Most of the quirks of previous Red Hat versions (errors in wireless extensions and Set Mode/Freq errors) have thankfully been fixed in Red Hat 9.0.

 

NOTE: All commands in this section assume you are logged in as root. If you are "su root", some of the commands will need to be preceded by /sbin/

 

 

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1. Check module loaded by pcmcia manager:

 

# modprobe -l | grep pcmcia

.....

/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia/wvlan_cs.o

.....

 

When you have finished this section, lsmod should give you the appropriate modules for the wireless card, namely orinoco and orinoco_cs.

 

2. Make sure your PC's wireless interface is switched ON (left side of keyboard, near front). Run network interface configuration

 

# neat

Your list of network hardware should include the "Lucent Orinoco and Prism II-based PCMCIA wireless" card. If it does not, try adding it manually. If that fails, perhaps you have a problem with your kernel configuration? - see this page for details.

 

Set wireless interface IP addresses (static) or DHCP (assigned) and enter ESSID and encryption key: use "neat" with correct options for your wireless AP: check with network administrator. Also select the option to start the eth1 interface automatically when the computer boots up.

 

3. Check that wireless interface is receiving signal

 

# iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

 

eth0 no wireless extensions.

 

eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"***********" Nickname:"myhostname.mydomain"

Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: 00:04:76:A7:9F:E7

Bit Rate=11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3

RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off

Encryption key:****-****-**

Power Management:off

Link Quality:38/92 Signal level:-48 dBm Noise level:-86 dBm

Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:339 Missed beacon:0

 

Note: ESSID and Encryption key have been concealed with "***" for security reasons.

 

4. Change Gateway device to "eth1"

 

# cd /etc/sysconfig/

# vi network

press i to enter insert mode

 

change GATEWAYDEV from eth0 to eth1

 

press (Esc) to exit, :wq! to write modification and quit

 

5. Unplug your eth0 network cable (if you have one) and restart network service:

 

# service network restart

Shutting down interface eth0: [ OK ]

Shutting down interface eth1: [ OK ]

Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]

Setting network parameters: [ OK ]

Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]

Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ]

# ifdown eth0

# ifup eth1

 

6. Test your wireless LAN interface:

 

# ping www.ukonline.co.uk

PING www.ukonline.co.uk (195.40.113.2) from ***.***.***.*** : 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from www.ukonline.co.uk (195.40.113.2): icmp_seq=1 ttl=244 time=13.2 ms

64 bytes from www.ukonline.co.uk (195.40.113.2): icmp_seq=2 ttl=244 time=10.4 ms

64 bytes from www.ukonline.co.uk (195.40.113.2): icmp_seq=3 ttl=244 time=10.5 ms

 

 

 

That's it!

 

...BUT be aware of a potential problem with kudzu. "kudzu" detects and configures new hardware during the initialization process. It seems unable to detect that the Lucent Orinoco Prism card has already been added to your system, and will try to configure it again. When it starts the configuration, it crashes with a "segmentation fault". The wireless LAN card will work nonetheless. If the messages from kudzu annoy you, simply click on the "Ignore" option next time round.

Also, the default initialization script will try to bring up interface "eth1" before Yenta (the PCMCIA card slot manager) has detected the wireless device. You will get the following message: "orinoco_cs device eth1 does not seem to be present: delaying initialization". Again, you can safely ignore this message.

The sound chip is correctly probed by RH 9.0 and you should have no problems with it, except with Real Player as detailed below.

 

 

 

REALPLAYER

A Linux-compatible version of the player is available at this site. (Thanks to Jim Redman for this). Do not try to use the "Linux Community"-provided player at the Real Player site (URL = [/url][url=http://forms.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html)]http://forms.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html) - it crashes with a segmentation fault under Red Hat 9.0...! More glibc problems, I'm afraid to say.

 

Once you have downloaded the source rpm RealPlayer8-8.0.3.412-6.fdr.0.src.rpm from the link above (or from anywhere else you can find it by doing a "Google" search) do rpm -ivh RealPlayer8-8.0.3.412-6.fdr.0.src.rpm and it will create a bzipped tarball in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. Depending on your existing setup, you may need to install the Red Hat 9.0 kernel-source package, first. Untar the RealPlayer8 tarball and move the uncompressed files to your user library directory:

 

cd /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/

bzip2 -d RealPlayer8.tar.bz2

tar -xvf RealPlayer8.tar

mkdir /usr/lib/RealPlayer8/

cp -ravd /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/RealPlayer8/* /usr/lib/RealPlayer8/

ln -s /usr/lib/RealPlayer8/realplay /usr/bin/realplay

ln -s /usr/lib/RealPlayer8/rpnp.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/rpnp.so

 

Note in the last two lines above (optional) I have added symlinks:

 

To make RealPlayer start from a console command "realplay";

To add a RealPlayer plugin to Mozilla.

Adjust these links to suit your personal setup.

 

You may have trouble with the sound not working, in which case set View >Preferences > Performance > Audio Driver Options to enable ESD support, and run esd:

 

$ esd

 

 

This allows multiple devices to access the sound card. As esd will upset some other applications (notably xine!) you will have to kill the esd process after using Realplayer....

CDROM

The drive works "out of the box" for reading CDROMs.

 

CDR/CDRW

For writing CDR/CDRW media, 2 different GUI-based applications come with RH9.0: gtoaster and xcdroast. I suggest you try both of them. In my view, gtoaster has some limitations, and therefore my personal preference remains xcdroast. The version packaged with Red Hat 9.0 (0.98alpha13) is reasonably stable and allows use by non-root users. Start XCDroast by typing xcdroast <Enter> in your console. After that, you will need to enter the general setup options. When creating a CDR, you may get an unexpected message about multi-session CDs when you never asked for that option in the first place... Click on "Continue anyway" - it does not seem to matter.

 

If upgrading your system, do not install cdrtools version 2.01a17 or cdrecord versions greater than 8:2.0.6 - the cdrecord binary outputs a version string not accepted by X-CD-Roast and will cause your recording to fail. This problem may be fixed in later versions of X-CD-Roast.

 

DVD

The DVD function requires a symbolic link before any application will recognise it. As root, create a link as follows:

 

$ ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd

 

There are various applications for playing DVDs but most seem to support only unencrypted formats. A version of Xine with associated libraries and CSS decryption module has been packaged for Red Hat 9.0 by Matthias Saou:

 

[/url][url=http://shrike.freshrpms.net/]http://shrike.freshrpms.net/

 

You will need a very long list of libraries and applications to build a working Xine configuration. The list seems to get longer with every new release of Red Hat Linux, so here goes:

 

aalib

xvidcore

flac

alsa-lib

libfame

xine-lib

xine

xine-skins

libdvdcss

xine-lib-devel

libdvdread

libdvdnav

libdvdplay

Download and install the rpm files for all of the above, from the "freshrpms" site, in the order shown.

 

In a console, type xine-check. This will check your xine configuration and will also set up the application to point to a valid plug-in directory. If there are any error messages, correct the problems flagged before going any further. Finally, type xine to start the DVD player. If it crashes when first trying to read the tracks from the DVD, restart your computer and try starting xine again.

 

To enable DMA access for the DVD drive (prevents video frame loss and gaps in the sound), add the following line to /etc/modules.conf:

 

options ide-cd dma=1

Apart from the floppy disk drive, I have only tried one other USB device: an Aiptek Pencam Trio Digital Camera.

 

Upon hot-plugging the camera, it was automatically detected and the stv680 module was loaded. Unfortunately, this is not useful for any of the applications that may wish to access the camera (gtkam and pencam2, for example). I received the error message "Unable to claim USB device". The solution is quite simple: remove the module that was loaded (rmmod stv680) and everything will work just fine after that...

 

I do not know if a similar problem occurs with other digital cameras (e.g. Kodak) but will check.

 

 

How to Mount a Camera Compact Flash Card

An alternative method of transferring pictures from your camera is to remove the flash memory card from your camera, and mount it in a PCMCIA flash card adapter. Plug in the PCMCIA card, and check what happened (using dmesg). My adapter generates the following messages:

 

hde: SanDisk SDCFB-48, CFA DISK drive

ide2 at 0x100-0x107,0x10e on irq 3

ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide

hde: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }

hde: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }

hde: 93952 sectors (48 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=734/4/32

hde: hde1

ide_cs: hde: Vcc = 3.3, Vpp = 0.0

 

Then, create a directory to mount it in:

# cd /mnt

# mkdir flashdisk

 

The following command should then mount the flash memory card in read-only mode:

mount -t auto -s -r /dev/hde1 /mnt/flashdisk

The floppy disk drive connects via a USB interface. Red Hat 9.0 should already have created a directory to mount it in (/mnt/floppy); if not, create it manually as root:

 

$ mkdir /mnt/floppy

 

Then you can mount/unmount the floppy disk using:

 

$ mount /dev/sda /mnt/floppy

$ umount /dev/sda

The keyboard suffers from atrocious key bounce, as you will probably have noticed by the time you get this far. ;)

 

Method 1

Use "AccessX" to define the bounce delay:

 

1. Obtain the tarball and follow the installation instructions given at:

 

[/url][url=http://www.rehab.uiuc.edu/accessx/freewareaccessx.html]http://www.rehab.uiuc.edu/accessx/freewareaccessx.html

 

2. Add the following lines to /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession after the section where it runs all the system xinitrc shell scripts:

 

# inserted to prevent key bounce

 

ax +bouncekeysax -timeoutax bouncedelay 5# end inserted lines

(This is for RedHat 8.0: other distros may be different, but essentially you need to find a file from which scripts are run every time the X-server starts up).

 

 

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Method 2

In file /etc/X11/XF86Config, set the Xkbdisable function as follows:

 

# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.

Option "XkbDisable"

 

This works more reliably than Method 1, but you will lose some keyboard functionality, specifically anything invoked by the AltGr key.

I think a section dedicated to certifications of all kinds would be cool B)