Installed CyanogenMod 6.0 on HTC Magic (UK Vodafone)

After seeing this article on slashdot.org and not knowing when the official update was going to be released I attempted to install this ROM.

I used these packages (as suggested by the instructions linked in the article above)

e90b977ca7c7d82f11632ca20405cccb8148aa3a  flash_image
d6cd759f0f565b8e5691a271abaa4d94f685796d  gapps-mdpi-tiny-20100816-signed.zip
561ff6fcf893eda0fbcd49c2ca621f0fa79ec6ed  recovery-RA-sapphire-v1.7.0G.img
56a88427dd34391d1390a3865aa4696b73164d3c  UniversalAndroot.apk
33ea8755946e79cb3bc6d0397e8e7f677566c12c  update-cm-6.0.0-DS-signed.zip

The flash_image command mentioned in the instructions was not present on my Android 1.6 device but the version contained within the update-cm....zip file worked once I had copied it out of the .zip to the device (via usb mounted sdcard) then copied it to /data using 'cat' and chmod'ed it to be executable.

I needed to wipe the memory from the recovery menu before the upgrade would boot.

Overall the Magic seems faster however the device would benefit from having more memory - note on my machine the JIT was disabled by default. I've enabled it but don't know if doing so really gains anything. JIT enhanced code would be faster but the JIT uses up precious memory.

CentOS on Asus EEE pc

An unofficial team of CentOS developers and Asus EEE pc owners (KB and MH) managed to get CentOS 5 installed over the network onto an EEE pc today.

Wireless and some speed related tweaking are still required.

HOWTO documentation to follow...

Asus EEE PC CentOS

Want security updates for ASUS eee pc - install another operating system

I've loaded Ubuntu 7.10 on my Asus EEE pc, I did not wait for Asus to put security updates on their repository.

At FOSDEM a chap who had Debian Etch on his knew what vulnerabilities there were in the stock Asus install - even though his machine had Debian on it within 1 hour of being out of the box.

Also at FOSDEM the CentOS guys discovered that a standard CentOS network install does not have a driver for the built in network card.

Ubuntu it is for now...

Wireless woes

I have a old, really old, iBook Dual USB. It has never given me any problems and with a replacement battery is still a quite useful machine - if you are not in a real hurry.

The machine did not come with wireless, I went wireless after the AirPort card stopped being made so used a USB stick from Belkin with the Ralink drivers for MacOS X 10.3.

However knowing that Apple would eventually stop supporting that version and given the age of the machine I would have to chose an alternative OS at some point I chose to use Debian Etch on it.

Problem was the USB stick has never worked with Etch, I purchased an EdiMax stick that was sold as Linux compatible but this required drivers to be compiled for it - these drivers did not like the PowerPC architecture at all so rather than remain isolated I investigated alternatives.

Luckily I came across the ASUS WL-330gE, this attaches to the Ethernet port and once configured can act as a Ethernet to wireless gateway.

The unit attaches connects to the Ethernet port and is powered from either the USB connector or a separate power pack. Conveniently I have a USB connector adjacent to the Ethernet port so I plugged it in set my IP address to one within the adapter's default range and configured it to match my wireless network.

Once I reconfigured my Ethernet settings to use DHCP my machine connected via the adapter to the wireless network.

If you are a complete Linux novice I would strongly suggest that a machine with Linux pre-installed with drivers for wireless would be a better match for you.

People who know a bit about Linux and know how to reconfigure network adapter settings and just want their machine to connect via wireless may want to investigate the ASUS unit.