If you have linux system without graphic chip?

There is solution for GUI on it, especially if your platform is X86 compatible!

It is QT embedded that I am talking about. And how does it work? Framework can be compiled in such manner that applications can run as stand-alone VNC servers. One aplication initiates server and others coexist, or every application runs it's own VNC server instance on succesive port number (5900, 5901 etc.).

And it works! I have just compiled latest debian release working as text-mode-only system, have built qt embedded, all under two hours, run application as VNC server, connected with client from another system and success!, application is alive and running.

Please see this page and do check out!

We were dying to try this approach for SSV's DNP9200 modules, but compiler is not on QT's list of supported platforms. Misfortune indeed!

I am however developing something similar - remote GUI over network protocol - very fast and secure (SSL encrypted on demand).

Till next time...

Problem solved - SSV linux embedded works as new

My mistake!

I despered attempts to increase free space on file system I copied /bin folder from rot partition onto second disk - compact flash.

It is strange however, that all worked - even after couple of reboots.

Mouse is now working also. psmouse driver should be loaded, not just usbmouse.

Regards,

Marjan

Shame for Apple

I live in slovenia. My country is a member of European Union. It is located between Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, countries that are more known then ours. Why is it so, I will not discuss here.

I like Apple, allthough lesser latley.

It looks however, that Slovenia does not exists for Apple. Or better to say: for Apple, Slovenia is somewhere in Sahara desert. Near Timbuktu (I am sure that for Apple Timbuktu is more known than Slovenia).

Why do I think so?

• Slovenian people cannot purchase anything from iTunes with exception for applications for iPod.
• after nearly two years since its apperance, iPhone still cannot be purchased officialy in Slovenia.
• It is funny, that computers, ipods, and other stuff can be bought with ease.

This is something very mysterious , because there is are no apparent reasons for those statements above. I cannot ask apple directly, and apple shops (wannabe stores) in Slovenia don't know what to answer. Same goes with our two main mobile phone distributors. Allthough there was a mess with 'ipod batteries which owner cannot replace by him or herself, which is illegal in this country'...

Who is to blame? Apple's revenge for some unknown reason? Or is it so, that in European union 'we are all equal', but some of us are little bit less? Or is it simply my country idiotism? I still don't know.

Perhaps it is time to get out of equality?

Problems with SSV eSom development kit

Looks like I screwed up something; after my experiments to make USB mouse alive, linux suddenly gave up booting, saying that kernel cannot run init. I passed location of init explicitly, but kernel was still unable to start init.

I am still waiting for response from SSV, but I wanted to continue with experimenting. So I installed debian etch from CD, drive was connected on USB.

Installation went fine, but I installed console-mode only, no X11 server and desktop.

First I had to make network alive. I had to recompile r6040 driver (orignal kernel had different version tag and I was not able to insmod driver into new installation). This is well described on internet.

So, internet was accessible. It was time for X11. apt-get install xorg took care of that.

Touch panel and video card (Volari) driver? I copied them from original installation and now all is working, including USB mouse, touch panel, and USB keyboard.

System is far from optimized (there are many obsolete programs installed), but this was only test to check how GUI works. Remember, system has only 180MB RAM, so KDE or GNOME are out of question. OpenBoy and ROX were installed again and they work. Also, full console mode is available, so... Usefull, usefull...

Best regards,

Marjan

Linux embedded GUI developers kit is now only 250EUR

You should realy check out this offer! Price is now halved!

I have described testing and my first impressions of the system being offered here.

Marjan

Certificate generation: problems with keytool on linux

Have you every tried to generate self-signed certificate but you got mysterious errors like 'java.lang.io:invalid character'? I sure did. And I solved it only yesterday.

What was the cause? Java. By default, there was some strange version of java installed on our company servers, and java and keytool links in /usr/bin folder were pointing to a location somewhere in /etc.

When I deleted those symbolic links, downloaded java from sun and installed it (into (/usr/java folder by default), and relinked java and keytool from /usr/java/java_version/bin into /usr/bin folder, certificate generation and signing began to work as they should.

Hope this helps anybody.

Yours trully...

Linux embedded GUI with X server and desktop

I have noticed many linux embedded systems with GUIs on Embedded World expo this year. And today I have tested this beast, which is composed of a PC motherboard-in-chip with RAM, FLASH and BIOS chips.

In original, GUI is implemented with X11 server and JAVA (1.6) which is using X11 library for direct communication with X11 server. On boot, java demo application is started where some capabilities of the system and it's settings are presented. Distribution is standard x86 debian etch. You have nearly 500MB of free space by default, so installing window manager (openBox) and desktop (ROX) was not a problem.

It took me a day or so to reconfigure it as I wanted it to be. And here is final result after reconfiguration:

openBox window manager with ROX desktop.

Now desktop is loaded automaticaly, USB keyboard works (mouse not yet), and there is still 200MB space left. I activated compact-flash interface and connected a 4GB card, so there is more than enoguh room left now...

Yes, linux GUIs have arrived. Windows CE, watch out!

Best regards,

Marjan