Dossy's Blog

Last night, Aunty Liz and Uncle Steve helped the girls carve some pumpkins! Here’s the result of everyone’s creative work:

So, we’re all ready for the visit of the Great Pumpkin this year, if it comes!

Tags: pumpkins

So, I have a TiVo Series 2 stand-alone DVR with a Product Lifetime subscription. For years, I’ve had it connected to the home network using a Linksys WUSB11 wireless network adapter, but it finally died. I went and grabbed a Linksys WUSB54G as a replacement, but found out that the TiVo doesn’t support it. No problem, I know the TiVo runs Linux and there’s plenty of documentation on how to “hack” the TiVo so I can load my own kernel modules on it, etc.

It turns out that the Linksys WUSB54G v4 uses the Ralink 2570 chipset. Fortunately, there’s been effort on native Linux drivers for the Ralink family of wireless chipsets. The hurdle, of course, is that the TiVo’s MIPS R5432 is big-endian, so it presents a bit of a challenge porting the driver to the TiVo.

Working off the latest code for the legacy rt2570 driver from CVS, I’ve gotten it to compile using TiVo’s Linux 2.4.20 kernel. Loading the module, however, results in this:

rt2570: init
usb.c: registered new driver rt2570
rt2570: idVendor = 0x13b1, idProduct = 0xd
rt2570: idVendor = 0x13b1, idProduct = 0xd
rt2570: using permanent MAC addr
rt2570: Active MAC addr: 00:12:17:89:f5:02.
rt2570: driver version 1.0.0
Unaligned Access to 0x80230b2b in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4
Unaligned Access to 0x80230b2d in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04
Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021b3dc
Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021b408
Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021dc2c
Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021dc08
Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021cd8c
Unaligned Access to 0x80230f47 in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4
Unaligned Access to 0x80230f49 in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04
Unaligned Access to 0x80231155 in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4
Unaligned Access to 0x80231157 in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04

So, now I get to go fishing through /proc/ksyms and try to fix up all these unaligned access errors. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get through all of this and get the driver working.

Anyone out there have experience porting Linux device drivers like this? Got any tips or techniques that might help me? I’d really love any help I can get …

Update: I’m posting my debugging progress in a rt2×00 forum thread. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow, right?

Update: I’ve gotten it working! I’ve addressed the majority of the unaligned access traps and I can now use my WUSB54G as a wireless NIC on my TiVo! Here’s a patch against rt2570-cvs-2008102616 of the driver and the corresponding kernel module binary:

• rt2570-tivo-mips.patch
• rt2570.o.gz (1.42 MB)
  MD5: 64605e019929db714d583d160a6b513c

If you have a SA2 TiVo and want to use a Linksys WUSB54G as your wireless NIC, this driver is what you want. It works for me, anyway!

Tags: Linux, TiVo, open source, hacking, Linksys WUSB54G, Ralink 2570

Back in 2003, when I started working for AOL, there was a race to launch a digital music store for the Windows platform. The company to beat was Apple, who launched their Windows port of iTunes in October 2003. At that time, AOL was still claiming to have over 24 million subscribers. Clearly, if AOL could push out a digital music store offering as part of their service to that many customers before Apple, it might have made a difference.

But, wait … AOL launched its MusicNet offering as early as February 2003, you say? Beating Apple didn’t make much of a difference, after all, right?

I wasn’t directly involved in any of that work at AOL so I’m just speculating here, but I know a lot of effort went into rights management systems and DRM. I’m willing to bet a lot more effort went into getting all that stuff working than actual work on making the product–the music store–kick ass. I kept complaining that AOL should take advantage of its then-800-pound gorilla nature and spend its budget and manpower to invent and pioneer a business model that was DRM-less, rather than spend all that time trying to satisfy everyone’s wacky demands trying to implement DRM.

At the time, I kept hearing responses that all boiled down to: it’s not going to happen. I’ve learned that nothing happens unless someone makes it happen and AOL certainly could have been one to make it happen. This reminds me of a quote I love: “People aren’t resistant to change. Matter of fact, people will change just about anything in order to maintain the status quo.”

Fast-forward five years to 2008: Amazon, Walmart and even Apple (through iTunes Plus) are offering completely DRM-free music downloads. Somehow, things are changing from “not going to happen” to “it’s happening” to “it’s happened.” What makes me sad is that instead of rendering itself irrelevant, AOL could have pioneered this.

Regardless, I’m happy that we can finally start saying goodbye to DRM for real. Now, companies can start focusing on really innovating where it counts–identifying, funding, producing and distributing quality digital content–instead of on meaningless technology like DRM.

Tags: digital content, DRM, AOL, Apple, music

We recently had photos taken at church for the upcoming printing of the church directory. I think the picture came out really nicely, so I’m posting it here, too.

Tags: family, photo

Next week, our third grade Sunday School children each will receive their own Bible, which this year, my older daughter will be included. Part of the process involves parents selecting their favorite Bible verses and highlighting them, so that when the children read through their Bible, they will be able to share this with them.

Now, I imagine for most parents who have gone through Sunday School and otherwise grew up in a church already have a bunch of favorite Bible verses. For me, this isn’t the case; I was only baptized at the end of 2005. I suppose I could skim through and try to find meaningful passages, but for some reason it just seems wrong to do that.

So, I put out a call to my Twitter friends asking for their favorite Bible verses and several people responded! Here’s the first few responses that came in:

• Micah 7:8 – “⁸Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; Though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me.” [from @jaymartinez]
• Proverbs 31:8-9 – “⁸Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. ⁹Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” [from @jerseymomma]
• Leviticus 24:15 – “¹⁵And speak to the people of Israel, saying: Anyone who curses God shall bear the sin.” [from @jgrossberg]
• Exodus 21:17 – “¹⁷Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death.” [from @jgrossberg]
• Matthew 6:28-34 – “²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” [from @suebob]
• Psalm 118:24 – “²⁴This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” [from @suebob]
• John 14:18 – “¹⁸I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” [from @suebob]
• 1 Corinthians 15:56 – “⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” [from @harda]
• John 14:6 – “⁶Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [from @ronaldbradford]
• Matthew 5:1-12 – The Beatitudes [from @ronaldbradford]
• Genesis 1:1 – “¹In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,” [from @ronaldbradford]

Some of my own favorites (that aren’t included above) that I’ve learned so far through the few years I’ve been regularly attending Sunday services include:

• 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 – “⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.”
• Ephesians 2:8 – “⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—”
• Titus 3:5 – “⁵he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
• Romans 12:2 – “²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
• John 13:34 – “³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
• James 1:5 – “⁵If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.”
• Hebrews 13:5 – “⁵Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’”
• Galatians 3:28 – “²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
• James 2:14 – “¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?”

Do you have a favorite Bible passage that isn’t listed above? I’d really love to know what it is–tell me what it is in the comments below. Thanks.

Tags: religion, Sunday School, Bible