Monitoring & configuring tools independant of WM

spiffytech · 08-07-2006, 07:57 PM

I recently got a laptop, and put Ubuntu on it. I'm going to use this laptop for college work, so it'll be mobile, and not a stationary workstation.

Gnome and KDE are OK, but I like to use other window managers *cough*Ion window manager*cough* that are more efficient to work with than your standard low-learning-curve window managers. This, however, poses a problem for me, since most software that I need is designed for a specific window manager. Could someone please look at this list, and tell me if there's an program that I can use, regardless of what window manager I have or what WM my distribution is based on?

Disk mounter- Something that sees and lets me mount/unmount removable drives. I'd use the command line, but I need to know what the drive is called, instead if typing "sdxx" until I get it right. Something like Puppy Linux's MUT would be nice.

Wifi software- Must be able to easily connect/disconnect from networks, and handle profiles that store WEP/WPA keys

Battery monitor- Nothing fancy, just charge level and estimated remaining time.

Hibernate/suspender- Gnome and KDE have their own functions for hibernate/suspend, but if I don't use one of those desktop environments, I'm stuck with shutting down and booting up. Not cool when I change classes as frequently as every hour. I want a program that will do this for me independant of Gnome/KDE, or at least the command line commands for Ubuntu's hibernate/suspend operations.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

chrisortiz · 08-09-2006, 05:27 PM

as far as i know you only need the libraries for other window managers to use them in another one. Try that first, you might need to add /opt/kde/apps to your path (for kde apps of course). If it don't work repost, and we will go from there.

spiffytech · 08-12-2006, 09:52 AM

Some I can access from another window manager, but others not, such as Gnome's disk mounting function, or the hibernate/standby features.

chrisortiz · 08-12-2006, 08:48 PM

you are going to have to do everything by hand or by shell scripts. Soooooo, lets get started.

To help you auto mount, you should be able to make an entry in your /etc/fstab file.
All the entries in this file are mounted when the machine is booted.

for wifi download "wpa supplicant". To make your life a little easier i'll post a basic .config file and a basic wpa_supplicant.conf file

.config

Code:

CONFIG_DRIVER_NDISWRAPPER=y
CONFIG_IEEE8021X_EAPOL=y
CONFIG_EAP_MD5=y
CONFIG_EAP_MSCHAPV2=y
CONFIG_EAP_TLS=y
CONFIG_EAP_PEAP=y
CONFIG_EAP_TTLS=y
CONFIG_EAP_GTC=y
CONFIG_EAP_OTP=y
CONFIG_EAP_SIM=y
CONFIG_EAP_AKA=y
CONFIG_EAP_PSK=y
CONFIG_EAP_PAX=y
CONFIG_EAP_LEAP=y

wpa_supplicant.conf

Code:

network={
  scan_ssid=1
  ssid="ur-ssid"
  psk="ur-key"
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=TKIP
}
network={
  scan_ssid=1
  ssid="ur-next-ssid"
  psk="ur-next-key"
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=AES
}

you can make it automatically connect to any available AP, but i don't remember how, if you search a little bit you can find it. to start it use

Quote:

wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -D ndiswrapper -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf & && dhcpcd wlan0

this is assuming you are using the config i posted.

I don't know of any console utilities for a battery monitor, but

Quote:

/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0

contains all of the information on your battery

for suspend you can

Quote:

cat /proc/acpi/sleep

to look at the available states, and

Quote:

echo # > /proc/acpi/sleep

to sleep. where # is the level of suspend

If i'm wrong here, someone please correct me, i don't have suspend enabled on my laptop.

spiffytech · 08-19-2006, 09:02 PM

I'm afraid that that didn't put my notebook to sleep. I wonder if there's a command, like "halt" and "reboot" that works in Ubuntu?

chrisortiz · 08-20-2006, 01:36 PM

you can use

Code:

shutdown -h now
init 6

those all turn off your machine.

[UPDATE]
i've been playing with acpi for a day or two and i found out that /proc/acpi/sleep is for 2.4 kernels.
2.6 kernels use /sys/power/state you can try "echo mem /sys/power/state" For me it hibernates, but it doesn't come out. I'm still playiing with my standby functions. There is a program posted on other threads in this sub-forum, but i don't remember the name of it.