Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

I have just been untarring lots of files lately and its so nice for it to just work instead of rebooting.

Thanks for fixing it, are there any new speed test being done, was there any difference?

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Well, I was attempting to install your KDE package, and I got my N800 to lock up/reboot during the large un-tarring procedure. The "XFCE-6-INSTALL.tar.bz2" file was on the same card (8GB Transcend) as the loop-mounted 512MB ext2 file, so that's obviously a very stressful situation. However, it's disappointing to see a lockup - that just shouldn't happen. At least normal operation with this card seems fine so far. My previous 8GB Transcend died within a couple of hours with the old kernel writing Maemo Mapper files to it.

I wonder if it didn't completely lock up, but just prevented the watchdog process from running long enough to reboot. I'll try to take a look at the relative process priorities.

Full disclosure: I'm running a self-compiled kernel with the high-speed SD patches, and my kernel optimization set to '-O2' instead of the normal '-Os' (optimize for size). The base kernel source is the latest (-osso55) release, with the high-speed patches applied. 'dmesg' debug output shows that my 8GB card is running at the high-speed rate of 48MHz. So maybe it's the unofficial high-speed mode or the kernel optimization that was the problem.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

I am running stock kernel, and not a bump, I'll give up speed for reliability any day.

what are the speed differences, in your kernel compared to stock? do you have some hdparm numbers or other dd time or anything?

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Also do not bother installing KDE, pm me and I will give you a link to my latest tarball.

Its real nice!!

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

No before/after transfer speeds, unfortunately. With this test:

time dd if=/dev/mmcblk? of=/dev/null bs=8192 count=30000

I get right at 12MB/sec on both the internal slot (8GB Class 6 Transcend) and external slot (2GB Kingston 120X "ultimate" SD). At some point I plan on trying some different kernels, enabling/disabling the various SD modes.

Using "-O2" (disabling the "optimize for size" kernel config option) seems to make the entire device snappier. Might just be my imagination - I don't have a lot of time on my N800 so could just be wishful thinking. I'm still running from internal flash (haven't cloned my rootfs to SD yet), and don't yet have a swap file, so any snappiness shouldn't be due to the higher SD R/W speeds of the patched kernel.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Actually, I haven't upgraded yet (that's two versions I'm now behind) and, given that we can expect a major upgrade in a few weeks, I'm probably not going to bother.

Then again, ITOS2008 will -- contrary to Nokia's explicit promises!!!!!!!! -- again break software compatibility with existing software, so I might forego upgrading to 2008 until every -- unpaid!!!! -- developer has once again recompiled his software.

You know, I'd complain about it, had I not expected this to happen. There are some serious *ssholes inside Nokia who apparently have no truck with f*cking with the community as they see fit.

I'm getting myself an Eee. At least that one's just hardware, without corporate dilberts to fornicate me over...

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Karel, I think you misunderstood. There was no promise that Chinook would not break compatibility, at least that I ever saw. In fact all the official info I've seen was that Chinook would be a major break DUE TO THE INCREASING EMBRACE OF OPEN SOURCE AND CURRENT GTK THAT USERS HAVE BEEN SCREAMING FOR. :p

The promise was that the previous device (N800) would not be officially abandoned as the 770 was.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

^ Second to that... At least current Becomeroot and SSH install on Chinook as is. (Becomeroot actually works, SSH I have not tried.)

I do not think there is need for major differences in code. It might just be that recompiling is needed, and that's it.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Actually, at LinuxTag 2007 in June, Quim Gil promised on slide 28 of his presentation that Chinook would bring an API break to sync up with GTK+. According to that same slide, Nokia intends to maintain backwards compatibility from "Diablo onwards". However, the slide does say that if the technologies Nokia builds Maemo upon (such as GTK+) break compatibility, then Nokia will follow along and do so as well.

In the end, API breaks are far more common in Linux, and the software built upon it, than in, say, Windows. This means Linux doesn't carry the baggage Windows does, but it does also force folks to keep applications up to date.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Actually, the API breaks are far more common in GTK than just Linux in general.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Thank you. That was my impression, but I don't follow Gnome closely.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

In any case: sexually assault them. I've been through the compatibility break with the 770, and it was a royal pain; some of the greatest apps on the 770 still haven't made it unscathed to the N800, and some never made it. Bog only knows how many promising developers turned away, thinking (and justly so) that this mess was just too much trouble for what it's worth.

Like I wrote, my next device will be an Eee, and Nokia will have to do some mighty magycks with the N900 if I will even consider buying it. And let me add that the rumours that it will be a general public (as in: "dumbo box") device, are not really getting my hopes up much...

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

I'm not sure what you're wanting here, Karel.

The bad transition from 770 to N800 has been adressed: it's not gonna happen with the N800 to N810.

As some have pointed out, and I thought you understood, Linux is a constantly evolving OS and there will occasionally be breaks as newer libraries are developed and engaged. Yes, this can be a pain for developers and users alike, but it avoids (as someone already pointed out) the sort of "DLL Hell" we Windows users have dealt with for decades due to Microsoft's own OS idiosyncracies.

Of course I will gripe too if AisleRiot Solitaire isn't available at launch...

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Actually, it's not really that much of an evolving Linux problem, the OS2005/2006/2007 changes were more of an evolving first-try with a new device:

OS2005-OS2006: Change from an older ARM binary format to a newer one, presumably to accomodate the newer ARM cpus/instruction sets (or the switch could all be a political decision for all I know).

OS2006-OS2007: Hardware of N800 slightly different from 770, and this hardware layer not sufficiently abstracted away from the software (in addition to a newer CPU with instructions not even available on the old CPU. A bit like going from Pentium-II to P4, an application optimized for the latter won't run on the former. As performance is an issue with mobile devices it's more common to optimize as much as possible, more often than for desktop computers where building for the lowest common denominator is more affordable.)

Then there's the new, evolving Hildon UI and its integration (or missing integration) into mainstream gtk+.

The good news is of course that everything is stabilizing more and more now, I seriously doubt we'll see many big changes after OS2008.

(as for Linux itself, even though it evolves it doesn't actually make everything obsolete as it moves, at least not as a general rule: I still have applications from the early years (close to 15 years) that still work fine on my new multi-CPU modern-UI Xeon desktop system. Mobile devices can be a bit more problematic though, for the reasons stated above.)

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Without recompilation? Were the a.out-to-ELF and libc5-to-libc6 transitions more than 15 years ago?

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Thanks for the clarification TA-t3. Obviously I should have included a mobile-specific context.

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Karl I think you have summed it up nicely, I do not anticipate buying a n810, although I was chomping at the bit until I saw the spec's.


Good move on the staying back, I wish I had done it, but its stable now and I have no interest in changing anything. Its really time to step up my search for a replacement hardware platform.

Anyone listening, nows the time?

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

As I'm going into leech mode as far as the N800 is concerned, I won't be contributing to this forum much anymore. I decided to see how things pan out with ITOS2008; if everything I use (and the things I want) get ported to 2008 hassle-free, I might change my mind. Otherwise (and that is what I fear will happen), it'll be a definite goodbye.

I'm sure software will get ported to or developed for the platform, but the sad change to form over function (just look at the myriad of media players, each trying to out-skin the other) doesn't bode well. I don't like the direction the platform seems to be taking -- into a general public entertainment-only device -- so I'm hedging my bets and I'm getting an Eee which, while not perfect and not as pocketable as the N800, at least is a general-purpose Linux device that will allow me to use it as I -- and not the manufacturer or developers for a fringe platform -- see fit.

Bye for now...

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

a.out still works (there's an a.out execution module in the kernel, distros are typically set up to automatically load it if needed). However, for dynamically linked old applications you may find that you don't have the runtime library available (or certainly won't, if you just installed your new fresh system). So, to run them you must have kept your old runtime libs. Some of the oldest applications only still run if they were statically linked.

I don't remember exactly when the a.out->elf transition happened, but it definitely had happened before early 1996 - I just ran some old libc5 elf applications from February 1996.

I would have re-tested some of my 1992 applications (been some months since I did), but that old disk I kept connected (as old as the applications) broke down very recently.. not that much of a surprise really! :)

Re: Is anyone else just happy their SD cards are working again?
 

Thought I'd post more numbers. With the standard Nokia 24MHz SD clock limit built back into my kernel, both cards mentioned above now sit at 8MB/sec on the 'dd' read test.

So a 100% increase in the SD clock rate (24->48MHz) only results in a 50% increase in actual transfer rates. The CPU usage is pegged at 100% during the test (both at 24 and 48MHz), so I assume this less-than-theoretical speed increase is largely due to that. I tried both Busybox 'dd' and the standard GNU coreutils version, and they produce basically the same result. With the upcoming Chinook (2008) firmware boosting the N800 clock to 400MHz, it will be interesting to see if we get a corresponding increase in transfer rates, at least in this artificial test.

I'm going to try the stressful un-tar procedure again (source .tar.bz2 file on the same card as the loop-mounted ext2 file being written to) with the slower clock and see what happens.