N900 is out

And it looks really nice, I like. My good old N73 will be retired and I'll switch as soon as it's available. Release date seems to be October, but who knows when it is available in any stores around here.

Finding roads to map for OpenStreetMap

Even if there is still a lot of mapping to do here in Finland, we already have most of the major roads done. I at least are having a problem finding roads to map when I'm not driving just for mapping anymore.
For example, our family summer cottage is a 240km away from my home, and all the roads that it makes sense to drive trough have already been mapped. And it doesen't help that the fastest way is the E18, starting 100m from home and going almost straight to the summer cottage, with only about 7km of some smaller roads to drive so you tend to prefer that fastest route instead of smaller roads. Not that I personally don't like driving on them, it's the others in the car (read: girl friend :) that like to get there fast.
So I've been trying to find some way to get myself on smaller roads and I think I've found a nice way that also requires a GPS. And, you guessed it, it's geocaching! I try to look for caches in obscure places so that I need to drive on smaller roads. And the gf, not eager, but at least she likes geocaching and tags along.

Working around buggy ALi IDE on ultrasparc hardware

The Linux ALi IDE driver (at least 2.6.23) does not have a proper workaround for a hardware bug that makes DMA transfers sometimes produce garbage. The simple workaround to get these sparc up and running has been to boot with the "ide=nodma" kernel parameter. That is fine, but performance will really suck.
Anyway, I run my personal production mail, proxy, tunnel, build server on a Netra-AX and it has the buggy ALi IDE chipset. My first workaround was to just have the basic root system on a small IDE disk on the primary channel and all data disks on a SATA controller. This was alright for a while but on some heavy compilations and swapping made the system crawl. I had made the stupid mistake to put my swap on the no-dma disk, plus loading binaries and libraries from the nodma disk was slow. But what to do then ? The PROM will only boot from the internal IDE and I didn't like to move the system to another disk. Digging in my hardware stash I found a nice IDE-to-CF converter that can be plugged directly into the motherboard, plus a 32Mb CF card, just enough for a kernel or two. And the CF card is PIO only so the kernel handles it alright. So now I boot the system from the CF card and have the disk plugged into the external PCI IDE card.

N73 software update done

A short follow up to the earlier N73 update post. I was able to find a copy of XP and installed it on a old Athlon XP machine. First the updater just froze and I was already sure that I now have a nice black brick, but fortunately the phone booted with the old firmware still intact. Ok, second try: This time the update was uploaded properly and my phone was running the latest firmware. Oh joy! :D
But wait.. all didn't go well at first.. Nokia data restored ok, but after restarting the phone a got message like this "Phone startup failure." and it froze there. Fortunately a quick google found a "4 finger salute" reset operation that fixed the bootup. And skipping restoration of my previous settings made the phone finally work OK.

MySQL is teh shit or notes to self on how to fix dumps

Just a note to self:

Notes on Importing mysql database dumps:
When using InnoDB tables to get a proper database disable foreign keys when importing:
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

ERROR 1005 (HY000): with error number 139
A Text/Blob field has a too large index prefix in CREATE TABLE

Work stuff

Well, not everything is fully negative in things that really matter. Just got word that I get a new work contract for about 2 years forward (and a little pay raise even! w00t). Now you might ask why only 2 years, but I work at place with mostly externally funded projects so they can't promise much more than that in one go. But if it goes like before the contract will continue again. Unless I find something by that time, but I enjoy doing what I do, quite flexible work hours and the work place is not like some ordinary plain and boring office, but who knows...

Nokia N73 software update hurdle

I don't know what to now, bang my head on the wall or what. I've been trying to get my N73 phone firmware updated for quite a while now as there have been a update available for ages already. Problem is I have this SIM locked phone (with Sonera) and well, the operator lags a bit with letting people update their phones and I refuse to pay for something I can and should be able to do for free.

So, being prepared for another no-updates-for-your-product-code situation I checked the software update. And lo and behold! Version 4.0812.4.2.1 is now available for me (my old software 3.something so old as hell).

Anyway, I'm mostly Linux only, I have a W2k computer mainly just for playing Eve (as the cedega crap won't run on 64-bit only x86), fortunately the Nokia updater has run fine before... but oh nononono... just so they can fuck with me a bit more the updated requires XP or Vista now. ARGH.