fidzu : OpenMoko

Half year ago at UDS-O in Budapest Michael Opdenacker interviewed some people from Linaro. I remember that at the end of event Kiko asked him did he talked with me cause he thought that it could be interesting for someone.

Then we had another Linaro Connect (in Cambourne) and nothing happened. But in previous week I got an email that there will be interview with me in Orlando and that I should choose time slot for it. So I did and here is the result:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajNSrQfFcPA

What we were talking about? Check it yourself. And please comment did you enjoyed.

---

All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
I got interviewed during Linaro Connect was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

04 Nov 2011 10:36am GMT

24 Oct 2011 2:47pm GMT

Radek Polak, développeur de QtMoko viens de recevoir son GTA04 (Early Adopter Program). Il a donc tout de suite tenté le portage de sa distribution sur son nouveau jouet, et il fonctionne-out-of-the-box !

Il a donc publié une vidéo de l'ensemble :

C'est rapide, très rapide même, la machine est visiblement très à l'aise avec toutes les optimisations faites sur cette distrib pour l'accéllerer.

Vous pourrez aussi admirer les talents de sculpteur de notre ami Indien, qui s'est confectionné un boitier sur mesure pour le nouveau téléphone.

Il reste quelques petits détails à régler : installer un pilote pour le modem, ce qui peut être utile pour téléphoner.

To be continued ...

19 Oct 2011 7:33am GMT

你可以在这里找到Ben Nanonote 的SDK(64bit)，我将在我的服务器上编译相应的 32bit 版本。

而且在下一版本的Ben Nanonote Image 中。我们将加入Ben WPAN支持。以及升级内核到Linux-3.0

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_personal_area_network#Wireless

[2]http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/wpan/web/

[3]wpan-ipv4 ben nanonote

17 Oct 2011 12:43pm GMT

Dieter Spaar and I will be holding yet another GSM security training on November 15/16 at this years DeepSec conference in Vienna.

We have been giving a series of successful GSM Security trainings in-house at various operators, as well as at a variety of conferences during the last couple of years. If you want to beef up your knowledge on the detailed inner workings of mobile networks, with a specific focus on security related aspects, this training might be a great opportunity.

You can register here. Unfortunately the Early Bird discount has already expired, but you still have a chance to book before November 2nd, after which a late booking fee will apply.

17 Oct 2011 2:00am GMT

The Omsocom project announces the first code release of the Omsocom project announces the first code release of the Omsocom project announces the first code release of the Omsocom project announces the first code release of the OsmocomGMR project. GMR is Geo Mobile Radio, the specifications for (among others) the Thuraya satellite telephone network.

For more details see the OsmocomGMR announcement.

I still remember some years ago, when Dieter and I were first working on some code to implement the GSM protocols, which later ended up becoming OpenBSC. A number of other developers joined the project ever since, and we have a wide user base, from individuals over academia up to commercial deployments. Next we did GRPS, which was another journey into a new world. While OsmoSGSN still has some bugs here and there, it has come a long way ever since.

In December 2010 at 27C3 I had this crazy idea of looking into yet another communications system (TETRA). Just one week of coding later, the first working code emerged and later became OsmocomTETRA. Again, history repeated itself and what was started by one person became a collaborative effort in very short time.

Finally, in July 2011, I thought it would be time for yet another communications system: ETSI GMR, used by Thuraya. This time I was too busy to actually write any code, but I just read specifications, found a supplier for some equipment and got some fellow Osmocom developers interested in it. For weeks, the IRC channel was flooded with daily reports about progress, new measurements/traces that had been made and about new code that had been written. About three months later, the code is capable of demodulating, decoding, de-interleaving, and it can give you a BCCH protocol trace in wirshark.

With this pace of progess, I wonder where we might be in yet another one or two years. At least on my personal agenda are the following items:

• Finish Erlang TCAP + MAP implementation, which will allow us to implement a true HLR/AUC and finally a new MSC that can interoperate with GSM/3G core networks
• Integrate OpenBSC and OpenBTS, especially now that we already have the BTS-side A-bis implementation as part of osmo-bts
• Get funding to implement a GPRS/EDGE PCU, enabling osmo-bts to talk to OsmoSGSN
• Work on some hardware+software interface that allows us to use the Motorola Horizon Macro BTS with OpenBSC, or at least their TRXs (called CTU) with osmo-bts
• Implement a UMA/GAN gateway (for UMA capable phones and femtocells)
• Support IuCS/IuPS from our MSC and SGSN for 3G Femtocells
• Complete the SIMtrace firmware/software to do full MITM and SIM card emulation
• Work on automated regression testing for osmo-bts, OpenBSC, OsmoSGSN and all other GSM related Osmocom components.
• Continue the excellent work that has been done on supporting MTK chipsets from OsmocomBB at some point

At least now you know there is never any reason to be bored. If you have time and are interested in helping with implementing any of this stuff, let me know.

16 Oct 2011 2:00am GMT

Thanks to Shinya Kuribayashi, we added the Ben Nanonote support to u-boot[1].

[1] http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2011-October/105044.html

13 Oct 2011 9:14am GMT

Put a dent in heaven. You'll be missed dearly here on earth.

06 Oct 2011 12:56am GMT

Table of Contents

• Msmcomm
• FSO
• Status
• Links

As you may already know^[1], I got a free HP|Palm Pre2 developer device some time ago.

The first project I started with this really nice piece of hardware is Bootr^[2] - a multiboot solution for all HP|Palm Pre devices, which let's you select an OS (SHR, WebOS, Android, …) at startup.

Msmcomm

I pledged that I'll work on the SMS part of msmcomm^[3] next, which is a free and open source utility to communicate with the Palm's Qualcomm/MSM modem.

Now I'm happy to announce that I've finished quite some work on msmcomm's SMS part and I've upstreamed all bytes of it. This starts at the (almost) lowest level of reverse engineering the structures used in the protocol to communicate with the modem and building useful data structures out of it. Then gathering suitable data to stuff into those structures and send them to - and receive them from - the modem.

FSO

To make my work usable to distributions like SHR^[4], QtMoko^[5] and Aurora^[6], I integrated my work with a higher level layer - the FreeSmartphone.org middleware^[7]. You can now use the usual FSO DBus commands as stated in FSO's docs^[8] to send SMS' and listen for new, incoming SMS'.

As FSO is an abstraction layer between the low msmcomm/modem level and the higher userspace/distribution level, all my work can now be used by the abovementioned distributions automagically without any change needed - isn't this awesome?!

Status

What's working

• sending/receiving SMS
• works for SMS containing special chars like "äöüß"
• works for multi part SMS (e.g. SMS > 160 chars)
• acknowledging (single) incoming SMS
• works using the FSO and the Msmcomm DBus APIs

What's left

• acknowledging multi part SMS
• SMS status report
• squeezing out bugs

Note: This only represents the SMS part of msmcomm. There is whole lot more working in the context of calls, 3g internet, sim, phonebook, …

Links

[1] HP|Palm developer device - blog.slyon.de
[2] Bootr - github.com
[3] Msmcomm - git.freesmartphone.org
[4] SHR project - shr-project.org
[5] QtMoko project - qtmoko.org
[6] Aurora project - wiki.freesmartphone.org
[7] FreeSmartphone.org - freesmartphone.org
[8] FSO API documentation - docs.freesmartphone.org

27 Sep 2011 10:06pm GMT

Table of Contents

• Goldelico GTA04
• Testing
• Future
• Support
• Links

The replacement SoC for the Openmoko Neo Freerunner and Neo 1973 - called Goldelico GTA04 alias "Phoenux" - just arrived at it's final production stage after another slight delay.

Goldelico GTA04

The Goldelico GTA04^[1] is a state of the art hardware upgrade for your Openmoko Neo Freerunners and Neo 1973s. It has an ARM Cortex A8 800MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a HSDPA 3G modem, an OpenGL ES 3D graphics chip, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and much more…
For a detailed overview of it's technical specification and the story behind it, see my other post^[2].

Testing

The first three "GTA04 Early-Adopter Boards" arrived at the labs of Golden Delicious Computers in Munich^[3] and successfully went through the semi-automated hardware validation test. The remaining GTA04 EA boards are expected to arrive later this week.

Future

After those remaining boards passed the test, they are ready to ship to their new owners, who are already very excited about their new free smartphones and ready to develop free software for it.

It is expected that the FreeSmartphone.org^[4] middleware will quickly support the GTA04, which makes it possible to run phone distributions like SHR^[5], QtMoko^[6] and Aurora^[7] on it. And of course Debian GNU/Linux will run on the Goldelico GTA04 as well, as it is the default OS on the EA boards^[8].

Support

If you want to know how you can support this project, which now needs to shoulder the production of the next batch of GTA04 boards, which will then be available to the public, you have serveral opportunities:

• Make a donation to the project ^[9], so Golden Delicious Computers can stock the chips needed for new GTA04 boards.
• Buy a cool Letux 400 ^[10] MIPS Minibook, so Golden Delicious Computers can clear their warehouse, to stock GTA04 parts.
• Preorder a GTA04 replacement board ^[9] for your Neo 1973/Freerunner, after it became available again.
• Spread the word about this ^[1] awsome project.

Links

[1] GTA04 project - gta04.org
[2] specs and story of the GTA04 - blog.slyon.de
[3] Golden Delicious Computers - goldelico.com
[4] FreeSmartphone.org project - freesmartphone.org
[5] SHR project - shr-project.org
[6] QtMoko project - qtmoko.org
[7] Aurora project - wiki.freesmartphone.org
[8] GTA04 Debian rootfs - projects.goldelico.com
[9] Preorder a GTA04/donate - handheld-linux.com
[10] Buy a Letux 400 Minibook - handheld-linux.com

27 Sep 2011 2:54pm GMT

While we at OsmocomTETRA have been looking only at implementing the TETRA protocols as they are (and doing a bit of sniffing on unencrypted networks), some researchers have recently published two ground-breaking papers on the (lack of) security in the APCO P25 radio system.

In case you haven't heard about APCO P25: It is a digital mobile radio system mainly used by Police in non-EU English speaking countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand.

You can find the respective papers here and here.

So apparently P25 uses either single-DES or a proprietary cipher with only 40 bit key-length. No, I'm not joking. Seems like it was developed by people who have not the slightest clue about communications security at all.

And guess what they used to receive and transmit P25 waveforms? Of course the USRP and gnuradio. This once again proves how invaluable those tools are, not just for the FOSS community, but also for the communications research community.

18 Sep 2011 2:00am GMT

I have flashed OpenWrt on my D-LINK DIR-300, but the signal goes very bad. only 3 meters can receive signal (Link Quality=2/5). here is some steps flash DIR-300 back to original firmware.

1. connect the serial, check here, it's TTL not 12v so you have but a RS232 <-> TTL converter

+-----+ +---+ +-----------------+ +---+
|Power| |Wan| |Ethernet x4 ports| |Ant|
+-------------------------------------+
|TXD|
|GND|
|VCC|
| . |
|RXD|
+-------------------------------------+

2. download redboot at 1 2 3

3. setup TFTP server, put redboot to TFTP server folder, connect to DIR-300 WAN port.

4. boot DIR-300, press Ctrl + C at serial terminal. input those command:

DD-WRT> ip_address -l 192.168.1.1 -h 192.168.1.2
Default server: 192.168.1.2
DD-WRT> fis init
About to initialize [format] FLASH image system - continue (y/n)? y
*** Initialize FLASH Image System
… Erase from 0xbffe0000-0xbfff0000: .
… Program from 0x80ff0000-0x81000000 at 0xbffe0000: .
DD-WRT> load -r -b %{FREEMEMLO} dir300redboot.rom
Using default protocol (TFTP)
Raw file loaded 0×80040800-0x800607ff, assumed entry at 0×80040800
DD-WRT> fis create -l 0x30000 -e 0xbfc00000 RedBoot
An image named 'RedBoot' exists - continue (y/n)? y
… Erase from 0xbfc00000-0xbfc30000: …
… Program from 0x80040800-0x80060800 at 0xbfc00000: ..
… Erase from 0xbffe0000-0xbfff0000: .
… Program from 0x80ff0000-0x81000000 at 0xbffe0000: .
DD-WRT> reset

5. download DIR-300 firmware page at D-Link Singapore.

6. Getting into Emergency Recovery Page
Reset DIR-300, setup your IP address to 192.168.20.80
Open up your web browser and go to http://192.168.20.81.
You should be able to see the emergency recovery page as seen below.

7. select Firmware you download, click 'upload'

8. wait until serial console show flash finished. reset your DIR-300

More Info check http://www.shadowandy.net/2007/10/flashing-dir-300-back-to-original-firmware.htm

29 Aug 2011 12:39pm GMT

The WebShop for the SIMtrace hardware can be found here. We are using a CA-Cert signed SSL certificate and your browser vendor might not like it.

Setting up, or mostly modifying the webshop was my first encounter with rails. In some ways it is a great framework, in others with a Smalltalk background there are some tears in my eyes. This is using spreecommerce because I wanted something that is not done in PHP and is not following the OpenCore business model.

The manual of spreecommerce is actually great from an engineering point of view, they describe the concepts, the models and how to modify it. But they are bit short on setting it up. There are some config options where no Graphical way to change them exists yet. So it is best to look into the app_configuration.rb of spree_core, e.g. to modify the default country.

There are still some bits that I would like to change, the code for my modification can be found on gitorious.

28 Aug 2011 4:38pm GMT

Well... in fact maybe some of us we are! But we are spending some of this time working on SHR.

We have been focusing on new shr-core images for last weeks, as well as some other nice improvements. And hopefully much more enhancements are coming soon, such as a better sound routing handling system :)


First of all, I have to tell you that we have some bad news today!
Lopi announced recently he officially abandoned the iphone SHR port because the linux kernel for those devices is no longer being worked on, so the port could never be completed as the kernel is not in a good shape (for instance it lacks suspend/resume).
Anyhow I hope we will continue enjoying his presence in our project! :)

We even have more bad news: After Nokia Stopping the GNU/Linux phones and switching to windows phone 7, HP (that bought palm) will stop making new webOS devices. Those are bad news for SHR as we were having quite good success with the ports from webOS devices.
In the meantime, though, Android devices are becoming more standard (for instance the Nexus S has ALSA and V4l2. Its modem has a non-standard protocol, but an opensource implementation is beeing implemented in Replicant project by paulk and ius).


But let's talk about us now! SHR-core has been made possible thanks to JaMa and all the other developers who are migrating to it and fixing its bugs! For those who doesn't know what shr-core is: it is the shr-image created from new OpenEmbedded layered system, splitting configurations and recipes among several layers. For instance shr-core image is using openembedded-core, meta-openembedded and meta-smartphone layers among others. Finally, it's important to note that shr-core is not ready yet for end users as it still has some bugs which needs to be fixed, but hopefully it will be ready soon.

Next point! An alsa driver was written by Cotulla for qualcomm snapdragoon(QSD) android devices. It was writen for the htc leo (htc HD2), but it also works on nexusone device with minor changes. it's not complete yet but the sound quality is now perfect on the nexusone!

Meanwhile, GNUtoo has written two device porting guides on the wiki. There you will find information on how to port SHR on your device.

GNUtoo also hacked a bit on FSO these days, and now requesting Bluetooth resource launches bluetoothd automatically, which makes emtooth2 work out of the box for instance.

Palm Pre2 had some enhancements too: GRPS connection and WiFi should be properly handled by FSO now!

Nokia n900 is a work in progress and a better sound plugin for calls has been started by GNUtoo, mrmoku and DocScrutinizer). Recently dos1 adjusted fso configs to the new kernel, which means slider, special buttons (keyboard backlight) etc. are now working again. Finally, xf86-video-omapfb has been patched to run when using VRFB (static) screen rotation

The HTC Dream has now an improved sound driver that permits to get ringing and playing music at the same time (before it was not possible).

23 Aug 2011 11:54pm GMT

Kauft man heute ein Handy, speziell ein Smartphone, so ist die Auswahl des Systems doch eher homogen. Ist es kein iPhone von Apple so ist es vermutlich ein Androide, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows oder Bada Phone, das war es dann aber auch schon fast. Betrachtet man aktuelle Marktzahlen dann wird schnell klar in Europa besteht die Welt aus Äpfeln und Androiden.

Und das macht offensichtlich den Markt kaputt. Gute Konzepte, Systeme und Strategien haben hier nichts zu suchen. Es zählen allein Verkaufszahlen und nicht die Philosophie. War eben noch Nokia der große Buh-Mann der erst Symbian die Giftspritze setzte und Meego ins Klo spülte so hat jetzt HP den Hoffnungsträger aller die ein bisschen anders sein wollten. WebOS, den Todesstoß versetzt.

Hätte Palm vor einem Jahr vernünftige Hardware auf den Markt gebracht würde heute kein grüner Androide in meiner Tasche klappern sondern ein WebOS Phone. Gleiches gilt für Maemo respektive Meego oder Openmoko. Wenn ich ein Hardware Gerät für den Alltag brauche, dann will ich mich nich ärgern wenn mein Kollege schon eine App für mein Problem hat, will nicht das mein Handy klappert und ich mir die Finger an den Kanten aufschneide oder das der Akku nicht mal einen Tag Standby durchhält. Und dennoch, oder gerade weils eher an der Hardware hapert, habe ich weiter in diese Richtung geschielt, aber im monokulturellen Wald der Systeme wurde durch HP jetzt weiter aufgeräumt und WebOS zugunsten von mehr homogenität erdolcht.

Was bleibt am Ende noch? Blackberry ist als System komplett geschlossen, Symbian röchelt vor sich hin und stirbt einen langsamen Tod des noch eine Weile supported seins. Meego hat ebenfalls keine Perspektive und Bada, Bada gibt zumindest mir das Gefühl das es technisch einen Schritt hinter der Konkurenz herhinkt und vor allem wie auch WebOS nur von einem Hersteller durch Hardware unterstützt wird.

20 Aug 2011 9:16am GMT

Yesterday, after I install ubuntu 11.04 on my macbook, everytime the macbook powerup, there a big loud and long beep, 10 times sleep light flicker, screen go to blank in next minute, then system continue boot. I found the new ubuntu 11.04 is using a grub-efi, not like before install the grub on /dev/sd5(for example), I guess it's grub-efi problem, I switched to grub-pc and install it on /dev/sda5, ubuntu can not boot anymore by rEFI . try to google about this long beep, found one command in Mac system fix this problem.

Quote From Links
Download the EFI Firmware update from Apple, unpack the package (e.g. with unpkg) and locate the Firmware in the correspoding app. Or you use the existing app in /Applications/Utilities if you happen to have it already. As I needed to reflash a Unibody MacBook 5,1 (Late '08), I downloaded the package for it (MB51.007D.003 (EFI 1.3)), unpkged it and located my firmware in the app (MacBook EFI Firmware Update.app/Contents/MB51_007D_03B_LOCKED.scap). This is very important!! One needs to make sure to flash the correct version!!! Else bad things WILL happen! Then open a terminal and use bless (That command is one line and yes, -firmware is an undocumented feature):

xiangfu@macboot:~$ sudo bless -mount / -firmware /Applications/Utilities/MacBook EFI Firmware Update.app/Contents/MB51_007D_03B_LOCKED.scap

Again: BE VERY CAREFUL TO USE THE RIGHT VERSION!!! THIS CAN BRICK YOUR DEVICE!!!

Then shutdown and continue with the default firmware flash procedure for your device (e.g.: Unibody MacBook 5,1 - 1.3 EFI Firmware).
And that's all folks. The Mac should reboot, flash the firmware and everybody's happy again. It worked for me like a charm, but ymmv.

Links:
http://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-update-manually-on-a-macbook-51/
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3260
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1743800

19 Aug 2011 1:48am GMT