Openmoko

Je dois avouer qu'en ce moment mon temps extra-professionnel est plus accaparé par la préparation de mes vacances que par la mokosphère (honte sur moi !). Mais je vais au moins faire l'effort de rédiger le billet mensuel. C'est parti pour le résumé ... [More] du mois juillet ... Actualités Voici une sélection d'informations intéressantes : Debian pour Freerunner poursuit son évolution et va intégrer les packages de SHR QtMoko v24 est sortie et la v25 se prépare déjà Un joli thème a été créé pour QtMoko Gennady Kupava fait de l'overclocking sur le Freerunner Golden Delicious annonce la sortie de l'Openmoko Beagle Hybrid  Le projet FNBv2 annonce la sortie imminente de modules d'extension matérielles pour le Freerunner Consultez les pages Community Updates (page du 01/08) pour plus d'informations. Comme nombre d'entre vous, je n'ai pas été très actif sur le site ce mois-ci. Seulement 2 billets ont été publiés en juillet : le premier pour rappeler les 2 ans d'existence du Neo Freerunner et de la communauté francophone l'autre pour signaler le l'ouverture des RMLL 2010 Voilà l'état des lieux sur le forum : Nombre total de membres : 625 Nombre total de discussions : 1288 Nombre total de messages : 14678 Souhaitons la bienvenue à : guisemau, Cissou, Xanatos et ngm, Voici une sélection des nombreuses discussions du dernier mois. Communauté : guisemau . sujet distrib linux? . pas beaucoup d'amateur ? (8 messages) Salut à tous (6 messages) Hello World ... (3 messages) blog, visibilité de certain menu (4 messages) RMLL à Bordeaux. (6 messages) Logiciels : [SHR-U] Grosses Evolution - kernel 2.26.32 (18 messages) Demande d'avis (16 messages) [H:1] Fixer l'adresse Wifi (12 messages) putain de moko qui ne veut plus rien flasher! (9 messages) SHR en français (6 messages) [SHR-U] bizarreries (6 messages) [QTmoko]Neo control (4 messages) QTMoko v24 est là ! (4 messages) OsmTracker pour Android !! (3 messages) Clavier python Elementary (3 messages) [SHR-U]:Maj du (faite le) 6 juin (2 messages) qi-bootmenu, un bootloader graphique (2 messages) [SHRu] Version française. (2 messages) navit : le point sur le projet? On en est ou? (1 messages) flash kernel/bootloader (1 messages) [Androïd] Récupérer version Koolu (1 messages) ça bosse dur sur glamo... (1 messages) [Pymail-gtk] Client mail pour interface gtk et OS basé sur Debian (1 messages) Vidéos de démonstration de CellWriter et de la Webcam sur le FR (9 messages) Geocaching script (4 messages) Funambol: synchronisation de son mobile/pc (mail calendrier photo etc) (1 messages) Matériels : Palm pré (12 messages) Mort de mon neo (9 messages) [GPS] NMEA / BT protocol RFCOMM (4 messages) Neo freeRuner à vendre... (3 messages) Cherche une antenne GPS interne (1 messages) Projets : Openmoko dans GPF ( un comic ) (2 messages) Un site pour les wikiliseurs (1 messages) Sleepytux : Une application android pour définir des profils. (3 messages) Divers : [WANTED] Mokoïste Grenoblois (2 messages) Il n'y a pas de nouvelles pages à signaler pour le wiki en juillet. En revanche, les pages suivantes ont été mises à jour : PymailGTK Android Statistiques du site Graphique des visites :  Nombre de visites par mois :  (Cliquez sur l'image pour l'agrandir) Répartition par pays :  Visites par jour :  Statistiques du forum :  Les statistiques du wiki :  Bilan Au vu de l'avancée de certains projets (overclocking, FNBv2, Openmoko Beagle Hybrid, Debian, ...), j'ai l'impression que le mouvement se radicalise. Avec le temps, le Neo Freerunner s'oriente moins vers objet grand public (ce qu'il n'a jamais été d'ailleurs), mais beaucoup plus vers un outil pour hackers en tout genre.Comme un élément de base pour des bricolages de plus en plus complexes, un genre de couteau suisse pour bidouilleurs. Personnellement, ces projets me fascinent mais restent relativement hors de portée.J'espère donc qu'il restera des énergies et volontés suffisantes pour produire des solutions utilisables par le quidam lambda.En ce sens, les progrès sur le noyau et les distributions généralistes sont encourageants. Sur ces réflexions, je m'apprête à prendre des congés bien mérités avec un périple qui s'annonce sympathique.Aussi je vous souhaite bonne vacances et je vous donnerais des nouvelles à mon retour. [Less]

YouTube video of the theme The package is not include in the official  pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org repository yet, but you can download the files HERE. I still need to figure out if is okay that the changes file is labeled as i386 or what I need to do ... [More] differently. But at least it passes “lintian -i -I –show-overrides –pedantic matchbox-theme-finger-friendly_7svn_i386.changes” without any problems. [Less]

Last year I started to occasionally play with Erlang. People who know me as die-hard C coder who tries to avoid C++, Java and Python wherever possible will probably be surprised here now. I have no intention of changing my general position on ... [More] programming languages. I don't feel comfortable using something where I don't know and/or understand the immediate impact on how this code will be executed on the actual silicon. However, if you have a need to play with anything that uses ASN.1, but particularly the aligned/unaligned PER encoding variants, then it is pretty clear that there is nothing available as Free Software that can compare to the Erlang asn1ct/asn1rt modules. At that time last year I was doing some rapid prototyping with the RANAP protocol, and the progress was quite quick. I never had time to return to that project, so it (and my Erlang skills) were left dormant. In recent weeks, I have picked Erlang up again - again to work on ASN.1 encoded messages: This time TCAP and MAP. While we still need the in-progress TCAP+MAP implementation in C for OsmoSGSN, there are other tasks at hand where an Erlang-based implementation might yield a much higher productivity. So right now I'm working on a program that parses/decodes and iterates through every MAP component in a TCAP message and replaces certain fields, re-encodes the entire message and sends it off the wire. Once that is done, I think I'll actually try to do a more complete TCAP server and implement a simplistic HLR for OsmoSGSN testing. [Less]

I've come up with GSMTAP about two years ago while working on airprobe. The goal was to have something similar to what radiotap does in the wifi world: A pseudo-header that adds additional information and context that is not present in the actual ... [More] message. Initially, GSMTAP was intended to be a separate link-layer type in the pcap file format, but this would preclude its use in real-time protocol analysis. So I modified it to be encapsulated in UDP packets, which are sent and received using normal UDP/IP sockets. Over recent years, GSMTAP has not only been integrated into multiple programs of the airprobe project, but is also understood by wireshark. OpenBTS has also decided to adopt the format and can generate GSMTAP messages for debugging purposes. After creating OsmocomBB, it was taught how to generate GSMTAP messages very quickly, too. So by now, at least when it comes to Free Software, it is definitely the de-facto standard for capturing/transmitting and analyzing protocol messages from the GSM air interface. However, until now, there has never been any official "homepage" of the GSMTAP header. This has changed now, the GSMTAP homepage is now part of the OsmocomBB wiki. [Less]

YouTube video of the theme Finger friendly window manages presents special challenges mostly caused by the need for larger controls due to inaccurate finger tapping. On small screen devices like mobile phones this presents another challenge, we do ... [More] not want to use too much of our small screen for controls. On the Neo/Freerunner this is made even more complicated as the bezel around the screen makes it hard to tab the edges. And the edges are where we normally put the controls. But Nokia seemed to have succeeded in making the Matchbox window manager finger friendly on the 770. And while the 770 does have a larger screen, why not our Freerunner? I am not graphics artist so I am pretty sure that it could have been made to look nicer but here is what I have done. The top window border have been enlarged to 48px, no other border needed. The window chooser and close buttons have been made larger and moved away from the left and right edge. (But the entire area left or right of the icon can be clicked) Only a small area above the window chooser displays the window title (also activates the chooser) The font size used for the chooser and application launcher has been increased to allow using them with your fingers The remaining space is used to “dock” the matchbox-panel , so it does not have to use valuable screen estate. There are still plenty of things that remain to be done most importantly create a Debian package to allow others to install the theme easily. And since there MUST always be one window open to show the  launcher I should probably while(true) spawn either zhone or some sort of home window in .xsession. And something must be done to the launcher, as it does not show half of my installed applications including any terminal (shiver), I could either: Fix the launcher config files, I do belive that can be done… Remove the launcher from the panel and replace it with the “home window” thing. This would also free the panel space for extra notification icons [Less]

Some news sites seem to do very limited research and present it as big news that you can now build an IMSI-Catcher for a budget of USD 1500, using OpenBTS and a URSP. Let me bring some clarity into this situation: Fundamentally, an IMSI-Catcher ... [More] is nothing special but a GSM base station (BTS) that is configured to the network country code (NCC) and mobile network code (MNC) of a commercial network operator. In GSM, the phone has no way to authenticate and thus verify the legitimacy of the mobile network. This is like a "rogue access point" in a open (unencrypted/unauthenticated) WiFi network. Thus, anyone who has a device that can run as a GSM base station has the ability to run an IMSI catcher. There are two Free Software / Open Source projects for running your own GSM network, both have first been published in 2008: OpenBTS and OpenBSC. None of those two projects are intended to be used as an IMSI-Catcher but for legitimate operation of GSM networks. However, if a user choses to configure the NCC and MNC of a commercial operator and allow "unknown/unregistered/unprovisioned IMSIs (SIMs) on his network, he will effectively have an IMSI catcher. Such operation is in violation of spectrum usage regulations, even if you have a valid test/experimental license, since that license does not permit you to use somebody else's NCC/MNC. Furthermore, such operation is in violation of criminal law in most jurisdictions. In Germany there is a separate offense in the criminal code, called Paragraph 317 Stoerung von Telekommunikationsanlagen, combined with Paragraph 202b Abfangen von Daten. Furthermore, there are certainly civil claims to be made by the affected operator (and its subscriber) against anyone who unlawfully operates such a fake base station OpenBTS and OpenBSC, as well as the problems resulting from this fake base station attack have been covered in a variety of conference presentations from 2008 through today. Thus, there is nothing new about what has been presented at Defcon 18 Also, the theoretic basics ow how to operate an IMSI catcher are nothing new either. There are even a number of patents covering IMSI catchers, the first that I know of has been patented by Rohde & Schwarz in 2003. Also, see this blog post by OpenBTS founder David Burgess on this topic. So all that you always needed is a bit of hardware and software to send radio waves containing messages formatted in the way how they are described in the (equally public) GSM specifications as published by ETSI and 3GPP. Commercial, proprietary systems have existed for a decade. From 2008 on, there is some Free / Open Source Software to operate GSM networks. The situation remains unchanged in 2010. So please, remember this the next time somebody is trying to tell you that this is the latest invention since sliced bread. [Less]

Photo courtesy Photos8.com Ok, maybe not the killer but then at least the delayer. But it did get your attention right? As usual I am struggling just to get the phone working as a receiver of SMS messages. Trying to figure out where gsm0710muxd ... [More] writes it log files by default I fetched the source. I know it is sort of deprecated but I’m trying to get my Debian based install up and running. And the Debian dependency graph lists it as a dependency of fso-frameworkd… gsm0710muxd states: THIS_IS_DEPRECATED_USE_LIBGSM0710MUX libgsm0710mux states: DEPRECATED_PLEASE_USE_CORNUCOPIA And of course there is also fso-abyss.git the “GSM 07.10 Multiplexer (NG)” (which is deprecated in favour of cornucopia) To sum it up we have 4 different implementations of a GSM multiplexer… no wonder I am a bit confused which to use. But why not just “apt-get install cornucopia” and leave the past behind? Well I would but unfortunately it seems that the bleeding edge phone software needs a bleeding edge “valac 0.9.3-3″ which even the vala developers consider a development release which prevents it from entering the Debian unstable distro. Being a fan of C and C++ (if you can spare the “disks” space for the std. library) I sure would have preferred if the more proven and stable platform  C were used than this new kid on the block valac which I did not even know existed prior to its usage on the Neo/Freerunner. It sure would make it easier to port it to other distros than SHR. And then there is SHR and the whole home-grown Illume 1and 2 issue, focus bugs, all new bugs in V2 (I have not tried it as the mailing list scared me away). Being slightly conservative with regard to this whole new software ting. What is wrong with say matchbox as far as I know it mostly just works. Okay it is not thumb friendly per standard, but a little themeing seemed to do the trick for Nokia and the 770/800/810. And GTK seems to do the trick for my desktop PCs, and it seems slightly more stable that the fancy Enlightenment tool kit. At least I can not remember having any problems giving focus to a text input field. But is  SHR not the  most advances phone distro? It is, however it lacks the diversity of available packages of Debian, and I find the the build system beaks way to easily for my taste. Why do I believe that all this may be harmful? If there are lots of things that do not work you are more tempted to not use the FSO phone this includes UI misfeatures. I once used it as my primary phone but have reverted back to an ancient Nokia 6100. Using new tools makes it harder to gain support from the community as less people know them. Lots of rewrites causes bad documentation, as no one has the time to write it. It also makes it harder for the occasional hacker to get anything done as everything is new at each rewrite. It also puts an increased strain on other distro maintainers as they have to keep up, not only with the new services but also the new dependencies. Last but not least: Remember the ones writing the code is always right. If you don not agree with them do not write blog entries, write code. To: Michael ‘Mickey’ Lauer, the SHR and Pkg-FSO team Keep up the good work, I can not imagine how you get any real life activities done as well as coding this much. [Less]

I'm excited to be giving two presentations at Debconf 10, held this year on the Columbia campus in New York City. The first is "FSF's Campaigns for Freedom" on Sunday, August 1st, from 14:00 to 15:00 in 414 Schapiro. I'll give an overview of some of ... [More] the current FSF campaigns, like the GNU Project, Working Together for Free Software, Defective by Design, PlayOgg, Windows 7 Sins, and the High Priority Projects List; and resources like the Licensing & Compliance Lab, Free Software Jobs page, Hardware Directory, and the Free Software Directory. But I'm going to save plenty of time to talk with the room about things the FSF should or could be doing. The second is "Patent Absurdity: How software patents broke the system" on Thursday, August 5th, from 14:00 to 15:00 in the Davis Auditorium. We'll be watching the Patent Absurdity film, chatting about what's happened since, and what the Bilski decision means for the future of free software. I'll be around the conference all week, so drop me an email at [email protected] or catch me in the #debconf channel (johns) if you want to chat about the FSF or GNU. [Less]

Dieter Spaar, who has been involved in various ways with both OpenBSC and OsmocomBB has just started a blog. This is good news and I hope this way he will get a bit more (much deserved) exposure on his great work.

At Blackhat US 2010, there was a Talk that (among other things) apparently included the subject of a RACH DoS on GSM base stations, implemented using my Layer1 of the OsmocomBB software. As some news sites are covering this as "news": This ... [More] vulnerability has been long known in the field and was - to the best of my knowledge - first demonstrated to a public audience by Dieter Spaar at the Deepsec 2009 conference in November 2009. You can get his slides. The difficult part for many years has not been to know about the possibility of this weakness. Anyone who has read the GSM air interface specification will inevitably see that there is a limited number of RACH slots and a limited number of dedicated channels. Once you fill more RACH slots than the cell has dedicated channels, and you keep re-filling them at a higher rate than the cell can expire those dedicated channels, you have a DoS. So rather, the difficult part was to implement it in practise, as traditionally all GSM baseband chipsets have been extremely closed, just like the very software (firmware) running on them. Today, starting from Q2/2010, it is very easy to do a proof-of-concept implementation, as we have created OsmocomBB: An Open Source baseband firmware. Dieter Spaar's implementation predates OsmocomBB development by the better part of a year. At that time, he had to resort to binary-patching existing proprietary (binary-only) baseband firmware. So I think people should recognize his effort in doing the first practical implementation of that attack. I can only hope that the author of the Blackhat presentation has given proper credits and shown that neither OsmocomBB, nor the RACH DoS attack, nor the IMSI DETACH attack he has presented have been discovered or first published by him. [Less]