As is usually the case, adding additional packages is essential to getting the computer working right for me.

Add Codecs, Java, and other Customizations

The official way to do this is documented in the Ubuntu Wiki under CommonCustomizations. There is also a wiki page on EasyCodecInstallation. The official meta package is called “ubuntu-restricted-extras” and this installs:

• MP3 playback and decoding
• Sun Java runtime environment
• Flash plugin
• DVD playback
• LAME (to create MP3 compressed audio files)
• msttcorefonts (may be missing in kubuntu extras)
• DeCSS script to download and install for DVD viewing

$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
$ sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
$ sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

Add the ability to compile, edit, and maintain code

Here are the compilers and their documents
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion-tools gcc-4.2-doc glibc-doc manpages-dev
$ sudo apt-get install mingw32 mingw32-binutils mingw32-runtime
I need access to subversion and XSLT ChangeLog tools
$ sudo apt-get install subversion-tools
$ sudo apt-get install xsltproc
I install a couple of editors, useful for various things. Kate is already installed.
$ sudo apt-get install scite
$ sudo apt-get install vim-full
Useful tools for cleaning up code, converting comments and line endings, and code statistics:
$ sudo apt-get install splint
$ sudo apt-get install sloccount
$ sudo apt-get install indent
$ sudo apt-get install liwc
$ sudo apt-get install tofrodos

Add favorite online music source and music/video player VLC

$ sudo apt-get install streamtuner
$ sudo apt-get install vlc

Add the Adobe Flash Plugin and Sun Java JRE

A lot of websites use Flash or Java for their user interface, so it seems that they are essential.

$ sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin
$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre

Get rid of annoying PC speaker beep

Using a console, remove the PC Speaker driver from the kernel:
$ sudo modprobe -r pcspkr
Create /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-user.conf and add a line to keep the PC Speaker driver from automatically loading:

# Keep the annoying beep from occurring
# don't load the PC Speaker driver
blacklist pcspkr

SynapticsTouchpad

The laptop has a touchpad, which is really annoying when you also have a USB mouse attached, because the touchpad picks up thumps made by my big fingers and makes the mouse click somewhere that you didn’t want it to click.  Correcting this in Ubunut Jaunty is as easy as selecting System > Preferences > Mouse, under the Touchpad tab. Uncheck the Enable mouse clicks with touchpad check box.

I created a BACnet Development Kit, compiled the open source BACnet Protocol Stack hosted on SourceForge.net firmware using gcc-avr, and attempted to load the firmware onto the kit using an Atmel AVR ISP mkII USB programmer.  I connected the AVR ISP mkII to my Ubuntu Hardy Linux PC and attached the 2×3 ISP cable to the development kit board, and attempted to program using avrdude:

$ avrdude -c avrispmkII -p m644p -P usb -e -U flash:w:bacnet.hex

avrdude: usb_open(): cannot read serial number "error sending..."
avrdude: usb_open(): cannot read product name "error sending..."
avrdude: usbdev_open(): error setting configuration...
avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device "usb"

Wow! That wasn’t nice.  A search on the Internet turned up some answers about how to fix the problem, and I modified my /etc/udev/avarice.rules file to look like this:

SUBSYSTEM!="usb_device", ACTION!="add", GOTO="avarice_end"

# Atmel Corp. JTAG ICE mkII
SYSFS{idVendor}=="03eb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2103", MODE="660", GROUP="dialout"
# Atmel Corp. AVRISP mkII
SYSFS{idVendor}=="03eb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2104", MODE="660", GROUP="dialout"
# Atmel Corp. Dragon
SYSFS{idVendor}=="03eb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2107", MODE="660", GROUP="dialout"

LABEL="avarice_end"

I disconnected and reconnected my AVR ISP mkII, and tried again.  I still had the same results.  I checked that I was a member of the dialout group:

$ groups
skarg adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev users fuse lpadmin admin

I looked at the symbolic link in the /etc/udev/rules.d/ directory and also consumed the README file.  My file had the following name:

/etc/udev/rules.d/z60_avarice.rules

So I changed the filename:

$ sudo mv /etc/udev/rules.d/z60_avarice.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/60-avarice.rules

I unplugged the AVR ISP mkII, and plugged it in again.  I tried to run avrdude again:

avrdude -c avrispmkII   \
     -p m644p -P usb -e        \
     -U flash:w:bacnet.hex

avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.01s

avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e960a
avrdude: erasing chip
avrdude: reading input file "bacnet.hex"
avrdude: input file bacnet.hex auto detected as Intel Hex
avrdude: writing flash (57406 bytes):

Writing | ################################################## | 100% 6.31s

avrdude: 57406 bytes of flash written
avrdude: verifying flash memory against bacnet.hex:
avrdude: load data flash data from input file bacnet.hex:
avrdude: input file bacnet.hex auto detected as Intel Hex
avrdude: input file bacnet.hex contains 57406 bytes
avrdude: reading on-chip flash data:

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 5.41s

avrdude: verifying ...
avrdude: 57406 bytes of flash verified

avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK

avrdude done.  Thank you.

The kit programmed successfully, and began operation.

In April, 2008, I was informed that the Cimetrics U+4 packets showed up in Wireshark, but were not decoded correctly.  I asked for a sample of the capture, and reverse engineered the header.  I then created the BACnet MS/TP decoding in Wireshark in order to display the MS/TP data, and passed the BACnet Network Layer and Application Layer information along to the existing dissectors.

The beauty of the BACnet protocol is that it is layered.  The NPDU (network layer) and APDU (application layer) encodings are the same regardless of the datalink layer used.  The NDPU layer is decoded by packet-bacnet.c, which passes the APDU layer to packet-bacapp.c.  The BACnet MS/TP datalink layer is decoded by packet-mstp.c which I created, and passes the NPDU, if it exists, to packet-bacnet.c, for decoding.  The ARCNET, Ethernet, and BACnet/IP (packet-bvlc.c) all pass a relevant packet to packet-bacnet.c for BACnet decoding.  I created packet-cimetrics.c for the Cimetrics header which passes the BACnet MS/TP datalink layer to packet-mstp.c.

The BACnet MS/TP patches were accepted into the Wireshark repository on May 13, 2008, checked in as SVN 25291.  The SVN 25881 was a fix to the Length decoding.  The BACnet MS/TP decoding eventually made it into the Wireshark 1.1 development release, but is not present in the Wireshark 1.0 stable release.

Wireshark now sees packets with the Cimetrics U+4 signature encapsulated in the SNAP protocol as MS/TP packets, and it is able to open a file that has been saved in PCAP format using the MS/TP WTAP signature.  But I didn’t have a Cimetrics U+4 device.  So I used a standard RS485 converter, my open source BACnet stack, and wrote a simple application to packetize the MS/TP frames and saves them to PCAP format.  I could now capture MS/TP packets and view them!

In August, 2008, I received an email from John in New Zealand.  His intention was “to use an existing simple VB application that captures MS/TP traffic from a low cost USB to RS-485 converter, to send the MS/TP packets using Winsock/UDP to Wireshark for final dissection and display.”  I figured that we could do this by making use of the existing SNAP protocol dissector that I created for the Cimetrics packets.

I reused the code that I had written to save in PCAP format, and wrote a simple application to packetize the MS/TP frames and resend them on Ethernet as the Cimetrics U+4 signature encapsulated in the SNAP protocol.  I got it to work under Linux, but would probably need to use WinPcap to get it to work under Windows.

Sending those SNAP protocol packets on Ethernet allows the display of BACnet MS/TP packets in realtime alongside BACnet/IP and BACnet Ethernet.  This makes it very easy to relate traffic going to and from workstations and routers with what is happening on the BACnet MS/TP network.

There are some sample captures (see cimetrics_mstp.pcap and mstp_wtap.cap) that demostrate some of the abilities of Wireshark.

I use a USB to RS-485 converter from SerialGear USB-COMi-SI-M, and am told that the B&B Electronics USOPTL4 works very well.  I am also told that the USB to RS-485 adapters that use the FTDI chipset are great for this as they allow the use of 76800 baud which is usually the stumbling block for native MS/TP interfacing with a standard PC serial port.

I searched the internet for some assistance in removing the digital noise using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), and stumbled upon a well written post about how to remove digital noise.  The technique makes use of the GREYCstoration plugin for the GIMP.

I use the GIMP on Kubuntu Linux, and wondered if there was already a package created for GREYCstoration.

$ apt-cache search greyc
gimp-plugin-registry - A repository of optional extensions for The GIMP

I found it!  So I installed it:

$ sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registry

After restarting the GIMP, here are the results:

Low light photo (scaled)

Low light photo (GREYCstoration, scaled)

I created a ring buffer library for embedded systems in C some years ago and have been using it when I need to add a simple queue to my software.  I knew it worked correctly since I created unit tests to validate the code.  However, I noticed that it wasn’t interrupt safe since one of the consumer variables is shared by the producer (the count).  This library requires disabling interrupts when consuming.  Not what I wanted.

There are a number of difficulties when designing ring buffers, mostly dealing with efficiencies of code or data, or the struggle between consumers and producers.  My generic ringbuf library had used a single fill count, but the count had to be updated by the interrupt service routine (producer) and by the routine that retrieved the data (consumer).  I tried to use read and write offset indices, but that required that I always keep an element open since the you can’t tell if the ring is empty or full when the head and tail are the same.

Absolute indices appeared to be interrupt safe, although they require that the buffer length be a power of two.  That seemed to be flexible enough for most embedded work.  I modified and tested my ring buffer library using that method, but my ringbuf, which allowed for a fixed length element,  seemed to be overkill for what I was using it for – gathering bytes from a serial interrupt service routine.  Its API also had a slight flaw such that if the consumer retrieved the data (via Pop rather than just viewing the first element), the producer was free to put new data into the buffer, overwriting the data just retrieved.

I had started my ring buffer library as a simple character (one byte) FIFO – first in, first out.  So, I revisited that code, and modified it to use absolute indices.  A simple byte ring buffer, first in, first out.  Now I had interrupt safe code that would work in my serial interrupt service routine.

Why go to the trouble to make a library module to handle a ring buffer when slapping the following quick and dirty ring buffer code (from Stefan) into the serial module would have worked as well?

   #define N 128
   volatile unsigned int head, tail;
   volatile char buffer[N];
   unsigned int inuse() { return head - tail; }
   void put(char c) { if (inuse() != N) { buffer[head++%N] = c; } }
   void get(char* c) { if (inuse() != 0) { *c = buffer[tail++%N]; } }

Because I needed to know that it worked correctly, and I like reusable library modules.  Especially high quality reusable modules.  Especially high quality reusable modules that include unit tests to validate functionality.  Unit tests that also serve as guides for implementers.

The new module files are ringbuf.c and ringbuf.h for the ring buffer with fixed sized elements, and fifo.c and fifo.h for the ring buffer with byte sized elements. All my versions of the ring buffer and the unit testing framework can be found in the ringbuf.zip file.

I drove to the BACnet meetings in nearby Atlanta and Bill photographed my license plate.  We need lofty goals, don’t we?

/usr/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/

File convertmp3.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
ServiceTypes=audio/*
Actions=convertToMP3

[Desktop Action convertToMP3]
Name=Convert to MP3
Exec=lame -V2 %f "`echo %f | perl -pe 's/\.[^.]+$//'`.mp3"

Enjoy!

https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha?

I usually use a longer lense (300mm) to get in close, and didn’t realize how much shaking is going on when I am photographing something.  Since a lot of birds eat in the morning or evening, and the setting is my back yard which is wooded, the birds are not in full sun light.  The other challenge in a wooded environment is auto focus.  Too many things for the auto focus to focus on, and how does it know I am looking at a bird?

1) Focus Problem  2) Lens Shake  3) Missed the Bird

So here is what I do:

1. Increase the ISO.  I set my Canon Digital Rebel XTi to ISO 1600.
2. Use shutter priority – TV – mode.  Set the shutter speed to 1/125s or faster.
3. Use the rapid fire – AI Servo – mode for taking lots of photos very fast.
4. Use manual focus (sometimes).

The BACnet committee met in Salt Lake City at the end of June.  We had a large number of Addenda that had finished public review, and had lots of comments for which to respond.  Salt Lake City had some interesting sites and some street items that I had not seen before.  The “Look” on the pavement, as well as the flags used at some crosswalks.

I attended Mass at Cathedral of the Madeleine on Saturday night.  It was a beautiful church and a thought provoking sermon.

I ate some wonderful food in Salt Lake City, including a fabulous carrot cake at Squatter’s Pub Brewery, and some delightful salmon at Cucina Toscana.

We had our traditional Tuesday night BACnet dinner at Dogfish Head Brewery.

Most of the working groups met.

I presented my handiwork to Anna. She told me that Tinkerbell’s wings were more blue, she needed a ribbon in her hair, and she had tassles or balls on her shoes. I guess I missed a few critical details. So back to the drawing board I went.

I had hoped to add this little gem to Tux Paint, but I am not sure that I can since Tinkerbell is a Disney trademark image.

Add Codecs, Java, and other Customizations

The official way to do this is documented in the Ubuntu Wiki under CommonCustomizations. There is also a wiki page on EasyCodecInstallation. The official meta package is called “ubuntu-restricted-extras” and this installs:

• MP3 playback and decoding
• Sun Java runtime environment
• Flash plugin
• DVD playback
• LAME (to create MP3 compressed audio files)
• msttcorefonts (may be missing in kubuntu extras)
• DeCSS script to download and install for DVD viewing

$ sudo apt-get install kubuntu-restricted-extras
$ sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh
$ sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

Add the ability to compile, edit, and maintain code

Here are the compilers and their documents
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion-tools gcc-4.2-doc glibc-doc manpages-dev
$ sudo apt-get install mingw32 mingw32-binutils mingw32-runtime
I need access to subversion and XSLT ChangeLog tools
$ sudo apt-get install subversion-tools
$ sudo apt-get install xsltproc
I install a couple of editors, useful for various things. Kate is already installed.
$ sudo apt-get install scite
$ sudo apt-get install vim-full
Useful tools for cleaning up code, converting comments and line endings, and code statistics:
$ sudo apt-get install splint
$ sudo apt-get install sloccount
$ sudo apt-get install indent
$ sudo apt-get install liwc
$ sudo apt-get install tofrodos

Add favorite online music source and music/video player VLC

$ sudo apt-get install streamtuner
$ sudo apt-get install vlc

Get rid of limited use Dolphin

This is one of the main reasons I use Kubuntu and KDE: Konqueror allows me to do many things that Nautilus and Dolphin prevent or are unable to customize
$ sudo apt-get remove dolphin

Get Rid of IcedTea – Install Sun Java JRE

I had several errors which prevented me from doing useful work on some websites that used Java.  Turns out that the default install of Kubuntu used IcedTea – the OpenJDK.  Well, apparently it doesn’t mimic Java the way the websites expected, and so, it didn’t work.  Into the hopper it goes, and Sun gets the install.
$ sudo apt-get remove openjdk-6-jre
$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre

Get rid of annoying PC speaker beep

Using a console, remove the PC Speaker driver from the kernel:
$ sudo modprobe -r pcspkr
Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add a new line to keep the PC Speaker driver from automatically loading:
# Keep the annoying beep from occurring - don't load the PC Speaker driver
blacklist pcspkr

Get rid of annoying Synaptic Tap Button

Edit the X11 configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add the Tapbutton line and any other missing lines in the Synaptic Touchpad section:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier  "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver      "synaptics"
Option      "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option      "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option      "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option      "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option      "SHMConfig" "On"
Option      "TapButton1" "0"
EndSection

You can disable the Tap Button effect immediately using the synclient tool as long as SHMConfig is On:
$ synclient TapButton1=0

Fix a bug in Firefox 3 rendering Check boxes and Radio boxes

Check boxes and Radio boxes show as a blank box or circle until the focus is moved away.  This bug was reported, and the solution is to install a GTK2 engine:
$ sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-qtcurve

Additionally,  go to System Settings->Appearance->GTK Styles and fonts, and Set: Use another style = QtCurve.

Updating a Toshiba A135 Notebook

I also updated our Toshiba A135 Notebook and the sound and sound controls now work!  I did have to fix an fglrx bug to keep from locking up on logout.

1. Figure out how to do BACnet segmentation
2. Figure out how to get BACnet MS/TP into libpcap/winpcap.
3. Add a couple of BACnet dissector enhancements to Wireshark.
4. Learn about using Wireshark for problem network analysis.

I attended Laura Chappell’s training sessions, and learned a whole lot about Network analysis and the love-hate relationship between TCP/IP SYN, ACK, and Keepalives (#4 completed). I also wrote some Wireshark code during the classes which I promply submitted (#3 completed). Loris came into the activity center and sat down with my son Joshua and me, and so we discussed how to integrate BACnet MS/TP RS485 from serial port into libpcap/winpcap (#2 completed). On the last day and the last session of the conference, I attended a session by Richard Sharpe about file sharing protocols and learned about Wireshark conversations (#1 completed).

We were treated to an inspiration talk on Tuesday morning by Vint Cerf. After the talk, I went to Laura’s session, and Joshua talked to Vint. Vint signed Joshua’s Half-Life player guide, had photos taken with Vint and Gerald, and the Wireshark crew gave Joshua some swag.

Gerald treated the developers to dinner on Tuesday night at Trader Vic’s. I drove to dinner with Joshua and Jaap Keuter, and learned about PBX systems and Jaap’s passion for skydiving. At dinner I sat next to Ulf Lamping and learned about yet another division of Siemens and about Ulf’s love for motorcycle riding. Guy Harrris and Mike sat across from me.  Joshua ate with Gerald’s wife and daughter, and John Bruno’s wife.

The Foothill College campus was beautiful and on Spring Break. The food was awesome and plentiful.  The people were great!  The Wireshark sessions were helpful.  Maybe I will get to attend next year.

The Transmit Complete (TXCn) Flag bit is set one when the entire frame in the Transmit Shift egister has been shifted out and there are no new data currently present in the transmit buffer. The TXCn Flag bit is automatically cleared when a transmit complete interrupt is executed, or it can be cleared by writing a one to its bit location.

I had initially written the code to clear the TXC0 flag by clearing it, rather than setting it. Since the code could not determine when the end of the transmission occurred, I had added a _delay_us() function from the AVR-GCC library. This is what the AVR-GCC manual says about that function:

In order for these functions to work as intended, compiler optimizations must be enabled, and the delay time must be an expression that is a known constant at compile-time. If these requirements are not met, the resulting delay will be much longer (and basically unpredictable), and applications that otherwise do not use floating-point calculations will experience severe code bloat by the floating-point library routines linked into the application.

Severe code bloat indeed! I had used a non-constant (the Baud Rate) in the delay call, and that resulted in a 4k increase in code size. After fixing the Transmit Complete flag functionality, I was able to remove the _delay_us, and the code size dimimished by 4k. On this 16k device, that means alot!

Statistics for the BACnet Stack at SourceForge on the ATmega168 are as follows:

IAR Atmel AVR C/C++ Compiler V5.10A/W32
10 191 bytes of CODE memory (+ 36 range fill )
775 bytes of DATA memory (+ 24 absolute )

avr-gcc (GCC) 4.2.2 (WinAVR 20071221rc1)
Program: 12052 bytes (73.6% Full)
Data: 481 bytes (47.0% Full)

With all the extra code space, I went on to add more functionality to the demo. The BACnet capabilities include WhoIs, I-Am, ReadProperty, and WriteProperty support. The BACnet objects include a Device object, 10 Binary Value objects, and 10 Analog Value objects. An LED is controlled by Binary Value object instance 0. All required object properties can be retrieved using ReadProperty. The Present_Value property of the Analog Value and Binary Value objects can be written using WriteProperty. The Object_Identifier, Object_Name, Max_Info_Frames, Max_Master, and baud rate (property 9600) of the Device object can be written using WriteProperty.

After adding all that functionality, I learned the hard way about the C-Stack differences between the IAR AVR compiler and the GCC-AVR compiler. The IAR compiler uses a fixed CStack size. If it is not set correctly, the CStack can overflow and cause problems in your code.

The GCC compiler uses the RAM not allocated to variables and text for the C-Stack. That means that the data value reported by the avr-size program is only part of the picture. If the data value is 481 bytes, and the device has 1024 total, then 1024-481=543 bytes are used by the C-Stack. In other words, don’t be fooled by the “47% Full” printed by avr-size and think that you have extra RAM. You might be able to add some more functionality, but certainly leave some RAM (or alot in my case) for the C-Stack. The GCC-AVR has two intrinsic variables for tracking the C-Stack: _end and __stack. These can be used to paint the C-Stack prior to its usage, and monitor the C-Stack during runtime. I added this technique to the demo.

The final statistics on ATmega168 demo of the BACnet Stack at SourceForge:

IAR Atmel AVR C/C++ Compiler V5.10A/W32
12 732 bytes of CODE memory (+ 36 range fill )
955 bytes of DATA memory (+ 24 absolute ) (CStack=0×200)

avr-gcc (GCC) 4.2.2 (WinAVR 20071221rc1)
Program: 15790 bytes (96.4% Full)
Data: 414 bytes (40.4% Full) (CStack=0×262)

Note: The photos are ancient computer memory from The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.  I’m visiting the area for the Wireshark Sharkfest ‘08.