Liebes Rhein-Neckar-Zentrum, vielleicht ist es Euch noch nicht aufgefallen, dass Ihr mit Euren Öffnungszeiten "Mo bis Sa bis 20.00 Uhr" seit etwa anderthalb Jahren mitnichten mehr etwas besonderes seid. Wenn man genau darüber nachdenkt, seid Ihr damit eigentlich nur noch unterer Durchschnitt.
Selbst schwedische Möbelhäuser und popelige Dorfsupermärkte öffnen wenigstens zwei Tage in der Woche bis 22.00 Uhr.
Unter diesen Umständen ist es doch eher peinlich, Eure Werbestraßenbahnen weiterhin mit dem Slogan "Extra Lang Geöffnet" herumfahren zu lassen.
Continue reading "Extra Lang Geöffnet"
Da sitze ich nichts ahnend am Sonnabend Nachmittag am Rechner und evaluiere Programme zur Verwendung als serieller Konsolenserver. Draußen geht die Welt unter, worüber ich mich freue, denn es wird dabei deutlich kälter im Rhein-Neckar-Gebiet.
Continue reading "Braucht die Wohnung eine USV?"
Murphy konnte schon in der Wallstadter Wohnung die Schlafzimmertür trotz senkrecht gestellter Klinke öffnen. Das macht dabei auch noch einen derartigen Höllenlärm, dass an Schlafen nicht mehr zu denken ist.
Letzte Woche ist der Frau K. dann der Kragen geplatzt und hat die Türklinke außen durch diesen dekorativen drehbaren Knauf ersetzt.
Daran hat sich der Herr Murphy bis jetzt die Zähne ausgebissen. Dagegen ist es für den Menschen nichttrivial, wenn er mit frisch eingecremten Händen ins Schlazimmer will. Na ja, schlaf ich halt notfalls im Gästezimmer.
This is the second installment of my article about the Serial Console Server for the Poor. First installment here.
The last part of the article having covered the hardware and the udev part creating the device nodes, this part addresses the part of the software that connects the user to the device node.
Continue reading "Serial Console Server for the Poor II"
The serial port is still the way to access network components out of band. It is slow, but reliable, and remarkably well standardized. It does not have technical whiz-bangs that can fail when one needs things to just work. That makes it the natural way to access critical infrastructure and still being sure that this access vector still works when most other things are down.
Every communication link has two sides, so there is a market for devices with a network link and a bigger number of serial ports to connect the actual devices to. Commercial vendors have a broad choice of serial console servers. Most of them, especially the small products with five to ten ports, are quite expensive, so I have been investigating how do build a serial console server with el cheapo hardware.
Continue reading "Serial Console Server for the Poor I"
Today, I had the opportunity to try my UMTS initialization mechanism that I built this weekend with more recent hardware, a newer Option Globetrotter 3G Express Card with Vodafone branding (reporting itself to be a "Globetrotter HSDPA Modem" with Vendor ID 0xaf0 and Product ID 0x6701). To get the card connected to my test Notebook, a hp compaq nc8000, I had a "Expresscard in a PC card slot" adapter and a passive "Expresscard at a normal USB port" adapter. The USB adapter had cost about ten Euros, and I don't imagine the PC card adapter to be much more expensive.
Continue reading "Works with a more recent card as well"
Ich möchte ein Notebook hp nc 8000 per Wake-on-LAN aufwecken, um sicherzustellen, dass es möglichst immer läuft. Leider habe ich im BIOS keine Einstellung für Wake-on-LAN gefunden, und ein per etherwake oder wakeonlan gesendetes magisches Paket wird ignoriert. Also versuche ich mal den hp-Supportchat, vielleicht bin ich ja nur zu doof zum suchen.
Continue reading "hp Supportchat völlig unbrauchbar"
For mobile UMTS/GSM, I have been using an Option 3G Data Card for two and a half years now. I blogged about getting the card to work (in German, sorry) on Linux in July 2005. I never found the time - until now - to automate the card initialization so that I had been using a horrible chat script for card initialization when the PPP connection was built.
I recently took the time to automate this, so that the PIN is transmitted to the card automatically when the card is plugged in. This article documents what I did.
On a side note: Unfortunately, the vendors' attitude towards Linux hasn't changed since 2005. Their Hotlines still deny that their products can be used with Linux at all, and they surely do not publish any documentation that can be of help. Otoh, Vodafone has published a software that supposedly aids usage of their products under Linux. I haven't tried it yet since it is not packaged yet for Debian. Additionally, Vodafone support media and sales do not seem to know about this effort, they still deny that their products work with Linux. Windows users happily install proprietary software products that do little more than sending a handful of AT commands to the emulated USB modem and hand over the connection to Windows' PPP Stack. A very unsatisfying situation.
Just for the record: Dear Vodafone DE, a week ago you missed the sale of a new USB UMTS interface because you don't even document it on Linux. This motivated me to look into the drawer that holds the old, non-HSDPA PC cards that have been decommissioned at the customers' site and use an old, used device. Your fault.
Continue reading "Automatic initialization of a Option 3G Datacard"
