Did you see my comment? Both of those modems have known timing issues with Tomato (and likely dd-wrt, since they both use busybox’s dhcpc).

You can either:
1) Power up the modem first, giving it a couple minutes to come online, THEN power up the router OR
2) Reconfigure dhcpc as described in my post above.

(my post on Jan 8 describes exactly why you’re having issues)

I have two WRT54 routers, a v1.1 flashed to an old beta of DD-WRT, and a v3 running stock. Just today yesterday got a Charter connection, with a loaned / rented Ambit U10CO80.60 modem until I get something to replace it – a cheap Moto SB5100 was unable to connect during the initial setup for the tech, so he left me the Ambit.

Tried hooking both WRT’s WAN port to the Ambit, but no dice. Am looking to solve it.

You could try upgrading to a DPC3010, or you could use a third-party firmware like dd-wrt and manually correect the settings listed below.

Obviously, you shouldn’t *have* to do that. I’m not defending Charter’s policy of 5 attempts/3 minutes. I’m simply trying to give people a resolution if they run into this problem.

Details:
The root cause of the problem is that Charter’s DHCP server stops communicating with any DHCP client that attempts 5 communications in a 3 minute window. Once blacklisted, devices are not able to communicate with the DHCP server until there has been 3 minutes of inactivity. However, Tomato’s default behavior is to try 5 communications per attempt, and to try more frequently than every 3 minutes to connect.

When making the connection, some cable modems appear to establish the upstream connection before the downstream is fully established. This allows packets to travel FROM the router but not back TO the router. When the Tomato router attempts to get its IP address, the packets TO the DHCP server are received, but the responses are not. This causes Tomato to retry over and over, getting itself blacklisted. Once blacklisted, Tomato attempts often enough to stay blacklisted.

When power is applied simultaneously (power comes back) to the cablemodem and router, certain cable modems startup at the same time as the Tomato router. This means that Tomato has a timing condition where (after a power outage), it gets itself blacklisted and will not obtain internet access without manual intervention. However, other cable modem models appear to startup much more quickly (or establish upload/download at the same time), and are not affected by the issue.

From a Charter Rep:
The amount of time that it takes to reestablish a connection makes me think we could have a DHCP denial issue. This is where something from the customer’s end is requesting an IP address from our DHCP servers more than 5 times in 3 minutes. The culprit of these issues is a router about 95% of the time. When this happens, your service is temporarily blocked. To fix it, the server has to be clear of all requests for 3 minutes. We usually accomplish this by unplugging modem and router for that time.

Fix:
The fix is to reconfigure udhcpc to try fewer times and to wait longer between attempts. This prevents the router from being blacklisted. This is achieved by passing “–retries=2 –timeout=5 –tryagain=310″ to udhcpc.

Workaround:
The issue can be worked around by unplugging the Tomato router for 5 minutes, and then plugging it back in. Alternatively, you can power on the cable modem fully before starting the router.

Reproduced this issue on a WRT54GL with the following cablemodems:
Motorola SB 5100
Ambit U10C018.80

Issue did not exist with a WRT54GL the following cablemodems:
Cisco DPC3010

You can access the music controls from the lock screen by double-tapping the home button.

I had tried nouveau but had seen some problems. Interestingly, there issues are worse running in 2d mode (effects off) than 3d mode. (Try turning the effects off and grabbing a window and shaking it).

This is related to the original subject of the post in that it seems to me that KDE is actually finally coming into its own. Much of the craziness of the 4.0 release is solved. While everything is not totally stable, it is well on its way.

On the other hand, for a developer such as myself, I found working with a Mac decidedly inferior. I spent much more time finding and installing development tools and libraries. (sudo apt-get install ROCKS!) I couldn’t stand the fact the sftp is compiled without support for key navigation! I can’t stand using the control key in the shell and the command key everywhere else. There were myriad such annoyances. Maybe they don’t matter to a non-technical user, but they bothered me.

No one on a mac could ever get the office’s irritating Panasonic DP C405 to work right – it would never print color! In Kubuntu, just go through the setup and it works like a charm!

Cheers for the reply,

Do you mean in respect of DISPLAY=”0.1″ for example?

I have a strange question, I’m trying to get this set up on one physical monitor in portrait mode (2x 960×1080). I’ve got it working in fedora core 16. I’m not using xephyr as this needs to be permanently this way. Problem is, when set up landscape everything works great and windows will maximize and fullscreen to a particular fake display. In portrait however, windows in the lower fake screen still maximize in the top half.

To be honest this doesnt bother me if i can launch a program to a particular screen. Basically what i need is virtualbox running fullscreen in the top half and a kiosk locked down browser running fullscreen in the second half, no window decorations at all.

Thanks so much for your help, excellent website.

Jon

Do you happen to know if its possible to specify a program to launch on a particular fake xinerama display?

Thanks
Jon