EDIT: further images from this process were lost in a phone smash incident, sorry
Here’s a preliminary HOWTO from my recent external flashing of the BIOS ROM on a Lenovo X200 thinkpad (Wikipedia). The particular firmware flashed was a Libreboot build for this machine (instructions for X200 and details of the external flashing procedure) but anything goes (but anything may not be useful, though).
I’ll amend this HOWTO with more detailed instructions and pictures in the following days (warning: a prediction) to hopefully make it more complete and useful for the vary inhabitants of LibreBootLand.
A programmer kit was bought on AliExpress for $4.20 containing a USB programmer board and an SOIC-8 clip which ended up not being used as the particular X200 had a SOIC-16 chip so a separately ordered SOIC-16 chip ($3.11) was used.
Buy: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32898599200.html @ $4.20
The programmer is based on the WCH CH341a chip which is an USB <-> seriel/parallel/uart interface. The manufacturer WCH being WinChipHead aka. WCH (Nanjing QinHeng Electronics Co.,Ltd) (maybe also aka. WCH-IC (Jiangsu Qinheng Co., Ltd)). There are lots of options for buying board varieties based on the CH341a chip, to get you started here is a BangGood search and an AliExpress search.
Boards like this has also been described by others including a deduced schematic, EEVblog critique of the I/O pin power on similar boards (not yet confirmed whether that is true for this programmer too, I guess so, but at least one flashing done without damage) and a mention on hackaday of other board types.
There are a bunch of downloads from the WCH site regarding the chip including a Chinese datasheet, no English language documentation seems to be available from the manufacturer however. There are some English editions of the datasheet to be found, of unknown origin. They seem plausible enough to use, though. Somebody has attempted to collect documentation about the chip in a Git repository.
Buy: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32869145935.html @ $3.11
To attach physically to the Macronix MX25L6405D flash memory chip in a SOIC-16 package present on the X200 in question (words are that this is the norm although the board can be populated with a SOIC-8 too) a clip that matches the pins of the SOIC-16 package is needed. I bought the one mentioned above for $3.11 at random from AliExpress and this worked fine. In the pictures the wiring is hooked up correctly to the programmer to allow for flashing as described below.
6405 <-> CH341a
MISO<->MIOS (label error, should be MISO)
MOSI<->MOSI
CLK <-> CLK
CS <-> SS
GND <-> GND
First tried driving the the flash chip from VDD on ch341a but this was unsuccessful, no chip could be found, so the 6405 was hooked up to external 3.3v power supply with supply GND connected to GND on CH341a to align the ground potential between ch341a I/O supply and 6405 supply (important!).
To get the latest ECP (Embedded Controller Program) from Lenovo (no free alternative exists) containing software for the MCU controlling low level hardware like battery charging/keyboard/backlight stuff you need to update the BIOS which also updates the ECP. Most recent version for X200 is “BIOS: 3.22 / ECP: 1.07“. This is not needed if you already have these versions on the machine, check current versions by pressing ThinkVantage during boot and choosing “Enter Setup”. If your system has a Windows installation download and run the “BIOS Update Utility“executeable. Else you’ll need to get the “BIOS Update Bootable CD” and somehow get it on a CD and find a CD-ROM drive. Alternatively on a Linux system the CD file system can be extracted and added to Grub to be directly bootable. Below was done on an Ubuntu 16.04 system: $ sudo apt install genisoimage syslinux $ wget -q https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/6duj48us.iso $ geteltorito 6duj48us.iso > 6duj48us.img Booting catalog starts at sector: 20 Manufacturer of CD: NERO BURNING ROM Image architecture: x86 Boot media type is: harddisk El Torito image starts at sector 27 and has 75776 sector(s) of 512 Bytes Image has been written to stdout …. $ sudo cp 6duj48us.im /boot $ sudo cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot $ sudo nano /etc/grub.d/40_custom <add lines below to the end of file, preserve the “exec tail…” line> menuentry “BIOS Update” { linux16 /memdisk initrd16 /6duj48us.im } $ sudo update-grub Reboot, press <left shift> key while booting to access Grub, choose BIOS Update menu entry and follow the Lenovo update procedure. To start flashing it requires both a connected power supply and also a working, non-exhausted battery (!) mounted in the machine. This is tiresome for owners of worn out batteries… Some notes about the flashing process can be found in the documentation of a patch set for the Lenovo BIOS.
To get the latest ECP (Embedded Controller Program) from Lenovo (no free alternative exists) containing software for the MCU controlling low level hardware like battery charging/keyboard/backlight stuff you need to update the BIOS which also updates the ECP. Most recent version for X200 is “BIOS: 3.22 / ECP: 1.07“. This is not needed if you already have these versions on the machine, check current versions by pressing ThinkVantage during boot and choosing “Enter Setup”.
If your system has a Windows installation download and run the “BIOS Update Utility“executeable. Else you’ll need to get the “BIOS Update Bootable CD” and somehow get it on a CD and find a CD-ROM drive. Alternatively on a Linux system the CD file system can be extracted and added to Grub to be directly bootable. Below was done on an Ubuntu 16.04 system:
$ sudo apt install genisoimage syslinux $ wget -q https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/6duj48us.iso $ geteltorito 6duj48us.iso > 6duj48us.img Booting catalog starts at sector: 20 Manufacturer of CD: NERO BURNING ROM Image architecture: x86 Boot media type is: harddisk El Torito image starts at sector 27 and has 75776 sector(s) of 512 Bytes Image has been written to stdout …. $ sudo cp 6duj48us.im /boot $ sudo cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot $ sudo nano /etc/grub.d/40_custom <add lines below to the end of file, preserve the “exec tail…” line> menuentry “BIOS Update” { linux16 /memdisk initrd16 /6duj48us.im } $ sudo update-grub Reboot, press <left shift> key while booting to access Grub, choose BIOS Update menu entry and follow the Lenovo update procedure. To start flashing it requires both a connected power supply and also a working, non-exhausted battery (!) mounted in the machine. This is tiresome for owners of worn out batteries… Some notes about the flashing process can be found in the documentation of a patch set for the Lenovo BIOS.
$ sudo apt install genisoimage syslinux $ wget -q https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/6duj48us.iso $ geteltorito 6duj48us.iso > 6duj48us.img Booting catalog starts at sector: 20 Manufacturer of CD: NERO BURNING ROM Image architecture: x86 Boot media type is: harddisk El Torito image starts at sector 27 and has 75776 sector(s) of 512 Bytes Image has been written to stdout …. $ sudo cp 6duj48us.im /boot $ sudo cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot $ sudo nano /etc/grub.d/40_custom <add lines below to the end of file, preserve the “exec tail…” line> menuentry “BIOS Update” { linux16 /memdisk initrd16 /6duj48us.im } $ sudo update-grub
Reboot, press <left shift> key while booting to access Grub, choose BIOS Update menu entry and follow the Lenovo update procedure. To start flashing it requires both a connected power supply and also a working, non-exhausted battery (!) mounted in the machine. This is tiresome for owners of worn out batteries…
Some notes about the flashing process can be found in the documentation of a patch set for the Lenovo BIOS.
sudo apt install flashrom
ch341a support in flashrom
Download the stable LibreBoot firmware: https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/libreboot.org/release/stable/20160907/rom/grub/libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb.tar.xz
The brave will of course want to compile it themselves.
$ cd $ wget https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/libreboot.org/release/stable/20160907/rom/grub/libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb.tar.xz --2019-06-07 07:35:21-- https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/libreboot.org/release/stable/20160907/rom/grub/libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb.tar.xz Resolving www.mirrorservice.org (www.mirrorservice.org)... 212.219.56.184, 2001:630:341:12::184 Connecting to www.mirrorservice.org (www.mirrorservice.org)|212.219.56.184|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1632800 (1,6M) [application/x-xz] Saving to: ‘libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb.tar.xz’ libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb.tar.xz 100%[================================================================================>] 1,56M --.-KB/s in 0,1s 2019-06-07 07:35:21 (13,9 MB/s) - ‘libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb.tar.xz’ saved [1632800/1632800] $ tar tf libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb.tar.xz libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/ libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_deqwertz_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_esqwerty_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_frazerty_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_frdvbepo_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_itqwerty_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_svenska_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_ukdvorak_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_ukqwerty_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_usdvorak_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_usqwerty_txtmode.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_deqwertz_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_esqwerty_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_frazerty_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_frdvbepo_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_itqwerty_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_svenska_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_ukdvorak_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_ukqwerty_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_usdvorak_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_usqwerty_vesafb.rom libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/ChangeLog libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/NEWS libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/version libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/versiondate $
As the MAC address of the ethnernet PHY is stored in the flash, yo have your X200 ethernet MAC address correspond to the sticker on the back of the machine, and also avoid a potential but improbable DHCP/ARP conflict, the MAC address from the label/ifconfig from the existing system must be embedded into the flash file that we are going to program into the flash chip.
For this a tool called ich9gen is needed, this is a part of the libreboot repository and we need to build it ourselves.
$ git clone https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot Cloning into 'libreboot'... remote: Counting objects: 29080, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (9855/9855), done. remote: Total 29080 (delta 18748), reused 27899 (delta 18057) Receiving objects: 100% (29080/29080), 63.90 MiB | 11.13 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (18748/18748), done. Checking connectivity... done. $ cd libreboot/projects/ich9gen/sources $ make gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/ich9deblob.c -o obj/ich9deblob.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/common/descriptor_gbe.c -o obj/common/descriptor_gbe.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/descriptor/descriptor.c -o obj/descriptor/descriptor.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/gbe/gbe.c -o obj/gbe/gbe.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/common/x86compatibility.c -o obj/common/x86compatibility.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 obj/ich9deblob.o obj/common/descriptor_gbe.o \ obj/common/x86compatibility.o obj/descriptor/descriptor.o obj/gbe/gbe.o \ -o ich9deblob gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/ich9gen.c -o obj/ich9gen.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/ich9gen/mkdescriptor.c -o obj/ich9gen/mkdescriptor.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/ich9gen/mkgbe.c -o obj/ich9gen/mkgbe.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 obj/ich9gen.o obj/ich9gen/mkdescriptor.o obj/ich9gen/mkgbe.o \ obj/common/descriptor_gbe.o \ obj/common/x86compatibility.o obj/descriptor/descriptor.o obj/gbe/gbe.o \ -o ich9gen gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 -c src/demefactory.c -o obj/demefactory.o gcc -I. -Wall -Wextra -g -std=c99 obj/demefactory.o obj/common/descriptor_gbe.o \ obj/common/x86compatibility.o obj/descriptor/descriptor.o obj/gbe/gbe.o \ -o demefactory $
Running ich9gen itself generates the flash descriptor (fd) header including possible configuration section where the MAC address is stored for the gigabit ethernet (gbe) PHY onboard the ICH9 chipset. When run six 12 KiB files for respectively 4, 8 and 16 MiB binary images and chipsets including (gbe) and excluding (nogbe) gigabit ethernet PHY are generated.
“aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff” in the commandline should be replaced with the actual 12 hex digits from the label on the machine or by running ifconfig on the machine using the existing Lenovo BIOS.
$ cd ~/libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/ $ ~/libreboot/projects/ich9gen/sources/ich9gen --macaddress aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff You selected to change the MAC address in the Gbe section. This has been done. The modified gbe region has also been dumped as src files: mkgbe.c, mkgbe.h To use these in ich9gen, place them in src/ich9gen/ and re-build ich9gen. descriptor and gbe successfully written to the file: ich9fdgbe_4m.bin Now do: dd if=ich9fdgbe_4m.bin of=libreboot.rom bs=1 count=12k conv=notrunc (in other words, add the modified descriptor+gbe to your ROM image) descriptor and gbe successfully written to the file: ich9fdgbe_8m.bin Now do: dd if=ich9fdgbe_8m.bin of=libreboot.rom bs=1 count=12k conv=notrunc (in other words, add the modified descriptor+gbe to your ROM image) descriptor and gbe successfully written to the file: ich9fdgbe_16m.bin Now do: dd if=ich9fdgbe_16m.bin of=libreboot.rom bs=1 count=12k conv=notrunc (in other words, add the modified descriptor+gbe to your ROM image) descriptor successfully written to the file: ich9fdnogbe_4m.bin Now do: dd if=ich9fdnogbe_4m.bin of=yourrom.rom bs=1 count=4k conv=notrunc (in other words, add the modified descriptor to your ROM image) descriptor successfully written to the file: ich9fdnogbe_8m.bin Now do: dd if=ich9fdnogbe_8m.bin of=yourrom.rom bs=1 count=4k conv=notrunc (in other words, add the modified descriptor to your ROM image) descriptor successfully written to the file: ich9fdnogbe_16m.bin Now do: dd if=ich9fdnogbe_16m.bin of=yourrom.rom bs=1 count=4k conv=notrunc (in other words, add the modified descriptor to your ROM image)
$ cd ~/libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/ $ cp -v x200_8mb_usqwerty_vesafb{,_customised}.rom 'x200_8mb_usqwerty_vesafb.rom' -> 'x200_8mb_usqwerty_vesafb_customised.rom' $ dd if=ich9fdgbe_8m.bin of=x200_8mb_usqwerty_vesafb_customised.rom bs=1 count=12k conv=notrunc 12288+0 records in 12288+0 records out 12288 bytes (12 kB, 12 KiB) copied, 0,0299453 s, 410 kB/s $
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom1.bin flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom2.bin flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom3.bin flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom4.bin flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom5.bin cmp rom{1,2}.bin cmp rom{1,3}.bin cmp rom{1,4}.bin cmp rom{1,5}.bin
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom1.bin
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom2.bin
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom3.bin
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom4.bin
flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -r rom5.bin
cmp rom{1,2}.bin
cmp rom{1,3}.bin
cmp rom{1,4}.bin
cmp rom{1,5}.bin
$ sudo flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L6405D -w ~/libreboot_r20160907_grub_x200_8mb/x200_8mb_usqwerty_vesafb_customised.rom $
Tænk hvor meget trafik, processerings- og ventetid der ville være sparet hvis nogen gad at overveje hvad billeder på en hjemmeside anvendes til og tilpasse de transmitterede data derefter!
Her et enkelt sølle eksempel af mange observerede (ingen særlig grund til at klandre den specifikke afsender her, blev bare trigget af at klikke på et link i et nyhedsbrev just modtaget) fra SDFE‘s nyhedsoversigtsside, hvor det er så åbenlyst tydeligt på billedindlæsningshastigheden at billederne er alt for meget større end nødvendigt.
Inspicering i browseren (f.eks. med Firefox dev-tools: F12->Network) viser da også at billedindholdet fylder 14,85 MiB ud af sidens samlede størrelse på 16,23 MiB (91,5%).
SDFE.dk nyhedsoversigtsside, billederoverførsel
Hvad værre er at billederne på denne side kun anvendes som meget små illustrationer til en række artikler, men hentes som enorme filer i opløsningen 1920×1080. Inspektion af det første billede i browserens DOM-inspektør (Firefox: F12->Inspector) afslører at browseren kun viser billedet i en opløsning på 100×56! Der går altså 1920*1080-100*56=2’068’000 (99,73%) pixels til fuldstændig spilde.
SDFE.dk digebillede, vist størrelse vs. datastørrelse
Et hurtigt forsøg med at nedskalere et enkelt billede (terminal-foo!), uden at gå ind i så avancerede emner som JPG-kompressionskvalitet eller alternative billedformater (for ikke at tale om reel billedoptimering), kan give en ide om hvor meget data der egentlig overføres unødigt ved visning af denne side:
$ wget –quiet https://sdfe.dk/media/2919562/dige-1920×1080.jpg $ gm convert -resize 100×56 dige-1920×1080.jpg dige-100×56.jpg $ ls -l dige-* -rw-rw-r– 1 miki miki 17420 Apr 30 15:54 dige-100×56.jpg -rw-rw-r– 1 miki miki 1568308 Apr 24 14:54 dige-1920×1080.jpg $
Billedets størrelse reduceres her fra 1’568’308 bytes (1,60 MiB) til 17’420 bytes (17,01 KiB). Det er relativt en besparelse i overførselsmængden på dette billede på 8903%, vel at mærke med nøjagtigt det samme visuelle udbytte! For ikke at tale om den besparelse i hukommelsesforbrug og processeringstid der også opås ved at sidebeskuerens browser skal forholde sig til en tilsvarende mindre mængde data.
Under antagelse af at tilsvarende reduktioner kan opnås på det samlede sæt af billeder på denne side, vil overførselsbehovet kunne reduceres fra 15’206,40 KiB til 170,80 KiB. Tænk lige over det næste gang, webmaster!
Update: Jeg mødte Richard i Odense, fik lov at sponsorere FSF og fik en GNU med hjem!
Mikkel & RMS (og GNU)SDU, Odense
Rygterne har lydt noget tid, men nu er det officielt at formand for og stifter af Free Software Foundation, den ideologiske ophavsmand til GNU-projektet og højlydt fortaler for softwarebrugeres frihed og privatliv i den digitale verden, Richard Stallman besøger Danmark med en række åbne og gratis foredrag dette forår.
Det er Stallmans dedikerede arbejde med fri software og GNU-projektet fra starten af 1980’erne, herunder udformning af softwarelicenser som GNU GPL og udviklingsværktøjer som GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) og GNU Emacs, der er grundlaget for en stor del af det der i offentligheden i dag bedst kendes som “open source”. I Stallmans og GNUs terminologi benævnes det dog retteligt “fri software” (på engelsk: “free software”) for at fremhæve at etablering og bevarelse af softwarens, og slutbrugeren af dens, frihed er det egentlige rationale for at give kildekoden fri.
Kernen Linux er frigivet under GNU GPL og er både inspireret af og anvender GNU-projektets arbejde direkte, og er en vigtig del af et komplet GNU-system (også kendt som GNU/Linux eller en “Linux-distribution”).
Stallman kommer på en veritabel Danmarksturne med start i Aalborg mandag d. 6. maj 2019 og ender i København fredag d. 10. maj 2019. Foredragsrækken er arrangeret af innovationsnetværket for IT, InfiniIT, som inkluderer de store IT-universiteter i Danmark.
Den samlede foredragsrække er som følger:
16:00-19:00
16:00-18:00
(ændrede lokationsoplysninger ikke opdaterede her)
Kilder: FSF: Where in the world is Richard Stallman?, InfinIT-arrangementer, IDA-søgning, PROSA-arrangementer
Begivenhederne er også tilføjet den åbne kalender GriCal: grical.org/s/?query=%40DK.
De primære kilder er hovedsageligt på engelsk:
I regularly stumble upon maps which I cane recognize as derived from OpenStreetMap. Usually by map style, the level of detail or by seeking out details I know is only present in OSM. I usually inspect the attribution and license accompanying the material to assess whether it is prepared by an organisation who understands the needs to and cares about having its chain of copyright somewhat traceable. I’ll attempt to do a small concise writeup of the findings going along this in the future. Maybe I’ll be able to produce a series of “OSM Use & Attribute” posts?
Quite randomly the first one became the Danish company Bisnode.dk using OSM tiles from Mapquest (the ones who fled from an open approach in 2015) to indicate locations in the commercial and subscription-required yellow pages product named Bisnode Navne & Numre® Erhverv (aka. erhverv.nnmarkedsdata.dk).
For reference: OSM’s Copyright and License page
Below is a screen-shot from within the walled garden, and the actual link leading to the page (accessible to me because I’m the owner of the company in question).
Bisnode obviously uses Mapquest as supplier of their maps. Mapquest do make sure to display a nice and prominent copyright attribution line in the map with text linking to respectively Mapquest’s Mapbox attribution page (“MAPBOX” text), OpenStreetMap’s about page (“OPENSTREETMAP” text) and Mapquest’s TOS (“TERMS” text).
The OSM attribution doesn’t comply exactly with the words of the OSM attribution instructions; to use the text “© OpenStreetMap contributors” and make it clear that data is distributed under the ODbL license (suggested done by linking to the OSM copyright page which only happens indirectly through the about page). This is almost fulfilled on the 3rd Party Notices and Licences which is, however, buried behind the long read of the Mapquest TOS, and where the attribution strangely becomes the rather twisted “© Open Street Map and Contributors”. Who are OSM beyond its contributors? And why doesn’t Mapquest know the correct name of the project? Is it to prevent search engine hits of the more unique concatenation of the three words? That’s a guess.
Strangely an almost similar text but also with a reference to the ODbL is to be found in the “Mapbox Streets” section of the Mapbox attribution page.
For reference: OSM/OSMF’s Tile Usage Policy
The tiles are obviously rendered using the Mapquest cartography and thus can be served only by Mapquest.
The support request replicated below was posted as ticket #20427 on Micro:bit support on 2019-01-31 22:19 CET spawned by discussion in F-Droid RFP #662 about inclusion of the official Micro:bit Android Companion application in the free software application store F-Droid.
Hi at Micro:bit Educational Foundation. We are wondering a bit in the F-Droid free software community (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues/662) whether it is worthwhile for us to try to loosen the official Android companion application (https://microbit.org/guide/mobile/#og-app) from its non-free dependencies to make it available in the free software application store F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/). This leads to a couple of questions you can hopefully help answering; 1) Do you regard the application as alive and supported? The latest release of the application was v2.0 2017-01-17 (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit) and the publicly available code base (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/) seems to have been completely abandoned. Only two commits were ever made by Samsung and no involvement with the community has been seen at all. 2) How come the big difference in maturity between the iOS and Android mobile applications? It seems like the iOS application has received some more attention seeing regular updates through to v3.0.2 released 2018-11-01 (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/micro-bit/id1092687276?mt=8). Also it appears to have a much wider fetaureset (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit&reviewId=gp%3AAOqpTOGpgo4CF2qrry4qWqLXyj0TZaEEJcrTB-yZ61o4nJbqhq-2mBojlYQJP7BzdkAzseGaLD1sVO9fBv1R3sY) developed along the way by Insight Resources (http://www.insightresources.co.uk/microbit/index.html). The Android application appears to have been more of a one-off project from Samsung having all sorts of issues especially with Bluetooth that has never been attended to (http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/2016/04/mobile-microbit/, https://support.microbit.org/support/solutions/articles/19000041104-diagnosing-bluetooth-problems-android). 3) Is there a plan to bring the application in better shape? Some activity can be seen in repository forks and branches from the original Samsung committer ailrohit (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…ailrohit:school_project) and microbit-sam (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…microbit-sam:partial-flash) identifying as being from the foundation but none of this work seem to be included in releases yet. 4) If a freed fork is made for inclusion in F-Droid would you be willing and able to integrate the changes into the official sources? F-Droid prefers an upstream source which can be directly built without non-free dependencies using an appropriate set of build options. This greatly simplifies maintenance and build efforts. A forked repository is already in place at the foundation’s Github organization (https://github.com/microbit-foundation/microbit-android) but is at the moment even with the stale Samsung repository. Thanks for any clarifications you can provide. Regards, Mikkel
Hi at Micro:bit Educational Foundation.
We are wondering a bit in the F-Droid free software community (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues/662) whether it is worthwhile for us to try to loosen the official Android companion application (https://microbit.org/guide/mobile/#og-app) from its non-free dependencies to make it available in the free software application store F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/).
This leads to a couple of questions you can hopefully help answering;
1) Do you regard the application as alive and supported?
The latest release of the application was v2.0 2017-01-17 (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit) and the publicly available code base (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/) seems to have been completely abandoned. Only two commits were ever made by Samsung and no involvement with the community has been seen at all.
2) How come the big difference in maturity between the iOS and Android mobile applications?
It seems like the iOS application has received some more attention seeing regular updates through to v3.0.2 released 2018-11-01 (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/micro-bit/id1092687276?mt=8). Also it appears to have a much wider fetaureset (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit&reviewId=gp%3AAOqpTOGpgo4CF2qrry4qWqLXyj0TZaEEJcrTB-yZ61o4nJbqhq-2mBojlYQJP7BzdkAzseGaLD1sVO9fBv1R3sY) developed along the way by Insight Resources (http://www.insightresources.co.uk/microbit/index.html).
The Android application appears to have been more of a one-off project from Samsung having all sorts of issues especially with Bluetooth that has never been attended to (http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/2016/04/mobile-microbit/, https://support.microbit.org/support/solutions/articles/19000041104-diagnosing-bluetooth-problems-android).
3) Is there a plan to bring the application in better shape?
Some activity can be seen in repository forks and branches from the original Samsung committer ailrohit (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…ailrohit:school_project) and microbit-sam (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…microbit-sam:partial-flash) identifying as being from the foundation but none of this work seem to be included in releases yet.
4) If a freed fork is made for inclusion in F-Droid would you be willing and able to integrate the changes into the official sources?
F-Droid prefers an upstream source which can be directly built without non-free dependencies using an appropriate set of build options. This greatly simplifies maintenance and build efforts. A forked repository is already in place at the foundation’s Github organization (https://github.com/microbit-foundation/microbit-android) but is at the moment even with the stale Samsung repository.
Thanks for any clarifications you can provide.
Regards, Mikkel
If you’re interested in the universe (and who aren’t), outer &/| inner space and its human exploration you can get yourself a nice reminder of everything going on in your favourite calender application (be it mobile, desktop or cloud based) by configuring them to display these iCalendar/CalDAV feeds;
They contain schedules and usually good information (links background information, webcasts etc.) about earthly initiated stuff going on in space focusing on events and launches respectively. See for example the recent Spx-16 release & landing.
They are compiled by a guy called Mario Billiano (aka _starbase_) who announced them at the nasaspaceflight.com forums in August 2017.
He is also present on Twitter and Facebook.
Hit an odd browser behaviour today.
Trawling through some of those nice and dandy terms for a service (no I won’t tell) I followed a link and suddenly hit an “insecure connection” message from Firefox.
Examining the certificate using the usual “openssl s_client” and “openssl x509” tools surely enough revealed that the served certificate didn’t include the second-level but only on the third-level www sub-domain. Strangely enough I discovered that when entering the same URL directly into the address bar of Firefox the connection was somehow redirected to the www sub-domain and loaded fine without any complaints from Firefox.
Looking into what was happening on the wire using wget directed to not check the certificate (–no-check-certificate) and displaying server responses (–server-response/-S) revealed that the server behind the misconfigured certificate was aiming to issue a HTTP 301 redirect to the valid www sub-domain of the site (actual site replaced by foo.bar and localhost ip);
$ wget –server-response –no-check-certificate –output-document=/dev/null https://foo.bar –2018-11-15 18:59:14– https://foo.bar/ Resolving foo.bar (foo.bar)… 127.0.0.1 Connecting to foo.bar (foo.bar)|127.0.0.1|:443… connected. WARNING: no certificate subject alternative name matches requested host name ‘foo.bar’. HTTP request sent, awaiting response… HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Location: https://www.foo.bar/ Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2018 17:59:13 GMT Content-Length: 152 Location: https://www.foo.bar/ [following] …
Apparently Firefox’s behaviour in this scenario differs depending on the method in which the user is supplying the URL, in some cases silently ignoring the TLS/SSL warning. A little more experimentation revealed that it was actually not the source of the URL, link followed versus one entered in address bar, that made any difference. Instead it is the presence of a trailing slash on the URL that triggers the silent suppression of the serious red flag that the second-level domain asked to be fetched is not present in the served certificate. I was fooled by the fact that when entering URLs in the address bar Firefox suggests ending the URL on a slash (‘/’) if it is not already present. Manually removing this when editing in the address bar also makes Firefox display the security warning. Alas, the link I originally followed was also missing the trailing slash and behaved as expected by throwing me into a security warning.
The whole “feature” of silently ignoring a security issue seemed very odd to me, but a bit of searching revealed that this was apparently championed by Google Chrome a couple of years ago. It is described in this servertastic post which also directs to a discussion on Twitter, with some key points replicated below, about its presence in Chrome and confirmation from a Chrome team member that the behaviour is intended.
Interesting. Chrome recognizes https ://onlineservices.nsdl.com has a cert valid only for www and redirects to https://www… @Scott_Helme pic.twitter.com/j9XdqiXqAI — Anand Bhat (@_anandbhat) October 26, 2016
Interesting. Chrome recognizes https ://onlineservices.nsdl.com has a cert valid only for www and redirects to https://www… @Scott_Helme pic.twitter.com/j9XdqiXqAI
— Anand Bhat (@_anandbhat) October 26, 2016
invalid cert for raw TLD but valid cert for www will trigger redirection down to www — Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) October 26, 2016
invalid cert for raw TLD but valid cert for www will trigger redirection down to www
— Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) October 26, 2016
The thread ends with a guy who had dug up the source code of the feature in Chromium (on which Chrome is based) known as “SSLCommonNameMismatchHandling” in file browser/ssl/common_name_mismatch_handler.cc (see all mentions across code base).
This has obviously also trickled down into Firefox, however, not much mention of that is to be found. Not even traces of it by some quick searches of the mozilla-central codebase. Some day I promise (really!) to dig through all source of Mozilla and hunt down the implementation, but for now I’ll revert to a bit of practical experimentation showing the behaviour in the different browsers and operating systems I happen to have access to at the moment;
So somewhere between 59.0.3 and 62.0.2 Firefox also implemented a policy of silently accepting invalid certificates when certain non-obvious criteria is met (is the redirect actually followed and certs checked, or is “www.” just prefixed?), but this happens only when the URL ends on a slash. Go figure…
2020-11-25 add news item about cable extension to Copenhagen, add Bulk data center blog link 2019-06-04 add details of Bulk data center in Esbjerg and infrastructure, add local news items about construction start 2019-05-08 add system summary from FCC application, elaborate on landing point discrepancies between FCC/cablemap, link to docs describing seg. 5 cable lay schedule 2019-03-06 fix links to submarinecablemap.com and some press, add info from TE Subcom experience doc., some general touch ups 2019-01-22 change “Danish Press Coverage” to “National Press”, add “International Press”, add some National about datacenter prospects & International Press items about contractors choosen 2018-10-05 initial commit
Europe, Denmark and my local neighbourhood of Western Jutland is going to get its connectivity boosted by the Havfrue transatlantic cable system being built by a consortium consisting of Google, Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure. To quote the announcement done by Google;
To increase capacity and resiliency in our North Atlantic systems, we’re working with Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure to build a direct submarine cable system connecting the U.S. to Denmark and Ireland. This cable, called Havfrue (Danish for “mermaid”), will be built by TE SubCom and is expected to come online by the end of 2019. Google blog post, 2018-01-16
Digging into the details first reveals the projected trench as illustrated in below by some of the stakeholders;
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by cloud.google.com.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by TE SubCom.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by submarinecablemap.com.
EDIT 2020-11-25: Additionally in 2019-06-21 Interxion announced a direct connection between the AEC2 landing site in Blaabjerg to its two datacenters in Ballerup/Copenhagen.
More digging into the Danish parts reveals that most sources mention Blåbjerg (Blaabjerg) as the Danish landing point for Havfrue (just as TAT-14), although ComputerWorld DK (see National Press below) relays the information that it will land at Endrup (where COBRAcable is terminated). However, a FCC application dated 2018-05-25 SCL-00214S (pdf) refers to it as the “Havfrue system” and specifically states that a new cable landing station will be constructed in Blaabjerg (as well as in Leckanvy, Ireland and Kristiansand, Norway);
The Havfrue system will consist of three segments. (1) The Main Trunk will connect the existing cable landing station at Wall, New Jersey with a new cable landing station to be constructed at Blaabjerg, Denmark. (2) The Ireland Branch will connect a new cable landing station to be constructed at Old Head Beach, Leckanvy, Ireland with a branching unit on the Main Trunk. (3) The Norway Branch will connect a new cable landing station at Kristiansand, Norway with a branching unit on the Main Trunk.
Google is currently also projecting its own private subsea cables, some of the rationale behind their mixed private/consortium/lease approach are disclosed in blog post from 2018-07-17 announcing the Dunant cable, which is the first Google private transatlantic subsea cable projected to connect Virginia Beach and France.
EDIT 2020-11-25: see blog post detailing my visit to the construction site in June 2019
Bulk has announced that the Esbjerg data center location will be referred to as DK01 Campus which is described on the about page (EDIT 2020-11-25: now has its own page with different wording) as follows:
Bulk’s DK01 Campus, Esbjerg, southwest Denmark, will be a scalable Carrier Neutral Colocation data center ready for customers Q4 2019. Esbjerg is becoming a highly strategic data center location with several subsea fiber systems terminating within or nearby. These include Havfrue (US, Ireland, Norway, Denmark), Havhingsten (Ireland, Denmark), Cobra (Holland, Denmark), Skagerrak 4 (Norway Denmark), DANICE (Iceland, Denmark) and TAT-14 (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark). Combined with excellent terrestrial connectivity, this will make Esbjerg the main international entry point to the Nordics and enable the Bulk DK01 campus to be the natural traffic exchange point.
An article (translated) in the local newspaper JydskeVestkysten first revealed the exact location of the center and renderings of its visual appearence and construction. The location is in Kjersing industrial area North of Esbjerg.
A further map of the Bulk connections between Norway, Denmark and Ireland has been revealed in an article of Capacitymedia and on Bulk’s own fiber networks page. Also a partnership with Amazon about delivering both connectivity and datacenter infrastructure for AWS has been announced.
Taking a deeper look into the meta data of the document containing the Environmental Assessment (Danish: “miljøvurdering” shortened “MV”) and Environmental Impact Assessment (Danish: “miljøkonsekvensvurdering” or “vurdering af virkningerne på miljøet” shortened “VVM”) of the announced data center in Esbjerg reveals an interesting embedded title of the document which has not been carried out into other publicly used references.
The embedded PDF title of the document uses the “Project Ember” term which has not been indicated by other sources than articles in the JydskeVestkysten newspaper. The paper cite municipal sources but the municipality has not used the name directly in any of their communications.
The report authored by consultants COWI contains the following naming:
Below a dump of the full meta data:
$ pdfinfo MV-VVM_afgr%c3%a6nsning.pdf Title: Microsoft Word – Project_Ember_MV-VVM_afgrænsning_v.4.0.docx Author: lojo Creator: PScript5.dll Version 5.2.2 Producer: Acrobat Distiller 15.0 (Windows) CreationDate: Fri May 25 15:49:44 2018 ModDate: Fri May 25 15:49:44 2018 Tagged: no UserProperties: no Suspects: no Form: none JavaScript: no Pages: 25 Encrypted: no Page size: 595.22 x 842 pts (A4) Page rot: 0 File size: 234728 bytes Optimized: yes PDF version: 1.5
2019-06-03 add (local|national) press items about bulk data center (follow this in post about Havfrue, no further updates here), minor text fixes 2019-03-07 add local and national press items announcing cancellation of project 2019-02-27 add local press item about property value, environmentalist opposition and local educational initiatives 2019-02-21 add local press item about unsatisfied land owners 2019-01-22 add official approval of plans, fix original chronology of Official Documentation items, add (local|national|international) press items about a.o. announcement of Bulk Infrastructure datacenter 2018-12-19 add documentation and local press items about postponed permit decision from municipality 2018-11-30 add a bunch of local press items, and archaeological section to documentation 2018-10-04 add local and national press item about Amsterdam trip and announcing Facebook as the developer 2018-09-06 add local press item about downscaling and older national press, reorder press items (top=latest) 2018-08-19 add local press item and Official Documentation section about housing abandonment 2018-08-01 add local press item with letter to editor 2018-06-13 updated with 1 new local + 1 new national press, rewrite first paragraphs, mention project name, mention DDI trade association, mention investindk & havfrue cable 2018-06-12 initial commit
The local media of Western Jutland, JydskeVestkysten, has spearheaded the coverage of an interesting technology related story over the last weeks. The Esbjerg municipality planning departments has started to reveal details of the preparations for the development of an industrial site on a large swath of land just outside of Esbjerg seemingly for the purpose of a hyperscale data center of the proportions employed by FANG sized (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) organizations. According to the media the project is by some municipal sources referred to as “Project Ember“. I have been unable to confirm this name from official documentation yet released or any other sources.
Neither the newly formed trade association named Danish Data Center Industry (DDI/DanishDCI) (in Danish: “Datacenter Industrien“) or the state’s Invest in Denmark office has brought any more light to the issue. The former has, however, tweeted a couple of times about it when it hit the national media and the latter has brought forward a vague hint that Western Denmark is an “attractive data centre hub“. I’m not in any doubt that this is partly driven by the announcement of the “HAVFRUE consortium“, which includes Facebook, that they intend to install a 108 Tb/s transatlantic cable crossing from New Jersey to Ireland and Esbjerg, as also announced by Invest in Denmark in January.
Below is an outline of the area in question (on an OpenStreetMap based map using the umap project) that I have drawn from the only geographical details yet leaked which is contained in the meeting agenda mentioned below. See also a visualisation of the area on a photo taken by local photographer Christer Holte.
I have collected links to all official documentation I have been able to locate and to press coverage below, and intend to keep updating this post as details is being revealed.
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