Started a new 2.6.x based mini router distribution

I'm in the process of deploying a couple of PC Engines WRAP.1C embedded x86 boards deployed in my apartment. They make neat little playgrounds for Router/NAT/VPN/WLAN/... style appliances.

Unfortunately I didn't find any embedded Linux distribution project that was up to my demands. Apparently they all use age-old kernels (2.4.17 or something ancient like that). And they very rarely come with a decent automatic build system that would allow you to rebuild it from scratch, adding your own patches, ...

So what did I do? I started my own :(. Not that I'm proud of it, but it was necessary. My home VLAN/firewall/PPPoE/NAT/VPN router is now running the very first image of this new distribution I called 'gRouter'.

It's main features are kernel 2.6.8.1, uClibc-0.9.26, busybox-1.00rc3, pppd with in-kernel PPPoE support, quagga, iptables-1.2.11, openvpn-1.6.0, and dropbear for SSH. It all fits in about 8MB of compact FLASH.

The build process is semi-automatic, apart from a few glitches the whole image compiles itself. I stole some of the build magic from the WISP-DIST project (part of LEAF), although this is all quite simple scripting.

After some more cleanups and testing, I plan to release this distribution. Please don't expect any support, or any configuration tools. It will be available for Linux experts who can configure and setup their system from scratch, and want to have the gadgets of the latest software releases.

On the todo list is cross-compilation support (well, since it is uClibc based, it already does cross-libc-compilation), madwifi support, and especially IPsec using the 2.6.x kernel implementation.

Getting the external VGA of my Apple Powerbook (TiBook IV) working

If you've attended one of my presentations during the last 12 months, you will certainly have noticed the poor quality of the slides. Yes, the content and the presentation is poor, too - but I'm mostly referring to the optical quality.

I've already spent at least a whole day in the past in trying to get the external VGA working with Debian/ppc, with little success so far. I really don't care whether the external port mirrors the content of the display, or if it runs in dual head mode.

Today, I spent some three more hours in trail-and-error with the radeon driver of the dri-trunk XFree86. I tried CloneMode, Dual Head, with and without FBMode, and about any other parameter within XF86Config-4.

In the end it turned out that the man page was not up-to-date, and the preferred way to get it running was the so-called MergedFB mode. This wasn't as easy to configure as expected, and I still got lots of 'Signal 11' segfault-style crashes.

The crashes seem to be totally unrelated to my graphics setup. In fact, it crashes when eth0 is not configured yet, but works after the network device is up. Now please somebody step up and explain...

Finishing preparations for upcoming netfilter developer workshop

I've spent a significant amount of time over the last couple of days with the final preparations of the upcoming 3rd netfilter developer workshop. This is the first one where I'm in charge of every tiny bit of the organization, and I hope I got everything right.

The first attendees are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. They might even arrive before me, since I'll be heading the 500km down south tomorrow.