**FIXED** Wireless range and stability. (Page 1 of 2)

You will have to repeat this step every kernel upgrade ofcourse. It works FLAWLESS with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS dvd! and plus it cracked wep for me so fast without even using the padlock modules!!! lol best wifi chipset ever

dont forget to
depmod -ae
after you make and install the new modules!

Last edited by dimethoxyhead (2008-07-21 6:24:29 pm)

and supposedly if you use "iwconfig wlan0 rate 5.5M auto" with the really poor rtl8187 driver, it is supposed to work? maybe ill try that one day

Hi, nice help you give with all that instructions I will try one by one (little newbie), for now, I try compcache, download the .tar and "make" "run", the question is: Dont need to do that every reboot? doin once make the modifications forever ? (by the way, dont note to much improvement)
Thanks, I like to try the other instructions you give, but sounds complex for me for now.

EDIT : I follow the instructions for wireless increase of range, the wireless continue working but, I really dont notes big diference, (must use more time to really note some diference) until now still working, but without increasing range.

EDIT : I follow all the instructions, included recompilation of kernel and honestly dont notes improvement, the compilation takes at least more than 5 hours, and at the end, everything works in the same way, I really hope some way to improve my dear easynote

Last edited by jhonfy (2008-06-06 11:36:03 pm)

you have to load ./use_compcache.sh every time manually, or just create a boot script like i did so it loads automaticly every time
(that drasticly speeds up boot time with the full 1.2GHZ support added together! performance gain is substantially insane )

Philip550c:  Under Ubuntu or gOS?

If you really need more range with your wireless in your Cloud, just try some of these commands as root:

Usage Tips
Power Settings

The transmit power can be adjusted using:

iwconfig wlan0 txpower <value of 0 to 35>

With 0 being the lowest and 35 being the highest transmit power. The default is 5 which is normal. In order to use higher values, you must first “enable” the high power option. See the next section regarding how to do this. WARNING: Enabling high power can damage or destroy your wireless device. Use this feature at your own risk.

It is important to understand that the values are relative power values, not absolute. Meaning that they do not refer to dBm or mW values.

To view the current setting enter:

iwlist wlan0 txpower

The system responds with the current setting:

wlan0     unknown transmit-power information.

        Current Tx-Power=5 dBm        (3 mW)

You MUST ignore the dBm and mW labels. The value of “5” above is the actual value in the 0 to 35 range. Unfortunately due to driver constraints, the “dBm (3mW)” are also displayed but must be ignored.

See this posting for a more detailed description of the power settings.
"highpower" ipriv Setting

+++++++++ WARNING +++++++++
+++++++++ WARNING +++++++++
WARNING: Enabling high power can damage or destroy your wireless device. Use this feature at your own risk.
+++++++++ WARNING +++++++++
+++++++++ WARNING +++++++++

Starting with the rtl8187_2.6.24v3.patch, there is a iwpriv “highpower” setting you need to set to “1” in order to increase the txpower over the default value.

To enable high power:

iwpriv wlan0 highpower 1

To disable high power:

iwpriv wlan0 highpower 0

I would stay away from the highpower settings because they can damage the card but the iwlist wlan0 txpower 35 command should do something nice for the signal range!

Last edited by dimethoxyhead (2008-07-24 4:20:19 pm)

Hey, having a slight problem following your instructions on patching the wireless driver (I'm running openSUSE 11).  When I try to "make", it returns:

rm -f ieee80211/Module.symvers 2>/dev/null
rm -f ieee80211/Modules.symvers 2>/dev/null
make -C ieee80211 all
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/areldyb/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/ieee80211'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.25.11-0.1-default/build M=/home/areldyb/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/ieee80211 modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.25.11-0.1-obj/i386/default'
make[2]: *** No rule to make target `modules'.  Stop.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.25.11-0.1-obj/i386/default'
make[1]: *** [modules] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/areldyb/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/ieee80211'
make: *** [all] Error 2

The troubleshooting tips on the page you linked to don't mention this at all.  Any ideas on what's wrong, or how to correct it?

Figured it was something simple.  *chuckles*

Got it working now, thanks for the help.

Ubuntu version: Ibex
Netbook: Sylvania G netbook

Running with Cpufreq at 400 Mhz does kill my keyboard, mousepad & powerbutton at random intervals; usb ports, network & wireless keep working.  Setting the lower value to 500 mhz seems to do the trick.  Can't figure out the reason or if it is software or hardware related.

However enabling Cpufreq and doing cpu intensive task (such as kernel compiles) gets the CPU warm although still inside specs, but random lock up start to occur at around 60 degrees C, so to keep and eye on the temp I use a Gnome applet and suspend for a few secs any intensive task.  The lock ups are total not even sysrq works.  It is worth mentioning that I live in Puerto Rico and typical ambient temperature is around 75-85 degrees, so that might be a factor.  Raising the netbook appears to improve airflow as the CPU fan is extruded from the bottom of the plastic case and reduces clearance under the machine.

wow
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Compcache
that makes me think about switching back to Ubuntu! lol
but really though, its better to just keep a simple subversion checkout of compcache
svn checkout http://compcache.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ compcache-read-only 
this way you can keep the compcache modules up to date by "cd compcache-read-only ; svn up"
very rarely, a new update may not work with a brand new kernel, if this ever is the case, you can keep an extra version of compcache by going
svn checkout http://compcache.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ compcache-svn
what i do is keep two directorys, i update one and if it works i update the other, and if the new update does not work than i simply go to the other dir and build the version before it and just "./use_compcache.sh"

seriously compcache is the greatest thing to use on the nanobook especially if your model only has 512mb of ddr2, the VIA V4 Bus is very efficient in its memory use and once compcache is loaded, i basicly dare you to use up all that memory -- including the compressed ram ofcourse!

Ubuntu Ibex is making another statement by adding compcache to its default developers kernel, and soon the released kernels when Ibex is out. Compcache is something i perfer over a RAM upgrade simply because less memory = more battery life, and Compcache makes things faster no matter how much ram you got, just compile anything without compcache then turn off all swap drives or swap files and then load compcache and compile the same again, the difference in speed is obscene! Compcache is AWESOME. I've been using it since version 0.1 and I'm the one who noticed that it dont work on ARM platforms, i posted an issue it never ever got fixed, But any x86 running Linux should absolutely run the latest compcache svn! I wonder what benchmarks would look like with compcache on and off on several diffrent kinds of machines, maybe mikez could tell us, he's got 14.

"More interestingly, compressed cache for faster systems with large amounts of memory is extremely significant, as it raises the upper memory bound for physical disk swapping proportionally to the (larger) amount of physical ram while simultaneously imposing less CPU load (and thus performance loss) for the compression operations due to the increased processing power. Microsoft will duplicate this when it goes mainstream in Ubuntu Desktop and Server as a default enabled option; I don't know if Apple will get there first or simply follow suit. --JohnMoser"

Last edited by dimethoxyhead (2008-08-26 12:52:04 pm)