2007-08-22

EVDO on Debian / Ubuntu

Posted by Robert Auch under HowTo, Linux
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I’ve used this configuration, with minor tweaks on 3 different laptops, with 3 different OSes (if not 4) with great success. There’s so little good Linux info on evdoforums.com (at least I have a hard time finding it), and the posts I made link to a site that’s non-existant now, so I realized I had to repost this info. I’ve had both the Merlin S620 Sprint PCS EVDO card, and the Sierra Mobile AirCard 575, and now have a Dell built-in EVDO modem.

For all 3 of them, the only difference was the modprobe line, for vendor and product ID, as noted below.
Merlin S620:
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1410 product=0x1110
Sierra 575:
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1199 product=0x0019
Dell Sprint 5720 PCI-Express Modem
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x413c product=0x8134

I saved the appropriate PPP files at /etc/ppp/peers/1xevdo and at /etc/chatscripts/1xevdo_chat. In this post, I’ve blanked out the parts that are particular to my install (phone number), but it should be pretty easy to recreate your settings.

/etc/ppp/peers/1xevdo:

-detach
ttyUSB0
115200
debug
noauth
defaultroute
usepeerdns
user $(full-phone-number)@sprintpcs.com
show-password
crtscts
lock
lcp-echo-failure 4
lcp-echo-interval 65535
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -t3 -f /etc/chatscripts/1xevdo_chat'

/etc/chatscripts/1xevdo_chat:

'' 'AT'
'OK' 'ATZ'
'OK' 'ATE0V1&F&D2&C1&C2S0=0'
'OK' 'ATE0V1'
'OK' 'ATS7=60'
'OK' 'ATDT#777'
CONNECT CLIENT

Since I do several bits of work through the console, including accessing my Cisco VPN, and in some cases naim and tmsnc (console AOL and MSN chat) inside a screen session, scripts for these setups work great for me. I wrapped the whole thing up inside a bash script called $HOME/bin/evdo.sh – and I just call that when I want to get online, after inserting the card.
~/bin/evdo.sh:

sudo /sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1199 product=0x0019
sleep 5
sudo /usr/sbin/pppd call 1xevdo

The sleep statement helps make sure that the modprobe has completed, scanned the device, and settled before calling PPP.

My Dell D620 arrived, and I was able to quickly determine the changes for an “always there” card, vs. a pluggable PCMCIA card.
First I created /etc/modprobe.d/usbserial with the line:
options usbserial vendor=0x413c product=0x8134
and added “usbserial” to the end of /etc/modules so that the card would always come up at boot (sudo lspci -v | less to find the exact product ID and vendor – I only have 2 “Dell” devices on my laptop). I set my radio kill switch to affect only my EVDO and bluetooth radios, letting the software (~/bin/rfkill.sh in Linux and the Dell software in Windows) handle the WiFi – I use WiFi all the time, but only want the battery-draining EVDO in a few specific instances. So I added “cat 0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:03\:00.0\rf_kill” to my “evdo.sh” file to kill the wireless when I wanted to use EVDO – no need to ever have them both on.

 

2007-08-13

How To: Increase Battery Life in Ubuntu or Debian Linux

Posted by Robert Auch under Linux, Mobile
[4] Comments 

EDIT Dec. 4, 2012: Update!  I’ve written a new update to the configuration files referenced in the post below, over here: http://www.totalnetsolutions.net/2012/12/09/lenovo-t430-running-kubuntu-12-10-for-extreme-battery-life/ so please check out the CPU and battery sections of that post.

Thanks!
/EDIT

With the popularity of the last How To on Domain Controllers, I thought we should do some more. So here�s how I�ve nearly doubled my battery life on my laptop (2 hours max with Windows to 3:30 average with Ubuntu, which was originally 2:30). I used to use a series of programs on Debian Etch which are also available in Ubuntu. However, probably because of their lack of nice GUI interfaces, they�re not installed by default. If you are more interested in increasing your battery time, however, follow along.

  1. Install laptop-mode-tools and cpufreqd
    sudo apt-get install laptop-mode cpufreqd cpufrequtils
  2. Make sure that the proper CPU governers are installed for your processor. I have an Intel Centrino Duo 1.6Ghz (which clocks down to 1Ghz).
    sudo modprobe acpi-cpufreq (or speedstep-centrino or powernow-k8|k7|k6 or longhaul, depending on architecture – acpi-cpufreq should be the most compatible)
    sudo modprobe cpufreq-conservative
    sudo modprobe cpufreq-ondemand
    sudo modprobe cpufreq-powersave
    I use ondemand and conservative – ondemand for when I�m plugged in – no point running at 1.6Ghz when I�m idle – it just heats up the system and overworks the fan – and conservative on battery life – it only steps up slowly as requires, and I can still limit it well with cpufreqd. However, having powersave available on a moments notice to keep the processor locked at 1ghz is nice.

 

  1. Add acpi-cpufreq or whichever cpufreq driver you picked in the previous step to the end of /etc/modules to force the system to load them at bootup. Ubuntu didn�t pick this up properly for me on any install yet (Dapper, Edgy or Feisty), but Debian did in Sid and Etch
  2. Now open up a terminal (or Konsole) window and edit the files (or replace them with my versions). I�ve attached my versions below.
    laptop-mode.conf
    cpufreqd.conf
  3. A few things to look out for when editing these files
    1. set your cpufreqd.conf to the proper CPU speed limits. You can get the hardware limits for your processor from
      cpufreq-info -l
      Mine are obviously (when you read my       cpufreqd.conf) 1000000 to 1667000
    2. Note which steps are available to you. On my Centrino Core Duo, I only have 3 steps, but on one Celeron processor I saw 10 steps from 2GHz down to133MHz.
    3. Make sure in this configuration that you�re disabling CPU monitoring in laptop-mode.conf. Laptop-mode-tools seem to do this well, but when I last read the man pages, it does all its switching with the usermode driver, which is a more expensive operation than kernel mode – where cpufreqd runs at; letting the speedstep operations run as intended in the core is much more efficient, cpu-cycle-wise� which saves even more battery life. Yes, every second counts.
    4. I personally set �noatime� as a default mount option in /etc/fstab for every physical drive in my laptop. However, you�ll also see my laptop-mode.conf has �control_noatime=1� set, in case I forget, or edit fstab. This does a mount -o remount on all drives when you unplug from the wall, setting the noatime mount option ONLY on battery power. This got confusing to me, having access timestamps sometimes, so I just disabled it completely, and know that my access timestamps are 100% worthless, rather than 50% worthless.
    5. Look closely at the cpufreqd.conf that I�ve created – you�ll see several different scenarios for how to control the CPU limits, based on utilization, battery life, AC status, and even which programs are running. These are settings that work very well for me – I doubt they�ll work well for everyone, but they do cover pretty much every situation I�ve been in on battery power, from doing a presentation out of VMWare to taking notes in a 4 hour meeting. I rarely play games in Linux, much less on battery power, so I can�t speak much to that. But I can get a full DVD easily, and 2 movies if they�re ripped to DivX on the HDD.
  4. Last step is to check the brightness of your laptop. In mine, I can set the brightness on battery power vs. AC power in the BIOS. I also have controls for it. Lowering your brightness by half increases your battery life a HUGE amount. I try to keep it as low as required to see it – in a dark meeting room, that means �as low as it goes�. Being a touch-typist becomes important here, cause that�s not bright enough to see the keyboard on my system.

That�s it. For reference, this whole post written on battery power tonight, while doing other things (like cooking dinner and going for a walk), never in sleep mode. Percentage battery remaing thanks to bat-stats.sh

robert@laptop:~$ bat-stats.sh
# Using governor powersave
# Battery max design 5100 mWh, last 4321 mWh
# Using last max for percentages.
22.0319

robert@laptop:~$ uptime
23:00:51 up 3:09, 4 users, load average: 0.20, 0.14, 0.10

 

2007-08-06

Marketing greatly affects children’s taste preferences

Posted by Robert Auch under Business, Personal
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I found this in the news today and hunted down the original paper at Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. It shows that children as young as 3 years old are greatly affected by marketing and brand loyalty, with as many as 73% of kids 3-6 preferring food in McDonald’s wrappings to the same food in plain paper. Even if that item was a carrot, kids preferred it significantly over the generic item.

Reading further, the stats get more interesting.  The more TVs in the house, or the more times the kids ate at McDonald’s per month, the greater the preference for the branded food. The whole paper is a really fascinating read, but it does get (as most scientific publications do) pretty stats-heavy, so if you don’t follow statistics very well, just plow through it and check out the graphs and findings.

Moral of the story?

For parents: Remove TVs from the house, and eat healthy at home more often.

For businesses: your branding can be extremely powerful.  Even the kids who NEVER ate McDonald’s preferred the branded food.

 

2007-08-02

Domain Controller logon problem fixed

Posted by Robert Auch under Domain Controllers
1 Comment 

Tonight we fixed my friend’s network – see this post for history. It turns out that after changing IPs on the first server, the servers lost communication long enough for the password on one of the 2 of them to expire. This was causing replication to fail, which caused DNS to fail to update, and the 2nd DC stopped answering client requests.

Thanks to cyrilliano at Neowin Forums I was reminded of all the fun that is netdom.

I just had to run netdom resetpwd /server:dc2 /userd:FOOBAR\administrator /passwordd:admin_password and wait 15 minutes. His post suggests disabling the KDC service, but I found it unneccessary. However, the 10 minute wait was not quite enough in my situation. Yet another reminder that patience is the first requirement for DC troubleshooting.

 

2007-07-29

How To: Change a Domain Controller IP address

Posted by Robert Auch under Domain Controllers, HowTo, Networking
[3] Comments 

A friend came to me this week with an issue he had earlier – he had to change the subnet of a client’s network, and issues with the Windows 2003 Domain Controller appeared. Here’s how to avoid (or fix) the problem. For this HowTo, I’ll be using a current network of 192.168.1.2/24, with the server being it’s own DNS and WINS, and a gateway of 192.168.1.1. We’ll be changing the server to 172.31.2.2/24, and using the domain name “foobar.local”.

  1. Why are you changing the subnet? Most often, I’ve had to do this for customers because a business partner’s subnet has conflicts that are coming up during VPN tunnel creation. I’ve had other reasons, and you might too – but that’s the most common I’ve seen – 2 sites that are both 192.168.1.0/24 trying to build a VPN tunnel to each other.
  2. Now that you have a good reason to go through the pain, determine your layout – I’m going to write this for a single DC environment and point out a few changes for a double-DC environment. If you have more, you should be able to extrapolate the requirements from there, but you can also leave some comments and I can write another post if required. I’ll also be writing cmd scripts for most changes, rather than attaching huge (pixel-size) images.
  3. Determine the new subnet.
  4. Add the reverse lookup zone to DNS for your new network. In this case, in the DNS wizard, you’d make the reverse zone “172.31.2″ (filling in all boxes). This makes the zone name “2.31.172.in-addr.arpa” or “172.31.2.x” in the DNS console.
  5. Open Active Directory Sites and Services. Right-Click “Subnets” and add in the new subnet (172.31.2.0 with a Subnet Mask of 255.255.255.0). You’ll see the subnet listed as CIDR notation in the box (172.31.2.0/24) for verification. Pick the site that the new subnet belongs in (probably Default-First-Site-Name), and click “OK”. This guarnantees that AD will recognize the new site properly.
  6. Determine the new IP for the DC, and *add* it to the DC’s adapter. Do NOT remove the existing IP, yet. Don’t add the new gateway, yet. Just add the new IP, and save the settings.
    netsh interface ip add address "local area connection" 172.31.2.2 255.255.255.0
    (This command assumes that your DC has a static IP address. I haven’t seen a site use DHCP for their DCs yet, but it’s a possibility. This command on a DHCP address will set only a SINGLE address with no gateway, and could leave you with 0 remote access to the server.)
  7. Verify that the new IP is showing up on the server.
    ipconfig
  8. Get the server to register its new info in DNS
    ipconfig /registerdns
  9. Wait and watch the Application and System event logs for DNS related errors. Also check that the DNS server is publishing the new IP address, not just as the server name, but also as the domain name, and the DCs (This can take up to, but shouldn’t take longer than, 15 minutes):
    nslookup foobar.local
    Also, open the DNS console and look inside “_msdcs.foobar.local” to see that the GUID of the server is listed with both IPs.
  10. Once the server is advertising the new IP, you can swap the system to use the new IP range completely. It’s not time to remove the old IP yet though. This is the time to change the gateway, DNS servers, and WINS server. Since the server is listening on, and advertising on, the old and new IPs, DNS shouldn’t have any issues.
    netsh interface ip set address "local area connection" static 172.31.2.2 255.255.255.0 172.31.2.1 10
    netsh interface ip add address "local area connection" 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0
    netsh interface ip set dns "local area connection" static 172.31.2.2
    netsh interface ip set wins "local area connection" static 172.31.2.2
    This can, like all other steps, also be done in the GUI quite easily, by just shifting the orders of some things (IPs), and replacing others (DNS/WINS/Gateway).
  11. Now re-register the server with itself, looking for error messages in the Application and System logs.
    ipconfig /registerdns
  12. Remember that changes to DNS can take up to 15 minutes to appear, as you watch the logs for errors, and check dns.
    nslookup foobar.local
    What you’re looking for in the nslookup is to see the address of every domain controller in your domain. If this is a single server (like a Small Business Server 2003 network), you should, at this point, see 2 or 3 addresses (depending on how you set up your public network, for SBS2003).
  13. If everything looks good here, this is a good time to test some logons to make sure things are working properly. This is the point in the project where I normally create the new DHCP scope, deactivate (not delete) the old scope, and change the LAN settings on the router. This is also a good time to reboot some of the client PCs to make sure that they can boot up properly, get IP addresses in the new subnet, login without errors (remember to check that Application log!), and get online without issues.
    Because we haven’t removed the old IP from the server yet, the biggest issue you *should* run into is a client who gets an IP from the old subnet, or is statically set. They’ll log in ok, but won’t be able to get to the internet (unless you’ve got SBS2003, and the server is also your router). At this point in time, it’ll be easy to figure out if the new IP is working – clients that can log in and get access to resources are logging in to the IP address for the DC that’s local to them – if they’re in the new subnet, then your new IP is working. You can now reboot your DC as a final test (or act of faith, as your experience may prompt).
  14. When the DC comes back up, log in, and remove the old IP address – this is easiest in the GUI, but if you’re doing it with netsh, I prefer to just reset the DC settings completely.
    netsh interface ip set address "local area connection" static 172.31.2.2 255.255.255.0 172.31.2.2 10
    ipconfig /registerdns
    nslookup foobar.local
    Now it’s cleanup time.
  15. Open Active Directory Sites and Services. Delete the old subnet.
  16. Open up your DNS server and make sure your forwarders are correct – lots of small offices skip this step – your forwarders should be the IP addresses of the DNS servers that your ISP gave you. Don’t put these into your DHCP scope DNS servers list, or even in the list of DNS servers on your server – they go in the “forwarders” section here.
  17. That’s it. Your clients are set up and ready to go, your server is healthy, and now you get to tackle the problem that made you have to change the IP in the first place!

For those who are having issues, because they’re finding this after attempting the change, or for my friend who prompted me to write this, here are some suggestions:

  1. Add the old IP back to the server, run <code>ipconfig /registerdns</code> and wait for the old IP to take. Now verify that the server’s logging in properly, and not giving error messages.
  2. Do you have all the zones in DNS, so that registration can take? Many small sites forget to put in the reverse zones into the DNS server.
  3. Go back and check Active Directory Sites and Services to verify that both the old and new subnets are listed. While you’re in transition, all subnets should be listed in all locations.
  4. If your server is screwed up badly enough that you can’t even log in, boot into Active Directory Services Restore Mode, make sure that your networking changes are set properly, and that your DNS server has it’s forwarders set up right. This is a good way to check the base level of your server’s health, then bring it back online to try to log into AD.
  5. There’s no reason to need to rebuild the server, but if it’s a small enough location (AD doesn’t change very often, or if it does, the changes are minor), and you have good backups, take a look at how long this is taking you, and how much longer you’ll spend attempting to fix the problem. Going back to the backup from the previous night and restoring ONLY the system state in Directory Services Restore Mode might be the fastest and best solution. Then you can follow the steps in here in order, and grow fewer ulcers.

Next week sometime I’ll do a similar version for multi-DC, multi-Site AD networks – it’s a lot shorter and easier.

 

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