Broadcom 4318, ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant under Linux

I don’t know about others, but for a long time I had problems with using WPA with my Broadcom wireless card in Ruri. Thankfully all troubles are now gone :)

The steps for a working wpa_supplicant are simple:

1. Download the latest wpa_supplicant. I recommend at least version 6.3 (5.x didn’t work for me)
2. Install it and configure it to use Linux Wireless Extensions driver interface, for example by supplying -Dwext to it’s command-line options. Exact configuration depends on your linux distribution - on Gentoo it’s a wpa_supplicant_interface=”-Dwext -iinterface“ line in /etc/conf.d/net
3. Start it up and voila - wpa_supplicant should be able to properly associate with networks from now on. Do some checking with wpa_gui

Happy wireless surfing :)

Testing Blogging Apps: QTM

So I downloaded and installed QTM.

I have to say that it surprised me from the building process: It was a first application that used cmake which I had to build myself,
and it shows clearly that Cmake is superior to Autotools.

The only dependency was QT >= 4.1.x, and it worked like a dream with QT4.3.
The building process itself was a breeze compared to what I would except from QT application (And CMake showed it’s beatiful scripts again :D)

As for the application itself: IT’S FAST!, I mean, REALLY FAST. Sure, it’s about tasks that don’t consume too much resources, but it snappy in a way that doesn’t always show with today’s apps. I also didn’t even notice when it downloaded my categories after inputting my blog settings in configuration window.

There are however some drawbacks - It doesn’t seem to have support for editing existing blog posts, support wordpress tags (But it might work from the technorati tags page) nor uploading media objects. Also, the interface is a little different, but usable.

Now let’s see how it will publish this post :D

Well, it had some problems with uploading the post, and a progress bar would be a good thing :D. However, it worked pretty nice. And I found it does support uploading files!

Testing Blogging Apps: Drivel

I have to say that I basically hate inputting blog posts over WordPress web interface, especially since I don’t have stable internet access, which makes it much harder to use.
So today I decided to test another blogging app: Drivel from Gnome, version 2.0.3.

Well, it certainly lacks some features, and might not win against weblogger.el It can be used with WordPress by setting MovableType interface, however, there
is nothing for uploading images or setting tags. Also, posts can be only in one category.

Looks like I’ll have to write a client and a supporting it EmacsLisp interface anyway, so I’ll have muse/org-mode/whatever support ^_^”

Drivel managed to doublepost because of net error… I need something that is more reliable. Maybe QTM?

Testing Blogging Apps: Word 2007

Today, I decided to test blogging features of Word 2007, so here is a test post with it :-)

Although I’m not a big lover of Microsoft, I have to say that the new Office 2007 suite is working pretty good – IMHO you can see a steady improvement, although it’s disk space requirements have gone thru the roof, like 2-3 times more space is required for full install compared to full install of Office 2003.

Now, if the changes in programming style and design forced after NT6 will start to become widespread in Microsoft, we might see a fair surprise around NT7. Of course, if they don’t screw it again… (Hope not, even If I wish in my heart for Microsoft’s collapse).

ああ。。。日本語のテストで ;-)

EDIT:
I edited the code after all, but it doesn’t look so bad compared to some of the atrocities Word used to output as “HTML”. There is progress :-)

Parlament Elections 2007 - an Afterthought

Well, it’s over.

Thankfully, this time the attendance had risen - it’s speculated to be over 55,3%.

If the final number of voters exceeds that, then it’s much more important than the result itself.

As Rughalt says: “If ~90% of people allowed to vote had given their votes, then I would not complain about Poles being stupid in voting.”

Anyway, Methinks of throwing a party at Inaba for PiS’ great failure :>

HOWTO Get SMC FastIR IRDA to work under linux

Requirements:

• Knowledge how to modify module set of kernel or roll your own
• linux 2.6.x
• Laptop with SMC IrDA chip

Many laptops nowadays come with IrDA served through an SMC IrCC SIR/FIR controller. Unfortunately, it’s setup is not done “by default”, leading people to think that IrDA simply doesn’t works. This is not true. Here’s a howto (not full, you have to read your distro’s manuals about how to adapt it to your system. Console commands however are universal on 99% percent of distros)

Weird Spam

I found one interesting thing about the spam blocked from my blog.

It looks like ‘unya’ gets spanish-or-portugese spam to my blog….

At least Akismet works good :-)

Coffee & Lemon

As the title says. And it’s one hell of a good thing for headaches, not only as a booster :-)

I strongly recommend it, alongside my other picks: Good Tea and Cocoa :-)

ndiswrapper and Broadcom 4318 wlan card HOWTO

Broadcom is a company well-known for their lack of cooperation with open-source developers, even when they have complete code for linux driver!

That also means that one of the more popular 802.11b/g cards, Broadcom 43xx series, is a PITA under linux.

Some time ago I got it working using ndiswrapper 1.38 and XP64 drivers from some other laptop. Sometime later, I upgraded both kernel (2.6.22.1-ck1) and ndiswrapper (1.47) and when I got myself in need to use WiFi, I found it doesn’t work. After long story of shotgun debugging, I finally found a way to make it work.

Install ndiswrapper 1.47 from here.

In gentoo:emerge ndiswrapper

Download driver sp33008, like:
wget ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp33001-33500/sp33008.exe

And use cabextract to extract drivers from exe file:
cabextract sp33008.exe

Now, install driver using ndiswrapper and reload ndiswrapper (Remember to uninstall old one!):
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf && modprobe -r ndiswrapper && modprobe ndiswrapper


In case of my card (in Acer 5112WLMi), I had to add symlink 14E4:4318.5.conf -> 14E4:4318:1355:103C.5.conf, like
ln -s /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/14E4:4318:1355:103C.5.conf /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/14E4:4318.5.conf

It seems to help with some errors concerning encryption. Your mileage may vary, but there are few variants of this conf file - one of them might work for you, and they are all included with the driver

If all is well, you should have a new network device by the name of wlanx or ethx, depending on your settings, and iwconfig should be able to set up your card.

Beach

I have to say, that I don’t like being on the beach. I don’t swim, hate getting sunburned and so on.

So you say, ‘at least you can ogle beatiful girls’. Yeah… not. Three sizes average at 90-120-110…. It’s rare to see nice looking women of applicable age without boyfriends/parents and you are with your parents - which makes it harder to ogle anyone…

Oh how I’d prefer to go to the mountains……