Export restrictions

It is a sad rainy day...

The ethernet card which i need for tests that NetBSD foundation sent to me was returned back with the following statement:

THE SHIPMENT CONTENTS ARE SUBJECT TO EXPORT RESTRICTIONS

I'm curious does that mean it's not possible to ship out that card out of US nor to pass it with someone?

SO_TIMESTAPMNS option in NetBSD

I've made a small patch that implements SO_TIMESTAMPNS option in NetBSD kernel. Userlevel program that can test it is here.
One nasty thing i faced is that i used older header files for userspace program, and struct timespec was changed since.

struct timespec
{
    time_t tv_sec; //Now 64 bits long (was 32)
    long tv_nsec;
};

I have been getting zero tv_nsec all the time because of that. 

For real the receieved structre is:
+---------------------------+
| tv_sec  | [lower 4 bytes] |
| tv_sec  | [upper 4 bytes] |
| tv_nsec | [4 bytes]       |
+---------------------------+

Userspace thinks:
+---------------------------+
| tv_sec  | [lower 4 bytes] |
| tv_nsec | [4 bytes]       |
+---------------------------+

Had a hard time debugging that ;)

Base64 and Pipes

Today I needed to copy an rpm file to Xen virtual machine having xm console as the only access to VM (xm console opens console to virtualized OS).

The first idea that comes is to open editor in the VM and copy-paste the contents of rpm there. 

Unfortunatelly it's not going to work because virtual console will interpret non-ASCII symbols of binary file stream as escape codes which makes copying in this way impossible.

The UNIX utility which can help us is base64. It converts binary file to text representation which can be copied safely.

The whole process can be simplified to following:

from host side:
base64 file.rpm | xm console vm

from VM side:
base64 -d < /dev/tty > file.rpm

Where
"< /dev/tty" - standart input (from console),
"> file.rpm" - standart output (to file)

GSoC is on the way

My GSoC 2011 proposal has been approved!

I'm going to need the network card w/frame time-stamping capability for tests.

This one seems suitable.

I've set up project page here where I will post current project status.

The wind in my ears

Cycling is just great.

I've bought my bike yesterday, and managed to get to work in 50 mins just like through the subway.

Gonna like that!

New job

Switching to new job...

Got that weary feeling that morning when  telling my colleagues that i'm going to leave.

So i'm starting the next week. Quiet probably i will be doing embedded linux stuff on routers.

My google summer of code 2011 proposal

I want to try to participate in Google Summer of Code 2011.

The open source project i am intending to contribute to is NetBSD.
I think it is a great Operating System.

Here is my proposal. Any comments are welcome.

In short, i am going to enhance packet NetBSD timestamping for better accuracy.

If the committee decides I am sane for that kind of work my summer will be full of kernel-level coding.

P.S There is a whole bunch of comments of my posting at netbsd tech-net mailing list. It's pleasant to have that kind of feedback