[01:22] <twb> persia: mainly I wanted an arm netbook for the battery life, and so I had an excuse to play with arm
[01:23] <persia> Would you accept a 5" Netbook with a 7-8 hour battery life?
[01:23] <twb> But I've basically been sold on the new AMD64 Atom that came out in December, which has 8 to 10 hours.
[01:24] <persia> What's the mass of a shipping product?  At least for me, grams matter more than architecture.
[01:26] <twb> persia: my netbook's primary job is to connect to an external monitor and keyboard, and run Emacs and SSH to connect to "real" computers (i.e. stuff in the racks) for sysadmin work and for writing code.
[01:27] <twb> It's secondary role is to let me do the same stuff while I'm not at my desk, e.g. when I'm at a friend's place or on a bus.
[01:28] <persia> Well, if you're willing to run Lucid, you can use a USB dock with an arbitrary device to take care of the primary job.
[01:29] <persia> The secondary role becomes more interesting: and then it's a matter of size/mass/time
[01:30] <twb> It'll run Debian, not Ubuntu.  Sorry.
[01:31] <persia> Well, I hope to find time to get displaylink working for squeeze, but I'm not sure I'll finish testing prior to freeze.  It will definitely be in squeeze+1.
[01:31] <persia> But then this isn't the right channel anymore :)
[01:33] <twb> Yeah, I figured I'd just stick my head in to hear what you had to say re. the netwalker
[01:34] <persia> I'm happy with mine, so I tell people who want ARM netbooks that there is one currently in retail and they should go buy it.
[01:34] <persia> I'm not convinced that lots of others will appear in retail if the first one doesn't sell so well.
[01:35] <twb> What was it retailing going?
[01:35] <twb> What was it retailing *for?
[01:35] <persia> EPARSE
[01:35] <twb> (Edited out the wrong word.)
[01:36] <persia> Depends on where you get it.  Somthing like 500 AUD
[01:36] <persia> +shipping / etc.
[01:37] <twb> Blergh.  If it was AUD300 I'd be more interested.
[01:37] <DanaG> wait, arm netboook where? the touchbook?
[01:37] <persia> Yeah well.  This is why the rest of the world has to wait a couple years for Japanese electronics :)
[01:37] <persia> DanaG: The NetWalker
[01:37] <twb> DanaG: we're talking about the Sharp Netwalker
[01:38] <twb> DanaG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netwalker
[01:38] <DanaG> ah.
[01:38] <persia> Nice little box.  I find the positioning of the "A" key a bit frustrating, but otherwise very usable.
[01:39] <persia> Sturdy too: I've watched it bounce down a flight of concrete&steel stairs, and dropped it from ~3.5 meters a few times onto hardwood.  I don't recommend doing this, but mine still works.
[01:40] <DanaG> hmm, does it do mobile broadband?
[01:40] <DanaG> (not that I have a data plan...)
[01:40] <persia> DanaG: It's advertised as doing so with a USB dongle.  Having split my case open, I *think* there's enough space to wedge one inside, but it's a bit of a hack.
[01:41] <persia> (plus you'd be down to one USB port)
[01:41] <DanaG> bah, I'd want mini-pcie.... and you could use it for gps, while you were at it anyway.
[01:42] <persia> Finding PCI or PCIe on ARM boards is *hard*.  I have a collection of ARM devices, but only one of them has PCI, and I'm not convinced it isn't a hack like PCI-over-USB on the boards.
[01:42] <persia> The bus usually isn't there at all.
[01:43] <twb> You should be able to work it out by checking if the chipsets on the board implement pcie at all
[01:44] <persia> I'm pretty sure the i.MX51 series doesn't.
[01:44] <twb> Yeah
[01:45] <DanaG> Erm, most "Mini-PCIe" WWAN devices are really USB-based.
[01:45] <DanaG> And most "Mini-PCIe" SSDs abuse mini-pcie pins for SATA or PATA.
[01:46] <persia> Sure, but if the bus isn't present, you can't expect the pinout to be available to be abused.
[01:46] <persia> At least for the Eee hacks, stripping the case from a USB dongle and sticking it internal seemed a popular solution.
[01:47] <twb> Is mini-pcie that crufty mishmash of pcie and cardbus?
[01:47] <persia> twb: Yes.
[01:47] <twb> Righto
[01:47] <persia> Not quite as confusing as XpressCard, but close :)
[01:49] <DanaG> Wrongo.
[01:49] <DanaG> Mini-PCIe is the internal slot -- equivalent of mini-PCI.
[01:49] <persia> Please share?
[01:49] <DanaG> ExpressCard is the PCIe equivalent of CardBus.
[01:49] <DanaG> Both mini-PCIe and ExpressCard happen to offer both USB and PCIe interfaces in the standard, though.
[01:50] <twb> Sorry, I got confused.
[01:50] <persia> OK.  So mini-PCIe is USB+PCIe and ExpressCard is CardBus+PCIe+USB ?
[01:50] <DanaG> nope, ExpressCard is just hotpluggable PCIe+USB in a cardbus-ish shape.
[01:50] <Martyn> yep
[01:51] <Martyn> convenient too
[01:51] <persia> So the old CardBus ATA hacks don't work?
[01:51] <Martyn> although the cardbus-like connector puts some serious constraints on the types of peripherals you can create
[01:51] <DanaG> And ExpressCard 54mm actually offers LESS space than cardbus.
[01:51] <persia> Martyn: Bandwidth excepted, how?
[01:52] <Martyn> persia : Mini-PCIe can handle larger current draw
[01:52] <persia> Aha!  The EeePC has a *special* *custom* miniPCIe that is PCIe+USB+SATA
[01:52] <Martyn> it's designed for it
[01:52] <twb> persia: which eee is that?  I'll avoid it.
[01:52] <Martyn> Which pins do they overload to get SATA?
[01:52] <persia> Martyn: That makes sense.
[01:53] <persia> http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Research is cited in wikipedia as the reference for the odd custom port.
[01:53] <DanaG> And a bummer with HP: they whitelist stuff, so you can't use the wwan usb-only slot for anything but HP wwan module.
[01:54] <Martyn> must be pins 51,49,47,45,43,41,39,37
[01:54] <Martyn> those are "reserved"
[01:55] <persia> DanaG: But seriously, you shouldn't worry about PCIe if looking for an ARM netbook.  It's unlikely to be implemented in most solutions (I would expect PCIe to only be exposed for "server" type devices (which might include plug-servers and NAS boxes).
[01:55] <Martyn> persia : *cough*  *COUGH*
[01:55]  * Martyn can't say .. but *COOOOOOOUUUGH*
[01:56] <Martyn> (in fact, most people implementing cortex-A9's are implementing Synopsys' PCIe)
[01:56] <persia> Martyn: Really?  That's very encouraging.
[01:56] <DanaG> I saw somebody on #radeon talking about sticking a Radeon on Marvell ARM thingy.
[01:57] <Martyn> DanaG : most manufacturers of multicore ARM solutions are looking at PowerVR
[01:57] <Martyn> although nVidia is getting hot 'n heavy with Tegra2
[01:57] <persia> Does PowerVR have open-source drivers yet?
[01:57] <DanaG> Good luck getting open drivers for that, though.  =þ
[01:58] <Martyn> DanaG : Open drivers now exist
[01:58] <persia> Oh excellent!
[01:58] <Martyn> DanaG : They went through the trouble of creating an ABI + shim just like nVidia
[01:58] <Martyn> so they can publish a binary driver, and open source (linux) solutions only have to implement the shim
[01:59] <DanaG> ah, though, that's not entirely open.
[01:59] <Martyn> Sure, but open drivers DO exist, just not optimized, nor with great 3D accel
[01:59] <DanaG> random link: http://www.techeye.net/software/amd-and-nvidia-bitchfight-over-open-source-support
[01:59] <persia> A shim solution is sufficient to start.
[01:59] <DanaG> ah.
[01:59] <persia> A parallel to the various more-open driver can wait.
[02:00] <DanaG> My criterion for "good" 3D is "can run compiz".
[02:00] <DanaG> =þ
[02:00] <Martyn> hell, there are some OPEN SOURCE drivers that can't run compiz
[02:00] <Martyn> for well supported cards (points at nouveau)
[02:00] <persia> Lots of them.
[02:01] <persia> nouveau can run compiz for some cards.
[02:01] <Martyn> in fact, I can't think of any that can support the full compiz requirements
[02:01] <Martyn> closed source shims do so pretty well
[02:01] <persia> They have their own problems
[02:01] <DanaG> check the last comment on that thread... that's my post.
[02:01] <Martyn> <-- is _not_ biased towards open source.
[02:01]  * persia has a shim-melted card
[02:02] <DanaG> What I call bad: when your binary drivers fail to do anything but segfault the X server -- and have been broken in that way for 2 years.
[02:02] <persia> But shims are sufficiently free to ship, which is the key bit.
[02:02] <persia> DanaG: That's usually a case of full binary drivers, rather than shims.
[02:03] <DanaG> And they've "updated it to support new x servers"  -- but I say, s/support/segfault/
[02:03] <DanaG> =þ
[02:03] <DanaG> anyway, how well does the SGX in beagleboard work?
[02:04] <DanaG> Oh, and OpenGL ES (OpenGL on bare console?) seems like 'black voodoo magic' to me.
[02:04] <twb> Give me a Matrox GPU any day :-)
[02:04] <Martyn> DanaG : That's a pretty good description :)
[02:04] <Martyn> OpenGL ES uses the framebuffer as the base canvas
[02:04] <Martyn> it's not THAT much voodoo
[02:04] <Martyn> but it's hard to grok
[09:30] <persia> StevenK: So, I was just reviewing the actions from last week's meeting, and it appears you and I were supposed to strip armel down to three flavours : *-netbook and server.  Did you already do that?  Can I help somehow?
[09:55] <Guest62340> Hi
[09:56] <persia> hey
[09:57] <Guest62340>  I have installed Mer on my N810
[09:59] <persia> Guest62340: OK.
[10:02] <StevenK> persia: I didn't, no ...
[10:02] <persia> StevenK: OK.  Can I help?
[10:02]  * StevenK peers at antimony
[10:03] <ogra> how are netbook and server *three* flavours ?
[10:03] <persia> ogra: *-netbook
[10:03] <persia> kubuntu-netbook and ubuntu-netbook
[10:03] <ogra> ah
[10:03] <StevenK> Which are currently there.
[10:03]  * ogra still sees no point in kubuntu building as long as kde isnt installable
[10:04] <StevenK> persia: Right, I think it's done, if you want to check
[10:04] <persia> Right.  We want to not have ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop, and ubuntustudio-*
[10:04] <persia> StevenK: I don't know how to check, but if you think it's done, I'll trust you.
[10:05] <StevenK> persia: Dig through cdimage.u.c and see if armel images appear where they shouldn't.
[10:05] <persia> That I can do :)
[10:06] <StevenK> Or if they don't appear where they should
[10:08] <persia> I don't see any ubuntu-server images at all :(
[10:08] <persia> Oh, just build failures.  Nevermind.
[10:09] <StevenK> How do they fail?
[10:10] <persia> DIdn't check that.
[10:10] <persia> But it's for all architectures for the 0301 build
[10:10] <persia> kubuntu-desktop is current on armel
[10:11] <persia> (and shouldn't be)
[10:11] <persia> err, kubuntu-desktop-live (sorry)
[10:13] <persia> In summary, kubuntu-desktop-live needs to go, and ubuntu-server-alternate needs love.
[10:17] <StevenK> I can see kubuntu desktop in the cronscripts
[10:17] <StevenK> NCommander: ^
[10:18] <persia> What do you seek?
[10:18] <persia> I can produce logs from #kubuntu-devel that agree it doesn't belong there
[10:19] <persia> http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2010/02/23/#kubuntu-devel.txt 14:09 through 14:14
[10:35] <ogra> lool,      if [ "$DIST" = "jaunty" ];then
[10:35] <ogra>          VMCPU=""
[10:35] <ogra>      fi
[10:36] <persia> Um, why?
[10:36] <persia> Shouldn't it detect current compilation options or something?
[10:42] <StevenK> persia: Right, fixing crontab, then
[10:42] <persia> StevenK: Thanks.
[10:47] <StevenK> persia: Fixed, and old images purged
[10:48] <persia> StevenK: Excellent!  Now we have good news to report *and* more space on cdimage for the next hungry flavour.
[10:49] <StevenK> persia: Build log for swerver?
[10:51]  * persia gets confused
[10:52] <persia> Aha!  The issue was that the images were *currently building* when I last looked.  They were successful and are now published.
[10:53] <StevenK> Right, so nothing more to do
[10:53] <StevenK> We win, are manly men, etc, etc
[10:57]  * persia waves the torch of victory and ignores the sounds of looting and pillaging
[10:58] <ogra> sooo ...
[10:59] <ogra> what do you guys think about adding a date -s "<date of image build>" to casper for armel ?
[11:00] <persia> Why would such a change be architecture-specific?
[11:00] <persia> I like the idea, but I don't see the point of making it arch-specific at all.
[11:00] <ogra> because it bugs us most
[11:00] <ogra> but yeah, can be generic
[11:00] <persia> No, it really doesn't.
[11:00] <persia> It bugs me *lots* but mostly for i386 images.
[11:01] <ogra> well, PC BIOS batteies are less often broken than having boards that dont set the time on first boot
[11:01] <persia> Oh, you're not talking about the thing that irritates me at all :)
[11:02] <persia> But anyway, yeah, I don't see any issues with it, and don't think it ought be arch-specific.
[11:02] <persia> We know it's at *least* that date.
[11:03] <ogra> right
[11:03] <lool> ogra: Are you pinging me about the VMCPU thing?
[11:04] <ogra> lool, yeah, i did, but i gathered its not needed if we use the netinst kernel for all releases
[11:04] <lool> ogra: Note that I only *flipped* the logic to deal with karmic +
[11:04] <lool> See r30.1.1
[11:04] <ogra> i dropped all release specific kernel stuff now and default to not use devtmpfs in rootstock
[11:04] <lool> http://paste.ubuntu.com/386913/
[11:05] <lool> I changed the logic which only worked for jaunty and karmic to work for jaunty and any release
[11:05] <ogra> that shpould make it work with the lucid kernel everywhere
[11:05] <lool> But we should simply set Cortex-A8 ALL the time
[11:05] <ogra> right, thats what i do now
[11:05] <ogra> using only the netinst kernel
[11:06] <lool> Once the binaries are new-ed, we should have initrd support in that kernel as well -- I hope
[11:07] <ogra> well, doesnt bother me in rootstock atm :)
[11:07] <ogra> its unlikely i'll use an initrd there
[11:08] <ogra> though i could generate one during build if --keepimage is set for people wanting to use one with their VM
[11:09] <ogra> grrr
[11:09] <ogra> evolution still out of sync ... i cant do testbuilds
[11:11] <persia> Just give up on the concept of email.  Adds more time to your day and you never have sync failures :)
[11:11] <ogra> persia, well, then someone needs to fix the metapackages :P
[11:12] <persia> Hrm?
[11:12] <ogra> its not installable atjm
[11:12] <ogra> *atm
[11:12] <persia> Oh, right.  I misunderstoof.
[11:24]  * ogra takes a break
[12:05]  * StevenK throws evolution back to the wolv^Wbuildds
[12:10] <twb> And I thought *emacs* would stress a 1GHz arm...
[12:13] <suihkulokki> twb: building vim takes longer than building emacs ;)
[12:14] <twb> Emacs is "only" eight megabytes and constantly swapping :P
[12:14] <twb> Whereas eclipse is more like eight HUNDRED
[12:19] <jussi01> hi all, http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/arm says the iMX51 is supported, but will it run on an iMX31?
[12:20] <ogra> nope
[12:20] <jussi01> aww...
[12:20] <ogra> the kernel on these images is specifically built for a certain board
[12:20] <jussi01> and hi ogra! :D
[12:20] <ogra> hi :)
[12:21] <jussi01> ogra: right.
[12:57] <ogra> ****************** Reminder mobile team meeting in #ubuntu-meeting in 3min ***********************
[12:58] <twb> We aren't all on 132-character terminals, you know :P
[12:58] <ogra> lol, sorry
[12:58] <ogra> i'll make sure next week its 80chars :)
[13:01] <twb> 80 less your nick, etc.
[13:02] <persia> Impossible to know how much our clients prefix, etc.
[13:02] <twb> But actually my framebuffer is something like 300x120
[13:02] <persia> Jst dropping the *s would probably work
[13:02] <ogra> ah, come on, get a wider screen :) its not like i have a long nick :)
[13:02] <twb> Aren't the **s a dumb way to use /notice ?
[13:02] <ogra> yeah, i'm lazy
[13:03] <twb> Hmm, didn't work: 00:03 /notice #ubuntu-arm Yow!  Film at 11!
[13:03] <twb> Oops, I'd better wrap up before security come to hassle me again
[13:05]  * persia doesn't tend to like arbitrary /notice
[13:05] <persia> (and would go fiddle flags if people started using it much)
[14:10] <twb> persia: using it judiciously is better than it being totally unused except by the freenode devs
[14:10] <twb> (IMO)
[14:10] <persia> I guess.  I just don't really like it.
[21:31] <|nfecteD> anyone know how i can limit how much RAM the beagleboard has avalible... it fails horribly right now when i try to compile larger programs
[21:32] <persia> |nfecteD: You mean limit how much memory is available to the compilation process?
[21:33] <|nfecteD> yeah
[21:33] <persia> The solution I typically use in memory limited situations is swap, but swap-over-USB gets painful quick.
[21:34] <|nfecteD> I know there was a file or something in angstrom where i could change a value from unlimited to something else and it worked :/
[21:34] <persia> You can try playing with `ulimit -v` but it may just make the compiler crash more quickly (depending on the operation)
[21:34] <|nfecteD> USB swap it is then
[21:34] <|nfecteD> i need a bigger SD card
[21:35] <persia> swap-on-sd is a recipe for buying new SD cards :)
[21:35] <|nfecteD> yeah
[21:35] <|nfecteD> same goes for USB sticks i guess
[21:37] <persia> But not for old-style USB rotary disks :)
[21:37] <|nfecteD> i only need to use "swapon /dev/sda" right?
[21:37] <|nfecteD> (after i format ofcourse)
[21:37] <persia> Soemthing like that.  I always put stuff in /etc/fstab and use swapon -a when it's available.
[21:38] <persia> Where "format" means "run mkswap", yes :)
[21:38] <|nfecteD> good thing you know what i mean
[21:39]  * |nfecteD throws 2gigs of swap at the compiler
[21:39] <|nfecteD> fill that up!
[21:39] <|nfecteD> (bastard...)
[21:39] <persia> Build boost :)
[21:40] <persia> (no not really : boost is best built either 1) when really necessary or 2) when one wants to exercise high memory-pressue situations)
[21:41] <|nfecteD> if i could find my USB HDD i'd have 30GB swap!
[21:41] <|nfecteD> SUPER SWAP POWER!
[21:41] <|nfecteD> anyway... isn't there supposed to be some way to set the CPU frequenzy while im in ubuntu?
[22:00] <dyfet> you mean like cpufrequtils?
[22:00] <|nfecteD> i guess
[22:00] <dyfet> I recall using those on debian...
[22:01] <|nfecteD> since i have the ub3rl33t C4 version that can "safely" be clocked to 720mhz
[22:01] <|nfecteD> i might as well use it sometimes
[22:02] <roxfan> o.o http://www.keil.com/ds5/
[22:04] <|nfecteD> god damnit!¤!¤!¤
[22:04]  * |nfecteD curses and swears at the snes9x sourcecode
[22:14] <|nfecteD> boo
[22:15] <|nfecteD> i don't have a cpufreq driver
[22:27] <persia> !ohmy
[22:27] <ubot4> Please remember that all Ubuntu IRC channels share the same attitude of providing friendly and polite interaction with all users of all ages and cultures. Basically, this means no foul language and no abuse towards others.
[22:31]  * |nfecteD sits in the corner
[22:33] <persia> heh :)
[22:34] <persia> Just try to say #('$& instead or something :)
[22:34] <persia> Not much to self-censor, but in addition to other stuff, it keeps our logs free from nanny-filter blocking.
[22:36] <|nfecteD> yeah