Re: debian wheezy does not support Atheros AR956x Wireless card‏

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

Hi Fanghua!

Can you please tell me if you have a computer nearby where your notebook 
currently is that has Internet connection (by observing the fact that 
you download and also send mails I presume you have)? Your problem is 
only in your wireless from what I can tell based on your message. This 
means that your Ethernet LAN port is working. If so, you can easily 
establish a bridged connection between your notebook and the computer 
that is connected to the Internet thus being able to share the 
connection. It takes a matter of a couple of clicks to get it up and 
running. I have a workstation at home that I don't want to connect to 
the Internet all the time and I use my notebook to redirect my Internet 
connection (router<->wireless adapter on notebook) to it via an Ethernet 
cable. You can do exactly the same and then you should be able to 
download all dependencies. If you have Internet access somewhere else 
but for some reason you cannot share the connection (work, school, too 
far away etc.), Debian provides DVDs with packages that you can use as 
an offline source for resolving missing dependencies.


Regards,
Aleksandar

PS: In the future ALWAYS try a live version of Debian or whatever 
distribution you want to install (if live version is provided) before 
going straight for the final installation. Although from my experience 
live version and the installed one differ when it comes to things 
working or not (in Debian Wheezy live version for example on my Sony 
Vaio VPCEB3M1E none of my AltGr keys were working yet after the 
installation most of those worked), it is much better then falling into 
a pit such as this one you are currently in. And it is definitely more 
accurate then a virtual machine, where hardware (which is culprit number 
1 for most problems on notebooks) is de facto not the real one on the host.


On 09/07/2014 03:07 PM, fanghua ye wrote:

Dear guys,

I tested again with firmware-jessie-DI-b1-i386-netinst.iso and 
firmware-testing-i386-netinst.iso, now both ethernet and wireless card are 
detected :). I was so excited. The direction is right to use non-free installer.

When I entered my correct password but after a while the error
message I got is


"The exchange of keys and association with the access point
 failed. Please check the WPA/WPA2 parameters you provided." :(.
I could download a additional Atheros driver, but without internet connection 
it could not be installed due to pakage dependency.
In google I have more or less learned there is still something missing in 
installer, maybe it is a bug?

Hopefully someone could consider this issue and I am looking much forward and 
waiting for new version released.

Thanks again all guys, I feel realy warm here :).

Fanghua




Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2014 13:48:49 +0200
From: jan.rens.reit...@gmail.com
To: debian-laptop@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: debian wheezy does not support Atheros AR956x Wireless card‏

On 09/07/2014 12:21 PM, fanghua ye wrote:

By the way, I remember the laptop was equiped with Win 7.


Win 7 or 8 is installed on most x86 computers because they wound n't be
sold without an OS.


Wheezy was successfully installed in Virtualbox with official netinstaller.
Now Win 7 is completely removed and it is surposed to install a pure
Linux system.
I do not know why the installer is not able to detect any network hardwares.


I guess that the wheezy kernel does n't support the latest versions of
the atheros hardware because it is too old. You can download atheros
drivers from:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/Atheros

The current jessie kernel version is 3.14-2-amd64.


Do these two installation have any differences?
cheers
Fanghua



--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: https://lists.debian.org/540c4621.3090...@gmail.com







--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: https://lists.debian.org/540c5e32.6090...@gmail.com

Re: Installing Debian with only 64mb RAM

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

Hi!

You should really think about what you need this for and if Debian can 
provide it for you. If you want to run something really lightweight 
there are distros specifically designed for this and frankly even a 
stripped down Debian is not meant for it. This requirement for such a 
low amount of RAM seems to me to be some sort of an embedded project you 
are working on (if you want more help, it would be useful to provide 
more information about what exactly are you trying to achieve) in which 
case I'd also suggest to looks somewhere else as long as the support for 
many architectures of Debian is not what you require.


Regards,
Aleksandar


On 04/27/2015 03:14 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

need stripped-down kernel.  64M is plenty as long as you don't run X
with all the bells and whistles.


I have also run Debian on my ASUS WL-700gE, but I wouldn't say that 64MB
is "plenty" to run Debian.  For my day-to-day use (mostly as
router+NAS+jukebox) it was indeed sufficient, but doing upgrades via
`apt-get' (which I consider as one of the cornerstones of Debian) was
fairly painful.


 Stefan





--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: https://lists.debian.org/553fa79a.9010...@gmail.com

Fwd: Debian 32-bit or 64-bit

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

​Hi, Jos :)

Well, in order to produce 64bit binaries you would need a 64bit system
(although maybe with QEMU you can omit that but it's not worth it).
RAM-wise it's no problem to stay with 32bit because of the PAE (physical
address extension) that is a feature of the Linux kernel that you either
already have with your current one or need to add (by downloading a
PAE-enabled kernel image). For more information on PAE you can read at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension. Your CPU has to
support this extension (from what I've seen at
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_2/Intel-Core%202%20Duo%20Mobile%20T7700%20LE80537GG0564M.html
in the section *Other features* at the bottom it does support it). You can
also check http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/12071 on a discussion whether to
use 32bit with PAE enabled or pure 64bit OS.

Regards,
Alex

Re: Debian 32-bit or 64-bit

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

Hi Jos :)

​Yes, there are some performance benefits but it really depends on the
scenario. Many Linux applications have lived a lot longer in a 32bit
environment hence they are better tested than their 64bit counterparts. As
for the minimum RAM required it's the same as the 32bit version (see
http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/amd64/ch03s04.html.en). However I
would suggest 256MB minimum if you want to have a window manager installed.
The thing with 64bit is that pointers require double the space compared to
32bit ones hence the increase in RAM requirements (this is most notable
with Windows where you can see increase by factor 2-4 in this departement).
A basic installation of Debian however (the minimum 128MB RAM is suggested
for *terminal-only* installations; I've tried running an LXDE-based Debian
on 128MB and it wasn't that great of an experience) includes very little
software that accordingly doesn't blow up the memory requirements
noticably. The more you install and run, the more RAM you will need. You
can balance things out a little bit by adding some extra swap if necessary.
I have been using Jessie from its first day of final release with XFCE on
it and the memory footpring of an idle running Debian system is really,
really great.

Note also that on 64bit you can run/develop 32bit software using the *multiarch
*feature Debian (any many other Linux distros) has nowadays. Read
https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTOto see how to enable it. It is
important to notice that doing so requires downloading the 32bit
counterparts of all required libs which on systems with small storage space
(HDD/SSD) would have an important impact.

Regards,
Alex

Re: Home Directory in SSD

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

Hi Jos,

Usually SSDs are used to store things that you want to load as fast as
possible. Generally this includes files, that the OS requires during its
booting, application that you use very often etc. I would recommend that
you store things like Music, Documents, Videos etc. to an HDD not only
because its easier to diagnose for failures but also because you don't
require that much performance for such files and because of the much
larger space a good old HDD offers compared to a modern SSD. If you have
partitioned your SSD in a manner that /home is not where / is moving
your /home won't be a problem at all.

Regards,
Alex

On 02/06/2016 03:00 PM, Jos Collin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have Debian/testing installed completely in my 120GB SSD. I have
> learned that if an SSD fails, it is difficult to recover data from them.
> An SSD often does not give much warning before it fails.
> Electronic components don’t begin to grind or buzz as they grow older.
> They work – and then they don’t.
> 
> So do I have to consider this risk and move the /home and /root
> directories to an HDD as they contain the Personal Data of each user,
> and only keep the Operating System files in the SSD ? How do you people
> keep the /home and /root directories, when you install the OS in an SSD
> ? (I have an Ultrabay Caddy, in which I can connect the HDD also in my
> Thinkpad T61).
> 
> Please advice.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jos Collin
> 


0x05076853.asc
Description: application/pgp-keys


signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Home Directory in SSD

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

You have to determine where exactly is speed required with your files.
As it was already mentioned (twice) speed is required only for certain
things. Putting a video file that is opened once every couple of days is
most certainly not crutial to the system's performance. I haven't heard
anyone ever suggesting that you store your video collection on an SSD...

On 02/06/2016 04:42 PM, Jos Collin wrote:
> Keeping everything on the SSD has its advantage too - speed. But won't
> secure the data on the fly as keeping it on the HDD.
> 
> Actually I'm confused which method to follow. Both has its own advantage
> and disadvantage.
> 
> On 06-Feb-2016 7:54 PM, "Bennett Piater"  > wrote:
> 
> I just keep everything on my ssd and make regular backups.
> If you backup enough, which you should anyway, you'll be fine.
> 
> On February 6, 2016 3:00:57 PM GMT+01:00, Jos Collin
> mailto:joscol...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >I have Debian/testing installed completely in my 120GB SSD. I have
> >learned that if an SSD fails, it is difficult to recover data from
> >them.
> >An SSD often does not give much warning before it fails.
> >Electronic components don’t begin to grind or buzz as they grow older.
> >They work – and then they don’t.
> >
> >So do I have to consider this risk and move the /home and /root
> >directories to an HDD as they contain the Personal Data of each user,
> >and only keep the Operating System files in the SSD ? How do you people
> >
> >keep the /home and /root directories, when you install the OS in an SSD
> >
> >? (I have an Ultrabay Caddy, in which I can connect the HDD also in my
> >Thinkpad T61).
> >
> >Please advice.
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Jos Collin
> 
> --
> GPG fingerprint: 871F 1047 7DB3 DDED 5FC4 47B2 26C7 E577 EF96 7808
> 


0x05076853.asc
Description: application/pgp-keys


signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Home Directory in SSD

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

Backups are usually supposed to be done on a different storage device
than the one that is actively used. I wouldn't include the "backup
scenario" here unless Jos is doing backups of a storage device onto the
storage device itself (if that is the case I would strongly recommend
NOT to do that).

As for the quality of SSDs - yes, it has improved greatly (example for
some test of longevity:
http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes).
I have read however that SSDs are much more susceptible to power failure
compared to HDDs leading to a higher data corruption in case a poor
electrical grid is used to power the device up. However in terms of
protecting your data from shocks (dropping the notebook onto the floor)
SSDs are definitely much better. Because of the mechanics that are
involved in HDDs, such drives are less suitable for the task of storing
data on mobile devices.

Needless to say both HDDs and SSDs are not meant for long term storage.
That is way things like tape drives are still produced and widely
popular among people who work with servers (in terms of longevity,
capacity etc. tape storage blows both HDDs and SSDs away by a lot but
the main issue there is definitely the steep price for the device that
are used to read those).

My suggestion, Jos, is to start looking at various tech reports with
tests and detailed description of the scenarios those tests were
performed for so that you can decide for yourself what to do. I'm
backing up my data on a regular basis to an external drive (even have a
tape drive here somewhere but there seems to be some problem with it (or
with Linux using it :D)) and if it wasn't for the fact that my Vaio is
more than 6 years old and has a SATA2 (yes...TWO) I would have changed
my HDD for an SSD long ago. If your notebook is mostly stationary (as a
desktop replacement) you can go with a SSD (for regularly used files) +
HDD (for less regularly used files) combo. SSDs are relatively new but I
do believe they will replace the HDDs in the near future because - let's
face it - in terms of innovation the HDD-departament isn't doing that
much except increasing the storage density which will also stop at one
point.

Regards,
Alex


On 02/06/2016 11:00 PM, Tom Dial wrote:
> Doing regular backups takes pretty good care of device failure.
> Depending on how it is done, it also can help recover from accidents
> other than equipment failure, like deleting files in error.
> 
> That said, I have read that for some time SSD reliability has been at
> least on a par with HDDs.  And you also do not want to have to recover
> data from a failed HDD.
> 
> Tom
> 
> On 02/06/2016 07:00 AM, Jos Collin wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have Debian/testing installed completely in my 120GB SSD. I have
>> learned that if an SSD fails, it is difficult to recover data from them.
>> An SSD often does not give much warning before it fails.
>> Electronic components don’t begin to grind or buzz as they grow older.
>> They work – and then they don’t.
>>
>> So do I have to consider this risk and move the /home and /root
>> directories to an HDD as they contain the Personal Data of each user,
>> and only keep the Operating System files in the SSD ? How do you people
>> keep the /home and /root directories, when you install the OS in an SSD
>> ? (I have an Ultrabay Caddy, in which I can connect the HDD also in my
>> Thinkpad T61).
>>
>> Please advice.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jos Collin
>>
>>
> 


0x05076853.asc
Description: application/pgp-keys


signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: PowerTop on Debian Stretch

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

This is a reply to Jos Collin's weird comment.

What kind of a comment was that? Just waste your battery because - hey! -
it will die on you anyway at some point in the future. How is battery life
NOT important for a MOBILE COMPUTER?!? The whole point of a laptop IS to
use its battery efficiently so that you can be independent power-wise at
least for a limited amount of time.

On 10 February 2016 at 07:02, Jos Collin  wrote:

> Hi, I'm not answering your question. But my suggestion is: don't bother
> about your battery life. Because even if you get 10 hours now, it is going
> to reduce slowly and reach 30 mins or 10 mins with in a few years. Then you
> have to replace your battery with a new one.
>
> I had a battery that drains to 0% with in 30 secs. I replaced that in 2012
> with a 9 cell battery, when I started traveling with my laptop. The new
> battery also drains to 0% within 30 secs now.
>
> So I advice you to forget about battery life and move on to other
> important things. :-)
> On 10-Feb-2016 11:05 AM, "Dwijesh Gajadur"  wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone.
>> I have a Dell Inspiron 5559 laptop which has a 40WHr, 4-cell battery. On
>> Windows 7 I get a battery life of 6-7 hours. On Ubuntu I get a battery life
>> of 5 hours after using PowerTop.
>> However on Debian I get only 3 hours of battery life. I have done
>> calibration several times and for several hours but I get only 3 hours of
>> battery life.
>>
>> When I do *powertop --calibrate *the following lines appears:
>>
>> root@debian:/# powertop --auto-tune
>> Loaded 137 prior measurements
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>> File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with
>> battery only
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> Devfreq not enabled
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>> File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with
>> battery only
>> To show power estimates do 124 measurement(s) connected to battery only
>>   unknown op '{'
>> Leaving PowerTOP
>>
>> root@debian:/# powertop --calibrate
>> Loaded 87 prior measurements
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>> File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with
>> battery only
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> Devfreq not enabled
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertoproot@debian:/# powertop
>> --auto-tune
>> Loaded 137 prior measurements
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>> File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with
>> battery only
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> Devfreq not enabled
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>> File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with
>> battery only
>> To show power estimates do 124 measurement(s) connected to battery only
>>   unknown op '{'
>> Leaving PowerTOP
>>
>> root@debian:/# powertop --calibrate
>> Loaded 87 prior measurements
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>> File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with
>> battery only
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> RAPL device for cpu 0
>> RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask f
>> Devfreq not enabled
>> Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
>> File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with
>> battery only
>> Starting PowerTOP power estimate calibration
>> Calibrating idle
>> System is not available
>>   unknown op '{'
>> To show power estimates do 174 measurement(s) connected to battery only
>> System is not available
>> Calibrating: disk usage
>> Calibrating backlight
>>  device /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness
>> Calibrating idle
>> System is not available
>> System is not available
>> Calibrating: CPU usage on 1 threads
>> Calibrating: CPU usage on 4 threads
>> Calibrating: CPU wakeup power consumption
>> Calibrating: CPU wakeup power consumption
>> Calibrating: CPU wakeup power consumption
>> Calibrating USB devices
>>  device /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/control
>>  device /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-6/power/control
>>  device /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-8/power/control
>>  device /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb1/power/control
>>  device

Re: PowerTop on Debian Stretch

[Aleksandar Atanasov]

I understood pretty well what you said. That is why I was so flabbergasted.
You are now partially contradicting yourself. Your first post was "Battery
is not important" and now "Use it efficiently" (why if it's not important?)
and "Battery is not important" at the same time.

Now on topic: from what I've seen so far googling this seems to be a bug.
Multiple distributions (Arch, RH etc.) have patched this upstream. Not sure
if fix is available for Ubuntu (which Ubuntu are we talking about here?)

On 10 February 2016 at 08:18, Jos Collin  wrote:

> I'm saying that the battery should be used efficiently.
>
> But What I meant was it is not worth bothering too much about battery
> life, as it is going to die in the near future anyway.
>



-- 
Elvis Presley: Love is worth all the gold on Earth