OpenZaurus time is over - long live Ångström

Some time ago new kernel hacker joined team of people working on 2.6 kernel for Zaurus machines — Thomas Kunze gave us SD/MMC driver for collie and works on other subsystems to get this machine working. As result collie got added into list of Ångström supported devices and test images were generated.

Also during last time people were asking Koen Kooi when Ångström is going to be released. He usually answered that it depends on OpenZaurus release plans (OZ first).

But we lack developers to work on two distros in one time. Release of OpenZaurus 3.5.4/3.5.4.1 took me few months of work as I had to organize beta testing program, build images, fix bugs, find someone to work on documentation, build feeds. Then due to limited access to main mirror I had to work on upgrades feeds. Those tasks will be split to more people in Ångström.

As a result I was going to tell world that there will be no new OpenZaurus releases ever. But I did not wanted to sound like dictator — I asked other developers on openzaurus-devel ML what they think. There were 3 options:

1. we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for all Zaurus models
2. we release OpenZaurus 3.5.5 for Collie/2.4 only
3. we close OpenZaurus history and switch to Ångström

During week twelve persons replied — no one chosen option 1st or 2nd…

So Ångström is a future for our machines — and many others already supported in OpenEmbedded. End of OpenZaurus does not mean that Zaurus models are obsolete or that users need to switch to pdaXrom or Cacko.

It needs work to create nicely working distribution which will use up-to-date technologies, will base on current software etc. Personally I do not even plan to look at 2.4 kernel for Zaurus any more — it was ‘created’ in such bad way that… no comment

What does OpenZaurus meant to me?

For me it was really nice to have OpenZaurus on each Zaurus model which I had in my hands. It started with SL-5500 collie which I bought for quite big amount of cash (about 2/3 of my month salary), then was C760 donated by Richard Jackson. Later I got SL-5600 and SL-6000 donated by anonymous donor from USA. During OEDEM I got SL-C3000 from Mickeyl and gave him SL-5600 instead. Now SL-C3000 is in Rolf Leggewie hands and SL-6000 waits for developer which would like to work on improving support for it (SL-5600/6000/C3000 are OpenEmbedded project devices).

Thanks to OpenZaurus I started to use OpenEmbedded. First as stupid novice, then advanced user finally one of core developers. Without playing with those systems I would not be the person which I am today. Since I left my previous work as PHP programmer I finally do what I like to do (and I am paid for it).

Without playing with it I would not have all those gadgets/toys which I have here.

I would like to thanks for some persons:

• Chris ‘kergoth’ Larson for starting work on OpenZaurus distro
• Michael ‘mickeyl’ Lauer for maintaining OZ
• Richard ‘rp’ Purdie for maintaining Linux-2.6 for all Zaurus models
• John Lenz for starting work on getting Linux-2.6 working on collie
• Dirk Opfer for Tosa part
• Graeme ‘xora’ Gregory for being one of most active Zaurus developers
• Koen Kooi for maintaining Ångström distro
• Scott Bronson and Simon ‘lardman’ Pickering for work on OpenZaurus documentation
• Thomas Kunze for work on SD/MMC driver for collie
• all other OpenZaurus hackers

For all time which they spend on getting Zaurus machines supported.

Tags: collie company consulting donations nokia oedem openembedded openmoko openzaurus poodle progear tosa zaurus 4 Comments »

Job change

Yesterday I got job offer from one company. They want me to work for them in full time during next months. The best thing is that this job is OpenEmbedded related so I will do what I like to do and will be paid for it.

I accepted offer (who will not :) and today discussed with my current boss about leaving. So from February 2007 I will be free man — only own company work. In other words — starting from Feb 2007 I will get busy on OE rather then on making websites (my current job).

Tags: company consulting openembedded 4 Comments »

How to use task-base

In OpenEmbedded we had long discussions how to get minimal images few times, there were developers which worked on getting smallest possible working ones — one of them was Matthias Hentges which essential-to-boot image was 3.5M jffs2 and had everything needed to use WiFi on Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000 (akita).

Finally Richard Purdie added task-base into OpenEmbedded repository as new idea to generate rootfs images. First version was far from perfect but show a way. We improved it a lot since then so now it support:

• Linux 2.4/2.6
• power management systems: APM, ACPI
• wireless connectivity: Bluetooth, Wifi, Irda
• USB host and gadget (gadget only under 2.6 because 2.4 lack any)
• keyboards
• touchscreens
• screen in machines which have them
• PCI, PCMCIA/CF bus
• internal storage for models with microdrives or hard disks (’ext2′ feature)
• NFS for nfsroot installations
• IPSec

Any new features are easy to add.

Why switch from task-bootstrap to task-base is required now for all target devices and distributions? Reason is simple — this allow much better integration of them and leverage possibility of forgetting something. For example in past one of our distributions supported WPA ‘out of box’ but there were problems with some methods of encryption — it was fixed by update with few extra kernel modules added. Now imagine that you have to change this thing for all distributions and have to check which of them support wireless with WPA capable drivers — nightmare… Instead of it you change task-base recipe and every distro will get this update for free.

Another bonus which distro/machine maintainers get with task-base is simplify of configurations. There is no need to specify all tools again and again, thinking which parts of rootfs should be specified in machine config and which in distribution one. Instead of it only features of target and distro has to be defined and task-base will handle rest of it.

Example

Few months ago I was working on creating new distribution called celinux-test for CELF. Main target of it was omap5912osk developer board. I decided to use task-base from beginning.

Cleaning machine and distro config

omap5912osk.conf was long because this board has modular kernel so lot of modules need to be present in rootfs. I started from definition of MACHINE_FEATURES and switch to task-base:

MACHINE_FEATURES = "kernel26 pcmcia usbhost"
MACHINE_TASK_PROVIDER = "task-base"

Then I build bootstrap-image and compared amount of packages installed with a list from older rootfs. Some tools were lacking so I checked them and added proper features to celinux-test distribution config:

DISTRO_FEATURES = "nfs pcmcia usbhost"

Rebuild of task-base and bootstrap-image gave me rootfs which contained nearly same set of packages as old image. New one got some additional pcmcia modules, usbutils but every needed utils present in older images were present.

Extra stuff

Cleaning of configs allow to remove all BOOTSTRAP_* variables. But how to add some packages into rootfs without them? There is solution — MACHINE_EXTRA_RDEPENDS/MACHINE_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS and same for distros: DISTRO_EXTRA_RDEPENDS/DISTRO_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS. Everything from them will get added into task-base dependencies.

Tags: consulting openembedded Comments Off

Project for writing GPL driver for 8385 Marvell wifi chipset

Yesterday new project was born: writing free driver for Marvell 8385 based WLAN cards. Currently there are few persons involved including me and Holger Schurig. Join us if you are interested.

Holger did research and found that driver for 8388 (USB version of chipset) is GPL licensed and contain newer version of WLAN interface then cf8385 driver which we got from company which sent us cards. I diffed both versions and it looks like USB version has some support for 2.6 kernel added already.

We currently does not have any timeline for release — first we need to get it built against 2.6.19-rc kernel.

Project page at Linux To Go gforge.

Tags: cf8385 consulting marvell openembedded Comments Off

My OpenEmbedded environment II

Year ago I wrote post about my directory structure for all my work with OpenEmbedded. Recently I discovered that some people on #oe IRC channel follow this too. But they had some questions so I decided to write this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

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30 months of OpenEmbedded and me

During discussion with some users on #openzaurus channel I discovered that about 30 months passed since I’m using OpenEmbedded for building software.

First attempts were used to build extra packages for my SL-5500 running OpenZaurus 3.3.6-pre1, then I built OZ “3.5.0″ for it and worked on getting OPIE working correctly when compiled with gcc 3.4.x (loading 40MiB large libqte2/libqpe1 inside of gdb to get backtraces). Time passed, new machines appeared: first Zaurus C760, then Linksys WRT54GS.

My wrt54 runs under OpenWRT distribution so I’m able to build additional packages for it with OpenEmbedded (MACHINE=”wrt54″ DISTRO=”wrt54oe” combo) and they works. Of course they are unofficial because OpenWRT team use own buildsystem.

One of my common targets is MACHINE=”native” which I used for OPIE development or building needed tools on remote machines where it was easier then pestering administrators to install ‘mc’ or ‘git’.

Recently I used OE to build system for omap5912osk developer board used by CELF in their testlab. Creating new distribution was interesting because I learnt lot about how ‘task-base’ works and why it is good solution for our targets.

Soon I will have new target — this time it will be x86 based webpad. But I will write more about it when it arrive and start working.

Tags: company consulting openembedded openzaurus opie zaurus 2 Comments »