I ran into a weird clocksource issue on my VPS that I haven't seen elsewhere. This issue was that my time would progressively get worse and worse and eventually NTP could not keep up because the clock was so far out of date. This happened on a pretty quick interval, about 1-2 days until I had to manually reset it. I opened up a support case with Host Virtual and the suggestion was to change the kernel's clocksource to jiffies, from tsc, or vice versa. (or use a newer kernel, but I was already at the latest 2.6.32.x kernel at the time) My kernel's clocksource was at the default and I had to research the issue some more because I haven't heard of this before.

In the kernel's Documentation directory, I found some info. (Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt). There is quite some details in there, but the summary is that the default clocksource was 'tsc' on x86. I changed my kernel's clocksource by the clocksource=jiffies kernel parameter. Rebooted the virtual machine and NTP has been able to keep time since.

I don't really know the difference here and don't care to research much more. It is fixed and maybe this info will help someone else someday.

I would have a screenshot to show here, but it is hard to take a decent picture on my 40" "monitor"

For the Genesi Efika MX (unboxing), I now have a binpkg repo setup (for Gentoo Prefix only). This was mainly a fun proof-of-concept that I did. I went from installing 70 packages in about 18 hours, to about 30 minutes using binpkgs.

What does this mean:
Given the relatively small set of arm users and the highly specific use cases for arm hardware, well, there isn't a very big percentage of users that will keep Ubuntu on their Efika MX when they get it. But, if they do, that means that they can get a complete toolchain and Gentoo Linux userland (including portage package manager) on the host in less than an hour. Of course, they could also get the same packages from the Ubuntu package manager but that isn't as cool

How to install/get working:
Follow this easy guide that I wrote, here. All 70 packages will occupy about 580MB of space. Then you will have the toolchain and portage (emerge) at your disposal to use on your Ubuntu ARM (cortex-a8, armv7) system.

Have fun.

For your single host, emerge unbound, start the service, add 127.0.0.1 to the first nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf. Unbound is setup (by default) to accept connections from localhost and refuse anything else. If you are using dhcp at home (likely) then also emerge openresolv and uncomment name_servers=127.0.0.1 in /etc/resolvconf.conf, openresolv then "intercepts" dhcpcd when it tries to write to /etc/resolv.conf and adds 127.0.0.1 as your first nameserver For your LAN, just configure your router to look to the host that you setup unbound on, with additional configuration.

Finally, you can also have unbound run on your co-located host. Just edit /etc/unbound/unbound.conf to a) listen on an outside interface and b) allow your other host to query it. This will be left as an exercise for the reader, it is easy to figure out.

Lastly, a shout-out to Linux Gazette for an excellent write-up on GoogleDNS (and why you should use something like unbound) and DNS/LAN metaphors. Suggested reading if you feel out of your league with DNS internals, like me.

A quote from the above linked article: "Why outsource to anyone, when you can do a better job locally, at basically no cost in effort?" and really, that is the truth. Have fun.

In my opinion, the easiest way to get DLNA to work for this TV is to use mediatomb. The reason is that this TV needs the mimetype of avi/mkv's to be video/mpeg and (so far) I have not found any other DLNA software that is able to modify mimetypes like this. You also need to set a custom http header, as I found here.

Here is my config.xml that I am using to stream to the TV. It is not perfect but the majority of the work is done. Tested with mediatomb-0.11.0 only.

%% cat /etc/lighttpd/mod_fastcgi.conf
server.modules += ("mod_fastcgi")
fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
    ( "localhost" =>
        (
            "socket"   => "/var/run/lighttpd/lighttpd-fastcgi-php-" + PID + ".socket",
            "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
            "max-procs" => 2, # default 4
            "bin-environment" => (
                "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "2", # default 1
                "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "500" #default 1000
            )
        )
    )
)

So, bootcharts:
bootchart-2.6.31.6.png 39 seconds
bootchart-2.6.32-no-devtmpfs.png 37 seconds
bootchart-2.6.32-devtmpfs.png 37 seconds
bootchart-2.6.32-openrc.png 26 seconds (devtmpfs)

So, where is the real win here? Well, as I wrote before, use openrc.

The exciting part, that I got working and am ready to announce publicly, is my new atom-x86 binpkg repo. What makes this repo different than the binpkgs located on tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/default-linux is that this repo has CFLAGS specific to the Intel Atom processor. I identified the compiler flags by using the following gcc command: gcc -Q --help=target -march=native and set the following -march=prescott -mtune=generic -msahf. On my linode (review) host, I have a chroot that builds all new packages in my world file once a day which comes from the aspire1. In this manor, I am able to always have binary packages available to me whenever I update my aspire1. Now, I have all the benefits of a source distro and the speed of a binary distro.

If you would like to use this repo, set PORTAGE_BINHOST in /etc/make.conf and add 'getbinpkg' to FEATURES (or use the emerge options directly). Be advised, that thought this works for me, I make no guarantees for you.

PORTAGE_BINHOST="http://tinderbox.jolexa.net/atom-x86/"
FEATURES="${FEATURES} getbinpkg"

I also have an html view of the packages available.

That HDMI output makes it the best text console I have ever seen on my 40" 1080p LCD TV! Seriously though, on my TODO:

• Analyze the possibilities for a HTPC. This will be just something fun to do.
• Gentoo Prefix on ARM. This will be the first time, that we know of, that it has been attempted. It shouldn't be that hard because Gentoo already has ARM support which means that most apps already work.
• Install Gentoo Linux on it and help armin76 document the installation process.
• Assisting the Gentoo ARM team with providing binary packages and weekly stages for Gentoo Linux users.
• And more...

Size comparision of Efika MX vs Aspire1

Back of the Efika MX. Power, HDMI, Ethernet, headphone, mic

Front of Efika MX. USB, USB, SD Card Slot