Monthly Archives: November 2008

How-to fix wireless DHCP on Mandriva 2009.0

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In two words: dhcp_client sucks !

And now the long story…

Since the upgrade to Mandriva 2008.1, wifi stopped working on my laptop. I tried to install the 2008.1 on several machines. I tried to connect on different access points. I lowered security on the access point. I tried eveything. On desperation, I even tried to boot Windows to check that hardware was ok ! And the only log I had was this:

SIOCETHTOOL: Operation not supported

After all these tests, I was convinced that the problem had something to do with the distribution itself. Maybe a firmware issue or a bad combination of packages…

Then came the 2009.0 release. I though that an upgrade will cure my malediction. Indeed. Nothing new on wireless side. My wifi was still broken. Until I came across a tip on a random forum (I don’t remember which one) suggesting that dhcp_client could be the culprit.

So I replaced it by dhcpcd, and against all expectations, it worked !

And to not be annoyed by dhcp_client in the future, it’s wise to definitely remove it:

urpmi dhcp_client

Google Apps’ video chat comes with secure Gmail sessions

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The story was spread by all top tech blogs last week: Google’s Gmail now features a video chat. And it requires the installation of a dedicated plugin.

Alas, there is no such plugin for any other platform except “Windows XP and later” (according the official website) and Macs (as read on the official blog). So it’s a quite sad news for us Linux users. Indeed, I’m confident about a future seamless integration into the free software ecosystem, as the Gmail’s video chat is based on a stack of open (or soon-to-be, according the recent controversy) standards and protocols: XMPP/Jingle, h264/SVC & RTP.

Anyways, that’s not the main purpose of this post.

I just wanted to point out an update that was not reported by the news: as soon as it was officially made available for the public, the brand new video feature was released for Google Apps’ Gmail too.

Not only that, Google also backported to Apps’ Gmail the much awaited HTTPs option that allow you to force secure encryption of your sessions:

These two updates are quite interesting to note. I long as I remember (and I might be wrong), Google Apps components were always out-of-sync with their legacy equivalent. So this maybe a sign of change in a really good direction for Google Apps users ! :)