Planet Openmoko

Michael "mickeyl" Lauer: Openmoko Workshop in Munich

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:30:38 +0000

I’ll be present at the first Openmoko Workshop in Munich, gracefully organized by Dr. N. Schaller (Goldelico) hosted at the University of applied science in Munich. Topics will be developer-oriented, but beginners are also invited. There are only few seats left, so please contact Dr. Schaller via the freeyourphone.de forum, if you want to be on board.

I’ll be talking mainly about freesmartphone.org — the beginning (2002-2008, from handhelds.org to openmoko.org), the present (2009, how to program with FSO), the future (2010-, what the Vala rewrite will bring and how we get FSO to more hardware).

This is just a loose gathering to get started. If there is sufficient interest, we will consider turning this into a more formal (professional) training course in the future. Hope to see you there!

Marcin "hrw" Juszkiewicz: Embedded package managers sucks

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:08:32 +0000

Years ago someone wrote IPKG in pure shell. It can be still found in some distributions. Then it was rewritten into C and this version we used in OpenEmbedded derived systems. It had some bugs, we patched some of them, from time to time there was even upstream development done for it.

Then Openmoko arrived and forked IPKG — new project got OPKG name. It was written by OpenedHand and Openmoko developers. Their main goals were:

callbacks for GUI package managers
GPG signed repositories
fixing bugs

Many things got changed, OE patches got merged, new bugs was added. Those who use CLI version of opkg (so far the only usable client) lost some functionalities — for example there is no progress bar when packages are fetched.

For last few months OPKG is in unmaintained mode again and I think that this is some kind of curse on embedded market package managers.

Some time ago I discovered that when many (>50) packages needs to be upgraded then opkg segfaults during process and this is not a matter of going out of RAM as I have ~400MB free. Today it did not gave value of PATH for post install scripts… I wonder what else can be found ;(

What are other options? So far I know two — dpkg + apt or rpm + yum. First one costs few megabytes of space, second one require also Python so it is not acceptable for most of our targets. Both also require rebuilding of everything :(

openmoko-fr: Anniversaire (et buzz fix ?)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:27:00 +0000

Comme annoncé dans ce billet, des rencontres Openmoko sont organisées à l'occasion de l'anniversaire du Neo Freerunner (et de la communauté FR).

Voici ce qui est en préparation pour le moment :

Grenoble (ce samedi 4 juillet) : informations et inscription sur le wiki (+ discussion sur le forum).
Lille : discussion sur le forum.
Nantes et/ou Rennes : discussion sur le forum.

Ces rencontres sont bien sûr gratuites et ouvertes à tous.
Profitez-en pour venir échanger vos informations et vos idées ou poser vos questions.

Remarque :
Les opérations de buzz fix organisées en Europe et aux US sont limitées dans le temps.
Aussi nous envisageons la possibilité d'organiser une collecte de Neo Freerunner A5 et A6 pour faire un envoi groupé.
Donnez votre avis sur le sujet en commentaire de ce billet ou sur le forum.

Rui Seabra: Elmdentica release 0.4.0

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:02:24 +0000

Hi! A release a day! 0.4.0 doesn’t add THAT much, unless you like to, you know… repeat (or retweet) what other say and reply to others, or maybe proudly show you’re using Elmdentica! Oh… and a counter (but it lets you type more than 140… just warns…)

0.4.0 in action...

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

Chris Lord: Building Moblin Web Browser

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:03:00 +0000

I've been meaning to put some documentation together for mozilla-headless and the various related components, but a pretty hectic schedule (both work and personal life) has meant that I've been pretty short on spare time lately. So just to get the ball rolling, the following is a guide on building the Moblin Web Browser. I'll try to turn it into real documentation and stick on moblin.org later.

Some notes

I'm going to assume that you build all of this in $HOME/moblin and that you're ok with mozilla living in /opt/mozilla-headless (trust me, it's for the best). I'm also going to assume that you have a system already setup for building GNOME applications. And that you have Mercurial installed. For those with non-debian systems without sudo setup, replace 'sudo [stuff]' with 'su -c "[stuff]"' (or setup sudo).

Step 1

Checking out the source

cd ~/moblin
git clone git://git.clutter-project.org/clutter
git clone git://git.clutter-project.org/clutter-gtk
git clone git://git.clutter-project.org/clutter-mozembed
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/ccss
git clone git://git.moblin.org/clutter-imcontext
git clone git://git.moblin.org/nbtk
git clone git://git.moblin.org/mozilla-headless-services
git clone git://git.moblin.org/moblin-web-browser
hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/incubator/offscreen mozilla-headless

You may also need a check-out of libunique; instructions here.

Step 2

Building Clutter

cd ~/moblin/clutter
./autogen
make
sudo make install

cd ~/moblin/clutter-gtk
./autogen
make
sudo make install

cd ~/moblin/clutter-imcontext
./autogen
make
sudo make install

Note that if you want documentation, all three of these accept '--enable-gtk-doc' as a configure parameter. These should all install in /usr/local by default, you should check that this is setup in /etc/ld.so.conf.d, and you may need to run 'sudo ldconfig' after installation.

Step 3

Building Nbtk

cd ~/moblin/ccss
./autogen --without-rsvg --without-soup --disable-ccss-cairo --disable-ccss-gtk --disable-examples
make
sudo make install

cd ~/moblin/nbtk
./autogen
make
sudo make install

Note about documentation still applies. You can get nicer build output from libccss by specifying '--enable-shave' too (used by Clutter and co by default), and if you're a developer, you may also want '--enable-debug'.

Step 4

Building Mozilla

Download this file to your home directory before starting.

cd ~/moblin/mozilla-headless
hg checkout headless
make -f client.mk configure
cd ../mozilla-build
make
sudo mkdir /opt/mozilla-headless
sudo chown $USER:$USER /opt/mozilla-headless
make SKIP_GRE_REGISTRATION=1 install

Now, this is the slightly less straight-forward bit. You'll either need to add a file to /etc/ld.so.conf.d to add '/opt/mozilla-headless/lib/xulrunner-1.9.2a1pre/' and '/opt/mozilla-headless/lib/xulrunner-devel-1.9.2a1pre/' to your default library search path, or you'll need to alter your environment to add them to your $LD_LIBRARY_PATH. I'd recommend the latter, and doing it in your ~/.bashrc, making it easier if something goes wrong.

You'll also need to add '/opt/mozilla-headless/lib/pkgconfig/' to your $PKG_CONFIG_PATH. Again, I'd recommend doing this in your ~/.bashrc. Don't forget to run 'sudo ldconfig' after installation, if necessary.

Step 5

Building ClutterMozEmbed

We're almost there now :) If you've followed all the previous steps correctly, it should all be downhill from here (in a good way).

cd ~/moblin/mozilla-headless-services
./autogen --enable-gnome-proxy
make
sudo make install

cd ~/moblin/clutter-mozembed
./autogen --enable-plugins
make
sudo make install

Again, the only slightly non-standard thing here is that mozilla-headless-services is a dbus daemon and you may need to setup your system for dbus service activation to work from the /usr/local prefix. Most distributions do this by default, but if yours doesn't, have a look in /etc/dbus-1. If you can't get that to work, you can run the daemon manually with '/usr/local/libexec/mhs-service'. Don't forget 'sudo ldconfig'!

Step 6

Building Moblin Web Browser

cd ~/moblin/moblin-web-browser
./autogen
make
sudo make install

You should now just be able to run 'moblin-web-browser', although you may want to run 'moblin-web-browser -w' so that it doesn't launch full-screen (and you may also want to alter the .desktop file to do this by default when launching from the applications menu). I'm plenty aware of bugs, but if you find something that isn't totally obvious, file it over here. Happy surfing :)

openmoko-fr: Actualités diverses

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Voici quelques informations pêchées ces derniers jours sur le web.

Les dernières nouvelles de la communauté ont été publiées sur le wiki officiel.
Deux articles à ne pas manquer sur le blog de Philippe Scoffoni : un sur les smartphones opensource et l'autre sur le projet OpenCellID.
Cet autre article pose la question : l’open source s’applique-t-il aux objets ? (et openmoko est pris en exemple).
L'un des thèmes du Linuxtag 2009 était la mobilité. Michael Lauer y était présent, j'espère que nous aurons quelques retours intéressants sous peu.
Elmdentica, l'application de Rui Seabra avance vite, les amateurs de micro-blogging sont invités à la tester.
Harald Welte informe que des sessions de GSM wardriving ont commencé.

Bonne lecture

Rui Seabra: Elmdentica release 0.3.0

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:00:27 +0000

Elmdentica is getting better all the time

the toolbar is no longer out of the screen
the timeline now displays (cacheable) icons in the nice bubbles
libcurl is being called with object reuse, which optimizes downloads a bit

So here’s the complementary screenshot, followed by the download links:

Release 0.3.0 in action...

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

Rui Seabra: Elmdentica release 0.2.0

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:10:16 +0000

Wow, again you say? Well, early stages of development are like that Its starting to shape up a little better (even if still a bit too memory hungry - 15% WTF). As usual, available at Elmdentica’s google code page, or the links below:

Release 0.2.0 in action...

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

openmoko-fr: Linux rapproche Intel et Nokia

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:30:00 +0000

Les deux géants Intel et Nokia annoncent une collaboration autour de logiciels libres (oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer ou encore PulseAudio) à destination de Moblin et Maemo.

Mais ils souhaitent également "définir une nouvelle plate-forme nomade qui dépassera le cadre des téléphones-organiseurs (smartphones), PC portables et netbooks actuels pour se concrétiser par des équipements, des logiciels et des services Internet mobiles innovants".

Est-ce un début de contre-offensive face à androïd ?

Rui Seabra: Elmdentica release 0.1.0

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:18:43 +0000

Hi, this new version is a bit more usable (although it clearly lacks features and has bugs-a-plenty), enjoy!

Release 0.1.0 in action

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

Rui Seabra: New elmdentica dev screenshot

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:56:40 +0000

Hi, I’m slowly starting to get a better hold on Elementary, once I fix the obvious problem in the screenshot below, I hope to release 0.1.0 tomorrow:

elmdentica now has a nice scrolling friends timeline...

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

Michael "mickeyl" Lauer: LinuxTag 2009

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:34:30 +0000

I’m on my way to LinuxTag 2009. Instead of a “real booth” like last year, we settled on a developer table in the hacking area — there we can present our Linux on mobile projects such as

in a more relaxed way — giving room to dive into some technical issues, when interested folks come around.

Find me there, if you’re interested in any of the aforementioned projects. I’ll be there until Friday afternoon.

Rui Seabra: Elmdentica 0.0.2 Screenshot

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:51:40 +0000

Hi, by popular request, here’s a screenshot of elmdentica in action. Yes, it’s not pretty, I know… as I learn Elementary (or people make patches) it’ll get improved…

0.0.2 in action...

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

Harald "LaF0rge" Welte: GSM wardriving has started

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:00:00 +0000

As you can see in this picture referenced by this blog post, somebody is having real fun using the BS-11 and OpenBSC for GSM wardriving.

Please note that the BS-11 is a 200W AC powered device, so you need the entire trunk full of lead batteries and a reasonably sized UPS to provide it with power.

There are much lighter setups using a laptop and a nanoBTS, but then those setups are likely a factor 10 more expensive (and provide less RF power).

But what this all tells us: GSM wardriving has started. More security researchers are looking into GSM security than a year ago, much due to the successful growth of a community around OpenBSC. Many people are only starting with GSM and mainly using/playing with the software, the number of actual contributers to the code is still small...

On a larger scale, you can see that GSM insecurity is finally going to become a much more popular topic, with more people able to demo the various long-known issues such as lack of mutual authentication and insufficient threat models/analysis during protocol design.

Rui Seabra: elmdentica release 0.0.2

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:09:25 +0000

Ok, a new quick release of elmdentica. Biggest changes are some steps towards a better timeline display, and support for identi.ca errors (as wrong user or password data, for instance).

Get it here while it’s hot (and unusable)

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

Rui Seabra: elmdentica release 0.0.1

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:28:31 +0000

As some of you may know, I’m writing an identi.ca client with Elementary for the OpenMoko. This, is it’s first release. It’s almost totally unusable, right now, in great part due to a documentation that could be better (I’m looking at you, Elementary…), but you can already get a gist of what is can do.

Anyway, in the interest of release early, release often, here’s a first working release, 0.0.1:

I won’t hope you enjoy because it’s really crappy, now, but it loads in a jiffy

Temas: ElmDentica, OpenMoko, Software Livre

Talpadk: Debian and the Freerunner

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:04:17 +0000

Some time ago I bought a Freerunner as an upgrade for my Neo 1973, I was going to wait for the GTA03 but as you all know it got delayed indefinitely.

Why Debian.
Q) Why Debian?
A) Well I like the fact that it comes with a ton of pre compiled software. Also it behaves just like my regular desktop computer: Development environment, just apt-get install a gcc compiler on the phone and you are set.

Q) Why not a Debian base distro like Neovento?
A) Yet another Debian distro, not again… Also it seems to be geared towards installation onto the internal flash, and I like to install large silly things like emacs, compilers, pcb, gschem, kicad. Also it uses LXDE and I just happen to like Matchbox for embedded devices.

Some historic events
Of course I had bought two Kingston SD-C02G 2GB microSD cards for the Neo 1973 which fails with I/O errors on the Freerunner typically me…
However there is a fix which works for me, well except that the Debian installer at that exact point in time was broken.
Quick fix: Just copy my Neo 1973 install using dd. Install the config for gta02. Works like a charm.

The actual “review”
I bought a Kingston SDC4/8GB as I would like to run the SD controller at full speed, I have not tested this yet but:
The Debian install went smoothly…

The Good

Comes pre installed with matchbox, my favorite window manager
Trayer is installed and works just fine
openmoko-panel-plugin is installed as default

The not quite so good

No way of launching additional applications (no panel app with a start menu installed)
I just can not seem to get the WLAN GUIs to work (they anr not installed by default either), command line WLAN works just fine.
The default is still running the phone as root. Can not blame Debian as this is still the up stream/FSO way, I just do not like it that is all.

Conclusion:
The Debian install had included some extra features as default since my last install.
How ever I would like some way of launching additional programs as default, if I just wanted to use zhone I could have installed a number of other distributions.
This can easily be fixed by installing additional software, I guess it is a matter of minimalism to allow the freedom of choice.
Debian still provides a good minimal install for customising your phone, also I like the apt-get upgrade option instead of the eternal complete re-flash cycle I know from my Nokia N770

openmoko-fr: 4 juillet 2009 : anniversaires et rencontres

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:26:00 +0000

Le samedi 4 juillet prochain sera une date spéciale.

Bien sûr, il y la fête de l'indépendance Américaine.
Mais pour nous, ce sera surtout un double anniversaire :

celui du Neo Freerunner
celui de la communauté francophone

En effet, Openmoko "déclarait l'indépendance" du Neo Freerunner avec sa commercialisation officielle à partir du vendredi 4 juillet 2008.

En parallèle, dans la nuit du 4 au 5 juillet, j'installais la première version du forum et en quelques heures les premiers inscrits se manifestaient.
Comment l'ont-ils trouvé alors que je venais juste de l'installer et qu'il n'était référencé nulle part reste pour moi un mystère !
Toujours est-il que cela marque réellement la naissance de notre communauté.

Je vous invite donc à organiser des rencontres dans vos régions respectives pour fêter cet événement.
C'est dans 2 semaines exactement ce qui fait court, mais à coeur vaillant, rien d'impossible.
N'hésitez pas à utiliser le forum et le wiki pour vous faire aider dans cette tâche.

De mon côté, je prépare actuellement la rencontre qui aura lieu dans la région de Grenoble.
pour en savoir plus, rendez-vous sur la page wiki dédiée et les fils de discussions du forum.

Harald "LaF0rge" Welte: Palm Pre wanted for FOSS hackers

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:00:00 +0000

A number of people from the various community-based Linux mobile phone projects (OpenEZX, gnufiish, freesmartphone.org, openmoko, openembedded) are interested in adopting the Palm Pre into the portfolio of supported devices.

If anyone wants to support those communities with Palm Pre hardware, please let me know. Right now, all the people I know are in Europe. Yes, we don't have CDMA hare - but those hackers don't care. All they want is to make sure you can build a number of different distributions on the application processor, and to support everything _but_ the CDMA modem in preparation for the GSM variant that is to be released at some future point.

Valério Valério: Maemo Summit 2009: Call for Content Now Open!

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:27:43 +0000

“The Maemo Community Council is very pleased to announce that the Maemo Summit 2009 Call for Content is now open. If you think you have a presentation that would benefit our community, please go to the Content Submission page and add it to the bottom.

Please read both the Call for Content and Submission pages and follow all of the instructions.

Presentations can cover a wide variety of topics, from application development and usage to interesting ways that you are using the Maemo operating system (as well as variants and/or third-party OS’s) to unorthodix uses of the internet tablet(s) to core development, etc. The presentations can be user-based, development-based, or a combination of both. No topic is too trivial — there’s always something interesting in how the Maemo Community is using this great open source platform.

Keep in mind that not all content submissions can be accepted. This is primarily due to the fact that there is limited space and time, but also because the Summit organizers would like to create the most interesting and stimulating experience possible. Because of this, a core group of community members have been chosen by the Maemo Communit Council to oversee the approval process for all of the submissions. You will know these people in this Content Committee as maemo.org rockstars, so rest assured that they will do a great job in selecting content for the Summit. Likewise, if you see a submission that you view as a “must have,” feel free to voice your opinion in the Community section of the Talk forums. The Content Committee will surely take all discussion about our community’s next Summit into consideration.

So, without further adieu, the Maemo Summit 2009 Content Committee is:

Dave Neary (dneary)
Jamie Bennett (baloo)
Valério Valério (VDVsx)

The Community Council would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to these brave folks. It’s a cool, but integral, responsibility.”

Travel and accommodation sponsorship will be available, like in the last summit.

Original post by Tim Samoff.

openmoko-fr: Des nouvelles de Symbian et PALM

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:40:00 +0000

La Fondation Symbian initiée par Nokia vient de lancer en phase beta le site developer.symbian.org.
Il contient de nombreux outils : forge logicielle, wiki, suivi de bugs, forum, documentations, code source, etc.
Les développeurs souhaitant participer peuvent s'inscrire dès maintenant et choisir leurs langages favoris (Python, Ruby, Web, Java ME, .Net ou Flash Lite).
Voir cet article pour plus de détails.

En parallèle, PALM a commencé à publier sur opensource.palm.com certains codes sources et patches utilisés dans le système (nommé "WebOS") du PALM PRE.
Merci à Harald Welte pour cette information.

Harald "LaF0rge" Welte: Palm has released sources for WebOS 1.0.1

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:00:00 +0000

On this page, Palm has started to release source code + patches for a number of FOSS programs that they use in the Pre. I suppose the page is only an interim solution, since the entire site (nor the page URL) doesn't yet really seem to consider the fact of OS updates, etc.

Of course I have no idea yet if those sources can be considered complete and corresponding, but at least an initial look seems quite promising.

I've spent about 10 minutes looking at their 9 MByte (!) kernel patch against vanilla 2.6.24. The modem interface seems to be a UART + USB. The UART is required for stuff like waking up the OMAP3 from the baseband, and then you use it to set up a USB connection to the modem, where a hacked/extended version of the cdc-acm driver appears to be used.

I don't have time to look further into it, but I'm sure somebody with actual device hardware will - now that the source is out there.

Risto H. Kurppa: Paroli background images

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:01:44 +0000

Paroli is the C00L telephone app for Freerunner phones. OM2009, the distribution that will use Paroli has just released testing5 images. Go and try it, it really is worth it if you’ve never tried it before or have been using testing4 images released weeks ago.

Anyway, as Paroli is plain black&white (with some small exceptions) and I don’t like it too much so I found an easy way to install nice colourful background images that will just destroy the plain black&white minimalism.

I released some of my photos to be used as Openmoko phone background, see http://www.kurppa.fi/freerunner/bgimages

For step-by-step instructions, check http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Paroli-background and please link your images there for others to use!

Could anyone help me to set this to illume background image too? Maybe even startup image?

Tags: freerunner, planet-fnoss, planet-openmoko, planet-vapaasuomi