Wikis need maintenance

In the course of my digital media home efforts I have come across large amounts of documentation. This is good. Now, the problem is that in many cases this is stored in the form of a wiki, see for instance the recently mentioned ivtv driver project. Why is that? Yes, well, I'd like to join the choir complaining about the accuracy and actuality of the contents of a wiki. I myself have contributed to a wiki or two so I'm not against the idea as such, but since it is an effort that is largely uncoordinated it becomes inefficient when used to document an often fast-moving development project. Much of the information becomes stale and incorrect quite quickly and that creates a barrier to new users, especially inexperienced ones. I can sometimes guess what is valid info at a certain time and what is not, and I'm not afraid to ignore documentation when it doesn't fit my scenario and make my own adaptations, but it takes some experience to do that.

So, by all means use a wiki to flesh out documentation for stable projects, or to document certain (stable) releases, but in the case of something that's changing all the time, you have got to develop documentation along with the application, however brief or sketchy it might be.

Now, some would say that if you discover issues you could update the wiki - sure, but that's not what I can spend my days on! In order to do that I would have to research the issue and create a correct article, which could easily take days when you're not familiar with the subject area. I've got a day job... The developer(s) are of course intimately familiar with their app and so would be ideal candidates for documenting the stuff. I realize they too often have day jobs, but hey, docs are a part of the app!

iTV isn't so new

Ok, I did read this Engadget spot last month, but I've since then noticed a couple of mentions of Apple's new media stream receiver, iTV (mentioned for instance in the iTunes7 press release). As the release says though, iTV will not be the final name... yeah, whatever.

Anyway, some of these mentions say that it is "the first" network media player, which is just plain wrong! I get so annoyed that tech writers have missed things like D-link's DSM-320, the Hauppauge MVP, some of the Kiss DVD players, the Pinnacle showcenter and so on and so on. I forget some too, but hey, some of these commentators have just sort of missed a whole category of products. Jeez!

Some comments on the instructions from Pendrivelinux

Here's another take on the problem of getting Damn Small Linux onto a USB stick, from Pendrivelinux, with my comments. The original is here, and it was written by "~The Pendrive Doctor~ ". Note that I've only commented the process itself, there's some more details in the original - I've taken the liberty of editing the text a bit.

• Download the HP USB tool and format your stick with the tool using the Fat or Fat32 option.

This is a useful tool as it will format any usb stick, even when the Windows Disk manager sometimes doesn't seem to want to do it. Remember though, that syslinux only supports FAT so avoid FAT32. I used another Linux system as a go-between.

• Download the dsl-embedded.zip

Or, the .iso, but then you need a tool to extract the contents from an iso (or burn it to a cd first), plus you need to rearrange the files that go onto the stick, as well as renaming the isolinux.cfg file into syslinux.cfg (see previous post).

• Extract the files from dsl-embedded.zip to your USB stick.

If you use the .iso don't forget to rearrange the files as per my previous post.

• Download and extract syslinux to a directory on your computer.
• Run the command prompt in windows (start/run/cmd) and CD to the syslinux directory.
• Once there simply type syslinux.exe F: (F: being the example drive letter of the USB stick in this system)
• Reboot your PC, go into your system BIOS and set your boot order to boot from any selectable USB device. (example USBZIP or USB_HDD)
• Save your BIOS settings. On the next reboot, you should have a sucessful launch of Damn Small Linux from USB. Enjoy!

I hope that helps someone :D

So, the get-DSL-on-USB procedure...

Ok, I know, the easiest way to get DSL on a USB is to just boot from a live CD, frugal or usb-frugal and use the builtin script, see the DSL FAQ. However, if you want to do it yourself from Windows you need the following:

• Computer that can boot from USB (change the boot order in BIOS)
• USB stick, at least 64MB, max 2GB
• Latest ISO for DSL or DSL-N
• Syslinux (this is to enable booting Linux from a FAT partition)
• Any software that lets you extract files from an .iso; Powerarchiver and Daemon Tools are those that I have used.
  

The USB (or at least the partition used to boot, although I haven't tried using more than one partition on a stick) cannot be larger than 2GB since you will have to use the FAT file system. FAT32 does not work as syslinux only handles FAT, so make sure that when you format the stick you make it FAT. I first tried FAT32, which didn't work of course, but I failed to see why until I read the syslinux documentation.

Another small gotcha I encountered was that when I formatted the stick in Windows, the partition was not marked as active/bootable, so obviously it didn't boot. I was unable to do this from Windows, so my solution was to use Linux cfdisk to mark the partition bootable (I had Slackware 10.2 running in a VMWare setup). If anyone knows how to do this from Windows I'd be happy to know!

When the stick is formatted properly you'll just need to extract all files from the ISO onto the stick, and then move all files from the isolinux directory (DSL-N) or the boot/isolinux directory (DSL) to the root of the USB stick. The reason is so that we can use syslinux in a simple manner. Remember to take note of which drive letter the stick uses.

Syslinux works by looking at a configuration file on the partition it works on. There already exists one, but it is called isolinux.cfg. Isolinux is just a variant of syslinux intended for cd booting. Rename it to syslinux.cfg and if you feel adventurous you can change the contents. It will probably work without changes but if you're interested, check out the syslinux homepage. Note that there's also a file called isolinux.bin. I ignored that one and everything seems to work fine. YMMV.

Now open a command line window and navigate to wherever you put the syslinux package. There's a win32 directory inside that contains a binary for windows (9x/ME/2K/XP) so go ahead and run

syslinux <usbdrive>:

If you remember the contents of the USB there is a file called linux, which is the kernel. Syslinux will boot that kernel automatically, but by changing syslinux.cfg you could make it boot other kernels too.

If you now look at the contents of the stick and have set windows to show hidden files you should now see a file named ldlinux.sys, and that tells you everything is done. Reboot the computer and if you remembered to set up the BIOS properly you should within a few seconds be looking at the DSL/DSL-N boot screen.

I'll try to summarize in a later post, gotta go, have fun :D

(Oh yeah: this works for me, I make no guarantees, everything that goes wrong as a result of following these directions is entirely your own fault)

Ok, WTF's this U3 garbage that doesn't work on Win XP?

Just have to throw in a complaint against Sandisk and their decision to incorporate U3 on their Cruzer Micro's. As I wrote in my last post I have been looking into putting the latest version of the big brother of Damn Small Linux (DSL-N) on a USB flash drive. I felt I needed to have another drive so I went to the local Clas Ohlson store and got myself a 2GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro. I already have a 512MB Cruzer which I like. Later I noticed the new disk comes with U3 software on it - I had heard about it so I knew what to expect and I think it's a neat idea to be able to bring your environment with you and not leave a trace on the computers you use. After all that's partly why I like DSL... I thought I'd just uninstall it if I didn't like it. Turns out I didn't, I ran it on my work computer first and it seemed to work ok but it just didn't seem like something I could use regularly.

So, how to uninstall?

First I discovered there was an update from Sandisk but for some reason the installer could not download it. Seemingly had something to do with the network at work since I later found it worked from another network. While there I found two tools, the Launchpad remover and the Launchpad installer. Second I noticed that the U3 software was located on a virtual cd-rom and I was unable to get rid of this by any "normal" means - I used OpenBSD and Slackware Linux to have a closer look at the device but it looked like real hardware. Reading through U3's site I understood that it actually was a hardware thing so I could not get rid of it by any standard means. The Launchpad remover seemed to be what should do the trick however. And trying the stick in my home PC (Windows XPSP2, AMD dualcore) it did not run well - it took ages to start, plus the application claimed that the stick "is not a Sandisk U3 device". Annoying does not begin to describe it!!! I tried running both the launchpad tools (remove and install) but same answer, "please insert a Sandisk U3 device" (or something along those lines).

Luckily U3 also provides their own removal tool for U3 sticks from other vendors, but it actually worked fine for me! Then I found a couple of mentions about similar problems so for fun I tried both tools on my work computer (couple of years old, Windows 2000SP4) and lo, it worked great.

Conclusion

Sandisk's U3 tools/drivers are not compatible with WinXp on a dualcore box. On a longshot it could be vmware that interferes as well, but I don't know and don't care much. Plus, it's quite useless if you anyway don't always run Windows. The amount of space taken by U3 is not large but it's a waste nevertheless (for me! I don't have any beef with the idea as such) and an annoyance, and it seems to be a hack as the quality of the code is not up to what I would expect from someone trying to sell a sort of turn-key solution for mobile computing.

I'll try my own hand at this, thank you, so that I know what's going on, using Linux or something else.