Actually I described how to enable wireless networking on a Travelmate 5730 under Debian a few months ago. But nevertheless I still had problems, that it might not work from time to time. (I don’t know why, but it happened to stop working, and I could not figure out, how to bring it back up).
The problem was always, that I didn’t get any IP-address via dhcp, which was looking like:

Aug 7 13:07:58 sunny kernel: [ 7581.690716] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
Aug 7 13:07:59 sunny dhclient: wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Aug 7 13:07:59 sunny dhclient: Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:21:5d:82:34:6a
Aug 7 13:07:59 sunny dhclient: Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:21:5d:82:34:6a
Aug 7 13:07:59 sunny dhclient: Sending on Socket/fallback
Aug 7 13:08:03 sunny dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
Aug 7 13:08:09 sunny dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
Aug 7 13:08:20 sunny dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 18
Aug 7 13:08:38 sunny dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
Aug 7 13:08:48 sunny dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11

If I had a look, what iwconfig was showing, I could see, that it was not connected to my Access Point:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:”Attacke”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.447 GHz Access Point: Not associated
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key:3236-4772-4462-6D4C-6231-3938-30 Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level:-32 dBm Noise level=-87 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

What finally brought the solution was the simple command:

iwconfig wlan0 ap any

Just like that, it connects to my network without any problems.

Normally, DVDs play well on Debian Linux. Never experienced any problem with that. But recently, I tried to play a shop-bought DVD - and it didn’t work out with Kaffeine. The message I got was:

“Your DVD is probably crypted. According to your country laws, you can or can’t use libdvdcss to be able to read this disc…”

OK, the solution is as follows:

First, install the libdvdread3 - package

apt-get install libdvdread3

After this, you need to install the libdvdcss2 library, which can be downloaded on this page. Please, choose the right one, according to your architecture. For example, like that:

wget http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/deb/libdvdcss2_1.2.5-1_i386.deb

And install it:

dpkg -i libdvdcss2_1.2.5-1_i386.deb

After this, the encrypted DVDs play like a charm.

This concert of Manowar was absolutely great. Never did I experience anythings as loud as that. They performed so great on stage.

But, in “Stadthalle Fürth” some bad word threw a stink bomb. The air-conditioning system could never cope with that. So the smell was horrible. After the concert, I put my clothes on the balcony.

Well, anyway, I will try to get a ticket for them again.

Recently, my cousin was asking me for help with her computer. Traveling for 500 km just to help her, is too expensive. So I was looking for an easy remote access tool. I didn’t want to explain for two hours, how to install VNC-Server.

Second thing: I wanted to make sure, that I can listen under Linux. It’s simply too complicated to always switch between two operating systems.

What I found was:

UltraVNC SC

This tool comes helpful, if you want somebody to just click, and the connection will be established. You have to create a txt-file, upload it, and your personal .exe will be created. There are enough UltraVNC howtos online, so I don’t want to go into detail here.

The interesting thing is. If you want to listen with Linux, you can try several VNC-derivatives. Sometimes, connections have been established, but you didn’t get pictures. So, finally, I used wine and downloaded a ultravnc-viewer only. And ran it under Linux like that:

wine vncviewer.exe -listen

Then I started the created UltraVNC SC program. And: et voila, it was working.

Hey, today, I found in my logfile, that somebody was looking for that phrase:

hp+c3600+what+can+it+be+useful

*rofl*

Don’t know, whether he/she got an answer. But I can answer it now: It can’t be useful. Because it is slow, heavy, complicated and consumes more energy than an average aircraft.

The only thing it absolutely is: It is cool. If you wanna show off, have it. (I have two HP workstations. C3600 and B1000)

:-)

BTW: He/she ended up here.

Yeah, just ordered the tickets for the next event I will attend:

Manowar in Fürth.

Yeah, let it rock!