Ever since upgrading my two Windows machines (Asus UX301 ultrabook and Lenovo ThinkPad 8 tablet) to Windows 10 the Wifi throughput and latencies have been a mixed bag. Throughput is fluctuating and latency skyrocketing to 100ms periodically every 10-30 seconds. The bug is pretty similar to the one in Windows 7 ages ago where the operating system would continue scanning for available networks every few seconds, thus interfering with the current Wifi connection. The issue looks like this (iperf measurement + Task Manager graph for Wifi connection):

The drop in throughput is also where the latency is increasing to a point where VNC and even SSH connections are no longer interactive.

After tuning my access point’s and Wifi adapters’ settings to no avail, I started looking for running services on Windows 10 that might cause these interferences and lo and behold restarting the service “WlanSvc” (WLAN Auto Config) fixed the issue. I am now employing a task that does this on startup of the machine.

Alternatively you can manually enable/disable WLAN autoconfig on all interfaces. This can be used during and after connecting to the Wifi network:

netsh wlan set autoconfig enable=no interface=*

to disable autoconfig after making the connection.

netsh wlan set autoconfig enable=yes interface=*

to connect to other wireless LANs again afterwards.

Microsoft, get your crap sorted out!

I have been struggling with the SailfishOS Build Engine VM for quite some time. 4 out of 5 SailfishOS builds of QuasarMX would fail because the Shared Folder (vboxsf) mechanism in VirtualBox at some point starts to corrupt files on my system, even though the system’s RAM and storage are perfectly fine. Since QuasarMX heavily relies on qmlpp (see previous post) to work with QtQuick 2, a lot of files will be touched during compilation. For this, vboxsf is both unreliable and slow (!).

So, here is a short tutorial that will show how to run the SailfishOS Build engine outside of the VirtualBox VM in your host’s Linux installation. This guide is geared towards Ubuntu 12.04, but might work on other systems too.

UPDATE 1: New version with root check, private namespace and permission fixes in SB2 targets.
UPDATE 2: The tutorial has been updated to work with SDK Alpha-1404 (Alpha 4). This new version does not work with Alpha-1312 (Alpha 3).
UPDATE 3: This method is working with SDK Beta-1509.

Start the Build engine VM and make sure you can connect to it via SSH (see Developer FAQ for details):
$SUDO_USER is the username you used to sudo into root privileges, change it if you have not used sudo to become root.

ssh -p 2222 -i /home/$SUDO_USER/SailfishOS/vmshare/ssh/private_keys/engine/root root@localhost

If it works:

exit

Now, become root:

sudo -i

Create a directory to host the rootfs of the SailfishOS Build engine:

mkdir /opt/sailfishos-buildengine

Use rsync to copy the rootfs to our newly created directory:

rsync --numeric-ids -xazuv -e "ssh -p 2222 -i /home/$SUDO_USER/SailfishOS/vmshare/ssh/private_keys/engine/root" root@localhost:/ /opt/sailfishos-buildengine

This will take a while. Go, have dinner or get a cup of tea.

Save the following script as file “run-sailfishos-buildengine.sh” somewhere you like. We’ll use /opt/run-sailfishos-buildengine.sh
Make sure to edit the first few lines to match your environment, SDK=/opt/SailfishOS is the directory you used to install the Sailfish SDK on your host. This probably is /home/YOURUSERNAME/SailfishOS if you haven’t installed as root.

#!/bin/bash
USER=$SUDO_USER
USERDIR=/home/$USER
SDK=/opt/SailfishOS
BUILDENGINE=/opt/sailfishos-buildengine

if [ $EUID -ne 0 ]; then
	echo "This script must be run as root." 1>&2
	exit 1
fi

if cmp -s /proc/$PPID/mountinfo /proc/self/mountinfo; then
	exec unshare -m -- "$0" "$@"
	echo "$0 must be run in private namespace."
	exit 1
fi
		
cleanup()
{
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/dev/pts
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/dev
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/proc
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/sys
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/run

	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/home/mersdk/share	
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/home/src1
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/etc/ssh/authorized_keys
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/host_targets
	umount -l $BUILDENGINE/etc/mersdk/share
}

trap "cleanup > /dev/null 2>&1; exit" INT QUIT TERM EXIT

mount --make-slave "$(df -P "$BUILDENGINE" | tail -1 | awk '{print $NF}')"

mount --bind /dev "$BUILDENGINE/dev"
mount --bind /dev/pts "$BUILDENGINE/dev/pts"
mount --bind /proc "$BUILDENGINE/proc"
mount --bind /sys "$BUILDENGINE/sys"
mount --bind /run "$BUILDENGINE/run"

mount --bind "$USERDIR" "$BUILDENGINE/home/mersdk/share"
mount --bind "$USERDIR" "$BUILDENGINE/home/src1"
mount --bind "$SDK/mersdk/ssh" "$BUILDENGINE/etc/ssh/authorized_keys"
mount --bind "$SDK/mersdk/targets" "$BUILDENGINE/host_targets"
mount --bind "$SDK/vmshare" "$BUILDENGINE/etc/mersdk/share"

# Rewrite user id and group id entries to match host system's users
updateConfigs()
{
	sed -i -e "s/$1:x:$2:100000:/$1:x:$(id -u $USER):$(id -g $USER):/" "$3/passwd"
	sed -i -e "s/$1:x:100000:/$1:x:$(id -g $USER):/" "$3/group"
	cp /etc/resolv.conf "$3/"
}

updateConfigs mersdk 1001 "$BUILDENGINE/etc"
updateConfigs nemo 100000 "$BUILDENGINE/srv/mer/targets/SailfishOS-armv7hl/etc"
updateConfigs nemo 100000 "$BUILDENGINE/srv/mer/targets/SailfishOS-i486/etc"

cat > "$BUILDENGINE/runmersdkengine.sh" << CONTENT
#!/bin/bash

cleanup()
{
	pkill -KILL -f "/usr/bin/ruby /usr/bin/puma -p 8080 -t 1:1 -e production"
}
trap "cleanup; exit" INT QUIT TERM EXIT

# Fix up permissions to point to new uid/gid of mersdk
mkdir -p /home/deploy/installroot
chown -R mersdk.mersdk /home/deploy/installroot
chown -R mersdk.mersdk /srv/mer/targets/*
find /home/mersdk | grep -v "/home/mersdk/share" | xargs chown mersdk.mersdk

# Run web server of build engine as mersdk in background:
su mersdk -c "cd /usr/lib/sdk-webapp-bundle; /usr/bin/ruby /usr/bin/puma -p 8080 -t 1:1 -e production" &

# Run SSH Server of build engine as root:
/usr/sbin/sshd -p 2222 -D -e -f /etc/ssh/sshd_config_engine
CONTENT

chroot "$BUILDENGINE" sh /runmersdkengine.sh 

Don’t forget to

chmod 755 /opt/run-sailfishos-buildengine.sh

Now exit the root shell and run:

sudo /opt/run-sailfishos-buildengine.sh

This will start the Open SSH server and the build engine’s web server which is used in the modified Qt Creator of the SailfishOS SDK.
Press CTRL+C to terminate the engine at any time.

Qt Creator will complain that the VM is not started and offers to start the VM for you. Just click No and ignore it. The build is already running in the background.

Enjoy your fast builds!

So, Nokia is removing developer documentation and support from their site to focus on the ill-fated move to Lumia Windows Phones and their S40 devices re-branded as Asha.

The first victim (or shall I say winner?) of this move has been Qt. Best move ever selling Qt to Digia, Nokia! Now we can finally have official iPhone and Android support in Qt. Digia has been committed to developing Qt ever since and in my opinion it finally shows.
The second victim is Symbian of course. Nokia is incrementally removing support for the platform. Most of the online developer resources have vanished and it is getting harder to find documentation.
The third victim is obviously Harmattan / Maemo 6 which is used on the N9 and N950. The harmattan-dev.nokia.com site has been offline for the last 2 to 3 weeks and I have repeatedly called upon @nokiadeveloper on Twitter to get the issue sorted out. It looks like there is absolutely no interest on Nokia’s side, which is quite unfortunate.

This is Nokia kicking developers in the teeth. Thank you.

So, as matters stand now I have created three mirrors on katastrophos.net to keep all those valuable Harmattan and Symbian resources alive:

Symbian Belle Developer Libary: https://katastrophos.net/symbian-dev
Harmattan Developer Documentation: https://katastrophos.net/harmattan-dev
Symbian Resources, Development Tools & SDKs: https://katastrophos.net/symbian/mirrors

Nokia, yes, if you have problems with yours truly mirroring your abandoned content, sue me.
Oh, and by the way, you are still owing me 600 Euros for January! 3 eMails and 2 months of patience and NOTHING has been resolved.

Ubuntu 12.04 has been released almost a month ago and I thought I revive my semi-benched U2010 to see how the hardware support has improved in this new release of Ubuntu.

First off, if you are installing Ubuntu 12.04 and are getting the dreaded black screen issue, follow the Ubuntu Wiki here. Make sure to also install the fix to get suspend/sleep and hibernate working with the new psb_gfx driver.
After the installation you will have to make some minor adjustments to get everything working on the Fujitsu U820/U2010:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist poulsbo
blacklist fujitsu_laptop

The first line disables the stub driver, the second line makes sure you can actually use the backlight keys (fujitsu_laptop conflicts with the psb_gfx driver).
The enable_msi fix in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf is no longer required. The sound will work just fine without it.

To get the microphone working I had to add the following line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=laptop-amic probe_mask=1

The headphone jack sensing/detection is flacky in this new release. Switching between the headphone jack and the internal speaker will only work after the audio card goes into power-saving mode, ie. a few seconds after the last audio output closed.

/etc/default/grub:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet console=tty1 acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor nmi_watchdog=0"

quiet console=tty1 is the recommended workaround for the black screen issue of the new psb_gfx driver in 12.04.
acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor is required to get the backlight controls working.
nmi_watchdog=0 disables the NMI watchdog responsible for detecting a hung system and might issue a reboot. According to Intel PowerTOP this option saves power by producing less wake-ups.

Finally update the bootloader via:

sudo update-grub

2. Installing the Fujitsu Buttons driver (fjbtndrv)

In order to get the screen buttons working we will need to compile and install the latest version of fjbtndrv.
The most current version as of this writing is 2.3.2. Please make sure you download the latest version here.

sudo apt-get install libxrandr-dev libxtst-dev libxi-dev libhal-dev
tar xvzf fjbtndrv-2.3.2.tar.gz
cd fjbtndrv-2.3.2
./configure
make
sudo make install

3. Calibrating the display

The touch screen has been supported for several kernel and Ubuntu versions already. The big problem always was the missing calibration tool. Luckily a calibration is now available in form of xinput-calibrator. At last special drivers are no longer required.

sudo apt-get install xinput-calibrator
sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
xinput_calibrator

Calibrate the display and save the output to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf
Here is my calibration config:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier      "calibration"
        MatchProduct    "Fujitsu Component USB Touch Panel"
        Option  "Calibration"   "58 3877 249 3830"
EndSection

Known problems:

• Headphone jack detection does not work as expected
• System freezes when idling, but wakes up again once an interrupt is triggered (e.g. keyboard, mouse, touchscreen etc.). This mostly happens when I am simultaneously using a Bluetooth mouse or a Bluetooth Dialup connection. I have not been able to pin-point or fix the issue yet.
• Screen rotation is not working with the psb_gfx driver
• Note to self: Newer versions of the psb_gfx driver are called gma500_gfx