Wireless BCM4312 3.2 kernel
Since there is an Ubuntu package ‘firmware-b43-lpphy-installer’ which is up to date and will work against the 3.0 kernel, my earlier posts are obsolete. If you are not running Ubuntu, then you will still need to reference my post.
The latest 3.2 Linux kernel however has a few ABI changes, most notably in the network stack which effects the Broadcom’s wl module. Most notably is: .ndo_set_multicast_list which was replaced with .ndo_set_rx_mode.
Kabouter: a gnome terminal based multi-ssh connector
Kabouter is Dutch for gnome and also a tool to connect to a range of IP addresses via ssh. It uses gnome-terminal to manage the sessions which, for me, seems more natural than some of the other 3rd party SSH applications available.
Usage is simple:
bcurtis@ronin:~$ kabouter ampli 172.19.18.65 172.19.18.96
This creates a gnome-terminal session with 32 tabs connecting to the range of SSH enabled machines. This works very well when using it with SSH Multiplexing which then gives you a way to automate remote commands through SSH without needing secure key authentication and without having to authenticate each time you want to run a command.
Download: kabouter
Wireless BCM4312 3.0 kernel
With the latest 3.0 kernel there is still no “out of the box” support for my BCM4312 wireless chipset. Nor is there any help from Ubuntu 11.04 leaving me to use Broadcoms hybrid driver with patch.
Chipsets supported by “Broadcom’s IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux® device driver” are: BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4313, BCM4321, BCM4322, BCM43224, and BCM43225, BCM43227 and BCM43228.
My specific chipset from lspci command:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
Wireless BCM4312 on Ubuntu with 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 kernel
My Vostro 1510 comes with an on-board wireless miniPCI card but it does not work “out of the box” with Ubuntu, even with the latest 2.6.39 kernel. The only option that works for me is the binary hybrid blob driver provided by Broadcom, but even that is out of date. They need help in order to work with 2.6.36 and upwards and I have a patch for that.
Chipsets supported by “Broadcom’s IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux® device driver” are: BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4313, BCM4321, BCM4322, BCM43224, and BCM43225, BCM43227 and BCM43228.
The my exact chipset from lspci command:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
threading.Thread vs. multiprocessing.Process
The Feather or the Anvil? 
First a bit of background: I was tasked with created a high level tester for my company’s system. The idea is create 1 or more monkeys to pound away at the company’s product for a very long time. A concurrent parallel programming project with the requirement that it needed to be compatible with 2.6.2 version of Python.
With threading, you get real posix threads (pthread) which works pretty well. They implicitly share state with the parent thread and do not use IPC or messaging. They have low latency and low overall resource footprint.
However there are drawbacks that made further development using threads a real problem. that is the use of signals. Such as threads not handling signals, working with the global interpreter lock (GIL, only one thread allowed to run at a time), and more. Read more
