Robert Small, The blog thereof.

The Linux GPS project has been started, it’s aimed at providing useful information about Linux related GPS projects and how to get GPS devices working correctly with Linux. I have a CF based Holux GPS device and a Bluetooth/USB based Holux device, I’ll provide as much information about these as possible.

We hope to provide information on the protocols we come across and the ways they can be made to ‘play’ nicely with Linux. In the end we may develop programs to provide unavailable features to Linux users. Although there are several projects which seem interested in providing GPS support for Linux they seem to lack a central place for a user to start, a place for you to pick what you need and get everything working; Linux GPS is being developed with this in view.

www.linux-gps.org

Your support would be appreciated.

Kind regards, Robert.

This is laptop-centric, desktop users will have a far easier time in general.

I’ve just done my second hard drive replacement on a laptop, I’d never had cause to do them before and everyone who’d mentioned it had warned me it was laced with peril. It would seem that they were wrong. Both IDE* drives were replaced with relative simplicity, I’ll explain how.

You’ll need:

• A 2.5 inch IDE adapter or caddy.
• Cables which come with, usually USB.
• A blank CD.
• A dog, children, lunch, or similar distraction.

What I tested this with:

• Adapters/Caddies:
  • Generic IDE 2.5 inch caddy, USB power and data.
  • Generic SATA 2.5 inch caddy, USB power and data, only for a little data removal, no copying but should work just as well.
• Partition types:
  • ext2
  • ext3
  • linux swap (with resume image)
  • fat16
  • fat32
  • ntfs
• Operations:
  • Copy, paste.
  • Copy, paste and resize.
  • Standard checks.

So, firstly you want to burn a copy of the gparted livecd onto the CD. This CD contains the tools to do all the work we’re intending to do. Now you must take your old hard drive out of your laptop and put it in the caddy/adapter, don’t plug it in yet. Take the new hard drive and put it in your laptop, put the CD in the drive and boot to it.

You’ll be asked a few regional questions, answer them and wait for the gparted screen to show. When this shows plug in the caddy/adaptop and for some, turn it on. Tell gparted to refresh the devices, it’s under the first menu. In the right at the top of the window there’ll be a drop-down list of devices, select your external caddy (most likely the second).

At this point I should mention that when you’re copying data things might break, it’s unlikely but possible. Don’t blame me, blame Canada.

Simply right click the partitions you want to copy over (select copy) then select your new drive and paste them. When you do this you can actually resize them, a useful function as most likely you’re putting in a larger drive. Make your / or OS partition bootable using the flags dialog.

Windows users will probably want to use their install disk to ‘repair’ their installation, Linux users can chroot into their / partition and do a grub-install hd0 to create a new mbr.

There are ways to make this process slightly better/easier but I’m giving you the basics of a GUI based one for lazy people like myself, remember to read manuals and keep a computer with internet access nearby.

Kind regards, Robert.

* This process would be identical for SATA, just pick 2.5 inch SATA adapters insted of IDE.

Written on the plane on Nov 2nd.

Airports are interesting places. As a man who’s rarely travelled abroad they posses a curious attraction. I hate security, I really hate being put though all the things that they deem necessary to make sure that you’re not a terrorist or maniac. Being entirely mad I always wonder why they let me through without question, the world is most certainly a strange place. As I write this I’m directly over Belfast, or so the GPS tells me, Several thousand feet above it I admit, but still above Belfast, I don’t feel anything special because of this, I suppose I should really.

I know a fair few people who’re scared of flying, I am not. I’m not really scared of airports, turbulence, flying meals, Dutch, or English security; what gets me is American security. I dislike being bullied, I dislike being made to feel scared and suspect, I dislike American airport security. My experiences have, on the whole, been OK, I’ve never been shot or had anything confiscated and I’ve never seen anyone shot or confiscated; my gut feeling dislikes being involved with people who refuse to look me in the eye and carry a gun while looking rather bullying. It’s strange, I’ve never actually had anything bad happen but I just don’t like their attitude.

I don’t like DVDs which contain advertisements telling me not to download them and I don’t like people requesting to ‘mark’ my receipts. I am not a thief, please stop treating me as such

I’m somewhere around half way through the second flight now, I don’t find it the most enthralling pastime but between watching the in flight TV and considering life my time has passed reasonably well. More fortunately I have no worries about my laptop giving out as I have two extended life batteries and three standard ones, today a long time of computer life tomorrow the world! It also helps that I’ve done a lot of work on making my laptop as energy saving as possible, It currently is using around 8.4W, this includes some (a little) disk usage and a fair bit of keyboard usage. I have all my cunning plans to create marginally better laptop yet to implement, the unfortunate fact is that the X31 only has one PCMCIA slot and one CF (CompactFlash) slot; this is a perfect amount for one GSM/UMTS modem and one GPS device, leaving no space for a CF boot card. Other cunning plans have involved putting my swap space onto CF or moving my log and tmp directories onto one, this all relies on a CF card and I like my GPS. Some of you may suggest a USB based solution, but this would also eat power and eating power is bad.

Still, around eight watts is a sensible usage and provides me with many hours using my dock and spare batteries, what’s more I have TuxOnIce working nicely and can switch between batteries without even bothering to reboot! Life is wonderful, well, maybe not wonderful but at least mediocre.

I’m currently passing over Greenland. I love the Dutch and their language, and their airlines. They’ve provided me with a ‘vegetarian pasta’, I didn’t really mind what the pasta had eaten, but it tasted very nice. KLM food generally is nice, they provide me tomato juice and pepper to go with it, they provide hot towels - i have to provide the hands to use them, they provide a nice meal with real cutlery. In fact I’m not that sure that I’m that far from being at home and in comfort. That is if it weren’t for my nose. My nose feels like it is likely to explode, and my neck on the same side is echoing the emotion, I presume this is some issue with the pressure up here.

To distract myself I’m analysing the scientific impossibilities within the dramatisation of Harry Potter, I personally have preferred the spin-off comedies.

I started using TuxOnIce when I switched kernel’s to the kamikaze sources. I’ve been doing a few things to try and get the best power usage out of Linux and my IBM X31 possible, TuxOnIce seems to do an excellent job suspending and resuming my entire OS. Without giving it any extra kernel parameters and only changing a few options within the configuration. For those of you who haven’t met TuxOnIce, it’s the new Suspend2.

Some of you may know that I’ve recently purchased an IBM X31 and that I’ve been trying to get the best battery life from it possible. One of the things about this is not having to restart whenever you have to change a battery, hibernation as it was dubbed by the windows developers is a useful trick for this. I can wait till my battery is almost run out, hibernate, change batteries, then start up again and resume where I left off. This can be done in a short enough time to preserve a net connection and not ping out on IRC! I’ve actually considered creating a ‘blank’ suspend image which has the main core of the OS and the DE loaded already and simply resuming to that instead of ever starting a new session, the problem with that would be resuming from a different partition when I’d actually suspended. I’d also have to create a new version of this image each time I updated my kernel or certain bits of core software, this will take some thought before I decide to go into it but it does provide something for thinking about.

I’m intending to build my father a media centre, this will (of course) use a Linux core and a probably a MythTV front end. This project would greatly benefit from a suspend image booted from a CF card, in fact, it would be almost instant boot and instantly be usable from where it last was. This might be a method of producing a very fast unalterable distro, your entire filesystem could be on ram-disks and your entire operating system could be stored on a suspend image, all you’d need is an initrd image and a kernel. The entire system could be updated by a bootable dvd which simply replaces the suspend image. If anyone has any comments on this then please do leave them as I’ve become interested in the concept within the space of writing it. Before I get attacked for breaking freedom and closing an OS, it wouldn’t be closed at all, the suspend image could be disassembled and edited with absolute ease; to prevent this some for of checksumming or signing would have to be implemented and I would not support that. Tell me your thoughts.

I used to use Suspend2 when I first experimented with Gentoo a few years ago, now I’ve returned to it for my IBM X31 I’ve resumed my interest (pun not intended). Back then I was looking to completely replace windows and show my school that it was possible. Although I proved this to myself they were still cynical and blamed every problem on Linux, even when the camera refused to work on their windows PC’s. There are none so blind as the willing. I do find it both sad and somewhat frightening, people believe what they’re told by the people they believe are right; even after being shown categorical results to the opposite. I’m rambling.

Do leave my any thoughts on the suspend image based OS.

Kind regards, Robert.

I will be working on a new V8d Org project, Linux GPS. This is a project designed to build an almost complete compatibility list with full instructions how to get all the devices working with your chosen distribution. Membership and readership will be free.

We will be using a mixture of a wiki for the main information and forums for threaded conversations about what’s going on. Lee is working on the design of this site at the moment, the process simply is to pick two pieces of standard software to be integrated together with the desired result.

We will also be providing a list of software which uses GPS and the role it takes, if we see any major gap in the software packages then we will attempt to breach this gap to provide a complete experience for the Linux user. For those interested I do intend to support and involve the OSM (OpenStreetMap)  community and their work in both the software and the information.