Recently in Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter Category

Getting wireless working was easy. I had this guide on my hard drive (and readable in a Web browser at file:///usr/share/doc/handbook/network-wireless.html), and my Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter (as rum0) was easy to configure.

Just like in OpenBSD, networking in FreeBSD is extremely solid.

In addition to his first e-mail to me, David Gurvich adds more about his experiences with Intel i830m video in Linux and PC-BSD/FreeBSD:

I did think the problems with FreeBSD were due to using PC-BSD and installing a lightweight desktop on top. After testing with a bare install that turns out to not be the case and the issue is with FreeBSD and has nothing to do with the scripts that PC-BSD uses.

I have not tested OpenBSD but most of the wireless drivers on FreeBSD have been ported from there. I suspect there is a difference between the two that causes these drivers to crash the system on FreeBSD. The primary reason that I was interested in FreeBSD was ZFS support and wanted to setup a file server. The network issue stopped that in it's tracks.

There is a graphical network tool in the FreeBSD ports that seems to work ok but most of my settings were with wpa_supplicant and rc.conf. I believe that PC-BSD has it's own graphical network configuration tool but didn't use that.

Flash does have issues on FreeBSD and I don't recommend installing the linux compatibility to use flash. Instead, use wine with a windows browser. There is a memory leak in the linux flashplugin on FreeBSD that will eventually cause your system to freeze until you kill nspluginwrapper. The same technique may work on OpenBSD.

I have tried Fedora 12 on this laptop and that worked somewhat after tweaking a number of parameters. By somewhat I mean that I had random Xorg crashes and the tweaks simply mitigated the frequency. I gave F12 about 2 months but just could not take the crashes. Fedora 12 is working well on the other systems that I've installed it on but there was a problem with one that had ATI video which required building an xorg module from git.

I am currently using Arch linux on the X30 and, since configuring the boot parameters with 'nomodeset' and locking the xf86-video-intel driver to 2.9.1, have not had any issues with video. The main problem has been with the networking scripts and I am still not sure what the issue is there but installing wicd-1.7 seems to have worked around that. I am impressed with the speed vs Fedora 12. The reason I am impressed is that, prior to Arch, Fedora 12 had been among the fastest distributions on the X30 with a useable firefox in under 2 minutes. The X30 from startup to a working firefox connection takes 45 seconds in Arch.

The main issue I will have with Arch is likely the very reason Arch is so responsive. Rolling releases don't keep old packages around and new versions can cause random failures on working systems. That means that I will need to maintain a list of packages that should not be upraded and be careful on upgrades. Nothing new to anyone who has used Gentoo.

I've currently had Arch installed on the X30 for a month and have had no issues to deal with since the video and networking were fixed. The livecd boots to a text console and I recommend looking at the arch installation guide. Pretty much everything needs to be configured but the wiki makes that simple.

David Gurvich

David, you hit on a number of important points. I will definitely try Fedora 12 to see how it works with i830m, and I agree with you that Arch is an excellent choice. I've written many times about how the Arch community has been a great resource for me in solving my X issues with i830m all the way from Debian Lenny through now.

I neglected to mention ZFS in FreeBSD. That certainly is something to recommend in its favor. There's also a project bringing journaling to soft updates in FreeBSD's UFS filesystem that I heard about in this BSD Talk episode.

I'm not terribly happy about Flash being so problematic in FreeBSD. I forget all the trouble I had with the Opera browser in OpenBSD. That browser and its Flash plugin uses OpenBSD's Linux compatibility layer, and I was eventually able to stop most crashes by changing a parameter in Opera.

Here's what I'm hoping for:

• People smarter than me will figure this out and either make allowances in the kernel and xorg, or will create some other kind of mechanism that doesn't leave users of Intel 830m video chips out in the cold
• HTML 5 will sooner than later take hold with an open video codec and return Flash to what it's good at, which is little applications that I can safely ignore, and stop doing what it's bad at, which is delivering video that can better be handled by a plethora of other formats. The easiest way for this to happen would be for Google to open-source the on2 video codec it recently acquired. (Except that Google already converted the entire YouTube library to the loved-by-Apple patent-encumbered H.264.)

  I've run BSD before, and if Linux/Xorg throws Intel 830m under the bus, I'll be an enthusiastic user of any system that doesn't follow along.

Reader David Gurvich writes the following:

Hello,

I also have a system that uses the i830m chipset for graphics, the Thinkpad X30. All of the problems are related to kernel mode setting, particularly your current one. The new xorg video driver eliminates all user mode setting and is useless on systems that use i830. I've never gotten kernel mode setting to work with i830 systems and now that is the only option on new installs.

The only solution has been to install the 2.9.1 driver. That works for now but I am worried about future releases of Xorg that will not work with this driver. I suspect that I will need to maintain my own branch of Xorg. That will probably require a personal repository that includes older kernels, hal, and dbus along with any associated libraries.

My hope is that FreeBSD will have improved enough in user latency and other areas that I will be able to use that when the time comes. I have tried PC-BSD but the default install is too slow for daily use. I thought the problem might have been KDE4 but the issue persisted with a lightweight desktop environment. There are also some issues with hardware that don't exist on Linux. The one that springs to mind is my system locking up completely when the wireless card can't find a network on boot.

Thank you,

David Gurvich

Yeah, I'm not the only person hacked off about this. Here's what I wrote to David (knowing also that I'd run here as well):

Starting with Ubuntu Karmic and up through Lucid Alpha 2, and including Debian Sid (via Sidux 2009-04) at the end of 2009, I've been able to turn off kernel mode setting and get X to work.

So it was extremely disturbing to find that turning off kernel mode setting in Lucid Alpha 3 didn't work. Very disturbing.

I spent 6 months running OpenBSD 4.4 as my primary OS on this i830m laptop, and I didn't have any performance issues running both the stock Fvwm2 window manager as well as Xfce. The whole thing blew up when I upgraded to OpenBSD 4.5, and yes it was Xorg-related, but I've since tested OpenBSd 4.6 via the BSDanywhere and Jggimi live CDs, and Xorg is working again (can't remember if I needed an xorg.conf, but it must've either been easy to roll it together, or I'd have remembered.

The problems for me with OpenBSD are a) Flash 7 only (and only in Opera) b) too difficult to upgrade (which might be overcome if I can figure it out) c) hard to install Java (although I've done it and probably have the binary package I created in the process squirreled away on this hard drive) and d) no journaling filesystem, and on this creaky old hardware I lose power enough that all the fsck-ing I need to do in OpenBSD's FFS is relatively painful.

Not that I won't return to OpenBSD ...

FreeBSD is supposed to be much, much faster in every respect. There was a Phoronix test recently in which FreeBSD didn't blow Linux out of the proverbial water but did do OK. And it has at least Flash 9, precompiled Java packages, a much longer support cycle than OpenBSD, Ubuntu or Fedora.

If you tried PC-BSD but used, say, Fluxbox instead of KDE, I imagine the system would be much slower than if you installed vanilla FreeBSD and added the desktop environment and applications yourself. At least that's the theory anyway.

I don't know how FreeBSD uses memory, but I can tell you for sure that Linux and OpenBSD use it much differently. Linux seems to want to grab as much memory as possible and reserve it for whatever uses it thinks it's going to have. I don't know how this affects system performance - it could improve it, or it could hurt it. I'm really not sure.

But OpenBSD is very sparing on the memory it uses. I ran 768 MB for that six months in OpenBSD 4.4 and don't think I ever tapped the swap space even once. Now with 1 GB in both Ubuntu (Hardy, Karmic) and Debian (Lenny), the machine isn't relying heavily on swap but does use a little bit of it at least a little bit of the time. Again, I'm not sure which scenario is better for performance (or how FreeBSD factors into all of this), but it's at least a curiosity.

David, I don't know if you've tried Fedora 12 yet. I downloaded the image but haven't had a chance yet to burn it. Like you I'm looking for any bright spot in this whole mess. I don't know who to blame: the kernel team or Xorg (or the distros themselves). Intel i830m video can't be so obscure that nobody is suffering from this, and I can imagine hundreds or thousands of potential users being turned off when they can't get the live CD to boot to anything but a blank screen.

Before I forget to mention it, my experience with wireless on this platform with OpenBSD at least, is the opposite of what happened to you. Not only did wireless perform better with absolutely no crashes, I also was able to more easily configure my cheap NIC with a Ralink chipset in OpenBSD before I could get it working in Linux.

And crashes with wireless were precisely the reason I upgraded from Ubuntu Hardy to Karmic. I think a kernel update in Hardy eventually fixed the problem (I still have a Hardy i830m laptop running and can test this), and I wish I had stayed with it on the other i830m laptop. But networking in OpenBSD at least is a relative pleasure; networking and drivers are very important to the developers, so they get a lot of attention. However, you can't use the GUI tools like NetworkManager, I think, because of the vast differences in configuration between BSD and Linux (I could be wrong about this). Learning manual network configuration isn't the worst thing in the world.

Have you read the past 25 or so entries in this blog?

Once I finally solved all my issues with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, I decided to start the upgrade path to version 9.10.

I wanted newer applications. I needed better hardware drivers.

But especially with 9.10, nicknamed Karmic Koala, I've had to deal with too many issues. I'm tired.

And aside from the laptop on which I'm running Ubuntu beginning its own hardware death spiral, its CMOS battery long dead, LCD screen sprouting a half-dollar-sized black blotch and taking the lower right half of the screen with it, I have what I always seem to have.

X issues.

Finally things seemed to be going well. A kernel update took my shutoff of kernel mode setting out of /boot/grub/menu.lst and I could miraculously run X with the aforementioned kernel mode setting, no xorg.conf file needed.

Then an Xorg update rolled in, and suddenly the screensaver, if let run too long, would render the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop inoperable. The machine was running, but the mouse and keyboard were dead to it.

Even returning ctrl-alt-backspace X-killing had no effect. (Note to self: Even though X works with kernel mode setting, could KMS be responsible for the keyboard/mouse death?)

I enjoy debating the removal/inclusion/reimagining of the GIMP, F-Spot, Pidgin, Empathy, Mono and Ubuntu One as much as the next blogorrhea-striken geek, but as Linux Outlaw Fab and Jermaine of "Flight of the Conchords" say, it's business time

I didn't know exactly when it would happen, but with 8-year-old laptops running on glue, various varieties of tape and other household sundries, it pays to have a backup.

And this post comes to you from that backup, the "other" Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101, which has had a fully encrypted LVM installation of Debian Lenny — the project's current stable distribution — on it for a number of months.

Sure, this Toshiba hasn't had working sound almost since I first grabbed it out of a pile of to-be-recycled laptops in various states of dismemberment.

And its space bar is a little flaky.

And the display's inverter is intermittent, requiring frequent manual presses of the lid-closing switch to bring the display back.

But the X issues that plagued my Intel-running laptops since Lenny was in Testing have long since been mastered (again, thank you Arch Linux Forum members, who've given me many an xorg.conf hack, most of which have worked).

I've been reluctant to switch laptops because I'm always midstream. I have over 2 GB of POP mail in Thunderbird on the Ubuntu laptop and another 3 GB or so of other files.

Sure, I could install Debian (or Slackware or fill-in-your-favorite) over Ubuntu, but I'm not yet ready to take that step.

I can and probably will update my rsynced backups in Ubuntu and move everything over to this Debian Lenny machine.

I didn't think it was "ready" for my work flow. The biggest problem is that I've started using Audacity, and that won't go so well on a laptop with no sound.

But otherwise I've got Iceweasel (which sends its name out to the Webby world as "Firefox," as one of my SAAS applications requires), I'll bring the mail from Thunderbird to Icedove (although the new year ahead is as good a time as any to start piping my mail through Gmail and leaving it in the cloud).

I have Flash installed, which I need semi-frequently. Same for Java. And I'll need to add MP3 support. Even if I can't hear the files, every once in awhile I have to verify that they'll play.

I've been using gThumb as my main image editor. Yes, it's that good. And luckily gThumb, not Ubuntu's favored (and much less capable) F-Spot, is in the Debian Lenny default desktop install.

All the rest of the GNOMEish tools I use in Ubuntu are here. Gedit (which is really growing on me and would grow even more if there was a keyboard shortcut to change the case of letters), Epiphany (again, I've really enjoyed using the Webkit version in Ubuntu, but Epiphany is still a great browser with Gecko), the GNOME terminal, the Nautilus file manager, Synaptic (although I've pretty much abandoned it for Aptitude, especially with Ubuntu's cryptic method of having an Update Manager window "magically" appear at seemingly random times).

I finally figured out how to get my Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter to work using the rt73 driver.

NetworkManager, despite not being the newer and greatly improved version I first saw in Ubuntu 8.10, is working fine.

I have gFTP, even though I've started using Nautilus for FTP. Yeah, I don't have OpenOffice 3.1 for the occasional .docx file sent my way, but I've got plenty of other machines that do have OO 3.1.

I need the basics to work. And I need them to keep on working. I can't keep fixing things every time there's a software update.

Nowhere does the phrase, "Your mileage may vary," apply more than in the world of Linux and BSD operating systems.

But in the case of this hardware and my workflow, it's Debian time.

I did an update today on the Gateway Solo 1450 laptop that our 6-year-old uses mostly for the educational games GCompris, Childsplay and the excellent TuxPaint.

The Gateway (aka The $0 Laptop) isn't normally connected to the Internet, although that could very well change as our daughter gets old.

So it goes a long time between updates. When I do sit down to update it, I plug the Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter into the laptop's sole working USB port. It originally had two but the plastic tab inside the jack broke off quite some time ago. Luckily the touchpad still works on this 2000-era laptop, since I have to unplug the mouse in order to do the update over WiFi. (I'll eventually spring for the $5 to get a USB hub for this thing).

The update went without incident. It had been over two months since the last update on this installation of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, yet there were surprisingly few packages that needed replacing: Firefox and its ancillary packages, the kernel and tzdata.

I do have the Opera Web browser on this computer, even though I don't really need it to be on here, but in order to update it from the Opera repository, I had to reimport the GPG key. I followed my own recipe ignore the Debian Etch problems and go right to the Opera portion of the entry) and then updated Opera from 9.64 to 10.01.

At some point in the recent past, the "h" key popped off the keyboard, and after replacing it, the "h" had to be pressed really, really hard in order to make the letter appear.

I looked into a replacement keyboard, but I had an idea on how to fix the "h.":

I popped the key off again, placed a very small piece of paper, folded over once, between the "h" key cover and the key membrane itself, then snapped the "h" back into place.

That did it; we can safely type "h" again.

As laptops go, this Gateway is no "best of breed," but it does have a very nice keyboard (better than my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101) and unlike the Toshiba, the Gateway still has a working touchpad.

Unfortunately the Cardbus slot's pins are horribly bent — there was a screw lodged in there, and when I tried to plug a PCMCIA card in there for the first time, that was enough to bend the pins. I tried straightening them, but it didn't work. I suppose I could find a replacement Cardbus assembly, but since the laptop does work with USB WiFi (and very well; better than the Toshiba did with this same adapter and OS), this laptop that cost me nothing a few years ago is still quite serviceable.

I did have to buy a new hard drive (I pulled the old one and gave it to the laptop's original owner). I also had to do a quick/dirty power plug replacement (the reason the laptop was dead and given to me; the repair quote was $800; a new motherboard just to replace a very poorly designed power plug). I did the repair guerrilla style for $3.

At one point the Gateway had 1 GB of RAM (I did buy the modules used), but since the Toshibas use the same PC133 SODIMM modules, I've moved them around a bit, and now the Gateway is running with 512 MB. That's a serviceable amount of RAM. More is always better, but 512 MB gets it done.

Since I'm having no stability or networking issues with the Gateway, I will not be upgrading it through 8.10 to 9.04 and then 9.10. When the next Ubuntu LTS comes out in 2010, I'll consider doing that upgrade, but I'll be worried as I always am about breakage on this now-9-year-old platform.