PowerTOP

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Few days ago Intel released PowerTOP utility which can be used to check what software takes most of power on device (x86 targetted but should works on other architectures too). During weekend I started it on my laptop and changed few things after that so it came from about 300 to less then 100 wakeups during X11 work and 70 when working in remote console over wifi (most taken by bcm43xx driver).

I do not remember how big impact it had on battery life because I mostly use this machine with AC connected and battery keep only 50% of original capacity (it is over 2 years old).



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NSLU2 joined under-desk machines

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Today I bought Linksys NSLU2 machine. It is small, ARM based NAS and it is running Linux out-of-box. Unpacked, connected to home network and after checking that it is working I reflashed it with OpenSlug 3.10. So now it runs 2.6.16 kernel (instead of old, hacked 2.4.something) and opensource system (built with OpenEmbedded).

What for I bought it (other then taking space under desk)? I plan to run few services on it:

  • NFS server with DL_DIR contents (all sources used by OpenEmbedded builds)
  • TFTP server (to server kernels, rootfs images for miscelanous devices on my desk)
  • SMB server (music, movies)
  • Bluetooth access point for my Neo1973 phones and other devices

Too bad that small embedded PCs are harder to get that such gadgets. I hope that one day I will be able to buy machine which will replace my WiFi AP/router and NSLU2 (NAS, BT AP) in one.



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WPA in Debian and Poky

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

During last week I switched my home WiFi from insecure WEP to WPA2.

Why not used WPA before? My x86 test machine was ProGear which use Orinoco PCMCIA card (no WPA support) and I also used Tosa with that crap called wlan-ng (also no WPA support). Now I have USB Ethernet card and PCMCIA->CF adapter so both can be connected via wire or with CF WiFi card (Prism2 with 1.8.4 firmware so WPA out-of-box).

But since I use Dell D400 as x86 test machine ProGear is not powered — I will probably put it on shelf to get some desk space free (there is no such thing as big enough desk — just ones that are not cluttered yet).

But how to get WPA working in Debian, Poky, Ångström, OpenZaurus or other distros? You basically need few things:

  • WPA-Supplicant
  • card with good driver (so no Orinoco or wlan-ng crap)
  • proper configuration
  • network with WPA

First I configured “maluch” (D400). Installed wpasupplicant package and discovered that it is not supported out-of-box. README propose two methods:

  1. Use only one network and configure network in /etc/network/interfaces
  2. Roaming networks with extra scripts

I decided to follow 3rd way where you need to edit /etc/network/interfaces just to tell wpa-supplicant which config it has to use and which driver: 

iface eth1 inet dhcp
        wpa-driver wext
        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/config

This way wpa-supplicant is started automatically with /etc/wpa_supplicant/config file as configuration. This file also contain all networks which you want to connect. It can be edited by hand or using external tools — wpa_cli or wpa_gui (QT3/QT4). Have to check does it works ok with other networks then my home one but it should work.

Then same configuration on Zaurus C760 running Poky — Prism2 card in CompactFlash slot. Connecting to network works out-of-box now. On Nokia 770 all I need to to was entering WPA-PSK key.

The worst part was MS Windows laptop — I had to remove all networks from list of preferred ones, reboot and then enter WPA-PSK key to get it working.

Now it should be harder to connect to my network ;)



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Neo1973 and WiFi

Friday, March 23rd, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

FIC Neo1973 phone is more or less ready for developers. GTA01Bv4 will be shipped soon but it will not have WiFi. The reason is simple — creators did not found chip which will:

If everything will go OK then during Summer there will be hardware update which will add WiFi (they are meeting with Taiwan companies to discuss availability of good chipsets) and maybe faster CPU or more flash…

I have to admit that I did not understand why people want WiFi in phone so much… But this is because I mostly use wireless when I am at home so I can use my desktop machine. But when I had to spent two hours on Munich airport during way to FOSDEM (Thx goes to Secunet company which sponsored my plane tickets) I had an option to use WiFi (not free iirc) so with proper hardware… RSS, Emails..

But time will show what will be in GTA01Bv5 (if it will exist at all). Now we have to get used to current hardware and write software for it.



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Drivers in Linux land

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Today I read post on LinuxNews (Polish language) about state of drivers for graphic cards. There are closed source propertiary drivers which works and give 3D acceleration and there are free drivers which cover some cards and provide kind of 3D acceleration for subset of them. The result is that user have to choose:

  • closed, propertiary driver which can contain security problems but gives working 2D, 3D
  • free driver which works in 2D but rather not in 3D

Similar problem exists with WiFi support. CompactFlash cards are now hard to get because good, working ones (Prism2/3 based for example) are not RoHS friendly so no one want to manufacture or sell them. Instead there are new cards which base on new chipsets with no drivers or pay us to get source which you can not share licensed ones.

USB dongles are in better situation as there exists few good supported chipsets:

  • Zydas (mainline kernel and also external one)
  • Ralink (external free one and also vendor provided one)
  • Prism2 (working, shitty one)

For a start let we forget that Prism2 exists in USB version (it does not support WPA, code is very low quality, will never merge into mainline kernel). Zydas and Ralink supports also 802.11g and are available from many vendors, have working drivers, firmware is available. As usual user has to triple check does this is version with blue sticker and not with red one because red ones use other chipset which is not supported.

There are also dongles with Marvell 8388 or 8338 chipset — first ones are supported by libertas driver done for OLPC, second one are not supported yet. BTW — this driver will also support 8385 chipset used in some CompactFlash cards.

And USB versions has other problem… they require +5V which is not present in many embedded devices. 3.3V, 2.5V, 2.0V and even 1.8V or less are common values for that kind of hardware. I know companies which solved it by rebuilding existing USB devices to work with 3.3V (many WiFi dongles use that voltage and have proper regulator on board to change +5V into +3.3V) — this way they can lower price and complication of device by not using extra regulators. This also improves power life. But you have to remember which dongles are changed to not plug them into PC — if you forgot then they get burnt after insert.

When few years ago I was buying my first PC I selected all components to be 100% sure that all will works under Linux. Those years passed but you still need to be careful when you buy new hardware ;(



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CompactFlash 802.11g card

Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Some time ago one company contacted me. They have 802.11g CF card which they want to put on market but first want to get it supported in all Zaurus distributions. Driver is available but only for 2.4 kernel, and OpenZaurus use 2.6 on most of models.

I got driver source (without license information inside) and started hacking on it. During searching for patches I discovered that there are newer versions of Marvell CF8385 driver but due to license (or rather lack of it) you can not get sources..

Weekend will be related to driver hacking — having 54Mbps instead of 11Mbps is something nice ;)

Card info: 

Socket 1:
  product info: "Marvell", "802.11 CF", "ID: 04", ""
  manfid: 0x02df, 0x8103
  function: 6 (network)

This is reference card, final version will be branded by one of popular manufacturer (and it is not Linksys or Sparklan).



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