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Ubuntu 8.04 available to downloads, today.

Canonical just bring the new Ubuntu 8.40 with the codename, Hardy Heron Alpha 5. Now, its available to downloads. If you are planning to use it on your main system, I not recommend it because its still an alpha version and contains many bugs. Well, they are working on it.

This version come with the new features that i think is great. I decide to cover it here. First, the way to install and i think this will be the easiest way ever for OS installation - WUBI. Wubi was born as an independent project, as such 7.04 and 7.10 are unoffical releases. But since 8.04 the code has been merged within Ubuntu and since 8.04-alpha5, Wubi can also be found in the Ubuntu Live CD. Thats cool.

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Guide on configuring Nokia phone as GPRS / 3G / EDGE / HSDPA modem

NOTE: Some parts of this tutorial is probably outdated.

This tutorial will cover steps that needs to be done to enabled your shiny new Nokia (almost any recent brand that have data connectivity, including N80, N81, N95, N93, 6680, 6630, etc.) to work as modem under Linux. I am using Ubuntu "Dapper Drake" for this guide. But it should be easily adapted to whatever Linux distribution your are using. Basically, your Nokia phone will be automatically detected using the cdc-acm driver. But this driver have some drawback for me. Up until kernel 2.6.15, I am experiencing problems with cdc-acm such as:

• I cannot get full data transfer speed using cdc-acm driver. My 3G download rate stuck at around 144 kbps. This problem only manifest itself when you use the USB sync cable to connect to your Linux box. Using Bluetooth, you get full 384 kbps speed. Go figure…

• It oops (crash) just to often. Unplug the USB cable, bang it crash. Battery flat, bang it crash again. After a while, it becomes rather tiring.

So, not willing to give up my Ubuntu, I started digging. Eventually I realized I can use the usbserial driver for my Nokia. And turns out, the usbserial is at least much better when used with my Nokia 6630 and 6680 when connected to USB sync cable compared to cdc-acm.

• I get full 384 kbps on my Celcom 3G connection. Way to go!

• More stable, and not prone to oops compared to cdc-acm. I can plug and unplug the USB cable for all that I care, the driver just gracefully recover.

Enough background, lets start working.

1. I am using kernel 2.6.15 provided in the stock Dapper. It should work with other 2.6 kernel. No idea whether it will work on 2.4 kernel though.

2. Make sure you have ppp package installed. Execute the following if you do not have ppp installed.

sudo apt-get install ppp

3. "Blacklist" your cdc-acm driver. Under Ubuntu, this can be easily achieved by this command:

4. Tell Ubuntu to automatically load the usbserial module.

5. Now trickiest part, setting your phone device ID as the 

usbserial parameter.Issue the command lsusb.

If you have your phone plugged with the USB sync cable, it should appear here with description "Nokia Mobile Phones". Notice the vendor ID and the product ID, 0421:041e. Vendor ID is 0421, product ID is 041e for Nokia 6680. We need to put these IDs into out modprobe options. This can be done with this command:

Notice you need to prefix the IDs with "0x" qualifier, since the ID is specified in hex.

6. Now load the module. Ensure we have unloaded the cdc-acm driver first. As root, execute the following.

7. Copy the following text and save it with name /etc/ppp/peers/provider. Especially, you need to change the line user "celcom3g" to the user name that your mobile operator assigned to use their GPRS / 3G Internet access. You probably need to become root user in order to write to /etc directory.

/dev/ttyUSB0    # Serial device to which the GPRS phone is connected
debug        # Comment this off, if you don't need more info
# scripts to initialize the 3G / EDGE / GPRS modem 

connect /etc/ppp/peers/connect-chat
# AT commands used to 'hangup' the connection
disconnect /etc/ppp/peers/disconnect-chat
460800      # Serial port line speed
crtscts    # hardware flow control for cable
local        # Ignore carrier detect signal from the modem:
lcp-echo-failure 0
lcp-echo-interval 0
# IP addresses: 

# - accept peers idea of our local address and set address peer as 10.6.6.6
# (any address would do, since IPCP gives 0.0.0.0 to it)
# - if you use the 10. network at home or something and pppd rejects it,
# change the address to something else
:10.6.6.6
noipdefault        # pppd must not propose any IP address to the peer!
ipcp-accept-local    # Accept peers idea of our local address
defaultroute        # Add the ppp interface as default route to the IP routing table
replacedefaultroute    # New route should be our default route to Internet 

usepeerdns        # User DNS returned by server
noauth            # The phone is not required to authenticate
# Most phone do not support compression, so turn it off.
novj
nobsdcomp
novjccomp
nopcomp
noaccomp
# Username and password: 

# If username and password are required by the APN, put here the username
# and put the username-password combination to the secrets file:
# /etc/ppp/pap-secrets for PAP and /etc/ppp/chap-secrets for CHAP
# authentication. See pppd man pages for details.
user "celcom3g"        # Change this if you are not using Celcom 3G!
persist            # Persistent connection
maxfail 99999        # Retry and retry and retry if failed...

8. If your mobile operator requires you to give password to access the APN, then edit or create the file /etc/ppp/pap-secrets for PAP authentication or /etc/ppp/chap-secrets for CHAP authentication. The format should be as follows:

9. Copy the following text and save it as /etc/ppp/peers/connect-chat.

#!/bin/sh
exec chat                                               \
        TIMEOUT         5                               \
        ECHO            ON                              \
        ABORT           '\nBUSY\r'                      \

        ABORT           '\nERROR\r'                     \
        ABORT           '\nNO ANSWER\r'                 \
        ABORT           '\nNO CARRIER\r'                \
        ABORT           '\nNO DIALTONE\r'               \
        ABORT           '\nRINGING\r\n\r\nRINGING\r'    \
        ''              \rAT                            \
        TIMEOUT         12                              \
        SAY             "Press CTRL-C to close the connection at any stage!"    \

        SAY             "\ndefining PDP context...\n"   \
        OK              ATH                             \
        OK              ATE1                            \
        OK              ATD*99#                         \
        TIMEOUT         22                              \
        SAY             "\nwaiting for connect...\n"    \
        CONNECT         ""                              \
        SAY             "\nConnected." \
        SAY             "\nIf the following ppp negotiations fail,\n"   \

         SAY             "try restarting the phone.\n"

However, some network requires you to specify the APN. Thus, you need to add the following line after the "OK ATE1" line in the file /etc/ppp/peers/connect-chat.

OK              'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","your_apn_name","",0,0'   \

10. Copy the following text and save it as /etc/ppp/peers/disconnect-chat.

#!/bin/sh
# send break exec /usr/sbin/chat -V -s -S    \
ABORT           "BUSY"          \
ABORT           "ERROR"         \
ABORT           "NO DIALTONE"   \
SAY             "\nSending break to the modem\n"        \
""              "\K"            \
""              "\K"            \

""              "\K"            \
""              "\d\d+++\d\dATH"        \
SAY             "\nPDP context detached\n"

11. Both the file /etc/ppp/peers/connect-chat and /etc/ppp/peers/disconnect-chat should have executable bit set. Thus, issue this command to set it as executable;

12. Test your connection. Issue the command as root to check whether you are successful.

# pppd call provider
# ifconfig ppp0
ppp0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
         inet addr:10.176.226.135  P-t-P:10.6.6.6  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:38 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:41 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
          RX bytes:7700 (7.5 KiB)  TX bytes:3148 (3.0 KiB)

Voila! However, if the result of ifconfig ppp0 is blank, then you need to check /var/log/messages output to figure out why it failed.

13. Make your changes permanent. Under Ubuntu, this can be achieved easily creating an empty file ppp_on_boot in the /etc/ppp/ directory. The next time you restart your machine, connection to the Internet will be automatically established.

14. Enjoy your connectivity!

[via- bitubique]

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Posted in Tip of The Day, phone, hardware, ubuntu | No Comments »

Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista

With Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn released last week, bloggers, journalists, and users are asking the inevitable question: How does it compare with the other major OS update this year, Windows Vista.

Serdar Yegulalp at Information Week have written up a detailed comparison of the two operating systems. We have to agree with most of the points made. Here’s the bullet point version, with our two cents thrown in at the end:

In a nutshell, both operating systems come with a full set of features. What sets them apart now is primarily the ease with which you can customize your settings.

Vista still has a bit of an edge on the user-friendly front here. Too often, you need to open up a terminal in Ubuntu and type in some arcane commands or edit a configuration file in order to get things working the way you’d like.

Sure, the only reason some of these actions are more intuitive in Vista is because most of us have been using Windows for years. But that does mean there’s a learning curve for anyone switching to Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution.

If you handed a PC preloaded with either operating system to someone who’s never used a computer before, they’d probably find plenty to like in each one. And Ubuntu 7.04 is definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to making Linux easier to use from the get go. If you’re not a power user, (Hi, welcome to DownloadSquad), you may never need to use the command line in Ubuntu, because the preinstalled software covers most of the basic functions you’ll ever need, including word processing, web browsing, email and music management.

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Ubuntu 7.0.4 officially released

Ubuntu 7.0.4 (Feisty Fawn) has officially been released and is available to download from the official Ubuntu website. The release follows a very short Feisty Fawn beta, which just became available to the public last month.

Ubuntu’s next release Gutsy Gibbon is expected to be released — in typical, rigid Ubuntu release schedule fashion — just 6 months from now.

Ubuntu’s install CDs are also Live CDs, so you can get a feel for how an installed Ubuntu system will behave, even without changing a single bit on your hard drive.

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New Ubuntu branch gets funny name

Those crazy developer kids with their cheeky prototype names. Mark Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu’s next release will carry the development code name Gutsy Gibbon, following in the footsteps of Feisty Fawn, Edgy Eft and Dapper Drake (see a pattern?)

Gutsy Gibbon is scheduled for release in October of 2007, following Ubuntu’s rigid and rapid release cycle. To be known in production as 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon will also take “an ultra-orthodox view of licensing: no firmware, drivers, imagery, sounds, applications, or other content which do not include full source materials and come with full rights of modification, remixing and redistribution”

For those of us that still want to get our non-GNU on, Automatix will no doubt be available for the new platform but, we’re forced to wonder what code in the current;y circulating Ubuntu might get the heave-ho under a renewed focus on open and transparent source code.

What else is on the table for this next cycle of the fastest growing Linux distribution? An unattended, enterprise-geared installation package named Ubiquity which should make Ubuntu even more attractive to large corporate clients. Shuttleworth is also pushing — third time is the charm — for “composite by default”, using the somewhat revolutionary Compiz 3D desktop environment. Although he’s pushed for a default composite desktop before, he seems more realistic this time around, “There’s a reasonable chance that Gutsy will deliver where those others have not. I remain convinced that malleable, transparent and extra-dimensional GUI’s are a real opportunity for the free software community to take a lead in the field of desktop innovation ”

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Posted in linux distributions, ubuntu | 1 Comment »