Happy Thanksgiving weekend to everyone!

Your industrious friends at Netgate have been working hard over the holiday weekend to bring you some excellent news to start your post-family-food-football-shopping-weekend.   We have a good ETA for you on the RouterStation PRO cases and kits.  (“Finally!” you say.  Yeah, we’re with you.)

December 10, 2009.

If you’ve already indicated interest by following our “I may want one!” link below, we’ll contact you with a few questions (just the case, a kit, a kit with card, pigtails and antennas) and payment options later this week when we recover from our food coma.  Don’t worry – you’re first in line.   In the mean time, if you want to look over the options we’ve collected all the relevant bits into a Ubiquiti Kits category here.

The RouterStation PRO enclosure WILL include a light guide, which raises the price to $40.

The RouterStation PRO KIT which includes the enclosure with light guide, RouterStation PRO board, and a power supply is $149.95 if purchased separately.  Our kit price is $147.95.

Various Ubiquiti cards, paired with the appropriate number of pigtails and antennas are also available on the same category page.

So go crazy!  Buy hundreds, nay, thousands!  That way we’ll be able to order 50,000 light guides from China and drop the price accordingly. 

If you have a burning question, feel free to email us at sales@netgate.com

So what’s next?  How about a 1U rack mount enclosure for the RouterStation PRO?   Stay tuned…

As many have heard before through their song “Lazy Eye” the Silversun Pickups are recorded through their most anxious week of their lives, as they release their latest album, “Swoon,” play the songs live for the first time, and face their fans reactions. Step into the pressure cooker with Embedded for seven days of exclusive, intimate access. In part 2, the band struggles with a perfect set list for its first live performance of “Swoon.” They meet their biggest fans on the sidewalk before a show at the legendary Glass House in Pomona, California, where they play “The Royal We” and “Sort Of” live. You can find the full episode plus more HERE.

A small system used for access and power control of a truck maintenance hall.
In addition to this functionality, the unit also provides invoice documents and transaction logs on company/employee basis.
The invoice documents and transaction logs are accessible remotely through a web interface, were the administrator also actually can control the maintenance hall remotely.

This system i based on the ACME circuit board with a recompiled kernel supporting the webserver Apache and another board for electrical contactor control and pinpad interface. The admin web interface is written in PHP and uses SqLite, wich both resides onboard the unit.
Device drivers and main logic is written in C.

Here’s a picture of the system while still under development (in case that isn’t obvious )

I will update this article with some more information and pictures of the system in use.

In this Tour Stop segment with Passion Pit, the hipster darlings throw an album release party on a boat in New York City’s Hudson River. They perform “Make Light,” “To Kingdom Come,” “Sleepyhead” and “The Reeling,” and celebrate singer Michael Angelakos’ birthday and take us back to being in the studio with producer Chris Zane to make “Manners.”

earlier this week they debuted a new video for “Little Secrets“.

Bon Iver goes singing in the rain with this performance of “For Emma”, presented in partnership with La Blogotheque.

Get more at http://current.com/embedded. Bon Iver goes singing in the rain with this performance of “For Emma”, presented in partnership with La Blogotheque.Current Music Presents: Embedded is … more

My companion snapping a shot of the executed men

Microphone in hand to catch the full sound of the gunshots, I watched the first victim crumple on the ground. Fear was etched across the face of the second as he looked from his friend’s slumped body to the executioner. His body jerked awkwardly as he attempted to face the man who was about to kill him.

After he had dispatched the two policemen, the insurgent leader turned back to our camera, still intently trained on him. He held aloft the detonators connected to explosives – explosives tightly bound to two more local policemen.

A stark warning was issued: “If Nato attack our position I will blow these men up and myself with them.”

I asked him if anything could be done to save the lives of these unwilling human timebombs. I felt sick with fear for them – this man had already dispatched two others in front of us – their only crime was to uphold the local rule of law.

“These men are traitors. They have collaborated with the infidels. They will die no matter what,” came the harsh reply.

Safe and unthreatened, we returned to our transport – we were being used to deliver a message and to inspire fear in the local population.

Back at the Nato base where we have been embedded with the troops there is a dispute. Should we broadcast the horrific images of two men being put to death? I argue that we shouldn’t but my companion feels the images are so powerful that we must.

A problem – there’s no audio. We don’t have the words of the militia leader. It makes our editorial decision for us – we show the images but with a voice-over – hopefully our package is more than just propaganda. The escalation in violence and the threat of retaliation that the local people live with is our justification for the sensational images.

The piece goes out and I hear back from military officials – they thought the guys wrapped in explosives were suicide bombers – when they attack they will now try to rescue these men. So the attack is to go ahead and we are to join them…

Night has fallen, it’s dark and there is surprisingly little noise as the line of soldiers makes it’s way across the heath towards the insurgent stronghold. The sky is clear and I am seeing the stars for the first time since I moved to the UK. We stop to regroup before the assault begins and I see a shooting star so bright that I think it’s a flare for a moment…

Troop-sergeant Seacroft is our minder. He is in command of the attack and so he stays to the rear unless there are casualties at which point he reassures me “I will hand you over to someone else and deal with that situation.”

We’re held back from the front as the troops rush through the trees in which the militia have their stronghold. They’re quickly spotted by the sentries and we can see the bright bursts of gunfire. Two loud explosions momentarily drown out the sounds of the battle – I know whose sad demise the sound marks…

Seacroft is on the move, low and quick. We struggle to follow through the vegetation, unused to jogging in body armour and helmets. We’ve smeared our faces with camouflage paint but my impractical navy and cream rain jacket practically glows in the inky atmosphere.

Our helpful minder explains that the two groups are attacking from different sides but have arranged their angles so that they are not shooting across at each other. We’re moving left towards the main force but we venture a little too far toward the centre – the point where the insurgents are still in control, the troops have not come this far yet.

An ‘enemy combatant’ jumps out of the trees ahead and lets off a quick burst of gunfire. A few feet ahead of us the troop sergeant falls to the ground and we, the four ‘impartial’ media professionals fall victim to the same hail of bullets. As I slide to the ground the shadows above brighten as light from a flare brings the foliage into relief…

…

Or that is what would have happened if this had not simply been a training exercise – for the young officers of the Royal Marines and equally for us journalism students.

We continued on with Troop-sergeant Seacroft until he reached the casualties. Men who had been picked by the supervisor of the exercise to play ‘almost dead or wounded’. At this point however we had been showered with blank rounds several times over and our valient troop-sergeant was declared dead.

Chaos ensued for the next 30 minutes until the insurgent threat had been eliminated. It was now time for me to enjoy myself and bother the poor guys trying to reorganise themselves with an endless stream of questions. ‘How many have been killed?’ ‘Did you take any militia captive?’ and so on.

We were on our way back – the ‘tactical’ route i.e. not straight – we had stopped to allow the brass time to discuss and plan what to do and how to get home. I wrangled an interview with our miraculously regenerated troop-sergeant but his brother-in-arms decided I had asked too many questions. I was roughly grabbed by the arm and pulled away. “He’s very busy and he doesn’t have time to answer your questions now!”

The fun continued back at the base.

Two huge explosions not far from the camp resulted in a scrabble to investigate. I bagged an interview with the commander of the base. A few questions in I get a gem of a quote. “These kind of occurrences will happen in the early stages of an invasion,” said troop sergeant for Nato headquarters 2nd Lieutenant Perks.

It was just a slip of the tongue and he quickly corrected himself but I couldn’t help the smirk and he gave me a look that said ‘Damn, you caught me’.

Hard at work

Being embedded with the military was an amazing experience. The fictional country the soldiers were dealing with unsurprisingly had several similarities with the situation in Afghanistan. Though it was always clearly an exercise rather than the real thing, it was important and simple enough to take it seriously. Many of the men involved had already been to Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the ones who haven’t already been have signed up to go when they graduate (in two weeks).

I talked to as many soldiers as I could during the two days to try and understand why they sign up for this. One of the most interesting conversations I had was with one of the training officers on our way back from the chaotic attack.

He made the point that there is a new generation of soldiers now – they knew the UK was at war when they signed up and they knew what kind of war it was. He had decided to join the marines when he was 17. He was 15 when Nato invaded Afghanistan.

We lay on the ground during a break in the march and watched a shooting star. We didn’t know that we were watching the Leonid meteor shower. He promised to let me try on his kit when we got back to base to feel the weight of what they have to carry.

But when we got back I was busy chasing interviews and writing stories.

I couldn’t see his face in the dark so I didn’t know which one he was. He has signed up to go to Afghanistan as soon as he passes out. By now, he’ll know if he’s being granted his wish.

The smell is what hit me first. Sulphur combined with an earthy musk stifled my nostrils swamping the air, erasing the odour of any individual.

Royal Marines are a strange breed: the young untried recruits possessed with a sense of adventure, lost in the moment, an indistinguishable cog in the machine, the old hands decked out in their authoritative berets, living a life between the forces and “civyy-street”, and then there are those serving, the finished article.

Dirty and sleep deprived, these serving soldiers are ruthlessly efficient and professional. At no point during my brief time spent embedded with them did I ever feel in danger or in doubt of their abilities.

While their actions and thought processes require a robotic precision, I felt a greater humanity from these men than I did with either their old and young counterparts.

One marine, recently returned from Iraq, said after he had secured a good pension he would retire immediately to set up his own fitness business. It had been the hardest experience of his life and he had no desire to return.

We went on an ambush exercise with this troop, ghosting along track and woods in the dead of night, and it struck me how much time marines spent alone. Although they are irrefutably a team, almost identical in the black of night, I was very aware in the oppressive silence that I was surrounded by humans, not soldiers, with individual thoughts.

When I asked one marine about this he said his mind drifted terribly. He often thought about where he would spend his next holiday, or who he would be sharing Christmas with.

While I know these thoughts are far from revelatory, it was reassuring to know the awful musk of sulphur and sweat had not claimed the individual and these were men first and soldiers second.

I have found one use full command when you deal with PCI drivers in linux

lspci which is part of pci-utils

usage of the lspci command as follows.

Usage: lspci [<switches>]

Basic display modes:
-mm        Produce machine-readable output (single -m for an obsolete format)
-t        Show bus tree

Display options:
-v        Be verbose (-vv for very verbose)
-k        Show kernel drivers handling each device
-x        Show hex-dump of the standard part of the config space
-xxx        Show hex-dump of the whole config space (dangerous; root only)
-xxxx        Show hex-dump of the 4096-byte extended config space (root only)
-b        Bus-centric view (addresses and IRQ’s as seen by the bus)
-D        Always show domain numbers

Resolving of device ID’s to names:
-n        Show numeric ID’s
-nn        Show both textual and numeric ID’s (names & numbers)
-q        Query the PCI ID database for unknown ID’s via DNS
-qq        As above, but re-query locally cached entries
-Q        Query the PCI ID database for all ID’s via DNS

Selection of devices:
-s [[[[<domain>]:]<bus>]:][<slot>][.[<func>]]    Show only devices in selected slots
-d [<vendor>]:[<device>]            Show only devices with specified ID’s

Other options:
-i <file>    Use specified ID database instead of /usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz
-p <file>    Look up kernel modules in a given file instead of default modules.pcimap
-M        Enable `bus mapping’ mode (dangerous; root only)

PCI access options:
-A <method>    Use the specified PCI access method (see `-A help’ for a list)
-O <par>=<val>    Set PCI access parameter (see `-O help’ for a list)
-G        Enable PCI access debugging
-H <mode>    Use direct hardware access (<mode> = 1 or 2)
-F <file>    Read PCI configuration dump from a given file

Hope this will be useful. Cheers !!!.

I hate to be cold, wet, tired and forced to do hard physical exercise. I also have a fear of life in the military and being caught up in a fight between two opposing enemies…

My thoughts have changed slightly after spending 24 hours with the Royal Marines at a military base in Caerwent, in South Wales. This experience was challenging, exciting, at times terrifying and in general fun.

On arrival a very stern Major lectured us about the role of the media in warfare today. Much of this we already knew and after donning a camouflage hat and bullet proof vest we clambered into the back of a van and became embedded with a group of 36 soldiers.

Surviving on sleep for one hour a day sounds like hell to someone like me who needs at least eight.  I don’t expect anyone this sleep deprived to be able to hold a conversation or be welcoming or polite – yet every marine I spoke to was friendly, helpful and couldn’t do more to make us feel at ease with the situation.

Despite several blatant digs at the ’scum of the earth’ freelance journalists currently out in Iraq, everyone seemed professional and accepting of us, clearly preferring embedded journalists who can be looked after, and kept an eye on at all times.

The marines we were with were all aged over 30 and being tested to become officers – so in a state of heightened stress and anxiety. They have all served in conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq and will be sent out again.

Throughout the exercise we were very close to the action,  leaping through ditches and over barbed wire fences and we were treated as one of the marines – at one point we even had to attempt to help carry the dead and injured men away to safety.

As an embedded journalist you gain the trust and respect of the soldiers you are working with and therefore if you uncover a hugely scandalous story – you have the choice of breaking it and getting a good headline but at the same time losing the trust of the military and putting your career as a war journalist at risk.

The whole 24 hours was exhausting but rewarding. It hasn’t convinced me to become a war correspondent but has reconfirmed my view that soldiers are not just superhuman machines but real people. Even after 24 hours it’s impossible not to build a relationship with these men who are pushed to such extremes every day. Whether you agree with the military or not, these individual soldiers should not be attacked or blamed for their part in any conflict. They are merely pawns in a political game.

The experience was eye-opening for me, I realised how much each of these men must go through everyday and how impossibly hard it would be for an embedded journalist to break a story that would destroy that trust.

Java Card 3.0 was released a couple of months ago – and the second update (version 3.0.2) is scheduled for December. If you haven’t paid much attention to Java on smart cards because you thought it’s not “real” Java – well, look again.

It’s true that Java Card 2 was very limited in many ways – a testament to the kind of technology you had available on smart cards 10 years ago. There are billions of these out there today and it is the most popular platform for the GSM SIM and ID market. Java Card 3.0 Classic Edition is a maintenance version of Java Card 2 with some enhancements and bug fixes.

But where Java Card really leaps ahead is with the Java Card 3.0 Connected Edition – it’s the dramatically enhanced next generation of Java Card technology. The Connected Edition contains a new architecture that enables developers to integrate smart cards within IP networks and web services architectures. It supports extended Java Card applets and servlets to allow for these new capabilities in addition to also supporting classic Java Card applets.

Highlights of Java Card 3.0 Connected Edition:

JDK 6 compatible VM

• Supports the latest Java class file version (50) and interoperates with JDK 6 tools
• Key difference: No floating point types

Full Java language support

• Use Java 5 language features like annotations, generics, enhanced for-loops, (un)boxing, and more.

Rich APIs

• GCF, servlet, Java Card 2 API, sockets, threads, transactions ….

Three application models and two library models

• Java Card 3 servlets and classic and extended Java Card applets (not to be confused with Java SE applets)
• Deploy classic or extended libraries
• Create almost any kind of secure application

Servlet Container with Servlet 2.5 support

• HTTP and HTTPS interface
• No need of special client programming – use any web client to reach Java Card 3

Size still measured in KBytes

• Fits in 24K RAM, 128K EEPROM, 512K ROM (running on an embedded 32 bit processor)

Netbeans plug-in for easy development

• See the sneak preview
• New version of plug-in will be available in December with the 3.0.2 release

And … not just cards anymore

• With the newly added USB interface Java Card technology can go way beyond smart cards
• Think secure USB tokens, secure personal databases, embedded servers, WebDAV compliant thumb drives, …

And finally, the Java Card team has started a Kenai project – good info there already, and more being added weekly.

So, check out Java Card 3.0 Connected Edition – Real Java, just really flat

Cheers,

– Terrence

Here I am posting the small kerenl module that I have written . which will just post a hellow world message.

#include <linux/module.h>

module_init(tiny_init);
module_exit(tiny_exit)

compile it and then insmod and rmmod then you will get the output in dmesg as follows.

[ 4657.170634] tiny: module loaded
[ 4657.170637] tiny: hello world
[ 5470.578753] tiny: module removed

When you are learning Linux kernel development it is tough to use dmesg and compile insmod and rmmod. so here is the command you can run this one terminal and the dmesg output will be scrolling in one terminal . just switch between them to see the output. we will use the /proc/kmsg entry to do this.follow the below steps.

before going the we will clean the previous dmesg which we are not interested in using the following command

thalib@SilentStorm:$ sudo dmesg -c

then you issue the following command

thalib@SilentStorm:$ sudo cat /proc/kmsg
4>[ 4651.514748] tiny: module removed
<4>[ 4657.170634] tiny: module loaded
<4>[ 4657.170637] tiny: hello world

when ever you printk a message by the module they will appear here. just switch between the console to set the message output

Thats it for now . next time with new trick if I get any.

The armed forces remain a mystery to a huge section of UK society. I thought this quite strongly when our bus rattled over the cattle grids at Caerwent training area yesterday.

As us 10 trainee journalists skidded along the rain-soaked roads of the 1,500-acre site, we got held up by marines with tired-looking black and green faces and their guns. Smashed-up warehouse buildings and barbed wire lined the roads while skeletal sheep grazed the tufts of grass around them. It was like entering another world.

We were there on a Senior Command Course to watch marines Non-Comissioned Officers – the forces’ real on-the-ground elite – compete for promotion from corporals to sergeants. We were herded around on patrol, ‘embedded’ with the military to test their skills in keeping us alive. Read on to find out if they managed it.

But we also had to test our skills as journalists – whether we could pick through the miles of jargon and chaos, and of course, darkness and freezing rain, and come out with a usable story on the other side.

The military and the press have always been at odds. Journalists take risks; they don’t fall into line, and the soldiers looking after them have to risk their necks to pull them back, like children, from the side of the road.

But it’s worse being a freelancer. If you’re not embedded with a unit you have the advantage of uncensored copy – but the disadvantage of being blown up or kidnapped at any second, as the case of Javed Yazamy proves. According to the International News Safety Institute, 23-year old Mr Yazamy, a freelancer who contributed to the Canadian Press, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Kandahar City, Afghanistan on 10 March this year. He was in his vehicle at the time. There are countless cases like his.

So the MOD’s line recently, especially since Iraq, has been that they’re in support of the press. “It’s part and parcel of being in a liberal democracy,” Major Andrew Ferguson told us.

“Some journalists, once they’re embedded, decide to go against the military to get the story they want. But the individual will be ostracised – and they won’t be allowed to work with the military again.”

The two of us, he said, must work under the same sense of brotherhood the forces work with themselves. And surprised though we were, once we were on patrol with the marines they treated us like family.

The troop, made up of 38 corporals from all over the UK, took us under their wing and showed us round. The men in their mid-thirties, all with years of operational experience, were spending the 10-day period camped out in one of the deserted buildings. They lived on an hour or so of sleep every 24, and 7000-calorie ration kits which included dehydrated lamb dinners, unbranded milk chocolate and even tiny bottles of tobasco sauce.

It was few days in and they were already exhausted; five had dropped out from an original 43, one due to appendicitis. While they sat around and told us their war stories, the November wind whipped through the broken windows of the old ammunition factory where they still are now.

The time came for orders – their briefing - and they all gathered in a darkening corner of the warehouse where a model of little cardboard boxes and crepe paper had been put up. We sat on a cot bed along the wall and were introduced as “our friends in the media”, which earned us a curt nod from around the room. The report points on the model were given names like Kate Adie and Trevor McDonald, in honour of us.

The mission was to make a reassurance patrol in a fabricated Afghan village down the road, with the intention of setting up future civic projects. Those in charge of the various sections ran through a dazzling array of jargon that we tried furiously to scribble down in the near-dark. They explained parts for us, which we just about understood before they moved on again. By the end of the orders we were fairly confident the three of us would just be following the troop sergeant in single file the whole way.

But, as could be expected, the mission didn’t go to plan. We were at the rear of the troop when those at the front came under fire from insurgents (played by members of the army). We were impressed by how we were looked after. They had us sit completely still while supposed chaos unfolded and gunfire rattled overhead.

Some of our colleagues, playing freelance journalists, were locked in a toilet and told to stay there until things calmed down. They weren’t told what was going on; we were. We had various officers retreat from the front line to calmly reel off what they were doing now; even to make some light conversation. Many of them seemed to enjoy having guests in their midst.

Then a corporal from one section was ‘injured’ by a ‘gunshot wound to the leg’ at around 6pm. He was stable, and so it wouldn’t be newsworthy, we were told. As there was a risk of injuring civillians the troop withdrew back to the base. We came back cold, wet, and without a story.

We got back, debriefed, and the men went off to get some kip while we were driven back to our base. It felt like we’d hardly started; and when some young riflemen we got chatting to back at the base went out to play more insurgents at 11pm, and left us to sleep, we felt inadequate.

Before they left, they were a little suspicious – asking if I was hiding a dictaphone under my Times - but more often they were just incredulous about our work, much as we had been towards theirs. Maybe our relationship with the military is not so much hostile as, well, ignorant.

So we could all do with learning a little more about each other - even if the work’s not to our taste. And it seems the feeling’s mutual. As one 21-year-old rifleman said: “Is that all you do? Read papers all the time? I’d rather be shot at any day.”

You can create as file name Makefile with the following contets to compile the module

default:

obj-m:=test.o

make -C /path/of/linux/source/directory M=/path/to/my/module_src  modules

If you want the make file for different project/modules compiling the following will become handy.I Use the following make file to compile my Linux modules

Hope It will be useful to you peoples.

I am learning how to write pci and Ethernet driver . I will post here the success and problem that I came across while learning

Simple coder to detect the pci device in the pci bus

In the above code to probe and vendor or device ID use the PCI_ANY_ID so it will detect any PCI device on the bus.

….

You now have the opportunity to take advantage of a truly unique offer that doesn’t come along too often.

Here’s the deal …

I recently released a valuable and unique product consisting of three proven squeeze page templates which also include professional, high-quality audio …

This is a brand new template package – and ALL the work has been done for you – all you do is insert YOUR own copy, and add YOUR autoresponder info.

• HTML
• High quality headers & footers
• Professional audio narrated “generic” squeeze page greetings
• Flash is done (and included)
• All media and images files are embedded and ready to rock!
• Play / Stop / Rewind / Fast Foward buttons are also included

THREE COMPLETE SETS are included!

• Different graphics
• Different color schemes
• Different audio files

Continue Reading…

arm-elf-GDB is the debugger that helps to simulate ARM processor.

Prerequisites:
-install arm-elf-gcc toolchain
-compile your source code with -g option turned on.

Lets us assume your output elf file is main.elf. Type the following command in the terminal to open GDB.

arm-elf-gdb main.elf

It brings up the gdb prompt. These commands initialises the gdb environment.

target sim
load

The first statement tells gdb that we are going to simulate ARM processor. Second line tells it to load the current ELF(main.elf) file into memory. Next step is to create some breakpoints and run the code.

From Wikipedia:-
(Note:- A breakpoint, in software development, is an intentional stopping or pausing place in a program, put in place for debugging purposes. More generally, a breakpoint is a means of acquiring knowledge about a program during its execution. During the interruption, the programmer inspects the test environment (logs, memory, files, etc.) to find out whether the program functions as expected. In practice, a breakpoint consists of one or more conditions that determine when a program’s execution should be interrupted.)

You can set breakpoint at a particular function, line number, address or offset.
Syntax:

break *address

• sets breakpoint at particular address

break function

• sets breakpoint at function

break filename:line_number

• sets breakpoint at line number of a specified file

break +offset
break -offset

• Set breakpoint some number of lines forward or back from the position at which execution stopped in the currently selected stack frame.

After you have set the breakpoints. Run the debugger using

run

Notice that debugger stops at the places you have set breakpoints. Now you can inspect the registers and memory using these commands.

info reg

• displays register information

x /5xw 0×00000800

• this displays memory starting at address(0×00000800). The /5xw instructs gdb to show 5 memory locations, each of length words and represented in hexadecimal. Use d instead of x to display in decimal. h or b instead of w to display in half-word or byte length.

After you have finished inspecting, you can either continue execution or step through each instruction or statement.

next

• steps through each statement.

continue

• continues debugging until next breakpoint is reached.

Pidgin Embedded VideoPidgin Embedded Video is a GTK plugin for the popular instant messaging client Pidgin. It transforms a simple conversation into a much more attractive and interesting experience. Sharing links to videos and watching them was never such a pleasant activity in Pidgin. The purpose of this plugin is to provide a faster way to watch videos while chatting with your friends. No more additional browser windows!Features

• The plugin automatically inserts the video pointed to into the conversation when an appropriate link is sent or received.
• Every video has a toggle button which allows you to show or hide the video.
• The default behaviour for a new video link is customizable from the “Configure Plugin” menu. You can choose whether to show the video instantly or to hide it by default.
• Currently supported video sites are Youtube and Vimeo.
• It works with the Ubuntu version of Pidgin. It should work on every Linux distribution as far as the requirements are met. 

Installation1. Requirements:

• pidgin-dev
• libglib2.0-dev
• libxml2-dev
• libwebkit-dev >= 1.1.12

To install the libwebkit-dev dependency, you just need to add the following repository:Karmic Koala users:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webkit-team/ppa

Jaunty, Intrepid or Hardy users:

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 2D9A3C5B

For the rest of the dependencies, just install them with:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install pidgin-dev libglib2.0-dev libxml2-dev libwebkit-dev

2. Install the pluginAfter all the dependencies are installed, just download Pidgin Embedded Video, extract the archive you have downloaded and run the following commands./configuremakemake install3. Restart pidgin, activate Pidgin Embedded Video under the “Plugins” menu and have fun! Screenshots

 

Linux is growing attractive for Embedded engineers day after day. One good thing about Linux is that GNU C compiler is available for almost any CPU architecture you can name. ARM is no exception. This post is about setting up the development environment to cross compile applications for ARM.

Cross compiling is the process in which code for a target processor is compiled in a different host processor. This is usually done because the target processor might not have enough resources to be able to compile applications on it. In our case target processor is ARM and host processor is x86.

First you need to download the cross compiler tool chain. You can either build your own tool chain or download prebuilt tool chain. I prefer using the prebuilt version. To download the toolchain, visit

http://www.gnuarm.com/
http://download.ronetix.info/toolchains/arm/

Once you have downloaded the toolchain, uncompress it in the place of your choice. I uncompressed it in /usr/cross/. Now add the following line to the end of .bashrc file in your home directory.

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/cross/arm-elf/bin/

Replace the /usr/cross/arm-elf/bin with the path to the bin directory where you have extracted your toolcahin. Now test tool chain by typing the following

arm-elf-gcc -v

This should print out some information regarding your tool chain. If it prints out Command not found, then you have entered wrong path in the export statement. Now let us compile our first program for ARM.

.global _start
_start:    mov r1,#21;
mov r2,#32;
add r3,r1,r2;
b _start;
.end

Save this file as arm_hello.asm. Now type the following in terminal to compile this assembly file.

arm-elf-as arm_hello.asm -o arm_hello.o
arm-elf-ld arm_hello.o -o main.elf

If your arm_hello.o and main.elf files are created, congrats! Your ARM toolchain is working. In our next post we will discuss a more complex project involving makefiles and linker files.

Linux is growing attractive for Embedded engineers day after day. One good thing about Linux is that GNU C compiler is available for almost any CPU architecture you can name. Blackfin has got a lot of open source support. This post is about setting up the development environment to cross compile applications for Blackfin processor.

Cross compiling is the process in which code for a target processor is compiled in a different host processor. This is usually done because the target processor might not have enough resources to be able to compile applications on it. In our case target processor is Blackfin and host processor is x86.

First you need to download the cross compiler toolchain. You can either build your own tool chain or download prebuilt tool chain. I prefer using the prebuilt version. To download the toolchain, visit

http://download.ronetix.info/toolchains/blackfin/

Once you have downloaded the toolchain, uncompress it in the place of your choice. I uncompressed it in /usr/cross/. Now add the following line to the end of .bashrc file in your home directory.

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/cross/bfin-elf/bin/

Replace the /usr/cross/bfin-elf/bin with the path to the bin directory where you have extracted your toolcahin. Now test tool chain by typing the following

bfin-elf-gcc -v

This should print out some information regarding your tool chain. If it prints out Command not found, then you have entered wrong path in the export statement. In our next post let us code and compile our application for Blackfin processor.

Full disclosure: I am a MontaVista employee and thus a stakeholder in this acquisition. However, I have worked with embedded systems and Linux since 1992, including two years at Wind River in the mid 1990s. I hope I can present a somewhat-objective, partly-informed grasp of the facts beyond my current situation.

I was intrigued by the opportunities for MontaVista provided by Intel’s acquisition of Wind River earlier this year, and a little scared by Mentor Graphics’ swallowing of Embedded Alley, which nudged Mentor into the role of embedded Linux provider, albeit focused on custom solutions.

However, I am absolutely floored by the opportunities presented for both MontaVista and Cavium with this merger.

The background issue with this deal is that embedded systems are very diverse from a hardware standpoint, and there are many players in the field. There are base architecture providers/licensors that provide raw architecture flavors: ARM, MIPS, x86, PowerPC, m68k, SPARC, Alpha, PA-RISC, a whole host of them. The technology is often known as IP (“intellectual property“). From these spring actual hardware providers, chip and board manufacturers who license the actual platform technology and produce physical examples. These licensees come in many different modes:

• Some, like x86, are produced by the same company that invented it (Intel in this case) as well as by competitors (like AMD).
• Sometimes the IP is owned by one company and licensed to a number of manufacturers. ARM is like this (owned by ARM Limited), as is SPARC (owned by Sun, now by Oracle) and MIPS (owned by MIPS Technologies).
• Sometimes the IP is co-owned by several companies and licensed by a consortium (like PowerPC, developed by IBM and licensed by Power.org), which adds an interesting twist that consortium members can make money on their competitors’ products. It’s a crazy world.
• Sometimes the IP ends up being owned by a company that goes under, leaving it in a delicate state. A timely example is Transmeta’s IP, which was owned by Novafora until they closed up shop a few months ago. The IP is now for sale. (This one is particularly interesting: the Transmeta Crusoe and Efficeon processors were RISC-based, but supported x86 instructions. Again, it’s a crazy world.)

(Please note that this doesn’t even qualify as a primer on the subject. I’ll try to cover this and draw a map in a future post.)

While the desktop market has historically been driven by x86 architectures, the embedded market is much more fragmented. Some embedded licensees specialize on one particular architecture, like Intel, who only produces chips based on Intel-created IP. Others take an agnostic approach and license whichever architecture suits the solution they are seeking. Cavium Networks, for example, has produced products based on ARM, MIPS, SPARC, and x86 CPUs (and likely others I could not easily find).

All of the astute, intelligent, and frankly attractive readers of this blog remember that I am a Linux dude. I work in embedded systems, where there are tons of different architectures to choose from. Specifically, I work for a Linux provider who produces market-specific distributions and software development kits for a wide range of different architectures.

Linux has evolved to be a universal operating system. Originally conceived to run on x86 architectures, thanks to its open-source nature Linux has been ported to practically every modern microprocessor (and even an FPGA). It is particularly popular currently on ARM, MIPS, and PowerPC-based embedded systems, but for all intents and purposes, it can be made to run just about anywhere.

That sets the stage for a huge win-win scenario.

Wind River’s acquisition definitely fits, for lack of a better term, a “proprietary” model. As a standalone company, Wind River provided Linux solutions across the board just as MontaVista does. However, now they are owned by a company who is single-minded giant in desktop computing, and who probably acquired Wind River in the first place in order to extend their reach more deeply into the embedded market, where they have not had much recent success. There is no motivation for Intel to continue to provide software solutions for competitor’s products beyond current contracts, and a lot of motivation for them to close ranks. (Industry watchers will remember that this also happened to Metrowerks a short while after they were absorbed by Motorola/Freescale.)

However, the MontaVista/Cavium situation is different. Cavium is a solutions provider who is not tied to any particular platform. Cavium currently produces products primarily based on MIPS and ARM platforms (executives of both are quoted in the press release), but they are not limited to those, and have used others in the past, as stated above.

Those are the facts. What follows is conjecture based on those facts, simply my opinion.

This merger provides a strong impetus for Cavium to grow their product line into other markets. I would not be surprised to see Cavium extending its marketplace reach over the next few years, and expanding into new territory using MontaVista’s processor-agnostic philosophy as leverage. In fact, at the same time they announced this merger, Cavium also announced their intention to continue their relationships with Wind River and their other ecosystem partners, which I read as an desire to put a foothold on every aspect of embedded computing—ambitious, but now achievable. Cavium recognized a gap in their portfolio and filled it.

MontaVista, for their part, recognized a brass ring when offered, and took it. Other, more knowledgeable bloggers than I have already written about the merger in terms of MontaVista’s past, their business model, mistakes and successes. I am more concerned with the future.

The enormous potential is what I find so amazing about this merger. It provides MontaVista with a stable base where it can keep producing world-class software and tools, along with an extremely useful general embedded Linux community. It provides Cavium with an end-to-end hardware-to-software solution, as well as a set of software, tools, and ecosystem—support, QA, experienced FAE, professional services, documentation, community—to enter any embedded marketplace.

In other words, it is a win for both MontaVista and Cavium, and a huge potential upside for all of the customers of both companies.

UPDATE: Jerry Krasner at EMF agrees.