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Argh, I spent the whole day figuring out how to connect to the VPN of my current customer. The Windows client on my other computer works just fine, at least after selecting the UDP option. But it is quite some overhead to install Windows on my Linux box just to connect to a VPN. The proprietary Cisco VPN client for Linux works until kernel version 2.6.25 AFAIK. Therefore, This is no option for all users of Ubuntu 10.04.

There is an Open Source client for the cisco vpn concentrator that replaces the Cisco client: vpnc

It can be installed on the command line using

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install vpnc resolvconf

Once you’ve done this, you will want to create a config file for your VPN:

/usr/share/vpnc/pcf2vpnc ciscovpnconfigfile.pcf > default.conf

Now move that file to /etc/vpnc:

sudo mv default.conf /etc/vpnc

Theoretically you should be able to use the VPN now like this:

sudo vpnc

And terminate it like that:

sudo vpn-disconnect

Of course it would be too easy this way. There were a couple of changes I had to apply to the config file:

First of all and most importantly, the line

Application version Cisco Systems VPN Client 5.0.07.0240:WinNT

simulates a Windows client, which the Cisco concentrator at my customer’s network checked for. If that is the case and it refuses the connection, you won’t see any error that tells you about it, vpnc just won’t connect properly and say “no response from target” after several seconds! It took a long time until I figured that out, but just because I had a similar problem with an older Windows client previously. Also it’s hard to find out, how the version string is supposed to look like.

The other line I added was “NAT Traversal Mode cisco-udp” and if you like “Xauth password XXX” to store your password in the config file, so that you don’t need to enter it each time you connect.

Hope that works for you!

As posted on Facebook and Twitter, my good old Nokia E51 was stolen last night. I still got that Palm Pre Plus, but the battery life is too short for daily usage and the form factor is also not very comfortable for normal phone calls. It’s a smart phone, not a convenient one. So again, I have to deal with the Nr 1 topic of the western society: Which mobile phone do I want? Damn it.

The good news is: T-Mobile will provide me with a new SIM card next week, so that I can keep the number. Until I get it, you have to talk with my voice mailbox (all messages will be deleted). If you have anything important to say, please write an email!

Who will bother stealing a Nokia E51 with Arabian keypad in Germany? It is risky to sell a unique phone like this on eBay and on the street, they will not make a fortune. Whatever.

I could not find a single correct and useful description how to get the Gobi™ 2000 PCI Express Mini Card, that is built into some Lenovo ThinkPad X100e models, to work with Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS “Lucid Lynx” on Google (which is identical to the Internet). Therefore I want to share my knowledge with you, before I forget everything. This howto might also work for other notebooks that use the same WWAN/UMTS/3G card (like the ThinkPad T410).

1. First you should turn off and open your notebook at the bottom by removing the 7 screws. Inside, you will see the sim card socket and instructions how to use it (it’s not too obvious). If you got another ThinkPad model like the T410, the sim card needs to be installed differently, for example behind the battery pack.
2. If you did not install Ubuntu yet and Windows 7 is still there, then get the files amss.mbn, apps.mbn and UQCN.mbn from the directory C:\Program Files (x86)\QUALCOMM\Images\Lenovo – the first two files are in the “UMTS” sub-directory, the other one is in “0″. As I didn’t have my Windows 7 partition on the X100e anymore, I simply copied the files from a ThinkPad T410. If you don’t have a copy of these files, you will find some advice at http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Qualcomm_Gobi_2000.
3. If you did not install Ubuntu yet, do it now! The X100e has no DVD drive, so you need to download the ISO image from ubuntu.com and then create a bootable USB stick. The free tool http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ can be used for that. Use the 64bit version of Ubuntu, as the X100e supports up to 8GB of memory and you don’t want to re-install everything after an upgrade. I know the Ubuntu Web site says that it is not recommended for daily desktop usage – this is nonsense.
4. Don’t use the proprietary ATI graphics driver. Uninstall or disable it. It will break with the new kernel.
5. Download the latest version of the gobi loader from http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/gobi_loader/download/
6. Untar the files using tar -xzf gobi_loader-0.6.tar.gz, change into the directory and then install the tool via the usual make and sudo make install procedure.
7. Now copy the files amss.mbn, apps.mbn and UQCN.mbn to /lib/firmware/gobi/: sudo cp amss.mbn apps.mbn UQCN.mbn /lib/firmware/gobi
8. Get the latest mainline kernel from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ – I am using v2.6.35-rc1-lucid, but as kernel development does not stop, you should check if there is a later version available. The important thing is that the directory ends with -lucid for Ubuntu 10.04. If you use an older version, you can try v2.6.34-rc2, but I am not sure, if that will work as well. You need to download the kernel headers and image for your architecture (i386/32bit or amd64/64bit) only.
9. Follow the instructions on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/MainlineBuilds – if there are other .deb files in the current directory (where you downloaded the kernel files in the previous step), then you can not use sudo dpkg -i *.deb, but need to explicitly list the deb files: sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.27-02062715-generic_2.6.27-02062715_amd64.deb linux-headers-2.6.27-02062715_2.6.27-02062715_all.deb linux-image-2.6.27-02062715-generic_2.6.27-02062715_amd64.deb (if you got the 64bit version of Ubuntu installed).
10. After restart, you will notice that your wireless connection does not work anymore. Therefore, you should wait and download the file rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0015.0127.2010.tar.gz first, for example from http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads – some people say downloads from this site were corrupted, so wish you good luck! Some people also say these drivers don’t work with a 64bit kernel. I did not experience any problems in that direction. But if you want to try, there seems to be another (older) driver for 64bit systems available for download at http://launchpadlibrarian.net/34090404/rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0010.1012.2009_64bit.tar.gz
11. Of course, you need the build-essential package to compile the drivers: sudo apt-get install build-essential - now it should be safe to restart.
12. After restart, you will notice that the ThinkPad hotkeys are working now, which is another benefit of kernel 2.6.35. However you still need to compile those WLAN drivers: extract the files from the tar archive (tar -xzf somefile.tar.gz), change into the directory, say “make” and then NOT sudo make install. Instead you copy the file HAL/rtl8192/r8192se_pci.ko to /lib/modules/2.6.35-020635rc1-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ (depending on your kernel version, of course): sudo cp HAL/rtl8192/r8192se_pci.ko /lib/modules/2.6.35-020635rc1-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/
13. After a sudo depmod -a or a restart you can use wireless networking again.
14. Last but not least, you need to unlock your WWAN card via rfkill unblock wwan and you’re done! You can now create new WWAN connections using the standard Gnome Network Manager in the top right corner.

Enjoy! xD

(I am not responsible for any damages)

Update

This table shows the contents of the individual Gobi 2000 firmware files: