Technical Blog of Richard Hughes

Long shot: Anybody got any advice on how to use a tool such as SoftIce to log all EC and ACPI accesses during the Windows XP suspend? I can't believe I'm reverse engineering a closed source windows DLL just to find out why resume won't work in Linux…

Hypothetically, if I was to buy a new laptop for geeky work I'm thinking I might go crazy: An Apple Macbook.
I'm avoiding the Macbook Pro due to the non-free video and significant price increase, and also that I could do with something more portable than what I have now.

So far, I'm thinking:

• [X] Dual core, lots of memory
• [X] Suspend and Hibernate work
• [X] Screen brightness works
• [?] Ambient light sensor
• [X] DVD burner
• [  ] Wireless without ndiswrapper
• [?] Second monitor out working with VGA and DVI
• [X] Intel GMA graphics card
• [?] XRANDR support for video driver
• [X] Bluetooth that works
• [X] Integrated camera
• [X] Can blast OSX off the drive completely.
• [?] Can run xen or vmware

So, does anybody know if:

1. You can retrofit another pcie wifi card?
2. madwifi_ng will actually work reliably in F7?
3. the super-reflective screen will annoy me?
4. you can run vmware or xen on a macbook?
5. the macbook has a brightness sensor like the pro?
6. The keyboard is any good?
7. You can actually cope in GNOME having one mouse button?

Now, I'm thinking I might buy this in the US rather than the UK… It's still significantly cheaper (about £200) even after taking into account the stonking exchange rate. Bad plan?

Anyone got any success or horror stories? Thanks.

p.s. two exams down, two to go. So far, so good.

Seeing as I now have a laptop that won't resume, set the lcd brightness or even charge it's own battery, gnome-power-manager development is on hold. I can't afford to trade in this laptop and buy something else before I start work in September, so 2.19.x development is effectively frozen.

My Lenovo 300 N100 laptop is now not charging the battery. The laptop also won't turn on when on battery power alone as the cell is 0% charged. Removing and reinserting the battery sometimes makes it charge for a few seconds only.

This laptop is a hunk of shit.

EDIT: IT GETS WORSE. According to this lenovo document  the battery isn't covered under the warranty. This laptop is less than 6 months old…

If you have an ACER laptop, please read this battery recall notice.

If you are affected by the recall or have a similar TravelMate, please email me the output of lshal to richard_at_hughsie_dot_com (and state if you are affected) – and then I can add the DMI data to hal-info. Many thanks.

This is the current gnome-power-statistics user interface:

It is a pretty rubbish UI from a HIG point of view, and the language is also not great. Glade file here if it helps. So, suggestions anyone?

Now, what's with the artwork for Fedora recently? I've been looking at some of my old screenshots of RH9 and FC1 and they left me wondering… why did the old version look so much more clean, neat and professional than the new versions?

Now, I've got nothing against air balloons, but it's hardly the most professional of images to be the default for rhgb, GDM, grub, and the default wallpaper. What about some sleek new lines for F8?

The cynic inside of me would say that RHEL is kept more professional as it's not the product that being given away for free. Also, some of the Echo icons are nice, but I really think the Tango theme is much more professional. Comments?

Okay. In playing with this laptop some more, I'm trying to fix the suspend and hibernate keyboard buttons. Suspend is activated using Fn+F4 and hibernate Fn+F12. Or at least that's what they are meant to do.

I'm getting the following in my dmesg:

Suspend:
atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0x97 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e017 <keycode>' to make it known.
atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x97 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e017 <keycode>' to make it known.

Hibernate:
atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0x98 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e018 <keycode>' to make it known.
atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x98 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e018 <keycode>' to make it known.

Now, I know I could hack up something involving rc.local and setkeycodes but what's the real way to fix this so it works out of the box for people? This is on Fedora Core Rawhide. Either post a comment or email me at richard_at_hughsie_dot_com please.

Thanks.

My Lenovo 300 N100 is causing problems again. When I press Fn-F7 to switch output video modes the output is like below on the laptop TFT, blinking from red to pale blue:

The analogue VGA output does sort-of work, when set to 1024×768 (rather than a widescreen mode) but I can never get the TFT display back to normal, even with repeated Fn-F7's.

Anyone seen this before? I've tried the latest nv and nouveau DDX. Needless to say, this has never worked on Linux for me, and always worked with Windows XP.

Thanks.

Spot the absent minded typo:

rpm -e rpm -e –nodeps ConsoleKit-libs

Bother.

#rpm -Uvh rpm-4.4.2-40.fc7.i386.rpm
/bin/rpm: No such file or directory…

Meh. I think I've just blown my feet off. Now, where's that backup…