Looking for my next technical venture

My regular readers know that I used to be an HP-UX admin until a few months ago, and I threw the towel on my sysadmin career.

I'm left with an interesting-enough IT-related job at work, but I can't blog about it easily. The work I'm doing cannot be easily contributed back in a generic way. And the technologies I'm learning are mostly specific industrial stuff and I don't think anyone would be interested in reading about this. Case in point: Is there anybody here, expect perhaps me, interested in IRIG-B ? Yeah, I thought so.

So I'm slowly investigating where I should spend maybe 2 hours a week learning the ins and outs of a new technical thing, and possibly start contributing to the community in whatever means I can, once I feel good enough with it (which might end up taking years). Since I work with embedded devices at work, I've been getting interested in the embedded market and it looks like my next venture might be with OpenWrt but as I don't have many practical uses for it at home, I'm still not sure.

I just found out that a smaller-than-netbook device named běn NanoNote went into production recently, and it runs OpenWrt. What is special with the NanoNote is that both the software and the hardware schematics are completely open designs. At 99$, it's as cheap as it can get. It's almost the same price as a dumb HP digital picture frame I purchased a few days ago, yet I can do whatever I want with it.


Whatever I want with it... I've been spending half an hour staring at the NanoNote specs and pictures, thinking about what I could use it for. Remember that it's very limited in memory and flash, and you can't fatten it up with thousands of bloated applications. In our iPhone/Android era, I simply don't know what people would think of this. But I'll admit it has one advantage against smartphones up its sleeves: it is cheap, and can be mass-produced unencumbered by patents and legal restrictions (at least, I think so).

One can only hope that someone smarter than me will invent a proper use for this device.

O.

What running backfire on a WLI-TX4-G54HP *really* looks like

The 10.03 release of OpenWrt is named "Backfire", which is a cocktail made of the following ingredients according to the login banner:

I happen to have these three drinks at home, so I fixed myself one to celebrate yesterday's experience with this device. Here's what it looks like, with a WLI-TX4-G54HP:

I thought it would have been a three-layer drink, but it gets mixed up quickly in tha glass. I never tried a Backfire before, and it does taste good. Both in the glass, and in the router.

O.

Running OpenWrt on a WLI-TX4-G54HP

I have an on hand a Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP. This is a wireless-to-ethernet bridge. What that bridge does is acually the reverse of an access point: it lets you plug any device that doesn't support wireless, such as an old Xbox, and connect it to a wireless network. I actually used it with my locked-down corporate laptop which had its wireless fuction "deactivated for security reasons". :-)

I was thinking of purchasing a WRT-54GL or an Alix board. The WRT54GL, being a hobbyist device, is pricey for what you get (even on eBay) and I was hesitant. Since I had that Buffalo bridge doing nothing, I thought that I might as well hack it with an alternate firmware and see what I can do with it.

The WLI-TX4-G54HP is not specifically documented as runnable with a third party firmware, my take is that not many of these bridges have been sold so nobody reported it. Yet I found some specs hinting me that it was running on a Broadcom 5352 which is the same as the chip used in the WRT54GL. It also has the same amount of RAM and flash, which is a good thing. So sure enough, there were some Buffalo routers based on the 5352 that were officially supported by OpenWrt, but no mention of the WLI-TX4-G54HP. I decided to take a chance and flash it anyway. And it worked:

The only method of flashing OpenWRT on this device is to use the TFTP method. There are no signed firmware available that you can install from the router's webpage. It worked on my first try using tftp.

That's it for now. I'll do some more tests as time permits, and will see how I can submit that device in OpenWrt's compatibility lists.

Why OpenWrt? And why not Tomato or DD-WRT? Because from what I've seen until now, OpenWrt seems to be the most "open" solution available. All source code is available and GNU licensed. Furthermore, it has a lot of command-line interfaces and is targeted to experienced Linux admins.

N.B. If you're running Windows 7, you'll notice there is no longer a tftp or telnet client included as with Windows XP. Look here for a quick fix to include them:

http://www.leateds.com/2009/telnet-for-windows-vista-windows-7/

O.

Thoughts on NTP and a possible homebrew project

After two months without working with UNIX I'm already missing it, and I'm looking for a project to have fun at home and remain technical -- all I do at work is using Word and Excel, and it's starting to make me crazy.

After accumulating them for over 20 years, I recently gave or threw away most of my computer parts (which included two vintage 5 1/4 drives, what a shame). The only PCs remaining are various laptops which are used by my family. I also have a rock solid m0n0wall appliance hidden in my utility room, and I don't want to zap it right away because all my network depends on it.

Those who know me well are aware that I've had a personal fascination for years with NTP. Being a licenced ham operator, building a public stratum-1 server synchronized to CHU using Linux's CHU driver would have been a kickass project to undertake 10 years years ago, with the satisfaction later down the road of contributing to the NTP pool when it became mainstream. However, owning a fixed IP address is costly, not counting bandwidth, and limiting the usefulness of a time server to my own internal network wouldn't give me much. And what's the purpose of using CHU or WWVB when you can sync using a GPS anyway; the only situation I can think of is if you can't have a clear path to a satellite, or need a cheap solution to extract the time from a reliable source. That's the premise those nice radio clocks that set their time automatically are built on.

My second fascination is with embedded devices. They don't consume much power, they're small and fun to work with. The cheapest way to own one to play with would logically be to buy a WRT54GL and flash it with a third party power-user firmware such as OpenWRT. However, the WRT54GL is based on old technology (2002), and thus fairly expensive for what you get. To add basics such as a serial port, you need to crack open the case and solder wires. Fixed storage is limited to 4Mb, that's not a lot of space in 2010 numbers. Bottom line, using the WRT54GL for a homebrew project can get expensive and cumbersome quickly, and paying big bucks for an underpowered device doesn't excite me much. Thus, I'm almost ready to purchase an ALIX 2d13. It's around double the price of a WRT54GL when you count shipping, a case and a CF card. But but it packs a LOT more power and expandability and this embedded device should be able to offer enough power to last 10 years.

One thing I was thinking about is to combine both by adding a soundcard (miniPCI or USB) to the ALIX board, plugging in a shortwave radio, and building a homemade CHU-compatible NTP time server. And why not try WWVB as a "part two". It could have been used in areas where satellite is not accessible. But I quickly found out I wouldn't have been the first one to think of this -- Meinberg already has one. Their only drawback is that it's fixed to one station (they're German, so of course they offer one synced to DCF77). But once your choice is made, you can't change it.

So back to square one. I won't invest tons of money to recreate what has already been done. And this is where I'm at, as of today, with my research on embedded x86 devices.

I think I'll end up building a generic server on the ALIX. Some tasks such as PXE installs don't seem to be well documented on this platform, and I think that testing and documenting a PXE environment could be of benefit to whoever has a bunch of these to flash. We'll see.

Take care

O.