Bodhi Linux ARMHF RootFS

If you've been following my blog (or my updates on Google+) then odds are you know I currently have my hands on two ARM devices (plus a third in the mail) I am working on creating Bodhi Linux images for. With this in mind I've decided I am going to start maintaining a generic ARMHF root file system to make creating Bodhi Linux images for new ARM devices easier for myself and others.

You will always be able to find the latest copy of this file system on Bodhi source forge page here. The default user name is armhf and the default password is bodhilinux. The default user has sudo access by default.

Essentially on any device we have a functioning Linux kernel for - it should simply be as easy as extracting that file system to a bootable location. Copying over /lib/firmware and /lib/modules and then telling your ARM system to boot from this new file system.

As an aside - this is the first blog post I am writing from the Samsung ARM Chromebook with the Bodhi desktop! Hopefully have install instructions for this device online soon.

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Start an SSH Session from ChromeOS

My lovely fiance knows how much I love my toys and opted to get me one of the new ARM based Chrome books as an early Christmas present. I'd been talking a lot about the device because the hardware on it is fairly fantastic for the 250$ price tag it comes with. At any rate - I'll be writing up a full formal review of the device at a later date (once I have had a chance to use it more). I also plan to create Bodhi ARM images for the device once time permits.

Until I have time to get Bodhi running on the device though I am stuck with ChromeOS - which while interesting leaves some to be desired. At the very least I need my operating system to have a web browser and a ssh connection - the former ChromeOS provides very obviously (the whole OS is one giant web browser). Getting an SSH connection from the device was not as straight forward however. I started by searching for a terminal emulator on the Chrome Web Store. As you can see - there are a few options there, but none of them would successfully open a ssh connection to my build servers from my Chrome Book.

A little bit off searching on the Linux answer machine yielded me a proper solution from the comment section of a posting. To get a SSH connection on ChromeOS you do not need to add any software! Pressing the key combination:

ctrl+alt+t

Will open a browser based terminal emulator called "crosh" in a new tab of your browser on ChromeOS. Now my build servers are accessed from a non-default ssh port. On any Debian based operating system I would use the following to connect:

ssh -p username@myserveraddy.com

The ssh client on ChromeOS doesn't seem to like the -p argument for a port number though. I found two ways to connect to a ssh server using a different port number. The first is simply:

ssh username@myserveraddy.com

The second is a whole lot less intuitive. In order you type:

ssh

host myserveraddy.com

user username

port  

connect

Have fun sshing from ChromeOS!

~Jeff Hoogland

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Bodhi Linux Nexus 7 Drive

So I was on the Kernel Panic Ogg cast last night (the episode should be for download later this weekend). While we where discussing a number of things related to Bodhi our ARM port and tablet interface came up. ARM hardware is a very different beast from your normal x86/64bit devices. Meaning even if you have functional kernel drivers for a given device - you still often need a seperate file system images for each device you wish to be easily installable on.

Currently we provide easy to install ARM images for the RaspBerry Pi and the Genesi Smartbook - the latter of which I am actually writing this post from. By the end of this month I hope to be able to add the MK802 I've written a bit about to our support devices as well.

The point of this post however is to see how much interest there is in us creating a Bodhi image for the new Nexus 7 tablet. I've had a couple of users express interest about it on our forums and there was positive buzz about it on the Ogg cast last night.

The main thing holding us back is a lack of developer hardware - I don't own a Nexus 7. We only need a single unit to get our work done, so if you are a Nexus 7 owner that has an interest in running Bodhi on your device and you can spare 5$ (or even 10$) please consider sending it our way via the button below so we can purchase a Nexus 7 to work with.

Edit/Update: In just 5 short days we've managed to collect enough to pick up a development unit! Hopefully we can have some Bodhi images live by the end of the month. If you are still looking to help support us - servers do take money to maintain. You can do so by donating directly to the Bodhi project.

Thanks to everyone who helped out.
~Jeff Hoogland

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MK802 Media PC Review

I recently made a post comparing the specs of the A10 based MK802 to the RaspBerry Pi. For those who are unaware the MK802 is a low cost, Android based media PC you can pick up on Amazon for less than 40 USD. A little over a month ago I replaced my desktop sized media computer with an MK802 - today I would like to share with you my thoughts on the device.

The Hardware:

The MK802 is a little bit larger than a flash drive and the package includes a power adapter, HDMI mini to HDMI cable, a user manual and a few USB cables:

Now, the MK802 has only a single USB port, which means unless you have a keyboard/mouse combination you are going to want to be sure to pick up a USB hub to go with this device so you can attach multiple peripheralsto it.

I have read reviews that said this little device is prone to over heating - I do not believe such reviews. I've left my MK802 powered on for over a week straight and playing hours of video in a single sitting without issues. It is a little trooper.

The Software:

The default operating system that comes with the MK802 is a fairly stock version of Android 4.0. So much in fact that it is very clearly designed for a tablet computer - not a media center PC. Still, the GUI functions well enough with a USB keyboard/mouse and with a few minor tweaks it is near perfect.

The first thing I did on the device was disable the on-screen keyboard. It seemed terribly silly to have a giant keyboard take up half my TV screen every time I clicked into a text box. This issue is quickly solved by installing and configuring the Null Keyboard application from the Play Store.

Speaking of the Play Store, I've installed several applications from there and most of them have worked fine - however not all of them. For example Google's Chrome for Android does not support the device.

One nice thing about the device is that the version of Android on it is rooted by default and the device knows what to do with an APK file when you click on it in the file manager.

In terms of speed the MK802 isn't going to win and records. The 1.5ghz single core processor runs most applications fast enough, but there is a noticeablespeed reduction when using multiple applications on the device simultaneously.If you are interested in the full specs of the device I would direct you to my post here.

Wrapping Up:

Over all I've been very happy with my purchase of the MK802. It has aptly replaced my media PC at a low cost, while using much less power. I would highly recommend this device to anyone looking for a cost effective media PC device.

As an aside I haven't been successful in booting an alternative operating system on the device - but I'm not giving up yet. Bodhi Linux will be booting on this thing before the end of the user.

~Jeff Hoogland

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HOWTO: Check Hard Drive Health with Linux

I've been experiencing full system lockups on my netbook off and on for the last few weeks now. Up until recently though they had been few and far between so I'd just been ignoring the issue. A few days ago however they got bad enough to the point where I had to restart my system three times in the same hour.

Needless to say shortly after that I started running system checks. A quick boot into memtest showed that my RAM was A-OK (which is good considering one stick of RAM is stuck to the netbook's mother board). The next piece of hardware I checked was my netbook's SSD. Almost all modern hard drives have "SMART" controls today to allow you to check their current health status.

I booted my netbook from a Bodhi live USB drive and did a quick:

sudo apt-get install gsmartcontrol

GSmartControl is a GUI front end for smartmontools - a library that lets you interface with your drive's SMART controls and run various health checks on the drive. The interface is fairly straight forward and right clicking on one of the displayed drives gives you the ability to begin checking it.

There are options for a short test (which takes a minute or two) or a longer test (which can take up to several hours on larger drives to complete - depends on the size of your drive).

After my netbook finished the longer test I was greeted with some bad news - my SSD was failing in one area and getting close to failing in others:

At any rate GSmartControl is a fantastic tool for checking the health of your drive that is fairly easy to use. Hopefully the results of your drive check will be better than my own!

~Jeff Hoogland

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Two Years of Bodhi, Three Years of Blogging

This year has flown by. My entire life - both on the internet and off the internet has been moving at a rapid pace and I have enjoyed almost every moment of it. I've been so focused on my last semester of graduate work that I completely forgot to make two posts I've been making every year.

The first is that Bodhi is two years old now! It was on November 16th, 2010 that I first announced the project I had started with a couple of friends. The project advanced rapidly and the team that we gathered was very pleased with where we were after just twelve months. Take a moment to look at the data graph in that previous link - in a nine month time span our highest throughput on the package server was under 1.5TB worth of data. We have made leaps and bounds since that point - in fact earlier this year we moved the main Bodhi package server from a VPS to a dedicated server because we had been consistently serving up over 5TB of packages each month. Beyond that our ISO image has been seeing over 25,000 downloads a month, over twice the number we saw in our first year.

The best part about all of this? Even with our increased overhead costs we have managed to stay 100% funded by user donations - meaning our main website and forums have been able to stay ad free (which I prefer). If you enjoy the Bodhi project I would ask that you please help support us by becoming a member, ordering some goodies or making a one time donation.

On a non-Bodhi related note, I've been publishing articles here on Thoughts on Technology for not one, not two, but three years now! I plan to continue publishing articles for many more years to come.

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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Raspberry Pi vs MK802

There has been a ton on news in the open source world revolving around the Raspberry Pi. It was one of the first low cost, ARM computers to be targeted at the hobbyist and educational markets. I've owned a Raspberry Pi for many months now and while it does an alright job at playing media files and acting as a small server - for most computing tasks it simply didn't have enough resources available to be useful.

My dedicated x86 media PC I'd been using for some time died a few months back and I had been searching for a low cost replacement for the system - I finally found it in the ARM powered MK802 device.

I've been using the MK802 almost daily for close to a month now and it shocks me that this awesome device hasn't gotten more press in the FOSS world. I plan to write a formal review of the device in the next week, but for now I would like to simply do a comparison between the MK802 and the latest RPI Model B device:

	MK802	Raspberry Model B
Processor	1.5ghz	1.0ghz
RAM	1 gig	512 meg
Internal Storage	4 gig	None
USB Ports	One	Two
Networking	Wireless	Wired
Video Out	HDMI Mini	HDMI, RCA
Audio Out	HDMI	HDMI, 3.5m
Storage	Micro SD	SDHC
Size	8.8 x 3.5 x 1.2 cm	8.560 cm × 5.4 cm
Cost+Shipping to US	38.50	43.33

In addition to having superior specs at a lower price point than the RPI Model B, the MK802 also included an HDMI mini to HDMI cord, power adapter, and the device is in a case by default instead of just being a raw board. Needless to say I am impressed with the little device. For those interested in picking up an MK802 I got mine from Amazon here.

~Jeff Hoogland

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