i386/amd64 d-i images for Lenny, Linux kernel version 2.6.32

I happily release lenny-custom-1230. Have a nice new year day.

• Debian 5.0.3
• Linux kernel 2.6.32
• ext4 support
• firmware support

[Update 16th January] Update ISO file (0116) with firmware files firmware-nonfree 0.22 based. I hope some devices such as bnx2, bnx2x, and tg3 work again now.

Adios Debconf9

I backed home from Madrid yesterday. I had a precious time in this trip.

La Coruna, where was the place I visited first, had a beautiful beach. I was relaxed a long time there and adopt myself to Spain, though sunburn was a bit painful. (hey, I'm molting!) Galician octopus was the best I ate ever. Thanks my friend Kazuhisa.

I stayed at Madrid before/after Debconf. Because it was the second time I visited there, I could behave like a tour conductor for my friends :-P Plada museum, Sophia museum, and Toredo were nice to see. Foods were really nice also.

Debconf9, you know, was the best. I met and talked with many people; old friends, new friends, local people, and so on. Every sessions were fun. i18n meeting was hot. Day-trip provided me hiking, swimming, drinking, and talking. It would be hard challenge to prepare and coordinate for organization team and local staff, but you succeeded perfectly! I'd like to say thank orga, staff, and all attendees. See you!

Oh my...

Yesterday Debconf provisional schedule was announced. Thanks Debconf team for your hard work!

But I understood I couldn't attend some interesting sessions and keysign party due to my schedule... I have to leave Caceres on 29 July afternoon. I made a big mistake about my travel plan.

OK, so I'll try to exchange keysign personally during the conference and watch the talks later when Debconf video team create them.

Working for ext4 support

I had gotten some requests to support brand-new ext4 filesystem from my backport d-i users. Yesterday I implemented it. Download via previous article.

The work was harder than I assumed...

• The implementation on d-i side was mostly done already on d-i trunk by cjwatson and otavio. I appreciate their good job! I merged it to partman-base and partman-ext3.
• Because GNU parted in Lenny didn't support ext4, I had to backport from unstable. Plus, I had to build again some packages to follow ABI change.
• e2fsprogs-udeb in Lenny didn't contain mkfs.ext4, though deb contained it. I backported from unstable for stability.
• grub won't work with ext4. You have to use grub-pc instead of it, if you'd like to use ext4 for root (boot) partition. I left this issue alone and just wrote down FAQ.
• Even you choose grub-pc, it won't boot because initramfs misrecognizes ext4 partition as ext3. You have to append "rootfstype=ext4" option to kernel parameter. I wrote it on FAQ.

i386/amd64 d-i images for Lenny, kernel version 2.6.30 + firmware + ext4 support

For those who would like to use Linux kernel 2.6.30 for installing Debian Lenny, here it is. Enjoy.

• Debian 5.0.1 Lenny based.
• Linux Kernel 2.6.30 (as same as Debian unstable)
• Support IDE disk again. (yes, I hadn't noticed ide-disk renamed to ide-gd_mod)
• pre-located firmware (linux-firmware package will be installed if d-i detects your machine needs it. This image supports bnx2 and bnx2x also)
• experimental WPA support (not tested)
• [update on 28 Jun] Added ext4 support. You can choose ext4 filesystem at partition manager screen. Don't try to use ext4 for your root partition (or see FAQ).

By the way,

My schedule for Debconf9 and vacation

Debconf9 is coming. I'll be there and will have a short trip to Coruna to visit my friend and to Madrid to visit some museums, before Debconf.

• Tokyo-Madrid round-trip ticket (Thai airline): Reserved
• Debconf attendance fee: Paid
• Madrid-Coruna round-trip ticket (Iberia air): Reserved
• Hotel at Coruna: Reserved
• Hostel at Madrid: Reserved
• Madrid Atocha->Caceres train Talgo (23 July): Reserved
• Caceres->Madrid (29 July evening): Not yet.
• Hotel at Madrid for 29 July: Reserved

Anyway, see you at Debconf9! :)

Opensource technology study meeting at GREE

Hideki Yamane and Nobuhiro Iwamatsu talked about Debian Project last Friday at GREE was one of famous SNS providers in Japan. GREE uses Debian GNU/Linux on large scale for its services.

Hideki, is active Debian Maintainer, talked that using Debian was pretty easy and welcomed every contributors. He also described how Debian Project was managing release, QA, and buildd for a large audience.

Nobuhiro, just passed NM tests and is awaiting final DAM's check, spoke about NM process with his personal experience. He is one of Linux kernel upstream developers and has good knowledges about embedded system programmings and device drivers. I hope he passes DAM's check early to improve Debian more.

I met and talked with some people who were interesting in Debian after the meeting. Yes, I enjoyed that time.

Debian GNU/Linux device driver check & report version 2.0

I updated Web service 'Debian HCL - Debian GNU/Linux device driver check & report page' is an easy tool to check and see the support status of your hardware on GNU/Linux, with many improved features.

Integrating the check page and submitted reports is convenience. The vendor tree view will make easier to find models what you'd like to see. Although Searching isn't implemented yet, I think new URL structure is friendly to search engine crawlers. I'll put Google search form on the page after Google crawls.

Handling your submission is semi-automatic periodically. So please don't submit again and again even it won't be shown soon. :)

This service is localized in English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Spanish-Argentina, Italian, Polish, German, Portguese, and Chinese (simplified) at this time, by using your Web browser language information. Because I introduced the GNU gettext system for internationalizing, it's easy to translate and update the translations. You can take template.pot file and translate in your language. If you'd like to translate in your language, please tell me. Have a fun!

i386/amd64 d-i images for Lenny, kernel version 2.6.28 + firmware + WPA support

I bought new laptop, SONY Vaio TypeZ. Because e1000e and iwlagn weren't detected by Lenny kernel 2.6.26, I made a custom image with kernel 2.6.28 for myself. I brushed it smarter yesterday. You can download it from the usual place. Enjoy.

• based on newest stable, Debian 5.0 Lenny
• Linux Kernel 2.6.28 (as same as Debian experimental's)
• experimental WPA support (not tested)
• pre-located firmware (linux-firmware package will be installed if d-i detects your machine needs it)

P.S. I'm planning to attend Debconf9. See you there.

i386/amd64 d-i images for Etch, kernel version 2.6.25 + firmware + WPA support

Yesterday I updated my Etch d-i to use Linux kernel 2.6.25. You can download it from the usual place.

In this version, I merged newest WPA support patch was created by Glenn into netcfg and wpasupplicant (thank you very much, Glenn!). Although I haven't tested yet, I hope it works. Because Glenn already started to collaborate with d-i team about his work, I believe Lenny or EtchAndAHalf will have this cool feature soon.

This kernel 2.6.25 package is as same as one of Debian unstable. I modified the files of kernel-wedge and di-linux-2.6-*. See my SVN for details.

i386/amd64 d-i images for Etch, kernel version 2.6.24 (with security patch) + firmware + wpa_supplicant, 3rd release

For those who care a security vulnerability, I updated my backport d-i to use 2.6.24-4 of Debian unstable. Although I didn't touch other stuffs except modifying to include linux-headers and linux-kbuild correctly from previous release, I list up features again.

• Include Linux 2.6.24-4, fixes security problem.
• Include many wireless drivers and firmwares^*.
• Include atl2, igb, acx, at76_usb, fsam7400 drivers^*.
• Include wpa_supplicant and wpa_passphrase commands. Although there isn't any menu interfaces yet, you can use these tools at 2nd console (push Alt+F2).

^*It is only the installation stage that you can use these additional drivers and firmwares. If you'd like to keep to use them after reboot, you have to do 'apt-cdrom add' and 'apt-get install linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-1-686' (or 'liunx-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-1-amd64', if you're using amd64 architecture).

As always you can take i386 or amd64 images (netinst CD, hd-media, and TFTP netboot) from here. Check FAQ also, especially when you're looking the way of TFTP boot.

i386/amd64 d-i images for Etch, kernel version 2.6.24 + firmware + wpa_supplicant, 2nd release

Today I improved previous version of backported Debian Installer for Etch.

• Include iwl3945 and iwl4965 drivers.
• Include usable wpa_supplicant and wpa_passphrase. I'm sorry but there isn't any menu interfaces yet (even on official Debian installer). You can run these tools at 2nd console (push Alt+F2).

As always you can take i386 or amd64 images (netinst CD, hd-media, and TFTP netboot) from here.

i386/amd64 d-i images for Etch, kernel version 2.6.24 plus firmware, firt release version

Some of you know, Eee PC was released at Japan also. My IRC friend Yamamoto asked me to build Etch installer with using 2.6.24 and atl2 driver for that machines.

Today I release first version of it. This is very early version.

• ported Linux kernel 2.6.24 from Debian unstable version.
• ported Ubuntu driver module package supported atl2, igb, acx, at76_usb, and fsam7400. This package includes a bunch of firmwares also (well, it's still unclear for me. Ubuntu bug#159933). I expect at least ipw2200 works. Although I believe you can use these devices during an installation stage, maybe you'll be not able to use them after reboot. There are packages named "linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-1-686" and "linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-1-amd64" for default kernels in CD. You can install them by "apt-cdrom add; apt-get install linux-ubuntu-modules-\*". (Oh, I noticed I had forgotten to build for other flavors. Will be fixed in next release.)

You can take i386 or amd64 images (netinst CD, hd-media, and TFTP netboot) from here.

Future plan: Includes iwl* and some other missing drivers. Supports basic WPA-personal configuration. Detects and installs linux-ubuntu-modules automatically during the installation.

By the way, some folks started Etch and a Half project. It sounds great idea. My productions will be completely replaced by their work :) [seriously, I subscribed their mailing list a few days ago.]

Micropolis

This game reminds me of my high school days. I had been playing "Sim City" every day.

Although Micropolis will be ITPed by someone (maybe by Debian Game Team) sooner or later, I packaged it for me. If you can't wait an official package, you can take my package (i386/amd64 version) from here. (Today's population was about 23,000. I almost forgot the techniques.)

[ yeah, Miriam Ruiz just ITPed as #460674. Good luck Miriam, you will have hard tasks :) ]

LOOX U50, nice gadget

I bought Fujitsu LOOX U50 ultra mobile note PC last week. This is nicely small and its weight is only ~600g (includes standard battery). Even so it has 1GB memory, 40GB HDD, 11a/b/g Wifi, and bluetooth. My purpose is to use this during short or day trip with my camera.

Although Windows Vista was pre-installed, we Debian guys prefer to use Debian, don't we? Yeah, of course I tried to install Debian :)

• Preparation: 40GB disk is already separated 4 partitions. Primary 1 and 2 are used for internal. Primary 3 (C: drive) is Vista system. Primary 4 (D: drive) is free space for backup and TV recording. I removed Primary 4 and reduce Primary 3 a little by using Vista's disk tool.
• Installation: I tried Etch win32-installer at first. Because RTL8139 NIC couldn't be detected by Linux 2.6.18, installation was failed. So I booted up my custom installer 2.6.23 from USB stick and installed successfully. I created Logical 5 for Debian system and Logical 6 for swap. GRUB supports to boot up from Logical partition.
• Upgrade: After login, my first doing was to update Etch to unstable, a.k.a. Sid :)
• Devices: CPU Intel A110 (800MHz) works well with -686 kernel. CPU scaling (600/800) works also. Wired NIC RTL8139 works. Graphic chip Intel GMA950 displays 1024x600x24 with X.org 7.3 (I'm using even compiz-fusion!). Stick point is recognized as PS/2 mouse. High-definition audio works, volume control dial works. Cardbus CF slot works (my PHS phone data card is detected). SD slot works (maybe).
• Keyboard: This keymap frustrated me. Especially I must push Fn key to input '-' or 'Tab'. I remapped using .Xmodmap, "keysym Henkan_Mode = BackSpace; keysym BackSpace = minus; keysym Zenkaku_Hankaku = Tab". Well, so far so good.
• Hibernate: Unfortunately this machine seems not support ACPI sleep. uswsusp works good.
• Wifi: Atheros works with madwifi. All of I did was just "apt-get install madwifi; m-a a-i madwifi". Easy! I can connect with my AP (WPA-mode).
• Fingerprint authentication: AES2501 is already analyzed. I took files from fprint project and debianized them ( libfprint, fprintdemo, and pamfprint). It's very funny the authentication for login or sudo is done by touching my finger.
• Brightness: Although I could control a brightness via /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness, hot-key seemed do strange behavior. It changed a value when I pushed, but backed 100% soon. As a temporally hack, I made a hook script to change a brightness twice for /etc/acpi/video_brightness{up|down}.sh.
• Tablet (touch-pen): LOOX BIOS provides a selection of tablet mode or touchpad mode. When I changed it to a touchpad mode, Linux detected /dev/input/event1 and /dev/input/js0 instead of /dev/usb/hiddev0. At first I tried evtouch driver and evdev, but I failed. After many try-and-error and GOOGLing, I finally found Simon Funk's solution. He developed 'joytouch' to use js0 as a touchpad. Wow, excellent! It works perfectly! I debianized joytouch also.
• 1-seg TV tuner: One of devices I can't use at this moment is TV tuner. I don't expect it works on FLOSS, and fortunately most Japanese broadcast TV programs are rubbish and vulgar for me :)

Now all devices what I wanted work on Debian. I can't wait coming winter vacation!