Archive for the ‘wifi’ Category

Bits from the Eee PC team, Spring 2009

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Lenny well supported

We’re pleased that Lenny released with good support for the Eee PC and are now turning our efforts to make Squeeze even better, while continuing to provide support for our Lenny user base.  The standard Lenny installer can install Debian on all models of Eee and our custom installer provides the ability to install over wireless for almost every model (more about this later) from a very small image.  The latter continues to be our recommended install method, since in addition to being wireless-ready, the custom installer also handles a few other small eee-specific configuration chores to make as much as possible “just work” right after the install.

Solid mainstream support

We’ve made good on our promise to make Debian work on the Eee PC, not a derivative, many of which use a custom kernel instead of the stock kernel as we do and use a special desktop instead of our users’ favourites.  While we agree that some intriguing things can be done in these areas, it is no substitute for mainstream support.  Our users are better served by a solid foundation than specialised modifications that limit their choices.  We want them to be able to enjoy the freedom to mold Debian, the universal OS, into whatever suits them best.

Squeeze support started

Work is well underway on supporting all Eee models in Squeeze.  For months, several team members have been experimenting with new kernels, producing support for them in eeepc-acpi-scripts.  The current release of this key package (version 1.1.0) supports Linux 2.6.29 and contains enhancements for wifi, sound hotkeys, bluetooth, external displays and OSD.

Squeeze will support wired & wifi on all current models

With the appearance of 2.6.29 in Sid, all ethernet and wifi cards used in all models of Eee today are supportable without the need for out-of-kernel or non-free drivers.  Madwifi is replaced by the free ath5k driver, the non-free rt2860 package is replaced by mainstream kernel support, (though it still requires non-free firmware provided separately by firmware-linux — for now in 2.6.29, the firmware is included in the kernel, but that is a bug fixed in 2.6.30,) rtl8187se is included, making it possible now for us to support the model 701SD, and ath9k is included, making full support for newer models such as the 1000HE possible.

Lenny backports and live demo

All of these changes can be enjoyed today by Lenny users.  Just add Daniel Baumann’s Lenny kernel backport repository and then install the 2.6.29 kernel and an updated acpid.  See our upgrade howto for details.  You can try a small (less than 256M) demo of this configuration by downloading beta 2 of our Live USB image.

Accessibility

Late last year, we discussed how to make it easier for the blind to install Debian unassisted on their Eee PCs.  As it was a simple change, we now include brltty in the custom installer, but we understand that some users also need software synthesized text-to-speech, something for which there is no support yet in the standard Debian-installer.  We understand this isn’t an easy thing to fix, but hope someone will rise to the challenge.

Growing team of developers

We welcome Darren Salt and Raphael Geissert to the team this year.  Both have been actively making contributions to the eeepc-acpi-scripts package over the past months, fixing some outstanding bugs and readying it to handle changes in more recent kernel releases.

Moved eeepc.debian.net to new hosting

Nico Golde, who hosted eeepc.debian.net for the first year development, has turned his focus to other areas of Debian.  Glenn Saberton has stepped in to provide a new home for it.  We thank them both for their efforts and for a smooth, uneventful transition from one host to the other.

Size of user community

Speaking of the move, earlier this year, Glenn shared with us some interesting archive traffic statistics that give us a rough idea how many users we have.  For the months of December and January, after factoring out bot hits, we were seeing about 300,000 hits from 15,000 unique users per month.  The site handles roughly 60G of traffic per month, most of that from thousands of downloads of our custom installer image.  It’s hard to draw any firm conclusions about the size of our user base from these stats, as many users may be on dynamic IP numbers, inflating the numbers, but we can conservatively say we have at least 5000 users.  Other interesting statistics are that we have anywhere up to 80 users at any given time on our irc channel and over 250 users on the mailing list.

Help wanted

The Asus Eee PC line continues to expand, with 24 models listed so far.  It is a challenge to keep up support for all of them.  We’re encouraged to see Asus choose a new b/g/n wifi chipset for their 1002HA that is supported by a DFSG free driver — ath9k in this case.  It appears that the new Atom N280-based 1000HE uses the same chipset as well (though be careful: I know of at least one user who bought a 1000HE in Argentina expecting it to have this chipset and was disappointed to find it had the Ralink chipset instead, we guess because of availability).  If this trend continues, we’ll be that much closer to our goal of full support for Squeeze main.  As it stands, we’re already as close as we can get given the state of rt2860 and no prospect on the horizon for replacing the non-free firmware.

If you would like to help us out in any way, whether by testing, debugging, patching, or improving our documentation, get in touch with our team.  We rely on your feedback to keep Lenny in good shape and work towards making Squeeze even better for all users of Debian on the Eee PC.

Posted in 701sd, DFSG, accessibility, asus, ath5k, ath9k, atheros, bits, debian, eeepc, installer, kernel, lenny, linux, live, madwifi, rt2860, rtl8187se, squeeze, wifi, wireless | 16 Comments »

Wifi roaming on the move

Saturday, October 25th, 2008

Preface: legal stuff

Depending on where you live, use of random open wifi networks might be considered illegal. Although I know of no law in my country against doing this, where you live, things may be different, so educate yourself before following my example.

Wifi roaming on the move

For the past year I have used my Eee PC on the metro transit bus, as it is the perfect size for this. When I can, I take advantage of open networks to connect back home. In this article I will show how you can actually use such access, will recommend which software works best and will explain how to set it up.

So, what can I really do with the net while in motion?

How about irc? No kidding! This shell one-liner does the job:

while ! ssh -t 10.9.8.7 'screen -UDr' 2>/dev/null ; do echo -n "." ; sleep .1 ; done

We’re concerned about privacy and security on other people’s networks, so we use ssh. Inside that screen session, keep irssi running for a continuous irc presence. Every 10th of a second, the script tries to resume your session. Once a the net passes by, typing “[Enter]~.” drops you back out to retry again. The row of dots serves as a progress bar. If you want to get fancy, you could replace that with an ASCII ‘spinner’. I leave that as an exercise for the reader. :)

Come on, is that really usable?

Certainly. As the good folks on #eeepc at irc.freenode.net and #debian-eeepc at irc.oftc.net can attest, even a half dozen brief connections can be enough to provide tech support, rough out some development ideas, or just carry on some friendly chat. If your spouse or housemate is online too, it can even help you make some last-minute grocery-list changes. :) While the script is working, enjoy some offline things such as blogging, reading a cached Planet Debian feed or a PDF book.

OK, so what else do I need to make it work?

Well, you’ve seen so far we need on a server:

  • openssh-server
  • screen
  • irssi

On the Eee, you should also have:

  • openssh-client
  • wpasupplicant
  • gnome-terminal

But what do I need wpasupplicant for if I only use open networks?

Well, wpasupplicant is really handy for fast control of networks in Roaming Mode (as per /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/README.modes.gz). A GUI is just too slow. For example, you may need to filter out ‘junk’ open wifi nets: pay-per-use hotspots or nets that hide their name. You’ll not only want a “catch-all” stanza for any open network, but also a number of the most commonly found default network names, e.g.

# Catch-all; associates with any open network:
network={
     key_mgmt=NONE
}
# Commonly found default network names:
network={
     ssid="default"
     key_mgmt=NONE
}
network={
     ssid="linksys"
     key_mgmt=NONE
}
# etc. by watching scan_results closely you'll find several more

While the connect script is running, keep a separate tab open in gnome-terminal for wpa_cli. Use ‘disable_network 0’ to drop the catch-all and let the other stanzas kick in and ‘enable_network 0’ after filtering is no longer needed.

Isn’t it really slow to get connected?

Without some tweaks, yes. But here are a few things I have found by trial and error that help.

One issue is that dhclient takes too long to retry, so you drop the delay between retries back to 1 second in /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf:

backoff-cutoff 1;
initial-interval 1;

If the signal is very weak, you’ll want the transmit power turned up to the maximum value for your hardware. For the Eee PC 4G this is 50mW, so you set this in /etc/network/interfaces for ath0, your wireless interface:

wireless-txpower 50mW

Finally, while you’re in motion you are constantly leaving no-longer-usable access points behind. The driver needs to discard them as quickly as possible and scan for new ones. So again in /etc/network/interfaces for ath0, you bring the default scanvalid 60 seconds down to 10 with:

pre-up /sbin/iwpriv ath0 scanvalid 10

Conclusion

The netbook has changed how we use the net. Now that we can take it everywhere, we either pay through the nose for expensive cell network access or else use the patchy wifi coverage blanketing most urban areas. A few lucky cities have such things as municipal wifi nets, but the rest of us have to scrape what access we can wherever we go. You are now equipped to try this out on the bus. If you find any other tips that can help, I’d love to hear from you.

Posted in commute, dhclient, eeepc, netbook, roaming, transit, wifi, wpasupplicant | Comments Off

Bits from the Debian Eee PC team, autumn 2008

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Some brief highlights of the last three months of Debian Eee PC development.

Thermal and ACPI breakage resolved in 2.6.26-7

We’re pleased to see that in the upload to Sid of linux-image-2.6.26-1-686 version 2.6.26-7, the pair of 2.6.26 bugs we’ve been tracking that have made it difficult for Eee users to upgrade their systems have been resolved. Since then 2.6.26-8 has been uploaded and is expected to enter Lenny this week due to a freeze exception. Once the new kernel has migrated we will move quickly to build and release a new installer that includes it.

Ath5k wifi works on Eee PC in Linux 2.6.27

Jean-Christophe reports that ath5k works in Linux 2.6.27 on the Eee PC 701, and just needs a small patch to work with our eeepc-acpi-scripts package. This is good news for those of us with models 701, 900, 900A and 1000HD who have been wanting to get off of the non-free Madwifi drivers and onto DFSG free drivers.

New Eee PC model 701SD wifi support in the works

Users of the new Eee PC Model 701SD have just started showing up looking for support in mainstream Linux distros. Martin Filtenborg confirmed using our Eee PC Live image with the GPL’d rtl8187se driver from Realtek that we can at least use it to connect to an unencrypted AP, get an IP address and ping other hosts.

Of course, it is one thing to have a working vendor-supplied driver and quite another to have mainstream support. We’ll make do with what we have now, but will be seeking a mainstream solution as soon as possible.

We’re seeking more testers and developers to work on this. To date, an ITP has not been filed, as it is not yet clear who is going to carry this work forward.

Chasing the 5 second boot

An interesting discussion on Arjan van de Ven and
Auke Kok’s work to get an Eee 901 to boot in 5 seconds took place this month. While the Debian Eee PC team is not making work on this a priority, we’ll keep an eye on it to see if Debian can incorporate some or all of the techniques they used so that our users can benefit without making radical changes to their systems.

Working towards mainstream support for rt2860

Our filing of an ITP for rt2860 (the wifi driver for models 901, 1000 and 1000H) was followed by discussion about how to separate out the GPL’d driver from the embedded non-free firmware so that it can at least go into contrib. Glenn Saberton has been working on rewriting the build system around kbuild and separating out the firmware.

Numerous improvements to ACPI scripts

Since my last progress report, there have been numerous improvements to the eeepc-acpi-scripts package to deal with all of the various models we now support and make the scripts more robust and flexible. Check out the changelog for details.

Posted in 701sd, acpi, ath5k, bits, boot, debian, eeepc, installer, kernel, lenny, live, madwifi, rt2860, rtl8187se, thermal, wifi | Comments Off

Fr-eee-dom: roaming on the bus with wpa_supplicant

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007

As I wrote earlier, I bought an Eee PC to use on the bus. Initially, I only used it offline to do some Debian packaging and blogging, but I soon discovered that I could do a few things online on the many open networks on my daily commute. While the connections are normally brief in good traffic conditions, even a few seconds here and there is enough to participate in irc discussions.

Manually connecting to each got old very quickly. So, to automate those connections I settled on wpa_supplicant, (wpasupplicant is the Debian package name,) which is quite easy to set up in roaming mode, as outlined in /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/README.modes.gz. All you need is the following in /etc/network/interfaces:

allow-hotplug ath0
iface ath0 inet manual
        wpa-driver wext
        wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

Then create your /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf as follows:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
     key_mgmt=NONE
}

That’s it. You can now roam from one open network to the next and the supplicant will connect you to each one in turn. I have used this to reconnect to my screen session each time the bus slows down for a stop or gets stuck in traffic to carry on conversations on irc for the whole length of the commute.

If you also connect to networks requiring authentication, you’ll need to add a “network” clause for each network. See /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/ for help with that, particularly the annotated conf file, README.wpa_supplicant.conf.gz.

For finer control over the process, I use sudo wpa_cli so i can:

  • keep an eye on what networks are around: scan, then scan_results,
  • disconnect from a network once I know it’s out of range
  • and reassociate as needed.

The only things that I haven’t figured out how to do yet are to make the process of switching from one network to the next a bit faster (it normally takes about a minute; precious seconds of online time are lost when the bus is in motion,) and to blacklist certain essids, e.g. commercial hotspots that make you pay before they’ll route your packets to the Internet. For the first problem, I have already tweaked my dhcp settings, which helps a bit. For the second, I tried adding network blocks for specific networks and setting them to a lower priority, but that doesn’t work because then the ‘catch all’ open network block kicks in and picks them up anyway.

Posted in bus, commute, debian, eeepc, network, roaming, wifi, wpa_supplicant | 3 Comments »

Atheros patch makes wifi work for Debian-eeepc

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

Atheros has released a AR5007EG chipset patch that makes wifi work for Debian on the Eee PC.

I have used the instructions in the ticket to build and install the patched driver. As noted in the comments, you’ll need the snapshot, not the latest release source for the patch to apply cleanly.

Posted in ar5007eg, atheros, debian, driver, eeepc, wifi | 5 Comments »

Debian-eeepc now has atl2 ethernet

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

With Kel Modderman’s help, we now have a working atl2 driver for the Eee PC. This brings the Debian-eeepc project one step closer to providing a pure Debian replacement for the Xandros OS that ships with the unit. Now that Asus has released the GPLed source that was missing before, we now just have to ensure both the atl2 and asus_acpi modules get merged upstream.

The driver for the wifi in the Eee isn’t under the GPL, however, and therefore only works on the Xandros kernel provided with the default OS. Since I really can’t live without wifi and it is not my first choice to buy replacement hardware, in the interim, I’m living with using the Xandros kernel and modules on Debian. I can learn from studying the Xandros components in action, but it’s not a solution I’m happy with in the long term. The Debian-eeepc project’s goal is to produce a pure Debian solution, at least as far as that is possible given the hardware present in an unmodified system. On that front, I think the best bet is for ath5k to support the particular Atheros chip in the Eee. (Yes, I know about ndiswrapper, but for both technical and philosophical reasons I won’t use it.)

Posted in asus, ath5k, atheros, debian, distribution, eeepc, hardware, mobile, wifi | 3 Comments »