Today I fixed the issue with my thinclients were I was unable to upload binary files (e.g. tar.gz) to my thinclient installation.

It's not very beautiful, but it works (I'm open for better solutions, so please send me e-mail if you know about a better solution to do this).

if [ "$REQUEST_METHOD" = "POST" ]; then
  TMPOUT=/tmp/fwupdate
  cat >$TMPOUT

  # Get the line count
  LINES=$(wc -l $TMPOUT | cut -d ' ' -f 1)

  # Remove the first four lines
  tail -$((LINES - 4)) $TMPOUT >$TMPOUT.1

  # Remove the last line
  head -$((LINES - 5)) $TMPOUT.1 >$TMPOUT

  # Copy everything but the new last line to a temporary file
  head -$((LINES - 6)) $TMPOUT >$TMPOUT.1

  # Copy the new last line but remove trailing \r\n
  tail -1 $TMPOUT | perl -p -i -e 's/\r\n$//' >>$TMPOUT.1
fi

This is necessary, because busybox's webserver (and maybe all others too) write four lines of content information at the beginning of the generated file and one line at the end as well as making a new line in the last line of the binary file causes the end of the last line to contain "\r\n" which is also subject to strip.

In my testings, I tried ten different binary files and always got the same md5sums after uploading, which means that this little shell script is likely to work.

When trying to populate my thinclient installation on my Thinclient PCs (VIA EPIA Mini-ITX diskless computers) Norton Ghost didn't find any valid source disks. This system in fact doesn't contain an IDE disk, but it contains a M-IDE cartridge directly plugged into the motherboard's primary IDE socket.

To get around this issue, you have to "Disable the Extended Int13h support" in Norton Ghost. This can be achieved with the following parameter:

ghost.exe -FNX

Afterwards, Norton Ghost recognizes the local M-IDE cartridge as ordinary IDE disk and you can continue imaging. Took me quite a while, to find this switch...

It's done, today I switched to Xorg 7.0 and modified the driver install script so that it will work with Xorg 7.0 installations too (at least on my system it does very well).

In short, here are the release notes:

ChangeLog:
 * Added suport for Xorg 7.0.0 in install.sh

Downloads:

• 1.4.3.4-to-1.4.3.5.diff (Differences from 1.4.3.4 to 1.4.3.5)
• mtxdriver-x86_32-1.4.3.5.run (Updated installer package)

Hints:
As the work on the unofficial mtxdriver is done in my sparetime and without any financial refundations, I want to post the link to my amazon wishlist here. So if you appreciate my work and want to do me a favour, feel free to pick one of the listed items, many thanks!

• My amazon wishlist

Today I spent quite some time on Amazon building my personal wishlist. Well, here it is. If you think that you should have bought me anything much earlier but didn't find any wishlists or something like that, now it's your great possibility to do so ;)

Links:

• My amazon wishlist
• English Help for non-german speaking people

Today I had some time and installed the new shiny 2.6.16.1 on my notebook and while I was experimenting with my kernel configuration options I stumbled accross the framebuffer logo configuration. I remembered, that I once wrote a small patch to hack my logo in there and tried to apply, but of course, it didn't work anymore (it was designed for 2.6.0-test9 or something else very old...).

So, now there's an update available that should work with all recent kernel versions and the link below the banner of this site has also been updated.
This diff is intended to give you an impression about how to inject your own image into the boot process, but you may also use mine if you want ;)

Downloads:

• tuxx-home.at-fblogo.diff (for recent 2.6.x kernel versions)

Today I upgraded to Xorg 6.9.0 and hacked the installer script of the mtxdriver to install on 6.9.0 too. Until now, I didn't experience any problems, system is up and running now for about two hours.

Please keep in mind, that this is only a workaround and that I don't give any guarantee, that it will work on your system neither can I be made responsible for any damage that may be caused to your system.

ChangeLog:
 * Added support for Xorg 6.9.0 in install.sh

Still Todo:
 * There is a warning during the compilation of the mtx driver claiming
   that KBUILD_BASENAME is being redefined. I don't actually know, how to
   get rid of this warning - so if you have an idea, please let me know.
   The whole build concept definetly needs reorganisation, but I don't speak
   Makefile syntax very well  

Downloads:

• 1.4.3.3-to-1.4.3.4.diff (Differences from 1.4.3.3 to 1.4.3.4)
  Please note: You have to manually copy the folder "xserver/6_8_2" to "xserver/6_9_0" or make a symbolic link for this name.
• mtxdriver-x86_32-1.4.3.4.run (Updated installer package)