Appeal for Linux Help from Pedal-Powered Internet?

lma asks: "As has been reported previously on Slashdot, Lee Felsenstein is involved in a project to bring wireless internet connectivity (including VOIP) to isolated villages in Laos. Lee is in Laos this week, trying to install and configure the initial systems. He's having a problem getting Linux installed and booting off a M-Systems DiskOnChip(DOC) as described here. Perhaps Slashdot readers could help with this problem, and make themselves available for future technical support issues as well."

Feel bad, but need to ask...

[Otter]

upgraded to kernel 2.4.21-pre2 for testing used both the doc2000 merged driver and the doc2001 millenium driver, changing the docprobe source as appropriate

used the February 7 2003 cvs snapshot to upgrade the 2.4.21-pre2 mtd drivers. Ran the patchin.sh, which worked nicely

Tried this "latest source" amalgamation with both the doc2000 and doc2001 driver, same results:

doc2000 driver detects no flash chips doc2001 driver detects 3 flash chips.

Not to be the Grinch, and I applaud the intentions and effort of the people working on this, but -- isn't the real answer that installing some crazy-ass combination of patched Linux kernels and "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!" hardware should be left to bored CS majors, instead of being left in the hands of users with no relevant technological knowledge whatsoever?

OK, let's say that given enough Ask Slashdots from Vientiane you can get this thing to work. Then what? And how will this help anyone else in the world?

For that matter, how are detecting no chips and detecting 3 chips the same result?

Re:Feel bad, but need to ask...

[f00f42]

>OK, let's say that given enough Ask Slashdots >from Vientiane you can get this thing to work. >Then what? And how will this help anyone else in >the world?

Well .. according to the original site:

Farmers in Ban Phon Kam and nearby villages are now able to grow surpluses of rice and other crops-thanks in part to organic farming techniques that Jhai helped introduce. To profit on their surplus, however, they need accurate and timely information about pricing in the market town of Phon Hong and the capital, Vientiane.
from http://www.jhai.org/jhai_remoteIT.html

and

What Good Will It Do?
The network will immediately enhance business and trade opportunities for organic rice and produce in market towns and the capital, Vientiane, and the establishment of a local market for sales of textiles and other products among the villages. Farmers in Ban Phon Kham and nearby villages are now able to grow surpluses of rice and other crops-thanks in part to organic farming techniques that Jhai Foundation helped introduce. To profit on their surplus, however, they need accurate and timely information about pricing in the market town of Phon Hong and the capital, Vientiane. The expert women weavers in the villages have begun the use of natural dyes- again with assistance from Jhai Foundation-and would like to weave textiles for export. They hope to find partners among expatriate Lao who will help them market their weavings and receive reasonable returns.

Villagers will also connect by voice and email with family members and others in the Lao diaspora who now live overseas. The Jhai Communications Centers will provide villagers with the opportunity to perform simple business functions, such as typing documents and creating spreadsheets, giving them access to tools to increase the viability of their family businesses and of the rural lifestyle that is at the heart of traditional Lao culture.
from http://www.jhai.org/jhai_remote_launch_faq.htm

Re:Feel bad, but need to ask...

[Otter]

You're completely missing my point.

The question isn't whether networked computers might be useful to them. The question is whether this solution, which even in the original story struck me as expensive and excessively difficult for anyone but the installer to maintain, is the way to do it. It has tons of geek coolness behind it, but seems like at best a one-time deal, if that.

not sure...

[zogger]

...not sure why "this solution" is being used, my guess is because of the nature of the power supply, and the costs involved, the sheer low quantity of the electric that's able to be produced, and the sophistication of the end users. Set up hard, running it after set up easy? And maybe travel back and forth to remote regions is harder than bopping on the tube or jumping in the belchfire for a spin to the store. That could be why he's doing it onsite now. Heck, I've lived places in the US it was quite the adventure to get to any "store" at all, let alone any tech store or place to get help on a tech question. This ws back pre internet days. I guess being even more remote than that causes some occassional problems, but I will agree the boxes should have been developed off site and QAed better. I think it's called making a mistake, bet everyone reading this has done that. The glass houses-stones postulate appplies as well as murphy's law..

Really just guessing on all this though.

I think a better deal would have been to get low powered, best battery life functional laptops donated from someplace and use them, perhaps modded for pure DC use, eliminate all that inverting, converting and perverting jazz that goes on to get juice to where it needs to be. Using the laptops built in battery as a cushion for the intermittent pedal electrical power seems the best idea. That and see if any of the big alternate energy suppliers would donate some stuff for more juice on site. I know from just one of my PV panels I can get enough juice during the day time to run one of my older laptops easily. Umm, I do it all the time. I also know in monsoon season in the tropics this isn't practical, so that's my guess on the pedal powered deal.

Not to be a bastartd, but...

[GoRK]

OK, not to be a bastard, but isn't this the kind of shit you learn how to do *before* you go "on-site," as it were, to install it? I have set up for m-systems disk-on-chip stuff and it's not that easy. I can see how he might be having problems with it, as it's an unnecessarily complicated interface. He should be contacting M-Systems and Tri-M to get this resolved, though, and not slashdot.

Re:Not to be a bastartd, but...

[Eagle7]

I agree with you 100%... I would have had the entire routine down to a science before I tried doing it at a clients site in my city, let along in a far away village in Laos. I praise the guy for his efforts, this is a really neat project, but it does seem like some lack of planning is biting him in the ass right now. Hopefully he gets it working.

Then don't.

[Ashurbanipal]

#1) Your 20/20 hindsight is not useful. Live in the now.

#2) He didn't contact slashdot, as far as I can see; rather, somebody at /. picked up on his cry for help and presented it to the community, because wider exposure may lead to resolution - or to put it another way, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".

Incidentally, I too have failed to get Linux running on a disk-on-chip. I was trying it in my basement on salvaged equipment, and eventually I shelved the project after a few weeks of frustration.

I suspect the ltsp guys might be the most accessible experts on this. I'm going to forward the link to them...

Hope this helps...

[CRaMM]

... and if somebody knows a better way to let these people know about this info please do it. I see no e-mail address in the linked mtdproblems.txt log file where I can send it.

Please see http://leaf.sourceforge.net/devel/jnilo/budiskonch ip.html [sourceforge.net] It's the "Installing and booting Bering from a M-Systems DiskOnChip" chapter (written by Brad Fritz) of the LEAF Bering User's Guide.

Bering is one of the branches (the currently most active one) of the LEAF project that is building on the strong LEAF heritage and adding some advanced stuff to get: kernel 2.4.19 (and 2.4.20), PPP[OE], firewalling (using Shorewall), bridging, wireless utils, linux-wlan, Host AP, DHCP (client and server), DJB's dnscache, pcmcia, Freee Swan, .... Bering main developers are Jacques Nilo and Eric Wolzak

LEAF is the Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall (http://leaf.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]).

Perhaps a timing issue here

[ColaMan]

I had trouble getting a DoC recognised on my webplayer too, with the same kind of symptoms.
Eventually I found that adding a delay in the DoC code fixed it - see patch.

--- linux/drivers/mtd/doc2000.c Tue May 1 08:19:14 2001
+++ linux/drivers/mtd/doc2000.c Tue May 1 08:21:25 2001
@@ -71,7 +71,8 @@
volatile char dummy;
int i;

- for (i = 0; i < cycles; i++) {
+ /* Virgin-Linux patch for WebPlayer DoC timing, multiply cycles by 4 */
+ for (i = 0; i < cycles*4; i++) {
if (DoC_is_Millennium(doc))
dummy = ReadDOC(doc->virtadr, NOP);
else

Re:Is this all?

[lilricky]

Actually I'm a Brit, perhaps bigots should learn a bit before posting?

Re:Is this all?

[cybermace5]

It's not that, it's just that through poor handling, "Ask Slashdot" is no longer taken seriously, and probably no longer read (unless it shows on the front page).