taktiksBLUE: January 2014

Thursday, January 23, 2014

New Sony VAIO Pro is now available with Intel® Core™ i7-4650U, Intel® HD Graphics 5000 and Wireless LAN (a/b/g/n/ac)!

The New Sony VAIO Pro 13 has just gone even better!!! Sony now allows you to also choose Intel® Core™ i7-4650U which comes with the newest Intel® HD Graphics 5000. Furthermore compared to the usual models it features Wireless LAN (a/b/g/n/ac)!

As a reminder, until a couple of days earlier one had no option to upgrade to Core™ i7-4650U and all the models had the previous graphics card (Intel® HD Graphics 4400). The wifi did not feature ac at all.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Ubuntu on the Sony VAIO Pro 13

http://simon.schllng.de/2013/08/10/ubuntu-auf-dem-sony-vaio-pro-13/?lang=en

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

nvidia fix

I had this same problem just a few hours ago, the latest 331 is broken. Downgrading to the previous driver or any other, included the open-source nouveau won't work, the only solution is uninstall all nvidia packages and install the driver from the .run you can download from the nvidia website.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

There, select your graphic card, architecture, etc, and download the installer. When it's done, you'll need to install it from the commandline without X running. Pres Ctrl+Alt+F6 and after login:

sudo service lightdm stop
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-319 nvidia-331 # (change this line to match the drivers you have installed).

Now, asuming your driver has been downloaded to the "Downloads" folder:

cd Downloads
chmod +x NVIDIA*
sudo ./NVIDIA*.run

I've used the asterisk here because I can't know if the driver you downloaded is the exact same name as mine, since it depends on your GPU. You could use autocompletion with the tab key to use the exact .run name.

Follow the on screen instructions. When you finish, reboot:

sudo shutdown -r now

If after rebooting you see the same problem, log again in a TTY and try:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

This should regenerate a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Just a quick update for anyone who used my solution: Today a new update of some gl libraries has broken my system again. I've had to re-install the NVIDIA run package, it complained about some of its libraries being altered and restored them to its working state. There seems to be a compatibility problem between libraries from the official repositories and the ones packaged in the driver. This is the reason I don't like to install things from outside packagers... To reinstall the driver, kill the X with

sudo service lightdm stop

and reinstall the .run with

sudo ./NVIDIA....run

edited yesterday

answered Jan 2 at 22:46

darent
2,199513

I get the following error on installing from these drivers :

-> Installing NVIDIA driver version 331.20. -> Running distribution scripts executing: '/usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install'... -> done. -> The distribution-provided pre-install script failed! Continue installation anyway? (Answer: No)

– Patryk Jan 2 at 23:08

I forgot to tell you that, I got exactly the same message. First I choosed No out of caution, but then when I was about to give up and reinnstall the whole system, I've tried again and selected yes to continue anyway, and the installation finished OK. – darent Jan 2 at 23:11

Did the same and now I booted back to the system :) Thanks. – Patryk Jan 2 at 23:12

Glad it helped. I was planing to spend today gaming and because of this, I've been hitting my head against the PC the whole day. Just remember one thing, your drivers are now installed from a source outside the package system, so if you later decide to install drivers from xorg-edgers or the official ppa's, you'll have to first uninstall this driver manually. If you try to use apt-get or the software-center to overwrite this drivers, it could break the configuration. – darent Jan 2 at 23:15

If you have secure boot enabled in bios, you have to disable it otherwise the installation will fail. – EApubsJan 3 at 4:26

Just a quick update: I just restarted the system after upgrading some packages and it was broken again. Aparently, a new version of xserver-xorg-video-nouveau broke the nvidia driver installed manually. If this happens to you, since you said you were trying different drivers, just remove it with sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and reboot. It should load again the privative drivers. – darent Jan 3 at 19:30

@darent, even with your fix, I get an error on startup "none of the selected modes are compatible with possible modes". It looks like the gui is loading in 800x600 resolution. – Gopherkhan Jan 4 at 6:22

This got me closer on 13.10, but not quite fully. I'm on a Lenovo y580 with an optimus-supporting 660M. I'm wondering if the bumblebee combination has messed something up further....what exactly is causing the rollbacks to not work? I had 310 working earlier, but just switched to the drivers in edgers a few days ago...– Gopherkhan Jan 4 at 6:24

Okay, I got it. The problem was with an incomplete ppa-purge of xorg-edgers. I had to re-add the ppa, then purge it again. After that, everything worked fine. – Gopherkhan Jan 4 at 7:25

I hope they realize this and release a new package soon, so we can add the ppa again and not depend on checking nvidia website for updates. I've been using xorg-edgers for months and never had problems with the nvidia drivers before (the ati drivers are a disaster, but that's a whole other story). – darent Jan 4 at 15:05

http://askubuntu.com/questions/399153/after-apt-get-upgrade-system-always-boot-to-low-graphics-mode

nvidia ubuntu 13.10

Before you install the driver you have to do the following actions:

sudo apt-get install linux-source
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

The important thing is that you first blacklist the nouveau driver:

A simple way to prevent Nouveau from loading and performing a kernel modeset is to add configuration directives for the module loader to a file in /etc/modprobe.d/. These configuration directives can technically be added to any file in /etc/modprobe.d/, but many of the existing files in that directory are provided and maintained by your distributor, which may from time to time provide updated configuration files which could conflict with your changes. Therefore, it is recommended to create a new file, for example, /etc/modprobe.d/disable-nouveau.conf, rather than editing one of the existing files, such as the popular /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf. Note that some module loaders will only look for configuration directives in files whose names end with .conf, so if you are creating a new file, make sure its name ends with .conf.

Whether you choose to create a new file (It's my preferred configuration) or edit an existing one, the following two lines will need to be added:

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

Then you install the nvidia driver with your prefered configuration ( x-swat, nvidia of the distributed drivers from Ubuntu).

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2181525

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Multiple Access Points

No WDS needed - that will just slow you down.

Exactly the same security on all APs (and I strongly suggest WPA2).
Same SSID on all APs.
Different channels, spaced at least 3, but preferably more, apart; i.e. 1, 4, 7, 11. Or if AP1 can't see AP3 (or are very far apart), you can use like 1, 6, 2, 7 (or similar).
WRTs configured to be APs only (no WAN, plugged to wired net via a LAN port).
DHCP server OFF on all APs (use your "other" DHCP server).

Now a wireless client can move freely among all the APs, and you (just about) won't notice when it roams from one AP to the next.

WPA2 has a built-in protocol that facilitates "fast roaming". This helps when a mobile wireless endpoint moves from say AP1's coverage area to AP2's coverage area. The transfer is a bit quicker with WPA2 (not that its very slow with other schemes). How quickly a wireless client switches over from one AP to the next is determined by how aggressive the client is set to roam.

Also, use AES encryption (which you actually should if you set WPA2), as this has the lowest encryption performance penalty.

Importantly, if your OS and/or wireless supplicant allows you to specify the AP by MAC, don't, as this would then not allow free roaming. Just specify the SSID

No real advantage to using Radius in a small environment - in a bigger env., there's mainly 2:
1) Nobody knows (or should know) the WPA passkey at any specific time, as the Radius server and the client sorts that. A real machine-to-machine love affair - no humans involved...

2) Every user can have a different username/password, or certificate, or the likes. It makes managing many users MUCH easier, especially if you already have an authentication framework like eDirectory, Active Directory, LDAP, etc.

Never use WEP! Even if you use a VPN on top of WEP:
1) hackers may still gain access to your router, fiddle it, and then get to your network, even if they can't decrypt your web browsing or file sharing traffic. Your network link packets, etc. are running outside the on-top-VPN. (To get around this, in days gone by [I think], companies used a VPN concentrator that sits between the AP and the rest of the net, and then allowed only specific traffic past the VPN concentrator. This way an AP compromise was not such a big deal).
2) WEP slows you down. The WEP encryption scheme is all software/CPU. Add to that the VPN encryption, which, most likely, will even involve multiple passes to decode/encode, further slowing your traffic.

With WPA or WPA2:
1) You already have the strongest VPN (experts call it something like RSN - Robust Security Network) you can just about imagine, encrypting not only your payload traffic (web browsing, file sharing, etc.), but also your link packets and some other connection data. (Bear in mind though that this VPN exists only between the wireless client and the AP. Where the AP joins the wired net, it's all unencrypted again.)
2) With Rijndael (I think that's how it's spelled) encryption, more commony known as AES or AES-CCMP, part of the work is done by hardware (in the client adapter and the AP) in a single pass. Quick-quick... Just "no encryption" beats AES's speed.

If you use TKIP encryption with WPA/WPA2, you are somewhat - not much - less secure than with AES, but the bigger drawback is that TKIP takes you back to all software encryption. Slower.

So, to stop my rambling: If you don't use a VPN to encrypt ALL you data on your wired net, there's really no point in having a VPN at all - just use WPA2/AES on your wireless segments to encrypt your on-air stuff

Source

http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/need-multiple-access-points-wds-or-just-same-ssid.23469/