Acer Aspire One - painless tsclient/rdesktop install

I recently installed Terminal Server Client (tsclient) and Remote Desktop (rdesktop) on my Acer Aspire One. Here's a little background on what I did to get remote access to the Microsoft Windows servers in my data-center from my Acer Aspire One netbook.

The complete installation information is at this Google Site.

Background:

tsclient - Terminal Services Client is a front end for rdesktop and other remote desktop tools.

rdesktop - remote desktop is an open source client for Microsoft's proprietary Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

The Install in Brief:

• Install rdesktop using yum
• Download tsclient-0.150-5.fc8.i386.rpm from rpmfind.net
• Install tsclient using rpm

Once installed the AA1 desktop is modified to display the Terminal Services Client icon for ease of use.

Acer Aspire One boot time less than 30 seconds

Another reason to buy an Acer Aspire One is the quick boot time. In a recent New York Times Technical article: In a New Age of Impatience, Cutting Computer Start Time It is the black hole of the digital age � the three minutes it can take for your computer to boot up, when there is nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait some more before you can log on and begin multitasking at hyper-speed.

PC manufacturers Dell, Lenova and HP will introduce a new generation of quick start computers.

Why wait for the next generation? The Acer Aspire One boots in under 30 seconds, if running the Linpus OS and booting off the 8GB solid state hard drive.

Even Microsoft, whose bloated Windows software is often blamed for sluggish start times, has pledged to do its part in the next version of the operating system, saying on a company blog that �a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.� Today only 35 percent of machines running the latest version of Windows, called Vista, boot in 30 seconds or less, the blog notes. (Apple Macintoshes tend to boot more quickly than comparable Windows machines but still feel glacially slow to most users.)

The NY Times article continues with a quote from UCLA professor Gary Small,

Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. �Our brains have become impatient with the boot-up process,� Dr. Small said. �We have been spoiled by the hand-held devices.�

USB Mouse on Acer Aspire One

I recently tested the functionality of a USB mouse attached to my Acer Aspire One (AA1). I attached a Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue USB and PS/2 Compatible mouse and started the AA1 without issue. Both the left and right mouse buttons worked as did the scroll wheel and center mouse mouse button (scroll wheel).

The output from from dmesg is:


ALC INIT<6>usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev
input: Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input8
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM)] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2



Unplugging the mouse and reattaching while the AA1 is running again was no problem and produces a dmesg output of:



usb 2-2: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 2-2: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input9
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM)] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2

Transfer files between a Blackberry Curve 8310 and an Acer Aspire One

It is easy to transfer files (e.g. photos) between a Blackberry Curve 8310 and an Acer Aspire One (AA1).

First a few background details: The AA1 comes with 5 usb ports (according to the dmesg output).



$ dmesg | grep 'new USB'
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5



When plugging the Blackberry into one of those USB ports, two events happen; one on the AA1 and the other on the Blackberry.



$ dmesg
...
scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access RIM BlackBerry SD 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 CCS
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 3994624 512-byte hardware sectors (2045 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 53
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 3994624 512-byte hardware sectors (2045 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 53
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through



The Blackberry warns:

USB charging current is not sufficient. Verify that your handheld is connecting to a powered USB charging source and that the proper USB driver is installed.


acknowledging that message, one is presented with:


Do you want to turn on Mass Storage Mode? You might not be able to access some media files in this mode.


Then one is presented with the option:


Mass Storage Mode is being activated. Enter your device password to grant access:

Finally after acknowledging the warnings and supplying the Blackberry password access to the USB storage on the Blackberry is available. It then can be treated like all other storage devices.

Acer Aspire One: painless skype install

I installed Skype on my Acer Aspire One. The Aspire One is a perfect skype platform (having a built in web camera). Here's how I installed Skype for fedora 7 linux:

UPDATE: 2009-01-02 - Please read the notes on my Google site to track the comments and changes since this original post.  The instructions below are now out of date when Acer released a Skype installer.

Download the skype rpm (fedora 7)

Go here to download the fedora 7 version of skype. I downloaded and installed skype-2.0.0.72-fc5.i586.rpm














Run the Installer:

Once downloaded double click the skype rpm to run the installer. Note: you will be prompted to supply an 'authentication code' which is the 'root' password to run the Linpus package installer. The root password was assigned (hopefully by you) when the AA1 was first turned on.













Install additional rpms

Additional rpms are required by skype so those have to be downloaded and installed as well.












Chose Install anyway when presented with a warning from the installer.













Configure the desktop to display the Skype icon

Edit the file /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml using the mousepad (default) editor.  Type the following in the xterm window.

$ mousepad /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml

And add the line:

/usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

to the appropriate section as per the image below.












Once added and the Acer Aspire One is rebooted the Skype icon is available:

Updates

I started a notes page on Google sites to track the comments and changes since this original post.

Acer Aspire One: increased security using GDM

I use my minty fresh Acer Aspire One for work. I work in the financial markets, ergo, it has to be rock solid secure. So to increase the security of my netboook I disabled the auto-magic login functionality and run the Gnome Display Manager (GDM) on startup to force a login. There are other benefits to doing this as well (like being able to switch window managers from Xfce to blackbox (which I'll explain in another post).

How to disable auto-logon:

WARNING: take extreme caution doing this or you will have a non-functioning netbook when rebooted. Be sure to read all instructions completely before making any changes and double check your work . You will need to remember the password you used when first turning on the Aspire One- good luck!

Edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.S

Find and comment out the line

/usr/bin/xinit -- -br>/dev/null 2>&1 &

thusly

#/usr/bin/xinit -- -br>/dev/null 2>&1 &

and right below this line add the invocation to the Gnome Display Manager (gdm):

/usr/sbin/gdm

as shown in the screen shot below:

If all is done correctly, when rebooted the GDM will present you with a welcome menu for user. I do hope you remember the password you used when you first turned on your Acer Aspire One.

Painless Acer Aspire One upgrade for wpa2-enterprise

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One netbook running the Linpus (fedora) OS. Long story short I love it! At 1Kg it's the envy of my fellow geeks!

However I could not use it to connect to our corporate wireless network because the Linpus OS and Network Manager installed does not support WPA2-Enterprise. So starting with this conversation on the Acer Aspire One Forum here's what I did to upgrade the Network Manager:

NOTE: It would appear that the prior instructions, as of 2008-10-09, are no longer valid. Therefore a shell script and archive that contains all that I needed to update the default Network Manager to one that supports WPA2-Enterprise are stored on my google site page.

Reboot the Acer Asprie One after installing the new Network Manger and enjoy WPA2-Enterprise.

For more information about this and all things Aspire One checkout the very informative Acer Aspire One Forum.

Acer Aspire One - Intel Atom N270 - system information

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One netbook. The system information is shown below.

The operating system is:

Linux version 2.6.23.9lw (gcc version 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)) #105 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jun 27 18:56:59 EDT 2008
























Here are some of the statistics according to dmesg. It leads me to believe that there are two Intel Atom N270 CPUs inside the netbook.











However according to Intel:

Hyper-Threading Technology3 (two threads) provides high performance-per-watt efficiency in an in-order pipeline and increased system responsiveness in multi-tasking environments. One execution core is seen as two logical processors, and parallel threads are executed on a single core with shared resources.

The full dmesg out put is here.