Laptop running at 590 MHz

My laptop has a pentium M processor which should run at 1.6 GHz, but it usually runs at 590 MHz. this i believe is because the power management comes to play. On linux, this can be changed by ‘echoing’ to a tunable variable in /proc (i vaguely remember doing this). Now how do i do this on Windows. Yeh i also run Windows XP on my laptop and i need to make the processor run at 1.6 GHz instead of 590 MHz. Ok id google and try to look for some tools that can help me do that.

Top 100 Network Security Tools

Top 100 Network Security Tools

Interesting to see the wireless tools listed.

booting windows from grub prompt

I did the unthinkable. In a fit of rage i booted my laptop i WinXP and deleted my linux partitions.
Now why did i do that? See the story below

I have been happily running linux on my laptop for quie some time now and i run winxp on vmplayer. vmplayer has been slow but not “irritatingly”. now a couple of weeks back, i noticed the winxp getting to that “irritatingly slow” level. i thought about it. *I* dint do anything that could have slowed it down. Also because of the ACPI issues, the linux usually ran only at 590 MHz for which i did a “echo performance > /etc/sys…..A path i will update later (can be googled easily)
However even with that i dint notice any discernable performance excpet that the windows welcome boot message was now understandable earlier when it booted, i could hear every note and it went on like for a screeching 10-12 seconds (im guesstimating here). ok finally this got to me one day and i thought id just do everything from scratch up. Had all the data i required on CD’s.

Into windows and in 2 minutes deleted all my linux partitions, recreated some blank partitions for linux and then remained on windows. i decided id run linux on windows inside the vmplayer and check the performance. *THEN* it hit me……………huh!!!!
there was an enterpirse patch for an antivirus software that was installed on my virtual machine (win xp). now this wasnt there earlier and this software rn 10-12 services which took quite a toll on the processor (i believe).

Anyways, things went on fine that day and i was ready to work on windows fo a while.

Next day, i started my laptop as usual and hey it just came to the grub prompt. Ooops!! i realised, where is the grub.conf?? i deleted that linux partition. I was ill and at home and couldnt boot into any OS to chek out google. So i called on my friend who did the googling.

Well there ar just 4 steps to get into windows from the grub prompt. do this

1) rootnoverify (hd0,0)
2) chainloader +1
3) makeactive
4) boot

and then you are in Windows!!!!!

Slashdot | Virtualized Linux Faster Than Native?

Slashdot | Virtualized Linux Faster Than Native?

Google Trends – An India Specific perspective

Google trends gives out some interesting results for queries related to india!!
Given that i work for a software major, i queries in for Wipro and Infosys.

The interesting results are in the langauge tab. Chinese search more for Infosys than Wipro.
Considering that its an upcoming market, seems interesting enough for me!!

http://www.google.com/trends?q=infosys
www.google.com/trends?q=Wipro

operating systems – secure and reliable?

2 big words secure and reliable form the topic of AST’s (Andrew Tenenbaum) new paper on microkenels. now will start another flamefest between linus and ast, unlikely but the article here is worth its writing
chek the home page of the flagship magazine of ieee at http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/

computer.org

This site is basically from the IEEE. Som very good articles appear here and this month there are a couple of articles on SSL and biometric security.

FC5 and vmplayer (vmware) – Update

Ok i finally got vmplayer configured ad running. As i mentioned in the post below, i dint have the FC5 sources. so i downloaded the rpm for the same and installed it.

Running vmware-config.pl and providing the path to the kernel headers (/usr/src/linux/include) threw me an address space conflit error. googled for the error using the exact phrase and it threw me a number of links. This link http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/vmware-tools-any-update1.tar.gz has a patch to the vmware-config.pl to resolve the address space conflict issue.

now my vmplayer runs with win XP. phew a relief!!!

FC5 and vmware (vmplayer)

FC5, surprisingly, doesnt come with the kernel headers/sources. this site has the RPMS http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/

i downloaded the kernel-devel and installed it without problems I ran the vmware config.pl to setup vmplayer. it asks you for the kernel source tree which is usually /usr/src/linux/include. well mine was /us/src/kernel/fc5-2.6.15…(something like that!), but it the config.pl threw me an error saying the address spaces were diferent. wierd message that!! aint sure about what to do.

have seen the /boot and i find that there is also a vmlinuz, system.map that are actually 2.6.16 (not 2.6.15) . will now download the plain vanilla 2.6.16 kernel and use its sources. of course will boot into the 2.6.16 kernel instead.

should update this once i get through vmplayer. i have to!!! coz all my GB’s of pst data runs in winxp inside a linux window

Fedora Core 5 (FC5) and my laptop (Wipro’s Little Genius 2200)

Having gone through the FC4 installation (see below on this page), The Fc5 installation was a breeze.

I dint want to format my HDD. I have 4 partions. the details are as follows
1) 1 with winxp
2) /
3) /opt
4) swap.
I kept the / and /opt partitions as-is. I went in for the upgrade to fc5 option and midway through the installation, there was a problem with a particular KDE package. huh!! so much for the breeze. I couldnt skip the particular package and had to reboot and start all over.
The irritating thing about the FC installtions are you cant skip certain packages when the cd/media has a problem, wonder why it is this way?

I then decided to go in for a new install, which went through without problems. Of course i skipped installing KDE which i tend_and_seem_to_like more than GNOME!

Booted into the more snazzy looking ‘Look and Feel’ of FC5. The FC5 comes with Firefox 1.5 (thank god!!),. FC4 for some non descript reason was running firfox 1.01.

Display: Works out of the box (not so in FC4)
Wireless: Works out of the box
Sound: Works out of the box (not so in FC4)
Vmplayer: Needs the any-any patch (see this post)