legacy.not404.com

Hello fellow hobbyist hackers!

Looks like GitHub has finally opened their doors to the public.

I've been working with Git on a daily basis for the past few weeks, and I gotta say, Git rocks and it sucks as much as Emacs.  That is to say, there are a crapload of great features packed into the tool, if only you can remember the correct sequence of commands and options to activate the feature you want.

Steep learning curve aside, I am finally managing to get pretty productive with it for my Rails application development efforts.  It's pretty nice to easily switch between branches to test experimental code out, and then merge the final results back into the main trunk.  As far as multi-parent merging is concerned, Git totally rocks my world.

Furthermore, since the bulk of my efforts to refresh the Xbox-Linux kernel (and especially when mixing in Fedora's patches) revolve around merging diffs from multiple upstreams, I am looking forward to trying my hand at refreshing the Xbox-Linux Kernel straight from the kernel.org git repository, combined with my local snapshot of the Xbox-Linux CVS repository from SourceForge. 

If that works out, and I can also figure out how to mix in the Fedora kernel patches for an XFedora-specific branch, I may decide to store the overall results on GitHub, and back-post the diffs to SourceForge.

Technically, it's a fork, but when you examine Git's philosophy in more detail, branching, forking, and merging are its strengths.

For those who are waiting for Git to become easier, keep a watchful eye out on my main site, not404.com.  I have been working on a Project Management tool (codenamed "TokiDoki") that is similar to Trac (wiki, tickets, milestones, repository browsing, diffs, etc.), but initially works with Git, and supports multiple project repositories and multiple wiki-roots.  Svn and maybe CVS repository support will hopefully be added as the project matures.

TokiDoki is written in Ruby on Rails, and if all goes well, it be available for online demonstrations in late April, or early May. 

An Xbox-Linux user recently asked:

Hi,
I saw you managed to fix annoying problem with halt for kenel 2.6.16. Is it possible
to obtain the patch or maybe some clues how to solve the problem
Thanks for your help
/smrdko

Yes, somewhere between kernel 2.6.12 and 2.6.16 the Xbox-Linux Kernel seems to have lost the ability to power-off the machine when you issue a Halt.  While working on XFedora 6, I came across the issue, and added in a quick-fix for the 2.6.18 xbox-linux patch.

Update 2008-January-20
I have taken a renewed interest in hacking these routers, and will be taking another stab at rebuilding the firmware based on the latest source code available in the OpenWRT project's repositories.  I've given away most of my other routers to friends and family who either needed quick replacements for their dead Internet Routers, or needed something that operated in "Wireless Bridge Mode".

Thus, with all of my "Good" routers spoken for, I'm a whole lot more motivated to get some of these unused WRT55AG routers back into service.

It's been well over a year since the last stable release of XFedora. In fact, XFedora5 never made it out the door because of technical problems with the Anaconda installer. (Sadly, that bad boy was just too huge to run on an Xbox). I've spent much of the past year enjoying my recent relocation back to my hometown in Honolulu, Hawaii, and haven't really had much free time to hack on personal projects. From the looks of things, it seems that much of the steam in the Xbox-Linux effort is focused on the Xbox-360, or on the 2.4.x series Linux Kernel. Indeed, the last Xbox-Linux Kernel Patch was targeted against 2.6.16 -- a whole 3 levels behind the bleeding edge.