Librebooted my x200
21/1/2020
Today I finally librebooted my thinkpad x200. This wont be a full tutorial because a million people have done that, instead it will be a collection of things I had to figure out and whatnot.
tl;dr: I followed this tutorial and it worked fine. Though there was an error in the pinout diagram they provide, my corrected version: (click to see larger picture)
First let me say the libreboot install docs were hard for me to follow logically with how it is laid out and the research you are expected to do first.
- I had no clue if my RAM would work, I have 4GB of DDR3 SODIMM PC3-8500 RAM in 2Rx8 density. Many people have said the requirements on RAM are very specific and few combinations actually work. I think that's mostly bullshit, as long as the previously mentioned is correct, I believe you're probably fine.
- The RTC battery, remove it or not? The libreboot docs do not mention removing it, however many tutorials online say you need to. I asked in #libreboot on freenode and they said yes, remove it.
- What programmer do you use? "Well, that's on you, figure it out" is how the docs seem to put it. They seem to suggest a Beagle Bone Black, however in IRC they are adamant they are NOT recommending it - just use whatever you have. I had 3 Raspberry Pi's, however they all had died for various reasons. Instead I found many people using and recommend the CH341A USB programmer, so I bought one. Terrible idea. The black version is shit. The 3.3v power output is 5v and the IO logic is at 5v. This is DANGEROUS and could destroy your chip, the fact it works for some people is amazing, but I did not risk it, I wrote off the cost and didn't use it (it was about $10 anyway). Next, I had the option of using my stm32 bluepill dev board. However there were no tutorials and I suck at this hardware stuff, instead I just ordered a raspberry pi zero because it was the cheapest pi I could find. Just buy a damn pi.
- To determine what kind of SOIC clip you need, you first must dissasemble your laptop. I needed a SOIC16 clip. It is rare for the x200 to have a SOIC8 chip, but you might. So I bought a cheap SOIC16 clip off ebay. Easy right? No, their pins are too close together to put female jumper cables on - I learnt this once the clip arrived. You could easily solder wires onto the clip if you had the skills, which I didn't. After a couple of tries I just bought a clip with wires pre-soldered. Buy a clip with wires pre-soldered.
- Update your BIOS and ECC firmware to the latest version in Windows or the bootable disc image. ECC firmware is important as it brings battery life improvements. coreboot/libreboot does NOT touch the ECC firmware and cannot update it.
- Don't forget you need a new wifi adapter as x200's come with intel wifi cards that are not supported by free software. Luckily a junk laptop I have had an atheros chip.
- On my first try the clip was not connected properly so it couldn't find a chip - I powered the pi down and reattached the clip, it worked fine. Amazingly my wiring was correct.
- Do not be a fucking idiot, turn the pi off before you attach the clip or when readjusting the clip - and check your wiring with a multimeter.
- Make multiple copies of your factory ROM, ensure their checksums match, ensure the data isn't junk (hexdump -C factory.rom, look for some hard-coded strings or something to ensure it isn't just junk).
- The libreboot docs do not mention how long the process takes. Reading the chip took about 15 minutes each time and about an hour to erase, flash and verify the chip.
- In my case, the pi powered the chip perfectly, I did not require an external power source, but some people do. Your mileage may vary.
- I had some problems with the RTC after librebooting. I had to sync the RTC using: hwclock --hctosys
Now for some pictures of the process:
Checked the BIOS and ECC versions are the latest:
Completed the required laptop disassembly:
Wired up the pi as required:
Put the clip on and connected it to the pi correctly:
Replaced the wifi card:
First boot:
From here, I migrated the Arch install to Parabola and life was free.
Got an x200T and some figures, libreboot tools
20/1/2020
I purchased an x200T for reading manga (and because thinkpads are sexy as fuck). It has 6GB memory and came with a 120GB SanDisk SSD. The keyboard is a shitty replacement, which is unfortunate. Original charger, new (probably shitty) battery, pen (needed a good clean with IPA, it was very sticky and gross) and nice conditioned lid. I don't intend to libreboot this one anytime soon, though.
I also purchased 2 Girl's Last Tour Nendroids and the Girl's Last Tour premium boxset.
I've also purchased a raspberry pi zero w and a soic-16 clip for librebooting my x200. I had 3 pi's but they are all dead, so I needed a new one. I could have used my bluepill devboard, however that looked harder as there were no tutorials on using it.
I did also buy a ch341a USB programmer to use as a librebooting tool, however its voltages are completely wrong.
website generator RSS support
12/1/2020
I added RSS support to the website generator. This blogs RSS stream can be found here.
The source code can be found in my git repo.
website generator re-written in C
6/1/2020
For the last week or so I have been re-writing my static website genertor in C (again), but this time I finished it. This website is now generated using it.
The source code can be found in my git repo.
status bar (binstatus) changes
12/12/2019
I've rewritten my status bar that I use for dwm. It is now completely dynamic and allows customisation through a config.h header file. Yes, I am copying the suckless way of doing things - it's great.
The bar looks like this currently:
(time, battery percent, battery status - D for discharging battery)
The status bar is customised by changing an array that consists of structs. The struct used contains a pointer to a function and a flag (integer). You can use any of the provided functions (see components.h) as a part of the struct. Adding your own is easy, they must just return a char *.
static const struct component components[] ={
/* function flag */
{currenttime, NORMALTIME|SHOWMERIDIEM},
{battery, NONE},
{charging, NONE},
};
The image above was made using this array. If you so desire, you can add more clocks, or any other component, just add another array element. The components are drawn in order.Flags currently include: 12 hour time, 24 hour time, time shown in binary and whether to show AM/PM. (OR the flags together)
The source code can be found in my git repo.
Got some things
3/12/2019
I've purchased a few cool things lately:
I finally got a thinkpad x200! A friend found the listing on ebay - it was a reasonable price compared to everything else available. 4GB ram, no damage, some scratches on the lid. I am yet to libreboot it, but that is the plan. There will be a post on doing that at some point.
I have purchased a new SSD for my desktop, so this x200 will eventually get the SSD that was in that. Or I will just buy a cheap one. Honestly, the HDD is fast enough for me.
I also got some figures, wall scrolls and a boxset. The pictures are shit and don't represent real colors and detail... The yagate scroll is shit in real life, though.
Mute music while something else plays audio
1/12/2019
I wanted to mute my music when another application (mpv or browser) started playing an audio stream and unmute the music when that stream ended. To do this I had a look at the pulseaudio API and started investigating how I could go about doing this. Quickly someone pointed me to the modules page on the pulseaudio wiki, specifically the role ducking module.
"This module lowers the volume of less important streams when a more important stream appears, and raises the volume back up once the important stream has finished (this is called "ducking")."
This is exactly what I wanted. Programs run with their media.role set to "browser" will make anything run with the media.role of "music" mute themselves. Implementing it into my environment was straight forward:
- load the module using: pacmd load-module module-role-ducking trigger_roles="browser" volume=0
- load the module on boot using: echo "load-module module-role-ducking trigger_roles="browser" volume=0" >>/etc/pulse/default.pa"
- add "PULSE_PROP='media.role=browser'" to any applications environment that I want to mute my music
- run cmus with the environment "PULSE_PROP='media.role=music'"
- patch urlopener to also run programs with "PULSE_PROP='media.role=browser'", see the commit here
MariaDB hassle
3/11/2019
For a TAFE project I am doing some stuff in PHP (simple store, see it live on https://manga.gnupluslinux.com and find the source code here) and it requires some databases.
I designed the database in WorkBench and attempted to forward engineer it to my local instance of MariaDB which lead to an error message.
Long story short, MariDB does not support the 'VISIBLE' key word, yet it claims to be a drop in replacement for MySQL. It mostly is, but that's annoying.
You can either remove the keyword 'VISIBLE' from the generated script or set your target MySQL version to 5.7 in WorkBench which does not support the keyword.
simple csv parse
30/10/2019
I store purchases I make in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is becoming a pain to use so I am creating a program to store them in a database and prettyprint purchases.
The first piece needed was to parse the csv output of the spreadsheet, I did this with a simple C program:
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
struct purchase
{
char *product;
char *website;
char *date;
char *cost;
char *notes;
};
void
parsepurchase(struct purchase *p, char *line)
{
char *modline;
char *bup;
size_t linesize;
size_t len;
linesize = strlen(line);
modline = malloc(linesize + 1);
bup = modline;
strcpy(modline, line);
modline = strtok(modline, ",\"");
p->product = malloc(strlen(modline) + 1);
strcpy(p->product, modline);
modline = strtok(NULL, ",\"");
p->website = malloc(strlen(modline) + 1);
strcpy(p->website, modline);
modline = strtok(NULL, ",\"");
p->date = malloc(strlen(modline) + 1);
strcpy(p->date, modline);
modline = strtok(NULL, ",\"");
p->cost = malloc(strlen(modline) + 1);
strcpy(p->cost, modline);
modline = strtok(NULL, ",\"");
p->notes = malloc(strlen(modline) + 1);
strcpy(p->notes, modline);
/* remove unwanted newline when note exists */
len = strlen(p->notes) - 1;
if (p->notes[len] == '\n')
p->notes[len] = '\0';
printf("%s, %s, %s, %s, %s\n",
p->product,
p->website,
p->date,
p->cost,
p->notes);
free(bup);
}
void
freepurchases(struct purchase *purchases, size_t count)
{
size_t i = 0;
while (i != count)
{
free(purchases[i].product);
free(purchases[i].website);
free(purchases[i].date);
free(purchases[i].cost);
free(purchases[i].notes);
i++;
}
}
int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
FILE *file;
struct purchase purchases[512]; /* max 512 entries for now */
char *line;
size_t len;
ssize_t read;
int i;
if (argc != 2)
{
printf("use: %s csvfile\n", argv[0]);
}
file = fopen(argv[1], "r");
if (!file)
{
fprintf(stderr, "unable to open csv file\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
line = NULL;
len = 0;
i = 0;
while ((read = getline(&line, &len, file)) != -1)
{
parsepurchase(&purchases[i], line);
i++;
}
freepurchases(purchases, i);
fclose(file);
free(line);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
more updates
12/9/2019
UPS battery failing
My CyberPower BR650ELCD UPS battery finally had its battery die after many years, no idea how many, 4-5? I purchased a new battery for it.I also purchased a second UPS, the APC BX700U. It is generally the same specs, 700va 390W, though this one is not a user replaceable battery.
I've now put the CyberPower UPS upstairs for my camera server + router/modem and kept the APC in my room.
4-Bit Adder
A month or so ago I started building a 4-Bit Adder circuit on a breadboard using logic gates, I've only implemented 2 bits so far, education and work became busy. This was my first go at using solid-core wire, so it is pretty ugly.
Manga
I also have my first shelf filled! These are the series I hold dearest to my SOL loving heart.
I don't know if I will continue getting manga or go towards artwork for a while, my walls are bare. I'd like to get some figurines, but quality ain't cheap. I've found many wall scrolls I'd like to get, I should commit to it.
