Ashok's Blog

Suspending OLPC activities for a While

2006-11-19T14:42:00.000+05:30

This Wednesday i got the reply mail from moinak and he scheduled the BOSUG met on this saturday.We discussed about FOSS.in/2006 presentation and demo's. I am also there for ZFS demo,but i don't know how good i can perform on that.

Then i discussed with Jeo who is boss for moinak. He told that debugging init is not a easy job. It will take some time to do that and you have to learn so many things to do it in your own. He suggested me to begin with device driver programming and belenix live cd distribution activities which will be helpfull for my OLPC project. His suggestion was great and i decided to follow his words. So, as of now i am in the situation to suspend the OLPC activities and i will start with device driver activities on solaris and contribution on belenix live cd distribution also.

surely i will do some thing for OLPC.

Strange thing with Sun Download manager

2006-11-09T15:48:00.000+05:30

The day before yesterday, i started to download schillix. till now i had 5 attempts with different mirrors, but still i am facing problem on download. i don't know why this is happening?. eventhough i left the system for long hours untouched and my internet connection also in good condition,it showing download speed is "0KBs", and file size as "unknown". still it is not resuming download.

i asked my friends, they were telling that "try once more". so again i will be tring, until i get it.
let see how long it takes.

Debugging init on solaris

2006-11-07T20:11:00.000+05:30

As you know,i was waiting for support from belenix team.
but yesterday also, i didn't get response from moinak. i disappointed very much.
init process giving some error, but not able to solve that. even though i spent so many days on belenix, i don't know internals of booting sequence of livecd? and how it is orgainsed and all?. moinak is the only person can tell that, because he only created it.

i was searching for "/sbin/init" in the live cd which was file actually creating problem and the very first proces forked by kernel, i haven't find in livecd file hierarchy.i think it might be rename to some other file name. if it was, i can simply replace it with my own customized init file by using remastering tool kit. but there was no luck for me.

In linux, there is a kernel parameter called "init=/program/to/path/name", which we can pass at the booting time, so it will be forked by the kernel as the first process, instead of /sbin/init, so we can play like anything for example init=/bin/bash will call bash as a first process instead of /sbin/init.

but i haven't find such option on solaris.

i am planning to ask some other sun guy's.

ATmega8

2006-11-07T20:01:00.000+05:30

Yesterday There was heavy rain, when i went to buy ATmega8 chip for my microcontroller project. so the shops are closed early, i was standing infront of closed shop for long time and finally i returned to home at 11pm with out buying chip :(

so today i started my hunt at afternoon itself, and i finally came to know that this chip not available here.

i have to search in bangalore only, but mostly probably it is possible in next week as i am planning to go there.

will see, i will get or not. if it happens, will continue with that otherwise i have to search some other chip which is compatible with this one.

Hope

2006-11-05T20:52:00.000+05:30

As i am very hungry on belenix, and i want to achieve something on that.
but moinak is very busy persion ya, he didn't find time to spend for me.
finally i got some positive reply from him, and expecting new version of belenix cd for my testing.
he told that he will give tomorrow.
i should be ready to fight with this hardware ;(

but in the meantime i had time to go thru some part open solaris source code..
and dumped the booting sequence thru serial port..

i am really smart know? :(

Second Attempt

2006-10-20T22:51:00.000+05:30

Today,i have tried with cd that moinak gave me on yesterday.

here is the list of results of booting cd..

1. Befault mode booting

still getting the same error, and didn't get the shell

2. No ACPI,Verbose,Debug mode booting

The text printed on the screen are...

module /kernel/misc/zmod:text at [0xfea3d7a8,0xfea41ba7] data at 0xfec9c508
SunOs Release 5.11 version Belenix 0.5 32-bit
CopyRight 1983-2006 sun microsystems Inc. All rights reserved
use is subject to license terms
features:10004d7

using default device instance data
cpuid 0:initialized cpumod:cpu.generic
mem=118140k(0x735f000)
root nexus=i86pc
pseudo0 at root
pseudo0 is /pseudo
scsi_vhci0 at root
scsi_vhci0 is /scsi_vhci
isa0 at root

WARNING: failed to program IO space [0/15/0] BAR@0x1c length 0x20
ramdisk0 at root
ramdisk is /ramdisk

WARNING:Last shutdown is later than time on time of day chip:check date
SMBIOS not loaded (system does not export on SMBIOS table)pseudo-device:dld0:dld0 is /pseudo/dld@0

WARNING: failed to decompress CTF data for pci:failed to decompress CTF data

pci0 at root:space offset 0
pci0 is /pci@0,0

and it did NOT proceed..

NOTE:
The behaviour is different for these two booting options on this CD only and NOT in the belenix 0.5 version

why? any clue?

First Attempt on OLPC

2006-10-12T20:32:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, i tried Belenix on OLPC hardware. it boots GRUB and while loading Belenix, i faced some init script problem and loops infinitely with an error message. still i am digging into solaris source code to find the problem.

Any how, this is my first attempt and succeded.. and i took video also. ;)