Tag Archives: Marcin Juszkiewicz

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Booted mainline kernel on Chromebook

July 21, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Olof Johannson wrote on Google+ how to get mainline kernel booting on Samsung ARM Chromebook. As mine returned from repair with new speakers and bottom cover I decided to take a look.

With chainloaded U-Boot and just standard “exynos_defconfig” build of 3.11-rc2 I got my machine booting to Ubuntu right away:

00:06 hrw@krolik:~$ cat /proc/device-tree/model ;echo
Google Snow
00:06 hrw@krolik:~$ uname -snrp
Linux krolik 3.11.0-rc2 armv7l

There are some things missing (audio, usb 3.0, backlight and more) but even with what is available we can boot and use Chromebook with mainline kernel instead of ChromeOS one.

I will revert to 3.4-chromeos for now and try 3.8-chromeos one but that’s because I use Chromebook as developer machine for some builds where storage speed matters.

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Booted mainline kernel on Chromebook was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Marcin Juszkiewicz: 35 months at Linaro

March 26, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Today with my pay check Canonical reminded me that 35 months I started working at Linaro…

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 how to count).

At same time Linaro grown from 20-25 people who met at private meeting on first day of UDS-M in Belgium to 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 few reminding Canonical ones…

Linux

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Cookies blabla…

March 22, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

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.

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Marcin Juszkiewicz: Linaro Connect Asia 2013 was fun

March 11, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

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 😀

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 …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Marcin Juszkiewicz: I am going to Hong Kong

March 1, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

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).

Linux

Marcin Juszkiewicz: AArch64 port of Debian/Ubuntu is alive!

February 27, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

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

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Marcin Juszkiewicz: How to update Chrubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 13.04

February 16, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

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-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/mmcblk1p1 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-drivers” 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.

Linux

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Nine years of embedded Linux

February 11, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

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 …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Marcin Juszkiewicz: Chromebook support lands in 13.04

February 5, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Today I got email that ‘xf86-video-armsoc’ landed in Ubuntu 13.04 ‘raring’. I also sent ‘linux-chromebook’ into archive.

Next step would be ‘vboot-utils’ which are now in NEW queue in Debian. Once it lands I will sync it into Ubuntu so we can sign kernels. What else needs to go into archive? Maybe OpenGLES driver. I have 0.45 packaged but need to fix showing the license.

What with support of older Ubuntu releases? I do not care about them and have a feeling that those who run them on their Chromebooks does not care as well (no one checked UCM profiles which were for verification).

So if you want to have good working Ubuntu on your Samsung ARM Chromebook then update to 13.04 or take care of backporting updates or ‘talk to the hand’.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Marcin Juszkiewicz: AArch64 porting update

January 17, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Most of my work at Linaro is around AArch64 architecture. Ubuntu cross compilers were kind of adopted by Matthias Klose (Debian/Ubuntu toolchain maintainer) so I was able to spend more time on ARMv8.

We have two projects at Launchpad:

In short: first one is about porting software to ARMv8, second about OpenEmbedded support for it. The fact that both projects are on Launchpad does not mean that they are for Ubuntu (which is common mistake). It is open for everyone. We have people working on fixing packages in Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu (when it comes to distributions) and in OpenEmbedded. All of that with usual mantra: upstream first.

So how it goes today? I would say that quite good. Since September (when we started OpenEmbedded work) we got to point when we fixed several projects and find less and less new ones to work on.

For me it is nice experience. As I am not a programmer (my last application was for AmigaOS in last millennium) I was often surprised how small changes are sometimes needed to get software running. I got X11 running with ~8 lines of code. Libav required editing of one line in configure script. NumPy was adding 4 lines. OProfile required copying few lines from kernel source. And all those got merged upstream or is on a way to it.

If you want to track our work then check “Merge ARMv8 support into OpenEmbedded” blueprint where I track every project I touch. And ignore ‘milestone’ field — it is always work in progress because every project we fix gives us new projects to build. Which often means another set of software to patch.

I prefer not to think how much it would take us without OpenEmbedded. Being able to just easily cross compile huge amount of software in automated way is great. Sure, from time to time I had to boot software model and do some native compilation or run some tests. But mostly to generate some files which are not properly built/guessed during cross compilation.

Also I would like to thank all maintainers (from OE and upstream projects) for reviewing all our patches and all help we got. But we did not finished yet — there is a long queue of things to clean up and send for merging 🙂

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Marcin Juszkiewicz: I did not finished with Chromebook

December 19, 2012 Leave a comment

Some time passed since my earlier post. I had to think about few things and made some decisions.

I will write an installation instruction for Samsung Chromebook users — about installing other operating system on internal storage. Targeted at advanced users but with more or less exact steps. If you do not know how to enable “developer” mode in Chromium then sorry…

And in meantime I worked on packaging. Few minutes ago I pushed kernel to my PPA and once it get built I will offer it in Chromebook hackers PPA so users will be able to use it instead of Chromium OS one. It will need signing and putting on proper partition but, like I wrote above, my packages are not only for novice level users.

Thanks to work started by Antonio Terceiro we have preliminary version of vboot utilities package. I cleaned it a bit and got to state when “cgpt” and “vbutil_kernel” are provided so playing with partitioning will not need files from Chromium OS. Will upload it into PPA as well.

Left speaker in my Chromebook died totally so I decided to spend some time on getting UCM profiles available in “quantal” and “precise” releases of Ubuntu as well. SRU process in progress…

Also got 32GB microSD card so one step closer to having other distributions running. Thinking of Debian here of course. But it is in deep freeze now so harder to get new packages there.

How can you help? Test, file bugs, attach fixes to bugs. And can also replace speaker in my Chromebook so I will not have to use headphones ;D

Bartle Doo Article Archives

Tag Archives: Marcin Juszkiewicz

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Booted mainline kernel on Chromebook

Marcin Juszkiewicz: 35 months at Linaro

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Cookies blabla…

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Linaro Connect Asia 2013 was fun

Marcin Juszkiewicz: I am going to Hong Kong

Marcin Juszkiewicz: AArch64 port of Debian/Ubuntu is alive!

Marcin Juszkiewicz: How to update Chrubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 13.04

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Nine years of embedded Linux

Marcin Juszkiewicz: Chromebook support lands in 13.04

Marcin Juszkiewicz: AArch64 porting update

Marcin Juszkiewicz: I did not finished with Chromebook

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