birds like wires

Updated: 16th November 2011

Download SSH/SCP Enabler v1.02 – (704KB)

Way back in the first days of Joggler hacking, the most important goal was telnet access into the native operating system. Telnet is a simple (and, by default, insecure) method of accessing a UNIX shell. Almost immediately after telnet access was achieved, the next goal was enabling Secure Shell access, or SSH.

This was achieved quite some time ago, and tools like this one have been in use for a while. However, other than getting SSH running, they did little else (and could even cause problems if run more than once). That’s why I put together this little enabler.

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tags: joggler, linux

Released: 31st January 2012

Download GRUB2 v1.98 – (2.5MB)

I have a few Joggler plans afoot at the moment and one thing that has been bugging me a little is GRUB2. Almost two years ago the grub-gop-video-v1.patch was written, which enabled proper video output by GRUB2 on the Joggler at startup. This is brilliant. Now we can have splash screens and, more importantly, we’re able to see what’s going on at boot time. That’s pretty fundamental. However, it doesn’t look terribly pretty.

So, I set about recompiling GRUB2 v1.98 into two versions; one with the patch applied and one without. This way it is easy to switch to a quiet output, where the EFI boot logo remains on screen all the way through boot until the graphics driver is initialised. In case of problems, the USB device can be plugged into another machine and a quick change to boot.nsh will choose GRUB2 with graphics enabled.

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tags: grub, joggler, linux

Recently, I had one of these land in my lap. Not literally, thankfully, as they weigh a ton and have pointy edges; regardless, I have one in my possession.

This particular box is an ARM-powered TeraStation Pro v2, and, as is the way with these things, it was broken. Retired from it’s backup duties, it had sat underneath a desk for some time with what I assumed would be a straightforward problem to fix. On applying some power it became obvious from the incessant beeping that drive 3 was kaput. So I had a little fight with it, swapping drives and breaking the cheap and superfluous little plastic clips on the carriers.

Eventually, I managed to make it appear happy by removing both drives 3 and 4 – then it got stuck booting and I pulled the plug. Powering back up I was treated to this happy little message on the screen:

TFTP MODE E06: Lost boot image

Well, at least that’s different problem to not knowing the admin password, I suppose.

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tags: linux, terastation

Latest Release: 5th February 2012

Download System v1.07 – (99MB) MD5

Download Reflash Script v1.11 – (11KB) CHANGELOG

The O2 Joggler is a great device. It’s useful, hackable, affordable and fun. However, there’s always the possibility that the fun might go too far and leave you with a Joggler that’s not as happy as it should be. So here’s a recovery tool that should bring it back to life.

This is designed to be a robust method of restoring and reflashing the O2 Joggler to its factory defaults, even in the event that the internal flash memory has had it’s partitions destroyed. The Joggler is remarkably robust and will continue to boot from external USB devices even when the internal memory has given up, so unless you have a hardware failure or EFI problem this should get things working again. It also resets the Joggler’s NVRAM in case there’s anything suspicious hiding in there.

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tags: joggler, linux

Latest Release: 27th October 2011
Ubuntu Server 10.04.3 – (170MB) MD5

In developing the Joggler reflash tool it was obvious I’d need a relatively lightweight Linux which would actually run the script. There are distributions that are a lot more lightweight than Ubuntu Server, but because I’m used to using it and there was no startup cruft to clear out, it’s the one I went for.

This has the happy side effect that those people interested in running a Joggler as some type of server-only device can grab a copy of this and get started quickly.

The Details

I’ve set this version of Ubuntu Server up with Jools Wills’ 2.6.38.4joggler1 kernel, which was the latest version at the time of writing. The filesystem consists of a 128MB FAT16 boot partition with the remainder formatted as ext2, so there’s no journal to worry about on flash devices. The fstab mounts the FAT16 partition to /boot on startup, just like Jools’ GUI releases. There is no swap on this system, so if you plan to use it long-term, that’s something you should probably add.

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tags: joggler, linux, servers, ubuntu

Latest Release: 5th December 2011

Version 1.31 (7.7.1-9561) – CHANGELOG

SqueezePlay is an open source music player written by Logitech for their line of wireless audio devices. Because the source code is available it is possible to make modifications and improvements, and one result of this open approach is SqueezePlay for the O2 Joggler.

Ordinarily, SqueezePlay is used on desktop systems, but because it was designed with touchscreens in mind it’s particularly well suited to the Joggler’s display. This version has had the standard skin adapted for 800×480 resolution, is compatible with Jogglers running both the native operating system and Ubuntu, and is compiled from some of the latest SVN source code. It also features a simple install and removal script, which should load it onto your Joggler without too much fuss.

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tags: joggler, linux, scripting, squeezeplay, ubuntu

I bought one of these recently, and I really like it. It magically plonks digital terrestrial TV and radio onto your network, so you don’t have to beat up your broadband connection to get it. But you can read all that on the Elgato website; there are just a few brief things I wanted to mention.

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tags: dtt, linux, netstream, ppc, radio, tv

If you’ve ever tried the binaries of Squeezeplay 7.6 available from the nightly downloads, you’ll know that things aren’t quite right for Ubuntu. The same holds true for the Joggler the graphics and the audio are pretty messed up. But there is a way, if you compile it yourself!

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tags: joggler, linux, squeezeplay, ubuntu

My word. After a chat with a friend in a pub, I found out that I had missed the opportunity to buy a hackable 7” touchscreen computer with an Intel Atom chip for £50. I’d been looking for something cheap and touch-screeny for the kitchen, so it was time for a trip to eBay.

I managed to pick up a mint condition O2 Joggler for about £70 in the end, and it’s superb. There’s no branding on the front at all, so it looks rather swish and inconspicuous. It’s rather like an electronic picture frame, but the spec is much more impressive. Made by OpenPeak, there’s an Intel Atom Z520 running at 1.3GHz, 512MB RAM, 1GB internal flash, wifi and wired ethernet, audio out, lovely display… and a USB socket on the side. That becomes important in a minute.

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tags: joggler, linux, ubuntu