sid – FoolControl – Phear the penguin

Kernel agnostic, DisplayLink Debian GNU/Linux driver installer (Debian/Ubuntu/Elementary)

November 29, 2015

I use DisplayLink at work for multi display setup/Ethernet/etc, all by connecting to a single USB port. Although it’s a nifty little device, its software support isn’t that great.

Only Linux driver they have is for Ubuntu. Which is only optimized to work with 14.04, and latest kernel they support is 3.19!

Their installer script can be modified to work with Debian and Systemd, but even so if you’re using any Linux kernel version other then >=3.14 && <=3.19 you’re not going to have a good time.

displaylink-debian (github)

That’s why I decided to take things in my own hands, and created displaylink-debian.

Tool which allows you to seamlessly install and uninstall DisplayLink drivers on Debian/Ubuntu based Linux distributions.

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Juniper/Pulse Secure VPN on Linux (2015 edition)

September 21, 2015

Prelude

Some time ago, Juniper Networks sold their beloved Junos Pulse SSL VPN, and thus new company called Pulse Secure was created. Which resulted in Pulse Secure client, which is used to establish secure authentication to the (VPN) tunnel.

Since Juniper never supported Linux, it comes as no surprise that successor company client supports every other platform except Linux.

Setting Juniper VPN/Secure Pulse on Linux is pain. Basically, it comes down to using Java applet in web browser or using 3rd party hacks and scripts. Something I refused to accept.

Getting it to work in a web browser

Although, it can be bit confusing on 64 bit architecture, getting VPN access via web browser is simple. You just need to install right packages:

sudo apt-get install icedtea-7-plugin openjdk-7-jre:i386 libstdc++6:i386 lib32z1 lib32ncurses5 libxext6:i386 libxrender1:i386 libxtst6:i386 libxi6:i386

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Linux power regression + overheating problem on ThinkPad [fixed?]

November 10, 2011

This post is also available on/was written for OMG! Ubuntu

This blog post isn’t only directed to ThinkPad owners as most notebook Linux users with Intel Core Duo 1/2 and i3/i5/i7 processors have been affected by this bug if not all. And yes, this problem is present on latest Debian Unstable and Ubuntu 11.10.

Prelude

I’m owner of Thinkpad X300, great machine except the fact that just recently I replaced its 3rd cooling fan! Yea, I do a lot of compiling and it’s on all the time, but still this kind of things shouldn’t happen. I first linked this problem to the fact that Thinkpad fan on Linux (as of 2.6.22) always works at what’s its basically maximum RPM, thus the reason there are numerous fan control scripts. My favorite one is Thinkfan, but controlling fan doesn’t really help if you have a overheating problem. For matter of a fact it working on its maximum speed might only help, with its own toll.

As of kernel 2.6.38 up until 3.1 (still present) there has been a problem of power regression but besides this I had slight problem with overheating. Regarding overheating in beginning I tried reporting bugs, tried different Thinkfan configurations, blamed proprietary software such as Adobe Flash for spiking up CPU temperature, however this problem was somewhat solved. After numerous battery calibrations and as these didn’t work in the end for battery life getting poorer with each day, I just blamed the factor that notebook was getting pretty old (~3 years).

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Price of bleeding edge? (update)

April 24, 2011

Since Debian is in GNOME3 transition period, after last dist-upgrade I lived on bare minimum of GNOME DE and its apps. basically all I had working right was Chromium and Terminal, instead of Rhythmbox I used mpg321, instead of Gedit it was Vim and so on, which is all fine except the fact it had me living in 2000 again.

It was all due to python-gtk2 version that was missing in Sid repositories. Furthermore, as I was unable to restart X and had my notebook on suspend after every login I had to retype my wifi passphrase due to a bug in gnome-keyring. I believe I did my part, reported the bugs and waited maintainers responsible for those packages to do something. But this “situation” went on for 8 days.

I remember the times when you couldn’t fire up X for weeks, but after those days Unstable has gained reputation that it’s not like that anymore, but after having a situation like this one, it makes me wonder.

Please, don’t take this the wrong way, I mean no harm but the ultimate question that is brought up here is … is this the price of bleeding edge?

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Need help setting up my Linux development platform

March 24, 2010

Maintaining stable life with unstable distro?

This post may sound ludicrous to some of you but please hear me out. I’ve been on Debian unstable/Sid for awhile now and it was all cool until yesterday.

Besides my work on Debian DebConf/some devel, I’m university student, also I do web devel which is my primary source of income, besides all those I try to go out on weekends and have some kind of social life. Somehow I manage to do all these things and I’d say I manage them pretty successfully too.

Now I’m hardcore to the bone, but this is just too much, last week started working on immense web devel project didn’t sleep more then 2hrs/day whole week; I also didn’t shut down my notebook and just kept it on suspend as I usually do. Either way I was about to print/scan something and I connect my printer and what happens? My whole system freezes, now I’ll let you figure out the result of doing hard reset and having a lot of gedit docs open at that time. And yes, I did had that bug reported awhile ago, can’t find it now, but it was fixed, seems like it’s back again.

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FoolControl – Phear the penguin

Tag: sid