Simon Josefsson’s blog

Sometimes it can be useful to build things without the autoconf ./configure machinery, and just use a simple and hand-maintained makefile and config.h. This is needed to build things in older uClinux environments. I wrote some instructions on how to build GnuTLS and GNU SASL, and their dependencies (libgpg-error, libgcrypt, libtasn1) without running ./configure, see:

http://josefsson.org/uclinux/old/

The makefile/config.h aren’t specific to uClinux, so if you for some reason need to build these projects in some other environment, without autoconf, the files may be useful.

(Although if you want to build GnuTLS/GSASL properly under a modern uClinux, you’ll be better of reading an earlier post.)

The timing of an article about the Hitachi 1TB disk (linked via a slashdot post) and the disk situation on my home server was too good to be missed. Hence this.

dopio:~# df -h|tail -3
/dev/sda1             917G  200M  871G   1% /big
/dev/sdb1             276G  248G   14G  95% /data
/dev/sdc1             276G  264G     0 100% /backup
dopio:~#

Oh, and not to be missed: the PopSci explanation of Perpendicular technology.

The physical design is excellent. The screen quality is awesome.

I started by flashing pre-built images to get something working. I flashed a new kernel and rootfs. The basic functionality is there, but things tend to crash a lot.

Building the software locally took quite some time, maybe close to a day on my laptop. The build tree is 11GB large. That is huge. Updating the software to the latest version and re-building it is pretty fast though; around a few minutes.

With todays’ build, I was finally able to make a voice call. The openmoko-dialer seems quite solid. What is missing is the audio settings. I’m now using alsactl -f /etc/alsa/gsmhandset.state restore to put the audio in the right state. There was a lot of echo and noise during the call.

Playing MP3 works fine. I was worried about performance problems, but the GUI is still responsive, even while copying a ~50MB file onto the 512MB mini-SD card. I discovered that the external audio connector isn’t a standard audio contact, it is smaller. I need to go out and buy a converter to be able to plug the neo into my stereo. It would have been nice if this cable had been included.

I briefly tried bluetooth, and at least the low-level stuff seems to be present and working. There is no GUI to power up the bluetooth chip though.

Greetings,

This message has been automatically generated with regard to the progress of your order at the OpenMoko online store (http://direct.openmoko.com/).

Your credit card has now been charged by the following amount:

Subtotal: $450 USD
Shipping: $88.98 USD
Total: $538.98 USD

Please note that this amount might be less than what was originally mentioned in the webshop, since we meanwhile got better shipping rates!

This means that we will now send out your order ASAP.

You will receive another status update once the order has been sent out.

Spending vacation at the summer house without Internet connectivity? Unthinkable.

The first few days, I connected the laptop to my cell phone using Bluetooth, and then to the Internet using 3G/UMTS.

However, we have more than one laptop here, and the range of bluetooth is limited. I ended up setting up a wireless access point with a PCMCIA slot for a 3G/UMTS card. It has worked flawlessly for several days.

The writeup on how to do this is long, so I put it at a separate page:
http://josefsson.org/grisslan/internet.html

Only a few hours after the Neo1973 was launched, I placed my order for a Neo advanced. Even before it hit slashdot.

They still haven’t charged my credit card. They confirmed my order though, and also asked me whether I wanted a black/silver or white/orange.

I’ll blog about my progress with the device under the new tag ‘openmoko’.

Today in a few hours, the GPLv3 will be released. I have prepared new releases of Shishi and GSS under the new license, and they will be released at the same time as the license.

Building software for embedded systems is quite simple today. A returning customer asked me to clarify how to build gsasl and gnutls under uClinux, and I finally created a web page collecting the instructions and patch.

http://josefsson.org/uclinux/

After getting more and more familiar with git, I now moved another project of mine to it. Libidn is not developed heavily anymore, but it is well-maintained, and it served as a good project to test my git skills on.

I have created a mailing list whose purpose is to discuss everything related to free software and the IETF, in particular themes related to copyright and patent. The idea is also to CC this list on discussions in various IETF areas that is relevant to the topic, so that everyone on this list becomes aware of what is going on. For example of useful things to CC are reviews (from a free software perspective) of documents in last call, and discussions in working groups related to patent/copyright decisions.

You may subscribe to the list.