The Dell Latitude D630 laptop and linux

In 2008 it was time for a new work laptop. The standard choice was a Dell Latitude D630 and that sounded good for me.

Stuff here:

The distro

I chose Ubuntu linux this time because I wanted to give it a try. It uses a lot of parts from Debian, so I can still type apt-get update but a lot more is automated.

I burned an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop cd and went through the installation. Not a lot of questions were asked, a lot is automated. Even firmware drivers for hardware are offered for installation.

Not using gnome

Gnome is nice but I like my fvwm window manager and personal keyboard shortcuts. So I created a personal account koos for normal work and an account gkoos for fast access to all the tools available for gnome users. Account koos has an .xsession file which starts some basic tools and has an exec fwvm at the end.

I can use the gdm user switching feature: just type the command gdmflexiserver. I learned this from the xscreensaver documentation.

gnome-keyring-daemon and ssh-agent

I noticed when adding ssh-keys with a specified lifetime that the lifetime was not honored by what I thought was the ssh-agent: 
koos@machiavelli:~$ ssh-add -t 1800
Enter passphrase for /home/koos/.ssh/id_dsa: 
SSH_AGENT_FAILURE
Identity added: /home/koos/.ssh/id_dsa (/home/koos/.ssh/id_dsa)
I found out after some searching that this is actually gnome-keyring-manager doing this and this is a kwown bug: gnome-keyring-daemon does not honor constrained ssh identities. I like my ssh identities constrained. Fix found via Marcus Brinkmann in GnomeKeyring overrides gpg-agent : 
$ gconftool-2 --set -t bool /apps/gnome-keyring/daemon-components/ssh false
Now ssh-agent (from seahorse-agent) gets started automatically.

NetworkManager and wireless

NetworkManager is nice, but it can't deal with the 802.1x wireless network at work. So I switched the control of the wireless card to wpa_supplicant using the following stanza in /etc/network/interfaces: 
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
The configuration for UU networks such as SOLIS-AIR is still the same as I documented before via entries in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. So the gnome network manager applet switched from all autoconfiguration to just the option Manual configuration... I run ifplugd on the wired network to make it automatically start dhcp when a cable is plugged in.

No beep

I noticed my xterms don't beep, even when enabling audible bell. Nothing. The pcspkr module is loaded. Seems to be a known bug: Bug#460410: alsa-base: snd_hda_intel for SigmaTel STAC9205 kills beeper speaker on dell laptop
Comments about this page and updates are welcome. E-mail is the preferred contact method.
Koos van den Hout (koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nl)
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