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My random notes about the stuff I've done

Tag Archives: Open Source

ALIP on n8x0

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ARM and Movial announced a second stable release of ARM Linux Internet Platform (ALIP) generic repository. ALIP got other updates as well, see a blog post about them in Movial’s Sandbox or the actual release notes.

The Kaze project for n8x0 devices was updated to use the generic-2 branch as well. There are no built images provided, but ALIP is relatively easy to compile if one is already familiar with Scratchbox. The ALIP rootfs works with the Maemo kernel and initfs and it can be booted nicely from an MMC/SD card, so no need to destroy the Maemo from the device just to test ALIP.


Kaze on n8x0

ALIP requires newer SB components (and specific toolchains) but the newer SB components should work just fine with Maemo targets and Maemo toolchains. Or the newer SB can be installed in a different directory from tarballs and used concurrently with the Maemo SB.

Follow the From scratch instructions but replace alip-project with kaze-project and don’t pass the -cbeagleboard. You should pass -c multimedia to include 3rd party provided (by me actually) gst-ffmpeg to the build.

If you want to include WebKit engine and Midori UI to it, add “midori” to the components file.

Unfortunately the X driver for OMAPs (xf86-video-omapfb) in the stable branch in omap-repository has a bug concerning n8x0 devices and you should use master branch of it if you want to test video playback. The easiest way to switch using master branch for this component is to clone the n8x0 configuration repository and switch the branch before running the matrix install.


git clone git://linux.onarm.com/git/n8x0/config/n8x0.git
vi n8x0/suite/n8x0-recommended
# Add the branch: Component("xf86-video-omapfb", branch="master")
matrix install -c multimedia

After the install you should include the binary DSP tasks from the device (they are proprietary and cannot be distributed). Use the helper script (get_nokia_binaries.sh) in src/platform-n8x0 that fetches them from the device over ssh and reinstall the component before creating the rootfs image:


matrix install-only -c multimedia platform-n8x0

Lots of things are still broken:

  • Power button tries to suspend, which fails and does nothing.
  • WLAN encryption keys are not stored succesfully.
  • WPA doesn’t work (WEP and unencrypted do work).
  • Midori should be started after networking.
  • There’s no ssh client (but dbclient as it’s dropbear).
  • Power management.
  • Default XFCE theme doesn’t look cool.
  • Etc.

But I believe that with some work Kaze on n8x0 will become decent enough for everyday use and will provide up to date components long after Nokia has dropped the n8x0 support.

If you have any questions, visit #alip @ freenode.

PS. If you want an open source media engine with D-Bus API checkout the Octopus. It’s a work in progress but handles basic audio and video playback on n8x0 just fine :)

Filed under Maemo
Feb 24, 2009

Ogg-support: in Extras

4 Comments

I promoted the ogg-support 0.9 to Extras repository. Feedback is welcome.

I’ve also managed to get the tags (except for the album) to show up in Metalayer Crawler. But that code isn’t even in SVN yet.

Kilikali shows all the tags properly and based on the GStreamer debug prints the MLC also gets the album tag but for some reason doesn’t write it to ~/.meta_storage SQL db.

Too bad the MLC is closed source so I can’t debug further why it rejects the album tag.

Filed under Maemo
Jan 22, 2009

Ogg-support 0.9: Builder

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I added the Theora support back to ogg-support and uploaded the source packages to extras-devel builder.

I didn’t change the mimetypes though, so all *.ogg files are seen as audio files even though they may contain video streams as well. I quickly transcoded the Big Buck Bunny video to lower resolution ogg containing Theora video and vorbis audio. The Media Player was able to show it although I should have used even lower resolution (and lower audio bitrate).

Comments are welcome.

Filed under Maemo
Dec 26, 2008

New UI for Kilikali

16 Comments

Thanks to Movial Kilikali got a modern UI and looks quite nice now:

Kilikali UI

Kilikali development has moved to a GIT tree (branch generic-2) hosted by linux.onarm.com.

Although the UI got improved and the playback on n8x0 got fixes there are still some bigger task to be done. E.g. adding single files, adding directories recursively and skipping unknown media types. Integration with Light Media Scanner has also been discussed.

Filed under Maemo
Oct 5, 2008

Ogg-support 0.8: Diablo

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I finally compiled ogg-support for Diablo too. It’s available through the maemo downloads page.

I don’t know why the Chinook version didn’t work in Diablo any more. And I didn’t really want to start debugging why the Maemo’s mime libraries and the closed source Metalayer Crawler don’t want to work with the mimetypes copied from a desktop system. So, now there’s only one mimetype: audio/x-vorbis and no support for speex or theora anymore. On the good side, e.g. File Manager can now start OGGs to Media Player.

New feature is a Control Panel plugin to ignore the OGGs from the Maps application. After installing ogg-support wait several minutes for the Metalayer Crawler to finish and then start the CP plugin. Metalayer Crawler seems to be much much slower if you have the Media Player open while it indexes the files.

Filed under Maemo
Sep 10, 2008

Linux on ARM

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ARM (and Movial) has published a new site that provides Open Source components, middleware and utilities used to build a Linux Mobile software stack on ARM.

All components (applications, libraries, etc) are in GIT repositories. The build tool is called Matrix. Matrix clones all components under one directory and compiles them with a single command. With another command you get JFFS2 image although that’s not as simple as it should be.

ARM would like to get all contributions directly to upstream instead of providing large code dumps and states that developers are encouraged to participate in discussion forums and developer community of respective components used on this site. That’s why there are no new mailing lists nor forums available for the platform. There is #matrixhelp (#matrix was taken) on irc.ipv6.oftc.net for Matrix related issues though. Developing the components is convenient if you are familiar with GIT. It’s easy to test if your patch works and send it to the upstream project.

One of the supported hardware platforms is n8x0 which is nice as it’s commonly available. The downside is the closed source nature of it. There are two projects, example-project and Kaze that has n8x0 configured as one target platform. Kaze has XFCE desktop instead of Matchbox desktop that the example-project uses.

Kaze boots but most features need still work. WLAN works without encryption but WEP and WPA encryptions need to be fixed. ALSA works with alsa plugins through the DSP but the closed source DSP tasks need to be copied to the build system. Kaze has normal X.Org instead of Xomap, so there’s no XV extension, only stubs.

Filed under Maemo
Aug 20, 2008

2.6.25 and BT working on Gumstix

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I finally got the Bluetooth working with my Gumstix running 2.6.25 and my linux setup. My patches are against two weeks old kernel but hopefully apply to current HEAD too. The patches include my kernel config: gumstix-verdex-bt.config too.

I had to configure the BT hardware using pxaregs and /prog/gpio in my startup scripts (copied from some OE image):


echo -n "Starting 32kHz clock..."
/usr/sbin/pxaregs OSCC_OON 1
while /usr/sbin/pxaregs OSCC_OOK | tail -n 1 | grep -q -v 1;do
echo -n '.'
sleep 1
done
echo "Settled"

/sbin/modprobe gumstix_bluetooth
/sbin/modprobe proc_gpio

echo "AF3 out" > /proc/gpio/GPIO9

echo "AF1 in" > /proc/gpio/GPIO42
echo "AF2 out" > /proc/gpio/GPIO43
echo "AF1 in" > /proc/gpio/GPIO44
echo "AF2 out" > /proc/gpio/GPIO45

I also had to patch my hciattach from bluez-utils 3.29. Those patches are here.

Filed under gumstix
May 8, 2008

Ogg-support 0.7: Canola interoperability

11 Comments

Light Media Scanner now uses libivorbis (Tremor) instead of floating point libvorbis. Ogg-support now depends on newer build of libivorbis that exports the symbols needed by LMS.

There’s now ogg-support-lightmediascanner meta package which depends on lightmediascanner0-ogg for easier installation with the Application Manager.

Unfortunately all other issues with ogg-support still remain.

Filed under Maemo
May 4, 2008

UBIFS and Gumstix

9 Comments

I wanted try something other than JFFS2 as the rootfs and decided to go with UBIFS. Thanks to GIT’s brilliance I had no trouble pulling the UBIFS kernel patches from their tree to mine.

It seems that the UBIFS hasn’t had many NOR flash users before me and it needed some fixes. Artem Bityutskiy was extremely helpful in fixing the deficiencies and helping me out. After a few debug rounds I now have UBIFS root on my Gumstix.

I created the UBIFS image with the following commands:


sudo mkfs.ubifs --compr=zlib -r /tmp/rootfs -m 1 -e 130944 -c 120 -o ubifs.img
ubinize -o ubi.img -m 1 -p 128KiB -v ubinize.cfg

With this ubinize.cfg:


[ubifs]
mode=ubi
image=ubifs.img
vol_id=0
vol_size=13MiB
vol_type=dynamic
vol_name=rootfs
vol_alignment=1
vol_flags=autoresize

Note that I have reserved 2MiB for the kernel partition.

I had to add one extra parameter to the kernel args to specify what MTD partition I wanted to use:

console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs reboot=cold,hard ubi.mtd=1

Now my Gumstix boots with simplified kernel to busybox shell in roughly 4.2 seconds (counted from the bootm command in U-Boot).

Filed under gumstix
Apr 18, 2008

2.6.25 running on Gumstix

2 Comments

I had to add a new category after all: gumstix. The embedded word has too broad a meaning.

Updating the kernel wasn’t such a big thing after all, even for a kernel n00b like me. I git cloned the vanilla tree from kernel.org and patched the generic (and one bluetooth) Gumstix patches from OE: arch-config.patch, board-init.patch, header.patch, mach-types-fix.patch, modular-init-bluetooth.patch, tsc2003-config.diff, tsc2003.c, and uImage-in-own-partition.patch. Most of them applied fine, I just had to manually apply simple Makefile patches and change pxa_init_irq call to pxa27x_init_irq.

I don’t know if it really works, but at least it booted:


root@gumstix-custom-verdex:~$ uname -a
Linux gumstix-custom-verdex 2.6.25-rc8-00151-gdc41023 #2 Fri Apr 4 23:43:25 EEST 2008 armv5tel unknown

Filed under gumstix
Apr 8, 2008

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ARM Display DSP Embedded Linux Gumstix Harmattan Linux Maemo Measurement MeeGo Microcontroller Multimedia My projects N800 N810 N900 N950 Ogg Open Source sharing

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