Two FC7 questions

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 04 November 2007, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>> I was just out on a 3000 mile run (my oldest daughter is dying of cancer,
>> maybe a week left), taking my HP DV5120us lappy with me, which has a
>> bcm4318 radio in it.
>>
>> Partway through the trip, while hooked to a cat5 cable I ran yumex and let
>> it update the box, which included the kernels, latest is now a 2.6.23-1
>> variant, but it removed the kernels that I had been running ndiswrapper
>> with flawlessly.
>
>It should not remove the running kernel!

I don't recall the exact version I was booted to at the time, but on the next 
bootup I only had 2 kernels left as choice, whereas smart had been told to 
leave the kernels alone, yumex apparently had been given no such 
instructions, so it merrily nuked the one that was running, /lib/module 
entries and all.

Smart didn't have any livna repos defined, and wouldn't handle some sort of an 
mplayer update because of that, so I used yumex.  Now smart is crashing too.

>I am guessing that you 
>booted a kernel that was not using ndiswrapper when doing the
>update.

No, its init was part of my rc.local.

>I have also run into problems sometime when an add-on module 
>that is tied to the kernel version installs as an upgrade and
>deletes the version(s) for the older kernels. In that case, you can
>lose the module for the running kernel. This is a packager problem.
>On the other hand, it can be hard to upgrade an installed module for
>the same kernel because the new one has files conflicting with the
>old one.
>
>> 2. Running roadnav while on the road, the screen blanker drove me nuts,
>> and this is something that I tried to turn off but found I had to park the
>> mouse where it got constantly jiggled in order to keep it alive more than
>> 10 minutes, all this while running on a lighter plugin supply which makes
>> it think its on AC power.
>>
>> Having to lean over the console in my truck to where the lappy was sitting
>> in the shotgun seat to find and tap the spacebar was both an irritation,
>> and multiplied the in-advertant lane wobbles that cause accidents by at
>> least an order.  At the ripe old age of 73, I don't need that a bit.
>>
>> So whats the cure for the blanker caused blue smoke from my ears?
>
>One thing that may work is to run something like "xset dpms off" in
>an xterm. As long as nothing else overrides it, your screen will not
>blank. I am assuming that you already have the screen saver turned off.

I had it set in the kde prefs for 2 hours.

>We can not have you weaving all over the road! It is bad enough that
>you are looking over at the laptop when driving. (I find that a
>small 12V monitor like they use for backup cameras mounted where you
>can glance at it without taking your eyes off the road work well. I
>thought about the review mirror replacement displays, but the sun
>visor ones would be easier to read. What I really want is a heads-up
>display for the motor home.

Its generally a quick glance to get the speed, which roadnav displays along 
the bottom of the screen in a font I can read in about 1 second flat.  
Anything else I generally have to pull over to do because the mouse pointer 
is so damned tiny, and my bluetooth mouse doesn't run at less than 500 mph.  
The whole screen is about a 1.5x2.5" area on the pad, and thats with the 
mouse speed set at 1.  A heads up display would be nice, but there is way too 
much detail on the roadnav screen for anything smaller than a 22" monitor, so 
the speed reading is about all that is usefull when in motion.  And it bugs 
me that you can't set north to up, it redraws the map so the direction your 
moving is up, totally scrambling the view IMO.  But that's another bitch that 
may get fixed by recompiling it from src after a few tweaks.  This was my 
first foray into using it on the road, and the author hasn't answered the 
email I sent so I guess its officially abandoned.  Oh, and don't ask it for 
directions, which it does a nice job of, but it never gives back the cpu and 
you have to quit it and reboot to recover.  That may take 10 minutes just to 
quit, but the machine is still stuck at 100%.

>Mikkel



-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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