Technicalities » Uncategorized

ASoC updates in 2.6.38

Mark Brown — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 12:58:48 +0000

Linux 2.6.38 was just released, with another big update to ASoC including:

Enhancements to multi-component from Jarkko Nikula allowing multiple devices of the same type to be included in one system (and handling other overlaps between devices) and support cross device DAPM.
Support from Dimitris Papastamos for compressing the register cache in memory using either an rbtree or LZO, giving substantial memory savings on CODECs with large register maps, especially those that are sparse. This is especially beneficial to modern devices with integrated DSPs. This can be enabled by machine drivers, though CODECs can also provide defaults.
Addition of trace points around DAPM and register I/O operation, allowing very low overhead logging without interfering with the main system log, useful for collecting verbose diagnostics without interfering with system operation and for always enabled flight recorder style tracking for intermittent problems. I blogged about ASoC trace points in more detail at the time.
Restructuring of the Samsung CPU support from Jassi Brar, including a number of really good usability improvements. This supports features of more modern CPUs such as the ability to run two audio streams to a single I2S port and includes a number of API simplifications which should also make developing drivers for Samsung systems much easier.
New CODEC drivers for ALC5621/2/3, WM8737, WM8770 and WM8958.
Machine support for HP iPAQ H1940, HP t5325 thin clients and OpenRC Ultimate.

Building firmware images for Nexus S

Mark Brown — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:03:54 +0000

Since I couldn’t seem to readily find any useful instructions for building firmware images for the Nexus S I thought I’d publish some. In a clean directory this sequence of commands should result in a working set of application layer images. They assume you’ve already got all the Android build dependencies installed:

repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git -b gingerbread
repo sync
MYDROID=$(pwd)
export MYDROID
. ./build/envsetup.sh
make PRODUCT-full_crespo-user

The resulting images will be in the directory out/target/product/crespo. You can get this running on your device by flashing the boot, recovery and system images:

out/host/linux-x86/bin/fastboot flash boot out/target/product/crespo/boot.img
out/host/linux-x86/bin/fastboot flash recovery out/target/product/crespo/recovery.img
out/host/linux-x86/bin/fastboot flash system out/target/product/crespo/system.img

Note that using these firmware images will void any warranty you have on the phone – you’ll need to unlock the phone using fastboot oem unlock, but note that this is irreversible.

Similar instructions should work for Nexus One too, using passion instead of crespo in the make command above.

etckeeping git

Mark Brown — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:10:33 +0000

Working with multiple upstream kernel trees and keeping an eye on more my git repositories tend to end up with large numbers of remotes (this laptop has 22, for example). It’s getting to the point where I need something like etckeeper to keep track of them all.

Sunday afternoons

Mark Brown — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:16:18 +0000

I do most of my reading in the atumn and winter. In the afternoon when the day is still I sit on my sofa, listen to music and read. On those days the light is grey and soft, casting shadows not much darker than the light itself – if you hold the page flat you can see the grain in the paper. During the summer there’s always some reason to do other things. In the winter there is so little natural light I feel I’m just making the most of what there is.

Today I’m doing that for the first time this year; summer is ending early.

Wii cleaning

Mark Brown — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:20:08 +0000

My Wii had been feeling a little toasty (even when it had only been sitting in standby) and had had a few glitches recently. A quick blast with the vacuum cleaner and it’s now running a lot cooler in spite of no visible effect when doing so.

Going, going, gone

Mark Brown — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:32:39 +0000

Since my bike was stolen last Sunday (which was annoying, especially since it was taken from the stairs just outside my flat) I was without a bike until Wednesday night. This somehow managed to coincide with a couple of early meetings so rather than trust the buses I ended up walking into work like I used to do when I worked down on Leith Links. It takes about an hour, which is only 20 minutes more than the bus should do. I ought to do this more often. It does take up a lot of time but I felt a lot better for doing it – it’s not just the exercise, it’s an opportunity to zone out and do something a bit more meditative for a while. Cycling does the exercise thing but it’s usually much more stressful due to the greater speeds and rather direct dangers.

The old bike was a bit beaten up. especially after the collision with a car door last year, so I had been thinking about replacing it anyway. This was a good idea – the new one is much more fun to ride. Much less effort and no sticky brake.

First post

Mark Brown — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 23:34:29 +0000

There really ought to be at least one post here, so… Perhaps I will use this for something. From time to time I do have an urge to write something for the benefit of Planet Debian or so but I’ve not really anywhere to put such things except Advogato which is itself trying to be a community site.