Posts Tagged ‘Linux’

* How to stop unattended upgrades on Debian / Ubuntu and other deb based Linux

Saturday, July 21st, 2018

If you wondered how to stop the annoying automatic upgrades that push unknown software in background loading the computer while you browse or work and Why here is how:

* 1. Stop Annoying Unattended Upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu Linux

As root you have to execute following command
linux:~# apt-get remove –yes unattended-upgrades

And TA DA DAAA DAA DAaM !!!
 

* From now if you like to upgrade to latest in order to upgrade you can do it manually with these 3 commands:

linux:~# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade dist-upgrade

Your thanks to me are very welcome

Virtual Keyboard for Linux and other Freedom respecting operating Systems

Monday, July 30th, 2018

How to install and Use Linux Virtual Keyboard and other freedom respecting Operating Systems

  •  Looking for a quick way to use VIRTUAL KEYBOARD ON LINUX COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM, you can do it just this 1 task in 3 simple steps  ???
    – Logical question emerges, WHY ??? would you need a virtual keyboard on Free Software OS such as Linux?
    Well, just because sometimes it is much more secure to use a Virtual Keyboard, especially if you have doubt that your keyboard has been tapped or a Key Logger (Sniffer), intercepting the Keyboard IN / OUT jacks, is installed on the computer or you might have sit on a computer of ,a friend running Linux, and you want to make sure he did not install sniffer to intercept your ,SSH login passwords and ,later hack into your Servers, after stealing, the password

 

  • Assuming you're on : – Debian / Ubuntu Linux, or other of the numerous IT systems such as ,FreeBSD / OpeBSD etc. out there, you can run simply this commands:

     

  •  apt-get install –yes florence
    * A. To make it, easily invokable for laters, create a small bash, shell script in directory; – location /usr/bin/virtual-keyboard like, the one below:

    vim /usr/bin/virtual-keyboard

    * B.. INside the file Place following 1 liner code
     

    #!/bin/sh
    /usr/bin/florence

     

    * C… To later invoke it any time:
    Press ALT + F2 (or use Run Command Dialog in GNOME / KDE / Windomaker / IceWM whatever or any other crazy graphic environment of your choice and run:

    /usr/bin/virtual-keyboard

 

How to connect to WiFi network using console or terminal on GNU / Linux

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

iwlist-screenshot-howto-connect-to-wifi-in-text-console-linux-wpasupplicant

Sometimes its useful to connect to Wireless Networks using console . The reasons for that might be many, one possible reason is to be able to debug, Wireless connection failures or simply omit the use of the many available GUI wifi connection programs.

As a first step before connecting in terminal is to look up for the wifi networks available for connection, this is done with cmd:

linux:~# iwlist wlan0 scanning
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:24:01:90:8F:38
Channel:7
Frequency:2.442 GHz (Channel 7)
Quality=70/70 Signal level=-39 dBm
Encryption key:on
ESSID:"magdanoz"
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s
Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Mode:Master
Extra:tsf=000000034f5c786b
Extra: Last beacon: 68ms ago
IE: Unknown: 00086D616764616E6F7A
IE: Unknown: 010482848B96
IE: Unknown: 030107
IE: Unknown: 32080C1218602430486C
IE: Unknown: CC0700CC020000018A
IE: Unknown: CC0700CC0300000100
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Cell 02 - Address: 00:1E:2A:60:5E:DC
Channel:1
...

To just list the ESSID s of the wifi networks:

linux:~# iwlist wlan0 scanning|grep -i 'essid'
ESSID:"magdanoz"
ESSID:"default"
ESSID:"todorov"
ESSID:"BTC-ADSL"
ESSID:"Zahari"
ESSID:"Drago"

1. Connecting to Open Wireless Network

Now from the above output it is clear 6 wifi networks are available for connection. The default wifi network from the list is an Open network (e.g. without pass). To connect to it I use cmd:

linux:~# /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid 'default'
linux:~# /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key open

After connected to configure IP, Gateway and DNS from a DHCP server running on the WIFI router, dhclient cmd is used:

linux:~# /sbin/dhclient wlan0

2. Connecting to WEP 64bit / 128bit encrypted network

linux:~# /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key 1234-5678-9101-1213

3. Connecting to WPA / WPA2 encrypted wifi network

To connect to WPA or WPA2 encrypted network its necessery to have installed wpasupplicant package. The name of the package might vary in different distributions on Debian and Ubuntu, the name of the package is wpasupplicant, on Fedora, CentOS and RHEL the package that has to be in is wpa_supplicant :
After having installed the wpa_supplicant to connect to the network with ESSID name magdanoz , wpa_passphrase is used first:

linux:~# /usr/bin/wpa_passphrase magdanoz Secret_Wifi_Password | tee -a /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
network={
ssid="magdanoz"
#psk="Secret_Wifi_Password"
psk=6f7590250c4496ff7bf8dd25199ac3bb5a614d4bc069975aa884bcf084da73bc
}

As you see in above command the secret password key is generated printed on the screen and then added to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf , necessery to establish the wireless connection with wpa_supplicant with cmd:

linux:~# /sbin/wpa_supplicant wpa_supplicant -d wext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B

-d wext instructs wpa_supplicant to use (Linux wireless extension driver).
-B tells wpa_supplicant to background the connection to prevent the wireless connection to drop off, if the console / terminal from which it is launched gets closed.

In case of succesful connection with wpa_supplicant , once again IP, Gateway and DNS is configured fetching the settings from the wifi hotspot dhcp server:

linux:~# /sbin/dhclient wlan0

General information about the wireless network and info related to the established connection can be obtained with /usr/bin/iwconfig :

linux:~# /sbin/iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abg ESSID:"magdanoz"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.442 GHz Access Point: 00:24:00:90:8F:38
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-39 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

To configure the exact channel over which the wireless connection will be established again is done with iwconfig, for instance to configure wlan0 wifi connection established to be on wifi channel 7:

linux:~# /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 channel 11

By default iwconfig is set to automatically set the channel based on connected network ESSID , if the channel is modified to some specific number to revert it back use:

linux:~# /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 channel auto
 

How to configure Joystick ( Gamepad ) on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint GNU / Linux easily

Thursday, November 2nd, 2017

linux-joystick-howto-configure-easily-joypad-joystick-genius-maxfire

"All work and no fun makes Jack a dull boy …."

If you own a PC joystick and you're a gamer who just migrated to GNU / Linux and you enter the wonderful world of Linux gaming (haha what wonderful world its nightmare :), perhaps you will want an easy way to make your Joystick work on GNU / Linux.

In this article I'll try my best to explain how you can relavitely easy make your Linux joystick (joy stick 🙂 ), bring you the happiness of playing old arcades in an old school joystick way.
 

1. Install necessery packages for joystick under Linux
 

gamelinux:~# apt-get install –yes joystick jstest-gtk joy2key gjoypad xserver-xorg-input-joystick \
xserver-xorg-input-joystick-dev kodi-peripherals


2. Test wherher joystick is properly detected by kernel

 

gamelinux:~# cat /dev/input/js0

 

test-whether-joystick-works-on-linux-screenshot-cat-command

 

 

If above cat command returns a bunch of weird signs in your terminal, that means the joystick was successfully detected and should be working.
 

3. Load Joystick necessery Linux modules if your Gamepad is not properly detected


Note that I assume you're super user most of below commands are preferrably to be run as root:

If you're Gamepad is not detected, you'll have to manually create /dev/input/js0

gamelinux:~# cd /dev/input
gamelinux;~# MAKEDEV js0


Further on you'll need to perhaps load at least the following 3 modules which gives support for a number of JoySticks / Gamepad devices

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe sidewinder
gamelinux:~# modprobe gameport

Just in case if you're planning to play old Arcade games I recommend you load also following bunch of modules:

gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-seq
gamelinux:~# modprobe 3c59x
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-emu10k1
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-pcm-oss
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-mixer-oss
gamelinux:~# modprobe snd-seq-oss

If you get an error message and don't suceed to calibrate your gamepad, you need to look under to know the modules that fit your Joystick model.

 

For a MS Sidewinder gamepad

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe sidewinder
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
## This one work only for analog pad, like joysticks


For a Logitech WingMan digital gamepad
 

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe adi
## Specific driver for Logitech gamepads

For a Logitech WingMan gamepad (analog)

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
## Module for analog gamepads
gamelinux:~# modprobe pcigame
## Module for PCI card (??)
gamelinux:~# modprobe adi
## Module for Logitech pads


For a MS SideWinder ForceFeedBack Pro
 

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
gamelinux:~# modprobe sidewinder
gamelinux:~# modprobe iforce
## Force Feedback driver
gamelinux:~# modprobe evdev

 


For a Guillemot dual analog gamepad (gameport, non-USB)

gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev
gamelinux:~# modprobe ns558
gamelinux:~# modprobe guillemot
gamelinux:~# modprobe analog
## to check
gamelinux:~# modprobe iforce
## to check


If auto-detect of joystick doesn't work (hopefully not your case)

 

gamelinux:~# modprobe usbhid
gamelinux:~# modprobe joydev

 

– Enable Joystick for KDE Users
 

Luckily though historically the kcontrol package was required but nowadays, KDE users could usually calibrate joystick via KDE K Control Centrer


To make joystick configuration permanent on Linux you need to add the modules that worked with your Joystick device to /etc/modules,

for eample I own

JOYSTICK GENIUS MAXFIRE G-08XU

And my

/etc/modules file

looks like so:

 

gamelinux:~# cat /etc/modules

# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
snd-seq
3c59x
snd-emu10k1
snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-seq-oss
joydev


In case of some problems with SoundCard conflicting joystick or the other way around you might also want to add into /etc/modprobe.d/options something similar to

 

gamelinux:~# vim /etc/modprobe.d/options

gamelinux:~# options snd_ens1371 joystick_port=1

 

4. Calibrate your joystick either using jstest / jscal commands or GNOME's jstest-gtk
 

To calibrate joystick in text mode use below commands

 

jscal /dev/input/js0
jstest /dev/input/js0


For the lazy ones you can calibrate your joystick via GNOME's graphical tool jstest-gtk
 

jstest-gtk

jstest-gtk-linux-screenshot-how-to-configure-joystick-linux

This article is just a basic explanation on how to make your joystick work, for thoroughful advanced explanation on JoySticks and Gamepads I recommend ArchLinux Wiki explanation on how to configure Gamepads
 

5. Create missing Symlinks from /dev/input/js0 to /dev/js0
 

I've personally experienced a problem with Xmame / Xmess (Multimedia Arcade Emulator) and other old arcade Virtual Machine Emulators that are supposed to recognize the joystick, but because it is common that the joystick is trying to be invoked via /dev/js0 /dev/js1 (depending on its model), but somehow this links are missing, thus I had to manually create the links with ln command, like so:

– For /dev/input/js0 to link /dev/js0

 

cd /dev; ln -sf /dev/input/js0;


– For /dev/input/js1 to link /dev/js1

 

cd /dev; ln -sf /dev/input/js1;

 

Install TeamViewer on latest Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS Linux quick how to

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

teamviewer-howto-install-on-gnu-linux-teamviewer-and-tux-penguin-logo

If you're a sysadmin who uses GNU / Linux as a Desktop as me you will certainly need to have TeamViewer installed and ready for use on your Linux desktop.

Even though TeamViewer is a proprietary application and I prefer not to use it I'm forced to have it installed because of every now and then a friend or customer would require you to login remotely to his Windows server and clean up the system either from spyware or viruses or just deploy some new software.

Nowdays most of people are running 64 bit ( amd64 ) built operating system and the problem with TeamViewer on Linux 64bit is that it doesn't have an actual full featured 64 port of the application but only have a 32 bits install, besides that big part of components of TeamViewer are running using wine windows emulation and hencing making it work on Linux is sometimes not so trivial as we might have desired.

Because TeamViewer is a 32 bit application, it has a number of dependency libraries that are 32 bit in Linux that's the so called (i386) built libraries (packages).

Hence to make TeamViewer work on modern GNU / Linux operating systems such as Debian / Ubuntu / Mint Linux / Fedora / CentOS etc. it is necessery to have some i386 libraries and other 32 bit things pre-installed and only then you can have a working copy of teamviewer on your Linux.

1. Installing i386 applications required for TeamViewer operation

– On Debian / Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Xubuntu Linux run below commands:

First we need to add the i386 architecture to be supported by Linux

 

dpkg –add-architecture i386
apt update

 

Then on Debian and other deb based Linux we need to install following libraries
 

# apt install libjpeg62-turbo:i386 wget gdebi-core
 

 


2. Download latest teamviewer version from TeamViewer website

– On Debian, Ubuntu and other deb based Linux distros.

Download latest teamviewer version and install it:

 

# wget https://download.teamviewer.com/download/teamviewer_i386.deb

 

 

 

On CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuSE other RPM based distros:

Download the Teamviewer package and package signature using wget

 

# wget https://download.teamviewer.com/download/linux/signature/TeamViewer2017.asc
# wget https://download.teamviewer.com/download/teamviewer.i686.rpm


 

 

3. Insteall teamviewer with gdebi (Simple Tool to install deb files)

 

# gdebi teamviewer_i386.deb


Remote control and meeting solution.
 TeamViewer provides easy, fast and secure remote access and meeting solutions
 to Linux, Windows PCs, Apple PCs and various other platforms,
 including Android and iPhone.
 .
 TeamViewer is free for personal use.
 You can use TeamViewer completely free of charge to access your private
 computers or to help your friends with their computer problems.
 .
 To buy a license for commercial use, please visit http://www.teamviewer.com
 .
 This package contains Free Software components.
 For details, see /opt/teamviewer/doc/license_foss.txt
Do you want to install the software package? [y/N]:y

 

On Fedora, CentOS, SuSE RPM based ones:

 

# rpm –import TeamViewer_Linux_PubKey.asc

 

 

# rpm -i teamviewer_12.0.xxxxx.i686.rpm

 

or if you face some failed dependencies you better use zypper that will download any missing teamviewer dependencies.

 

# zypper install teamviewer_12.0.xxxxx.i686.rpm

 

 

 

4. Start Teamviewer

 

 

teamviewer-running-on-linux-screenshot

 

linux:~$ teamviewer
Init…
CheckCPU: SSE2 support: yes
XRandRWait: No value set. Using default.
XRandRWait: Started by user.
Checking setup…
wine: configuration in '/home/hipo/.local/share/teamviewer12' has been updated.
Launching TeamViewer …
Launching TeamViewer GUI …

 

How to check Linux OS install date / How long ago was Linux installed

Sunday, October 22nd, 2017

If you're sysadmin who inherited a few hundreds of Linux machines from a previous admin and you're in process of investigating how things were configured by the previous administrator one of the crucial things to find out might be

How Long ago was Linux installed?

Here is how to check the Linux OS install date.

The universal way nomatter the Linux distribution is to use fullowing command:

 

root@pcfreak:~# tune2fs -l /dev/sda1 | grep 'Filesystem created:'
Filesystem created:       Thu Sep  6 21:44:22 2012

 

 

Above command assumes the Linux's root partition / is installed on /dev/sda1 however if your case is different, e.g. the primary root partition is installed on /dev/sda2 or /dev/sdb1 / dev/sdb2 etc. just place the right first partition into the command.

If primary install root partition is /dev/sdb1 for example:
 

root@pcfreak:~# tune2fs -l /dev/sdb1 | grep 'Filesystem created:'

 


To find out what is the root partition of the Linux server installed use fdisk command:

 

 

 

root@pcfreak:~# fdisk -l

 

Disk /dev/sda: 465,8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00051eda

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048 965193727 965191680 460,2G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       965195774 976771071  11575298   5,5G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       965195776 976771071  11575296   5,5G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 111,8 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

 


Other ways to check the Linux OS install date on Debian / Ubuntu / Mint etc. deb. based GNU / Linux

 


Deban based Linux distributions do create an initial /var/log/installer directory containing various install information such as hardware-summary, partition, initial installed deb packages, exact version of Linux distribution, and the way it was installed either it was installed from an ISO image, or it was network install etc.

 

root@pcfreak:~# ls -al /var/log/installer/
total 1228
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root   4096 sep  6  2012 ./
drwxr-xr-x 72 root root  12288 окт 22 06:26 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 sep  6  2012 cdebconf/
-rw-r–r–  1 root root  17691 sep  6  2012 hardware-summary
-rw-r–r–  1 root root    163 sep  6  2012 lsb-release
-rw——-  1 root root 779983 sep  6  2012 partman
-rw-r–r–  1 root root  51640 sep  6  2012 status
-rw——-  1 root root 363674 sep  6  2012 syslog

 

If those directory is missing was wiped out by the previous administrator, to clear up traces of his previous work before he left job another possible way to find out exact install date is to check timestamp of /lost+found directory;
 

root@pcfreak:~# ls -ld /lost+found/
drwx—— 2 root root 16384 sep  6  2012 /lost+found//

 

Check OS Linux install date on (Fedora, CentOS, Scientific Linux, Oracle and other Redhat RPM based Distros)

 

[root@centos: ~]# rpm -qi basesystem
Name        : basesystem
Version     : 10.0
Release     : 7.el7
Architecture: noarch
Install Date: Mon 02 May 2016 19:20:58 BST
Group       : System Environment/Base
Size        : 0
License     : Public Domain
Signature   : RSA/SHA256, Tue 01 Apr 2014 14:23:16 BST, Key ID     199e2f91fd431d51
Source RPM  : basesystem-10.0-7.el7.src.rpm
Build Date  : Fri 27 Dec 2013 17:22:15 GMT
Build Host  : ppc-015.build.eng.bos.redhat.com
Relocations : (not relocatable)
Packager    : Red Hat, Inc. <http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla>
Vendor      : Red Hat, Inc.
Summary     : The skeleton package which defines a simple Red Hat Enterprise Linux system
Description :
Basesystem defines the components of a basic Red Hat Enterprise Linux
system (for example, the package installation order to use during
bootstrapping). Basesystem should be in every installation of a system,
and it should never be removed.

 

Check TOP Memory and CPU use with ps command on Linux

Sunday, October 22nd, 2017

linux-command-toolbox-how-to-check-maximum-cpu-load-and-max-memory-usage-with-ps-on-linux

There are plenty of software to check the GNU / Linux Server Load bottlenecks such as top / tload / slabtop / htop but for shell scripting purposes or perl  / python / ruby automation Dev Ops scripts and various Web and Middleware Tasks it is always better to know how to print list the TOP Memory and CPU consumption processes on Linux.

Below are two easy commands you can use to check out, which process is the most memory hungry and which running daemon (MySQL / PostgreSQL / Apache whatever) is the overloading your *nix server CPU.

TOP Memory use sorted by process memory max consumption

 

ps aux  | awk '{print $6/1024 " MBtt" $11}'  | sort -n

 


TOP CPU use sorted y running daemon
 

ps -eo pcpu,pid,user,args | sort -k 1 -r | head -10


Enjoy 🙂

How to turn keyboard backlight on GNU / Linux, keyboard no backlight solution

Friday, October 20th, 2017

how-to-make-CM_Storm_Devastator-keyboard_backlight-work-on-linux-enabled-disable-keyboard-glowing-gnu-linux

If you're a GNU / Linux user and you happen to buy a backlighted keyboard, some nice new laptop whose keyboard supports the more and more modern keyboard growing or if you happen to install a GNU / Linux for a Gamer friend no matter the Linux distribution, you might encounter sometimes  problem even in major Linux distributions Debian / Ubuntu / Mint / Fedora with keyboard backlight not working.

Lets say you buy a Devastator II backlighted keyboard or any other modern keyboard you plug it into the Linux machine and there is no nice blinking light coming out of the keyboard, all the joy is gone yes I know. The free software coolness would have been even more grandiose if your keyboard was shiny and glowing in color / colors 🙂

But wait, there is hope for your joy to be made complete.

To make the keyboard backlight switch on Just issue commands:

 

xmodmap -e 'add mod3 = Screen_Lock'

 

# Turn on the keyboard bright lamps
xset led on

# Turns off the keyboard bright lamps
xset led off


If you want to make the keyboard backlight be enabled permanent the easiest solution is to

– add the 3 command lines to /etc/rc.local

E.g. to do so open /etc/rc.local and before exit 0 command just add the lines:

 

vim /etc/rc.local

 

xmodmap -e 'add mod3 = Screen_Lock'

# Turn on the keyboard bright lamps
xset led on

# Turns off the keyboard bright lamps
xset led off


If you prefer to have the keyboard colorful backlight enable and disabled from X environment on lets say GNOME , here is how to make yourself an icon that enabled and disables the colors.

That's handy because at day time it is a kind of meaningless for the keyboard to glow.

Here is the shell script:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 1
xset led 3
xmodmap -e 'add mod3 = Scroll_Lock'


I saved it as /home/hipo/scripts/backlight.sh

(don't forget to make it executable!, to do so run):

 

chmod +x /home/hipo/scripts/backlight.sh


Then create  the .desktop file at /etc/xdg/autostart/backlight.desktop so that it runs the new shell script, like so:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Devastator Backlight
Exec=/home/hipo/scripts/backlight.sh
Icon=system-run
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Ubuntu on Laptop

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

ubuntu-on-laptop

Here the story a cousin of my father has called me to help them to buy a laptop. We have checked different types of laptops in TechnoMarket and TechnoPolis, Vali and Bergon. In vali we asked about GPS devices (a device only connecting with a Satellite, which needs software to be used). I asked the seller in Vali is there a chance if the Holux GPS to work with Linux.He said he have no idea I'm citing his words "Only a few people use Linux today" :). Also the Computer sellers in TechnoMarket weren't much of a competent, I myself also didn't have enough experience with Laptops. Before everything began I asked God to guide me in the choice. We choose to take a Toshiba Sattelite L40 12G or something like this. The machine is a pretty neat one (2G of ram, Intel video, 120 SATA Disk). I gave the suggestion to install Linux on the laptop and spend money of the Operating System (because they would need the laptop when they travel out of the country, buying furniture to resell and they don't want to have illegal software. There was an international warranty issue. The sellers in Technomarket didn't have data is the laptop with International warranty later we understood that there is international warranty of 1 year. We bought the laptop I successfully installed Ubuntu and a ton of useful software. Today I have installed qemu qemu-launcher and qemulator. Ubuntu seems to work pretty flawlessly. The idea in the beginning was to buy a flash memory and install a windows on it because they needed also to have Windows to install a TBI Credit (SmartInfo) program. I tried Windows XP/2000/XP Small but all them required a minimum of 2G of hard disk space to install (!) pretty annoying and this wasn't possible because the flash memory we had was only a 1G one. In the end I ended installing the Windows on the HDD. Thanks to God everything seems to go on in a good way. Thanks Lord! 🙂 The only thing that's left to do is install the Wireless card properly under Linux and Windows.Glory be to God The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit! Now and Forever and Ever. Amen!END—–

How to install Toshiba Satellite L40 B14 Wireless Adapter ( ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B) on Ubuntu and Debian Linux

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

https://www.pc-freak.net/images/toshiba-satellite-l40

How to install Toshiba L40 B14 Wireless Adapter ( ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B) on Ubuntu and Debian Linux
I've been struggling for more than 10 hours to fix up issues on a Ubuntu Maverick-Meerkaat with a rtl8187B Wireless Adapter

The RTL8187B almost drove me mad. I could see the wlan0 which meant the kernel is detecting the device, I could even bring it up with ifconfig wlan0 up , however when I tried it in gnome's network-manager or wicd the wireless networks were not showing up.

Trying to scan for networks using the commands:


ubuntu:~# iwlist wlan0 scan

was also unsuccesful, trying to bring up and down the wireless wlan0 interface with:


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 up

or


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 down

Both returned the error:
iwconfig: unknown command "up" and iwconfig: unknown command "down"

Running simply iwconfig was properly returning information about my Wireless Interface wlan0 :


wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off

The exact information I could get about the wireless device was via the command:


ubuntu:~# lsusb | grep realtek
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B Wireless Adapter

Trying manually to scan for wireless networks from console or gnome-terminal with command returned also the below weird results:


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 scan
iwconfig: unknown command "scan"

More oddly tunning wlan0 interface with commands like:


ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 rate 11M

were succesful …

I read a bunch of documentation online concerning the wireless card troubles on Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian etc.

Just few of all the resources I've read and tried are:

http://rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page (Returning empty page already a lot resource)
http://rtl8187b.sourceforge.net (A fork of rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net which is still available though it was not usable)

Some of the other resources which most of the people recommended as a way to properly install the RTL8187B wireless driver on linux was located on the website:

http://datanorth.net/~cuervo/rtl8187b/ (Trying to access this page returned a 404 error e.g. this page is no-longer usable)

I found even a webpage in Ubuntu Help which claimed to explain how to properly install and configure the RTL8187B wireless driver on which is below:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/RealtekRTL8187b

Even the Ubuntu help instructions were pointing me to the broken cuervo's website URL

Anyways I was able to find the rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz online and made a mirror of rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz which you can download here

Another rtl8187b driver I found was on a toshiba website made especailly for the wireless linux drivers:

http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/pc/sat_PSPD0_report.htm

The questionable file which was claimed to properly be able to make the Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B Wireless Adapter to work out was called rl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz.
I've made a mirror of rtl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz is here

None of the driver archives rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz and rl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz that was supposed to make the Toshiba L40 realtek wireless to work out, after compiling and installing the drivers from source worked out …

Both archives produced plenty of error messages and it seems on newer kernels like the one on this notebook:

Linux zlatina 2.6.35-28-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 18 19:00:26 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux, they're no longer usable.

The compile errors I got when I tried compiling the rtl8187b driver provided by the archive rtl8187b-modified-dist were:


root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified# sh makedrv
rm -fr *.mod.c *.mod *.o .*.cmd *.mod.* *.ko *.o *~
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/build M=/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211 CC=gcc modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
scripts/Makefile.build:49: *** CFLAGS was changed in "/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211/Makefile". Fix it to use EXTRA_CFLAGS. Stop.
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
rm -fr *.mod.c *.mod *.o .*.cmd *.ko *~
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/build M=/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187 CC=gcc modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
scripts/Makefile.build:49: *** CFLAGS was changed in "/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187/Makefile". Fix it to use EXTRA_CFLAGS. Stop.
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified#

Another driver I tried which was found on aircrack-ng.org's website was rtl8187_linux_26.1010.zip

Here are the error messages I experienced while I tried to compile the realtek wireless driver from the archive rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006


compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [/home/zlatina/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/beta-8187/r8187_core.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/beta-8187] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
make: *** [modules] Error 2

I tried a number of fix ups hoping to solve the compile error messages, but my efforts were useless, as it seems many things has changed in newer Ubuntu versions and they could no longer be compiled.

As I realized I couldn't make the native drivers provided by the above sources compile, I decided to give a try to the Windows drivers for Realtek 8187B with ndiswrapper, a link for download of Realtek 8187B (RTL8187B_XP_6.1163.0331.2010_Win7_62.1182.0331.2010_UI_1.00.0179 is found here

I untarred the
RTL8187B_XP driver
and used ndiswrapper to load driver like so:


root@ubuntu:~# tar -zxvf
RTL8187B_XP_6.1163.0331.2010_Win7_....L.tar.gz
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B#
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B# cd Driver/WinXP
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B/Driver/WinXP# ndiswrapper -i net8187b.inf

In order to test the RTL8178B Windows driver I used:


root@ubuntu:~# ndiswrapper -l
net8187b : driver installed
device (0BDA:8197) present (alternate driver: rtl8187)

To finally load the Windows XP RTL8187B driver on the Ubuntu I used again ndiswrapper:


root@ubuntu:~# ndiswrapper -m

Further on I used the ndisgtk graphical ndiswrapper interface to once again test if the Windows driver is working on the Ubuntu and it seemed like it is working, however still my wicd was unable to find any wireless network ….

There were many online documentation which claimed that the driver for rtl8187b works out of the box on newer kernel releases (kernel versions > 2.6.24)

Finally I found out there is a driver which is a default one with the Ubuntu e.g. rtl8187.ko , I proceeded and loaded the module:


root@ubuntu:~# modprobe rtl8187

I also decided to check out if the hardware switch button of the Toshiba Satellite L40 notebook is not switched off and guess what ?! The Wireless ON/OFF button was switched OFF!!! OMG …

I switched on the button and wicd immediately started showing up the wireless networks …

To make the rtl8187 module load on Ubuntu boot up, I had to issue the command:


root@ubuntu:~# echo 'rtl8187' >> /etc/modules

Voila after all this struggle the wireless card is working now, it's sad I had to loose about 10 hours of time until I come with the simple solution of using the default provided ubuntu driver rtl8187 , what is strange is how comes that it does not load up automatically.

Thanks God it works now.