Running Systems

After upgrading my laptop to 2.6.15.1 kernel, hibernation worked flawlessly. Running my previous version of kernel – 2.6.14.2, I have had some hibernation instabilities. I’ve had some memory corruptions here and there, which would have required I reboot the machine. So far, and it’s been a while, I’m glad to say I had no reason to "reboot" my laptop, but only to hibernate and awake it. Works like a charm.

In my post here, I have complained of performance issues with Orinoco_pci module. Although I’ve had somewhat below the average speed in my LAN (I’ve got about 800KB/s, give or take, on my 802.11b network), using this line to reach an external server / address or even a web site was disastrous. Degraded performance, up to no connection at all. Ping was correct at all times, just as a simple wget to a rather close server (on my ISP’s server room) got timed-out, and drained to less than 2KB/s… Terrible.

In this kernel version, as I’m happy to say, I have tested the built-in orinoco, and finally it’s working just as it should. I get to use my full internet bandwidth, and I’m happy with it. Normal response times, and all. Now all I’ve got left is to make sure the internal LEDs work. On another day 🙂

Weird behavior of my Orinoco_pci wireless network interface. On my home 802.11b network, I get performance of about 600KB/s, instead of 1.1MB/s, which should be the approximate speed to expect to. Not only that, but browsing to external websites and the likes (I compare using wget), I get speeds of <7KB/s, and sometimes decreasing to a stall, on a 2Mb/s line. My desktop reaches speeds of >150KB/s, so I could either point at my wireless router/AP, or my wireless NIC. Using PCMCIA RTL8180 802.11b NIC, and using it with NDISwan drivers, I’ve got speeds of above 150KB/s, which points at my built-in Orinoco wireless interface.

I’ve tried downloading the newer orinoco driver, 0.15rc4 (instead of my existing 0.15rc2), and got similar results. I got stalled a bit later (testing with 18MB zip file), but it could be random point, just as well. Using the PCMCIA, it worked correctly *ALL* times. Pity. I will have to pay the “price”, regarding battery life, and extra accessories, regarding wireless for now. I might try this same test with some other router/AP sometime, when I get near one of those.

I’ve been working, on and off, on an update to my Linux kernel, for the last few weeks. I’ve tried my best with 2.6.12.1 to 2.6.12.5, and although it was compiled correctly, it failed to boot. I don’t know why, but this same problem occurred on my desktop PC as well.

Yesterday, finally, I was able to compile a running kernel, 2.6.13, with SWSUSP patches, and a fully working hibernation procedure. I was surprised to discover that the Orinoco module was the one I had to manually upgrade to, for my previous version of kernel, are already up-to-date, and that it leaves me with one module less to compile afterwards.

I’ve done the following, in this order:

1) Downloaded, and uncompressed the source of kernel 2.6.13

2) Patched it with SoftwareSuspend2 patches

3) Patched it with FBsplash patches

4) Used the following .config file with it

config-2.6.13.txt

5) Compiled, and afterwards, installed the modules and the bzImage

6) Complied and installed the new swsusp2 UserUI

7) Created initrd, according to the guidelines in swsusp2 wiki

8) Upgraded to the newer swsusp2 hibernate script (1.10)

9) Compiled and installed the Apanel module

10) Rebooted, and afterwards, hibernated and restored.

It worked quite well. Surprisingly easy, comparing to the hard times it used to give me in the past.

Well, I have a laptop for the last 2 years or so, which can be noted for its very light-weight and enhanced setup (it comes with full equipment – DVD-CDR combo, 802.11b, 1xPCMCIA, 2xUSB2.0, 1xFireWire, S-Video, VGA Out, Lan, Modem, etc), for only 3.2 lbs, or ~1.5Kg. However it has its disadvantages – the weak CPU (Transmeta 933MHz, which acts worse than P3 500MHz), the (very) slow HDD (40GB, but slow), and the very small VGA LCD – 10.2". Moreover, its Linux competability is not sky high, so I had to work hard to make things work correctly.

So far I have a working setup where the following list works:

1) ACPI Events*

2) PCMCIA

3) Software Suspend 2 (Aka, Hibernation, or ACPI State 4)*

4) USB, and USB devices

5) CDR/DVD

6) Floppy (as a USB Storage device)

7) VGA, and X finally stopped crashing by itself.

8) LAN – RTL8139 based, using ifplugd for detection of links, and using DHCP to obtain IP address then

9) Wireless Card, Orinoco_pci module*

The devices marked with (*) are those which I have problem with. Outside of this list, I have my FireWire untested, and I cannot activate my Modem (LT, if I’m not mistaken).

Current problems:

ACPId fails to show in the logs (/var/log/acpid) the transfer phase from AC to battery mode, and vice versa. When on AC, It says nothing. When on Bat, it prints once around every 10 minutes or so a notice about using battery mode, or that the battery is being discharged. However, on /proc/acpi/battery/CMB*/state I can see when the battery is being charged and discharged. Weird.

Software Suspend 2 has just been patched on a 2.6.11.11 kernel (I was not able to boot the 2.6.12.2 at the moment, but I will devote time for it in the near future), and is being tested as we speak. So far, it has worked remarkably well, joined with the Fbsplash, it shows a nice animation during boot time. One thing, though, which is related to Orinoco_pci module – If the Orinoco driver has no wireless network accessible, it will hang during the power-restore session, fill my logs with the comment "hermes @ MEM 0xcfc74000: Error -16 issuing command." and will not be able to function, on most cases until I hibernate/resume the computer. Even then, not always will it work. It drove me nuts, as it both abused my CPU and thus battery during battery usage, and it required I find some alternate solution. Finally I have a method of adding PCMCIA wireless card, using NDISwrapper to activate it, and removing the orinoco related modules.

Linux – Debian which was based on Knoppix, and was vastly tweaked since. Unstable, and up-to-date. My own custom kernel, and up until now, using vanilla kernel with the swsusp2 patch. Nothing fancy.