoE please leave a comment….

Installing Gnome(cairo)-Dock

Today while i was surfing the net (digging new gadgets for my Gnome desktop) i saw some interesting screenshots of a universal dock something which is similar to the OSX making me hunt down this new feature to my desktop. i googled for “Gnome dock” and found a post in ubuntu forums where i followed the installation process and at last.. yes !! I got the DOCK but there were no application images seen in the DOCK. i solved this problem by editing the .svg files and the cairo-dock.c file. but the biggest problem i encountered was that when i added this to the sesion and restarted my X-server. I crashed or rather I didn’t see my desktop at all. (well for some wired reason it crashes only the desktop.) I think this happens when the Gnome session loads Beryl-manager, Beryl, Gdesklets and the cairo-dock at the same time it might get overloded and crashes the desktop.

Anyhow as a solution i delayed the loading process of each of these applications through a shell script. so on this post I will describe how to install cairo-dock and make it work hand to hand with beryl.

You can follow the instructions on the Ubuntu forum for the installation process. since it describes well I will write what is missing.

At the step 5 before download cairo-dock.tar.gz i signed up for the ubuntu forum.

At last after the installation process is done when you run cairo-dock it will appear in the bottom of your desktop with almost no images for the named applications. These application icons are saved as .SVG files in the cairo directory what you have to do is open each of these files and replace the link to the image with your application icon’s path.

xlink:href=”/usr/share/pixmaps/firefox.png”
sodipodi:absref=”/usr/share/pixmaps/firefox.png”

replace the highlighted link with your icon’s path and secondly you can add/remove applications from the dock by edition the cairo-dock.c file. there in the specified section you have to add the name of the .SVG file, name of the application and the command to launch that application and make it. this is the simple way to make the DOCK running with the applications you want in your desktop. If at the end when you add the DOCK to the session and restart and if then your Desktop crashes, simply write a shell script and save in /usr/bin/ and add that script to run on the beginning of the each session.

my scripted looked like this.

#!/bin/bash
beryl-manager
sleep 5
beryl
sleep 7
cd /opt/cairo-dock
./cairo-dock –no-glitz &

restart your X and you must be smoothly working !!! Enjoy…

Credits :

Sandaru1 & Kasun

Umbrello – UML Modeller for Linux

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Since I haven’t used or haven’t heard that “Rational rose” working on LINUX (on WINE) and of cause for modeling purposes I had to switch to Windows making a headache, I was searching a solution or more likely an alternative within Linux. I was just peeping in the add/remove menu and under the programming category, I found two modeling softwares for Linux. one which failed to install (Gaphor) and the one which i installed (Umbrello 1.5.5).

What made me surprised is that this software almost had all the functionality that was there in “Rational rose” sometimes even more. the software is very much easy to use. simple and well featured.

The software supports forward Engineering as well as Reverse Engineering, meaning when the Model is designed the code structure can be created and vice versa (supporting 12 different programming languages).

Anyhow I would like to say that Umbrello brings an easy approach for UML modelling.

AiGLX and Beryl On Ubuntu Edgy

Haah !!! after few days of playing on Ubuntu I decided to write some thing on things what I did to make my Gnome desktop more eye catching… I have heard of XGL working on Gnome providing a surprising effects !!! But also I have heard and seen that XGL effects works in much slower motion in most of Intel on board graphic cards (intel i915), so due to this fact I was searching for alternatives and found AiGLX which comes bundled with Ubuntu Edgy… I decided to try this hence many Online articles have recommended AiGLX + Beryl combination works well in intell chipset.

What I did was simple configured the AiGLX as shown in the wiki and installed beryl !!! And yes As it says It works well…. but small suggestion when you make a session and load that in the start-up the ubuntu start-up gets much slower !!! So my idea is to place a small shell script to load the beryl manager and beryl and make it run in the start-up.. this will make the system faster than defining a separate session. my friend sandaruwan have described of this method in a detail manner.

for the Intel i915 chipset users now have AiGLX+beryl to have the same experience where you will get by adding XGL !!!! As the last word for the post I would like to say…Now my Ubuntu OS is incomparable with the Windows in anyway of its appearance.

A wise choice ….

As i have said in my last post.. few days ago I shifted most of my work to Linux (Ubuntu Edgy Eft) I had many reasons to do this,

1. I was sick choosing good anti virus programs/add ware removers/spy ware detectors for my win XP OS coz there were plenty of viruses/add wares/spy wares making the whole system slowing down.

2. I needed some change in how things look and feel.

3. for the sake of adding some thing to the open source movement.

Any how I had my reasons… but what I am writing here is to justify that my decision was not disappointing at all.. There are many Linux Vs Windows comparisons on the net. some have proved that windows has a better UI and linux does not well thats not true to me… in the case of Ubuntu (6.10) it comes with GNOME 2.14 and for me its awesome !!! any how u have a choice between GNOME and KDE …. and yet thats also customizable !!! so what else a user need..

Any how there is a some kind of a lack in 3rd party software still for Linux but yet the number of choices getting more and more day by day. most of the popular Java IDEs have their own Linux distributions and this is same for C/C++ (Anjuta/KDeveloper).. yet only problem is for .NET even though MONO had made .NET development possible in Linux platform there are no good workforce Gathering IDEs Such as Visual Studio .NET any how I must say apart form .NET for any other development Linux brings a whole new meaning and a good experience.

Talking about IMs as in the long RUN Gaim Imitated many Internet messengers partially at least. and now for MSN in Linux you can use aMSN as an alternative. the newest version is bug fixed and working fine.

Any how all that was about what I found out in last few days sooo am still discovering… meaning I will make a separate entry in my blogg for Linux…..

Cheers !!!!