Having gained root access earlier, I was able to use dd and nc to siphon off a copy of the internal SD card, which appears as /dev/block/mmcblk0. To grab a copy, first plug the unit into Ethernet (it’ll be faster, trust me) and have another Linux box handy:

Start up netcat on a Linux system:
$ busybox nc -l -p 8123 > tablet.img

Then on the tablet, become root:
$ /system/bin/su

Then start copying to the other system (here; its IP is 12.23.34.45):
# dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 | nc 12.23.34.45 8123

Sit back and wait, it should be done in about 5 minutes. Now if you look at the partition table, you’ll see the following:

Disk tablet.img: 482 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
tablet.img1            63   5535320    5535258   b  W95 FAT32           < -- User applications, data live here
tablet.img2       5535321   7612181    2076861   5  Extended
tablet.img3       7612248   7677783      65536  bb  Boot Wizard hidden  <-- Kernel?
tablet.img4       7677784   7743319      65536  bb  Boot Wizard hidden  <-- UBoot?
tablet.img5       5535384   6059608     524225  83  Linux               <-- /system partition
tablet.img6       6059672   7595608    1535937  83  Linux               <-- Android internal?
tablet.img7       7595672   7611992      16321  83  Linux               <-- ???

Partitions 3 and 4 are a complete mystery. They're not a standard Linux file system, but, the former appears to hold a copy of the Linux kernel, and the latter seems to hold a copy of UBoot. You can bust the image apart using the following script:


/sbin/sfdisk -uS -l tablet.img | grep ^tablet.img | while read part; do
pn=$( echo "$part" | cut -c 11-11 );
s=$( echo "$part" | cut -c 13-25 );
l=$( echo "$part" | cut -c 36-48 );
echo "[$pn][$s][$l]";
dd if=tablet.img of=tablet-$pn.img skip=$(( $s )) count=$(( $l ));
done


You might have to play with column offsets.

The initial part of partition 3 looks like this:

00000000  41 4e 44 52 4f 49 44 21  c0 d7 4b 00 00 80 00 10  |ANDROID!..K.....|
00000010  b5 2a 15 00 00 00 00 11  00 00 00 00 00 00 f0 10  |.*..............|
00000020  00 01 00 10 00 08 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000240  b8 29 4b 8c 7c d2 1f 65  cf b3 3a 78 bc 87 c0 61  |.)K.|..e..:x...a|
00000250  2e 24 79 a5 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.$y.............|
00000260  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000800  27 05 19 56 43 d9 c4 f4  4e ab c7 11 00 4b d7 80  |'..VC...N....K..|
00000810  80 00 80 00 80 00 80 00  d5 42 0e 53 05 02 02 00  |.........B.S....|
00000820  4c 69 6e 75 78 2d 32 2e  36 2e 33 35 2e 37 00 00  |Linux-2.6.35.7..|
00000830  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000840  d3 f0 21 e3 10 9f 10 ee  56 00 00 eb 05 a0 b0 e1  |..!.....V.......|
00000850  52 00 00 0a 6c 00 00 eb  05 80 b0 e1 4f 00 00 0a  |R...l.......O...|
00000860  7b 00 00 eb 13 00 00 eb  c0 d0 9f e5 00 e0 8f e2  |{...............|
00000870  10 f0 8a e2 30 5f 11 ee  02 50 85 e3 30 5f 01 ee  |....0_...P..0_..|
00000880  02 00 80 e3 1f 50 a0 e3  10 5f 03 ee 10 4f 02 ee  |.....P..._...O..|

Note the rather prominent “Linux-2.6.35.7″. Similarly, if we pick through partition 4:

00020eb0  11 12 a0 41 10 13 a0 51  30 1c 81 41 10 02 a0 e1  |...A...Q0..A....|
00020ec0  1e ff 2f e1 ff ff ff ff  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  |../.............|
00020ed0  00 10 05 60 20 10 05 60  00 13 05 60 20 13 05 60  |...` ..`...` ..`|
00020ee0  40 13 05 60 00 16 05 60  20 16 05 60 00 19 05 60  |@..`...` ..`...`|
00020ef0  20 19 05 60 00 1c 05 60  20 1c 05 60 40 1c 05 60  | ..`...` ..`@..`|
00020f00  55 2d 42 6f 6f 74 20 32  30 31 30 2e 30 36 20 28  |U-Boot 2010.06 (|
00020f10  4f 63 74 20 32 39 20 32  30 31 31 20 2d 20 31 37  |Oct 29 2011 - 17|
00020f20  3a 32 37 3a 30 31 29 00  18 13 ea 80 20 13 ea 80  |:27:01)..... ...|
00020f30  27 13 ea 80 2e 13 ea 80  35 13 ea 80 3c 13 ea 80  |'.......5...< ...|
00020f40  43 13 ea 80 4a 13 ea 80  51 13 ea 80 58 13 ea 80  |C...J...Q...X...|
00020f50  5f 13 ea 80 67 13 ea 80  6f 13 ea 80 77 13 ea 80  |_...g...o...w...|
00020f60  7f 13 ea 80 87 13 ea 80  8f 13 ea 80 97 13 ea 80  |................|

Since I like open source, and didn’t like the idea of spending several hundred on a hand-held GPS with proprietary firmware & map data which I need to constantly purchase updates for, I opted for the cheapskate route.  I picked up a GL4Ever Flytouch III Tablet off eBay.  The unit I have came loaded with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).

Ultimately I may replace the OS, or at least, the kernel, soon as I have sources for it, but in the meantime, it runs what it came with.  I have however, already managed to gain root access.

Those who might do a search for how to do so, may come across this guide.  I tried this first, and found I had no joy.  USB Debugging was enabled out-of-the-box on the unit I have, but z4root did not successfully enable root access.  The following are my notes on how I gained a shell with root access on the device.  Ohh, and I warn you, there is no warranty given in the instructions below.  If it breaks, you get to keep the pieces.

1. Download and install Gingerbreak.
2. Run Gingerbreak, it will run for a while, before resetting the device.  Upon starting, you should now notice you have a Superuser application installed.
3. Next, install Android Terminal.
4. Now, run /system/bin/su.

/bin/su is a symbolic link to /bin/busybox which was installed without the setuid bit, and is broken anyway, you’ll find if you do add a setuid bit, it will report that it can’t find the ‘root‘ user.  This system has no /etc/passwd or equivalent user database, so it has no idea who ‘root‘ is, but it knows who UID 0 is, and that’s what matters.  The latter ‘su‘ you’ll find has the necessary permissions, and knows about UID 0.

Other things I’ve found… the operating system lurks on a SD card embedded in the device.  Or at least, it’s presented as a SD card; /dev/block/mmcblk0.  The user-accessible SD-card port is /dev/block/mmcblk1.  You can verify this by ejecting the card, doing a ls /dev/block, then inserting a card and repeating.

On my TODO list, is to make a DD-copy of this block device, and pick through to see how one swaps out the kernel.  I’ll post notes if I figure this out.  I am also yet to obtain the kernel sources, I’ll chase those up before long.

I got fed up of restoring my firmware for the Broadcom wireless chip in my late-2008 model MacBook.  Anyone who has one of these might find the current in-tree versions of net-wireless/b43-firmware is missing files needed by the modern b43 driver (namely ucode16_mimo.fw), and net-wireless/b43-fwcutter doesn’t well, cut it, for extracting the newer files.

If you’ve got a newer 802.11n-based Broadcom chip, you might find the following ebuilds handy:

• net-wireless/b43-firmware-5.10.56.27.3
• net-wireless/b43-fwcutter-015 and net-wireless/b43-fwcutter-9999

The first is the firmware mentioned in this post.  It needs a newer fwcutter binary than is provided in Portage.  You’ve got the choice of the latest version, or the bleeding edge via git.  Both work at time of writing, although neither are guaranteed.

The ebuilds are not in-tree, I’ll leave that for the actual maintainer for these ebuilds to pick them up if desired, I’ve put them in an overlay accessed via the following command:

git clone git://git.longlandclan.yi.org/overlays/b43.git

Or you can take a squiz via gitweb.

A recent addition to our network was a 2008-model Apple MacBook, which I have dual-booting Gentoo and MacOS X 10.6.7 nicely.  One quirk of this particular laptop though, is that it will, when running its native OS, intermittently drop off the IPv4-only network.

The first tip-off to this is usually things like Skype ceasing to work.  Then I’ll notice DNS isn’t resolving (DNS is IPv6-accessible, but not many systems support RDNSS).

As a work-around to the problem, and also for my own self-education, I decided I’d have a crack at getting NAT64 and DNS64 to work.  What are they exactly?

NAT64 as the name suggests, is a variant of NAT that translates IPv6 to IPv4.  In doing so, allowing my MacBook that’s just disappeared from the face of the IPv4-only world, to still access the IPv4-part of the Internet.

DNS64 is a service that synthesizes AAAA records for host names that do not provide one.

The two work together to provide Internet access to an IPv6 only host.

What you will need to know

Make sure you have the following information on-hand.  I’ll use the following examples:

• Your server’s IPv4 address on the local network: e.g. 192.168.0.1/24
• IPv4 NAT address pool: This must not overlap with your existing networks.
  Examples use 192.168.255.0/24, I used 172.16.24.0/24
• TAYGA’s tunnel IPv4 address: This will be the first address in the above subnet (i.e. 172.16.24.1)
• Your network’s IPv6 subnet: e.g. 2001:dead:beef:1200::/56
• IPv6 NAT address pool: This needs to be a non-overlapping portion of your address space.  In my case, I’m borrowing a /56 from AARNet, and I used a /64 for this, setting the lower 8-bits of the prefix to 0×64.  It only needs to be /96 in size.
  Example used: 2001:dead:beef:1264::/96

NAT64 setup

To get NAT64 working; start by installing TAYGA.  This is a userspace daemon uses the TUN device to route between IPv4 and IPv6.  On Gentoo, begin by running emerge tayga.  (You may need to keyword it.)

This installs the binary, but crucially, it comes with no init scripts.  You will need to create one yourself like this:

#!/sbin/runscript
# Copyright 1999-2004 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/sys-libs/gpm/files/gpm.rc6,v 1.12 2004/07/15 01:02:02 agriffis Exp $

depend() {
    need gw6c net.nat64
}

start() {
    ebegin "Starting tayga"
    start-stop-daemon --start --quiet -p /var/run/tayga.pid \
        --exec /usr/sbin/tayga -- \
        -u nobody -g nogroup \
        --pidfile /var/run/tayga.pid
    eend ${?}
}

stop() {
    ebegin "Stopping tayga"
    start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/run/tayga.pid
    eend ${?}
}

Now, edit /etc/tayga.conf, using /etc/tayga.conf.example as a guide.  There are comments provided.  The following are the settings I used (with the above addresses):

#
# TAYGA's IPv4 address.  This is NOT your router's IPv4 address!  TAYGA
# requires its own address because it acts as an IPv4 and IPv6 router, and
# needs to be able to send ICMP messages.  TAYGA will also respond to ICMP
# echo requests (ping) at this address.
#
# This address can safely be located inside the dynamic-pool prefix.
#
# Mandatory.
#
ipv4-addr 172.16.24.1
# ... etc ...
#
# The NAT64 prefix.  The IPv4 address space is mapped into the IPv6 address
# space by prepending this prefix to the IPv4 address.  Using a /96 prefix is
# recommended in most situations, but all lengths specified in RFC 6052 are
# supported.
#
# This must be a prefix selected from your organization's IPv6 address space
# or the Well-Known Prefix 64:ff9b::/96.  Note that using the Well-Known
# Prefix will prohibit IPv6 hosts from contacting IPv4 hosts that have private
# (RFC1918) addresses, per RFC 6052.
#
# The NAT64 prefix need not be specified if all required address mappings are
# listed in `map' directives.  (See below.)
#
# Optional.
#
prefix 2001:dead:beef:1264::/96
#
# Dynamic pool prefix.  IPv6 hosts which send traffic through TAYGA (and do
# not correspond to a static map or an IPv4-translatable address in the NAT64
# prefix) will be assigned an IPv4 address from the dynamic pool.  Dynamic
# maps are valid for 124 minutes after the last matching packet is seen.
#
# If no unassigned addresses remain in the dynamic pool (or no dynamic pool is
# configured), packets from unknown IPv6 hosts will be rejected with an ICMP
# unreachable error.
#
# Optional.
#
dynamic-pool 172.16.24.0/24
# ... etc ...

Now, having done this… you just need to make sure the nat64 device gets created and initialised by openrc.  In /etc/conf.d/net:

# NAT64 configuration for TAYGA
config_nat64=(
   "192.168.0.1/24"
   "2001:dead:beef:1264::1/64"
)
routes_nat64=(
        "172.16.24.0/24"
        "2001:dead:beef:1264::/96"
)

preup() {
        case ${IFACE} in
                nat64)
                        /usr/sbin/tayga --mktun
                        ;;
        esac
}

Now, symlink /etc/init.d/net.lo to /etc/init.d/net.nat64, start the tayga service, and you should find that you can ping e.g. 2001:dead:beef:1264::8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8 is Google DNS).

DNS64 setup

All good and well if you know the IP addresses, but most people don’t.  Now emerge totd.  Use /usr/share/doc/totd-VERSION/totd.conf.sample.bz2 as an example for configuring /etc/totd.conf:

; $Id: totd.conf.sample,v 1.9 2003/09/17 15:56:20 dillema Exp $
; Totd sample configuration file
; you can have multiple forwarders, totd will always prefer
; forwarders listed early and only use forwarders listed later
; if the first ones are unresponsive.
forwarder 2001:dead:beef:1234::1 port 65053
forwarder 127.0.0.1 port 65053
forwarder 8.8.8.8 port 53
forwarder 8.8.4.4 port 53

; you can have multiple prefixes or even no prefixes at all
; totd uses them in round-robin fashion
prefix 2001:dead:beef:1264::
; the port totd listens on for incoming requests
port 53
; the pidfile to use (default: /var/run/totd.pid)
pidfile /var/run/totd.pid
; interfaces totd listens on (UDP only for now and not on Linux)
; If left out totd will only open wildcard sockets.
;interfaces br0
; 6to4 reverse lookup
stf

In my case, I have a local caching name-server (BIND), which I’ve moved to port 65053. The trick-or-treat daemon now sits on port 53 where the rest of the network expects it. You can now start the totd service, point your /etc/resolv.conf files to it, and everything should Just Work.

Testing

Easiest way is to shut off IPv4, and set up /etc/resolv.conf on your client with the IPv6 address of your server running totd.  You should now be able to browse IPv4-only sites as if IPv4 were running.  I achieved this test by plugging into Ethernet, turning off wicd (it kept wanting to start-up dhcpcd), then manually bringing the interface up and configuring /etc/resolv.conf.

zhouman portage # FEATURES=-test USE=-handbook\ -doc emerge -eukDN --keep-going system kde-meta vim poppler =xulrunner-2.0.1-r1 =vim-core-7.3.189 =gvim-7.3.189 gst-plugins-base vim =gst-plugins-theora-0.10.32 =firefox-4.0.1-r1
Calculating dependencies... done!

!!! One or more updates have been skipped due to a dependency conflict:

Use --autounmask-write to write changes to config files (honoring CONFIG_PROTECT).
zhouman portage #

THANK-YOU

You’ve just made my life trying to install and test big collections of software in Gentoo/MIPS much easier.

We had to stop releasing the Qtel client, as it relied on Qt3 which we no longer ship in Gentoo.  On top of this, the ebuild installed non-Gentoo init scripts, fails to build with gcc-4.6 and fails due to underlinking.  (My thanks go to Diego for pointing these flaws out.)

At the moment I’m working on the first problem, which is that the builds that were in-tree are crusty and old.  svxlink did release version 11.05 not long back, and ohh yes, they’ve changed their versioning scheme too to match Ubuntu.  However, their trunk branch is still dependent on Qt3 if you want Qtel.  There is an experimental Qt4 branch, which is what I’ve been working with.

One irritation I had was trying to make it possible to install the client component or the server component.  svxlink has its own, very custom, build system based on recursive makefiles.  (Yes, I know, considered harmful and all that.)  The build system first builds the core libraries, then it starts looking at Qtel and svxlink’s server components.  The first thing was to try and split these up.

The new ebuilds will introduce a svxlink-libs package.  This is relatively straightforward, and it just builds & installs the libasync, libechlib and liblocationinfo libraries.  The catch is when building qtel and svxlink, the build system looks for the built binaries inside the source tree.

I have submitted a patch upstream that remedies this.  Eventually I’ll look at how we can fix some of the other flaws in the build system.  So far I’m still battling svxlink itself, but I soon will have svxlink-libs and qtel packages available for testing in the Portage tree.  svxlink itself will also need to wait until I can set up a test node on simplex somewhere… my O2 looks like a likely possibility.

I’ll keep you all informed as this progresses.  Qtel appears to be working (although I’m battling some funnies with the sound device on the Apple MacBook)… just a matter of fixing some issues with the build system for svxlink and I should be able to have svxlink back in the tree once again.

stuartl@atomos ~ $ host www.google.com.au
www.google.com.au is an alias for www.google.com.
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.
www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.52
www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.48
www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.49
www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.50
www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.51
www.l.google.com has IPv6 address 2404:6800:4006:802::1011

I knew World IPv6 day was coming up, but it seems it snuck up on me and I barely noticed. Likely a testament to the fact we run a dual-stack network here, and so everything magically Just Worked™ as it should. Indeed, a lot of websites are now dual-stack, as is much of the gentoo.org infrastructure, Google (as seen above), FaceBook, and numerous other sites.

Sadly, a lot of ISPs here in Australia did the demented ostrich act when it came to IPv6. I wonder how many technical support calls they received, with users complaining about websites being slow to load up or failing to connect.

iTel, formerly “Global Info-Links”, now calling themselves “South East Community Telco“… were one of the masses that drove their RFC791-only heads in the sand and pretended that the entire Internet can be compressed into 32-bits of address space. We’ve been waiting to hear back from them on their plans for addressing since January as we’d like to upgrade the 512/128kbps ADSL link we use here. (Anyone noticed this site tends to load up a bit slow? That 128kbps figure is the reason why.)

We’ve been with this ISP since 1996. That’s quite a long innings… We’ve stayed put because until now we’ve been happy with the service. 512kbps was quite fast when we upgraded from 56kbps PSTN dialup (14.4kbps dialup when we first started… still have that modem too!). These days it plods along, but the 128kbps uplink is a notable thorn in my side with my telecommuting. So we’re looking at ADSL2+.

However, there’s one hitch. iTel is only a fairly small ISP. At the moment they do the noble thing of providing static public addresses on IPv4 for all fixed-broadband customers, but how long will that last? The last thing I want, is to sign up a contract for 12 months, then find out that in 6 months they need to move us behind CGN (Carrier grade NAT) to squeeze in some more customers. That won’t fly for us. I’d ideally like to ditch the 6-in-4 tunnel I have with AARNet and go native, or at the very least, swap it with one terminated at the ISP, but that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon.

At the moment there is only one ISP I know of that offers any sort of IPv6 connectivity. Internode. Kudos to them for taking the pioneering step! I’m seriously looking in their direction. I’m also hoping the NBN that we keep hearing about, is IPv6 enabled… and I’m holding out with the hope that our little suburb might soon be getting the long strands of glass laid down our street. If it’s only another year or so, it may be worth just hanging on with ADSL1 until then.

Thankfully, we do have the 6-in-4 tunnel through AARNet (and my greatest gratitude to them for providing it). There is a growing community on this newer protocol… I’m also happy to report absolutely 0 spam via IPv6… any spam or malware thus far has been via IPv4 … although I know this won’t last. The good news there is that with one unique address per computer (instead of per customer, or worse, per 100+ customers), it should be easier to track down the guilty party causing such Internet shenanigans. CGN by comparison is likely to be a spammer’s playground.

What am I doing about IPv6 deployment? Aside from my small-time tinkering with the network here… any socket programming I do today is at the very least dual-stack. One of my hobby projects is a digital mode stack for amateur radio… if I get my way it’ll be IPv6-only when used on a computer network.

One of my work projects involves interfacing some proprietary software to some power meters using RS-232 and RS-485 to Ethernet bridging devices. Even though the devices themselves are IPv4 only (and will be for the foreseeable future), I’m designing the software to handle IPv6. Doing this, future proofs the software. Surprisingly, I’m finding it easier to just design for dual-stack than it is to develop a IPv4-only application. If you’re building an application today, dual-stack IMHO must be part of the strategy if the application is going to work beyond this decade.

Some have asked about IPv6 on packet… sadly AX.25 packet does not go anywhere near fast enough to make IPv6 (or indeed, IPv4) networking a viable option on packet radio using existing TNCs… however I think IPv6 will, and should, play a much bigger part in amateur radio communications than it presently does… we can’t expect to hold on to the 44.0.0.0/8 subnet for much longer.

To the ISPs that are lagging behind, I say get moving! IPv4 is older than I am! This is especially true of the smaller ISPs… if you don’t move, you will get squeezed out of the future Internet connection market as address space gets consumed. To the nay-sayers who keep telling us that something else will replace IPv4, to you I say get moving… you haven’t got long to invent this magical silver bullet, in fact I say you’ve left it too late.

There are a few reasons why I’m not on FaceBook…

Need

First and foremost, is a matter of need.

The primary reasons why someone would set up something on FaceBook is to enable their friends to be able to locate them on the Internet.  In my case, just about any search engine using either my real name, nickname, or callsign, will lead you in the right direction.  Even then, it isn’t hard for people to trade email addresses by out-of-band means, then pass a URL to a blog site that way.

Next is the keeping track of friends.  Again, plain old email is good for this… so is the telephone.  RSS is a pretty good broadcast mechanism for this purpose too, and guess what, most modern web browsers are able to subscribe to such feeds as Live Bookmarks.  This effectively means your web browser becomes the central switchboard by which you can keep track of what your friends are doing.

As for sharing photos… most blog hosting sites provide a means for uploading photos… a perfect way to share photos.

There’s actually bugger all that I consider worthwhile that can only be done via FaceBook.

Time

These days I’m very busy in my daily life… too busy to sit in front of a computer checking up on online friends.  When I’m at work, I’m at work… I’m not browsing the web for personal pleasure.  Looking up things like FaceBook would be wrong and immoral usage of my employer’s Internet bandwidth.  So I don’t do it.

I can’t very well check FaceBook whilst in transit for two reasons: (1) I ride a bicycle, and need to watch where I am going, and (2) I don’t have any mobile Internet service.  I am usually on the amateur radio bands somewhere whilst mobile, but (ignoring IRLP/EchoLink/Allstar Link/APRS/etc…) you won’t find me via the Internet.  I answer my mobile phone too, but only after pulling over (I need a moment to switch headset cables over).

At home, yes I could be on FaceBook… but I find plenty of other things to occupy my time.  That, and sometimes it’s good to not have anything to do occasionally.

Privacy

FaceBook is controlled by one company, and is a closed system.  Aside from a “we promise not to look”, there is nothing to stop them doing anything they like with the information you provide to the service.  Even if they don’t, who’s to say their system is completely secure?  Lots of people entrusted their credit card details to Sony… Ooopsie!

So what kind of information does one share on FaceBook?  Aside from your name, age… okay, not deeply personal… you set yourself up with that information.  Then what?

You start “friend”-ing people.  You start “like”-ing people and adding them to your list of friends.  You build up a social graph.  Graphs are a mathematical tool for representing relationships between objects.  In this case, the graph’s edges represent some connection (i.e. acquaintance, friend, lover, … etc.) between two people (represented as nodes).  And using all kinds of graph theory, it’s possible to deduce all kinds of personal information about you.

How dangerous is this?  You’re probably thinking… “So what?”  Mark Pesce gave a talk on this at linux.conf.au this year.  If you’ve got a bit of time to spare, you can watch the video of the presentation, or have a read of the full transcript.  In short, a big part of what we do can be explained by what people are doing around us… we have a tendency to mimic those around us.  Knowing the group one participates in, is a pretty good way for someone with ulterior motives to figure out ways in which to manipulate you.

Your social graph is probably one of the most personal things you can reveal.

Keeping in touch

In order to keep in touch, you actually don’t need FaceBook.  Good ol’e email does a pretty good job.  So do blogs.  In my case, I post a lot of what I’ve been up to on this site.  This site broadcasts a stream using a format called RSS.  Guess what, most web browsers today (Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 7+, Chrome, recent Opera…etc) support this in the form of “Live Bookmarks”.  Or you can use an external news agregator… there are plenty to choose from.

Then in your web browser, subscribe to the feed.  In Firefox 4.0, under Bookmarks, choose “Subscribe to this page”.  Earlier releases have a button that appears in the address bar you can click.  Likewise for other web browsers… in fact, often you’re looking for an icon like this:

RSS feed icon (Source: Wikipedia)

Look for an icon like that on your web browser, click it, and follow the prompts.  Voila, you can now track that person through your web browser.  No one else needs to know about it, no need to log in to an extra site, it’s quick and easy.  Need something web-based for when you’re not at home?  There are plenty of web-based agregators.

Ohh, and you can track more than just friends this way.  News websites, companies… all sorts of things can be monitored this way.

But I want to be your friend!!!

Are you going to tell me this wasn’t possible before FaceBook?   Friends didn’t exist before Mr Zuckerberg invented this web-based forum?  Have people forgotten the art of face-to-face contact?  You don’t need FaceBook to have friends.  Give the old-school method a try some day.

zhouman ~ # uname -a
Linux zhouman 2.6.35.7-lm2f-nb #2 Wed Oct 13 00:42:58 EST 2010 mips64 ICT Loongson-2 V0.3 FPU V0.1 lemote-yeeloong-2f-8.9inches GNU/Linux
zhouman ~ # ifconfig sm0
sm0 Link encap:AMPR AX.25 HWaddr VK4MSL
inet addr:172.31.32.1 Bcast:172.31.32.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:256 Metric:1
RX packets:365 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:36 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10
RX bytes:24236 (23.6 KiB) TX bytes:6850 (6.6 KiB)

zhouman ~ # mheard
Callsign Port Packets Last Heard
VK4EA-9 sm0 6 Mon May 16 17:59:12
VK4NRL-9 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:58:40
VK4VP-1 sm0 8 Mon May 16 17:58:38
VK4RAI-3 sm0 9 Mon May 16 17:57:58
VK4TIM-9 sm0 14 Mon May 16 17:57:56
VK4TDI-1 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:57:39
VK4DC-1 sm0 15 Mon May 16 17:57:07
VK4TEC-9 sm0 120 Mon May 16 17:56:08
VK4FY-1 sm0 18 Mon May 16 17:54:38
VK4RMO-3 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:54:33
VK4RGC-3 sm0 3 Mon May 16 17:52:48
VK4RC-1 sm0 8 Mon May 16 17:51:29
VK4FIL-1 sm0 4 Mon May 16 17:46:44
VK4RIL-13 sm0 4 Mon May 16 17:45:43
VK4RBR-3 sm0 5 Mon May 16 17:42:59
VK2RDO-3 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:41:19
VK4RRC-13 sm0 3 Mon May 16 17:36:39
VK2JUB-1 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:34:44
VK4BNQ-1 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:26:58
VK4LDA-9 sm0 2 Mon May 16 17:24:59
VK2POO-9 sm0 9 Mon May 16 17:21:24
VK2XFL-9 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:21:09
VK4RSR-3 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:20:04
VK4IE sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:15:04
VK4ALJ-3 sm0 1 Mon May 16 17:15:00
VK4HPW-9 sm0 5 Mon May 16 17:13:23
zhouman ~ #

Set-up consisted of:
Linux kernel on Lemote Yeeloong, latest soundmodem driver, Yaesu FT-897D, homebrew interface cable plugged into Yeeloong’s onboard sound card, USB serial driving BC547 in interface cable for PTT.

zhouman ~ # cat /etc/ax25/soundmodem.conf
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<modem>
<configuration name="FT897-D">
<chaccess txdelay="150" slottime="100" ppersist="40" fulldup="0" txtail="10"/>
<audio type="alsa" device="plughw:0,0" halfdup="0" capturechannelmode="Mono"/>
<ptt file="/dev/ttyUSB0"/>
<channel name="Channel 0">
<mod mode="afsk" bps="1200" f0="1200" f1="2200" diffenc="1"/>
<demod mode="afsk" bps="1200" f0="1200" f1="2200" diffdec="1"/>
<pkt mode="MKISS" ifname="sm0" hwaddr="VK4MSL" ip="172.31.32.1" netmask="255.255.255.0" broadcast="172.31.32.255"/>
</channel>
</configuration>
</modem>
zhouman ~ #

I’ve shut it down for now, but I’ll give it a bit more work on 145.175MHz tomorrow. Once I get something working, I might set something up using the O2 or one of the Fulongs (probably the latter) and see about getting soundmodem back into Gentoo.

Update: After hand-editing the ebuild to enable APRS support, I can successfully report that not only is soundmodem working, but so is Xastir on my Yeeloong, as can be seen on aprs.fi.

Generic N32 MIPS-III little endian continues to remain unavailable due to an issue compiling Python 2.7, and unfortunately my N32 chroot on the Yeeloong broke when I upgraded glibc (the primary reason why I began doing a generic MIPS3 build on the Qube using Matt’s MIPS4 build).  I will get back onto this eventually.

On other news since the purchase of the MacBook I’ve been able to leave my Yeeloong sit at home running continuously to update the entire system.  Qt 4.7.2 gave me some grief — it seems at least on mipsel, qmake segfaults during the initial build of qt-core …

mipsel-unknown-linux-gnu-g++ -o "/tmp/portage/x11-libs/qt-core-4.7.2-r1
/work/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.2/bin/qmake" project.o property.
o main.o makefile.o unixmake2.o unixmake.o mingw_make.o option.o winmak
efile.o projectgenerator.o meta.o makefiledeps.o metamakefile.o xmloutp
ut.o pbuilder_pbx.o borland_bmake.o msvc_vcproj.o msvc_vcxproj.o msvc_n
make.o msvc_objectmodel.o msbuild_objectmodel.o symmake.o initprojectde
ploy_symbian.o symmake_abld.o symmake_sbsv2.o symbiancommon.o registry.
o epocroot.o qtextcodec.o qutfcodec.o qstring.o qtextstream.o qiodevice
.o qmalloc.o qglobal.o qbytearray.o qbytearraymatcher.o qdatastream.o q
buffer.o qlist.o qfile.o qfsfileengine_unix.o qfsfileengine_iterator_un
ix.o qfsfileengine.o qfsfileengine_iterator.o qregexp.o qvector.o qbita
rray.o qdir.o qdiriterator.o quuid.o qhash.o qfileinfo.o qdatetime.o qs
tringlist.o qabstractfileengine.o qtemporaryfile.o qmap.o qmetatype.o q
settings.o qlibraryinfo.o qvariant.o qvsnprintf.o qlocale.o qlinkedlist
.o qurl.o qnumeric.o qcryptographichash.o qxmlstream.o qxmlutils.o  -Wl
,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed
floatmath auto-detection... ()
/tmp/portage/x11-libs/qt-core-4.7.2-r1/work/qt-everywhere-opensource-sr
c-4.7.2/config.tests/unix/compile.test: line 71: 25542 Segmentation fau
lt      "$OUTDIR/bin/qmake" -nocache -spec "$QMKSPEC" "CONFIG+=$QMAKE_C
ONFIG" "CONFIG-=debug_and_release" "LIBS*=$LFLAGS" "LIBS+=$MAC_ARCH_LFL
AGS" "INCLUDEPATH*=$INCLUDEPATH" "QMAKE_CXXFLAGS*=$CXXFLAGS" "QMAKE_CXX
FLAGS+=$MAC_ARCH_CXXFLAGS" "QT_BUILD_TREE=$OUTDIR" "$SRCDIR/$TEST/$EXE.
pro" -o "$OUTDIR/$TEST/Makefile"
gmake: *** No targets.  Stop.
floatmath disabled.
... etc for numerous other modules.

qt-4.6.3 builds without issues, but this is not sufficient for KDE 4.6.  I’m still investigating.  hyperestraier also fails to build, but only if you have USE=debug set, disable that USE flag and it builds without issues.

Fingers crossed, I can get Qt 4.7 and KDE 4.6 to build, and that there aren’t any issues.  Previously libkjs used to be quite unstable which is one of the main reasons I have not keyworded any release of KDE 4 for MIPS.  Yes, you could dodge around it and have a usable desktop, but I didn’t consider it working well enough for keywording.

Mozilla stuff will need some loving too.  I hope to upgrade to Firefox 4.0 on MIPS, see how that goes.  One of these days I’ll get onto tackling Thunderbird.  Sadly my life away from Gentoo intervenes and thus my plans frequently get put on the backburner as work demands my attention elsewhere.