On Sun, 12 May 2002, Adam Bower wrote:

...

Why is it every so often the process Kupdated runs for a few seconds and takes 99% CPU usage?

are you using DMA and hdparm on your hard-disk? most likely the kupdated is writing out unflushed buffers and is using lots of cpu to do the disk writes. What happens if you do lots of disk I/O?

Um yes, which brings me on to another question, how do I make hdparm run everytime I boot up? ATM I run it by hand. The problem with Kupdated is caused mainly by heavy disk activity, which also knocks out the network card for some strange reason!

make a kernel that support IrDA and search on google, also make sure that it is a *full* modem if its crippled you may need some other software like Gnokkii

Um, dunno, tis a Nokia 7110.

Damn, I may be working that day, and have been asked to attend about 3 install days so far...

I finally met the guy whos on lugs.org.uk as the contact for the Kent LUG today at a computer fair!

Most likely, although I havn't really decided if i should drive or fly or what to get there, (its in Ireland in the last week of August btw) but the mini-lbw last weekend was fun. btw the url is http://www.lbwand.org

Kewl, am in middle of Exams else I would have gone too, looks like its ireland then for me, YAY!

Coz you are a young impressionable student who needs the money and will do anything to get it?

So true, so true!

D

Adam

On Sun, 12 May 2002, David Freeman wrote:

If I have a phone with an IR modem built in, How do I use this with a Laptop running linux?

IR is probably the worst thing I ever had to configure under linux. Compared to IR, everything else seems easy. The linux IR stack is something of a nightmare (although it's finally getting better in later 2.4.* kernels).

The good news is, once it's working it's unbelievably cool :-)

...

make a kernel that support IrDA and search on google, also make sure that it is a *full* modem if its crippled you may need some other software like Gnokkii

Um, dunno, tis a Nokia 7110.

7110 works fine with IR (7110 has a full modem). The 7110 supports 14.4bps connections, but I bet your telco doesn't :-)

You can allegedly use a WAP call as a dialup call, but I never got it working successfully (and given WAP was charged whilst normal calls came out of my 200 free minutes a month, it was better not to anyway).

Mark said:

I think I'm just about to go off on the IR+net route, so I was quite happy to find a howto on it, but I didn't keep the URL. Searching for "infrared mobile linux" may help and maybe mobilix.org will have a link.

In order of usefulness:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/IrDA/index.html http://mobilix.org/howtos.html http://irda.sourceforge.net/

I don't think you can use WAP time as net time, as surely you'd need to be dialled into their WAP service? I think you might be able to find a WAP client, though.

In theory, the WAP service provides an internet connection over which your WAP browser can then run, so configuring <your ppp software> on the laptop to dial the same WAP number using the same user/pass/DNS/IP settings will give you a full connection. In reality, the connection often appears to be restricted to allow only WAP traffic via a WAP proxy.

Anyway. Successful use of IR with a laptop depends on your laptop. The hardest thing is often figuring out exactly what IR chip you have in it (NSC, Winbond, etc). On Debian, grab the irda-common and irda-tools packages, then use findchip -v. You should get something like:

Found NSC PC87338 Controller at 0x398, DevID=0x0b, Rev. 2 SIR Base 0x3f8, FIR Base 0x3f8 IRQ = 4, DMA = -1 Enabled: yes, Suspended: no UART compatible: yes Half duplex delay = 0 us

When you compile the kernel, make sure you put the IR stuff in as modules. After all, you don't want IR caning your battery when you have no need for it.

Example kernel config for 2.4.16:

# IrDA (infrared) support # CONFIG_IRDA=m

# # IrDA protocols # CONFIG_IRLAN=m CONFIG_IRNET=m CONFIG_IRCOMM=m CONFIG_IRDA_ULTRA=y CONFIG_IRDA_OPTIONS=y

# # IrDA options # CONFIG_IRDA_CACHE_LAST_LSAP=y CONFIG_IRDA_FAST_RR=y CONFIG_IRDA_DEBUG=y

# # Infrared-port device drivers #

# # SIR device drivers # CONFIG_IRTTY_SIR=m CONFIG_IRPORT_SIR=m

# # Dongle support # # CONFIG_DONGLE is not set

# # FIR device drivers # # CONFIG_USB_IRDA is not set CONFIG_NSC_FIR=m # CONFIG_WINBOND_FIR is not set # CONFIG_TOSHIBA_FIR is not set # CONFIG_SMC_IRCC_FIR is not set # CONFIG_ALI_FIR is not set # CONFIG_VLSI_FIR is not set

Also, if you have a Palm, it can be used as a handy "sniffer" to see when you've kicked IR into life. Just point it at your IR port and wait for the "Beam - Waiting for sender..." prompt to appear on the Palm. If it doesn't, IR isn't working. (Or you have beaming turned off on the palm.)

Hope that helps.

Andrew.