Older blog entries for Kay (starting at number 45)

I'm currently not very active in software developing. Too much to do at work (Which is not worth mentioning here (Because it's Windows programming, yuck!)). But I found some time to do some geek stuff: I built a simple rubber band pistol as a replica of the IMI Desert Eagle with my old Lego bricks. Pictures and building instructions (Created with LeoCAD) can be found on my Loft.

Finally the iPAQ's touchscreen problem is fixed in the current CVS version of XFree86. Thanks to Jim Gettys and Keith Packard.

I have extracted the fix and created a patch for the current stable version 4.2 which can be downloaded from my patch repository.

Currently I'm learning how to use Allegro. It's a nice game programming library which also comes with some basic 3D functionality. Time to get back to work on my 3D engine.

Because of a question I got via email this morning I have created a small Open the Chassis of the Toshiba 3200 SXC howto.

Generating good statistics on Windows is a real pain. Expensive software like Webtrends is hard to maintain, hard to use and the generated statistics are graphical bull shit which are only useful to managers and marketing guys ("Wow! Those graphics looking great!!")

Webalizer, which is my first choice in the unix world, is also available for Windows but it does not support the W3C extended log file format (which is used by Microsoft's IIS) natively and tools like rconvlog are not working correctly. I wonder what has happened to the W3C patch which is mentioned on the webalizer web site. Since 2000 this patch (which I can't find) is not included into webalizer.

Well, because I was in need of a solution I patched webalizer myself to introduce W3C extended logfile support. The patch can be downloaded here.

I already tested the patch on a windows server. Seems to work. I'll produce a win32 binary package of webalizer tomorrow and publish it on my website.

Finally I managed it. I installed FreeS/WAN together with the X.509 Certificate patch on my personal router and on the company router and my VPN is now running with IPSec and no longer with vtun.

Originally I preferred vtun because it is much easier to install and to use than FreeS/WAN but after I have upgraded to 2.4 kernels I had a lot of trouble with these TUN/TAP devices. So I had the choice: Use IPSec or solve the TUN/TAP problem. I think it was a good choice to switch to IPSec, which is running great with the X.509 certificates.

Another reason why the choice was good: Some co-workers nagged me because they also want a VPN connection to the company. They are using windows and they are now able (Thanks to the X.509 certificates) to connect to the company by using an IPSec client like SSH Sentinel.

I've read that Windows 2000 comes also with an IPSec implementation. I'll give it a try but that doesn't sound like fun...

Today I played a little bit with mathematics. my goal was to calculate the coordinates of stars in a fictive galaxy with spiral arms. The result was a nice looking 2D galaxy with two spiral arms. But this result was mainly achieved by trial and error because I am not a mathematician. So I searched the net and found a nice DOS program from Ben Motz complete with source code. I borrowed the algorithm and converted it to a python script which generates a 2D view from the 3D galaxy and writes it to a PNG. This algorithm is nice because it can be configured in many ways (i.E. the number of spiral arms, arm width, number of stars in the disk and core, etc.)

The problems I have with the cross-compiled version of Xfree86 4.2 (KDrive Xfbdev) are still not solved. I forwarded a description of the problem to the Mailinglist and got the attention of Jim Gettys. He can reproduce the problem and will take a look at it together with Keith Packard. I'm looking forward to having a working XF4.2 running on my iPAQ soon :-)

I'm still trying to get my own cross-compiled Xfree86 running on my Compaq iPAQ H3600 handheld. I have the source code from an early 4.1 release which is working but my goal is to get the current 4.2 release running. The only thing which is not working is the touchscreen. After a few hours of source code reading I found an ugly hack to get it working but Xfree is segfaulting on shutdown if I use this hack. Maybe tomorrow I'll find the final solution... Or maybe not...

Cross-compiling Python is tricky but finally I have Python running on my iPAQ. Unfortunately I was not able to find a way to cross-compile it without modifying the source code. I have written a small patch which makes the cross-compiling process a little bit easier and I have documented the process of cross-compiling Python. I hope it's useful for someone.

Today I found the time to resume my work on my linux distribution for the Compaq iPAQ. I left this work some months ago in a state where it boots a 2.4.17 linux kernel with busybox and lrzsz. Now my target was to get Xfree86 running. Cross-Compiling Xfree is a real pain. My first run resulted in a "Completed" message but there were nothing useful compiled. I noticed that the compilation doesn't abort if an error occured. So I compiled again and redirected the output to a file to find out what's going on. Basically some libraries were missing in the cross compiling toolchain so I cross-compiled zlib, Berkeley DB, Linux-PAM, ncurses and flex. After a few other issues I got the xserver compiled and it works on the iPAQ but the touchscreen is not working... Don't know why, shit.

But a good thing is that I've written down the procedures to cross-compile the libraries and programs which I have running up to now and I have inserted that stuff in my ARM cross-compiling howto. Hopefully it will be useful for someone.