Programma overzicht

Silicon manufacturers, or rather design houses play a key aspect in how well their products are supported in Free Software oparating systems such as Linux.

In the early Linux days - more than a decade ago - it was normal to have completely public technical reference manuals for the silicon, enabling Linux community developers to write drivers for the chips.

After chip design houses start to realize there is an economically significant Linux market, they try to use their existing workflow, processes and development model for proprietary operating systems and try to apply this to Linux. The results are in many cases binary-only drivers for certain kernel versions and/or distributions or unmaintained, non-portable, coding style incompliant open source drivers for outdated kernel versions. Those kind of drivers are bound to create dissatisfaction within the Free Software developer community, among the Free Software users. Furthermore, they also result in inefficient use of R&D resources both inside and outside the chip vendor.

Many silicon design houses still don't understand the Free Software and particularly Linux development model at all. This results in suboptimal support of their hardware products. In the end, customers are likely to buy from a different vendor.

So what can chip design houses do to ensure excellent support of their products in the Free Software world?

High latency, low bandwidth, protocols designed with LAN-usage in mind (e.g.) CIFS) ; these elements don't ease your life trying to work remote and be mobile. Most problems cannot be solved by just adding more bandwidth. To mitigate these issues, you can buy WAN optimization solutions, who claim to speed up your WAN or mobile connection.

This presentation gives an overview of the WAN optimization landscape, both closed source and open source. It focus on the technical aspects of these solutions, their advantages and their drawbacks. It is vendor independent.

The new Connection Manager for Linux is an attempt to create a generic infrastructure for creating networking connections. The main goal is to make the new solution ready for embedded systems. The whole design is modeled to be slim and flexible. This is achieved via a fully plugin and policy based architecture. Connection Manager is the perfect solution for embedded system like phones and tablets that are running Linux and where Network Manager would be too big and complex. The plugin based architecture provides the most flexible way of integrating it into existing solution. Support for HAL, PolicyKit and other standard desktop components has been abstracted into a generic framework and are optional. It is possible to replace them with vendor specific plugins to deal with certain special embedded devices. All the hardware access is done via technology specific plugins. This allows a quick adaption of new technologies without changing the entire framework. The initial release has been made public as part of Moblin.org and includes support for Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth. Future releases will add support for Ultra-Wideband, GSM/UMTS and WiMAX.

The number of problems related the size of IP Packets seem to still increase year by year. Most of the time this leads to conditions where some applications won't work over the network. They increasingly create also more obscure problems where:

• It works sometimes but regular outages are observed for unknown reasons;
• There are severe performance issues with some specific applications/users;
• Network equipment and/or servers show high processor utilisation;
• Performance is (sometimes) spongy;
• FW's and IPS security provisions seem to cause problems for some
• applications.

This paper presents one possibility to preserve established network connections of unmodified applications, when an IP network address of an endpoint device changes. This functionality might enable the mobility of network users in a way, where a mobile user could cross borders of statically configured IP (sub)network areas just by accepting new IP address available from the entered IP network. At the same time established network connections would not be interrupted and no need for the network infrastructure routing reconfiguration on behalf of the mobile user's changed location, would be necessary. The basic idea of SACIP is to separate IP addresses written into IP packet headers from IP addresses used to create a network socket and to maintain a link between them. On IP address change extended socket parameters are being updated by new IP address values as well as remote hosts are being notified about the change. A special notification protocol is necessary for this purpose and which mostly defines the security aspect of the solution. The presentation includes a brief description of the primitive implementation of SACIP functionality for the Linux kernel and its possible enhancements and use cases.

My laptop always seems to be hot and sweaty from doing things, even if I don't ask it to do anything. This is a senseless waste of energy, and it is largely due to design choices that stem from an era when energy was in abundant supply. Mobile devices and the end of cheap fossil fuel are two reasons why we should change, and conserve energy. This lecture dives into the lowest levels of computing, and explains which energy-efficiency improvements are currently being worked on, and how we should change our style of hardware and software design. We sketch the architecture of future computers, starting at the level of the hardware and working our way up to kernel and applications. Will Unix be flexible enough to follow this radical redesign?

Keywords:

• low-energy computing
• interrupt-driven computing
• non-volatile memory
• asynchronous electronics
• solid-state devices
• data-flow architecture
• bistable memory
• clocktick interrupts
• bistable displays
• power budgeting

The solution uses public and private key technology saved on SIM smart cards (WPKI), and basic mobile telephone functions. Halcom's certifying agency, Halcom-CA is the first certificate agency in the region to have fully mastered the technology for saving public and private keys on SIM smart cards. Using WPKI technology and high quality software and the tried and tested Halcom business network and reliable technical connections with financial institutions, the Hal M-Payments solutions offers the following major advantages for users:
security: digital signature (WPKI)
easy-to-use: communication via SMS text message
also suitable for high-value payments: payment settled directly with user's bank account operates on all normal mobile telephones
low investment for partners (mobile operators, banks, and goods and serviceproviders): no major changes in information systems, relatively simple interface required.

Given the high security standards and ease of use, the Hal M-Payments solution is particularly suitable for the following e-services:

• secure e-payment for goods and services (including high-value payments)
• internet shopping
• public administration
• share trading
• e-services
• e-banking
• gambling and other services...

UMTS/3g networks are a hot topic. This talk focuses on the implementation that was done for openSUSE 11.0, from both a users and the developers view.

Topics:

• UMTSmon
• NetworkManager.

The presentation will give an overview about the current state of suspend and power management on Linux, mainly focused on notebook hardware.

Topics:

• device power management
• different sleep states
• implementation issues
• ideas for the future.

The popularity of KDE on laptops and increasingly on smaller mobile devices demands that applications are able to react to mobility and dynamic network environments. We present the Solid-Network framework developed to support KDE applications under these conditions. The varied software stack which KDE applications run on demands a flexible system. We show the abstractions used to make KDE integrate well whether on an OpenSolaris workstation, a variety of Linux distributions, or a Windows laptop.

A brief overview of the widely used NetworkManager system is given. The system is used in two ways. Networked applications need to be aware of connectivity changes. Infrastructure supporting this is provided to application developers and made as simple as possible to encourage adoption. Control applications responsible for configuration and status feedback must be usable but allow complex configuration. We summarize the discussions that informed the design. Finally we describe the requirements placed on the system by administrators, who require central configurability as well as secure storage of network authentication credentials.

Deze sessie beschrijft de mogelijkheid om netwerken ad-hoc en mobiel te kunnen vormen en hierop informatie te kunnen delen met peers in het (mobiele) netwerk en daarbuiten.

Door gebruik te maken van diverse beschikbare radio technologieën en roaming mogelijkheden is het mogelijk om in het mobiele domein en in de backoffice verbinding met elkaar te hebben. MANET, MANEMO, AUTOCONF zijn hier belangrijke protocollen. Een van de essentiële onderdelen hiervan is de mogelijkheid om een radio netwerk te laten communiceren met het IP netwerk om kwaliteit van het netwerk te kunnen gebruiken voor routeringsbeslissingen. Hierdoor is het mogelijk dat een radio netwerk dat in kwaliteit degradeerd te omzeilen en andere radio netwerken te gebruiken die wel beschikbaar zijn. Cisco heeft dit ontwikkeld en gestandariseerd in RFC4938 en onlangs bekend en beschikbaar gemaakt. Nu is het mogelijk dat radiofabrikanten deze techniek ook kunnen toepassen in hun terminals en modems.

Doelgroep voor deze sessie is:

• Defensie;
• Openbare orde en veiligheid;
• Openbaar vervoer;
• Transport.

De NLUUG conferentie wordt samen met de Embedded Linux Conference Europe gehouden. Op 6 november zijn alle lezingen van de Embedded Linux Conference Europe ook toegankelijk voor bezoekers van de NLUUG najaarsconferentie. Lezingen op deze dag zijn:

• Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri -- Rich GUI without pain
• Bas Engel -- Digital television with Linux: architecture and opportunities
• Thomas Gleixner -- Kernel summit report
• Peter Griffin -- A quart into a pint pot: porting uCLinux to small micros
• Eugeny S. Mints -- Taking Linux power management to production quality
• Denis Mishin -- A corner-to-corner approach for cost-effective implementation of consumer electronics human machine interfaces
• Michael Opdenacker -- Update on filesystems for flash storage
• Thomas Petazzoni -- Choosing free software graphical libraries for embedded devices
• Gregers Petersen -- Embedded magic, or how people suddenly find out that they are collaborating (some thoughts parsed through the brain of an anthropologist)
• Matthew Porter -- Managing NAND longevity in a product
• Vitaly Wool -- Using "Dot Clock" displays in embedded Linux devices
• Wookey -- Solar hot water geekery: making infinitely versatile home heating controllers with free software and open hardware

De NLUUG conferentie wordt samen met de Embedded Linux Conference Europe gehouden. Op 7 november zijn de lezingen van de Embedded Linux Conference Europe toegankelijk voor bezoekers van de NLUUG najaarsconferentie mits zij zich daarvoor geregistreerd en betaald hebben. Lezingen op deze dag zijn:

• David Woodhouse -- Embedded maintainers: Community and Embedded Linux
• Mike Anderson -- Using a JTAG for Linux driver debugging
• Tim Bird -- Tools and techniques for reducing bootup time
• Vitaly Bordug -- Device Trees in Linux
• Andrew Christian -- Handhelds Mojo - Building and running Ubuntu distributions on ARM
• Shane Martin Coughlan -- The strategic implementation of free software in business
• Jake Edge -- Avoiding web application flaws in embedded devices
• Armijn Hemel -- Abusing UPnP
• Marcel Holtmann -- BlueZ 4.0
• Perry Ismangil and Benny Prijono -- pjsip: open source compact SIP and media stack
• Mischa Jonker -- Power management on an ARM11 platform
• Jaya Kumar -- Deferred IO and E-paper displays
• Vasileios Laganakos -- Portability and optimization of GNU / open source applications with ARM embedded Linux
• Phillip Lougher -- An overview of the Squashfs filesystem
• Nedeljko Miljevic and Klaas van Gend -- Building embedded userlands
• Denis Oliver Kropp -- Open integration layer - DirectFB 2.0
• Bill Roman -- Using the appropriate wear leveling to extend product lifespan
• Frank Rowand -- Adventures in real-time performance tuning, part 2
• Frank Scholz -- Building bridges - coherence, a DLNA/UPnP framework
• Vitaly Wool -- NAND chip driver optimizaton and tuning

Plasma, KDE's new desktop shell that was first released with KDE 4.0 is one of the central elements of the traditional desktop interfaces people have been using on their computers since the mid-eighties. To the user, Plasma is what you start your applications with, and what helps you managing your tasks. Technically speaking, Plasma is a high-level toolkit that allows it to easily build user interfaces. The first product that has been built with Plasma is the KDE 4 desktop. With portability not as an afterthought, one of the design principles of Plasma was to not make assumptions about user interactions deep down in the software stack, but make it as easy as possible to build plasmoids, small plugins that take care of the user's interaction with the device. For using Plasma on mobile internet devices such as the Maemo platform on an N810, developers are working on integrating QEdje, a technology that is used to build 'fingerable' and visually appealing user interfaces with Plasma which in turn provides the shell and plumbing to run and combine these interfaces. KDE technology in general provides the underlying infastructure to integrate hardware, multimedia and the ultimately "The Cloud" into the user experience.

The BIOS and its successor EFI are considered by many to be the final frontier for open source software in commodity PCs. This talk describes the BIOS replacement coreboot and the projects surrounding it. The closed nature of traditional firmware is starting to cause concern even on the government level, as awareness for BIOS malware risks is increasing. The presentation describes coreboot, supplementary tools such as buildrom, flashrom, superiotool and nvramtool, and some popular payloads that combine with coreboot to make up the firmware: FILO, EtherBoot, SeaBIOS, Memtest86, tint, Linux, coreinfo, bayou and libpayload featuring tinycurses, which can turn simple applications into instant-on appliances. Finally there will be a demonstration of coreboot running on hardware.