Linux 3.16 Released

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.16 over the week-end: So nothing particularly exciting happened this week, and 3.16 is out there. And as usual (previous release being the exception) that means that the merge window for 3.17 is obviously open. And for the third time in a row, the timing sucks for me, as I have travel coming up the second week of the merge window. Many other core developers will be traveling too, since it’s just before the kernel summit in Chicago. So we’ll see how the next merge window goes, but I’m not going to worry about it overmuch. If I end up not having time to do all the merges, I might delay things into the week of the kernel summit, but I’ll hope to get most of the big merging done this upcoming week before any travel takes place, so maybe it won’t come […]

How to Boot a Headless Linux Image on Amlogic S802 TV Boxes (Tronsmart Vega S89 Elite)

As some of you already know, I’ve been playing around with Tronsmart Vega S89 Elite, an Android TV Box powered by Amlogic S802 quad-core ARM Cortex A9r4 processor at 2 GHz. Today, I’ll show how to boot a headless Linux image on any Amlogic-based S802 TV Box from the network. The instructions can mainly be used as a starting point for developers, as it requires access to a serial terminal via  UART, but if you’ve never done it before, the instructions should be easy enough to follow. Everything is loaded from the network, the kernel (via boot.img) is loaded via TFTP, and the rootfs (Linaro ALIP image) is mounted via NFS, so it’s nearly impossible to brick your device using the method provided. Linaro ALIP rootfs comes with LXDE, but at this stage, the desktop environment is not showing, even though my HDMI TV is properly detected by the drivers. […]

Linux 3.7 Release

Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.7: Whee. After an extra rc release, 3.7 is now out. After a few more trials at fixing things, in the end we ended up reverting the kswapd changes that caused problems. And with the extra rc, I had decided to risk doing the buffer.c cleanups that would otherwise have just been marked for stable during the next merge window, and had enough time to fix a few problems that people found there too. There’s also a fix for a SCSI driver bug that was exposed by the last-minute workqueue fixes in rc8. Other than that, there’s a few networking fixes, and some trivial fixes for sparc and MIPS. Anyway, it’s been a somewhat drawn out release despite the 3.7 merge window having otherwise appeared pretty straightforward, and none of the rc’s were all that big either. But we’re done, and […]

How to Transfer files between the Host and Qemu via SSH and NFS

Last week, I wrote a blog post explaining how to copy files to a qemu image by mounting the qemu image in the host. This is only useful if emulated platform does not support networking. If networking is enabled, using SSH (Secure Shell) or NFS (Network File System) is more convenient. Using SSH with Qemu To initiate the SSH connection from qemu, there is actually nothing extra to do as long as you have sshd installed and running on the host. If it is not installed simply run  sudo apt-get install openssh-shell on the host. This will install and automatically sshd. To initiate the SSH connection from the host, you’ll have to redirect the ssh port to an unknown port and start qemu as follow (for overo):

Please refer to Beagleboard Emulator in Ubuntu with Qemu for the detailed instructions on how to setup qemu to emulate beagleboard or […]

Setting Up an NFS Server in Ubuntu

You may need to setup an NFS server on Ubuntu to run and debug your program on your target platform or simply to share media files on the network composed of Linux clients. If you are using Windows clients, you would usually use SAMBA/CIFS, although it is possible to setup an NFS server in Windows as well using Windows Services for UNIX 3.5. Quick Guide to to setup an NFS server in Ubuntu without authentication. Install the required packages: # sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap Reconfigure and restart portmap: # sudo dpkg-reconfigure portmap # sudo /etc/init.d/portmap restart Edit /etc/exports: # sudo vi /etc/exports Add the directories to share with NFS and save the file, for example: /nfs 192.168.1.0/24(rw,no_root_squash,async) will give full read/write permissions to the nfs directory for computer in 192.168.1.0 subnet. Restart the NFS server: # sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart and reload the configuration: # sudo exportfs -a The […]

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