(you were awaiting this one, weren't you?) Ron Murray reported the Debian bug #570000 on Monday February 15th, against the gnome-keyring-daemon package. Bug #560000 was reported as of December 8th 2009. We're behind our "10,000 bugs in 2 months" pace by one week, so that's a small drop in the bug reporting rate, this time. I hope that people remember the Bug #600000 contest. Bets are closed now (the wiki page is still opened for modifications but I'll revert them if they are late bets). Being 30,000 bugs away from #600000, it's time to image when that bug could happen. The current "2 months+1 week/10,000 bugs" says it would happen around September 10th. With the "2 months/10,000 bugs" that would be August 15th, just after DebConf 10. The closest bet as of now seem to be either Miod Vallat or Kanru Chen. I probably lost already (I did bet June 30th) unless I imagine a very massive bug filing. Too bad Matt Arnold, Thomas Preudhomme, Nicolau Werneck and Odd Henriksen, you already lost!

I ve just read an interesting post at Making Light about seat-belts [1]. In Australia seat-belt use is mandatory, you can be fined for failing to wear one and the police (who help clean up the mess when someone dies on the road) are apparently quite aggressive about enforcement. Even aside from the legal requirement the use of seat-belts is fairly ingrained in Australian culture, people tend to use them even when they won t get caught. One of the things I like to do in my spare time is to take unused computer gear from IT companies (which they regard as rubbish) and give it to home users for recreational and educational use. Due to that and my work for some smaller IT companies I ve helped many people load computer gear into their private cars and observed that most people will not take adequate care unless I coerce them. A CRT monitor tends to be large and heavy, you wouldn t want to get hit in the back of the head with one at 60Km/h. With some combinations of monitor and car you can fit a monitor in the front passenger foot-well, but usually the only place a monitor will fit is the back seat. The correct thing to do is to use the seat-belt to strap the monitor in place. It s most likely that the monitor stand (the only part that allows a seat-belt to be attached) would snap off in the event of a serious crash but this would at least slow the monitor down. Also don t put the monitor directly behind your seat if you can avoid it, put it behind the passenger seat. In a collision monitor might be able to push through your seat and cause you a back injury. Between 1992 and 2006 there were 78,000 acute computer-related injuries treated in US hospital emergency rooms [2]. The number of injuries caused by monitors peaked at 37% of the total in 2003 this was largely due to monitors falling on people. Even without the speed of a car a monitor can be a dangerous projectile. Hard drives have a lot of potential to cause damage, they are dense, hard, and the corners often aren t rounded. Storing them above the back seat behind the driver s head (as a friend once tried to do) is a really bad idea. Mythbusters showed that a box of tissues isn t going to kill you in a crash, but a hard drive is much more dangerous. The typical car glove box can store a few drives. If you need to transport a box full then the front passenger foot well is a reasonable place. If your car rolls then that would suck, but it seems that people usually die when they roll their car anyway so just try not to do that. A serious server (EG 2RU or bigger rack-mount) typically weighs 30Kg or more and is solidly constructed. The size and mass of such a machine makes it extremely difficult to safely store inside a car. The ideal place is the boot, but if that isn t an option then behind the passenger seat is the next best option. One final issue that I ve been wondering about is the safest option for laptops that are in use in a moving car. A 3Kg Thinkpad would have to hurt if it hit you in the back of the head at 60Km/h. The child-seat attachments are solid anchor points that can be used for other things. I wonder if a laptop security cable could be attached to one of the child seat points. According to an exhibit at a science museum I can throw a tennis ball at 115Km/h, so I presume that laptop security cables are designed not to break when someone swings the laptop at that speed. Therefore if a car was driving at a legal speed in Australia before crashing then a laptop security cable should be able to stop the laptop. Preventing the cable from injuring the passenger on the way would be the difficult part.

• [1] http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008845.html


• [2] http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42768/135/

I have been reading a great many posts about Android lately, some consisting of criticism, some of praise and some simply addressing issues in the Android community . Let s have a look at those. Matt Porter s Android Mythbusters presentation and Harald Welte s reaction
I haven t seen the presentation live, but I had a look at the slides. Impressing work done by Matt putting all this information together. However, we all knew that Android only (ab-)uses Linux, without making use of the GNU userland for a long time, didn t we? In his presentation Matt has shown things such as Android s udev replacement that uses hardcoded values for device node creation and (on his blog) Harald has then come up with a statement I have found to be very strong:

The presentation shows how Google has simply thrown 5-10 years of Linux userspace evolution into the trashcan and re-implemented it partially for no reason. Things like hard-coded device lists/permissions in object code rather than config files, the lack of support for hot-plugging devices (udev), the lack of kernel headers. A libc that throws away System V IPC that every unix/Linux software developer takes for granted. The lack of complete POSIX threads. I could continue this list, but hey, you should read those slides. now!

Now both of these statements target technical details, but the root of the problem seems to be elsewhere. Where is my Android 2.0? Okay, that heading might not be making any sense in the context of this post at a first glance, but let me elaborate on that. Google and the Open Handset Alliance refer to Android as being an Open Source operating system, but the project is different from real Free Software projects: development takes place in a closed group and the results are shared with the community later on, when they are deemed to be ready. This means that innovation also takes place behind closed curtains and that the community is not involved in the actual development process at all. Lately we have seen the result of that, as Motorola is bragging about working close with Google on Android 2.0 ( Eclair ), but the AOSP source trees, open for everyone to have a look at, show no signs of version 2.0. In fact no changes that might even remotely suggest the release of a new major version have been made public in the past few weeks. So where is the openess there?
Actually, the Motorola Droid has already shipped with Eclair on 6th, but still, there is no indication that Eclair will be made available to the broader public. In short Android seems to be developed behind closed curtains, with hardly (read no) community input whatsoever and is sometimes released as Free Software, not what I would describe as an open development process. The Android Market problem As we have seen in the past Google is enforcing their copyright on proprietary applications that ship with pretty much every Android device, such as the Android Market. This has become really clear when Steve Kondik received a cease and desist letter when packing the Google-proprietary applications into his ROMs. Okay, it s Google s right to enforce their copyright and there is nothing wrong with actually doing so, the thing I really have a problem with is something else: the Market is proprietary. Now what this means should become rather clear. You can have an Android device without Google s proprietary bits, but with default settings you just do not have any way of installing additional software. In my opinion the Market should be freed by Google themselves, or the community has to react and come up with a free replacement to overcome the vendor lock-in. Oh, you might know a replacement called SlideMe (or Mobentoo) already. Well, that bugger is proprietary too, so not a solution at all. Nokia and Maemo to the rescue In most discussions about the openness of Android someone throws in Nokia and Maemo, as a solution to the dilemma. Reading all those positive comments I simply had to give it a try, but all my hopes were destroyed within a few minutes. Let s start with the good news and let alone the reason why my hopes were destroyed for another minute or two. Maemo is based on Debian GNU/Linux and various Free Software components, such as GTK+, gstreamer, esd and friends. Most of the system is Free Software which is a good thing(tm) and reading all of this really got me into Maemo. Okay, some applications seem to be proprietary, but I am sure that could be fixed rather easily, so I could once for all use a truly open phone. and then came the SDK installer shell script:

#!/bin/sh
# Copyright (C) 2006-2009 Nokia Corporation
#
# This is proprietary software owned by Nokia Corporation.
#
# Contact: Maemo Integration <integration@maemo.org>
# Version: $Revision: 1110 $

Now there is one question you should ask yourself: Why would someone trying to promote his platform as being open make the *installer* script for its SDK proprietary? Come on, it s an installer script, how much of your secret juice could be in there? What s the problem with people modifying it and working on this installer script in an open development environment? I had high hopes for Nokia actually doing a bit better than Google, but it seems they ve failed to do so. It may be me overreacting, but a proprietary SDK installer shell script scares me enough not to install the SDK and have a look at it for now nor to think about buying a Maemo-based device in the near future. Please Nokia, either get the facts straight or provide us with a free SDK to your free & open platform. So, in short, Google is bad at working with the community and creating a truly open development process, and Nokia simply fails in terms of not scaring off prospective developers for their open platform with the proprietary SDK installer. Do you have any solutions in terms of an open phone environment, apart from what OpenMoko has come up with?

I've always prided myself in the fact that I didn't have any fillings. That's about to change, sadly. One of the teeth at the back, top right of my mouth has a deep valley, which makes it hard to get at with a toothbrush, and there's a small cavity at the bottom of that. Dentist trips for me have always just involved the cleaning and scaling and an exam. Aside from having my wisdom teeth out (which I had done under general anaesthesia) I've never had a dental procedure before. Eeek.

Cory Doctorow has written a column for The Guardian titled You shouldn t have to sell your soul just to download some music [1]. One really interesting point he made was The same companies that spent decades telling lawmakers that they were explicitly not the guardians of the morality of the young that they couldn t be held accountable for sex, drugs and rock n'roll, for gangsta rap, for drug-fuelled dance-parties did a complete reversal and began to beat their chests about the corrupting influence of downloading on the poor kiddies . The pt4me2 organisation advocates that the Victorian government spend more money on public transport infrastructure [2]. Recently the congestion on Melbourne roads has been getting worse, the costs of private car parks in the central city area have been increasing, and during peak hours all public transport is over-crowded. Some significant improvements are needed, and more trains, trams, and buses are the only possible way of coping with the number of people working in the city. Also there s the issue of suburbs that lack any public transport, I wouldn t want to live near one of those areas when petrol hits $8/L (as the CSIRO predicts for 2018). Michael Tiemann writes about Microsoft s latest patent attack against Linux [3]. He doesn t pull any punches which is a very noteworthy thing. It s pretty rare to see someone in a senior position in a company blog in a way that makes any significant comment about another company. Dan Ariely gave an interesting Ted.com talk about Our Buggy Moral Code [4]. One of the points was that people who declare themselves to be atheists are less likely to cheat when asked to swear on a bible first, another was that if someone who is identified as a member of the same group cheats then others will follow, but if an outsider cheats then they won t. It seems that if you want to minimise cheating then you want to have only outsiders be seen to do it, and you want everyone to swear to follow some sort of moral code. Flame has written a good rant titled Anarchy is Dead about the lack of popular outrage against the Australian government s censorship plans [5]. Rolling Stone magazine has a good article about the US banking crisis [6]. A moderate amount of bad language, but no more than is deserved. Amazing video of rounding up sheep that are fitted with LEDs at night [7]. Here s an interesting TED talk by Saul Griffith about using kites to generate electricity [8]. Unfortunately he didn t give much engineering information, it was more of an executive summary of what he has done. He claims that if a wartime level of effort was put in place then wind could supply all the electricity needs of the US within 10 years. Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) gave a talk for TED about his obsession with the Dodo [9]. One thing that surprised me is how his manner in that talk differed from his appearance in Mythbusters. It seems that most of his crazy antics in Mythbusters are an act to entertain the audience. The information about the dodo was really interesting too. He then went on to talk about his recreation of the Maltese Falcon. His work can serve as inspiration for other geeks who want to try sculpting.

• [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/26/digital-rights-music


• [2] http://www.pt4me2.org.au/


• [3] http://opensource.org/node/399


• [4] http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html


• [5] http://cyko-circus.blogspot.com/2009/03/anarchy-is-dead.html


• [6] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print


• [7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw


• [8] http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/saul_griffith_on_kites_as_the_future_of_renewable_energy.html


• [9] http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/adam_savage_s_obsessions.html

I recently got my hands on a Lenovo IdeaPad S9e netbook for a short amount of time (I don't own it), so I did a few tests with Debian unstable (more or less Lenny right now) and a Linux 2.6.28 kernel on it, see results below. The machine type is 4187-42G, and it features an Intel Atom N270 CPU (with HyperThreading) at 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, an 80 GB SATA drive, an 8.9" WSVGA 1024x600 (glossy) screen, VGA port, LAN, wifi, bluetooth, 2xUSB, SD card slot, PCI ExpressCard slot, built-in microphone, and a webcam. BIOS You can enter the BIOS by pressing F2, the boot menu by pressing F12 during boot. Booting from USB works fine on this netbook. There's a Splashtop installation on the netbook (called "Lenovo Quickstart" here) which you can disable in the BIOS. Installation There's no CD-ROM drive, so the simplest way is to use a USB thumb drive for installation. Here's how you can prepare one containing a Lenny installer (assuming your USB thumb drive is /dev/sda):

  $ wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.0/i386/iso-cd/debian-500-i386-netinst.iso
  $ wget http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz
  $ gunzip boot.img.gz
  $ dd if=boot.img of=/dev/sda1
  $ mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt
  $ cp debian-500-i386-netinst.iso /mnt
  $ umount /mnt

If the above USB thumb drive doesn't boot correctly (which it did not in my case: GRUB error 17) it's probably because of a messed-up MBR. This is how you can fix it:

  $ apt-get install mbr
  $ install-mbr /dev/sda

Then insert the USB thumb drive in the Lenovo IdeaPad S9e, choose USB boot in the BIOS, and start the installer. Most of the process works as usual, the only small difference is that you might want to load the "parted" installer module in order to resize the Windows-partition on the disk (if you want to keep it) to make space for Linux. The second (fat32) partition seems to keep a restore image and/or the Splashtop stuff, not sure. Audio Works out of the box using the snd_hda_intel driver. The hardware is onboard audio in the southbridge (82801G / ICH7) and uses the Realtek ALC269 codec. If some programs don't have working audio, try modprobe snd-pcm-oss. Built-in microphone Untested so far. Bluetooth Works out of the box using the bluetooth and btusb driver. The laptop's Bluetooth device is USB-attached internally and shows up in lsusb as:

  $ lsusb
  Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0a5c:2150 Broadcom Corp.
  $ dmesg
  usb 3-2: Product: BCM2046 Bluetooth Device

After modprobe btusb you can use hcitool / hciconfig etc. as usual, and/or enable more related stuff with /etc/init.d/bluetooth start. Sensors The lm-sensors script detects the lm75, eeprom, i2c-dev, and i2c_i801 modules. The following is the 'sensors' output:

  $ sensors
  acpitz-virtual-0
  Adapter: Virtual device
  temp1:       +36.0  C  (crit = +95.0  C)    

The hard drive temperature can be viewed with:

  $ hddtemp /dev/sda
  /dev/sda: FUJITSU MHZ2080BH G1: 44  C

HPET The Intel ICH7 southbridge in this laptop supports High Performance Event Timers (HPET) which allows for more power savings and thus improved battery life.

  $ dmesg   grep -i hpet
  ACPI: HPET 3F6E1E41, 0038 (r1 INTEL  CALISTGA  6040000 LOHR       5A)
  ACPI: HPET id: 0x8086a201 base: 0xfed00000
  hpet clockevent registered
  HPET: 3 timers in total, 0 timers will be used for per-cpu timer
  hpet0: at MMIO 0xfed00000, IRQs 2, 8, 0
  hpet0: 3 comparators, 64-bit 14.318180 MHz counter

You can check the wakeups-per-second with powertop. SD card slot Works out of the box. It seems to be attached via USB internally (usb-storage driver).

  $ lsusb
  Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Mass Stroage Device

PCI ExpressCard slot Untested so far. ACPI Works fine, see comments for "acpitool" output. Network card Works out of the box using the tg3 driver.

  $ modprobe tg3
  tg3.c:v3.94 (August 14, 2008)
  tg3 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
  tg3 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
  eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95906) rev c002 PHY(5906)] (PCI Express) 10/100Base-TX Ethernet 00:11:22:33:44:55
  eth0: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] WireSpeed[0] TSOcap[0]
  eth0: dma_rwctrl[76180000] dma_mask[64-bit]

Touchpad Works out of the box, both in X as well as in the console using gpm.

  $ dmesg
  Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 7.2, id: 0x1c0b1, caps: 0xd04731/0xa40000

Suspend-to-disk and suspend-to-RAM I'm using the hibernate Debian package. You can explicitly force the usage of either method in /etc/hibernate/hibernate.conf by uncommenting the respective lines.

  TryMethod disk.conf
  # TryMethod ram.conf

Suspend does not yet work out of the box, however, as the machine is unknown:

  $ s2ram -n
  Machine unknown
  This machine can be identified by:
      sys_vendor   = "LENOVO                          "
      sys_product  = "418742G         "
      sys_version  = "Lenovo                  "
      bios_version = "14CN51WW  "
  See http://suspend.sf.net/s2ram-support.html for details.

After a few test I found that s2ram -f -a 3 works fine (tested from console only so far). Now this needs to be integrated upstream and in the Debian package (I'll file a bug report). Update: Submitted bug #520848, and an email to the upstream mailing list. Wireless There doesn't seem to be a mainline driver for the Broadcom BCM4312 wifi card in the laptop, yet:

  $ lspci -nn
  05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01)

Neither the b43 nor the b43legacy drivers work as of 2.6.28. For now, one of two possible options is to build a (partly non-free) driver provided by Broadcom from source (option 2 would be to use ndiswrapper, I guess, but that's untested):

  $ wget http://people.debian.org/~adamm/kernel/linux-kbuild-2.6.28_2.6.28-0.1_i386.deb
  $ dpkg -i linux-kbuild-2.6.28_2.6.28-0.1_i386.deb (currently needed in unstable due to bug #518115)
  $ apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-2.6.28-1-686
  $ mkdir temp; cd temp
  $ wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_79_10.tar.gz
  $ tar xfvz hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_79_10.tar.gz
  $ make -C /lib/modules/ uname -r /build M= pwd  clean
  $ make -C /lib/modules/ uname -r /build M= pwd  modules

If that worked, you can load the driver via:

  $ rmmod bcm43xx; rmmod b43; rmmod b43legacy (you could also permanently blacklist these modules)
  $ modprobe ieee80211_crypt_tkip
  $ insmod ./wl.ko
  $ dmesg
  wl: module license '' taints kernel.
  wl 0000:05:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
  wl 0000:05:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
  eth1: Broadcom BCM4315 802.11 Wireless Controller 5.10.79.10

You can now run iwconfig, iwlist, etc. from the command line, or use some GUIs such as kwifimanager. In order to disable wireless, run:

  $ rmmod wl

So far, I only tested WEP (but not WPA). CPU frequency scaling Works out of the box using the acpi_cpufreq driver. Use cpufreq-set -c 0 -g performance if you need full CPU power, cpufreq-set -c 0 -g powersave otherwise. Use -c 1 to do the same with the other CPU/core. PC speaker Works fine out of the box using the pcspkr module, tested with beep. Graphics card Works out of the box using the intel X.org driver.

  $ xrandr
  Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 600, maximum 1024 x 1024
  VGA disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
  LVDS connected 1024x600+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 195mm x 113mm
     1024x600      60.0*+
     800x600        60.3  
     640x480        59.9  
  TV disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

DRI works out of the box with the (mainline, open-source) driver:

  $ glxinfo   grep direct
  direct rendering: Yes

If you attach an external monitor or projector, you can enable it using xrandr as usual:

  $ xrandr --output VGA --auto

You can also use a dual-head setup by adding this to your "Screen" section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

  SubSection "Display"
    Virtual 2048 2048
  EndSubSection

After restarting the X server, you can play with xrandr and move the external screen (VGA) "below" the laptop's LCD screen (LVDS) for a simple dual-head setup. The GUI tools arandr or grandr are probably a bit simpler to use than plain command line xrandr. USB Works fine, of course. The only small problem is that there are only two USB ports, more would have been better. Disk drive Works fine, it's an 80 GB SATA drive. Webcam Works out of the box using the uvcvideo driver.

  $ lsusb
  Bus 001 Device 005: ID 5986:0141 Acer, Inc
  $ modprobe uvcvideo
  uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Lenovo EasyCamera (5986:0141)
  input: Lenovo EasyCamera as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.0/input/input9
  usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=5986, idProduct=0141
  usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
  usb 1-3: Product: Lenovo EasyCamera
  usb 1-3: Manufacturer: BISON Corporation

You can use luvcvideo for webcam viewing. Battery Lasts for ca. 3.5 hours, probably less if the system is under high load. Special keys Fn+CursorUp / Fn+CursorDown (brightness), Fn+ESC (enable/disable webcam), Fn+F1 (sleep mode), Fn+F2 (enable/disable TFT backlight), Fn+F6 (enable/disable thouchpad), Fn+F7 (Num lock), Fn+F8 (scroll lock), and Fn+F11 (F12 key) all work fine. Fn+F3, Fn+F5, Fn+F9, Fn+F10, and all other special keys are untested. LEDs The power, disk activity, CAPS lock, Num lock, and battery charging LEDs all work fine out of the box. lspci -tvnn

  -[0000:00]-+-00.0  Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub [8086:27ac]
           +-02.0  Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:27ae]
           +-02.1  Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:27a6]
           +-1b.0  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller [8086:27d8]
           +-1c.0-[0000:02]----00.0  Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express [14e4:1713]
           +-1c.1-[0000:03-04]--
           +-1c.2-[0000:05]----00.0  Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315]
           +-1d.0  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:27c8]
           +-1d.1  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:27c9]
           +-1d.2  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:27ca]
           +-1d.3  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:27cb]
           +-1d.7  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller [8086:27cc]
           +-1e.0-[0000:06]--
           +-1f.0  Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge [8086:27b9]
           +-1f.1  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller [8086:27df]
           +-1f.2  Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller [8086:27c4]
           \-1f.3  Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:27da]

cat /proc/cpuinfo See comments. Resources

• Lenovo/IBM announcement (German), specs (German), S9e/S10e overview
• Wikipedia: IdeaPad
• s10lenovo.com wiki
• Thinkwiki entry

All in all it's a really nice hardware, and it works (more or less) flawlessly without much hassle with recent distros/kernels. Update 2009-03-22: Updated various sections, added more info. Added resources section.