Monthly Archives: June 2005

It used to be that you could fairly easily allow remote applications to connect to your X server using just xhost. The criminally insane (re: script kiddies) have caused us all to lock down our systems like a virgin during the dark ages. Fortunately, sitting behind a well plumbed firewall […]

Using remote X applications under Fedora Core 3 (re: xhost ...

Thu June 30, 2005 in Linux / X11 tagged Fedora / gdm / gnome / Linux / X11 (updated 6533 days ago)

I was working on my book at lunch today and discovered an interesting and (as far as I can tell) undocumented requirement when using the Displace filter. The source and map layers must have the same size. Displace provides a menu of potential map layers in two menus (one for […]

GIMP Displace tip

Thu June 16, 2005 in General / GIMP / Linux tagged GIMP (updated 6761 days ago)

After all that work with my synaptics pad I finally decided to – essentially – disable it. I bought a $20 notebook optical USB mouse and it works fine. So now, after the system comes up, I just issue synclient FingerHigh=320 and plug in the USB mouse. So why did […]

The last thing about my Aspire 1690

Sun June 12, 2005 in Acer Aspire 1690i / General / Linux tagged aspire / GIMP (updated 6761 days ago)

My CDRW/DVD RW won’t play DVDs. It handles CDs fine, but DVD playing doesn’t work. Checking the logs I found the message: Jun 11 22:58:23 kepler kernel: ATAPI device hdb: Jun 11 22:58:23 kepler kernel: Error: Illegal request — (Sense key=0x05) Jun 11 22:58:23 kepler kernel: Media region code is […]

Acer Aspire 1690 – changing region code for DVD-RW

Sun June 12, 2005 in Acer Aspire 1690i / General / Linux / Video tagged acer / aspire / yum (updated 6761 days ago)

I upgraded FC3 and got a new kernel: 2.6.11-1.27. This kernel supports the ipw2200 wireless correctly, although you may still need to get the updated acerhk module to enable the wireless after you power off and then back on. Once the wireless hardware is enabled, I think it stays enabled […]

Acer Aspire updates

Sat June 11, 2005 in Acer Aspire 1690i / Linux tagged acer / aspire / gnome (updated 6761 days ago)

After I got X running again late last night, I didn’t look too deeply at how everything else was working. One thing that stopped working was the Synaptics pad. Before X died (and was resurrected) the Synaptics driver was loading and working fine. But that was with my own kernel, […]

ACPI update and Synaptics changes

Wed June 08, 2005 in Acer Aspire 1690i / General / Hardware / Linux tagged acer / aspire / gnome / graphics / intel (updated 6761 days ago)

The i915 driver snapshot from freedesktop.org fixed my problems with the video on my Acer Aspire 1690. It even allows the graphical boot (aka rhgb) to function again. But I still can’t use the DVD player. I still get lots of errors related to accessing hdb in /var/log/messages. I’ll have […]

Laptop Update: video fixed

Tue June 07, 2005 in Aiptek Tablet / General / Hardware / Video tagged acer / aspire / Video (updated 6761 days ago)

Everything was working well today. I took the laptop over to Panera Bread at lunch and got the wireless working there with a little script (the RH network config doesn’t bring it up for some reason). Then I managed to squeeze in a little writing work on my book. But […]

More laptop troubles

Tue June 07, 2005 in Aiptek Tablet / General / Hardware tagged atrpms / rpm / Writing / yum (updated 6761 days ago)

More info on support for using the Acer Aspire w/Intel i915GM video: Here is an updated 915resolution, based on the 855resolution tool. Here are snapshots of the dri driver for the i915 from X.org. Note that you need to have X11R6.8.2 to work with this driver (and even then it […]

Sushi break

Mon June 06, 2005 in General (updated 6912 days ago)

My old IBM iSeries 2611-412 finallybit the dust today. Strange that I was looking into buying a new laptop anyway, but right after I decided not to buy one, the PCMCIA slots died. While I might eventually get these working again, this system is 6+ years old and ready to […]