All posts by Daniel Stenberg

Electronics, Rockbox

Meizu M6 and Cowon D2

I hadn’t gotten myself a new DAP in ages, and the last time I got one I had it donated to me from SanDisk. So it was Meizu M6really due time to get back into low-level fighting with Rockbox ports again. I ordered myself an 8GB Meizu M6 (SL) and a 8GB Cowon D2 (DAB-less), since both are very interesting flash-based targets with two very promising early Rockbox-porting efforts and we have data sheets for the SoCs used in both of them ( Samsung SA58700 and Telechips TCC7801).

I decided I should dive right in and also be able to do some nice comparisons of both these targets as they are quite similar spec-wise. Both units arrived at my place at the same time, so I got the chance to get a feel for them at once without any discrimination against either one.

Some first impressions without even having switched any of them on:

Cowon D2

The M6 comes in a much smaller box indicating it’s “mini player” style already there. It was also much cheaper, almost half the price of the D2.

The D2 comes with a wall-charger but otherwise both boxes include earplugs, a driver-cd (windows stuff I presume) and a USB cable.

Comparing their physical appearances next to each other, there’s no doubt that the M6 is much smaller (even perhaps amazingly small – but yet with a screen that is considerably larger then for instance my Sansa e200) and I can’t help think that the D2 design is a bit weird has it looks as if it has something that can slide out but it doesn’t. I assume some of the D2’s extra size (thickness) is due to its SD slot (yes that’s full size SD not microSD) which is something the M6 doesn’t feature, not even a micro version. Both have USB mini-B slots and charges over that. The D2 has a small protective cover over the slot.

I’ll provide more fluff like photos comparing them against each other and against other targets soon as well, and perhaps something about how their firmware compares, the status of Rockbox on them etc. Stay tuned!

Update: M6 next to D2 pictures

cURL and libcurl

No metalink in libcurl

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It’s been a while since we had this discussion so I figure it is about time to re-iterate it and this time I thought I’d do a little blog post to put the lights on my stand-point regarding this issue:

metalink support in libcurl

I’ve had this discussion at length with Anthony Bryan (the main man behind the metalink format) privately in the past and I’ve bounced back a lot of feedback on the actual XML format to him and I believe some of that were taken into account and changed the format. Of course this was before it “settled” and started to get adopted. I think metalink is a great idea and the file format is (the last time I checked it out, I can’t seem to find the docs now) mostly making sense.

libcurlI have little to no understanding for the idea that libcurl should add support for this natively. metalink is just an XML format that sets up resources for an application to where and how it can download files, and libcurl does indeed support most of the protocols that such URLs can use. libcurl is a data transfer library that is oriented around a given URL and the URL in question has a 1:1 relationship to what protocol it is and it is always content-agnostic.

metalink is application layer, not transport. Adding metalink to libcurl would mean that all of a sudden libcurl would transfer a file and actually parse the (XML!) contents of that file and then get (possibly) multiple streams using multiple protocols based on what that parsing gave. It is just so many new things and violations against key libcurl concepts that I cannot see this done.

Metalink isn’t even a standard so we would then more or less open the gates for further random efforts to introduce similar ideas and whatnot and where would we draw the line? Currently I think we have a pretty solid border drawn in the sand and we don’t cross that line (on purpose).

And frankly, there is only one and one reason only (mentioned and that I can think of) for libcurl to support this feature and I that is because libcurl is already widely adopted it would be easier for metalink to conquer the world by sneaking in the back-door with libcurl as then a large amount of applications would support it with no additional efforts at all. But sorry, I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to break or change these important key concepts/limits of libcurl. (Actually, I think it is a bit foolish to think that adding metalink to libcurl would make all these applications automatically support metalink as there would be several arguments against that too.)

As I’ve said before, I think one of our biggest challenges in this project is to limit what libcurl does, to not allow it to grow in all directions, to keep the scope and to maintain focus.

A metalink file transfer library could be made as a layer on top of libcurl, and I think that is the only logical and sensible way.

Adding metalink support to the curl tool however, seems like a good idea to me…

Security

Bad guys reveal other bad guys

In Sweden we currently have an interesting situation where a hacking group called “Hackare utan gränser” (should probably be “Hackers Without Borders” if translated) hacked one of those auction sites where you make the lowest unique bid to win. The site in question is called bideazy and according to the hacker group’s announcement (forum posting and following discussion entirely in Swedish) their database is full of evidence of the bidding not having been done correctly and it seems to show that the site and company owner has won a large amount of all “auctions”.

And they also made most of that data publicly available.

This brings many questions in my brain, including:

First of course the evident discussion if one crime (the hacking) can be justified to reveal another (the scam), but what I think is more important: isn’t auction sites and especially the lowest-bid kinds more or less designed to open up for the sites to easily scam the users? It is very very hard for someone on the outside of it all to see if things are done the right way and that all rules are followed. Heck, even a little tweak here and there would make a huge impact for the site but won’t be seen by the public.

I also find it a bit funny that in this case is they seem to have stored the scam data neat and properly in their data base which the hackers found, and I really can’t figure out why. If they wanted a database to show as a front end if someone would ask and blame them for cheating, then this wouldn’t be the one. And since they really seem to be cheaters, why would they need to store and keep track of all the cheats in a huge database?

Linux, Rockbox

Sansalinux

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sansa e200RWith an unfortunate Sourceforge registry date of April 1st 2008, it could very well be an April’s fools prank but then I can’t see any real reasons why someone couldn’t port ipodlinux over to the Sansa e200 v1 series.

So Sansalinux is working according to their site, and they also provide some crappy screenshots that aren’t really good enough to make it possible to tell if they are for real or fakes.

The uclinux patch on their download page seems genuine and contains a lot of code originating from Rockbox (including copyright lines from Rockbox hackers).

As in the case with the ipod version, it begs the question what they want with this apart from the fun of getting Linux on yet another target. Also, seeing how there’s really no developers around to hack on ipodlinux it’ll be interesting to see if there will be any on the Sansa version. Seeing that it doesn’t run on the v2 version (no surprise really since Rockbox doesn’t either) so there’s no new Sansa e200 to buy to run this linux on.

If someone actually tries this out, please let us know what you find out!

Development, Electronics, Rockbox, Windows

How to hack firmwares and get away with it

It is with interest we in the Rockbox camp checked out the recent battle in Creative land where they shot down a firmware (driver really) hack by the hacker Daniel_K as seen in this forum thread.

We’re of course interested since we do a lot of custom firmwares for all sorts of targets by all sorts of companies, and recently there are efforts in progress on the Creative series of players so could this take-down move possibly be a threat to us?

But no.

In the Rockbox community we have already since day one struggled to never ever release anything, not code nor images or anything else, that originates from a company or other property owner. We don’t distribute other’s firmwares, not even parts of them.

For several music players the install process involves patching the original firmware file and flashing that onto the target. But then we made tools that get the file from the source, or let the user himself get the file from the right place, and then our tool does the necessary magic.

I’m not the only one that think Daniel Kawakami should’ve done something similar. If he would just have released tools and documentation written entirely by himself, that would do the necessary patching and poking on the drivers that the users could’ve downloaded from Creative themselves, then big bad Creative wouldn’t have much of legal arguments to throw at Daniel. It would’ve saved Daniel from this attack and it would’ve taken away the ammunition from Creative.Lots of Rockbox Targets

I’m not really defending Creative’s actions, although I must admit it wasn’t really a surprising action seeing that Daniel did ask for money (donations) for patching and distributing derivates of Creative’s software.

So far in our 6+ years of history, the Rockbox project has been target of legal C&D letter threats multiple times, but never from one of the companies for which targets we develop firmwares for. It has been other software vendors: two game companies (Tetris Company and PopCap games) fighting to prevent us from using their trademarked names (and we could even possibly agree that our name selections were a bit too similar to the original ones) and AT&T banning us from distributing sound files generated with their speech engine software. Both PopCap and Tetris of course also waved with laywers saying that we infringed on their copyrights on “game play” and “look” and what not, but they really have nothing on us there so we just blanked-faced them on those silly demands.

The AT&T case is more of a proof of greedy software companies having very strict user licenses and we really thought we had a legitimate license that we could use to produce output and distribute for users – sound files that are to a large extent used by blind or visually impaired users to get the UI spelled out. We pleaded that we’re an open source, no-profit, no-money really organization and asked for permission, but were given offers to get good deals on “proper” licenses for multiple thousands of dollars per year.

Ok, so the originating people of the Rockbox project is based in Sweden which may also be a factor as we’re not as vulnerable to scary US company tactics where it seems they can sue companies/people who then will have to spend a fortune of their own money just to defend themselves and then you have to counter-sue to get any money back even if you were found not guilty in the first case. Neither is Rockbox an attempt to circumvent any copy protections, as if it were it would have violated laws in multiple countries and regions. Also, reverse engineering is perfectly legal in many regions of the world contrary to what many people seem to believe.

If this isn’t sticking your chin out, then what is? đŸ˜‰

Update 4-apr-2008: Creative backpedals when their flame thrower backfired.

Open Source, Rockbox

Is gsoc 2008 doomed?

On the gsoc mentors list one of the Google admins brought up the suggestion that the application period should be extended another week to allow students somewhat longer time to apply. This caused a flood of responses from many organizations and a lot of them (although not all) told stories that we share in the Rockbox project: at this time (with only some 13 hours left until the deadline) we have less applications than last year and they also seem to be of lesser quality. At the time of me writing this there have been no verdict if the period will be extended or not. Of course voices have been raised against the idea as well citing well-argued reasons such as the students who did manage to apply before the deadline might be less favored by an extension and that it will affect the time line in general etc.

Google Summer of Code 2007 front print

In the #rockbox IRC channel we figured out that the total sum a gsoc student gets (4500 USD) has gone down quite One dollar billconsiderably to a European student as last year’s students got about 3500 Euros but the same amount of USD is currently worth not more than about 2800 Euros. And remember that this is payment for a supposedly full-time work during twelve weeks. Ok they’re students and everything ,but still… and this 700 Euro drop (ok since currencies fluctuates it may be more or less at the end of the summer) may in fact be a contributing factor why less students apply.

A lot of poeple also suggested that having the application period over the easter period might’ve hampered this as well, as easter time is holiday time in many countries all over the glob.

cURL and libcurl

curl and libcurl 7.18.1

Mainly thanks to the 22 friends named in the release notes, curl and libcurl 7.18.1 was released today with the news and fixes that should prove this the best curl and libcurl versions ever – I guess we always have to believe that our latest is the greatest, why else would we release it?

cURL

The release notes identifies 23 bug fixes we did during the two months since the last release, and the news we introduce include these goodies:

  • added support for “HttpOnly” cookies
  • ‘make ca-bundle’ downloads and generates an updated ca bundle file
  • we no longer distribute or install a ca cert bundle
  • SSLv2 is now disabled by default for SSL operations
  • the test509-style setting URL in callback is officially no longer supported
  • support a full chain of certificates in a given PKCS12 certificate
  • resumed transfers work with SFTP
  • added type checking macros for curl_easy_setopt() and curl_easy_getinfo(), watch out for new warnings in code using libcurl (needs gcc-4.3 and currently only works in C mode)
  • curl_easy_setopt(), curl_easy_getinfo(), curl_share_setopt() and curl_multi_setopt() uses are now checked to use exactly three arguments
  • –with-ca-path=DIR configure option allows to set an openSSL CApath instead of a default ca bundle.

As usual, you can download it here.

Electronics, Rockbox

Sansa Fuze AMS reuse

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Anythingbutipod.com published a Sansa Fuze disassembly today and allow me to offer a visual comparison of the SanDisk-branded main chips in the Sansa Fuze (top) compared to the one in the Sansa e280 v2 (bottom):

Sansa Fuze chip branded SanDisk

SanDisk marked chip, an AMS AS3525

And since we know the e200v2 one is an AS3525, there is little doubt that the Fuze one is as well. Of course we can confirm this for real once we get our hands on a firmware update file for the Fuze – I’m not aware of the existence of any yet at least.

So where does this put the Fuze Rockbox-wise? About at the same position all the other “Sansa v2 architecture” targets: we basically know the firmware file format, we have data sheet for the AS3525 but there aren’t any particular efforts going on and we don’t know if they have any means to recover from being flashed with a broken firmware!

Update: because some less intelligent people decided that facts I wrote in this article back in 2008 would still be the truth several years later, I urge you all you check the date for things your read on the internets. And in this particular case, Rockbox runs very good these days on several SanDisk players that use the AMS chipsets. See the http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaAMS page for details

Linux, Rockbox

lugradio s5e14

sansa e200RI listened to lugradio’s season 5 epsisode 14 podcast today and I thought I’d share that at roughly 1:20 into the show there’s a brief mentioning and discussion around Rockbox. The subject came up thanks to a listener’s email explaining how he got his Sansa e200 player to play ogg by installing it.

Unintentionally, it was also quite ironical how Adam (one of the podcast hosts) just minutes before this mentioned how he has an iAudio X5 that can play ogg vorbis (and flac) natively (as a response to a user asking what players the guys would recommend) – without mentioning a single word about Rockbox even though Rockbox worked on the X5 long before it worked on the Sansa and I would think that any Linux- liking Open Source geek should know about Rockbox and use it on their mp3 players at least as long as they have targets that Rockbox is already ported to and working fine on… and when asked, I can only recommend getting any player that can run Rockbox before one that can’t. Of course these days this is somewhat of a dilemma since none of the players Rockbox supports are manufactured anymore…

I also liked in a elbow-poking sort of way how they referred to the ipodlinux project as one of the most pointless projects in existence. Of course, that may very well also be one of the reasons why that project is now more or less dead. This also makes me think of this lwn.net post by debacle, who argues that having Linux on a portable music player is better than Rockbox simply because “there’s where the developers are”. As the ipodlinux example shows, the reality is not that simple.

cURL and libcurl, Rockbox

Two for the price of one

As probably one of the last humans on earth, I got my paper version of Linux Journal’s April 2008 issue in my mailbox today. While I’ve felt that the magazine has slowly degraded over the last years, this issue certainly made me all warm and fuzzy inside since it contains not one but two articles on subjects very dear to me. A three-page article was dedicated to a Rockbox review (subscription-required-to-read link) named “iPod + Rockbox =Linux Journal April 2008 issue 168 Entertainment Extravaganza” and there was a two-page article on how to use curl (another paid-subscription-required link)to fiddle with a web interface named “Twittering from the Command Line”.

I have a hard time to put a finger on exactly why I feel that the magazine has lost some of its past qualities but I’ve noticed that I finish the magazine much faster these days and I generally skip over more uninteresting articles. I haven’t really investigated this, but it may very well be because a shift in focus in the magazine. I tend to be interested in low-level, kernel, OS, hardware-touching, libraries and related stuff. Not so much in high-level applications or web frameworks and more user and desktop oriented fluff.

I should also add that the Rockbox review was pretty good. Not perfect in any way since it contained errors, was for an old boring grayscale-ipod target and suggested that the original OS is better suited for playing music… The article that mentioned curl wasn’t really about curl but only showed how it can be used but it was mentioned in positive terms at least!