A ton of questions from a noob

Forum: Laptops
Topic: A ton of questions from a noob
started by: Lunar_Lamp

Posted by Lunar_Lamp on Oct. 19 2005,15:45

First post, so I'd just like to say that after dipping my toes into the waters of several distros, DSL seems to be my favourite! Which is amazing considering it's tiny size really.

Briefly, I am running DSL 1.5 on a Dell CP M233 (I think that's the model number). In short, 48mb of ram (with upgrade in post), 233 processor and a whopping 3gb hdd! :;):

I have done a frugal install, and seem to have it working nicely to my likes, with it saving settings etc and working largely how I want. However, being a perfectionist, I still have a long list of things I want to fiddle with.

Laptop Specific:
- Is there anything I need to do re:keyboard setup? Currently I am set to UK keyboard, but will this detect the FN key, and will it realise that I don't have all the buttons of a fully keyboard? This comes from me previously (and on other linux distros) being able to press FN+F3 to view battery meter, for example. This doesn't appear to be working in DSL currently.
- Is there another way to view battery power remaining?
- I don't think the screen is turning off when I close the laptop up - how do I sort this out?

Currently - I have no way of accessing internet with the laptop - so:
- How do I install packages without doing so?
- Linked to that - how do I mount a usb hard drive (rewritable). Can this be done automatically etc? Does it have to be plugged in on boot?

- For when I do get net access, what is a really lightweight msn-capable chat client. I know of GAIM, but is there another, more lightweight version?

Thanks if you can answer any of these questions, though I am sure there will be more to follow, and followup questions required.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 19 2005,17:17

Quote (Lunar_Lamp @ Oct. 19 2005,11:45)

I have done a frugal install, and seem to have it working nicely to my likes, with it saving settings etc and working largely how I want. However, being a perfectionist, I still have a long list of things I want to fiddle with.

Laptop Specific:
- Is there anything I need to do re:keyboard setup? Currently I am set to UK keyboard, but will this detect the FN key, and will it realise that I don't have all the buttons of a fully keyboard? This comes from me previously (and on other linux distros) being able to press FN+F3 to view battery meter, for example. This doesn't appear to be working in DSL currently.
- Is there another way to view battery power remaining?
- I don't think the screen is turning off when I close the laptop up - how do I sort this out?
This might be something from the bios...I believe you can configure the keyboard from shell

Currently - I have no way of accessing internet with the laptop - so:
- How do I install packages without doing so?
- Linked to that - how do I mount a usb hard drive (rewritable). Can this be done automatically etc? Does it have to be plugged in on boot?
If you have a cdrom, you can mount and umount all day long

- For when I do get net access, what is a really lightweight msn-capable chat client. I know of GAIM, but is there another, more lightweight version? (gaim.uci there is nothing more light than a cloop mounted image (no ram usage until program is started)

Thanks if you can answer any of these questions, though I am sure there will be more to follow, and followup questions required.

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by Your Fuzzy God on Oct. 19 2005,17:40

1. As far as the FN key is concerned, you might want to try running xev. Xev will allow you to see the buttons keycode when pressed. Once you find the FN keycode try mapping the key to an unused F-Button (i.e. F 13) Like this:

xmodmap -e "keycode XXX = F13"

Then use xmodmap again to route the button to a mod so that you can use it in your ~/.fluxbox/keys file:

xmodmap -e "add mod3 = F13"

Open ~/.fluxbox/keys and add lines to open certain programs. Use the following as a template:

Mod3 F3 :execcommand /path/to/batterymeter

2. I'll Leave this to someone with more knowledge on the subject.

3. Try amsn, it is much smaller than gaim.

Posted by doobit on Oct. 19 2005,20:30

amsn.uci works great on my laptop, just follow the directions on the info page.

Posted by Lunar_Lamp on Oct. 20 2005,14:43

Ok, here are some more I'm afraid:

How do I get the clock to display in 24hour mode as opposed to 12hour mode? I'm sure this is obvious - but it's really bugging me, and I can't work it out.
How can I get the manual pages? i.e. so I can type "man foobar" and it will give me the manual pages I want.

"If you have a cdrom, you can mount and umount all day long" - that doesn't really answer the question I'm afraid, I wanted to know how to mount my usb drives (20gb usb hdd, and 256 usb flash drive) (note, not at the same time). If the info is readily available, please just point me in the direction - I have enjoyed working stuff out myself so far, though I am still a little confused as to the whole mounting procedure in a frugal install. If someone could point me to somewhere that it is explained I'd appreciate it.

Posted by doobit on Oct. 20 2005,14:48

Make sure your usb drives are plugged in when you boot. Then you can use the mounter tool in slit to mount the drives. You use the little arrows to select the drive you want then click on the little screw shaped thingy to mount the drive.

Posted by Your Fuzzy God on Oct. 20 2005,16:11

To change the time format open ~/.fluxbox/init and change the line "session.screen0.strftimeFormat:"

For 24hr use:
%k:%M
For 12hr use
%l:%M

As far as the man pages are concerned, I always search google for them or just use the --help option. I don't know of anyone who has all of the man pages for the default dsl packages, but it wouldn't suprise me if one of these guys has them all in one neat little package.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 20 2005,17:54

try restarting the hotload service to "automount" the usb pendrive...I dont have any machines that are usb capable (well running DSL anyway) to practice on...sorry

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by Lunar_Lamp on Oct. 21 2005,11:51

Whilst I remember - about the slit thingy. What is the top part for? I see a box with an up and a down arrow in it - but never anything more in there, and clicking it doesn't seem to do anything. What's that for, and if I don't need it, how do I remove it?

As I only have internet at work, I cannot use the laptop on the internet - therefore a "quick google search" takes ages, as I have to wait until the next day at work to check the syntax for a command. Being a noob, I need to do this regularly, so a package of the man pages would be good.

What is the hotload service, and how do I play around with it?

Posted by mikshaw on Oct. 21 2005,14:30

It's "wmnet", which monitors your network traffic. If you are not on a local network or connected to anything else through eth0 (such as a broadband modem or router), then you don't need it. It is started from /home/dsl/.xinitrc.
If you have a dialip connection, a new copy that monitors ppp0 should automatically load when you connect.

Posted by Juanito on Oct. 22 2005,02:30

Laptop Specific:
...- Is there another way to view battery power remaining?...

There are some things you can do to be able to view battery power etc.

What you do depends on whether your laptop follows the old APM (advanced power management) or the newer APCI (advanced power control interface) standard. I have been trying to get my laptop working with ACPI (you can see the details using the forum search function) so I don't know anything about APM.

As far as I can tell, DSL 1.5 does not support ACPI but DSL 2.0RC1 does. I have managed to manually load the ACPI modules and the myDSL wmapci dock app works fine, you can also manually slow your cpu down