So here is the front of the PCB + mods

You can see the original PIN A11 trace has been cut to allow PIN 4 to be wire linked with it. This wire link is on the back. The wire link you see here connects what used to be pin A4 input to decoding logic to +5V to pull it always high. This used to be the master CS pin which is not present on Electron.

And here is the back of the PCB + mods.

Here you can see the pin A4 to where A11 used to enter decoding logic wire link. You can also see the trace cut that used to be the original pin A4 trace.

With these mods the Electron recognises the cartridge as sideways RAM and the Slogger *rload commands work to load roms into these slots. There is however an issue with the images getting corrupted during load. I do not know what causes this. But it has been reported as happening on other sideways RAM projects using Plus 1 cartridge slots.

xinput set-prop 7 "Synaptics Finger" 5 5 256

If I could work out where xfce4 keeps its autostart files then I could get this to run at startup.

Running chrome itself is of little interest to me, much more interested in using it as a laptop. So first of all I used ChrUbuntu to get a 12.04 on it. Then I followed hrw’s instructions how to upgrade to 13.04. I messed it up a couple of times but eventually succeeded.

I will say two tips before rebooting, make sure you have ssh server running, and make sure you have a /etc/X11/xorg.conf working. Also if you are doing internal its really helpful to already have a valid install on external SD card you can boot in emergency.

It seems at the moment armsoc Xorg driver prevents suspend by crashing on VT change and then forcing a VT change when it restarts. So if you actually want to use the device you might need to switch to fbdev driver for now!

Very nice little device, I hope more of this sort of low power laptop appear to replace the now killed netbook market.

First create a file $HOME/bin/touchpad.sh with you configuration set using synclient.

#! /bin/sh

synclient TapButton1=1
synclient TapButton2=3
synclient TapButton3=2

And make it executable chmod 755 $HOME/bin/touchpad.sh

Now create a file to autostart this on login $HOME/.config/autostart/touchpad.desktop.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Touchpad
GenericName=Touchpad Config
Comment=Personal Touchpad Settings
Exec=/home/someone/bin/touchpad.sh
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=xterm
Categories=X11;
StartupNotify=false

This is probably not standards compliant .

Now if you logout and login your touchpad should be configured correctly. If you copied my setting one finger tap for left button, two finger tap for right button, three finger tap for middle button.

This has been well discussed on xda-developers forum and it seems for now the only way to restore functionality is to roll back to the latest working version.

The latest version is on the forums here.

Just uninstall all updates then install this package instead. It is a bit unfortunate that you also lose the nice clean interface of the newer app.

At only 2$ a ticket it’s a bargain for a 15 min ride around the park on the train.

At the end of every run the engine has to be turned around. The have a little turntable just off the end of the platform for this task.

One of the first things was getting closer to the local birds than I have mananged before.

We headed out along the Wolf Ridge trail.

After a brief stop for lunch we headed down the hill towards the old WW2 gun batteries. They were pretty impressive and once held some huge guns. The sort that hit things that haven’t come over the horizon yet.

Also coming down the hill there were good view back across to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco.

There was quite impressive surf on the sea and a few hardy surfers out enjoying themselves in it.

I had a great day and was a change from spending my time looking at boring “tourist” attractions. Must try and do this again in this area.

But crazy emacsen for setting base directory for kernel compiles and a correct for me compile command.

((nil . (
    (eval . (setq default-directory (locate-dominating-file
        buffer-file-name ".dir-locals.el")
        )
    )
    (compile-command . "make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-gnueabi- -j4 uImage")
)))

Firstly a set of vertical pistons.

The power from this is taken to all 4 axels which have small wheels to give more power to the track with less slipping. As its going up 9.25 grade I guess this is important.

It is an ex logging narrow guage. Today way pulled by Engine 1 which was a Shay.

Some nice features of the trip up the mountain were the Indian Creek trestle.

The route used to have a much higher double trestle that was damaged in a fire in 1976. This was replaced with a switchback to relink the tracks. The switchback has a grade of 9.25 which is pretty high for a passenger train.

And to finish off another couple gratuitous shots of the Engine!

This is easilly fixed with a few tools which are available on most distros these days, I happen to be using Fedora 18(ish) but similar should work on any distro.

Firstly install schroot, debootstrap and dpkg.

yum install schroot debootstrap dpkg

Make somewhere to install our chroots

mkdir /chroot/lucid-64

Now install the lucid 64bit into this, I am running from 64bit and want 64bit so its all easy.

debootstrap lucid /chroot/lucid-64 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu

Now create the file /etc/schroot/chroot.d/lucid-64.conf

[lucid-64]
type=directory
directory=/chroot/lucid-64
description=”Lucid 64bit for Android”
users=YOUR_USER
root-users=YOUR_USER
aliases=default

Now run shcroot to enter your chroot and use su to get to root user.

Final task is to install a few packages needed for a build, your may need different packages, this is just a list needed for random BSP.

apt-get install git-core flex bison gperf libesd0-dev zip gawk ant zlib1g-dev build-essential tofrodos bc
apt-get install lib32readline5-dev libstdc++6 lib32z1 lib32z1-dev lib32ncurses5 lib32bz2-1.0 lib32asound2 g++-multilib libx11-dev libncurses5-dev uboot-mkimage

One thing to watch out is not mixing repo/git operation inside and outside the chroot as there are likely different versions of git and it gets a little upset.

Launchpad Bug

This links to the official OpenVPN bug filed

OpenVPN Bug

I have applied the workaround in the launchpad ticket to my Fedora 18(ish) system and it certainly seems to have improved the situation a lot.

It first started to get really painful after an 11 mile kayak trip on the forth. A year of doing martial arts on it as well and it slowly got worse as it stopped recovering between sessions.

So I finally got round to seeing the physio about it. The was the most painful experience of my life. He very quickly demonstrated that the whole right hand side of my body was very tense and stiff. Once he pointed it out it was obvious the difference as compared to the left hand side of my body. Anyway he then set out to loosen things up. That was pretty brutal on my poor muscles and tendons. Still more sessions to go. Will all be worth it if I can get it fixed and kayak and fight better because of it though!

Suddenly there is no light at all, a massive cloud speeds across the
sky, you feel relieved for a second as the sickly green light
disappears. The you hear the wind, and the rolls of thunder, this is
going to be a rough night. You are glad you are safely within the walls
of the inn and that the fire is roaring and bright.

You almost start to forget the storm raging outside as you enjoy the
food and drink of the inn, but the wind keeps getting stronger and is
rattling the shutters. You can hear trees outside the walls creaking,
hear some cracks that mean some will not be standing in the morning. The
thunder is getting nearer.

The old lady is the corner starts to wail, the riders, the riders are
out, the leaders of the nine lost tribes once again ride, we are all
DOOOMED!!!!!

CRASH one of the shutters smashes open, the world turns pure white
silhouetting a hill. You could swear you can see an old man standing on
the hill a staff raised in the air. But its gone, you see flames then
someone jumps up and slams the shutter securely closed.

The atmosphere in the inn is now very subdued. You look around, not the
worst set of companions for your last night in the world. You pull your
possessions close and your weapons closer and wait for the storm to pass.

Went to Port Edgar near Edinburgh for courses on basic kayaking and sea kayaking. Over two weekends. I have fallen in love with sea kayaking and I plan to try and sit 3* and upwards over the next couple of years. Looks like finding storage for one isn’t going to be too bad either.

Over the winter I need to try and attend some pool sessions and learn some of the basics of handling like self recovery.

End of October going on a away trip to Loch Lomond in sea kayaks. Figure more time on the water is definitely needed.

Might also have a go at some river stuff next year but Im a little more frightened of rivers. Also had offers of some canoeing fun which I shall have to take advantage of.

I was originally recommended Rick Youngs by a friend I was talking with about medieval broadsword, he suggested I try Escrimma/Kali. Anyway I went along and watched a Muay Thai and a Kali lesson and loved what I saw so joined the next day.

Muay Thai I have now been doing for 3 months with pretty much every week attending 2-3 lessons (as many as I can). I am loving the kick boxing and my technique has definitely been improving.

Kali/Jeet Kwun Do is Saturday morning so unfortunately I have had trouble making it along regularly as everything else seems to happen on Saturdays as well.

This week I have also started to study BJJ at Rick’s. I had already done a bit of Judo as a kid and been doing some Ju Jitsu on Fridays so it isn’t completely alien. First lesson was two passes of the guard and two sweep to mount/side control from guard. Will definitely be a good addition to my striking from Muay Thai/JKD lessons.

I have been doing Ju Jitsu at another school mainly because I was looking for something to do Friday nights and it was the only lesson that was available. But Ju Jitsu also spends a lot of time working on core strength exercises so its very good as an addition to the other arts I study which are more focussed on technique. Certainly for punching power and grappling I need to improve my core strength.

Medieval sword fighting I have been studying for about a year now. Due to wrist problems I have been specialising in Rapier and will be studying the DiGrassi techniques when I get time to read the documents properly. I have been keeping my hand in at broadsword and done a little sword + dagger stuff. Kali has also been good for my technique. The Kali footwork is very applicable to the rapier and the double stick techniques blend well with sword and knife.

I used the kernel image that we use for Ångström images as Ubuntu doesn’t have a zoom2 kernel yet.

And this is a screen shot taken on the zoom2 (you’ll just have to believe me).

Thanks to TIs donation I have been able to work on support for this device. I have also been able due to the power of OE build on the Ångström communities support of omap3 chips in general. Anyway a Gnome rootfs is running nicely on the device.

Here is the login screen.

And after logging in the desktop running.

This as you can see is with the zoom2 running free of its debug board. This does mean with current OE recipes there is no networking but we are hoping to have that fixed soon now!

The patches can be found here.

During this article reference to the OE wiki especially the styleguide for new recipes is highly recommended.

• Styleguide
• Commit Policy
• Versioning Policy

The first step is to locate the software we are going to add and the version number of that software. In this case it the software is called eggdbus and it is version 0.6. Also at this stage check the license of the software in this case GPLv2.

Create a directory in the metadata to hold the new software.

mkdir recipes/eggdbus

Use an editor to create the recipe file for the new application. The general form of the filename is application_version.bb so in this case edit.

vi recipes/eggdbus/eggdbus_0.6.bb

Fill the beginning of the recipe with the informational fields.

DESCRIPTION = "gobject dbus binding"
HOMEPAGE = "http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/eggdbus"
LICENSE = "GPLv2"


The next step is to locate the download URL for the new recipe. In this case eggdbus is hosted in a sourceforge project so the download URL is.

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/eggdbus/snapshot/eggdbus-0.6.tar.bz2

OpenEmbedded creates a variable ${PV} from the filename of the recipe. It is recommended to use this in the SRC_URI as it saves typing when later upgrading to later versions of the software. It also creates a ${PN} variable from the package name.

SRC_URI = "http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/${PN}/snapshot/${PN}-${PV}.tar.bz2"

At this stage there is enough recipe to attempt a download and check that there are no mistakes so far.

bitbake eggdbus

This build is expected to fail as the OE metadata does not yet have the MD5/SHA256 checksums for the download yet.

NOTE: Missing checksum
ERROR: eggdbus-0.6: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/eggdbus/snapshot/eggdbus-0.6.tar.bz2 has no checksum defined, cannot check archive integrity
ERROR: Error in executing: /home/dp/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eggdbus/eggdbus_0.6.bb
ERROR: Exception: Message:1
ERROR: Printing the environment of the function
ERROR: Error in executing: /home/dp/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eggdbus/eggdbus_0.6.bb
ERROR: Exception: Message:1
ERROR: Printing the environment of the function
ERROR: Build of /home/dp/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eggdbus/eggdbus_0.6.bb do_fetch failed


OE helpfully generates the checksums it expected to see so these can be added to the meta data easilly. The cat just appends the new checksum to the end of the file. The next python command then calls a script to sort the checksums into the recommended format.

cat tmp/checksums.ini >>~/oe/org.openembedded.dev/conf/checksums.ini
python contrib/source-checker/oe-checksums-sorter.py -i conf/checksums.ini


To check this worked then re-issue the bitbake command.

bitbake eggdbus

In this case the command will succeed but builds no useful package. Depending on the application it will probably fail. This is not a problem at this stage as it is still work in progress and debugging these failures is what gives the information for the rest of the recipe.

At this stage the contents of the tarball file can be checked. The eggdbus tarball unpacks to a directory which is called eggdbus-0.6 which is what OE has already selected by default so we dont need to overide the default ${S} setting.

Eggdbus is an autotools using library so we tell OE to use its built in autotools support. If it is a well written autoconf then OE generates configure/compile/install tasks which work without modification.

inherit autotools

We can now try a build again to see if it will just build(tm).

In this case it doesnt because of gtk-doc.make. We currently dont really support this in OE anyway so we shall attempt to patch out this part.

cd tmp/work/armv7a-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/eggdbus-0.6-r0/eggdbus-0.6/
quilt new gtk-doc.patch
quilt add docs/eggdbus/Makefile.am docs/tests/Makefile.am


Edit the two Makefile.am and remove the reference to gtk-doc.make. Then generate the patch.

quilt refresh

The patches/gtk-doc.patch is now our patch. We need to copy it into our OE repo and add it to the SRC_URI.

mkdir recipes/eggdbus/files/
mv patches/gtk-doc.patch recipes/eggdbus/files/


And edit the eggdbus_0.6.bb to add the new patch to the SRC_URI.


SRC_URI = "http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/${PN}/snapshot/${PN}-${PV}.tar.bz2 \
file://gtk-doc.patch;patch=1 \
"


Now we attempt to build again.


bitbake eggdbus -c clean
bitbake eggdbus


This time the build fails inside the code stage, if the error is examined it will show that the build is trying to run a built program on the host. This obvously won’t work in cross compile situations so the program needs to be compiled for host.

This means a native version of the package is created. This used to mean a seperate .bb file but thanks to BBCLASSEXTEND it can be done in one file. This also means SRC_URI must be altered to use ${BPN} (Base Package Name) which is a version with -native/-sdk stipped from the end if present. So the following is changed/added to .bb file.


SRC_URI = "http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/${BPN}/snapshot/${BPN}-${PV}.tar.bz2 \
file://gtk-doc.patch;patch=1 \
"



BBCLASSEXTEND = "native"


On attempting to build this new native file it failed because it tries to use docbook to generate man pages. We dont really need them so disable them.


EXTRA_OECONF = " --disable-man-pages --disable-gtk-doc-html "


Now a rebuilt of eggdbus-native succeeds and host versions of the tools needed are available in the staging directory. Now some more changes are needed to the source. In the Makefile.am the programs we just built are referenced using the source directory but the ones in staging should be used so another patch to the Makefile.am files is produced. This patch should apply to the native version so more changes to recipe are needed.


BASE_SRC_URI = "http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/${BPN}/snapshot/${BPN}-${PV}.tar.bz2 \
file://gtk-doc.patch;patch=1 \
"

SRC_URI = "${BASE_SRC_URI} \
file://marshal.patch;patch=1 \
"

SRC_URI_virtclass-native = "${BASE_SRC_URI}"



bitbake eggdbus -c clean
bitbake eggdbus


This time the build succeeds, but one thing that isnt done yet is to tell OE what this recipe depends on. The trick used to do this is to examine the control file in the .ipk and see what is depended on.

For this recipe it is quite clear and dependencies on dbus glib. So a final change to the recipe to add dependencies.


DEPENDS = "dbus glib-2.0"


All these steps give up a complete recipe that reads as follows.


DESCRIPTION = "gobject dbus binding"
HOMEPAGE = "http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/eggdbus"
LICENSE = "GPLv2"

DEPENDS = "dbus glib-2.0"

BASE_SRC_URI = "http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~david/${BPN}/snapshot/${BPN}-${PV}.tar.bz2 \
file://gtk-doc.patch;patch=1 \
"

SRC_URI = "${BASE_SRC_URI} \
file://marshal.patch;patch=1 \
"

SRC_URI_virtclass-native = "${BASE_SRC_URI}"

inherit autotools

EXTRA_OECONF = " --disable-man-pages --disable-gtk-doc-html "

BBCLASSEXTEND = "native"


I have unexpectedly become an OpenEmbedded board member, wasn’t really expecting that as due to exhaustion I decided I needed to rest and recover instead of attending the GA. Its a pity I missed the GA but I wouldn’t have been much good there anyway. Anyway managed to preside over the first election using the online voting policy and that was a success. Second election for TSC is still in progress.

I have spent a week in Utah doing some work for Elphel, basically some training on OpenEmbedded and the first parts of doing a machine for one of their cameras in OE metadata. Interesting company and I have brought back to Scotland one of their cameras to play with. My brother is already considering the possibilities of using it to film badgers in the wild.

When I read about Utah on wikipedia I was expecting it so be really dull. But it seems Mormons aren’t the only inhabitants. The guys at Elphel took me out a few times and I had fun. Also shopping on the last day I found the rock/goth shop and bought some colours of nail varnish I had wanted but hadnt found in the UK. Also in Barnes and Nobles I found some lego sets I had never seen before, from the lego architecture range.

Last night I was at the Marilyn Manson gig at the O2 academy. It was the first time I had driven over to Glasgow. M8 was fun at rush hour, but I survived that to enter the Glasgow one way system from hell. In which some streets have changed direction since my GPS devices map was done. Anyway found the O2 academy and found the station carpark after a bit of a circle. Must say Strathclyde Transport make it nice and easy and even supply car park attendents to make escaping quick at the end of the gig. The gig itselt was awesome, and even the support band were ace. Was good to see Marilyn and Twiggy back together. All the goth/burlesque/emo stuff was gone and they played all the loud noisy stuff from the past. The stuff that most of the fans love. I did see a few confused looking youngsters who obviously never heard the early albums. There was the normal group of Christians protesting on the corner, but at least this time unlike Braehead they werent being violent and needing to be held back by the police.

BitBake Commander

During this article reference to the OE wiki especially the styleguide for new recipes is highly recommended.

• Styleguide
• Commit Policy
• Versioning Policy

The first step is to locate the software we are going to add and the version number of that software. In this case it the software is called eyeos and it is version 1.8.7.1. Also at this stage check the license of the software in this case AGPL3.

Create a directory in the metadata to hold the new software.

mkdir recipes/eyeos

Use an editor to create the recipe file for the new application. The general form of the filename is application_version.bb so in this case edit.

vi recipes/eyeos/eyeos_1.8.7.1.bb

Fill the beginning of the recipe with the informational fields.

DESCRIPTION = "The Open Source Clouds Web Desktop"
HOMEPAGE = "http://eyeos.org/"
LICENSE = "AGPL3"

The next step is to locate the download URL for the new recipe. In this case eyeos is hosted in a sourceforge project so the download URL is.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/eyeos/files/eyeos/1.8.7.1/eyeOS_1.8.7.1.zip/download

OpenEmbedded actually has sourceforge mirror handling build in. So when the SRC_URI is constructed for the reciped a shortcut can be taken. OpenEmbedded also creates a variable ${PV} from the filename of the recipe. It is recommended to use this in the SRC_URI as it saves typing when later upgrading to later versions of the software. It also creates a ${PN} variable from the package name. But in this case this is not used as it differs in case in the URL.

SRC_URI = "${SOURCEFORGE_MIRROR}/eyeos/eyeOS_${PV}.zip"

At this stage there is enough recipe to attempt a download and check that there are no mistakes so far.

bitbake eyeos

This build is expected to fail as the OE metadata does not yet have the MD5/SHA256 checksums for the download yet.

NOTE: Missing checksum
ERROR: eyeos-1.8.7.1: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/eyeos/eyeOS_1.8.7.1.zip has no checksum defined, cannot check archive integrity
ERROR: Error in executing: /home/graeme/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eyeos/eyeos_1.8.7.1.bb
ERROR: Exception: Message:1
ERROR: Printing the environment of the function
ERROR: Error in executing: /home/graeme/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eyeos/eyeos_1.8.7.1.bb
ERROR: Exception: Message:1
ERROR: Printing the environment of the function
ERROR: Build of /home/graeme/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eyeos/eyeos_1.8.7.1.bb do_fetch failed
ERROR: Task 2 (/home/graeme/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eyeos/eyeos_1.8.7.1.bb, do_fetch) failed
NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 445 tasks of which 444 didn't need to be rerun and 1 failed.
ERROR: '/home/graeme/openembedded/org.openembedded.dev/recipes/eyeos/eyeos_1.8.7.1.bb' failed

OE helpfully generates the checksums it expected to see so these can be added to the meta data easilly. The cat just appends the new checksum to the end of the file. The next python command then calls a script to sort the checksums into the recommended format.

cat tmp/checksums.ini >>~/oe/org.openembedded.dev/conf/checksums.ini
python contrib/source-checker/oe-checksums-sorter.py -i conf/checksums.ini


To check this worked then re-issue the bitbake command.

bitbake eyeos

In this case the command will succeed but builds no useful package. Depending on the application it will probably fail. This is not a problem at this stage as it is still work in progress and debugging these failures is what gives the information for the rest of the recipe.

At this stage the contents of the zip file can be checked. The eyeos zip unpacks to a directory which is called eyeOS which is different from OEs guessed at directory of eyeos-1.8.7.1 so the recipe needs updated to tell OE the real directory.

S = "${WORKDIR}/eyeOS"

Being a web application eyeOS doesnt have Makefile or autotools based installation so the compile/install stages will have to be hand written for this recipe.

The eyeOS installation is really simple from the OE point of view.

do_install() {
    install -d ${D}/www/pages/eyeos
    cp -r ${S}/* ${D}/www/pages/eyeos
}

There are two final things to do now before the recipe is finished. OE needs to be told which directories to package. It has some built in defaults like /bin /usr/bin /lib /usr/lib but our eyeOS install is outside these areas. We also need to tell OE that there is no CPU dependant code in the packages this recipe generates.

PACKAGE_ARCH = "all"
FILES_${PN} += "/www/pages/eyeos"

All these steps give up a complete recipe that reads as follows.

DESCRIPTION = "The Open Source Clouds Web Desktop"
HOMEPAGE = "http://eyeos.org/"
LICENSE = "AGPL3"

SRC_URI = "${SOURCEFORGE_MIRROR}/eyeos/eyeOS_${PV}.zip"

S = "${WORKDIR}/eyeOS"

do_install() {
    install -d ${D}/www/pages/eyeos
    cp -r ${S}/* ${D}/www/pages/eyeos
}

PACKAGE_ARCH = "all"
FILES_${PN} += "/www/pages/eyeos"


So the final stage the final packages can be built fromt the recipe. First a clean to make sure anything worked on is gone then a build.

bitbake eyeos -c clean
bitbake eyeos


The package produced from this recipe is now ready to be installed on target for testing.

So I select a kernel which I wish to develop with, in my case this is in

recipes/elphel/linux-elphel_git.bb

So I first make sure I am starting from clean

bitbake linux-elphel -c clean

Then take the kernel as far as the configuration stage, this makes sure all patches in the metadata are applied and that the defconfig has been copied to .config and make oldconfig has been run.

bitbake linux-elphel -c configure

Now I switch to another window where I shall be actually editing the code. I change to the temporary working directory of the kernel I am working with. This path below will change depending on kernel version or name. Kernels are always found in the machine workdir so tmp/-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/

cd tmp/work/elphel-10373-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/linux-elphel-2.6.31+2.6.32-rc8+r4+gitr2a97b06f43c616abb203f4c0eb40518c44c8d7fe-r28/

At this point I normally elect to use quilt to temporarily manage my patches so.

quilt new new-feature.patch

And to add files to this patch, I make sure to do this before I make any edits as the diff ends up being the diff from when this is first called to the current state.

quilt add driver/camera/random.c

Then load the file into my favourite editor.

vi driver/camera/random.c

I make the changes I require then it is time to create a patch from these changes so I then do.

quilt refresh

The above steps created a patches/ directory inside this is one or more patches and a file called series. series is a list of all the patches in the order they should be applied (quilt takes care of this).

So now I want to actually build this code to make sure it compiles so I switch back to my original terminal and issue.

bitbake linux-elphel -c compile

If this stage fails I continue editing the files to correct the errors remebering to refresh the patches as I go. The above command can be issued repeatedly until is succeeds. When it does I then wish to make the kernel image used on the the board I am playing with so.

bitbake linux-elphel -c deploy

I take the uImage file from tmp/deploy/images/ and send it to the board for booting however it is done in my setup. For this kernel I will write it into flash on the Elphel camera.

It is almost certain that this first attempt as create the new feature will have some problems. In this case I return to the terminal where I was editing the code and fix it (still not forgetting to refresh the patches). To force the compile stage to happen again I issue the command.

bitbake linux-elphel -c compile -f

The -f means force and forces bitbake to return to that stage. When the compile is successful I can again issue the following command to deploy the image again.

bitbake linux-elphel -c deploy

I repeat this cycle as needed until I have my new feature working as I wish.

When I am happy with the changes that have been made to the kernel I will have a patch file in patches/new-feature.patch that is suitable for adding directly to the OpenEmbedded meta data or which can be applied to a git tree ready for sending upstream.

I shall leave the git instructions to the git manual. For the case where I want to apply it to the OE meta data then I edit the original bitbake recipe, adding the patch to the SRC_URI in the form

file://new-feature.patch;patch=1

For example a finished line.

SRC_URI = "git://elphel.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/elphel/linuxdavinci;branch=elphel-10373;protocol=git \
file://new-feature.patch;patch=1 \
file://defconfig"

I copy the patch into a suitable directory in the metadata. More information on how the build system searches directories for patches can be found on the OE wiki and the bitbake manual. In this case.

recipes/linux-elphel/new-feature.patch

Now I test everything is ok with a clean rebuild so.

bitbake linux-elphel -c clean
bitbake linux-elphel


This should successfully complete the build and I should have a kernel with my new feature. If at a later date I find my new feature does not quite work as expected I can use a variation of the same process to update it. Instead of issuing the quilt new/add commands I just start editing the files in the patch again and a quilt refresh will refresh the last patch applied to the source which is most likely my new feature. If it is not or I have done this process multiple times I can use quilt pop and push to move between patches.

OMAP3 Card Formatter

And it turns out that some of the code was based on the work of Denys Dmytriyenko so give him your thanks as well!

Now for Kirstens Birthday!

It seems Microsoft have one crazy guy called Steve Ballmer. As Linux users and developers though we have to suffer a whole army of guys just as crazy. We don’t even get the option of keeping them safely in Seattle.

One thing I noticed at Edlug talks last night is people are still venomously bashing Microsoft just because its Microsoft. For example, MS Office is a perfectly viable office suite. Open Office is not magically better because it is free or has a different menu layout. I can probably give you hundreds of cases where OO fails and MS Office gets it right (especially reqgards to speadsheets). Also downright lies about MS Office really don’t help, if your going to compare two products, please at least have used them both.

Linux advocates keep bashing on about “Freedom” well one of the freedoms I still enjoy is the ability to select an application that suits my needs. Sometimes these applications cost money, sometimes they even come from a company called Microsoft.

At a request from TI developers I have decided to change the license of the script to GPLv2 as its more important to me that people can use the the script than spend their time arguing legal points.

[file lang="*" link="on"]wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mkcard-v0.3.sh[/file]

Got some feedback from people on IRC so added some checks so people with builtin card readers can run the script without having to edit it.

[file lang="*" link="on"]wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mkcard-v0.2.sh[/file]

This is using tun network interface so make sure that is available on your server.

I also created a dummy0 with a random ip 192.168.123.1 so I could connect to services on my server without bypassing the VPN tunnel. The dns server running on 192.168.123.1 redirects server.external to that ip address.

Anyway here is my server config.

[file lang="*" link="on"]wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/openvpn.txt[/file]

As you can see OpenVPN binds to the external port 443 and forwards non VPN traffic to localhost:443 where the webserver is listening.

Since the instructions to format an SD card for booting with beagle/zoom2/other omap boards seems to be so complex I decided to write a script that was nice and simple to accomplish the same task.

Here is my tested and working script.

[file lang="*" link="on"]wp-content/uploads/2009/08/mkcard.sh[/file]

To run this script you will require to run it as root. On Ubuntu or other linux with sudo setup run the script as

sudo sh mkcard.sh /dev/sdX

replacing sdX with the base device name of your SD card device.

If your running a distribution without sudo setup then become root then run the script as

su -
sh mkcard.sh /dev/sdX

One of the guys/rangers at the even told us that there was an interesting cave called Wallace’s Cave down the river from where we were and that you could actually get along the path that was marked as closed so we decided to hunt that.

Much climbing of hills, walking along walls bridging deep crevasses and head height nettles we found a variety of cave like places but not the right cave. But we did find a cool little mini waterfall.

We kind of decided that we should do it again, but next time in suitable clothes for getting wet and actually walk the river bed. In prep I also have the Ordinace Survey maps for mobile devices borrowed from a countryside ranger. I guess I better find waterproof PDA housing.

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/omap-zoom2-support

Found out why gpe-login was dieing, Xorg uses neon via pixman but the default andoid config doesn’t enable neon in kernel so fixed that.

This means that the zoom2 can now boot x11-image fully. I guess this means Angstrom supports OMAP Zoom2 I shall have to update the Angstrom website later/tomorrow to reflect this status.

Only bit of work I would like to finish now before calling it totally complete is to work out why mainstream u-boot cannot boot kernels. It would be nice to use that as its defineately got some bugs fixed with FAT mmc cards.

Me meeting Bret Hart at the book signing today! I’m such a fanboy

After trying different kernels I found the android/omap 2.6.29 kernel would compile and successfully boot on the Zoom2. This is also the first kernel I have found where fbdev works.

Xorg will now run and is using accellerated omapfb driver and I have had windows working. touchscreen for some reason is broken and gpe-login bails out so we cant yet use Xorg. But this is a massive step forward.

Also needed is to work out why OE built u-boot mainline will not boot kernels. There is some important FAT compatability work that makes mainline u-boot more desirable.

Getting ever closer to full Ångström support though!

So, thanks to a generous donation from TI I got to start working on Ångström support for the Zoom2 devkit last night.

After some false starts while trying to decode conflicting documents I managed to get it to boot from the SD card with a u-boot that was built from OE.

The mainline linux-omap is currently broken for omap2/3 so I resorted to the TI kernel from omapzoom.org which I managed to get to compile in OE fairly easilly. I also generated an x11-image.

The kernel seems to boot but when it gets to starting init strange things happen. It looks almost as if it slows the clock down to something silly like 10Mhz as it takes 3-4 minutes just to get to the udev 141 starting message. Then after about 20 mins doesnt apear to have done much else.

More work to do on this tonight!

Friday was Gigantor with Jen, I remember liking Gigantor but I must say thats two I’ve been to I’ve not really enjoyed, just can’t get into the music they play! So as I was feeling too hot and it was nice outside we left early and wandered home.

Saturday I spent the day at Unique Beats which was a festival of electronic music in the Roxy Arthouse. I must say I really love the Roxy Arthouse, it’s an amazing venue, an old converted church. Afternoon had companies advertising their software and doing workshops along with some people playing all day. Evening it changed to full on gig with some amazing people doing their music. Saw some really great and unusual sets, almost all of them involving real instruments as well as computers and gadgets. And Frog Pocket is amazing, go see if you ever get the chance. Wore my boots of doom and got lots of compliments For the last set of the day I got to hang around behind the no!input desk watching how they did the visuals which was interesting. Then off to the Brass Monkey for a few pints.

Today I caught tried to catch up on TNA and WWE, 7 hours in total, but still more to watch!

rsyncing the data from the old server to the new, going pretty damn quick!!!!

In the last few days I have also enhanced my WordPress theme editing skills and played around with remembering how to write sh scripts. Ill have to put this to use on my own WordPress to make a better theme for me. Quite a difficult task as I lack most artistic talents

Worse this is the error didn’t even produce any sensible google hits either.

So I with some cursing removed the default Ubuntu and installed Ångström using UBIFS. Some cursing was caused by the Sheeva failing to work with my usb stick or with my SD cards.

I am impressed with UBIFS it totally blows jffs2 out of the water. Mounts in seconds instead of minutes and doesn’t irreparably break when disk space runs low.

So with some fixes in OE my sheeva is now plugged into a USB hard drive and happilly running Transmission to download torrents. The 1.2GHz processor is easily fast enough for a headless box. The enormous RAM is a dream to work with on an embedded device. I still have some more improvements to test and move into OE so Ångström can benefit from them. But all is good so far!

Its been a fun few years since I first bought a 5500 collie and found that the Sharp rom was so limited, found the fledgeling OE project that could barely build stuff and started building my own packages one by one (as we had to in the old days). Since then I have upgraded the Zaurus twice, C860 and 3200. And OZ progressed into a fully functional system with thousands of packages.

But its now really dead, we have just moved onto Angstrom, this is a massive leap forward as its using the latest gcc, glibc and EABI. Making our systems smaller faster and even giving us debian compatability (well when they catch up anyway). So OpenZaurus is not really dead, its just grown up a little.

This is due to “sirfred” and his amazing new xserver for the imageon chips,  http://www.openembedded.org/filebrowser/org.openembedded.dev/packages/xorg-xserver

I think this makes the c7x0 currently the coolest zaurus about.

Who would have thought it was so hard to remeber what you know. Then trying to contruct that knowledge into some form of order is even harder.

Well only a week left and I leave IT Management for embedded linux.

Now my poor back just needs to recover.