My freedesktop.org stuff is online again

It's a while since the last post on my blog, so here the latest news:

Two weeks ago, after some weeks of absence, I tried to commit some patches to my hal/hal-info git repo at freedesktop.org, but there was no git repo anymore. In fact my complete home at people.freedesktop.org was empty. 

After wonder around about the reason, I found out that the freedesktop admins lost the complete /home filesystem during a power outage (see the announcement). Unfortunately there was obviously no backup (whyever!) and also no email announcement to the affected users after all . That's why my repos weren't reachable for nearly a month. Thanks for the service at  people.freedesktop.org in general (really!), but this was a lousy incident handling.

Anyway! You can find now again:

• my HAL git repo: here
  
• my hal-info git repo: here
• several different versions of the HAL specification: here

Tech Tags: HAL

HAL: new keys to match kernel version

Since a while there is the problem that e.g. suspend quirks or key mappings differ between kernel versions. While machines with newer kernel versions may need no longer to map scancodes (as in case of ThinkPads) or need no special suspend handling anymore, systems with older kernels may need other handling.

With current HAL versions it's not possible to match the kernel versions (e.g. > 2.6.28), except for a special version, because system.kernel.version is a string. This is especially a problem with data from the hal-info package, since the package depends on no special kernel version.

I added a patch to HAL to provide now these new comparable (using e.g. compare_*) keys:

• system.kernel.version.major (int)
• system.kernel.version.minor (int)
• system.kernel.version.micro (int)

This change will be part of the upcomming 0.5.12 release. For openSUSE 11.1 you can get the latest HAL snapshot from my OSBS repo.

Tech Tags: HAL Patches

TabletPCs: fix eraser detection in xournal

Some weeks ago I got a bugreport for SUSE about problems with automatic eraser detection of Wacom tablets/TabletPCs in xournal. After taking a deeper look into the problem, I discovered that it's again a problem with the naming of the wacom input devices in the xorg.conf.

To find out if the eraser is used, xournal checks for GDK_SOURCE_ERASER. And as it looks GDK can only identify an input device as GDK_SOURCE_ERASER if the devicename starts with eraser. But this is not the case at SUSE products since we use SaX2 which use Mouse[*] as device name.

I wrote a patch for xournal to use xsetwacom to find out if the currently used input device is a eraser, so that the automatic detection is working again and you can use the eraser without selecting the eraser tool again and again. You can find updated xournal packages for openSUSE/SLED in my OSBS repo.

In my opinion the real problem is, that there is (AFAIK) currently no way do mark and identify input devices in X.org as e.g. stylus/eraser/touch. It would make it much easier for applications if there would be a device name independent solution in X in the future.

Tech Tags: TabletPC Patches

HAL: support for linux leds kernel subsystem

I've implemented HAL support for the linux kernel leds (light-emitting diode) subsystem some days ago. The new namespace provides these information for leds devices:

• leds.device_name: The name of the related led device.
  
• leds.colour: The colour of the LED. (e.g. green, orange)
  
• leds.function: The function of the LED. (e.g. radio, power, standby, batt)

The new leds devices offer via a singleton addon also a DBus interface to set the brightness of the LED. It works the same way as e.g. the org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.LaptopPanel interface by providing a GetBrightness() and a SetBrightness() method. The values for the brightness depends on the kernel driver and should be normally between 0 and 255 (0 normally deactivates the LED, any other value > 0 activates the LED again).

You can get the patches from my git repo [1] [2] [3].

Tech Tags: HAL Patches

HAL: v0.5.12-RC1 released

I've released today the first release candidate of HAL v0.5.12 and a snapshot of hal-info (20081127). You can get the sources here:

• http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/hal-0.5.12rc1.tar.bz2
  
• http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/hal-info-20081127.tar.bz2
  

More information about the changes since the last HAL version (v0.5.11, released 2008-05-08) and the last official released hal-info package (released 2008-05-08) can you find here.

For openSUSE 11.1/Factory you can find packages in my openSUSE Buildservice Repository.

Please test the packages heavily and carefully. Please report bugs (no features get included until the final version, as already announced) to the HAL mailing list or via the freedesktop bugzilla.

Tech Tags: HAL

Linux Plumbers Conf: Follow-up

Six weeks ago the Linux Plumbers Conference 2008 ended in Portland (OR). Yesterday I found the time to fill the "Plumbers Conference Attendee Survey". The survey enable all attendees to address their commendation, but also constructive criticism for a better conference in 2009.

Here some of my points:

• It would be really nice to have a official IRC-channel for the conference next year. It would make it easy to get in touch with other attendees or to announce something.
  
• As I already criticised about the Akademy 2008: I missed a list of the attendees, available while the conference, with some information about them (What are they working on? Email address, IRC nickname ...). It would make it much more easier to find the people you are interested in to e.g. discuss a issue/topic. Especially on a new conference with many new people.
• I hope the room situation for the microconfs can get improved. In some rooms it was really hard to see the slides because you couldn't even see the screen from the half of the seats if the room was full.
• But one of the much important points is: Also six weeks after the conference only a minority, 14 out of48 , of the presentations slides are online available. Is it that hard for a speaker to upload the slides in time? Normally it should be possible for the majority to upload them directly while the conference or shortly after. So please, if you were a speaker: please upload your slide now!

To prevent the impression that I have only to criticise: I've met a lot of new people, but also people I already work with on different projects. It was a great, interesting and enlightening conference. Thanks to the conference team. I hope I can attend again next year ...

Tech Tags: Linux Plumbers Conference

Pictures from Linux Plumbers Conf and BlueZ Dev Meeting

Back from Portland I found now some time to put some pictures from Portland, the Linux Plumbers Conference 2008 and the BlueZ Developer Meeting 2008 (both took place in Portland (OR), USA) online:

• Linux Plumbers Conference (or as slideshow)
• BlueZ Developer Meeting (or as slideshow)
  

Tech Tags: Linux Plumbers Conference BlueZ Dev Meeting Portland Pictures