On my journey through the Web I looked into the details of various business notebooks. I stumbled across the Dell Latitude E6400, which looks nice and has everything I wanted. Unfortunately, it also seems to have problems with Ubuntu. In particular, the fan seems to run all the time (and not too slow, but very loud) – as many forum posts and user reviews prove [1,2,3,4].

Since I couldn’t find a solution, I decided to ask the Dell support via their support chat.

Update Nov/09: It appears that a BIOS update addresses the heat problem. Please refer to the community forum post (thanks to chato) for details.

Here’s what I found out. Note: This is a chat with the German Dell support from September 21, 2009, translated into English.

Me:
The Latitude E6400 has (like many forum posts say) a big problem with Ubuntu. In particular, the fan is always on and makes a lot of noise.

Agent:
Welcome to the Dell Chat.

Me:
Hallo. I’d like to know if there already is a solution for this problem. I was thinking about buying a E6400, but I couldn’t find any solutions for the fan/noise problem in Ubuntu.

Agent:
Since we do not support Ubuntu on this device, Dell does not work on a solution. Ubuntu is currently only supported on netbooks. There is no solution.

Me:
Okay. Do you think there will be a solution in the future? Is Dell planning to support Ubuntu on the E6400? Or never?!

Agent:
As I said, we don’t sell the device with Ubuntu.

Me:
Okay. Thank you for the honest answer. I’m gonna have to buy a Thinkpad then … Have a nice day.

Agent:
I’m sorry. But we don’t support Linux.

Me:
It’s not your fault. Thanks anyway. Good bye.

Agent:
I’m so sorry.

So the outcome is: The Dell Latitude E6400 doesn’t support Ubuntu and is NOT planning to solve the fan/noise problem.. That means, I’m gonna have to buy one of those ugly Thinkpads. But what other solutions are there?! None!

Unfortunately, the installation on Ubuntu/Kubuntu and any other Linux distribution is still not the most comfortable. For this reason, I sat down some hours and packed the tool into a deb-package and additionally added a nice command line tool to simplify some of the basics.

For those who can’t wait, here’s the package: gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb

Update Nov/08: Ubuntu Intrepid: I just re-installed my Ubuntu and successfully tested the provided version for the new system. Works like a charm for Hardy and for Intrepid.
~ 150 downloads so far, no complains/malfunctions!

Update Feb/09: Launchpad: I just uploaded the code that creates the deb-package on Launchpad. Maybe somebody of the Ubuntu team will pick it up and integrate it into the distribution. There is also a bug report for this issue, – feel free to contribute.

For all of you interested how to create your own package from my sources, follow these steps:

$ bzr branch lp:~binwiederhier/+junk/gcaldaemon
$ cd gcaldaemon
$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gcaldaemon/gcaldaemon-linux-1.0-beta16.zip
$ sudo ./create-package.sh gcaldaemon-linux-1.0-beta16.zip 'gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb'
$ sudo dpkg -i gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb

Update Apr/09: Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope: As Jens just wrote in the comments-section, the deb-package seems to work for Jaunty as well without complications. Yeyy!

Download and install

Alternatively to creating the package from my source, you can just download and install it from my deb-file:

$ wget http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2008/09/gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i gcaldaemon_1.0beta16~ubuntu0_all.deb

The following tools will be available:

• gcaldaemon
  Start/stop/restart the daemon.
• gcaldaemon-sync-now
  For immediate synchronization.
• gcaldaemon-config
  Open the graphical config editor.
  Also available via the menu „Utilities -> Configure GCALDaemon”.
• gcaldaemon-password-encoder
  Encode passwords for the config file.

Configuration

Each user of the system can have his or her own instance of the daemon running.
The config file is located at ~/.gcaldaemon/conf/gcal-daemon.cfg.

To edit the config file, you can either use your favorite editor, e.g. vi or use the GCALDaemon config editor GUI:

$ gcaldaemon-config

You can also open the config editor via the menu: „Utilities -> Configure GCALDaemon”.

To create passwords for the config file use the gcaldaemon-password-encoder-script. For details about the config options, please read the GCALDaemon documentation.

Running GCALDaemon

I have simplified the way how to start/stop the daemon with a small script. Simply type “gcaldaemon” to see what it can do.

To start, restart, stop and check the status (just like in an init-script), type:

$ gcaldaemon start
Starting GCALDaemon ... ok
 
$ gcaldaemon status
GCALDaemon is running as PID 30543.
 
$ gcaldaemon restart
Stopping GCALDaemon ... ok
Starting GCALDaemon ... ok
 
$ gcaldaemon stop
Stopping GCALDaemon ... ok

Enable autostart for GCALDaemon

To enable the autostart-option for GNOME or KDE, type:

$ gcaldaemon enable kde
$ gcaldaemon enable kde4
$ gcaldaemon enable gnome

As a GNOME user, it’s also possible to enable/disable the daemon autostart via the menu „System -> Settings -> Sessions”

Finally …

I know that the package is far from perfect, but it’s a lot easier to install/configure than the original package. Feedback is always welcome.

Well, the bad thing about Unison on the other hand is, that its backwards compatibility is anything but great, so that you have to make sure that everybody in the team uses the same version. And this can be tricky depending on what system you are using.

My home system is Ubuntu Hardy, the remote server system is Debian Etch. Both come with Unison 2.16.13 which would be great if not Apple’s new Leopard brings the newest version 2.27.57. Long story short, I needed the newest version on Hardy and Etch.

Unison on Hardy

To install the newest version of Unison on Hardy, it’s the best to just use the existing Backport package.

First, add the backports to the apt-sources, using your favorite editor, e.g. vi or nano:

$ sudo editor /etc/apt/sources.list

Look for backports and uncomment/add the following lines:

deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-backports main restricted universe multiverse

Then just install the backport using apt-get:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get -t hardy-backports install unison

After installing you probably should remove the added lines from the sources.list-file. Otherwise the update-manager wants to install all available backports which is probably not what you want.

Debian Etch

Update 30/07/08: Before reading my post, please have a look at the much easier method described by Andrew in the user comments. Only if this doesn’t work, you might want to have a look at my post.

Unison 2.27.57 binary for Debian Etch:
If you don’t want to compile the binary on your own (as described in the following paragraphs), you can download the Unison 2.27.57 binary for Debian Etch here.

Update 30/11/08:
~ 300 downloads so far, no known problems/malfunctions!

It’s much more difficult on an Etch system because no Backport package is available. Therefore you either have to create such a package, which can be annoying and frustrating, or you just compile it on your own and overwrite the binary.

Add the unstable sources and the etch backports to your apt-get sources by editing the file /etc/apt/sources.list (as root!):

# Unstable source packages
deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
 
# Backports for Etch
deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free

Now update apt and install the backport package of ocaml compiler. You also might want to install the debian backports keyring to avoid warning and error messages:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install debian-backports-keyring
$ apt-get update
$ apt-get -t etch-backports install ocaml

Then get the source package of unison 2.27.57 and make the binary:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get source unison
$ dpkg-source -x unison_2.27.57-1.dsc
$ cd unison-2.27.57/
$ make

Note: For my Etch installation, the make progress failed with some error, but the binary was created successfully anyway. Just have a look whether the unison-binary exists and test if it is working.

$ ./unison -version
unison version 2.27.57

Now install the old version of Unison and replace the binary with the new one. Also you might want to remove the lines from /etc/apt/sources.list and uninstall the ocaml compiler.

$ apt-get install unison
$ cp unison /usr/bin/
$ unison -version
unison version 2.27.57

That’s it! I know that this is not the best solution and that it might be better to create the backports package. But as there are many dependencies to other packages it’s maybe one of the fastest solutions.

I decided to publish the binary here (for the lazy ones): Unison 2.27.57 binary for Debian Etch.

Preparation: Create a short mute-script

Create your custom .bin-directory, add it to your .bashrc, create a mute-script and make it executable.

 $ mkdir ~/.bin
 $ echo -e '\n# Private binaries\nexport PATH=$PATH:~/.bin' >> ~/.bashrc
 $ echo -e '#!/bin/bash\namixer set Master mute' > ~/.bin/mute
 $ chmod +x ~/.bin/mute

Avoid the embarrassment: Use the script

You can now use the script by simply typing mute in your console window. To use it before logging into GNOME/KDE, follow these steps.

• Switch to a different tty by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1
• Log in with your username and password
• Run the script by typing mute
• And finally switch back to the graphical login window: CTRL+ALT+F7

Well, I hope this helps a little. Of course you don’t have to use the script but can just type:

$ amixer set Master mute

.