linux

Inside the GL4Ever Flytouch III

Well, it’s been a while since I touched this tablet.  I basically chucked it in a corner in disgust after it shat itself rather unceremoniously on the trip before we even got to the NSW/Victorian border.  By “shat” itself, I mean corrupting files on the internal microSD card, intermittent device resets, display flickers, all the hallmarks of a dry joint.

The seller on eBay that sold me the device have been completely unresponsive as to the problems, so looks like I kissed about $250 goodbye.  Ahh well, such is life.  They are still being sold on eBay, but buyer beware, they are cheap, and it’s pot luck whether yours is cheerful, or nasty like mine.  If you want something reliable, look elsewhere.

Having made this mistake, well, I’m looking to make lemonade from the lemon.  First step, was to figure out what on earth I had.  So out with the screwdriver.

You’ll notice on the top and bottom of the unit, there are four small plugs concealing screws.  These hold the LCD screen assembly in place.  Undo these, then you need to carefully work your way around and release the clips that hold the LCD screen assembly.  Do not try to detach the LCD touch panel from the LCD!  I initially couldn’t get it to budge, so I tried doing exactly this in the hunt for possible hidden screws (there were none).  This was the end result:

Shattered Flytouch III touch panel

Why one should not try to detach the touch panel.

Never mind I say… the unit was just about destined for the bin as it was.  External USB HID devices work for what I’m after, but it’ll mean any touch-related fun is out unless I can pick up a replacement 4-wire panel.  Element14 and RS have them at >$80, to which I say, bugger it, I’ll do without.

Having pulled the unit apart, the main PCB is held to the back shell by a few screws, one thing is immediately apparent.  The whole device is based on what looks to be a fairly generic System-on-Module based around the Vimicro VC0882BCXA System-on-Chip, and the Vimicro VC7822EL companion chip.

Flytouch III PCB

Top left is a Wifi module based on the Realtek RTL8111, and to the right, the GPS module (which hooks to one of the serial ports from what I recall).  Down the bottom of the image are the USB ports.  Near the HDMI socket is a Silicon Image SiI9022ACNU HDMI transmitter.

The system on module looks interesting, and I’m curious to find out more about it, as for hobby projects, the pins are not too small to deal with using a soldering iron.  The OS and boot loader exist on the microSD card.  I tried putting a 16GB card in, but evidently I wasn’t getting the partition table right as it wouldn’t boot.  I haven’t tried hooking up a serial port as yet, so it’s hard to know what is wrong.  Some research indicates that ttyS0 lurks on this board just near the aforementioned microSD socket:

The system on module within the Flytouch III

The system on module within the Flytouch III

I haven’t spotted the bad joints that were giving me grief. In fact, having gotten it out of the case, I find the top USB port (flakey from day one) seems to be behaving, and I’ve had no issues with it running with the case apart.  Otherwise I’d be running a soldering iron over a few joints just to make sure everything was right.

Next step?  Well for now, I’ll put it back together (minus touchscreen) and put it aside.  I’ll have a look at tacking a connector onto those serial pins, with a level shifter so I can interact with the serial console.

Having gotten bootloader access, I should be able to debug the SD card cloning issue, then I can have a close gander at what the current u-boot and kernel are doing to tickle the hardware.  End game?  Well, Android isn’t much use without a touch screen, so I’ll be probably hacking together a Gentoo-based environment with some amateur radio related software.  We shall see.

2012/04/01 by Amateur Radio Linux Development Public Syndication Thinktank 0

GL4Ever Flytouch III: The internal SD card

Well, further analysis today. The Flytouch III seems to boot off an embedded SD card. I don’t know if it is removable or not, for now I’ll assume no.

Having gained root access earlier, I was able to use dd and nc to siphon off a copy of the internal SD card, which appears as /dev/block/mmcblk0. To grab a copy, first plug the unit into Ethernet (it’ll be faster, trust me) and have another Linux box handy:

Start up netcat on a Linux system:
$ busybox nc -l -p 8123 > tablet.img

Then on the tablet, become root:
$ /system/bin/su

Then start copying to the other system (here; its IP is 12.23.34.45):
# dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 | nc 12.23.34.45 8123

Sit back and wait, it should be done in about 5 minutes. Now if you look at the partition table, you’ll see the following:

Disk tablet.img: 482 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
tablet.img1            63   5535320    5535258   b  W95 FAT32           < -- User applications, data live here
tablet.img2       5535321   7612181    2076861   5  Extended
tablet.img3       7612248   7677783      65536  bb  Boot Wizard hidden  <-- Kernel?
tablet.img4       7677784   7743319      65536  bb  Boot Wizard hidden  <-- UBoot?
tablet.img5       5535384   6059608     524225  83  Linux               <-- /system partition
tablet.img6       6059672   7595608    1535937  83  Linux               <-- Android internal?
tablet.img7       7595672   7611992      16321  83  Linux               <-- ???

Partitions 3 and 4 are a complete mystery. They’re not a standard Linux file system, but, the former appears to hold a copy of the Linux kernel, and the latter seems to hold a copy of UBoot. You can bust the image apart using the following script:


/sbin/sfdisk -uS -l tablet.img | grep ^tablet.img | while read part; do
pn=$( echo "$part" | cut -c 11-11 );
s=$( echo "$part" | cut -c 13-25 );
l=$( echo "$part" | cut -c 36-48 );
echo "[$pn][$s][$l]";
dd if=tablet.img of=tablet-$pn.img skip=$(( $s )) count=$(( $l ));
done

You might have to play with column offsets.

The initial part of partition 3 looks like this:

00000000  41 4e 44 52 4f 49 44 21  c0 d7 4b 00 00 80 00 10  |ANDROID!..K.....|
00000010  b5 2a 15 00 00 00 00 11  00 00 00 00 00 00 f0 10  |.*..............|
00000020  00 01 00 10 00 08 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000240  b8 29 4b 8c 7c d2 1f 65  cf b3 3a 78 bc 87 c0 61  |.)K.|..e..:x...a|
00000250  2e 24 79 a5 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.$y.............|
00000260  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000800  27 05 19 56 43 d9 c4 f4  4e ab c7 11 00 4b d7 80  |'..VC...N....K..|
00000810  80 00 80 00 80 00 80 00  d5 42 0e 53 05 02 02 00  |.........B.S....|
00000820  4c 69 6e 75 78 2d 32 2e  36 2e 33 35 2e 37 00 00  |Linux-2.6.35.7..|
00000830  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000840  d3 f0 21 e3 10 9f 10 ee  56 00 00 eb 05 a0 b0 e1  |..!.....V.......|
00000850  52 00 00 0a 6c 00 00 eb  05 80 b0 e1 4f 00 00 0a  |R...l.......O...|
00000860  7b 00 00 eb 13 00 00 eb  c0 d0 9f e5 00 e0 8f e2  |{...............|
00000870  10 f0 8a e2 30 5f 11 ee  02 50 85 e3 30 5f 01 ee  |....0_...P..0_..|
00000880  02 00 80 e3 1f 50 a0 e3  10 5f 03 ee 10 4f 02 ee  |.....P..._...O..|

Note the rather prominent “Linux-2.6.35.7”. Similarly, if we pick through partition 4:

00020eb0  11 12 a0 41 10 13 a0 51  30 1c 81 41 10 02 a0 e1  |...A...Q0..A....|
00020ec0  1e ff 2f e1 ff ff ff ff  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  |../.............|
00020ed0  00 10 05 60 20 10 05 60  00 13 05 60 20 13 05 60  |...` ..`...` ..`|
00020ee0  40 13 05 60 00 16 05 60  20 16 05 60 00 19 05 60  |@..`...` ..`...`|
00020ef0  20 19 05 60 00 1c 05 60  20 1c 05 60 40 1c 05 60  | ..`...` ..`@..`|
00020f00  55 2d 42 6f 6f 74 20 32  30 31 30 2e 30 36 20 28  |U-Boot 2010.06 (|
00020f10  4f 63 74 20 32 39 20 32  30 31 31 20 2d 20 31 37  |Oct 29 2011 - 17|
00020f20  3a 32 37 3a 30 31 29 00  18 13 ea 80 20 13 ea 80  |:27:01)..... ...|
00020f30  27 13 ea 80 2e 13 ea 80  35 13 ea 80 3c 13 ea 80  |'.......5...< ...|
00020f40  43 13 ea 80 4a 13 ea 80  51 13 ea 80 58 13 ea 80  |C...J...Q...X...|
00020f50  5f 13 ea 80 67 13 ea 80  6f 13 ea 80 77 13 ea 80  |_...g...o...w...|
00020f60  7f 13 ea 80 87 13 ea 80  8f 13 ea 80 97 13 ea 80  |................|
2011/12/20 by Linux Development Public Syndication 0

Gaining root access on the Android 2.3-based GL4Ever Flytouch III

Yes, I’ve joined this century and bought myself a tablet. Lately, I’ve found myself needing some means of navigating in strange areas whilst on the bicycle, and while pieces of paper work — if you’re organised enough to print them out in advance and not ride too fast (otherwise they disappear with the wind), I’ve found there are a number of shortcomings with this.

Since I like open source, and didn’t like the idea of spending several hundred on a hand-held GPS with proprietary firmware & map data which I need to constantly purchase updates for, I opted for the cheapskate route.  I picked up a GL4Ever Flytouch III Tablet off eBay.  The unit I have came loaded with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).

Ultimately I may replace the OS, or at least, the kernel, soon as I have sources for it, but in the meantime, it runs what it came with.  I have however, already managed to gain root access.

Those who might do a search for how to do so, may come across this guide.  I tried this first, and found I had no joy.  USB Debugging was enabled out-of-the-box on the unit I have, but z4root did not successfully enable root access.  The following are my notes on how I gained a shell with root access on the device.  Ohh, and I warn you, there is no warranty given in the instructions below.  If it breaks, you get to keep the pieces.

  1. Download and install Gingerbreak.
  2. Run Gingerbreak, it will run for a while, before resetting the device.  Upon starting, you should now notice you have a Superuser application installed.
  3. Next, install Android Terminal.
  4. Now, run /system/bin/su.

/bin/su is a symbolic link to /bin/busybox which was installed without the setuid bit, and is broken anyway, you’ll find if you do add a setuid bit, it will report that it can’t find the ‘root‘ user.  This system has no /etc/passwd or equivalent user database, so it has no idea who ‘root‘ is, but it knows who UID 0 is, and that’s what matters.  The latter ‘su‘ you’ll find has the necessary permissions, and knows about UID 0.

Other things I’ve found… the operating system lurks on a SD card embedded in the device.  Or at least, it’s presented as a SD card; /dev/block/mmcblk0.  The user-accessible SD-card port is /dev/block/mmcblk1.  You can verify this by ejecting the card, doing a ls /dev/block, then inserting a card and repeating.

On my TODO list, is to make a DD-copy of this block device, and pick through to see how one swaps out the kernel.  I’ll post notes if I figure this out.  I am also yet to obtain the kernel sources, I’ll chase those up before long.

2011/12/16 by Linux Development Public Syndication 0

“Journaling could not be enabled”

I struck this little jem today whilst shuffling the partitions around on my MacBook. (In my wisdom, I had made my MacOS X partitions waaay too big, and my Linux partitions waaay too small.)

The back-story is that I had made my MacOS X root and /Users partitions too big. I had successfully shrunk both, however, I discovered MacOS X’s Disk Utility does not support moving partitions, only resizing.  So, I created a new non-journalled HFS+ partition, booted into a Linux LiveCD, used rsync to clone the data.

All good and well, except after I deleted the old partition, I found I could not resize a non-journalled partition.  Fine, I hit “Enable Journaling”… no dice, it wouldn’t do it, and wouldn’t explain why.

So I was in a pickle.  The partition was too small for my needs, there was room to grow it, but it couldn’t do that unless journalling was enabled, and it wouldn’t enable it for me.

Further investigation, I fire up the Terminal and have a squiz on the command line, I spot something rather interesting:

vk4msl-mb:~ root# cd /Volumes/Home
vk4msl-mb:Home root# ls
.DS_Store		.fseventsd		Shared
.Spotlight-V100		.journal		stuartl
.TemporaryItems		.journal_info_block
.Trashes		.localized

Ohh yes, that might be a probable cause. rsync it seems, copied the .journal file over. And thus when Disk Utility open()‘s .journal (presumably with O_CREAT), the MacOS X kernel reports EEXIST (the file already exists).

I tried renaming it (with mv):

vk4msl-mb:Home root# mv .journal{,.old}
mv: rename .journal to .journal.old: Operation not permitted

Okay, that didn’t work. That said, the old partition was journalled, this one is not. So it probably doesn’t contain anything of great relevance now. It does have data:

vk4msl-mb:Home root# ls -ld .journal
----------@ 1 root  wheel  25165824 Apr  4  2011 .journal

So I decided to kiss it goodbye:

vk4msl-mb:Home root# rm .journal
override ---------  root/wheel uappnd,uchg,nodump,opaque for .journal? y
vk4msl-mb:Home root# rm .journal_info_block 
override ---------  root/wheel uappnd,uchg,opaque for .journal_info_block? y
vk4msl-mb:Home root# ls
.DS_Store	.TemporaryItems	.fseventsd	Shared
.Spotlight-V100	.Trashes	.localized	stuartl

All gone. Having done this, I now found that Disk Utility was more than happy to not only enable journalling, but grow the partition as I originally asked.

vk4msl-mb:~ root# mount
/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
/dev/disk0s3 on /Volumes/Home (hfs, local, journaled)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
/dev/disk0s7 on /Volumes/Data (hfs, local)
vk4msl-mb:~ root# df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2    93Gi   20Gi   73Gi    22%    /
devfs          123Ki  123Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
/dev/disk0s3   242Gi   82Gi  160Gi    34%    /Volumes/Home
map -hosts       0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /net
map auto_home    0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /home
/dev/disk0s7    84Gi  893Mi   83Gi     2%    /Volumes/Data

If others find themselves in this sticky situation, this might be a way out. I would strongly advise they back up any data before messing with file systems in this manner however.

2011/10/30 by Public Syndication 0

Broadcom Wireless related ebuilds

Hi all…

I got fed up of restoring my firmware for the Broadcom wireless chip in my late-2008 model MacBook.  Anyone who has one of these might find the current in-tree versions of net-wireless/b43-firmware is missing files needed by the modern b43 driver (namely ucode16_mimo.fw), and net-wireless/b43-fwcutter doesn’t well, cut it, for extracting the newer files.

If you’ve got a newer 802.11n-based Broadcom chip, you might find the following ebuilds handy:

  • net-wireless/b43-firmware-5.10.56.27.3
  • net-wireless/b43-fwcutter-015 and net-wireless/b43-fwcutter-9999

The first is the firmware mentioned in this post.  It needs a newer fwcutter binary than is provided in Portage.  You’ve got the choice of the latest version, or the bleeding edge via git.  Both work at time of writing, although neither are guaranteed.

The ebuilds are not in-tree, I’ll leave that for the actual maintainer for these ebuilds to pick them up if desired, I’ve put them in an overlay accessed via the following command:

git clone git://git.longlandclan.yi.org/overlays/b43.git

Or you can take a squiz via gitweb.

2011/09/13 by Gentoo Development Linux Development Public Syndication 0

To whoever came up with this feature…

To whoever were responsible for developing this new feature in the latest Portage releases…

zhouman portage # FEATURES=-test USE=-handbook\ -doc emerge -eukDN --keep-going system kde-meta vim poppler =xulrunner-2.0.1-r1 =vim-core-7.3.189 =gvim-7.3.189 gst-plugins-base vim =gst-plugins-theora-0.10.32 =firefox-4.0.1-r1
Calculating dependencies... done!

!!! One or more updates have been skipped due to a dependency conflict:

app-editors/vim-core:0

(app-editors/vim-core-7.3.219::gentoo, ebuild scheduled for merge) conflicts with
~app-editors/vim-core-7.3.189 required by (app-editors/gvim-7.3.189::gentoo, binary scheduled for merge)
(app-editors/vim-core-7.3.219::gentoo, ebuild scheduled for merge) conflicts with
=vim-core-7.3.189

!!! The following update(s) have been skipped due to unsatisfied dependencies
!!! triggered by backtracking:

app-editors/vim:0
[binary R ] x11-proto/xf86vidmodeproto-2.3.1
[binary R ] sys-libs/zlib-1.2.5-r2
[binary R ] sys-libs/ncurses-5.9
[binary R ] x11-proto/xproto-7.0.21
[binary R ] virtual/libintl-0
[binary R *] sci-visualization/gnuplot-4.4.2-r1
[ ... ]
[ebuild N *] kde-base/kdebase-meta-4.6.4 USE="(-aqua)"
[binary R *] media-libs/mediastreamer-2.7.3-r3
[ebuild N *] kde-base/kopete-4.6.4 USE="addbookmarks autoreplace contactnotes highlight history jingle nowlistening pipes privacy sms ssl statistics texteffect translator urlpicpreview v4l2 xmpp zeroconf (-aqua) -debug -gadu -groupwise -handbook (-kdeenablefinal) -latex -meanwhile -msn -oscar -otr -qq -skype -testbed -webpresence -winpopup -yahoo"
[binary R *] media-plugins/mediastreamer-ilbc-2.0.3
[ebuild N *] kde-base/kdenetwork-meta-4.6.4 USE="(-aqua) -ppp"
[ebuild N *] kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4 USE="accessibility nls (-aqua) -sdk -semantic-desktop"

The following keyword changes are necessary to proceed:
#required by kde-base/kdebase-runtime-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kdebase-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-meta (argument)
>=kde-base/kglobalaccel-4.6.4 **
#required by kde-base/kdemultimedia-meta-4.6.4[mplayer], required by kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-meta (argument)
>=kde-base/mplayerthumbs-4.6.4 **
#required by kde-base/kdeedu-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-meta (argument)
>=kde-base/rocs-4.6.4 **
#required by kde-base/kdegames-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-meta (argument)
>=kde-base/kigo-4.6.4 **
#required by kde-base/kajongg-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kdegames-meta-4.6.4[python], required by kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-meta (argument)
>=kde-base/oxygen-icons-4.6.4 **
#required by kde-base/kdebase-runtime-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kdebase-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-meta (argument)
>=kde-base/kdebase-menu-4.6.4 **
#required by kde-base/kdeutils-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-base/kde-meta-4.6.4, required by kde-meta (argument)

[...]

NOTE: This --autounmask behavior can be disabled by setting
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--autounmask=n" in make.conf.

Use --autounmask-write to write changes to config files (honoring CONFIG_PROTECT).
zhouman portage #

THANK-YOU

You’ve just made my life trying to install and test big collections of software in Gentoo/MIPS much easier. 🙂

2011/06/20 by Gentoo Development Linux Development Public Syndication 1

svxlink status

Well, I’ve been meaning to get around to fixing up svxlink in Gentoo for a long time now. For those who don’t know, svxlink is a client and server for the EchoLink amateur radio linking system.

We had to stop releasing the Qtel client, as it relied on Qt3 which we no longer ship in Gentoo.  On top of this, the ebuild installed non-Gentoo init scripts, fails to build with gcc-4.6 and fails due to underlinking.  (My thanks go to Diego for pointing these flaws out.)

At the moment I’m working on the first problem, which is that the builds that were in-tree are crusty and old.  svxlink did release version 11.05 not long back, and ohh yes, they’ve changed their versioning scheme too to match Ubuntu.  However, their trunk branch is still dependent on Qt3 if you want Qtel.  There is an experimental Qt4 branch, which is what I’ve been working with.

One irritation I had was trying to make it possible to install the client component or the server component.  svxlink has its own, very custom, build system based on recursive makefiles.  (Yes, I know, considered harmful and all that.)  The build system first builds the core libraries, then it starts looking at Qtel and svxlink’s server components.  The first thing was to try and split these up.

The new ebuilds will introduce a svxlink-libs package.  This is relatively straightforward, and it just builds & installs the libasync, libechlib and liblocationinfo libraries.  The catch is when building qtel and svxlink, the build system looks for the built binaries inside the source tree.

I have submitted a patch upstream that remedies this.  Eventually I’ll look at how we can fix some of the other flaws in the build system.  So far I’m still battling svxlink itself, but I soon will have svxlink-libs and qtel packages available for testing in the Portage tree.  svxlink itself will also need to wait until I can set up a test node on simplex somewhere… my O2 looks like a likely possibility.

I’ll keep you all informed as this progresses.  Qtel appears to be working (although I’m battling some funnies with the sound device on the Apple MacBook)… just a matter of fixing some issues with the build system for svxlink and I should be able to have svxlink back in the tree once again.

2011/06/19 by Amateur Radio Gentoo Development Linux Development Public Syndication 0

{Insert Name Here} is inviting you to join FaceBook

Without wishing to sound harsh, two words: Don’t bother. 🙂

There are a few reasons why I’m not on FaceBook…

Need

First and foremost, is a matter of need.

The primary reasons why someone would set up something on FaceBook is to enable their friends to be able to locate them on the Internet.  In my case, just about any search engine using either my real name, nickname, or callsign, will lead you in the right direction.  Even then, it isn’t hard for people to trade email addresses by out-of-band means, then pass a URL to a blog site that way.

Next is the keeping track of friends.  Again, plain old email is good for this… so is the telephone.  RSS is a pretty good broadcast mechanism for this purpose too, and guess what, most modern web browsers are able to subscribe to such feeds as Live Bookmarks.  This effectively means your web browser becomes the central switchboard by which you can keep track of what your friends are doing.

As for sharing photos… most blog hosting sites provide a means for uploading photos… a perfect way to share photos.

There’s actually bugger all that I consider worthwhile that can only be done via FaceBook.

Time

These days I’m very busy in my daily life… too busy to sit in front of a computer checking up on online friends.  When I’m at work, I’m at work… I’m not browsing the web for personal pleasure.  Looking up things like FaceBook would be wrong and immoral usage of my employer’s Internet bandwidth.  So I don’t do it.

I can’t very well check FaceBook whilst in transit for two reasons: (1) I ride a bicycle, and need to watch where I am going, and (2) I don’t have any mobile Internet service.  I am usually on the amateur radio bands somewhere whilst mobile, but (ignoring IRLP/EchoLink/Allstar Link/APRS/etc…) you won’t find me via the Internet.  I answer my mobile phone too, but only after pulling over (I need a moment to switch headset cables over).

At home, yes I could be on FaceBook… but I find plenty of other things to occupy my time.  That, and sometimes it’s good to not have anything to do occasionally.

Privacy

FaceBook is controlled by one company, and is a closed system.  Aside from a “we promise not to look”, there is nothing to stop them doing anything they like with the information you provide to the service.  Even if they don’t, who’s to say their system is completely secure?  Lots of people entrusted their credit card details to Sony… Ooopsie!

So what kind of information does one share on FaceBook?  Aside from your name, age… okay, not deeply personal… you set yourself up with that information.  Then what?

You start “friend”-ing people.  You start “like”-ing people and adding them to your list of friends.  You build up a social graph.  Graphs are a mathematical tool for representing relationships between objects.  In this case, the graph’s edges represent some connection (i.e. acquaintance, friend, lover, … etc.) between two people (represented as nodes).  And using all kinds of graph theory, it’s possible to deduce all kinds of personal information about you.

How dangerous is this?  You’re probably thinking… “So what?”  Mark Pesce gave a talk on this at linux.conf.au this year.  If you’ve got a bit of time to spare, you can watch the video of the presentation, or have a read of the full transcript.  In short, a big part of what we do can be explained by what people are doing around us… we have a tendency to mimic those around us.  Knowing the group one participates in, is a pretty good way for someone with ulterior motives to figure out ways in which to manipulate you.

Your social graph is probably one of the most personal things you can reveal.

Keeping in touch

In order to keep in touch, you actually don’t need FaceBook.  Good ol’e email does a pretty good job.  So do blogs.  In my case, I post a lot of what I’ve been up to on this site.  This site broadcasts a stream using a format called RSS.  Guess what, most web browsers today (Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 7+, Chrome, recent Opera…etc) support this in the form of “Live Bookmarks”.  Or you can use an external news aggregator… there are plenty to choose from.

Then in your web browser, subscribe to the feed.  In Firefox 4.0, under Bookmarks, choose “Subscribe to this page”.  Earlier releases have a button that appears in the address bar you can click.  Likewise for other web browsers… in fact, often you’re looking for an icon like this:

RSS feed icon

RSS feed icon (Source: Wikipedia)

Look for an icon like that on your web browser, click it, and follow the prompts.  Voila, you can now track that person through your web browser.  No one else needs to know about it, no need to log in to an extra site, it’s quick and easy.  Need something web-based for when you’re not at home?  There are plenty of web-based agregators.

Ohh, and you can track more than just friends this way.  News websites, companies… all sorts of things can be monitored this way.

But I want to be your friend!!!

Are you going to tell me this wasn’t possible before FaceBook?   Friends didn’t exist before Mr Zuckerberg invented this web-based forum?  Have people forgotten the art of face-to-face contact?  You don’t need FaceBook to have friends.  Give the old-school method a try some day. 🙂

2011/05/31 by 2011 Linux Development linux.conf.au Public Syndication 2

Experiments with AX.25

This weekend just gone I was at Imbil helping out with the International Rally of Queensland, reporting scores for the car rally there.  This was my first look at packet radio in action.  Prior to this I had enabled the amateur radio options in the kernels I built, but never tried actually hooking radio to computer.  I shall be posting some notes on how I got this working…

zhouman ~ # uname -a
Linux zhouman 2.6.35.7-lm2f-nb #2 Wed Oct 13 00:42:58 EST 2010 mips64 ICT Loongson-2 V0.3 FPU V0.1 lemote-yeeloong-2f-8.9inches GNU/Linux
zhouman ~ # ifconfig sm0
sm0 Link encap:AMPR AX.25 HWaddr VK4MSL
inet addr:172.31.32.1 Bcast:172.31.32.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:256 Metric:1
RX packets:365 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:36 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10
RX bytes:24236 (23.6 KiB) TX bytes:6850 (6.6 KiB)

zhouman ~ # mheard
Callsign Port Packets Last Heard
VK4EA-9 sm0 6 Mon May 16 17:59:12
VK4NRL-9 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:58:40
VK4VP-1 sm0 8 Mon May 16 17:58:38
VK4RAI-3 sm0 9 Mon May 16 17:57:58
VK4TIM-9 sm0 14 Mon May 16 17:57:56
VK4TDI-1 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:57:39
VK4DC-1 sm0 15 Mon May 16 17:57:07
VK4TEC-9 sm0 120 Mon May 16 17:56:08
VK4FY-1 sm0 18 Mon May 16 17:54:38
VK4RMO-3 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:54:33
VK4RGC-3 sm0 3 Mon May 16 17:52:48
VK4RC-1 sm0 8 Mon May 16 17:51:29
VK4FIL-1 sm0 4 Mon May 16 17:46:44
VK4RIL-13 sm0 4 Mon May 16 17:45:43
VK4RBR-3 sm0 5 Mon May 16 17:42:59
VK2RDO-3 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:41:19
VK4RRC-13 sm0 3 Mon May 16 17:36:39
VK2JUB-1 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:34:44
VK4BNQ-1 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:26:58
VK4LDA-9 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:24:59
VK2POO-9 sm0 9 Mon May 16 17:21:24
VK2XFL-9 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:21:09
VK4RSR-3 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:20:04
VK4IE sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:15:04
VK4ALJ-3 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:15:00
VK4HPW-9 sm0 5 Mon May 16 17:13:23
zhouman ~ #

Set-up consisted of:
Linux kernel on Lemote Yeeloong, latest soundmodem driver, Yaesu FT-897D, homebrew interface cable plugged into Yeeloong’s onboard sound card, USB serial driving BC547 in interface cable for PTT.

zhouman ~ # cat /etc/ax25/soundmodem.conf
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<modem>
<configuration name="FT897-D">
<chaccess txdelay="150" slottime="100" ppersist="40" fulldup="0" txtail="10"/>
<audio type="alsa" device="plughw:0,0" halfdup="0" capturechannelmode="Mono"/>
<ptt file="/dev/ttyUSB0"/>
<channel name="Channel 0">
<mod mode="afsk" bps="1200" f0="1200" f1="2200" diffenc="1"/>
<demod mode="afsk" bps="1200" f0="1200" f1="2200" diffdec="1"/>
<pkt mode="MKISS" ifname="sm0" hwaddr="VK4MSL" ip="172.31.32.1" netmask="255.255.255.0" broadcast="172.31.32.255"/>
</channel>
</configuration>
</modem>
zhouman ~ #

I’ve shut it down for now, but I’ll give it a bit more work on 145.175MHz tomorrow. Once I get something working, I might set something up using the O2 or one of the Fulongs (probably the latter) and see about getting soundmodem back into Gentoo.

Update: After hand-editing the ebuild to enable APRS support, I can successfully report that not only is soundmodem working, but so is Xastir on my Yeeloong, as can be seen on aprs.fi.

2011/05/16 by Amateur Radio Gentoo Development Linux Development Public Syndication 2

Gentoo/MIPS Status Update

Well, been some time now since I announced the start of some µClibc stages.  So far, not much has happened there other than the fact that I’ve successfully hard-locked the Fulong 2E system that I tried compiling on.  This is despite compiling with binutils-2.21 and using -Wa,-mfix-loongson2f-nop… which is usually enough to prevent lockups.  Clearly there’s further erratum that I’m hitting, I might try later on the Qube and see where that gets us, agonisingly slow might be better than the current pace.

Generic N32 MIPS-III little endian continues to remain unavailable due to an issue compiling Python 2.7, and unfortunately my N32 chroot on the Yeeloong broke when I upgraded glibc (the primary reason why I began doing a generic MIPS3 build on the Qube using Matt’s MIPS4 build).  I will get back onto this eventually.

On other news since the purchase of the MacBook I’ve been able to leave my Yeeloong sit at home running continuously to update the entire system.  Qt 4.7.2 gave me some grief — it seems at least on mipsel, qmake segfaults during the initial build of qt-core …

mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu-g++ -o "/tmp/portage/x11-libs/qt-core-4.7.2-r1
/work/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.2/bin/qmake" project.o property.
o main.o makefile.o unixmake2.o unixmake.o mingw_make.o option.o winmak
efile.o projectgenerator.o meta.o makefiledeps.o metamakefile.o xmloutp
ut.o pbuilder_pbx.o borland_bmake.o msvc_vcproj.o msvc_vcxproj.o msvc_n
make.o msvc_objectmodel.o msbuild_objectmodel.o symmake.o initprojectde
ploy_symbian.o symmake_abld.o symmake_sbsv2.o symbiancommon.o registry.
o epocroot.o qtextcodec.o qutfcodec.o qstring.o qtextstream.o qiodevice
.o qmalloc.o qglobal.o qbytearray.o qbytearraymatcher.o qdatastream.o q
buffer.o qlist.o qfile.o qfsfileengine_unix.o qfsfileengine_iterator_un
ix.o qfsfileengine.o qfsfileengine_iterator.o qregexp.o qvector.o qbita
rray.o qdir.o qdiriterator.o quuid.o qhash.o qfileinfo.o qdatetime.o qs
tringlist.o qabstractfileengine.o qtemporaryfile.o qmap.o qmetatype.o q
settings.o qlibraryinfo.o qvariant.o qvsnprintf.o qlocale.o qlinkedlist
.o qurl.o qnumeric.o qcryptographichash.o qxmlstream.o qxmlutils.o  -Wl
,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed                           
floatmath auto-detection... ()                                         
/tmp/portage/x11-libs/qt-core-4.7.2-r1/work/qt-everywhere-opensource-sr
c-4.7.2/config.tests/unix/compile.test: line 71: 25542 Segmentation fau
lt      "$OUTDIR/bin/qmake" -nocache -spec "$QMKSPEC" "CONFIG+=$QMAKE_C
ONFIG" "CONFIG-=debug_and_release" "LIBS*=$LFLAGS" "LIBS+=$MAC_ARCH_LFL
AGS" "INCLUDEPATH*=$INCLUDEPATH" "QMAKE_CXXFLAGS*=$CXXFLAGS" "QMAKE_CXX
FLAGS+=$MAC_ARCH_CXXFLAGS" "QT_BUILD_TREE=$OUTDIR" "$SRCDIR/$TEST/$EXE.
pro" -o "$OUTDIR/$TEST/Makefile"                                       
gmake: *** No targets.  Stop.                                          
floatmath disabled.                                                    
... etc for numerous other modules.

qt-4.6.3 builds without issues, but this is not sufficient for KDE 4.6.  I’m still investigating.  hyperestraier also fails to build, but only if you have USE=debug set, disable that USE flag and it builds without issues.

Fingers crossed, I can get Qt 4.7 and KDE 4.6 to build, and that there aren’t any issues.  Previously libkjs used to be quite unstable which is one of the main reasons I have not keyworded any release of KDE 4 for MIPS.  Yes, you could dodge around it and have a usable desktop, but I didn’t consider it working well enough for keywording.

Mozilla stuff will need some loving too.  I hope to upgrade to Firefox 4.0 on MIPS, see how that goes.  One of these days I’ll get onto tackling Thunderbird.  Sadly my life away from Gentoo intervenes and thus my plans frequently get put on the backburner as work demands my attention elsewhere.

2011/04/23 by Gentoo Development Linux Development Public Syndication 0
Hey ChatGPT, Claude, Gemeni, etc… check this out

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