Lightweight network access with wicd

One of the double-edged features of Arch Linux, is that it encourages the user to put together a software system which suits their needs, and not necessarily the system which someone else has assembled for them.

That’s not meant as a criticism—Linux distros like Ubuntu are great if you want/need a workable OS “out of the box”. However, as I’ve written here before, it’s not what I wanted for my Eee 701—my aim was to put together a “leaner” OS for the machine, which would use as many “lightweight” alternatives to the usual GNOME and KDE applications as possible.

Desktop environments like GNOME do a lot for the user, that they don’t always realise—one example is GNOME’s NetworkManager. It sits unobtrusively in the GNOME panel, quietly doing its best to connect the user to wired and wireless networks. If you want a Linux setup without GNOME and its associated apps, but would still like a measure of “hand-holding” managing your network connections, what is the alternative?

wicd graphical and console clients, running under Arch Linux (with Fluxbox)

For me: the answer is wicd. Wicd (pronounced “wicked”, apparently) is a network manager for Linux, which at its simplest has no GNOME or KDE dependencies, so it is well-suited to running under lightweight window managers like Fluxbox or IceWM (and is installed as part of quite a few “light” Linuxes, such as Zenwalk). In fact, wicd doesn’t need to run under X at all—it operates as a client-server application, where the server (daemon) does all the network-connection work, and you use a client application to interact with it. There are graphical (Python/GTK+) and console (ncurses) clients, so you can choose which you prefer (or need) to use.

Should you wish to give wicd a spin on your Linux system, you should be able to install it via your package manager, or compile it if you prefer. You need to start the wicd daemon at boot time; in Arch Linux, I add it to the “daemons array” in /etc/rc.conf. (For the finer points of setting-up, the wicd page at the Arch wiki is most useful.)

Most of the time, I’ve found wicd a “set it and forget it” kind of application—it stays in the background and just gets on with managing your connections. It’s not perfect—sometimes it fails to reconnect a dropped wireless link (giving a “bad password” error, even if the password is given correctly), though I believe I read this is a DHCP client issue, rather than wicd specifically—but in general I find wicd a pretty essential part of my Eee’s software setup. I especially appreciate that because of its client/server design, wicd is always running on the Eee, whether I am using the graphical interface or console. In X, the graphical wicd client can always be found in the system tray, and checking the network link is just as easy at the command-line.

Compared with GNOME NetworkManager, there are a few missing features; the main one that I would like to see, is a graphical interface for managing VPN connections. The wicd FAQ states that direct VPN support is planned for version 2—in the meantime, wicd offers the option to trigger per-connection scripts (a bit fiddly-looking to set up, but probably better than nothing). The developers have also expressed an interest in adding options such as management of 3G modem connections, but it looks like a lack of resources is holding this back for the moment. I think I’d like to keep an eye on the VeryPluggableBackends development branch, though…

In short: if you’re looking to build a Linux system without GNOME or KDE, but still want help managing your network connections, wicd is definitely worth investigating.

Hot-rodding an Eee 701: upgrading the RAM

RAM (lower) and SSD (upper) in an Eee 701SD

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I have been thinking for some time, about various ways to boost my Eee 701′s performance—partly by a change of Linux operating system, but also by upgrading the RAM and SSD (storage) to larger/faster alternatives.

I explained that whilst I felt upgrading the SSD was desirable, but would need to wait (on the grounds of cost and complexity), boosting the RAM was something of a “no-brainer”—it was more affordable, easier to undertake and would hopefully result in noticeable performance gains. With that in mind, I put in an order for a 2GB DDR2 memory module from Kingston’s ValueRAM range (around £15), figuring that a 400% increase in RAM capacity would be sure to have an obvious effect… wouldn’t it?

The module arrived this morning, and when I got the opportunity, I reached for the screwdriver and popped off the RAM/SSD cover on the Eee’s underside. Thankfully, Asus made upgrading the RAM pretty straightforward—simply release the two metal clips either side, give the module a gentle lever-up at the “middle” end, and it springs up at a slight angle, allowing you to swap over the RAM modules.

Readout in "hardinfo" (note the "Total Memory" figure)

Aside from a brief scare when the Eee wouldn’t power on (I think the battery wasn’t plugged in fully!), I was soon looking at the output of “hardinfo” (a system diagnostics app for X), informing me that the system was now looking at a nice 2GB of RAM.

If you’ve read this far, I expect you’re curious to hear whether I can notice any difference in the Eee’s performance yet. Well, it’s early days yet, but first impressions are undoubtedly positive.  Before the upgrade (512Mb RAM), bubblemon showed about 30% “water” (i.e. RAM used) simply by starting the X display, and opening Chromium (even without loading a Web site) would push the level up to more than 50% (not a “scientific” benchmark, but you get the idea). Opening more than four or five “multimedia” tabs (e.g. YouTube) in Chromium would slow the system to a crawl, and I didn’t really want to “push” this, as the Eee has no swap partition (to avoid excessive wear on the SSD). I didn’t know what would happen if I ran out of system RAM with no swap to fall back on…

Now, when I start X, under 5% of RAM is in use, and starting Chromium still leaves me with over 90% RAM free—the “rubber duck” in bubblemon hardly has any water to float on! I haven’t done any proper benchmarking tests, but subjectively the Eee seems to run a bit more smoothly than before, with application windows opening and closing more quickly. Perhaps later on, I should replicate the “five YouTube tabs” test of a few days ago!

So, it’s a bit soon to proclaim a huge difference in performance, but so far I’m very pleased by the Eee’s new RAM “ceiling”, and hope it should be enough for the rest of the machine’s lifespan.

The irony of owning a laptop with 25% as much RAM as data storage capacity (for the unitiated, an extremely high proportion for a computer that’s not a mobile phone), is not lost on me, and I haven’t ruled out the possibility of upgrading the SSD in the future, once I can be sure of overcoming the potential (and actual) issues, such as “cloning” the contents of the old drive to the new one, and ensuring I buy the correct model of SSD…

…but for now, I think I’ll stick happily with what I have

My Eee Desktop – September 2011

I’m back from my late summer break, and as autumn hoves into view, it feels like time to share my current Eee desktop:

My Eee Desktop - September 2011

You can see from the screenshot, that I have a new Fluxbox theme which I have knocked together: I call it “Pugin“, after the Victorian “Gothic Revival” designer perhaps best known for the interiors of the Houses of Parliament in London. I created the tiled wallpaper at BgPatterns, using the wine-red and deep gold colours which are often associated with Pugin’s designs, and also applied these to the various Fluxbox window decorations (apologies for forgetting to include the Fluxbox menu in this shot).
(A word of caution about BgPatterns: it’s highly addictive, especially if you have a penchant for tiled desktop patterns, so I wouldn’t visit if you don’t have time to kill )

The main apps visible are “top” (running in XFCE Terminal), XMMS and xfontsel. For the “dockapps” down the right-hand side, you can refer to the last desktop article to find out the purpose of most of them—Conky is also running on the root desktop, but it is mostly obscured here by the other application windows.

Until next month…

Hot-rodding an Eee 701: first thoughts

Perhaps this is a particularly British phenomenon, but I have never entirely understood why some young men bother taking a small car like a Nissan Micra, and “modding” it—i.e. sticking a more powerful engine in the front, installing blue LED strips on the underside, replacing the exhaust pipe with one of HMS Belfast‘s spare guns (judging by the size and the volume), and so on.

I didn’t really want to understand any of this, especially a few years ago, when some local “boy racer” would roar up the road in their souped-up Rover Metro or whatever, and definitely not when they’d just woken up my baby daughter in the process.

All the above sprang to mind recently, when it occurred to me that for some time, I have been considering something similar for my trusty Eee—a spot of “hot-rodding”, if you will. You could say I have already taken a first step on the “performance upgrade” path, by installing Arch Linux—the system now runs subjectively faster and smoother than its predecessor, even before I start looking at other, more hardware-orientated changes I could make to speed things up further.

And on that note…

Peering under the bonnet

In the nearly two years since I bought my Eee, surprisingly I’ve never got around to unscrewing the plate on the bottom of the machine, which provides access to the bay containing the RAM (and, I believed, the solid-state drive (SSD)). I’ve often thought about whether I could upgrade one or both of these—the Eee 700-series models vary on exactly what one can easily upgrade, but mine (the 8Gb, sometimes known as the Eee 702) is supposed to offer the best options—so during my summer break I finally got the chance to peek inside and find out what the options were.

SSD (top) and RAM in an Eee 701SD

Summary: it’s the best news possible, in that both the RAM and SSD are upgradable by the user. The photo I took shows the SSD “on top”, with the DDR2 memory module below it—the RAM chip just unclips, and the SSD is screwed in, but both can be upgraded without much “hacking”.

Memory first: the RAM module in my Eee is the 512Mb one it came with (complete with “void warranty if removed” sticker—no worries on that account here!). I am planning to replace it with a 2Gb chip in the near future, as one can find these for under £15 online (barely more than a 1Gb module), and I hope this will improve performance noticeably, as I use ramdisks for temp file storage, and have no swap space on the SSD to save drive wear.

The SSD is another matter. Undoubtedly, the 8Gb drive in my Eee is getting a bit cramped, and it would be nice to have more “headroom” for files on there. I have heard that third-party SSDs generally offer faster file access too, though I don’t know how much I would notice the improvement in practice.

Even now, however, SSDs aren’t cheap, especially as the Eee 700- and 900-series machines use SSDs installed into Mini-PCIe cards (a bit specialist, with a price tag to match). I am eyeing up one of Super Talent’s 32Gb Mini-PCIe SSDs, but am not 100% certain yet whether my Eee can use the SATA model. From scouring the likes of the EeeUser.com forums, I believe it can, but with a price tag of about £60 for a 32Gb unit, and the apparent possibility that you can “brick” the drive and/or the computer if you get the installation wrong, understandably I’d like not to make a mistake!

I’m also put off by hearing that I may have to do a fresh OS install on the new drive, as the hardware differences (e.g. PATA and SATA interfaces) between the old and new SSD might cause problems if I merely “clone” the contents of the old drive to the new one. Hopefully this wouldn’t be necessary, but it does give me pause for thought: would upgrading to a larger/faster SSD be worth the cost, effort and risks involved?

So, plenty to think about in the time ahead, but it’s fair to say I’m very likely to upgrade my Eee’s RAM to 2Gb in the near future—it’s cheap, relatively simple to carry out and (it seems) generally less risky and fraught with potential issues than an SSD upgrade. I might still go for the latter option too, but I think it will require more thought—not to mention the cash

Stay tuned to this blog for more on how all this pans out…