Slacy’s Blog

So, the Lenovo S10 works great with Linux, particularly Ubuntu 8.10, but the one thing thats a bit wonky is the way the trackpad works.  The trackpad is non-square, but reports square coodinates, so the vertical motion is exaggerated.

I’ve compiled a hacked version of the X11 Synaptics driver that includes a fudge factor for the Y component.  It does hw.y *= 0.6 internally, and this pretty much compensates for the incorrect coordinates.

Here’s a link to a modified replacement Ubuntu .deb package.

Just download that file, and then run:

dpkg –install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics_0.15.2-0ubuntu7_i386.deb

And you should be good to go.  If/when the Ubuntu maintainers publish a new or upgraded version of this package, this version will be overwritten, so you’ll be SOL.  So, be careful with those autoupgrades!

In other news, there are patches underway to do this in a more configurable way, and its possible that future versions of the Synaptics driver will include the ability to adjust the vertical sensitivity.

Okay, I’ve had my Lenovo S10 since Friday.  I briefly played around with the default Windows XP install, upgraded the BIOS, and then installed Ubuntu 8.10 as my primary disk, and wiped the OKR (One Key Recovery) partition, since I don’t really want to ever restore Windows.

Here are my first thoughts:

1. The screen is actually more functional than I thought it was going to be.  1024×600 is just fine for pretty much everything.  There’s a little more scrolling than normal, but nothing huge.  I do find that I am running Firefox in fullscreen mode more, so maybe that makes up for it.
2. The keyboard is actually quite good.  There are only a few weird things.  The number keys are offset to the left a bit more than I’m used to, and that means I hit 2 instead of 1, for example.  There are some other keyboard quirks, like the ~ key and PgUp/PgDn buttons, but I’m sure I’ll be able to get used to those.  The key autoreapeat happens a bit faster than I’m used to, and doesn’t seem to be adjustable in Ubuntu.  (Although repeat on/off does work).  I’m just tapping faster than normal.  The keyboard is large enough that I can touch type at full speed with nearly no problems at all.  Excellent!
3. The synaptics track pad works, but the vertical motion is way too fast, and I’m tracking an xorg bug and discussion on mailing lists about the patches that are proposed to fix it.  As soon as I can get a build of the .deb for people to check out, I’ll do so.
4. Battery life.  I only have the “3-cell” version, and people complain a bit about the battery life.  It seems to be working for 2.5-3 hours for me, which is really just great for what I’m using the laptop for.
5. The CPU is plenty fast, the graphics are plenty fast, and 1GB seems like plenty of RAM.  It really doesn’t feel like it needs an upgrade.  I’ve even been doing some ./configuge && ./make stuff for the drivers, and it works speedily and well.   The Atom shows up as Dual Core, due to hyperthreading.  CPU Frequency scaling works, and the steps are 800Mhz, 1.07GHz, 1.33GHz, and 1.6GHz.
6. It’s very light, and seems very well built.  The LED backlit display is very bright (on full brightness, which I don’t really use at night).

There are a couple of weird quirks, that I’ve mentioned above but will reiterate here:

1. Touchpad vertical movement is too fast.  I’m getting used to it, but it would be nice for it to be “normal”.
2. Screen brightness is very dim after a resume from suspend.  (Dimmer than anything I can set with the brightness buttons, and it returns to normal when I adjust brightness manually)
3. I haven’t tested video (webcam) or microphone yet, but sound works great.
4. Keyboard quirks (~, PgUp, Home, F12, are all hard to press.  There are buttons unused by Ubuntu (The ‘Home’ button and Windows Menu Button)
5. I’m having a bunch of trouble with 3-button (middle mouse button) emulation in X11.  Supposedly the synaptics driver does it automatically, but I haven’t delved into this much.  It does work, but just not predictably.  I’d like to just set some key+click combo to middle mouse.
6. Keyboard key repeat rate is too fast and delay is too short, settings under Ubuntu don’t seem to take effect. (this is minor, and I’m sure I’ll get used to it)

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-939165.html

audacious and audacity are two different, but sorta vaguely similar programs.

After a quick quest to Fry’s to see what the difference between the Acer Aspire One and the Lenovo S10 is, I decided that the Acer was way too cheap feeling, and that the Lenovo was worth the extra ~$50.  So, I put in my purchase (with IBM Employee Purchase discount from the family) and it should be on its way.  Hooray!

Researching the purchase of a new netbook.  Its always good to check up on the user forums:

Acer Aspire One user forums

Asus eee pc user forums

Lenovo S10 user forums

Any advice on how to choose between these 3 would be appreciated. :)  I’m planning on running Ubuntu and not storing much data, so an 8GB SSD would be fine, although I’d prefer 1GB RAM, and most seem to come with 1GB+160GB or thereabouts…

So, you want to switch eth0 from a ‘direct’ network connection to using a software bridge? Ok, here’s your 30 second guide. If you’re using DHCP, make your /etc/network/interfaces look like this:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
# Ports you want to add to your bridge
bridge_ports eth0
# Time to wait before loading the bridge
bridge_maxwait 0

And then reboot your machine or run “/etc/init.d/networking restart”. Voila. All your traffic now goes through the software bridge.

Background: This is useful for when you want to run multiple virtual machines, and give them all independent access to the network. The virtual machines need virtual interfaces, and therefore, all the interfaces (both the virtual ones and the ‘real’ eth0) have to go through the bridge and out to the network. So, once you’ve bridged eth0, its easy enough to add virtual interfaces (tap/tun) and use those.

So, I’m planning on using KVM to virtualize my new server, but when I try to boot any of the install ISO images, I get a message like this:

# kvm -no-acpi -vnc :1 -m 2000 -cdrom ./ubuntu-7.10-jeos-i386.iso ../test.img -boot d
exception 6 (0)
rax 0000000000000469 rbx 0000000000800001 rcx 0000000000004300 rdx 0000000000000000
rsi 000000000005961d rdi 000000000005961c rsp 00000000fffaa9cc rbp 000000000000200c
r8 0000000000000000 r9 0000000000000000 r10 0000000000000000 r11 0000000000000000
r12 0000000000000000 r13 0000000000000000 r14 0000000000000000 r15 0000000000000000
rip 000000000000b04b rflags 00033006
cs 4143 (00041430/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
ds 4004 (00040040/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
es 4004 (00040040/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
ss 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
fs 3002 (00030020/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
gs 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 3 db 0 s 1 type 3 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
tr 0000 (7d850000/00002088 p 1 dpl 0 db 0 s 0 type b l 0 g 0 avl 0)
ldt 0000 (00000000/0000ffff p 1 dpl 0 db 0 s 0 type 2 l 0 g 0 avl 0)
gdt 40920/47
idt 0/ffff
cr0 60000010 cr2 0 cr3 0 cr4 0 cr8 0 efer 0
code: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Aborted

And, if I

# rmmod kvm kvm_intel

Then it can boot, but without the KVM kernel modules, the performance is horrible. The KVM pages say that these exceptions are due to the fact that some Intel processors doesn’t emulate some 8088 instructions. Well, if that means that I can’t boot my install media, then its pretty pointless, isn’t it? BTW, would it be that hard to emulate these unfrequently used instructions properly?

I’m going to see if I can get through the install process without the kernel module (under full emulation), and then boot the resultant image with the module installed, but I don’t have much hope that it’ll work very well.

In the mean time, I’m reading up on Xen, which I think is a bit more mature than KVM is…

Hey, so, Ubuntu, what gives?

I’m running a “sudo apt-get install fobar-package-version” and I get messages like this one:

Media change: please insert the disc labeled
‘Ubuntu-Server 7.10 _Gutsy Gibbon_ - Release amd64 (20071016)’
in the drive ‘/cdrom/’ and press enter

What gives? If I put that disc in the drive (the install CD) then when my machine reboots, it’ll boot to that disk, which isn’t what I want. How about you please just get whatever you need from the internet? Oh, and by the way, I have a copy of the .iso image on my harddrive if you really really need something thats in there. How about I just point you at that? Would that be ok? Thanks!

Update: Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and remove the entry for the cdrom, or make it point at the ISO image file to solve this issue.