When I bought Samsung ARM Chromebook few months ago I had no idea about UCM profiles and burnt speakers (left is dead, right is resting)…

This was good lesson. I learnt more about how UseCase Manager works, took profiles from ChromeOS and added them into Ubuntu so other users will be a bit more safe (due to lack of testers it took months to merge it into “precise” and “quantal” releases).

During last months I had discussions with some Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora developers about how to solve such problems and how to keep UCM profiles shared between distributions.

In meantime Liam Girdwood pointed me to (not used) UCM git tree at ALSA Project server. So finally I spent some time and sent Ubuntu ones for merging.

I also got newer profiles for OMAP4 devices and some updates for Chromebook ones.

The idea is to collect UCM profiles, keep them in one place and share in each distribution packages. So if your hardware has profiles created then join us to make users life easier.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Call for ALSA UCM profiles was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

As I will leave Linaro at the end of May I would like to write a summary of current state of Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded.

At Linaro we have 3 layers:

1. meta-aarch64
2. meta-linaro
3. meta-linaro-toolchain

First one is BSP kind. I know that it had some issues which affected each build which had it in BBLAYERS but I fixed those issues. I would like to thank Khem Raj for pointing me at those.

We have git version of binutils there due to some changes which were not present in 2.23 line. But use of this version is not required as builds are fine with OE Core one.

We have “tune-armv8.inc” in this layer as well. There was attempt to merge that into OE Core but “/lib or /lib64″ discussion started and at that time I decided to skip it. There are similar discussions at GCC and Glibc mailing lists. Once they sort that out OE tune file will be adapted by someone (I hope).

Rest of recipes can be split into 2-3 types. Few (like sysprof, emacs) just disable recipes for AArch64. Other have extra patches to add missing functionality or defines. And we have Linaro kernel for AArch64 there.

Second layer has ARMv7a(b) machine definitions used for our machine independent builds and some recipes.

There are no patches for OE recipes here. The only exception is busybox where we enable “dpkg(-deb)” command which we need for our tools used to merge rootfs with hardware support.

We have “recipes-extra” where we keep new recipes which may not be in a nicest state so are not yet merged into OpenEmbedded (or have no use there like “meta-toolchain-hhvm” one).

“recipes-linaro” is for our stuff. Images, automatic root shell on serial port etc.

And finally is toolchain layer. Everything here is related to gcc-linaro and Linaro binary cross toolchains (armv7a and aarch64 ones). GCC 4.6 and 4.7 is there but 4.6 one will be removed when 4.8 will be added into OE Core.

Who will maintain those layers after my leave? This was not decided yet. There are few guys at Linaro who know how to use OpenEmbedded but I think that most of them is outside of Builds and Baselines team.

If you have any questions then better ask now.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
State of Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Good things have one ugly part in common — they have to end one day… For me that day will be 31st May 2013 when contract between Canonical and Linaro will end.

Those 3 years were great. I wrote a lot about it half year ago so those of you who are new – go to my previous “good bye Linaro” post before reading rest of this post.

Half year ago I was going to Canonical but got hold at Linaro for longer. Then I made a mistake by agreeing to postpone my move to Linaro instead of joining as soon as possible — my fault…

Last 6 months were full of interesting things. We went from just bootstrapped AArch64 port to fully working LAMP and SDK images built with OpenEmbedded. I integrated all Linaro layers into one repository and reorganized in a way that those who want only our toolchains can have them without using any of our changes. This move was greeted by lot of maintainers and users from OpenEmbedded community. Wherever new toolchain components were provided for tests I had them checked on first day to see how AArch64 situation got improved and provided fixes when they were needed.

Recent release of Yocto Project has several changes done by me and Riku Voipio integrated. OpenEmbedded project also made release and has even more our changes in it. Most of those were AArch64 related, some were software updates or fixes to low level stuff.

Linaro Enterprise Group has Owen Yamauchi from Facebook working on porting HipHopVM. He is using SDK created by OpenEmbedded to not worry about any build dependencies or missing libraries. With my work (and work from porters like Riku Voipio, Steve McIntyre, Yvan Roux and others) he got not only libraries but also tools he needed for his job.

Andy Johnson started OpenJDK porting — also with OpenEmbedded. Riku provided instructions which I merged into our ‘jenkins-setup’ scripts to make live easier for Andy.

Due to all that work I am often contacted by random people (not only from Linaro) wherever they have some AArch64 related questions. Sometimes even with ARMv4/EABI related like post from Nicolas Pitre a day after RMK wrote that FPU emulator has to be removed from the Linux kernel. I provided him instructions how to make such build and just to be sure that I did not made any mistakes I tried one on my machine. IIRC none of main distributions support EABI for ARMv4 (no thumb) processors.

But looks like all that has to end. Unless someone from Linaro member companies (or who knows, maybe even Linaro itself) wants to hire me. I am open for offers.

If I go outside of @linaro.org then I would like to stay around and check how things go — probably as ‘community member’ or how it is called.

And one more thing at the end. As usual when I end my work at one place I gather recommendations on LinkedIn. If you have few spare minutes and want to write something then it will be appreciated.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Looks like it is time for me to say good bye again was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.9 and many websites published summaries what’s new in it. One of common entries is support for ChromeOS laptops. But what that means for Samsung ARM Chromebook users?

Let’s start with Kernel Newbies summary which lists 5 commits:

• Platform: x86: Add Chrome OS Laptop driver
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add Acer C7 trackpad
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add HP Pavilion 14
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add Pixel Touchscreen
• Platform: x86: chromeos_laptop – Add Taos tsl2583 device

None of them are for ARM Chromebook. But that does not mean that nothing was done for it. Touchpad driver was merged, many Exynos platform changes were made but yeah — still lot to do.

But that’s a curse of ARM platforms…

UPDATE: Arnd Bermann wrote a comment on my Google+ post that Olof Johansson has “linux-next” bootable on ARM Chromebook. YAY!

UPDATE: I got ChromeOS 3.8 kernel running on my Chromebook. Needs some testing and then will land in “saucy” as default one probably.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Linux 3.9 and Chromebook support was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Today I can celebrate 3 years of working for Canonical.

First days

I was supposed to start from 1st May but as I had vacations already planned for that week (in Poland 1st and 3rd May are national holidays) they asked me to start work one week earlier — on 26th April 2010.

First week was usual learning about company rules, structure, reading wiki etc. Then I went for vacations and right after I was going for UDS-M (somewhere around Brussels, Belgium) where I met a team of people of unnamed project. Some days after event that team got a name: Linaro.

Linaro Developer Platform

I am a member of Developer Platform from beginning. Our team was changing, we got more people than we lost some as they moved to newly created teams and we had few renames. First it was Foundations (like Ubuntu Foundations at Canonical), then Developer Platform, then just Platform. Now we are Bold & BeautifulBuilds and Baselines.

We work on delivering components done by other teams (like ARM and AArch64 cross toolchains, Linux kernel), provide test images created from Ubuntu packages or built with OpenEmbedded (soon also Fedora).

Since September 2012 I am working on AArch64 (64-bit ARM) bring-up with use of OpenEmbedded (as at that time none of distributions had anything working to base on). Updated toolchain, fixed many issues with different software packages, patched some applications/libraries. Cooperated with few teams at Linaro and with several upstream projects.

Canonical or Linaro?

As some people remember there was a moment last year when I was supposed to leave Linaro and go to Canonical. But someone decided to keep me for longer…

But such things does not last forever. At the end of May I will probably end my journey at Linaro cause contract for Canonical’s engineers will end. Unless someone wants to keep me for longer…

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
3 years at Canonical was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

I plan to visit London and Cambridge on 16-22 May. Just for sight-seeing and meeting friends — no business this time.

Plan is to meet old OpenedHand fellows, some old friends from Poland, maybe visit Canonical office just to see it (as I work for them for nearly 3 years). And of course see something cause I was few times in London but managed to see only train/metro stations and nearly nothing more.

Then Cambridge for 40th Cambridge Beer Festival. There are friends to meet as well and maybe see something as well (but here I saw far more things than in London).

As usual flights from/to Berlin to one of London airports (plan to return from Stansted as it is the easiest to get there from Cambridge). Need to sort out some places to stay.

Also have to check which UK prepaid is useful today. I need few gigabytes over HSPA — previously Giffgaff was fine for it for just 10 GBP but they have changed rules. Tethering required due to tablet and Chromebook (which I plan to get repaired or replaced).

Any suggestions for 3G or place to stay?

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Time to visit UK again? was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

As guys from/around Texas Instruments promised there is new Beaglebone Black on a market. Faster, cheaper, with video output and other extras. For me it looks like Raspberry/Pi killer done right.

What is on board?

There is a lot of goods:

• 1GHz TI AM355x cpu with ARM Cortex-A8 core supporting ARMv7-a instruction set
• PowerVR GPU with OpenGL ES support (closed source driver)
• HDMI output (with audio)
• 512MB ram
• 2GB eMMC
• 92 expansion pins
• USB Host
• USB device
• Ethernet
• microSD slot
• user controlled LEDs
• serial port header

And it still supports (most of) expansion boards from the original Beaglebone which can add extra functionality so possibilities are uncountable. All that for only 45$.

But why it is better?

1. ARMv7-a cpu core. It means that you can run any Linux distribution on it. Think Ubuntu/armhf, Debian/armhf, Fedora/armhf. No need to reinvent a wheel (aka armhfv6 done for Raspbian distribution).

2. No dependencies on closed source components. You can boot board and use it with what ever you want and still have control on all sources used. Sure, there are some binary blobs for OpenGL ES but if you do not need this then you are fine. Try to boot R/Pi without binary blobs…

3. Texas Instruments level of support. Sure, we heard that they abandoned mobile market but Sitara line of processors is still in development, there are new CPUs and they provide documentation and source code for product. Also amount of work done in mainline kernel is not something to be ignored.

4. Expansion headers. Compare 26 pins of R/Pi with 92 of Beaglebone… Then add capes to this.

So which one to choose?

Beaglebone Black of course ;D

As people on IRC told there are other cheap devices made in China with faster cpus and more memory. But for me Beaglebone is not ‘yet another ARM computer’ but rather ‘yet another microcontroller on ultra steroids’ and this is where the true power of this board resides.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Death to Raspberry/Pi — Beaglebone Black is on a market was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

I am subscribed to many mailing lists. Creating filters for them was usually pain but keeping all in one folder was also not useful. So I decided to make it more automatic.

There are many pages which will tell you how to use maildrop, how nice it is etc. But as I am used to “autofolder” set of procmail rules written by Kamal Mostafa from Canonical I had some requirements already and some ideas how to handle few things in other way.

So what I did? Maybe not so much so far:

• handle @list[sy].DOMAIN servers
• autocreation of folder structure (/ML/{DOMAIN}/{LISTNAME})
• all GitHub projects are handled as folders of github.com

There is a lot of work to do but for now I am happy with what I did.

You can see it in hrw/dotfiles-mailfilter repository on github.

If someone finds it useful then please comment, fork, send merge requests, patches etc.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Automatic sorting of mailing lists with maildrop was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

I think that most asked question about Chromebook in last months was about hardware acceleration. So let’s write something about it.

OpenGL ES

There is a driver for OpenGL ES for Samsung Exynos5 Dual cpu present in Chromebook. But there are two versions of it: Week35 and Week45. Both require different kernel versions.

Ubuntu 13.04 has 3.4.0-5 kernel package which was built from R23 kernel branch. Week35 OpenGL ES driver works with it and you have to grab it from ChromeOS (but maybe it got updated there already).

I still have to find time and get R25 (or R26 or R27) kernel working so we could upgrade to Week45 driver. This one is available in ChromeOS as well (beta or dev).

Where are my packages?

There were packages which provided OpenGL ES driver binaries (week45). I removed them due to license issues as it looks like Samsung bought Mali T604 license from ARM Ltd. and got it working with Exynos5 Dual. Then they sub licensed it to Google for use with ChromeOS.

So Samsung does not distribute the driver — Google does. And even when they give tarball with files there is no license in it — just standard “Google Terms of Service” note.

No redistribution license == no packages. Sure, someone can make “chromebook-opengles-driver-installer” like package which would grab binaries from ChromeOS (I did such for week35) or will fetch them from network. Feel free to do it — you can use my chromebook-mali-driver repository as a base. Once you will get it working I can put it into Samsung Chromebook PPA.

Multimedia decoding

Other thing is hardware accelerated multimedia decoding (maybe also encoding). Under ChromeOS it was done with OpenMAX stuff. Google even had some binaries available but they crashed badly under Ubuntu.

How situation looks today? No idea as I did not had time for Chromebook stuff in last months.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Hardware acceleration on Chromebook was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

This year I spent Easter in other way than in past years. Instead of staying with the family I went for demoscene party — Revision 2013 in Saarbrücken.

Please note (RSS readers mostly) that this post will contain many YouTube videos embedded. Please go to my blog to have them properly displayed (I use WordPress + Jetpack plugin to embed them).

Friday

Took us 12 hours to get there (mostly due to waiting on TXL and FRA airports) but we managed to be at party place around 19:00 on Friday. Registered, met friends and went to Kirchberg Hotel to drop bags.

Hotel has two stars but was perfectly fine for such trip as our. Clean bed, good breakfast, quiet place (except church bells at 10:00 on Sunday). All just ~2km from E-Werk where Revision took place.

Back to party, more people to meet, discuss a bit with guys from ARM Ltd about Samsung Chromebook, Cortex-A15, Mali etc. One guy joined with his Chromebook and recognized me when I asked “may I fry your speakers?” :D

Timetable listed one interesting thing: “Curio’s 2012 Essentials” which was ~1 hour long set of PC demos from previous year. It was nice as I was totally out of PC scene so was able to check how it looks.

Taxi to hotel was just 6€ ;D

Saturday

Attended “How to start writing compilers without a Ph.D” seminar as it sounded interesting to me. And it was ;) Video below:

Also had discussion with ARM guys about presenting not only technical demos (like Unreal Engine one) but also to show some demoscene productions. Soon “Beginnings” by Elude started on one of Nexus 10 tablets and was working nice. But coder who wrote it was not so happy about that when we discussed that later… I think that it would be a good thing for ARM Mali team to get some good demoscene groups to write demos for Android platform to amaze people with nice looking productions. ARM even had seminar for OpenGLES 3.0 API:

But Saturday was also full of competitions. Tracked music, oldskool music (read: 8-bit mostly), photo, animation/video, game, ascii/ansi, Amiga intros, PC 4K intros, Oldskool demos (8-bit, Atari STE, Amiga 500)…

There were many entries in compos where productions from long time no see groups/people were presented. For example in oldskool demo we got “RINK A DINK REDUX” from Lemon which was astonishing:

There were also demos for Amstrad CPC, MSX1, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and other platforms. Oldskool music compo had even NES entry ;)

But it was also visible that demoscene is not full of amateurs like it was years ago. Some of videos in animation/video compo had professional level. “Lübeck 24x7x365″ took 50 days of recording but was really nice:

There was a concert in the evening… Ear plugs were not strong enough for me so I spent most of time outside talking with people. Next time need to take some better hearing protectors…

Sunday

As Saturday ended really late for us and competitions were planned for 13:00 we decided to not rush and stay in bed longer :) But at around 10:00 bells in local church started their music compo so we were not able to sleep anymore.

We got music, graphics, wild and of course PC 64K intro, web browser demo/intro, Amiga demo and PC demo competitions that day.

Graphics one was won by “Double Trouble by the Royal Forces” made by forcer & prince. Huge amount of details which was not so visible on big screen as it was on a tunnel’s wall where it was hanging as few square meters photo copy.

Wild compo… Man, that was something great. From productions made for Arduino (with some shields) though ARM Cortex-M3 one to interesting hack by Dexter/Abyss which shown one view on monochrome TV and second on oscilloscope while both were connected to Composite video signal only… See it for yourself (or grab separate entries from scene.org FTP server):

Then DJ set by h0ffman (skipped by me) and clue of party — Amiga and PC demos/intros. Different quality but most of them was really good — both from technical or design view (but not always from both at same time).

But as I am not a coder I looked mostly at design and audio/video part. All those names like ‘ray matching’ etc meant nothing to me so when someone tried to explain why demo which I did not like was so great I just told similar thing ;D

Monday

Wake up, breakfast, pack, pay, go to party place. We did not manage to get there before voting ended so not voted for PC demo compo entries. Greeted those who was still present, discussed a bit and then return trip… This time just ~9 hours but next time (if there will be such) we plan to go there by car. Less time needed.

Random stuff

I liked how party was organized — it was my first such event abroad and many people told me that Revision is the last demoscene party in old style. I really liked it. Saw many different platforms like MSX1, MSX2, C= VIC20, Amstrad CPC or Videoton…

Due to Easter time shops where closed on Sunday/Monday but it was not a problem for me as there was free coffee/tea, beer/water/orange juice was available to buy at low price (2.5€ for 0.5l beer) and there was hot food served all time (like 10:00 – midnight) also not so expensive.

Weather could be better as it was cold but at least there was no snow (which we still have here).

It was also nice to see Kiero at work as he was finishing “Machinist” Amiga demo on his x86-64 laptop with WinUAE running fullscreen. I was surprised that ASUS UL30A is capable to run it fast enough.

Amount of discussions with people is probably uncountable. Chromebook, ARM, Android, Amiga, scene were just subset of topics…

Will I go there next year? Will see…

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Revision 2013 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Today with my paycheck Canonical reminded me that I started working at Linaro 35 months ago…

Time flies fast and things are changing even faster. I am working in the same team as started but it has 4th or even 5th name with most of first members gone or moved to other teams. 3rd manager at Linaro (and first one not from Canonical) and 5th or 6th at Canonical (depends on how to count).

At the same time Linaro grown from 20-25 people who met at private meeting on first day of UDS-M in Belgium to a much bigger number. I lost track long time ago as it is hard to remember everyone especially when people move into Linaro and then go back to member companies, switch teams, companies (like going from member company to Linaro directly).

I will have to make such decision in next 1-2 months as I am one of the few reminding Canonical ones…

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
35 months at Linaro was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

This site is using cookies. Some of them are to track you as I use Google Analytics. Other may keep your name/email/website when you write comments on my blog.

We have new law here in European Union that visitors should get notification when website is using cookies. You know — privacy stuff etc. Lot of people does not even have any idea what this whole noise is about. There are websites for them with all that not even needed information — your search engine will point you there (and use few cookies in meantime).

I do not plan to add any of those annoying popups which will tell that there are cookies in use. Once you see such one you get cookie — cause website needs a way to remember that you clicked “yes, I know, get off my screen” button. You will not see such one here.

There is a text box in right column about cookies — go, read, decide would you read my blog or not. It is your choice and always was.

PS. I added tags into post just to get this post shown on each RSS aggregator I am/was listed.

UPDATE: added small header.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Cookies blabla… was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Second day in a row I managed to get 8 hours of sleep like I was not able at Linaro Connect Asia 2013. There was no time for sleeping as so many things had happened.

This time I decided to go to Hong Kong on Friday to have whole Sunday for shopping or sight seeing etc. Also to make things different I went though Helsinki (was Istanbul in 2012). It was interesting experience to hear English language with Finnish accent. There were moments when during in-flight announcements I was not able to recognize when they ended Finnish part and started English one ;D

HEL was cold but only outside so once I got to terminal it was fine. Rushed though, passed biometric passport gate and got a seat with electricity to charge my Chromebook and phone. Flight was “fine” as usual but as it was during night I tried to catch some sleep.

Finnair’s crew had some problems getting in-flight entertainment system working so we could watch how Linux booted on those NSC Geode GX2 based devices. Due to copyright note in bootloader (redboot) I assumed that it is not older than 9 years. Very slow boot anyway with lot of text printed. They should show some splash + potential progress bar instead. But finally it started working. Provided in-ear headphones are much better than ones on Lufthansa flights.

Landed, got prepaid sim from “3″ network, met Andrea Gallo and we went to hotel. I had plans to go to the city center but was too tired for it. I also lacked HKD due to other layout of keypad in ATM :D

On Sunday we grouped and went to Shim Shui Po to do some electronics related shopping. Prices in Hong Kong are similar/worse than in Europe so I bought only few things which I had problems finding in low price at home: mini-ITX case (16€), Nexus 4 back cover (6.5€), case for Samsung Chromebook (7.5€) and some cables. There are still no USB 3.0 cables in wide selection ;( I also bought crappy dual sim phone for 10€ as I needed one to get my Polish sim on network.

I also did some shopping on Tuesday — this time on Ladies’ Market. It is one long street with lot of sellers with clothes, wallets, toys, phone covers, headphones and other gift like things of unknown quality. I left there all money I had but got gifts for everyone I wanted. Haggling there is a must as 40% of starting price is easy to get. And you do not even need to tell anything to get price lowered…

We also went to Shenzen, China for one afternoon but that’s story for separate post.

But I went there for connecting with people. And to discuss/present our work done in last cycle and to be done in next ones.

Each day started with keynote (Friday one had Linaro awards). And we got speakers from outside of Linaro:

• Jon Corbet (LWN)
• Lars Kurth (Citrix)
• Jason Taylor (Facebook)
• Greg Kroah-Hartman

Each talk was interesting. Jon shown Linaro developers that Big.Little switcher should be taken for community review earlier, Lars presented Xen on ARM (v7, v8), Jason told about how Facebook handles servers and where is a space for ARM ones. Greg’s talk was best — he told why he does not want our code, what kind of mistakes people do in sent patches and gave us story how one code submission can break whole set of devices due to lack of testing. I wonder how Linaro Kernel WG will handle Greg’s new requirement of having all Linaro patches signed by senior kernel developer.

This was also first conference where I was fully ARMed. I left my x86 laptop at home and took Samsung Chromebook instead. Ubuntu runs fine on it, speed is comparable but size (13.3″ contra 11.6″) and weight differ. This also gave me few more occasions to talk with other developers.

I spoke with Citrix guys about Chromebook kernel changes and their Xen backport will probably be merged into “linux-chromebook 3.4″ package. Also had some discussions with ARM Mali developers which resulted in removal of OpenGLES packages from Chromebook support PPA due to licence issues (I do not have redistribution permission).

We also had meeting about hacking Samsung Chromebook where ChromeOS, Debian, Linaro, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu developers had discussion about what we can expect, where we are, how to get some things fixed etc. After that Nicolas ‘Charbax’ Charbonnier from armdevices.net shot video about it:

Direct link to video

I remember that Charbax tried to make interview with me at one of earlier Linaro Connects but I always rejected that idea. This time he went for help… And I could not refuse to Zack Pfeffer :) How it went? You tell me:

Direct link to video

Hong Kong was great. Weather was perfect with +25°C, sun and no rain. Someone told me March is the last moment for being there :)

But then I had to leave. Problem with return flights is that they usually are around midnight. Add lack of sleep during previous nights and result is not nice mix. So we spent some time in airport lounge to charge batteries (our and devices) and then squeezed in economy class for 11 hours. Took a nap, watched movie in English with Finnish subtitles (learnt new word even) and read “Amiga, the future was here” book.

Imagine weather change when we landed in Helsinki… -13°C and snow. As I left my spring jacket in checked-in baggage (but I had sweater) those few minutes from airport -> bus -> plane were cold ones. Similar few hours later in Berlin. But I had some time for shopping. Skipped salmiakki cause it is hard to know which ones will be hardcore just enough but got some other things.

Szczecin was nice on Saturday. Cold, but spring was visible. Winter came during night:

Next Linaro Connect will be in Dublin, Ireland. See you there!

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Linaro Connect Asia 2013 was fun was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

There will be Linaro Connect Asia next week. Which means: I am going to Hong Kong today. 21-22 hours trip like usual. This time through Helsinki ;)

But recently I started to count and got quite long list of Linaro events I attended so far:

• 2010.05 UDS/M – Brussels, Belgium
• 2010.07 Ubuntu/Linaro sprint in Prague, Czech Republic
• 2010.10 UDS/N – Orlando, FL, USA
• 2011.01 Ubuntu/Linaro sprint in Dallas, TX, USA
• 2011.05 LC + UDS/O – Budapest, Hungary
• 2011.07 Ubuntu/Linaro sprint in Dublin, Ireland
• 2011.10 LC + UDS/P – Orlando, FL, USA
• 2012.02 LC – Redwood City, CA, USA
• 2012.05 LC – Hong Kong, China
• 2012.11 LC + UDS/R – Copenhagen, Denmark?

The “Linaro Connect” name is quite young and I do not remember which event got this name first. There will be three of them this year: Asia, Europe, US. But when and where? Do not ask me cause so far it was not announced yet.

So if any of my readers will be in Hong Kong next week — please say hi. And there will be Chromebook hacking session on Tuesday at 15:00 in Fountain 1 room (but please check schedule/ask me if not changed).

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
I am going to Hong Kong was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

That day had to come. It was just a matter of time. Debian bootstrapped new architecture port using just own tools and packages…

It was long trip. During last few years we saw bigger amount of work spent in Debian/Ubuntu on cross building packages. Then were Google Summer of Code projects on bootstrapping Debian and one for multiarch cross toolchains. And we had Wookey with his ideas, knowledge and abilities to get one thing to work on for months in a way that managers were agreeding that it needs another month and another ;)

And today I found an email from Wookey about AArch64 port. I suggest you to read it as it has a lot of information. You can find ready to use rootfs there which (connected with kernel from OpenEmbedded) boots to fresh Ubuntu 13.04:

Ubuntu Raring Ringtail (development branch) localhost ttyAMA0

localhost login: root
Last login: Thu Jan  1 00:07:37 UTC 1970 on ttyAMA0
Welcome to Ubuntu Raring Ringtail (development branch) (GNU/Linux 3.8.0 aarch64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/
root@localhost:~# uname -a
Linux localhost 3.8.0 #1 SMP Wed Feb 20 14:31:07 CET 2013 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

You need to have patience as Upstart needs to run lot of stuff before it gives login prompt.

Still lot of work required as there are many patches to packaging waiting for being merged but I think that it is a big day for Debian and all distributions derived from it.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
AArch64 port of Debian/Ubuntu is alive! was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

There are many users of so-called Chrubuntu which have Ubuntu 12.04 running on their Samsung ARM Chromebooks. And I do not support them with any updates so they wonder how to upgrade to 13.04 release. So I decided to spend some time and help with it.

For this I installed Chrubuntu 12.04 on SD card (not on internal as I have own installation of Ubuntu there) and I will go though upgrade to 13.04 and document all steps here.

First thing: if your Chrubuntu installation fails on fetching 4.7MB of “ubuntu-1204-binak.bz2″ file then you probably started script with “sh” instead of “bash”. Abort process and run it with “bash” — it really needs it.

But ok, you got your Chromebook booted to Ubuntu desktop (running Unity 2D). Remember: your password is “user”. Open terminal (Ctrl+LAlt+t), get root and edit APT sources so they will point to “raring” instead of “precise”. Now refresh APT data and run distro upgrade (I used “apt-get dist-upgrade“).

There may be some issues during upgrade. I had to run “apt-get -f install” and it removed some packages including “unity” and “ubuntu-desktop”. To get them back I needed “apt-get install ubuntu-desktop gnome-control-center nautilus nautilus-share nautilus-sendto eog unity libgnome-desktop-3.4 gnome-settings-daemon” command.

Next step is adding ARM Chromebook hackers PPA: “sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromebook-arm/ppa” and again updating APT cache.

Now it is time to install Ubuntu kernel and tools: “apt-get install cgpt vboot-kernel-utils linux-image-chromebook“. During installation you will get “Warning: root device does not exist” message during creation of initrd image. Just ignore that and then remove “flash-kernel” package.

Time to sign kernel. Create file with kernel command line. I suggest “console=tty1 printk.time=1 quiet nosplash rootwait root=/dev/mmcblk1p7 rw rootfstype=ext4? but you can adapt it as you want. Sign kernel: “vbutil_kernel --pack /tmp/kernel-to-boot-ubuntu --keyblock /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel.keyblock --version 1 --signprivate /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel_data_key.vbprivk --config CMDLINE_FILE --vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-5-chromebook --arch arm“. And do not forget to write it to SD: “dd if=/tmp/kernel-to-boot-ubuntu of=/dev/mmcblk1p6 bs=4M“.

Time to reboot to 13.04. Less kernel messages on console then before but blue screen instead of Unity desktop ;( Good that “Ctrl-LAlt-1″ switches us to text console.

Login as “user” (password is “user” as I mentioned earlier), gain root and install “chromium-mali-opengles” package. Now “restart lightdm” and check how X11 looks this time. Still blue? Switch back to text console then.

Now it is time to enable “universe” part of repository (I though that it is enabled by default). Edit “/etc/apt/sources.list” file and uncomment proper lines. Now we can install “armsoc” X11 display driver. Here you can curse at me — package in repository lacks Exynos5 part of xorg.conf ;(

But this does not change situation — still no Unity. At this moment I can recommend XFCE instead. Install “xubuntu-desktop” (181MB of disk space needed).

Ok, time to switch default session to Xubuntu one. Edit “/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf” and set “user-session” to “xubuntu”. Save and “restart lightdm“. Now you should land in XFCE session.

Are icons broken? If yes then you probably need to complete distribution upgrade. I had 725 packages to process… Once it done — restart X11 session.

So now I have working XFCE desktop with latest kernel. OpenGLES is not working but I have to check why.

Was it hard?

UPDATE: fixed OpenGL ES package name and improved formating so -- were preserved. UPDATE 2: fixed PPA name and partition number.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
How to update Chrubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 13.04 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Today I work from Berlin (visiting Daniel Holbach) and took only Chromebook with me to check how bad/good it works as laptop replacement for me.

First issues appeared during first minutes. It was keyboard. Or rather keys which are missing there. XFCE terminal (my main tool) switches between tabs with Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn but I lack those keys. Good that I can edit GTK shortcuts. But remove of them is possible only with Delete key. And guess what — Chromebook lacks it as well ;D So I used some crazy Emacs like shortcuts (Ctrl-LAlt-Shift-something).

Good thing is support for 5GHz WiFi. I have to consider such change at home and provide not only 2.4GHz but also 5GHz network (I have around twenty 802.11g ones at home).

Terrible issue is power plug detection. I took Chromebook from backpack, booted it and got “97% charged, AC connected” message during work on battery. It is serious problem as no one likes to have random shutdowns just because battery went flat.

So there are few things to do:

• better keymap
• fixed power state detection

And then I can go to Hong Kong (for Linaro Connect Asia) with Chromebook only.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Spending whole day with just Chromebook was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Installing recent Ubuntu on Samsung ARM Chromebook is not rocket science. All you need is following steps.

So which steps there are? Note that I will describe only installation on SD card and assume some level of knowledge from reader — that’s why there are steps where exact commands are not given as you can use different tools.

1. Partition SD card with GPT. First partition needs type “7f00″ (ChromiumOS kernel) and 4MB is enough. Second is “8300″ type and should be enough to fit rootfs (or bigger).
2. Create ext4 filesystem on second partition.
3. Create rootfs — debootstrap, multistrap etc. You can do it directly to SD card partition to save copying later. You can also fetch any existing one.
4. Chroot into rootfs (you can do it from terminal under Chrome OS).
5. Add “Samsung Chromebook (ARM) support packages” PPA into APT sources.
6. Install “cgpt”, “vboot-utils”, “linux-chromebook”, “xserver-xorg-video-armsoc” packages.
7. Create file with kernel command line. I suggest “console=tty1 printk.time=1 quiet nosplash rootwait root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 rw rootfstype=ext4″ but you can adapt it as you want.
8. Sign kernel: “vbutil_kernel –pack /tmp/kernel-to-boot-ubuntu –keyblock /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel.keyblock –version 1 –signprivate /usr/share/vboot/devkeys/kernel_data_key.vbprivk –config CMDLINE_FILE –vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-5-chromebook –arch arm”
9. Write kernel to SD: “dd if=/tmp/kernel-to-boot-ubuntu of=/dev/mmcblk1p1 bs=4M”.
10. Mark kernel as good: “cgpt add -S 1 -T 5 -P 12 -i 1 /dev/mmcblk1″
11. Copy WiFi firmware from Chrome OS — it is /lib/firmware/mrvl/sd8797_uapsta.bin file.
12. Last chance to burn your speakers cause Ubuntu will not give that functionality…
13. Reboot.
14. Press Ctrl-U at that scary white screen.
15. Enjoy your Ubuntu system.
16. You may also add symlink for Samsung media framework: “cd /lib/firmware/;ln -sf s5p-mfc/s5p-mfc-v6.fw mfc_fw.bin”. But so far nothing uses it.

Note that you may have different results due to other rootfs used. I ran “debootstrap” and then chrooted, installed “xubuntu-desktop” and lot of other packages I use for development.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
How to install Ubuntu 13.04 on Chromebook was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Recently I got more and more questions how to upgrade from Chrubuntu to Ubuntu 13.04 to get my updates. So I think that it is a time for me to check how to do it.

I will book some time during weekend for playing with Chrubuntu installation on SD card and upgrading it to latest and greatest packages. Will post how it went and which bugs I got during process and how to fix/workaround them.

As usual I will not cover sound cause I do not have speakers in Chromebook.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Looks like I have to test that Chrubuntu thing was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Nine years ago I bought Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 as my first Linux PDA. And due to this I am where I am.

I could say that it started two years earlier when I saw PalmOS devices at local geek meetings. But it took me over year before Palm m105… Then was Sony Clie SJ30 — gorgeous device. High resolution, memory card, 16bit colour. Too bad that applications did not make use of it.

So I went for Linux. There were two options: Zaurus or iPaq. Went for former one as it had keyboard. It was good choice.

Quickly started development of packages and joined OpenEmbedded team. Then became one of OpenZaurus developers. After year or something took over release maintenance and released few last versions. 3.5.4(.1) were the best tested releases of OZ ever — I had over hundred testers for each RC image and they provided installation reports, bug reports and fixes. And it had unified installer for whole range of devices (took me several months to get it polished and few guys added own tweaks). When Ångström distribution started I was the one who officially ended OpenZaurus development.

And all that was in free time. But in mean time I created my consulting company. CELF was my first customer ;)

One nice evening I got question on irc and due to that I left dark side of IT and went from PHP programming to embedded Linux full-time. OpenedHand had interesting projects and clients with many devices. Imagine operating system + kernel + Python + GStreamer in 16 megabytes of flash… And I managed to get it done. While working for them I used proper developer boards (not only customer devices) and there were funny moments…

When we worked with ST Microelectronics on NDK-15 (later replaced by NHK-15 from ST Ericsson) I had to merge two kernel trees from two separate teams. Took me 2 days of mangling 20-30MB diffs but got it done. There are people at ST-E which reminded me this during one of Linaro Connects ;D

Also on GUADEC 2007 when we presented new interface for Openmoko phones NDK-15 had to wait for me as no one at stand was able to get it running (U-Boot config needed changes).

But then Intel acquired OpenedHand… The craziest trip of my life was return from London to my parents place. For three months I even had @linux.intel.com email but never used it due to problems with Intel corporate network and Linux (do not ask).

Next was Bug Labs and their BUG device. I cleaned their Poky trees, migrated to latest version and later to use OpenEmbedded directly. Less challenges but I also had few other customers at that time to keep me busy. Some of them were OH customers before and went to me for help.

Time passed, 2010 came. One day Canonical made another attempt to seduce me and this time I decided that it looks like good opportunity so I accepted. Sent BUG 2.0 prototype back to NYC and few weeks later I made crazy train trip to small nowhere near Brussels to meet my new coworkers from NewCore. 1-2 weeks later we got our current name: Linaro.

Total change… From embedded devices to ‘Yes, it is ARM. So what?’ kind as we support(ed) devices powerful enough to run normal desktop software. Many changes for me — from OpenEmbedded where you can (cross) build everything in few hours to Ubuntu packaging where sending package for inclusion into archive meant few hours of buildd queue and then few of build. But I learnt a lot here and met another set of hackers including grey beards ones ;)

And all that because I bought Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 nine years ago…

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Nine years of embedded Linux was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website