Alice - slow connects

After migration to Alice-DSL I noticed slow connects in Webbrowser. It turns out that it is caused by the DNS services provided by Alice on login.

Connecting Alice provides two  DNS services. These DNS service may change the next time logging in. These  Alice-DNS services are causing way to long timeout to return with answer, in range of seconds. Way tooooo slow. Probably the ISP (Alice) is trying to slow down traffic this way.

The DSL-router itsself is a problem. It is not possible to assign static IP addresses to known hosts in local network. This is a very nice feature, which allows you to assign well known IP numbers to notebooks in home network and friends network. Otherwise you will need to change static/manual IP configuration every time.

I recommend to by a third-party DSL router (eg. netgear) and make use of public-DNS services in the network, which will speed up webpage download a lot. List here http://www.ccc.de/censorship/dns-howto/

Poulsbo & Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

External display attached to Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) 

I use the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 as desktop host, with external 1440x900 display attached. Gladly this webpage explains how to get Ubuntu 9.10 run on this machine. I only had to add the monitor mode settings and modify the virtual screen size to match the size of external display.

1. Install Ubuntu 9.10 (do not install latest updates)
   
2. Download and execute the  script to install the GMA500 chip drivers as explained:  sudo sh ./poulsbo_ppa.sh
   
3. Change the X11 configuration file with editor:
   sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
   
   Section "Monitor"
      Identifier "Configured Monitor"
      Modeline "1440x900_60.00" 106.47 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync
      Modeline "1600x900_60.00"  119.00  1600 1696 1864 2128  900 901 904 932  -HSync +Vsync
      Modeline "1920x1200_60.00"  193.16  1920 2048 2256 2592  1200 1201 1204 1242  -HSync +Vsync
   EndSection
   
   Section "Screen"
      Identifier "Default Screen"
      Monitor "Configured Monitor"
      Device "Configured Video Device"
      SubSection "Display"
          Virtual 2464 900
      EndSubSection
   EndSection
   
   Section "Device"
      Identifier      "GMA500"
      Option          "AccelMethod" "EXA"
      Option          "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
      Option          "IgnoreACPI" "yes"
      Driver          "psb"
   EndSection
   
   Section "DRI"
      Mode    0666
   EndSection
   
4. Restart the machine, external displays of size 1440x900 (or larger) should work now. 
   

I also added a number of different modeline settings that might be useful if running larger external displays, such as 1600x900, or 1920x1200.
 
I used the gtf command line tool to generate the modelines:

   frehberg@naranja:~$ gtf 1440 900 60

yielding the generated modeline:

  # 1440x900 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 55.92 kHz; pclk: 106.47 MHz
  Modeline "1440x900_60.00"  106.47  1440 1520 1672 1904  900 901 904 932  -HSync +Vsync

Disable Lid-close event

It seems with release Ubuntu 9.10  Power-Management Preference does not provide the action "nothing" anymore, in case the laptop lid is closed. This is a pitty if you want to use the laptop with external display, and closing the lid of your laptop. This webpage gave me a hint, how to change the setting manually. I used gconf-editor to modify the settings to lid action "nothing".

1. ALT-F2, “gconf-editor”
2. /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons
3. set “lid_ac” and “lid_battery” to value "nothing"