Debian squeeze on dell vostro 1720
Really disappointed by latest ubuntu version (11.04), I recently decided to go back to good old debian. I'm using windows/linux dual boot on my computer. Nevertheless, it needed a few tricks... as usual.
Wifi network configuration
Debian installer was looking for b43/ucode15.fw and b43-open/ucode15.fw at network step, but I didn't find a way to provide those files on a USB stick. So I installed with my ethernet wired connection. Then I installed package firmware-b43-lpphy-installer as suggested by debian wiki. My chipset is a BCM4312 LP-PHY (PCI-ID 14E4:4315).
But it was not enough, I had to modify b43 linux kernel module configuration with the following steps:
modprobe -r b43
echo options b43 pio=1 qos=0 >> /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf
modprobe b43
Hard-drive configuration
I want my hard-drive automatically mounted after boot-up, so I modified /etc/fstab and added the following line:
/dev/sda5 /media/data ntfs-3g defaults,user,exec,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=0022 0 0
Anonymous user with no password
In addition to my standard private account, I want another anonymous account with no password, here is the way to do it in debian.
- create user anonymous using Users and groups panel,
- create group (addgroup) nopasswdlogin
- add a rule in pam configuration file pointing to this group :
auth required pam_env.so readenv=1 envfile=/etc/default/locale
auth sufficient pam_succeed_if.so user ingroup nopasswdlogin - check "log in without password" in anonymous user panel
Retrieve windows 7 boot entry
After debian squeeze installation, the new Grub2 installed removed my windows entry, to retrieve it I had to install os-probe package.
Rhythmbox radio stations
I also discovered that rhythmbox radio stations and all music tracks were stored in ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml. Very useful to backup and restore all your custom radio stations.