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.

I just got my GTA01B_v4 from UPS courier. This is send as “developer update” as package contains:

• GTA01B_v4 phone
• battery (charged)
• Europlug -> US plug adapter (no idea what for)

After powering phone I started ‘DM2’ application which allow to make few simple tests of hardware. And let Mickeyl and Sean stop talking that Neo1973 has nothing common with “The Matrix” movie — the sound sample used to test audio subsystem is Morpheus telling Neo that he is “The One”.

What do I plan to do when I have two phones? First I will upgrade Bv4 to newer software. Then I have to decide which one will run OpenMoko and which Ångström — so I will be able to compare (now both has OpenMoko distribution installed). And I wonder will Bv4 recognize my SimPlus prepaid card (it is normal 250 entries sim) — Bv3 do not like it.

This time I had to pay customs and UPS — 109 PLN (~30 EUR) in total. And as this time it was sent to me as person not as company I can not add this into company costs. But it does not really matter — I have phone and this is more important :)

Yesterday I got phone call from UPS about misterious package from Taiwan, today this mail from Sean:

We’ve been so busy trying to get production moved from Taiwan to China, and shipping you new NEOs(GTA01B_v4), that we well…forgot to tell you that we’re shipping you new phones ;-)

So your Freed Phone is in the mail. Please keep your eyes open.

Happy Hacking!

Now I wonder will courier bring me phone to home or will it go to customs…

Thomas Kunze provided newer version of his SD/MMC driver some time ago. Today I finally got some time to test it.

Result is awesome as most of my cards works now — only RS-MMC from Nokia 770 does not want to behave. I posted logs into proper bugraport and Thomas told:

hrw: fine. so nearly all cards work now. I have an idea what your rsmmc might need.

So it looks like this one will work too soon. New test images for Ångström will be available probably tomorrow.

I have Nokia 770 tablet at home. It is mainly used to play Maemo Blocks, Mahjongg or other game. From time to time I use it to browse web or read RSS feeds so it is non-stop connected to my home WiFi.

But today I had to charge it in the morning and after that it died after 2-3h of playing. I do not know how good is N800 in this subject but hope that next tablets will have better battery life as this one has it too small.

Some time ago I bought 320GB hard disk to my desktop machine (which also is my main developer box). I decided to try LVM on it and created one volume group which consists whole HDD. There is one partition on it: /home. It works good but I still had 104GB not used on older disk.

Today I finally found time to extend LVM to get use of old hdd space. Few commands later I have 400GB /home partition which use two discs and is easy to expand in future.

But desktop has easy configuration. When I bought Dell D400 I decided to remove Microsoft Windows XP from it (legal copy) and use this machine only under Linux.

Booted Debian ‘Etch’ installer via PXE/TFTP and split hdd into two parts: /boot partition and rest for crypted LVM. During start I am asked for passphrase and then rootfs is mounted, machine is booted into KDE. Swap partition is also crypted so even after suspend you can not check what was running.

So LVM is good solution if you have few hard disks in machine and does not want to think how to mount them to have them best used — simply join them into one big partition and mount (or few partitions but with easy resizing). It is also good when you want to crypt data — easy to configure and setup. The only minus is that it require initramfs if you have rootfs on LVM. But Debian makes this thing also easy to do :)

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.

Thanks to Michał Roszka’s comment I can write how to pronounce my nickname “Hrw” and name of my company “HaeRWu” (both sounds the same):

A phonetic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet should help all non-Polish-speakers or at least English-speakers to pronounce “HaeRWu” correctly. It is: /hʌ eə vʊ/ or /xa ɛə vuː/.

Or just use English pronunciation of letters.