July 2007 - Roundtable

Point to point wireless
by Kevin McGregor 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

Does anyone have some pointers (personal experiences, URLs, etc) on how to set up a point to point (house to house) wireless network? I and two geeky neighbours are thinking about setting up a private internal network to connect our houses, and we're not sure where to start.

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Monitor detection
by John Lange 10 Aug '07

10 Aug '07

I know someone mentioned this at a distant past MUUG meeting; what is the command line tool that will query the attached monitor for its settings? I believe this is called DDC? I have a laptop and I'd like to have a command line tool that can detect if a second monitor is attached. Any tips? John

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Network Administrator (part-time) required
by Sydney Weidman 31 Jul '07

31 Jul '07

http://www.winnipegjobbank.com/job-id-136.html For anyone who may be interested. It's for the Canadian Women's Health Network (http://www.cwhn.ca) a small non-profit office with 10 desktops, web server, file server, postgres/Zope application server, Raisers Edge. The strategic plan calls for migration of servers (except for the dedicated Raiser's Edge server) and desktops to Linux. - syd

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Fwd: USENIX Annual Tech '08 Call For Papers Now Available
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

Just FYI... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Board] USENIX Annual Tech '08 Call For Papers Now Available Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:57:49 -0700 From: Lionel Garth Jones <lgj(a)usenix.org> To: info(a)muug.mb.ca, gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca --------------------------------------- Call for Papers 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference June 22-27, 2008, Boston, MA Paper Submissions Deadline: January 7, 2008, 11:59 p.m. PST http://www.usenix.org/usenix08/cfpa/ --------------------------------------- Dear Colleague, On behalf of the 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference program committee, we request your ideas, proposals, and papers for tutorials, refereed papers, and posters. Authors are invited to submit original and innovative papers to the Refereed Papers Track of the 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference. Authors are required to submit full papers by 11:59 p.m. PST, Monday, January 7, 2008. We seek high-quality submissions that further the knowledge and understanding of modern computing systems, with an emphasis on implementations and experimental results. We encourage papers that break new ground or present insightful results based on practical experience. The USENIX conference has a broad scope; specific topics of interest include but are not limited to: * Architectural interaction * Deployment experience * Distributed and parallel systems * Embedded systems * Energy/power management * File and storage systems * Networking and network services * Operating systems * Reliability, availability, and scalability * Security, privacy, and trust * System and network management and troubleshooting * Usage studies and workload characterization * Virtualization * Web technology * Wireless, sensor, and mobile systems More information on these and other submission guidelines is available on our Web site: http://www.usenix.org/usenix08/cfpa/ IMPORTANT DATES: Paper submissions due: Monday, January 7, 2008, 11:59 p.m. PST Notification to authors: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Final papers due: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 Please note that January 7 is a hard deadline; no extensions will be given. We look forward to your submissions. On behalf of the Annual Tech '08 Conference Organizers, Rebecca Isaacs, Microsoft Research Yuanyuan Zhou, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference Program Co-Chairs usenix08chairs(a)usenix.org

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VIA releases source for Display and Wireless
by John D 18 Jul '07

18 Jul '07

Got VIA ? Once in a while they release chip info to FOSS folk. Frequent? No. Welcome? Yes. (And No) VIA Technologies Taiwan has (finally again) released DISPLAY DRIVER INFO for their Integrated Grfx Processors: Cn896 (Chrome9 HC) K8m890 (DeltaChrome) P4m900 (Chrome9) Vn896 (Chromotion, mobile) Info includes: - SOURCE CODE (!) - Kernel Library - V0079 Application note (FC5) - V0079 Install Guide - Debian4, FC5/6, Mandriva2007 http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2&OSID=25&CatID=2580 _ _ _ VIA also released NETWORKING DRIVER SOURCE CODE for their vt6655 & vt6656 "Solomon" WIRELESS LAN ("WLAN") controllers http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2&OSID=25&CatID=2590 _ _ _ _ VIA did this last back in 2005, with a Linux kernel 2.6.x source release for their CLe266 & Cn400 IGPs. The Open community would, therefrom, advance into terror-tories beyond VIA's own binary releases. That 2005 release was with usual press fanfare, but acrimony lurked. Hardly compliant (enough) with tenets of OSS purist Lucas Verhaegen of TheUnichromeProject (stagnant since 2005mar), there was some dissent and pooh-pooh bandied about. Shortly before he ousted the hwAcceleration feature from TUP, Verhaegen had branded the (rival?) separate project OpenChrome as a "fork". The latter chose to maintain that popular hwAccel feature. Hence, OpenChrome has since inherited "the wind". Waaall, we'll see how hard she "blows" this time, mateys. Aharrr. Cap'n Johnny big fan of Edubuntu and Mint

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Linux saves the day!
by Montana Quiring 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

Hello, I blogged about a recent positive experience I had with Linux at a special family function. Here's the Digg page that links to the post: http://digg.com/linux_unix/A_Windows_disaster_turns_into_a_Linux_win Feel free to digg it if you like it. I'm not a Windows hater, but I like to give credit where credit is due.

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From OpenWRT to DD-WRT
by John Lange 05 Jul '07

05 Jul '07

I have a Linksys WRTSL54GS (the one with the USB port) that was sitting on a shelf doing nothing since the OpenWRT load that I put on it was giving me problems. Just for the heck of it I decided to try and covert it to DD-WRT. I'm happy to report that it worked well simply using the "firmware upgrade" in the OpenWRT interface (I selected the "Erase JFS" option). The only gotcha was I could not authenticate on the web interface. Fortunately telnet is active and I was able to get in using the default username & password and then reset the http username/password with: ~ # nvram set http_passwd="" ~ # nvram commit nvram_commit(): end You then need to reboot the router from the command line (the web button seems broken?). This is documented here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Index:FAQ#I_upgraded_from_early_SP2_to… Just thought someone else with OpenWRT might be contemplating the same thing. John

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Re: Point to point wireless
by John D 04 Jul '07

04 Jul '07

Adam mentioned his pleasure with Buffalo during winter meeting: "..whoever Buffalo contracted for the radio section .. was worth their pay.." Got some. They are good. A WHRG125 is $55 from DirectDial.com London,ONT ($100minOrder). For dealers, Buffalo's Cdn distributor is TechData. ANTENNA notes for DIRECTIONAL point-to-point: a) _Radio_ Line Of Sight "101" A radio-link path must have clear Fresnel Zone (an imaginary sphere midway between radio endpoints. Imagine a big cone facing a cone, and a beachball between them. We need to "see" All of that ball.) _Anything_protruding_ into that space _will_interfere_ e.g: tree, rooftop, occasional animal, hill, etc. b) in Adam's recent example(2) of "One router in the middle as AccessPoint, and Two as clients" the "Centre" unit there, will likely have to be an Omni, reducing benefit due to puny (omni=widely dispersed) downstream gain c) that tiny coax (extension) cable and connectors are easier to find now. Tony at TipTop has parts and crimpers. You can run this coax waaaay farther than you can run the DC for the router d) more than one single-malt scotch is also packaged in mylar coated cylinder, a la pringle-tube homebrew antenna Mike mentioned e) corollary to Meyer's Spousal Approval Factor, these haiku: " far easier to get Forgiveness, than it is to get Permission "

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