I’m not a coder or a DBA, so getting answers like “look at the source” or “reset your counter” aren’t really answers. Looking for a common, yet simple answer is really difficult as well since there’s the possibility that the answer is so simple that everyone has the problem and then finds their own way to fix it without telling anyone.
I’ll tell you my problem and how I fixed it in the hopes it helps you out.
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It’s been a good trip, but I’ve almost had enough. At least on my portables.
I recently got a shiny new X61 tablet laptop with the kick-butt 1400×1050 screen, all in a 14″ frame. Oh, and the 4GB of RAM, 160GB SATA at 7200 RPM, core 2 duo, and wifi/bluetooth/fingerprint and it’s a tablet, so there’s a stylus and rotating screen.
I also have ‘ol sturdy, the X41 (non-tablet) that I’ve had now for about three and a half years. I upgraded it to Fedora 8 a few days ago and it’s mostly worked, but there’s a few dingleberries in the upgrade that I haven’t bothered to figure out what the problem is. For example, new applications start with the title bar underneath the top panel, so I have to move or hide the panel before I can move the new window. Also, my Fn-F5 key (which should power off the Bluetooth radio) suddenly stopped working. Some ACPI think that decided to stop working. Wireless with the atheros chipset is always finicky when coming back from resume, and bluetooth integration is still pretty sub-par, especially with my Treo 700p. It doesn’t help that the Treo itself is pretty finicky when it comes to bluetooth connections.
I purchased a Treo 700p a few weeks ago as a replacement for my Sony T637 and my Palm T3. The T3 died and just never came back. I need to have a Palm device in order to share passwords with my co-workers (TealSafe is great for this). I didn’t want to be carrying two devices anymore, so I got the 700p.
The short review of the 700p: It’s a palm. I get some hangs, some strange behavior, but it’s otherwise very nice. I can get Internet access form anywhere, and now that I’m taking the bus into work, that gives me a lot of time to catch up on my e-mail on my way in so I can plan my day (yay Chatteremail).
But now on to what I wanted to do in the first place - let my Fedora Core 5 laptop connect to the Internet via bluetooth to the Treo. There’s a lot of links out there that say “Oh yea, works fine.” Without actually giving directions or hints.
I just got it working. See what I did after the jump. (more…)
I’ve had a nice SMC 802.11b access point/router for five years that’s worked pretty well. But it’s a first generation 802.11 device, hasn’t been updated by SMC for at least two years, and has a pretty short range. Now I can get a nice shiny Linksys 802.11g with a real good range, 54Mbps speed, and it even runs Linux (sweet!). Best of all, it can be had for $60 with a $10 rebate. The SMC was $250 when I paid for it (I said it was first generation).
Wandered over to Staples, picked it up, went home.
Then I found out they suck. At least the latest hardware rev, which is the only thing you can find in the stores.
Oh sure, it’s great if you’re just doing SSH or web browsing, but my SMC could do that nicely. What if I wanted to transfer a big file to my laptop? Here’s about what happened:
Me: Get that file!
Laptop: Ok!
Wireless card: Hey! Gimme that file! And make it quick!
Linksys base station: Ok! Here you….ack! (fall over dead)
It would be funnier with puppets. Wasn’t funny at the time.
The various forums I’ve found that talk about the problem indicates it might be a thermal problem. Given I have better things to do than wait for tech support to figure out the problem and I have a working, albeit slow, wireless access point now, I’ve returned it and got my money back. When I find the problem gets fixed, I’ll go buy it again. And then maybe the people in my neighborhood can suck some free bandwidth off my access point.
The ‘official’ thread tracking the problem:
http://www.linksysonline.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28