Operating Systems Category - Page 366 of 1032 - CNX Software

August 12, 2019August 11, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

MINIX NEO S2 USB-C SSD Hub Review in Ubuntu 18.04 with Khadas Edge

MINIX NEO S1 & S2 are USB-C hubs with the usual HDMI and USB outputs, but also a built-in 120 GB & 240 GB SSD respectively. The company has sent me a sample of each, and in order to test the platform, I decided to do on a Khadas board running Ubuntu 18.04 with LXDE desktop environment (aka Lubuntu). I’ll start by checking out the packages’ content, before going through my experience with the MINIX NEO S2 USB-C hub in Ubuntu 18.04 with LXDE desktop environment. MINIX NEO S1 & S2 Unboxing Both packages are basically identical except for the different color, and one shows 120GB SSD capacity, while the other has 240GB The back side has some more details about the USB-C hub. I’ll focus on the 240GB model since it’s just the same, but around $13 to $20 more expensive, and it offers double the capacity, as well […]

August 11, 2019November 27, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Reading ID Card Data in Ubuntu with EZ100PU Smart Card Reader (Thai ID Edition)

I was asked help with configuring a smart card reader on a government computer running Windows 7, but this made me wonder what would happen if I connected the card reader to my Ubuntu laptop and whether I’d be able to read content from a Thai ID card. EZ100PU Smart Card Reader Let’s have a look at the card reader itself first. It’s a FAST ID EZ100PU smart card reader compliant with ISO7816 standard. That’s the product page of the specific model, but a search for EZ100PU only reveals the manufacturer may be InfoThink Technology based on Taiwan. The USB smart card reader comes with a CD that includes drivers for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and Android, as well as an SDK with a demo program and sample code in C++, Visual Basic .NET, and C#. As we’ll see further below, the Linux driver is not needed as it works […]

August 9, 2019August 15, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 56 Comments

How Do You Handle Backups in Linux? Hardware, Software, Configuration, etc…

Linux EXT-4 File System Corruption & Attempted Recovery There’s a file system corruption bug related to EXT-4 in Linux, and it happened to me a few times in Ubuntu 18.04. You are using your computer normally, then suddenly you can’t write anything to the drive, as the root partition has switched to read-only. Why? Here are some error messages:

[15882.773747] EXT4-fs (dm-4): re-mounted. Opts: (null)
[15898.557605] EXT4-fs error (device dm-4): ext4_iget:4831: inode #2113041: comm rm: bad extra_isize 20100 (inode size 256)
[15898.568305] EXT4-fs error (device dm-4): ext4_iget:4831: inode #2113042: comm rm: bad extra_isize 35148 (inode size 256)
[15898.569774] EXT4-fs error (device dm-4): ext4_lookup:1577: inode #2557277: comm rm: deleted inode referenced: 2113043

[15882.773747] EXT4-fs (dm-4): re-mounted. Opts: (null)

[15898.557605] EXT4-fs error (device dm-4): ext4_iget:4831: inode #2113041: comm rm: bad extra_isize 20100 (inode size 256)

[15898.568305] EXT4-fs error (device dm-4): ext4_iget:4831: inode #2113042: comm rm: bad extra_isize 35148 (inode size 256)

[15898.569774] EXT4-fs error (device dm-4): ext4_lookup:1577: inode #2557277: comm rm: deleted inode referenced: 2113043

What then happens is that you restart your PC, and get to the command where you are asked to run:

esfsck /dev/sda2

1	esfsck /dev/sda2

Change /dev/sda2 to whatever your drive is, and manually review errors. You can take note of the file modified, as you’ll likely have to fix your Ubuntu installation later on. Usually the fix consists of various package re-installations:

sudo apt install --resintall <package-name>

1	sudo apt install --resintall <package-name>

It happened to me two or three times in the past, and it’s a pain, but I eventually recovered. But this time, I was not so lucky. The system would […]

August 8, 2019August 8, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

Rock Pi 4 SBC Runs GNOME & KDE Plasma using Panfrost Open Source GPU Driver & Wayland

One of the highlights of Linux 5.2 release was support for two new Arm Mali GPU open-source drivers, namely Lima for Mali-4xx GPU, and Panfrost for the Midgard Mali-T6xx/7xx/8xx series, and the more recent Bifrost Mali-Gxx GPUs. Collabora worked on the release and was donated a few Rock Pi 4 boards from Radxa directly to work on the project. For those who are not familiar, Rock Pi 4 board is powered by a Rockchip RK3399 processor with a Mali-T860MP4 GPU that is supported by Panfrost open source GPU driver. The company managed to have Debian 10 Buster running on Rock Pi 4 using 3D graphics acceleration thanks to Panfrost drivers on both GNOME and KDE Plasma desktop environment, as well as Weston Wayland compositer. The good news is that you can build Rock Pi 4 images by yourself using Debos with the following commands:

git clone https://gitlab.collabora.com/rockpi/rockpi4
cd rockpi4
docker run --rm --interactive --tty --device /dev/kvm --workdir /recipes --mount "type=bind,source=$(pwd),destination=/recipes" --security-opt label=disable godebos/debos --scratchsize=8G rockpi4.yml

git clone https://gitlab.collabora.com/rockpi/rockpi4

cd rockpi4

docker run --rm --interactive --tty --device /dev/kvm --workdir /recipes --mount "type=bind,source=$(pwd),destination=/recipes" --security-opt label=disable godebos/debos --scratchsize=8G rockpi4.yml

Alternatively, you could directly download […]

August 8, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Samsung Galaxy Book S Snapdragon 8cx Laptop to Launch soon for $1,000

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx was announced as the first Snapdragon processor specifically designed for connected mobile PCs (aka laptops with cellular connectivity) last December. Earlier this year we got confirmation 8cx would support 5G connectivity as an option, and in May, we got news Lenovo Limitless 5G laptop was coming and got some benchmarks showing Snapdragon 8cx with performance similar to an Intel Core i5 Kaby Lake-R processor (15 Watt TDP) while offering much longer battery life. It’s Samsung turn to announce their Snapdragon 8cx laptop with Samsung Galaxy Book S that will be available this fall for $999 and up. Samsung Galaxy Book S specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform with eight 64-bit Armv8 cores in two clusters: Kryo 495 Gold cores (Cortex-A76 class) @ 2.84 GHz + Kryo 495 cores (Cortex-A55 class) @ 1.8GHz ; 7nm process; 7W TDP System Memory – 8GB RAM (LPDDR4X) Storage – […]

August 6, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments

TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers Benchmarked on Linux SBCs

TensorFlow Lite microcontrollers benchmark linux SBC

Dimitris Tassopoulos (Dimtass) decided to learn more about machine learning for embedded systems now that the technology is more mature, and wrote a series of five posts documenting his experience with low-end hardware such as STM32 Bluepill board, Arduino UNO, or ESP8266-12E module starting with simple NN examples, before moving to TensorFlow Lite for microcontrollers. Dimitris recently followed up his latest “stupid project” (that’s the name of his blog, not being demeaning here :)) by running and benchmarking TensorFlow Lite for microcontrollers on various Linux SBC. But why? you might ask. Dimitris tried to build tflite C++ API designed for Linux, but found it was hard to build, and no pre-built binary are available except for x86_64. He had no such issues with tflite-micro API, even though it’s really meant for baremetal MCU platforms. Let’s get straight to the results which also include a Ryzen platform, probably a laptop, for […]

August 6, 2019 by Stephen Vicinanza - No Comments

Arm Releases Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0 Platform with Greater Automation

Arm has announced its latest version of Pelion IoT Platform, a no-upgrade needed platform Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0 a SaaS with an automation engine. Previously, we reported on the Sigma Delta Technologies modular devkit that was designed to work with the cloud-based Arm Pelion 1.0 device management service through the Mbed OS, focused on IoT development. The Pelion Connectivity Management 2.0 adds a level of automation that the Pelion 1.0 didn’t have, but that the company felt the customer base in the IoT industry wanted. The new features expand on the Pelion platform, through the Mbed OS, which helped the platform expand through cloud-based management services. The loudest voices in the ever-expanding and transforming IoT industry have said that automation is the key to removing barriers that allow IoT to scale. Pelion 1.0 already offered a single, cloud-based connectivity solution for managing IoT devices. Pelion 2.0 allows IoT devices to […]

August 5, 2019 by Stephen Vicinanza - No Comments

IBase IBR210 i.MX 8M SBC Targets Multi-Display Digital Signage

The latest release from IBase is a single board computer that seems to be designed for the mass business markets, especially in signage. The IBR210 is a 3.5-inch (147 x 102 mm) low-power multimedia SBC based on the NPX ARM Cortex-A53/Cortex-M4 i.MX 8M processor that comes in either a dual or quad-core running in the 1.3 GHz to 1.5 GHz frequency range. The unit was announced on August 1, 2019, but as of yet there is no pricing information. The GPU is a Vivante GC7000Lite/GC7000VLX, and an integrated Cortex-M4F real-time core, in the i.MX8M. Although for the i.MX8M Mini is a faster and newer SoC, the i.MX8M supports 4K video and HDR. The system runs Android 9 or Yocto v2.5 Linux, with up to 3GB soldered LPDDR4 and up to 64GB eMMC. The video output supports 4K via HDMI 2.0, while there are 2 USB 3.0 ports. The board supports […]