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CompactFlash card problems - why it is worth to report them

Few days ago Ångström distribution was released. Currently machine mentors tests images and release them so their devices will be also supported and ready for users.

Users often have CompactFlash cards which we (developers) do not have. Some of them will be hit by miscellaneous problems. For example their WiFi card which was nicely working with HostAP driver now works only with Orinoco one so they can not connect to WPA encrypted access points.

How to solve that? Such users should report those cards. What report needs to contain:

• pccardctl ident output
• information does card was working with other distribution (it can be any Linux distribution — I test cards under Debian on my laptop)

What developer has to do then? Creation of patch to in-kernel driver is simple — there is one table per driver in source and few simple macros. Examples can be found in my submissions to kernel tree.

Tags: hostap linux orinoco 2 Comments »

Recent Poky changes

During last days I spent time on adding ARMv6 related stuff into Poky.

First problem was lack of ARMv6 support in QEmu which we use to generate binary locales (you need at least 128M of RAM to get localedef working on device). All information which I found in net was info from Paul Brook that he has ARMv6/v7 emulation working but can not release it due to license of ARM documentation.

But finally he got signed permission to show code to the world and QEmu got ARMv6/v7 support. Refreshing all our patches took some time for me and Richard ‘RP’ Purdie but finally we got it working. Binary locales for ARMv4t and ARMv5te worked but not for ARMv6 ;( The solution was quite simple — adding “–cpu arm1136″ into qemu-arm invocation. As a result I added new variable into “bitbake.conf” — QEMU_OPTIONS which set proper “–cpu” value.

So now, when we have binary locales working for all our devices the next change was possibility to generate only UTF-8 locales (does someone use other ones?). Change was quite simple and that is how “LOCALE_UTF8_ONLY” variable was born.

Now I have other thing to solve — get “qemuarm” (our ARM emulation machine) working with ARMv6 rootfs (I have to test it on something — all my ARM devices are ARMv4/v4t or v5te only). There is “RealView” emulation in QEmu which handle it but it lack many features so I have to rather try to get “VersatilePB” working with ARMv6. I just hope that messing with Linux kernel sources will not be too hard to get it working…

Tags: linux openembedded poky qemu 1 Comment »

GIT and I do not match

For both of my desktop machines I use git kernels and from time to time I add some additional patches to get something experimental to test. By default I use “quilt” to manage patches so my usual kernel session looks like:

quilt pop -a
git pull
quilt push -a

And as a result I have updated kernel with all my patches applied. If one of them do not apply I usually do updating by hand and call quilt refresh or search for newer version of patch.

Today I decided to do another attempt to use just GIT for managing my patched kernel tree instead of using GIT + quilt. And I failed :(

I cannot understand why GIT developers say that they hate CVS but follow its way when it comes to merging stuff… If any operation ends in merge conflicts all you get is file with CVS conflict markers inside. You need to call merge tool by hand, resolve problem, add files back to repository (do not ask me why adding files already known to SCM is needed) and tell that you resolved conflict. Even CVS or Subversion does not works that way…

I like the way it works with monotone — if there is conflict during update (so git pull like) merge tool is called (kdiff3 on my system) and user has to resolve all conflicts before monotone will go into next step. Whole merging stuff is then stored as another revision (with git it can be then remove during git rebase).

Maybe one day I will find a way to get familiar with git but it is not today…

Tags: git linux scm 1 Comment »

VoIP: headset, USB phone or BT headset?

During Wednesday I will have conference call to discuss some things with few developers. Before I used cheap VoIP headphones with microphone but one of cables broke so mic works or not.

So it looks like I will have to buy something again. During OEDEM Stelios used USB phone to make calls and it looked more handy then ‘VoIP headset’. But there are many of them on market so what if I will end with something which works only under MS Windows?

Other choice is Bluetooth headset. This one will be also usefull with my cellphone or Neo1973 or even with Nokia 770. Configuring headset to work with Linux was disaster but I googled a bit and found that with bluez-utils 3.16 or newer it is no problem (or at least it looks like that).

Which one to choose… Have to sleep with this and take decision tomorrow.

Tags: bluetooth linux nokia openmoko phone 7 Comments »

CPU upgrade

I usually did big computer upgrades (AMD Duron with SDRAM -> AMD Athlon with DDR, then to AMD Athlon64 with DDR) but this time it was only CPU. From Athlon64 3200+ (2GHz) I switched to Athlon64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz). Operation was quite simple — take one CPU, insert another but old one glued to radiator so I had to use some force :(

Then first boot and question… will BIOS recognize new CPU or not. It properly displayed information and then Linux started — just to show me 1 CPU. Quick installation of already prepared SMP kernel and /proc/cpuinfo had more informations.

Machine is quite loud when operating on full speed but most of time CPUFreq is able to lower frequency (1.0/1.8/2.0/2.2GHz steps are available) so it is noiseless. It is nice to see how CPU usage is split into two cores — now I do not have to wait when two builds are progressing and I want to run some applications.

Now doing builds will be more comfortable :)

Tags: amd64 bios linux Comments Off

Handhelds.org fork of kernel…

Today I wanted to check status support of TC6393XB companion chip (used in Zaurus SL-6000 for USB Host and few other things) in Linux kernel as the last working version which we (OpenEmbedded kernel hacking team) have is 2.6.17 (a bit old). Most of Google search results pointed to our patches so I tried to search also for “Toshiba Mobile I/O Controller” which also gave me pointer to handhelds.org fork of Linux kernel.

I fetched CVS HEAD (had to remind how to use it since most of projects which I use switched to Subversion or Git). After browsing their repository it looked like they have driver but marked as non functional so no use for me rather.

By curiousity I diffed handhelds.org fork against vanilla 2.6.21 (as hh.org kernel is still 2.6.21). Result was 10 megabytes file (with -X dontdiff -x CVS switches) — I wonder did they ever considered merging with upstream…

Tags: free drivers linux openembedded tosa zaurus 4 Comments »