How to determine which device drivers to use in Linux

Dave Farquhar Linux

A question came up in the comments of one of my past entries that raised a good question: When you can’t get a device to work, how do you determine which kernel module (Unix-speak that roughly translates to “device driver”) to use to get the hardware working?
Linux has a virtual file at /proc/pci that lists every PCI device it finds in the system. So you can just more /proc/pci to page through a system inventory and find out what video card, NIC, motherboard chipset, IDE and/or SCSI controller, and other devices are in the system.

If you’re in the process of installing when you need this information (highly likely), use ALT-F2 to get to a text console–or CTRL-ALT-F2 to get to a text console from a GUI installer–and issue the commands.

To get back to your installer, hit ALT-F1 to get back to a text-based installer, or CTRL-ALT-F7 to get back to a GUI installer. If CTRL-ALT-F7 doesn’t get you back to the GUI, try the other CTRL-ALT-function combinations.

My what-I-did-tonight piece

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , , , , , ,

I hate to do a boring this-is-what-I-did-tonight post, but I figure the occasional one of those is better than silence from my direction.
I’m sick again. I think this is some kind of record. This pattern of five-day breaks between illnesses really better not last much longer.

So I went out to stock up on sick supplies. You know the drill: chicken soup, zinc lozenges, vitamins. I went in to get my vitamins, then found myself blocked in, so I continued down the aisle and found the first vacant aisle to cut through. Of course it was the make-up section. I felt especially manly cutting through the make-up section, especially considering my next stop was… the sewing section. I needed a needle and thread, for two reasons. I’ve got two shirts with buttons popped off, and I learned a cool way to bind books, but you need a drill (which I have) and a needle and thread (which I didn’t) in order to do it.

So I picked up a couple different colors of thread, then wandered aimlessly for a while until I stumbled across the needles. I found a 25-pack for 64 cents. Good deal.

I really, really hope I looked as lost as I felt.

So when I got home I bound a short book. The idea is this: You drill holes a quarter inch from the top and the bottom, then drill two more holes spaced two inches apart. Cut a length of thread about four times as long as the book is high. You can get the sewing technique from this PDF file. Traditionally, you use Japanese stab binding for short books of drawings, poetry, or journals. But I found it works just fine for everyday stuff. I recently printed a few public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, and this provides me with an easy and extremely cheap way to bind them.

I was trying unsuccessfully to sew on a button when my phone rang. It was my girlfriend. She asked what I was doing. I told her I was making a fool of myself trying to remember how to sew on a button. She described a technique to me, and when I got off the phone with her, I gave it another try. I think I ended up using a combination of her technique and my mom’s, but it worked. The button’s not going anywhere.

Something she said gave me my masculinity back. She asked how I was at threading needles. I said I had some trouble doing it. She said part of the reason sewing is traditionally a women’s thing is because women have smaller hands, which are more adept to the fine movements that sewing requires. My hands aren’t huge, but they’re bigger than most women’s. She said threading a needle requires good vision, concentration, and a steady hand. I’ve got good vision and concentration. But every time I tried to do something that required a steady hand, my dad just shook his head and said, “You’ll never be a surgeon.” And they’ve only gotten worse with age.

And before all this, I spent some time writing up a piece talking about all the lovely things Microsoft did to DR DOS in the late 1980s. This is in response to some mudslinging that happened over at my recent anti-Microsoft piece. Normally I’d just ignore a troll who doesn’t even have enough guts to put his name on his taunts–all I know about him is his IP address is 12.209.152.69, which tells me he’s using a cable modem attached to AT&T’s network, he lives in or around Salt Lake City, Utah, and at this moment he’s not online–but I think this story needs to be told anyway. Depth is good. Sources are good. And there’s a wealth of information in the legal filings from Caldera. And those filings prove that my memory of these events–I remember reading about the dirty tricks in the early 1990s on local St. Louis BBSs–was pretty accurate.

I’m not surprised. I have a knack for remembering this stuff, and I had occasion to meet an awful lot of really knowledgeable people back then.

If I can still remember that Commodore’s single-sided 170K 5.25″ drive was the 1541, its double-sided 340K drive was the 1571, and its 800K 3.5″ drive was the 1581 and I remember the command to make the 1571 emulate the 1541, and why you would want to emulate a 1541, I can probably just as easily remember what you had to do to get Windows 3.1 running under DR DOS and what the reasons were for jumping through those hoops. That history is more recent, and at this stage in my life, I’m a lot more likely to have occasion to use it.

Not that I’m trying to brag. I can remember the names of the DR DOS system files, and I can remember George Brett’s batting average in 1983, but at the end of a five-minute conversation with someone I just met, I’ll probably struggle to remember a name. Or if you send me to the store, you’d better give me a list, because I’m good at forgetting that kind of stuff.

I suspect the DR DOS piece is half done. I might just get it posted this week.

Optimizing a web server

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , , ,

Promises of better Apache performance have me lusting after lingerd, a very obscure utility that increases performance for dynamic content. It’s been used on a handful of little sites you might have heard of: Slashdot, Newsforge, and LiveJournal.
Unfortunately there’s no Debian package, which means compiling it myself, which means compiling Apache myself, which also means compiling PHP and MySQL, which means a big ol’ pain, but potentially better performance since I could go crazy on the GCC optimization flags. Hello, -O3 -march=i686!

And if I’m going to compile all that myself, I figure I might as well compile it all myself and get the high performance across the board and get GCC 3.2x into the picture for even better performance. The easy way to do that is with lfs-install, which builds a system based on Linux From Scratch. For workstations I’d rather use something along the lines of Gentoo, but for servers, LFS is small, mature, and reasonably conservative.

Supposedly metalog offers improved performance over the more traditional syslogd or sysklogd. The good news is that those who are more sane than me and sticking with Debian for everything can take advantage of a Debian package (at least in unstable), and just apt-get away.

If I have any sanity left, I’ll think about minit to replace SystemVInit and save me about 400K of memory in a process that’s always running, and fgetty to save me a little more. I’ve tried fgetty in the past without success; it turns out fgetty requires DJB’s checkpassword in order to work.

Keep in mind I haven’t tried any of this yet. But the plan sounds so good in my current sleep-deprived state I couldn’t help but share it.

The future of the computer industry (especially Microsoft)

Dave Farquhar Software

This story, 2003 and Beyond is probably already really widespread. It’s a very L-O-N-G but thoughtful analysis of the computer industry of today.
The piece doesn’t paint Microsoft in a very flattering light. One of the things I’ve noticed about most pro-Microsoft pieces on the web is that they say Microsoft isn’t a normal monopoly, because after they got their monopoly, they didn’t raise prices. Well, I’m not necessarily convinced that every monopoly immediately raises prices. A company gets used to a certain level of growth, which increased market share provides. When market share slams into that wall of 100% and stops increasing, revenue stops increasing unless the market grows. Holding prices steady at that point may encourage the market to keep growing. Then, when the market stops growing, if you’re thirsty for continued growth, you start raising prices.

This piece articulates that, and tells what’s next now that the market isn’t growing anymore.

This is the most thoughtful analysis I’ve seen yet of Microsoft’s very recent history and current plans, pointing at XP, .Net, and Palladium and showing which way they’re headed by pointing out the pattern in the most objectionable features of each new technology. It took me a good 30-45 minutes to read, and I’m a pretty fast reader, but it’s worth the investment of your time.

Will this go down as my greatest crime against humanity?

Dave Farquhar Personal ,

I can’t decide if I should feel distressed that one of my Wikipedia entries directly led to the creation of the Martha Stewart entry on Wikipedia.
Allow me to explain myself. A link to a non-existant article about Frank W. Woolworth on a page in my watchlist was bugging me. So I wrote up Mr. Woolworth, which led me to do a writeup about the company he founded. Now I was born long after the five-and-dime’s heyday, but the concept was so central to many people’s memory of the 20th century that it bothered me that it wasn’t there. And even though Woolworth’s company is a shadow of its former self today–so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought it was out of business–Frank Woolworth invented the techniques that made Sam Walton the richest man in America.

I guess a cynical take on history could be that Frank Woolworth dramatically changed the look of downtown America, a century before Sam Walton destroyed it.

Woolworth’s five-and-dime stores evolved into the modern discount store we know today, which led me to write up an entry on Target Corporation and make significant additions to the entry on Kmart Corporation, since Woolworth at one time had two chains that competed directly with two of Kresge’s (now Kmart’s) chains.

Then someone noticed the Kmart entry didn’t mention Martha Stewart. Next thing I know, Martha Stewart has an entry in the Wikipedia.

Now Martha Stewart joins the long list of pop-culture icons who have entries in the Wikipedia.

I guess I really should go back to researching Microsoft.

Am I better than 50%?

Dave Farquhar Personal

I did a server migration, mostly from home, today. We’ll find out at what cost later. Batch files did the bulk of the work, but I underestimated a few quotas when I prepped in advance a few weeks ago, and it took a few hours to straighten that out. Funny how a handful of users always eat up your time. And it’s almost always the same users.
I couldn’t help but notice some of the filenames flying by as my manual copies went on. Now I know who installs software on their network drives. And one or two other people appeared to have dumped their Windows system directories to network drives, which left me wondering why? If Windows breaks, it’s right there on the CD. I don’t understand end-users anymore. Maybe I never did.

I watched Eight Men Out afterward. I remember watching that movie with my dad, years and years ago. It had too little baseball and too much behind-the-scenes stuff in it for me then. I liked it better this time around. It was as much the story of a pitcher facing the end of his career trying to take care of his family as it was the story of a handful of guys throwing the World Series. I guess I had to be older to appreciate that aspect.

I’m hoping I’ll be back up to speed tomorrow. But now, I’m headed off to bed.

I’m coming up for air

Dave Farquhar General

I’m sick again–similar to but less intense than the last thing I got–so I’m off to the doctor again.
Meanwhile I keep plugging away at this Microsoft stuff. There’s a lot more to it than I thought. This one’s going to have to be a series, spread out over–I’m guessing–at least three days.

I’ll start that up once I’m feeling better.

Pretentious Pontifications: Tape drives

Dave Farquhar Humor/Satire , , ,

R. Collins Farquhar IV, Scotsman, and aristocrat. To all whom it may concern. Greeting: One of my associates contacted me today about tape backup units, specifically, a review on Tom’s Hardware Guide. As usual, Tom’s Hardware substantially misses the mark.
I was extraordinarily disappointed that Tom’s Hardware made no mention whatsoever about Intel tape drives. I had my manservant call one of my contacts at Intel for the purposes of having them send me a tape drive, but my contact said that Intel does not make tape drives. Since Intel is one of a very small number of reputable hardware manufacturers, this is the kind of important information that needs to be in a review like this.

I had my manservant ask my contact at Intel which tape drive he would recommend. He recommended the HP SDLT320. Since Intel has a very close relationship with HP, I decided that an HP tape drive might be the next best thing. The Intel contact mentioned–as did the THG review–that the Tandberg SDLT320 is an identical unit. Since I have never heard of Tandberg, I did not even consider it. Any operation I have never heard of is obviously a fly-by-night. Accepting a Tandberg when Intel recommends an HP is akin to accepting a mere Bentley when you sought a real Rolls. Whereas Jacques Pierre Cousteau Bouillabaise Nouveau Riche Croissant de Raunche de la Stenche will settle for a Bentley, I am never willing to settle for a knockoff, even when the alleged difference is only in the front plate or grille.

I was also extraordinarily disappointed that Tom’s Hardware did not test the drives with Microsoft software. Microsoft, as even a tryo or ingenue knows, makes simply the finest software in the world. I would go so far as to call Microsoft the Rolls-Royce of software. So my manservant contacted Microsoft to ask for a copy of their top-flight tape backup software. The Microsoft representative said that Microsoft’s offering came bundled with its server software and is licensed by Veritas. If I wanted something better, I should talk to Veritas. Again, doing so would be to settle for something less than a Rolls. Even though a Rolls from the 1960s used a General Motors transmission, I would never settle for a 1968 Cadillac when what I really want is a 1968 Rolls. I have never heard of Veritas either, so I evaluated Microsoft’s offering and found it to be first-class and worthy of performing the backup needs of any enterprise. That Microsoft would be so generous as to bundle such a grandee application with its server software makes it all the more sweet for those whose means are less aristocratic than my own.

I was pleased when I connected the HP SDLT320 to my main workstation (a prototype 4 GHz Pentium 4 I got from Intel) that my Quake 3 framerates rose to 430 FPS. A serious gamer will want this.

Next, I tried backing up my Quake III CD to the HP SDLT320. I was amazed when the backup took a mere two minutes. I do not know whether to attribute these results to the influence of Intel engineers on HP, or to Microsoft’s sterling software. In all likelihood, it is a combination of both.

These tests prove once again the adage that corporations sufficiently large truly can do no wrong.

Writers vs. Critics

Dave Farquhar Writing

Charlie brought up a good point last week when he talked about the difference between being a writer and being a critic.
Sometime last week, I started getting hits from WatchingMicrosoftLikeAHawk.com. They had linked my “Why I Dislike Microsoft” piece. All told, just under 100 people followed that link here. A couple of people e-mailed me asking for permission to link. I thanked them for the link, which brings up a point. Some sites prohibit deep-linking, or try to. So let it be known now: Link to anything on this site that you want. Sure, I want people to read my new stuff and not just my old stuff, but getting them to read my new stuff is my responsibility, not yours. If you deep link, and my writing in that piece plus 30 headlines over on the right-hand side doesn’t get someone to stay, shame on me. Prohibition of deep-linking is a sign of bad site layout.

I also got some critics. Some of them seem to believe that corporations can do no wrong. Others disregard antitrust law, which states that the owner of a monopoly has to play by different rules than companies that don’t have a monopoly, and that the owner of a monopoly cannot use one monopoly to get another.

One anonymous poster told me to name sources and insinuated that I couldn’t. Now, had I written for a different audience, I would have used more sources in the first place. A peek at my logs over the past few months indicates the majority of my users are probably very familiar with Microsoft’s wrongs. I know a good number of them probably thought of the phrase, “DOS ain’t done ’til Lotus won’t run” when they read the title. To some of them, that piece didn’t say anything new at all. It was just the first time they’d seen it all in one place.

But sometimes pieces get read by people outside of the original audience, and that’s what happened here. I figured the piece would be read by about 300 people and promptly forgotten. I was wrong.

So I went looking for sources. And I told my nameless critic I’d name sources once he had the guts to post his real name, like I had. Then I came back with a source. A while later he came back with a name.

Before he came back with a name, I had some sources. What I found wasn’t pretty. Turns out that if anything, I’d underestimated Microsoft’s shenanigans.

My friend Jeanne asked me this week if sometimes having a Web site is more trouble than it’s worth. I said yes.

But I’ll be back tomorrow.