Quick Binary Debugging in Linux with Strace System Call Tracer

I’ve recently come across strace, a debugging utility for Linux that “monitor the system calls used by a program and all the signals”. It may not be that useful if you have the source code and can run other debugging tools such as gdb, or simply add printf to your code. But if you don’t have source code of the program, or you are a system administrator who wants to check if the program fails due to file access reasons, for example, this is really a great tool as it may help you find out which file causes problem. In my case, I was trying OpenGL ES on an ARM platform, and at least part of the code comes in libraries that are only available in binary form. I got the following error message running es2_info (part of mesa-utils-extra): UMP: ump_arch_open() failed to open UMP device driver ********************************************************************* ERROR: In […]

Kontron Unveils KTT30/mITX Nvidia Tegra 3 Mini-ITX Board

Kontron has today unveiled the KTT30/mITX, its first embedded ARM based Mini-ITX board (and the first ARM mini-ITX board I’ve ever heard of). The motherboard is powered by Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core processor @ 900 MHz with up to 2 GB DDR3L memory, and consumes less than 7W. Storage is available via 2 SD Card slots, one bootable eMMC, and one SATA 2.0 port. The company expects this ARM Mini-ITX motherboard to be used in applications such as thin clients, Panel PCs, digital signage and Mini-Box PCs. The solution is also suitable for industrial (rail road, instrumentation…) and medical fields as it will be available for at least seven years. By using the Mini-ITX form factor, Kontron KTT30/mITX board can be easily integrated in existing embedded solutions using (x86) mini-ITX boards. Here are the key features of Kontron KTT30/mITX motherboard: SoC – Nvidia Tegra 3 ARM Cortex-A9 Quad Core […]

Amahi 6.1 for Ubuntu 12.04 Released

Amahi has just announced the release of Amahi 6.1, Ubuntu Edition, an Home Digital Assistant (HDA). Amahi used to only work for Fedora and this is their very first stable release for Ubuntu 12.04. The key features of Amahi 6.1, Ubuntu Edition include: Greyhole 0.9 (storage pooling technology) Reliability fixes and updates New look Support for 32 / 64-bit Desktop and Server versions of Ubuntu Improved cloud storage with Amahi Sync Preliminary support ARM platforms such as PandaBoard and BeagleBoard One-Click App installs via Amahi’s application store If you want to get started with Amahi, you’ll have to register (and get an install code), and follow a few command line instructions. The instructions are the same to install on ARM platforms (assuming you already have Ubuntu 12.04 running), but Amahi developers recommend to install it to an hard drive instead of an SD card for performance reasons. They are also […]

Use GNU Parallel to Speed Up Script Execution on Multiple Cores and/or Machines

I attended BarCamp Chiang Mai 5 last week-end, and a lot of sessions were related to project management, business apps and web development, but there were also a few embedded systems related sessions dealing with subjects such as Arduino (Showing how to blink an LED…) and IOIO board for Android, as well as some Linux related sessions. The most useful talk I attended was about “GNU Parallel”, a command line tool that can dramatically speed up time-consuming tasks that can be executed in parallel, by spreading tasks across multiple cores and/or local machines on a LAN. This session was presented by the developer himself (Ole Tange). This tool is used for intensive data processing tasks such as DNA sequencing analysis (Bioinformatics), but it might be possible to find a way to use GNU Parallel to shorten the time it takes to build binaries. Make is already doing a good job at […]

webOS Community Edition Release for HP TouchPad

Open webOS 1.0 is planned to be released in September 2012, but in the meantime, the development team has released an intermediate webOS “Community Edition” for the HP TouchPad. This code is different from the Open webOS project, and is composed of additional components from the current release of webOS for the TouchPad. The open webOS project team has been working with WebOS Internals to bring this release out for legacy TouchPad devices. Thanks to the release of the webOS Community Edition, it is now possible to learn how the TouchPad works, modify your TouchPad experience and then apply that to Open webOS 1.0 once it is released. The Community Edition only supports HP TouchPad, whereas Open webOS 1.0 release will enable the community to port webOS to different hardware platform, and add more features by using open source stacks such as BlueZ bluetooth and GStreamer. You’ll need to download […]

Linaro 12.06 Release with Kernel 3.5 and Android 4.0.4

Linaro has released version 12.06 based on Linux Kernel 3.5-rc3 and Android 4.0.4 (r2.1). This release brings further multimedia enablement for Android as well as some improvement to perf for Android, improved instructions & scripts for multi-arch on Ubuntu, and lots of little improvements and bugs fixes. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Multimedia enablement on AOSP, patches are in review. Most of the benchmarking applications have been automated via Monkeyrunner, working on PandaBoard and Snowball. Update panda-ics-gcc47-tilt-tracking-blob build to the TI LT 3.4 kernel. USB camera preview and still capture forward ported to tilt-tracking. 3D graphics and multimedia working on tilt-stable. IOMMU for Origen’s Multi format codec (MFC) enabled. IOMMU for Origen’s FIMC enabled. (FIMC stands for Fully Interactive Mobile Camera, and it’s used for camera input). Snowball upgraded to Android 4.0.4. Cortex strings landed in Linaro Android and submitted to AOSP (https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/c/38031/). This is part of […]

AMD Introduces AMD G-T16R G-Series APU with 2.3 Watts Power Consumption

AMD has unveiled another APU in its Embedded G-Series processor family with the AMD Embedded G-T16R, which aims to provide a more powerful (up to 3x) and less power-hungry (7% less) replacement to AMD Geode LX processors. The AMD G-T16R is targeted at very low power, small form factor and cost-sensitive embedded designs. The company claims the processor consumes about 2.3 watts on average or 4.5 watts thermal design power (TDP). This new AMD embedded processor targets industrial control, point-of-sale, medical appliance and transportation markets.  As with the other G-Series platforms, the G-T16R can fit into small form factor boards by implementing a two-chip platform: APU + controller hub. AMD G-T16R is clocked at 615MHz, features a Radeon HD 6250 GPU and supports 1920×1200 resolution via VGA, single link DVI and DisplayPort 1.1a video outputs. It can also output 1080p via HDMI and LVDS. The APU supports Windows Embedded Compact […]

List of 39 Low Cost Linux Friendly Boards and Products

Dmitry (omgfire), one of my awesome readers, compiled a great tabular list of Linux friendly boards and products that sells for less than $300 US (usually less than $200). This list includes technical details such as the processor, GPU, memory, NAND flash, connectivity, ports, supported Linux distributions… as well as availability and pricing information. There are currently 39 Linux devices in total. The vast majority are ARM based boards, but he also included 2 x86 products by VIA, but those are relatively pricey ($265 and up). Here’s a summary list with SoCs used, links to blog posts and product pages (if available), as well as price information. Raspberry Pi Model B – Broadcom BCM2835 (ARM11) – Blog post (That’s my first post about the R-Pi last year, and the board is much different now) –  Product page – Price: $35 + shipping Rikomagic MK802 – Allwiner A10 (Cortex A8) –  […]

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