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I have recently bought a Toshiba AC100-10D (it was quite cheap because it's now old, but the hardware is still quite similar to that of the new tablets). I bought it with the expections of installing Ubuntu on it (I don't really need Android - I have an Android phone which is good for that purpose, but I'd like Latex, R etc. available on a netbook).

I found some tutorials on how to install Ubuntu, but I didn't really have any success until I found http://salaliitto.com/~gildean/ac100/wiki/phh/ . So thanks a lot to gildean! I would recommend that you follow that guide if you want to install Ubuntu to your Toshiba AC100. At least until Ubuntu 11.* supports the machine better, see e.g. https://launchpad.net/~ac100/+archive/ppa .

Today I got a new Nokia 6300 - my old Sony Ericsson W810i had hard times charging. Of course I wanted to copy my phonebook onto my new phone, but it wasn't as easy as I hoped for - but after a while I found an alternative and easy way.

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Well, for a phone it ain't really that amazing, but in the this (at least yet a while) small world called OpenMoko this is actually a break through for me! I've just made the first call from my Neo1973-phone with OpenMoko. Not through the Dialer or anything that fancy, just by executing AT-commands from the terminal.

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As written earlier, I'm now able to build OpenMoko in a reasonable amount of time due to the purchase of a new computer. I haven't had time to hack that much with OpenMoko in the past week because of a busy week (we made a one-week-project in algebra, so I'm governing Knapsack, Elgamel, group-theory etc. ), but today I had some time to play.

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I've just - briefly - tried QPE (Qtopia Phone Edition) on my Neo 1973. I tried both the image on http://www.qtopia.net/modules/devices/openmoko.php and http://buildhost.automated.it/OM2007.2/?M=D and with two different SIM-cards.

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I had no WLAN (wireless network) card, so I had to buy one in order to avoid the cables all over my apartment. And so I (accidentally) did, a Linksys WUSB54GC. After a few minutes surfing, I found out that it had the Ralink RT73 chipset, yielding an installation of the rt2x00-kmp-default-package:

zypper install rt2x00-kmp-default

I tried with the rt2500 at first, but it didn't seem to work - as far as I read, it's also to another chip-set, so it's not that weird after all.

Besides this I also installed a firmware from http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html (Firmware RT2501USB(RT2571W/RT2671)), but I really don't know it's actually required - and I'm to lazy to find out (it's Saturday!).

Today I received the parts which in total should be able to make up an entire computer - and it did. Or hopefully . No problems during assembling occurred, but the installation of Ubuntu made some trouble. The trouble was connected to the fact, that I bought two disk so that I could make RAID-1. It was quite tricky to get working (the right SATA-channel, Ubuntu installer-version etc.), but it seems that it's finally working. Before explaining more I probably have to list the specs:

• Intel Q6600
• Gigabyte GA-G33-DS3R
• 2 GB RAM
• 500 W PSU
• 2 x WD 320 GB disk
• Misc. parts

I'm not that interested in hardware, only the things it can do for me . The mainboard provides some sort of SATA RAID aka. FakeRAID, which I read was (roughly speaking) a driver to Windows making the software RAID appear as hardware RAID (or something like that). Nevertheless, I decided to just forget that whicky feature and
just go for the "native" software RAID support in Linux (provided by mdadm - it oddly looks like "madam"!).

In the ordinary Ubuntu-installer (ubuntu-7.10-desktop-amd64.iso) mdadm is not enclosed, but it is in the alternate installer (ubuntu-7.10-alternate-amd64.iso) which furthermore guides you thruogh the configuration. So I'll recommend using the text-based alternate installer.

Before that worked, I had to connect the disks to the ordinary SATA-ports and not the fancy GSATA ports. I don't know why, but as earlier mentioned, I actually don't care if it just works the other way.

I actually made me partitioning a bit different that one would normally do. At servers RAID-1 is also able to avoid some system crashes because everything (i.e. also including system files) is mirrored. I only need to get my data mirrored. If a disk crashes I don't mind whether the system does, too, as long as I have my data. Besides that, GRUB is not working with mdX-devices, creating a need for a separate boot-partitioning. Well, a lot of arguments back and forth I came up with this partitioning:

• /dev/sda
  • /boot, 1 GB
  • swap, 4 GB
  • /, 40 GB
  • 275,1 GB for RAID
• /dev/sdb
  • /xenimages, 41 GB
  • swap, 4 GB
  • 275,1GB for RAID
• /dev/md0
  • assembled by the two 275,1 GB sdax- and sdby-partitions making a /home

This configuration mirrors my home directory, but doesn't protect my system files - it's no problem in my case, I'll just remount /xenimages to a bootable / and/or make a fresh install when receiving a new disk. This set-up further more provides two different swap-partitions. Well, it was the best solution I could come up with.

So in a few seconds I'm ready to use my new computer properly. Guess whether I'm going to compile OpenMoko or install Xen as the first thing - I actually don't know it yet! It's certainly a shame that humans aren't able to natively multi-task yet. Maybe it'll come in the next firmware upgrade.

...is not as straight-forward as I hoped. That's of course because I'm not that experienced at developing to Linux-based environments in C - actually my past consists mainly of Windows-developing with C#. There's quite a huge difference - not only in libraries etc., but also the set-up as such.

Well, the C-coding is slowly returning (I've done some C-coding, but not as much as C#), but I'm still having some trouble setting a proper development environment up. That being said, I really haven't got a whole weekend dedicated for that, but the times I've tried to use MokoMakefil and OE's HelloWorld tutorial wasn't successfully. But that'll come later on, I assure you!

But for now, I'm just developing on my desktop, and then I'll try to get a decen (or just running) environment up and running when the time comes.

For just half an hour ago my (hopefully) sweet little new toy arrived! I'm really not going to say much - yet. So I'll just give you some pictures which barely left the camera (click to enlarge):

What an excellent timing receiving such a sweetheart on a Friday!

With the discussion regarding location-based software as a starting point, I realized that the issue regarding persistence was far from trivial. Of course it's a problem in the matter of making areas (as in a set of locations) persistent, but in general persistence of data structures often seems to be a problem, not just on OpenMoko.

Some optimal data structure might be quite a mess to make persistent, which lead to the selection of another data structure.

Still, I haven't read much about this subject in regards to OpenMoko, but I think remembering something about it uses a Evolution Data Server. Well, it's certainly a subject to investigate further - in particular to location-based reminding which I think is very exciting.

Oh, my Neo 1973 should arrive tomorrow! Yeah!