JLime Linux - WiFi Scanning, New Userland, etc...

Almost all of the problems I was initially having with jlime were due to the fact that when I downloaded it, they were in the middle of a big update with an experimental kernel and an old base userland image. After pulling down the new userland and going to a known-stable kernel, everything seems to be rockin' and rollin' with jLime on my Hewlett Packard Jornada 720.

Case and point, X now has a decent interface, desktop icons, and Torsmo status monitor works great (finally!)


I was also having problems with package management. Those were also resolved by installing fresh from the current userland image. The packages are also pretty up-to-date with a quite extensive list of things to choose from. Want nmap? MySQL? OpenSSH? No problem! Kismet for War-driving? Just say the word! Here's my J720 running Kismet with a Senao Engenius 200mW Long-range 802.11b card attached to a pair of 19dBi omni-directional magnet mount antennae.



And a close-up of the screen:


All this, and my battery lasts for hours upon hours, even with the wireless card installed. I actually have nothing left to complain about at all aside from the fact that 32MB of RAM and 206 MHz is still a somewhat anemic machine for web browsing. For light-weight stuff like checking e-mail, managing servers via SSH and the like, this seems to be just about the most handy thing I've seen in a very long time.

I'm working on getting a data cable for my new GPS so that I can really put this thing to the test when it comes to war-driving. I haven't ever used kismet for serious network location. I'm more of a Mac OS X and BSD guy at heart, so KisMAC and BSD-Airtools are my typical weapons of choice.

It's simply amazing to me, though, to see this kind of development happening for a family of portable computers that's been more or less dead for the better part of a decade. Where I was once drooling over the OLPC and EEePC, I'm now finding that I have all of the ultra-mobile goodness I really need right here in a package that's admittedly slower but also lighter, smaller and longer lasting.

Trying this... Posting from jlime

Thanks to a tip from a jlime forum denizen, I found out that an older kernel would work better on my Jornada 720. Suspend works, WiFi works, even the Torsmo status app works better. Minimo didn't like Blogger, but the Dillo browser seems to be working albeit in a really minimalistic way like you'd expect in a phone's browser.

In short, this is actually a completely functional networked Linux PDA right now. I'll keep this around and do some periodic reviews as I further use this platform.

UNIX variants on HP Jornada Palmtops

We covered this a bit at the 2600 meeting last night. I don't have a lot of time to go into detail, but here's a quick breakdown.

Asmodian X got me hooked on Windows CE Palmtops back in late 1997. I picked up a floor model HP 300LX for cheap, and actually used it as my main computer (including Dialup BBS, Telnet, Mail, and web browsing) for quite a while. It was more than sufficient for typing my papers for class and interfacing with the UNIX servers. Asmo also had a Casio Cassiopeia running CE, so we tinkered with this stuff a LOT back in the day.

Later, at DefCon 6, we'd run into a guy with an HP 620LX. That thing had a full color screen and a significant boost in memory, not to mention sound recording ability. This all sounds cheesy now, but it blew away the devices we had with their four or 16-color greyscale screens.

As time has progressed, I've also acquired an HP 320LX (same as 300LX but with a backlit screen and more RAM), a Jornada 680e (Refurbished Dutch Railways model) and a Jornada 720.

The HP300's are currently packed away somewhere, but the Jornadas are alive and well.

I was considering NetBSD and Linux for this project, but I found out that the NetBSD project for these pretty much died once they could say "it boots!" You have to use a serial cable for the console. In other words, it's useless until someone ports wscons and some device drivers. So, I chose JLime Linux, which is still in active development -- the kernel build on my 720 (Mongo branch) is less than two weeks old!

To install JLime, you need a CF card that's at least 128MB. You create 3 partitions:

1. FAT partition usable from within Windows CE
2. ext2 partition for Linux to run from
3. Swap partition for virtual memory

You copy the bootloader, boot configuration file and zImage (kernel, etc) to the FAT partition, and then uncompress the jLime userland onto the ext2 partition. Since the files were compressed with bzip2 and BSD's tar utility doesn't know what to do with that, I had to uncompress it before using tar. Make sure you run tar as root (or with sudo) and with "xpf" or "xvpf" to retain the file permissions and ownership of the userland image.

Once you insert the card into the PDA and run the boot loader, all of the PDA's memory will be completely wiped, so all files and data on it will be lost. Windows CE stays in ROM so when you reboot, Windows CE will be back in initial setup mode.

I actually put the boot loaders and zimages for both the J680e and the J720 on the FAT partition, created two different ext2 partitions, and left one shared swap partition on my 2GB CF card. Had I been thinking, I would have made a third ext2 for a shared home directory between the two PDAs.

Right now, here's the status of them:
Jornada 680 running jLime (Donkey):

• Boots Linux, loads fine.
• The keymap is completely trashed (dutch keyboard layout) so I can't login.
  
• Apparently, the J680 can "suspend" while running jLime.
  

Jornada 720 running jLime (Mongo)

• Boots Linux
• Runs X with IceWM
• Various X Apps work fine (MiniMO Browser, aterm, etc)
• Recognizes PCMCIA Ethernet and 802.11b/g wireless cards
• Can't seem to use the network, even when configured properly (dhcp doesn't get an address, wireless cards can't associate to open, unencrypted networks, etc)
• Cannot go into suspend mode properly. The backlight stays on, limiting battery life.
• After halting, the PDA can't reboot without a hard reset (removal of main and backup battery at the same time)

So, it looks like jLime has a little ways to go yet, but it's a functional UNIX environment, at least on my Jornada 720. I just wish I could get the networking piece to work properly. I could almost live without a suspend mode, since many of my other laptops don't particularly like to suspend, either.

It's official: Leopard = No network for OpenSolaris Indiana VMs

Lukas got it working on Parallels 3.0 under OS X Tiger, but two different HiR guys failed to get networking to work on OpenSolaris Indiana DP2 on parallels 2.5, 3.0 and VMWare Fusion when running Mac OS X Leopard.

Oh well. Like I said, maybe I'll give it a crack on a real computer when I have a lab machine ready to use.

More FreeBSD love and some fun stuff

I'm working on a fun project for HiR that involves a little bit of CAD (computer aided design/drafting) work. QCAD Community Edition is the GPL version of RibbonSoft's inexpensive QCAD software. It comes without RibbonSoft's technical support and lacks certain features that they reserve for QCAD Professional.

RibbonSoft claims that QCAD is usable right out of the gate even by people who have never used CAD before. I haven't touched CAD since I tinkered with AutoCAD Lite back in 8th grade shop class. I'd like to think I'm technically minded as well. QCAD is NOT easy to get the hang of. Maybe compared to AutoCAD or CADKey, but you can ask my wife and she'll tell you I've spent the better part of three whole days just getting my bearings straight with QCAD. I think I've got it mostly figured out now, though.

By the way, QCAD is available as a binary package or in the Ports tree for both FreeBSD 6.2 and OpenBSD 4.2. I've been using it on both platforms. FreeBSD works really well with QCAD despite my somewhat anemic workstation. My Logitech Revolution VX is a life-saver for precision CAD work. With its smooth-scrolling wheel and high-resolution laser optical tracker, it fits the bill perfectly. I'm really glad that FreeBSD and XOrg play nice with this mouse.

As for the project I'm working on, I'll just say it's mischievous and delightfully fun. I'll release the .DXF file for this project when the time comes.

Indiana + Parallels 2.5 = No Network For You!

I know, I should probably fork over the cash for Parallels 3.0. The reasons I have not are as follows:

1. As far as I can tell, there won't be much difference with OpenBSD as a guest OS which is primarily what I use Parallels for.
2. Windows 2000, which I use only for VPN access to work a few times per month, works fine under Parallels Desktop 2.5.
3. I don't like spending money.

With that out of the way, here's my OpenSolaris Indiana experience in a nutshell:

• The Live-CD functionality is a breeze. Once it's up, it's fairly responsive considering the fact that it's running Gnome. I really don't like Gnome, but it gets the job done.
• Installation is a breeze if you are willing to dedicate a whole hard drive to it. No word on how easy a multi-boot system is to configure.
• Once installed, it's surprisingly nimble and smooth, with the caveat that it doesn't like NE2000-based ethernet cards (or their emulated analog via Parallels)

Now, Parallels Desktop comes with a CD image full of useful stuff just for this occasion. Included are drivers (Solaris 10 binary as well as source code) for the NE2000 card. As this release of Indiana doesn't ship with a compiler, I followed these instructions for installing the binary drivers on Developer Preview 1, but to no avail. "Network Auto-Magic" did nothing, and a reboot didn't bring the interface to life, either.

This was my first real brush with OpenSolaris. I use Solaris daily as part of my job, and one of my main desktops at home is a Sun workstation running Solaris 10 (I opted for the CDE interface at home due to the slower processor). As such, I'm certainly no stranger to Solaris. Despite being unable to bring the network to life, I can honestly say that OpenSolaris looks, feels, and smells an awful lot like Sun's enterprise UNIX operating system. If you know Solaris, you know OpenSolaris.

On the workstation, Solaris 10 is actually very feature-rich out of the box. OpenSolaris takes this a step further. Until you hit the command-line interface, it feels very much like an older version of Ubuntu Linux. I haven't bothered to see if Java is as deeply integrated into OpenSolaris as it is in the commercial OS, but if it is, that's yet another boon.

I may have another HiR writer check out OpenSolaris on a newer build of Parallels to see if we can get the network up and running. Otherwise, I'll probably shelve Indiana for a bit until I have somewhat capable lab machine available to test it on. Preferably, I'd like to test it as a desktop system (not as a server host), which means that I'll need an extended period of a month or so to really give it the kind of attention it needs.

OpenSolaris Indiana (Developer Preview 2) Available

OpenSolaris Indiana is a project that's creating a binary distribution based on OpenSolaris source code that's both easy to install and use. It's worth checking out. I'm currently installing it within Parallels Desktop on my MacBook, and will also be playing with it some more when I get the free time to do so. Developer Preview 2 was released this week. A Live-CD distro similar to Ubuntu Desktop Edition is available. You can use it from the Live-CD or install it on a hard drive once the interface is up and running.

Giving FreeBSD another shot

I fell in love with FreeBSD for the first time around the early part of 1998. Although I'd heard of FreeBSD before, my roommate, Xeroline, introduced me to it formally. I'd been tinkering with Red Hat Linux and had grown tired of both the wild-goose-chase of RPM dependencies as well as the patchwork of software compiles that often had their own dependency problems. FreeBSD seemed, at the time, to be the answer to my prayers.

FreeBSD 2.2.8 was lean, mean, and very basic. It also brought with it the concept of the Ports system: a skeletal tree of software directories where one could simply utter the words "make install" and then sit back -- often for a very long time -- and watch software compile automatically and usually error-free. Initially, that's all I wanted. It was FreeBSD that pried me away from my Linux addiction, and I'd say that it's also FreeBSD that shaped much of what I've come to expect from a UNIX desktop OS. In short, I didn't want an easy, graphical install. I wanted an OS that would get up and running quickly, be quick on its toes, and give me as clean of a slate as possible from which to begin my adventures. I wanted a system that could be wrought from bare metal.

As time passed, FreeBSD got better, then worse. I had been using OpenBSD for servers since early 1999, and Shortly after the 5.x series came out, I got sick of FreeBSD and switched to OpenBSD 3.2 on the desktop and some of my laptops. That was more than 5 years ago. I seriously haven't touched FreeBSD since February of 2003. Until now.

I almost messed with FreeBSD 6.2 a few months ago. I downloaded the ISO images but never got around to burning them. The target install environment was going to be my Pentium 3 lab box, but at the time I was using it to do research for my Linux LVM2 article. The very same machine, in fact, kept getting re-purposed for various HiR research projects. The time has come, though, for me to square off against my quondam favorite desktop OS.

I've only been tinkering with it for about a day now, so I still have a way to go before I'm ready to give this a full review. All I can say is to stay on the lookout for some more FreeBSD love. I can immediately tell that they've worked out some of the major kinks in their package installation tools. The installation doesn't seem like it's changed much since the 4.x releases. For that, I'm thankful. It's just friendly enough for almost anyone to figure out, but not made of bloated graphics like the Ubuntu installer that takes forever to load.

I have a feeling I might start really liking FreeBSD again. Did anyone else feel alienated by the 5.x series, only to come back and try 6.2 or 6.3 and really like it?

Apple Releases OS X Tiger 10.5.2 Update

Just in case you haven't read it anywhere else (or everywhere else, as the case may be), Leopard users can now get Mac OS X 10.5.2, the much-awaited update to Apple's latest operating system.

The MASSIVE update, and links to more info can be found on the Mac OS X 10.5.2 page. Alternatively, you can just fire up Software Update and twiddle your thumbs for quite a while. It should be worth the wait.

AIX 6 goes General Availability

AIX 6.1 was released earlier this week. During the initial beta phase, they were considering calling it AIX 5.4.  There was no AIX 5.4, nor was there a 6.0.  They're debuting AIX 6 as version 6.1. 

AIX is IBM's enterprise UNIX offering for their pSeries servers, which replaced the old RS/6000 line years ago. New features include:

• Improved RBAC (Role Based Access Control) functionality
• Workload Partition (WPAR) virtualization - multiple virtual environments within one AIX instance, versus Logical Partition (LPAR) virtualization, which is multiple AIX instances on one system.
• Support for Encrypted Journaling file systems (JFS2/EFS)
• Trusted Computing Base - An optional secure-by-default installation
• AIX Security Expert - a template-based console for setting up security options
• Concurrent kernel updates - no reboot needed for certain types of kernel upgrades
• First-failure data capture functionality to aid in troubleshooting or reproducing obscure faults
• System routines that can gracefully recover from certain kernel crashes

I've had some time to use AIX 6 while it was in beta, and I must say that I'm impressed by the enhancements that I've been able to use so far.  Built-in virtualization is slick and seems to be working well in the general available release of AIX 6.1 now that it's out of beta.  You won't likely be playing with AIX on your next workstation, but you'll start to see it rolling out to an enterprise environment near you.

Technical OS review round-up

I ran across some awesome, highly technical reviews on some of the recently released operating systems. Both go in-depth with the new features, and are definitely a step up on the geek scale from the reviews written for mere mortals.

OnLAMP did a thorough interview of some developers to get information on the new features, performance enhancements and bug fixes that went into OpenBSD 4.2.

ArsTechnica is a great source of hardware and software reviews. Their coverage of the new stuff in Leopard is second to none.


Both are excellent reading material for those of us who are really interested in the more technical aspects of operating systems.

Operating systems out the wazoo!

In a matter of two weeks, we've seen a plethora of new OS releases:

• Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) (Oct 18th, 2007)
• MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Oct 26th, 2007)
• OpenBSD 4.2 (Nov 1, 2007)

I know that I am currently playing with all three:

I'm currently working with a fresh, clean install of Gutsy Server, building an end-all, be-all shared host for a client of mine who wishes to give dozens of end-users their own web space and e-mail domains. I haven't messed with Gutsy on the desktop yet. In due time.

I did an in-place upgrade to Leopard on my MacBook, and it's everything I expected and then some. There are a few minor annoyances, but I'll chalk them up to Apple making an attempt to match and/or exceed Vista's user-interface flair. Unfortunately, I feel that the UI changes in Leopard traded friendliness and clarity for sex appeal. It looks slick, but the graphical changes are skin deep. Functionally, Leopard is still lean and mean. I don't feel like it took a performance hit, and there are boat-loads of new feaures - some of them long overdue (like Spaces, and QuickLook which I'm already a fan of). Things I'm looking forward to testing out: ZFS Support (which requires a developer download to fully implement on Desktop Leopard), Time Machine, and the new "Firewall."

I also did an in-place upgrade to OpenBSD on the virtual machine that I use most often. At first glance, it's the same deal as usual. More hardware support, more robust drivers for certain devices, and some new functionality. I haven't gotten to test it yet, but I'm eager to see the new features in pkg_add, which has never, ever worked the way I would like -- so much so that I actually wrote (and released) a set of scripts to make installing software a breeze in OpenBSD. Finally, I'm interested in seeing how sensorsd works in its new zero-configuration mode on my 1U servers, which have always given OpenBSD's sensorsd some trouble.

I'm sure that HiR will revisit some of these in more detail after really giving them a good shake down.

If you're in or around Kansas City, come join us at the 2600 meeting tonight, Friday October 2nd, 2007 in the Food Court at Oak Park Mall - half a mile east of I-35 on 95th street. The "Official" start time is 5:00PM, but people generally show up as their schedule allows. Look for laptops. That will be us.