Category Archives: Tech

Sometimes not _everything_ is about Linux..

CyanogenMod and a Telstra Samsung Galaxy S (GT-I9000T)

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My brother has been complaining about his slow phone since.. well the day he bought it, so I’ve been recommending CyanogenMod since, well, the day he bought it.

Finally yesterday I had a chance to go over for lunch and a Linux hacking afternoon, but in the end I spent the whole time trying to get CyanogenMod (CM) on his phone. Finally, some 8 hour later, I got it working.

It was meant to be straight forward:

  • turn on USB debugging
  • root his phone
  • install ClockworkMod
  • backup
  • flash CM via recovery

Rooting the phone

CM has some great instructions on their wiki, but they don’t cover how to root the phone. I did some research and found z4root which is supposed to root his Froyo 2.2 based phone, but it just didn’t work no matter which version we tried. His slow phone was running anti-virus which caused all sorts of “problems” and was quite frustrating, but we were still full of hope when we moved on.

Then I came across SuperOneClick, a .NET application that is supposed to run under Mono, but ends with a windows.forms crash when you click a button. So, we found a dualbooting laptop and went to Windows.

That was a whole other level of pain.

Windows frustrations aside, SuperOneClick turned out to be SuperOneMillionClick, but it did root the phone, yay!

3 hours had passed and we had a rooted phone – that was meant to take 3 minutes.

Installing recovery
So now we had a rooted phone, time to install ClockworkModRecovery (CWM). This installed just fine, but we could never get it to flash the recovery to do a backup. Gosh darn it. This also meant I couldn’t flash CM either.

My plan of doing everything nicely, as safely as possible, with backups, goes out the window at this point. Time to flash a kernel (with CWM) directly onto the device, another method to get recovery on there (so that we can flash CM).

Needed to get Heimdall, but there’s no RPM for it. Could compile it, but I’ll just grab the deb. Where’s alien? No package for alien and it’s a deb package, too. OK. Just extract the deb, good, now do I have the dynamic libraries installed for it? Yes.

So, I flashed the kernel which completed successfully and rebooted the phone… into an infinite loop. Great, broke the phone. Fortunately, I could still get to the “Download” mode, which AFAIK is like a dumb serial mode that lets you flash stuff (no adb here).

So I hit #cyanogenmod telling them what I was doing and was told:

so then you *didn’t* follow the instructions
they clearly state to start from from stock 2.3

Which isn’t actually true, but fair enough. So I had a rooted (as in root access) rooted (as in broken) phone.. what to do next? I knew the Download mode still worked, because I could re-flash the kernel. Advice was to find a stock ROM and flash that.. but for the life of me I couldn’t find the right stock kernel. Apparently it doesn’t really matter, but 6 hours had now passed and I didn’t want to make things worse (like break the radio or something).

Then I had an epiphany. If I flashed a Gingerbread kernel (with CWM) and it broke, maybe I can find an earlier kernel that was for Froyo and flash that to unbreak it. I did some more digging and found one! I flashed this onto the device and…. and… infinite loop again. This time however I somehow managed to get into recovery, which was progress!

Flashing CM
Right, now that I had recovery I could try and flash CM7 to see if I could boot. First problem was, getting into recovery only worked 3/4 of the time. Second problem was, getting CM zip onto the phone. Fortunately I now had adb access (phew) so I pushed the zip onto the phone.

There were more issues with permissions and writing to the right card, browsing to the card under recovery, su that didn’t work, but I won’t bore you further with all that. In the end, flashing CM was successful and I was able to boot into it. Almost happy. The flash was a bit weird (it rebooted the phone halfway through, then continued flashing) and some things weren’t quite working like the SIM card (probably important in a phone) and the screen wouldn’t wake up from sleep, blah blah.

Fortunately, flashing CM7 put on a new kernel and new version of recovery. So I booted to recovery and re-flashed CM. This time it worked as expected and I booted up to a working CM7 – it prompted for the SIM pin and everything seemed to be running well.

So, after some 8 hours it was almost midnight, but I finally had CM7 on the phone. I went to bed.

More problems
I woke up pretty happy and couldn’t wait to tell my brother, so I SMS’d his wife but never got a reply. Called later and he checked the phone. No SMS! D’oh 🙁

SMS wasn’t working, but 3G and voice were. Time to re-hit Google.

Turns out some other people have the same problem and I need to enter the SMS Messaging Centre number into the phone. You do that by dialing:
*#*#4636#*#*

Which brings up the Testing program, where you can browse to Phone Info, scroll down and enter the SMCS number.

For Telstra it’s supposedly +61418706700 but that didn’t work. Fortunately, I was able to get the number from my sister-in-law’s phone via the same method, which worked.

So, how to do it next time

Enjoy.

Microsoft “licenses its patents” to Android manufacturers, sues if they don’t agree

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There’s never been any evidence that Microsoft goes after Linux based products, right? Hog wash.

Well, now it’s just Tom Tom all over again. So, we know that Microsoft has numerous patent licensing programs in place, including exFAT, FAT, .NET (Novell), and now Android. We know that Microsoft claims that Linux violates a few hundred of their patents. We know that as a part of these licensing agreements, companies sign a Non Disclosure Agreement so that they can’t let everyone else know the details. We know that if companies don’t agree to this extortion, Microsoft sues them.

Despite all this evidence, people still think .NET technology in Linux is not a risk. Wake up and smell the bananas, you morons.

Microsoft states that Android infringes on their intellectual property:

The Android platform infringes a number of Microsoft’s patents, and companies manufacturing and shipping Android devices must respect our intellectual property rights.

Microsoft has a patent licensing program in place for Android, which companies like HTC have signed:

To facilitate that we have established an industry-wide patent licensing program for Android device manufacturers. HTC, a market leader in Android smartphones, has taken a license under this program.

Microsoft is suing Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec (link above) because they did not take a license.

Microsoft Corp. today filed legal actions…against Barnes & Noble, Inc. and its device manufacturers, Foxconn International Holdings Ltd. and Inventec Corporation, for patent infringement by their Android-based e-reader and tablet devices that are marketed under the Barnes & Noble brand… We have tried for over a year to reach licensing agreements with Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec. Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market

You know what will happen now. They will settle and Microsoft will continue this racket.

-c

Using the serial port on an Apple Xserve

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Some have found my posts on running Linux on the (EFI only) Xserves useful, and one such person is Eddie, who emailed me with some details on how he got the serial port working. Hopefully it will be useful to someone else, so with his permission, the following is what he sent me:

Believe it or not, Apple screwed up the pin-outs on the back of the DB-9 port for the Xserve (it might have been a logic board design error and perhaps they didn’t want to spend the money to re-design it). I made my own null modem cable and got it to work with OS X Server (taking the other end of the null modem cable over to a USB-to-DB9 adapter and then plugged it into my PC running Windows 7). As for how Ubuntu handles serial ports including on Xserves, I have some good news. Today, after much digging around, I found out how this works. First of all the GRUB load / configuration that you helped put together and document for the Xserve recognizes the built-in serial port (hurray!). This built in serial port is recognized as /dev/ttyS0. For example, from my Ubuntu 9.10 kern.log file:

$ cat /var/log/kern.log | grep ttyS
Nov 16 09:34:38 ubuntu kernel: [ 1.140244] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Nov 16 09:34:38 ubuntu kernel: [ 1.140343] serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Nov 16 09:34:38 ubuntu kernel: [ 1.140720] 00:09: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A

I’m not sure, however, what ttyS1 is on the Xserve (as you can see in the output above).

Another way to look at this:

root@ubuntu:~# dmesg | grep serial
[ 1.140244] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[ 1.140343] serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

Ubuntu specifically made changes to how one goes about configuring from one major version to another (so this is going to also probably differ among Linux distros such as Red Hat) but for what its worth, under 9.10 you have to set up a ttyS0 file and place it in /etc/init/ and the contents should be the following:

# ttyS0 - getty
#
# This service maintains a getty on ttyS0 from the point the system is
# started until it is shut down again.
start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]
respawn
exec /sbin/getty -L 115200 ttyS0 vt102

Once this /dev/ttyS0 file has been created and in place, you can load it like this:

# start ttyS0

which, if successful, should output a line like this:

ttyS0 start/running, process 4478

You can also read the device like this:

# stty -F /dev/ttyS0 -a

and expect output as follows:

speed 115200 baud; rows 0; columns 0; line = 0;
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = ; eol2 = ; swtch = ; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R;
werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0;
-parenb -parodd cs8 hupcl -cstopb cread clocal -crtscts
-ignbrk -brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr -igncr -icrnl -ixon -ixoff -iuclc -ixany -imaxbel -iutf8
-opost -olcuc -ocrnl -onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0
-isig -icanon -iexten -echo -echoe -echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase -tostop -echoprt -echoctl -echoke

I had no problem firing up PuTTY on a laptop running Windows 7 and connecting to the Xserve running Ubuntu. I could log in just as I would be able to at any console whether via KVM or SSH.

Great stuff! Another option to keep our Xserves going into perpetuity especially since Apple is dropping them in a few months!

Anandtech takes a look at AMD’s new “Atom killing platform”

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Anandtech takes a hands-on look at AMD’s new CPU+GPU combination platform, Brazos. It’s designed to compete in the low performance power, and mobile spaces.

How well will it perform, especially in comparison to next-gen Atom SOC, Sandy Bridge, or NVIDIA’s ION platform? Not sure yet, but one thing I know, it will be practically useless for Linux without decent driver support.

Update: Looks like some open source drivers are on the way..

I-O Data pays Microsoft to use Linux

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Another day, another Microsoft cross-patent licensing agreement for companies who use Linux.

Japan-based I-O Data Device Inc. has agreed to cough up an undisclosed sum to the software giant for using Linux and other open source software applications in its devices and routers.

Now I-O Data joins the ranks of Samsung, LG, Kyocera, Fuji Xerox, Brother and TomTom (and others which we don’t know about).

Microsoft says:

Microsoft has a strong track record of collaboration with companies running Linux-based offerings, and this agreement is a reflection of our commitment to partner with industry leaders around the world.

Thank goodness we aren’t doing anything crazy like deliberately putting Microsoft technologies such as .NET into Linux distributions. That would just be insane.

Amazon, Microsoft sign Linux patent deal

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Amazon and Microsoft have signed a patent deal which covers their Linux based products and Kindle.

The deal covers both Amazon’s Kindle product as well as the company’s use of Linux-based servers. Microsoft has maintained that many implementations of Linux infringe on its patents and has signed numerous licensing deals that cover Linux with both companies that sell Linux-based software and those that use the operating system in their hardware.

Faster, better ARM Cortex-A9 on the way

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That’s right. ARM is set to take over the netbook market (yay!) and even more good news that their highly successful Cortex-A9 will get a revamp.

Shrinking the die down to 28-nanometer will provide a 40% performance increase and reduce power consumption by 30%. It should be available later this year. Now that will certainly be something for Intel to think about..

Trying to kill Theora – MPEG LA extends royalty free use of H.264 for Internet streaming

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So the MPEG LA has extended the royalty free life of Internet streaming H.264 video from the end of 2010 to the end of 2016. The majority of patents expire in 2028, so that will still give them plenty of time to collect on royalties, if we let them.

Make no mistake, this is about stifling the adoption of Theora in order to become the de-facto standard. MPEG LA is trying to kill Theora, but we must not let that happen! We need an open web.

If you use H.264 for ANY OTHER PURPOSE today, you still need a license. Yes, that means you Mr. Linux user ripping your DVD’s to H.264..

Do you use H.264 or MPEG? You need a license.

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Recently it was confirmed by the MPEG LA that a license is needed for any use of H.264 and that everyone on the chain is liable. Free software projects are not exempt from this either and neither are end users.

Ben Swartz has an excellent summary about why H.264 should not be used.

A lot of commercial software comes with H.264 encoders and decoders, and some computers arrive with this software preinstalled. This leads a lot of people to believe that they can legally view and create H.264 videos for whatever purpose they like. Unfortunately for them, it ain’t so.

The license that comes with commercial software, such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro, does not cover commercial works. Even so, if you use a commercial software package to create something non-commercial and give it to a friend, they need to be properly licensed also.

You have a license to use their software, provided you don’t make any money, your friends are also all correctly licensed, and you only produce content that complies with the MPEG standard. Using video for a commercial purpose? Producing video that isn’t within MPEG’s parameters? Have friends who use unlicensed encoders like x264, ffmpeg, or xvid? Too bad.

This last thing is actually a particularly interesting point. If you encode a video using one of these (open-source) unlicensed encoders, you’re practising patents without a license, and you can be sued. But hey, maybe you’re just a scofflaw. After all, it’s not like you’re making trouble for anyone else, right? Wrong. If you send a video to a friend who uses a licensed decoder, and they watch it, you’ve caused them to violate their own software license, so they can be sued too.

That’s right folks. Use Handbrake to rip a DVD, or create, view, watch or distribute any H.264 video and you’re liable (royalty free streaming via the Internet has been extended until the end of 2016).

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Windows 7 killing laptop batteries?

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Ars Technica reports on issues with Windows 7 and battery life on some laptops.

These users claim their batteries were working just fine under Windows XP and/or Windows Vista, and others are saying it occurs on their new Windows 7 PCs… their PC’s battery life is noticeably lower, with some going as far as saying that it has become completely unusable after a few weeks of use. To make matters worse, others are reporting that downgrading back to an earlier version of Windows won’t fix the problem.

The issue was originally reported back in June 2009, long before Windows 7 was actually released.