A Wiki where I keep bits of my Car PC project

There’s nothing much there yet, just a few bits and bobs and notes for myself. Once I get started I’ll put some more content.

https://sites.google.com/a/gurukuli.co.uk/car-pc-project/

I’m planning on using either an O2 Joggler and building my own double-din enclosure, or ripping apart the joggler and mounting everything inside a repurposed double-din headunit. The Saab 9-5 headunit apparently outputs line-level balanced audio, so I’ll need some 1:1 isolation transformers for connecting the Joggler’s headphone-out unbalanced connectors. Android is looking like the simplest OS choice, since I don’t want to run Windows, and really want to be able to use Google Maps navigation.

Kensington Smart Mouse Button Reassignment with X11

Changing the button assignments in X is easy, if you’re temporarily using your trackball somewhere:

 

 

xinput set-button-map "Kensington Kensington Expert Mouse" 1 8 3 4 5 6 7 2 9 10 11 12

Getting the settings to persist across USB disconnects or X restarts is slightly more involved. Putting the following in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, or into a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d (in newer OS-es) will do the trick:

Section "InputClass"
 Identifier "Kensington Expert Mouse Button Mapping"
 MatchProduct "Kensington Kensington Expert Mouse"
 MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
 Option "ButtonMapping" "1 8 3 4 5 6 7 2 9 10 11 12"
EndSection

Note that there is a TAB between “Kensington Kensington” in the MatchProduct line, and not a space. If you use a space, it will not work.

Avoid eBike like the plague

what a complete bunch of timewasters. They say that you can send documents to them via email, but if you send anything larger than 4MB (not uncommon when sending license, NCB, certificates, passport copies to prove ID, etc etc etc) their system silently fails!
getting through to their (premium-rate 09 number) call centre is also impossible, they keep you online for three minutes just to hear the ‘menu options’ and then when you finally get in the right queue, they say “sorry, due to legislation we can’t keep you in a queue any more. Bye” and HANG UP!
this company must surely be a fraud, right? Oh no! says Trading Standards; “You didn’t read their Ts & Cs. It’s all in there. Nothing we can do”

Avoid these scammers like the plague.

e

eBike. Avoid them.
What a complete bunch of timewasters. They say that you can send documents to them via email, but if you send anything larger than 4MB (not uncommon when sending license, NCB, certificates, passport copies to prove ID, etc etc etc) their system silently fails!
getting through to their (premium-rate 09 number) call centre is also impossible, they keep you online for three minutes just to hear the ‘menu options’ and then when you finally get in the right queue, they say “sorry, due to legislation we can’t keep you in a queue any more. Bye” and HANG UP!
this company must surely be a fraud, right? Oh no! says Trading Standards; “You didn’t read their Ts & Cs. It’s all in there. Nothing we can do”
Avoid these scammers like the plague.

I Don’t Know…

I dont know why the world throngs for pleasure when eventually what they seek in life, consciously or unconsciously, is happiness!
I dont know why it is so hard to believe that there are some things in life that you just cant explain!
I dont know why Satya-yuga is the best of yugas, the Vedas, the best of scriptures, the Ganga, the best of rivers, Kartika, the best of months.
And,then, you might just as well ask, why is midday the warmest part of the day? Why is midnight the darkest? Why do flowers blossom in the springtime?
Scientific answers might satisfy some people’s need for facts, but only a bhakta, a poet, a musician or an artist can truly explain the reason why peacocks call in such a melancholy way in autumn.So — some answers are according to _siddhanta_, and others according to _rasa_.
In England, Autumn inspires poetry with its delicate morning mists and dew-spangled spiders-webs, golden lazy sunshine and, later, the smell of bonfires and autumn leaves. According to Celtic lore, this is the season when the veil between this world and the ¿other¿ is thinner than normal and it is the season of magic, of witchcraft and sorcery.[1]
But then again, i dont know..
I dont know why the verdant beauty of the trees and bucolic countryside generate a vicarious thrill of our childhood when we almost never took notice of these things when we were actually experiencing them.
I dont know why, in the process of searching for peace we frantically look for peaceful milieu, keeping the inner tumultuous fight intact.
I don’t why it is ok for a woman to cry and extremely weak for a man to do the same.
I don’t know why we are so busy in being a girl or a boy that we forget to be a human.
I don’t know why after an exam we always say we have done our best, when almost always we know that we haven’t given it our100%.
I don’t know why a persons death raises sudden interest in his life.
I don’t know why it is ok to espouse ones thoughts by reasoning and not by feeling.
I don’t know why we are so engaged in reaching the destination that we forget to enjoy the view.
I really do not know why it is always preached and never practiced.
[1] Mrs Vaisnavi Devi Dasi.

Ode to my mother (By Tanu)

Ode to my mother

Oh my darling mother

As I lovingly call you Mee

You are my heart and you are my soul,

No matter how much you

chide and scold.


Your touch is like lilly petals

And embrace like a hearth

Your cheeks are like rosy plums

And body like a maiden at birth.


You care for us in your own way

And shout like Mrs Meera Ghosh :)

There is surely no one like you,

For all the love you bestow.


Mee, you are always there

To read my eyes and lips,

No matter how much I hurt you

You always give me a kiss.


Your cotton-soft body and silky-soft skin

Always provide a safe niche

For me to rest and lean

When life sets me forlon


Mamma,I understand that you have faced many hardships

And that life was very rude and unkind.

But one thing I can surely tell,

Is that, you are God’s most divine child!


You have taught me to be a real woman

For all the qualities you have imbued

Be it keeping secrets or being the buttress of support

Or just simply loving my man to my very core!


Your thoughtful way of packing lunch

And also handing out water

When we all leave for our sojourn

Makes me a very proud daughter!


Mee, in a few short days, I’ll be long gone

And so shall the daily meals and chinese checkers.

But I am sure, the memories will live life long

In the heart of us trekkers!


I still remember how you served doi(yoghurt) in litle kissan bottles

And always dressed us up for school.

The beautiful and punctilious hand-knitted sweaters

Make me so grateful!


The mid-day sun burning your skin

When you set for your irksome tutions

Just to fulfill my never ending desires

Inspire me to pen down a pean!


Mee,you are a very innocent soul

For you actually have a baby’s heart.

Tumi to aamar Mattu aar Meerabai

Are the things I so much admire!!!!

Oodles and Oodles and Oodles of

Love

Manu

State Bank of India vs. LLoyds TSB

So, here we have two banks. Both of which are majority owned by their respective governments. Both of which are old institutions in their countries.

I have an account at Lloyds in the UK. I have been trying to get them to send me statements for my accounts so that I can give them to the British High Commission in Delhi. Their response? “No”. Their response when I ask them to print them in the branch? “No, we don’t do that any more, it’s a new FSA regulation”.

This might be the sort of thing you’d expect them to put in writing if asked, or at the very least put up a sign that says that regulations may have changed. But no. In addition to the fact that they’ve arbitrarily changed all the regulations, the staff are also extremely rude and unhelpful, and are completely unwilling to offer any assistance to a customer of more than ten years. To me, this smacks of the typical profit centric mode of thought that the UK seems to operate under.

The ‘Customer’ is not a customer. If you are an account holder with a high street bank, you are the Product, not the Customer. The Customer is the bank itself, or the bank’s investors. Providing financial services to human beings is no longer a core business for these entities. Core to them is providing profit for shareholders, nothing more.

The SBI staff in New Delhi, on the other hand, were polite, helpful, experienced, and willing to understand my wife’s needs. The woman at the desk took the time to explain things to my missus, and even gave her security tips about being careful with her account details, pin number, etc.

Why is it that a major bank in the UK, supposedly the bankers’ capital of the world, cannot even ‘get’ the idea of being helpful?

Ten Years!

So, gurukuli.co.uk has just had it’s tenth anniversary:

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 19-May-2000
Renewal date: 19-May-2012
Last updated: 24-May-2010

I haven’t even lived in the same country for that long! I’m officially an Old Unix Beard now :-)

Missing NVRAM on generic bcm47xx router (Top Global MB6800)

I’ve been playing with a no-name router i picked up for free from a friend. This router seems to run an OS very similar to OpenWRT (linux 2.4 kernel, busybox, dropbear), though with a few annoying proprietary modifications. I am attempting to make OpenWRT work on this router. It has the following specs:

  • BCM947xx SoC
  • 16 MB memory
  • 8 MB flash
  • ADM9669 switch
  • Built-in RS-232 serial port
  • PCMCIA slot
  • USB Port

Manufacturer’s Spec Page

…Plus the usual assortment of LEDs and buttons (reset, ‘force reload’). I’ve asked the manufacturer for their modified GPL source, but have not yet received a response.

The problem I’m having with OpenWRT, is that I’m unable to get it to detect the switch, and therefore to initialise the PHY so that it can connect to the network, either on the WAN or LAN ports. This seems to be because the kernel cannot find the NVRAM to read the CFE parameters for these devices.

The first problem was that rather than having the 4 mtd ‘partitions’ we’re familiar with, it has *5* including a ‘backup’ copy of the NVRAM. this appears in the 128k before the NVRAM partition, and if an unmodified OpenWRT image is booted, is then misidentified as usable JFFS2 space. Upon rebooting, the CFE will then declare that the (perfectly fine!) NVRAM is ‘invalid’ and will overwrite it with the, now empty, contents of the ‘backup’! I resolved this issue with a quick & dirty hack to stop JFFS2 trampling on the backup:

Index: bcm47xx-flash.c
===================================================================
--- bcm47xx-flash.c (revision 20769)
+++ bcm47xx-flash.c (working copy)
@@ -353,7 +353,7 @@

/* find and size rootfs */
find_root(mtd,size,&bcm47xx_parts[2]);
- bcm47xx_parts[2].size = size - bcm47xx_parts[2].offset - bcm47xx_parts[3].size;
+ bcm47xx_parts[2].size = size - bcm47xx_parts[2].offset - (2 * bcm47xx_parts[3].size);

return bcm47xx_parts;
}
Thankfully CFE is smart enough to recognise this behaviour as wrong, and on the next reboot will replace the contents of NVRAM with an *absolutely* minimal set of parameters (basically, the sdram and cpu clock, and a couple other minor things). From here, I can rebuild the router’s initial config (including network & switch settings) using the output of ‘nvram show’, which I performed in CFE *before* starting to play around with various firmwares. Annoyingly though, the CFE on this device seems to be missing some of the commands mentioned on the Linux-mips Wiki

So, I guess I have several questions:

  1. Why does the kernel not recognise the NVRAM when running ‘strings /dev/mtd3′ works fine?
  2. Do any other devices have a ‘flash0.backup’? if so, which ones?
  3. Can a different CFE from another, similar, device be flashed in place of this one? This device’s CFE version is 1.0.5(build on May 6 2007 09:56:08)

I have attached various useful bits & bobs for comparison below.

Original firmware dmesg output showing the 5 mtd partitions:

Physically mapped flash: cramfs filesystem found at block 1336
Creating 5 MTD partitions on "Physically mapped flash":
0x00000000-0x00040000 : "boot"
0x00040000-0x007c0000 : "linux"
0x0014e144-0x007c0000 : "rootfs"
0x007c0000-0x007e0000 : "backup"
0x007e0000-0x00800000 : "nvram"

OpenWRT kernel 2.6 showing only 4:
Creating 4 MTD partitions on "Physically mapped flash":
0x000000000000-0x000000040000 : "cfe"
0x000000040000-0x0000007e0000 : "linux"
0x000000120000-0x0000007c0000 : "rootfs"
mtd: partition "rootfs" set to be root filesystem
split_squashfs: no squashfs found in "Physically mapped flash"
0x0000007e0000-0x000000800000 : "nvram"

…I’m slightly concerned about the squashfs message. The router boots fine, though.

Response from the GBC Secretary

So, I did eventually get a reply. But it seems nothing is going to be done yet. Ah well. I’ve followed this up, but have yet to receive any response thus far. At least the GBC have admitted the lack of operational ethics on the part of Vedanta.

To: "Seth Tunstall" <sethp@gurukuli.co.uk>
Subject: Fwd: ::: Euro GBC ::: Enquiry
Lines: 91
X-Mailer: COM 3.85.5
X-Com-Textno: PAMHO19048487
Message-Id: <19048487@pamho.net>
In-Reply-To: <42ff07981002070701x6d556cbbgb016ed595140ed03@mail.gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain

Dear Jambavan

Please accept my humble obeisances.  All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

Thank you for your concern, I have also raised questions regarding Vedanta
Resources operational ethos (or rather a lack of it) to the UK Management
Council and to the GBC and am waiting for some official definitive response.
Praghosa prabhu (UK GBC) did respond saying that a discussion on this and
other similar issues should be tabled for the next UK MC meetings.  Thats
all I can say at present. However I will forward your email to the UK MC.
As and when I hear something I will be in touch.

Hare Krishna.

Your servant

Varsana dd

Letter to the Euro GBC representative regarding Vedanta Resources and the Dongria Kondh

The Euro GBC are the ISKCON governing body commission for the Eurozone. They are responsible for ISKCON policy in this area and are based in Radhadesh, Belgium. I’ve written this letter to them to find out ISKCON’s position with regard to the destruction of tribal land, especially considering that Anil Agarwal is a very influential member of the London ISKCON community. I am waiting for a response, which will be published here.

http://www.eurogbc.com

Dear Dina Dayal,

What is the official ISKCON position in regards to Vedanta Resources’ exploitation and displacement of the Dongria Kondh tribe in Orissa, and the mining of their sacred mountain for Bauxite (aluminium ore)?

Anil Agarwal, the owner of Vedanta Resources, is an influential and rich member of the ISKCON community in London, and has his name on the logo of the Krishna Avanti school.

Does the GBC find it acceptable that ISKCON schools are being built using money that comes from the exploitation and displacement of Indian tribal people?

As a concerned devotee, and a member of the ISKCON community, I look forward to hearing ISKCON and the GBC’s official statement in this regard. Please find attached several websites with reference material.

Thanks,
Jambavan