Firewire Network On Fedora Core 4 and 5

I just bought a Firewire (IEEE 1394) cable to connect my AMD 64 bit (running Fedora Core 4) with my iBook, and strangely I can't get the firewire device be recognized as ethernet device even though I already inserted the eth1394 module using:

modprobe eth1394

(all other modules like iee1394, ohci1394 has been automatically inserted)

After searching through the Internet, I found out that this is a problem in Fedora core 4, and the solution is to build a new initrd. Some people might not know how to create a new initrd image (with eth1394 inserted of course), this is how:

mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img `uname -r` --with=eth1394

(note that the uname -r are surrounded by backticks, not apostrophes)

Actually I already had a wireless connection for connecting my iBook with my AMD64, but it is too slow to transfer large data (mostly things that I need to backup using my PC's DVD Writer). This firewire connection is a lot faster now.

Synergy

Lately it has been a necessity for me to work using both of my computer (my Mac OS X iBook Laptop and my Linux AMD64) on my desk. Working with two computer on the same desk is sometimes frustrating, because sometimes I forgot to use my PC keyboard when I meant to use my iBook keyboard. And not only that, sometimes I wanted to copy and paste things between this two computer, and although it is not impossible, it is time consuming.

I remember that few weeks ago I header something called Synergy that could just do what I want (share my desktop mouse and keyboard). I Installed this program, and within less than five minutes, everything has been running smoothly. I could easily move my mouse and keyboard from a computer to the other, and I could copy and paste text from one screen to the other. In fact, I wrote this entry using my PC's mouse and keyboard. Granted, not all things works smoothly, for example, sometimes I'm confused when using the alt key on my PC keyboard that acts as command key on my iBook, but that is just a small annoyance.

One tip: if you are using Mac OS X, I suggest you use SynergyKM instead of the official program, because it is much easier to use. With SynergyKM you can access the synergy preferences from System Preferences, and you can turn Synergy on or off through the menu bar.

SSH Public Key Login Problem

I wanted to login to my Mac from my PC using SSH without password, and also the other way around. This is supposed to be easy, i just need to do:

ssh-keygen -t dsa
scp .ssh/id_dsa.pub remote:./ssh/authorized_keys

(repeat the same from the other side).

The PC to Mac connection works on the first try, but not the other way around. After checking my /var/log/secure, I got the hint that I need:

Oct 8 00:33:21 localhost sshd[8703]: Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for file /home/yohanes/.ssh/authorized_keys

It seems that the umask is set diferently, so I had to do:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/*

Acer Aspire 5002 NWLCi WIFI on AMD64 Linux


Aspire 5002 NWLCi is a cheap AMD64 Turion based laptop ($999 retail price) that comes with Linpus Linux Basic Edition preinstalled. Unfortunately this is a very unusable configuration, because it's an outdated 32 bit Linux, with text only interface, and without the driver for basic things such as the internal modem and Wifi.

My girlfriend just brought this laptop, and to be usable I had to install Fedora Core 4 (AMD64 version) on the laptop. The only problem is the Wifi driver (because she never uses the internal modem) which is bases on Broadcomm chipset (as you might already know, there hasn't been any open source driver for it).

The first thing that comes to my mind is ndiswrapper, a wrapper for Windows driver to be used on Linux. But there is just one problem: I can't find the 64 bit Windows driver. Ndiswrapper on 64 bit machine must use 64 bit Windows driver. The driver is not on the CD and is not on the acer site (at least not when i searched for 5002 series). But it turns out that the latest Acer Ferari series uses the same Wifi chipset, and it comes with 64 bit Windows (which of course has the 64 bit driver). As you might guess, I downloaded the driver for the Ferari and it works like a charm.