Developer’s Blog

This Saturday (January 5th 2008), Silicon Safari CEO, Vince Hickey, and BlueGrid CEO, Dr. Robert Daniel, began testing Guardian Angel Linux and Apple’s Streaming Media Server at BlueGrid’s “BrainStorm” facility.

An assessment of Apple’s QuickTime Streaming Media Server technology was completed and further Linux integration and testing will be done so G.A.L. can utilize rtsp to present streaming media. Also, further work using the Darwin Streaming Media Server under Linux will be done.
Also, of great interest was working within BlueGrid’s Second Life presentation environment. Absolutely, an amazing amount of work and creativity was put into using S.L. as a productivity tool by the BlueGrid team.

Support for adapters using the RaLink rt72 chipset has been added to Guardian Angel Linux. wpa_supplicant has been updated to support for this adapter as well as go to the latest wpa_supplicant-0.5.9 version.

wpa_setup has been updated so it can use the new ralink directive. For example:
wpa_setup -g -k -i wlan0 -e wpa -d ralink -s access_point

Notes:

• the interface most likely will identify itself as wlan# (e.g. wlan0, wlan1, etc.)
• change the access_point value to whatever is appropriate for your WLAN

The following adapters use the rt72 chipset as per the serialmonkey rt2×00 website.

Asus WL-167g
Sitecom WL113 v1-002
GW-US54HP
D-Link DWL-G122 (new rev)
Digitus DN-7003GR (VPR 1.0)
Belkin F5D7050 Ver 3
Edimax EW-7318USg
Hawking HWUG1
Linksys WUSB54GR

Packages will be available in the repository.

This weekend, Silicon Safari CEO, Vince Hickey, and BlueGrid CEO, Dr. Robert Daniel, began testing Guardian Angel Linux and GAL-Kit at BlueGrid’s “BrainStorm” facility. The systems currently being tested on are: an Intel 8 processor, a 20″ iMac, a Mac Mini, and a 12″ MacBook.

So far, all features, except the built-in iSight camera, functioned effortlessly with GAL. Currently being researched is a solution for the iSight camera but by using the GAL-Kit’s USB camera, teleconferencing testing proceeded just fine. Also of note, was using an HD Projector to display the test results… Mr. Hickey was quoted, “BlueGrid’s ‘BrainStorm’ facility is quite slick. There are so many toys to play with at the facility, it has a playroom-like feel to it.”

A quick evaluation of the Macintosh setup is, the Macs were FAST… especially the 8 processor. Running off the GAL DVD, was about as fast as running off of a USB flash drive!

Some quick notes:

Built-in Bluetooth support has not been tested yet.

8 Processor Intel Macintosh
For the 8 processor Macintosh, the only sticking point was the built-in Broadcom 4328 wireless card, which was made operational using NDISWrapper and the Dell Broadcom driver.

mkdir driver
cd driver
wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R151517.EXE
unzip R151517.EXE
cd DRIVER
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
modprobe ndiswrapper

Interface shows up as wlan0- proceed with WLAN configuration as normal.

12″ Intel MacBook
The Macintosh worked with G.A.L. out of the box. Wireless connection worked perfectly with kernel driver. Built-in iSight camera non-functional.

20″ Intel iMac
The Macintosh worked with G.A.L. Video configuration requires “xconf2″ utility for screen auto-configuration. Built-in iSight camera non-functional. The iMac’s Wireless connection was a Broadcom 4311 and is fully supported.

Intel Mac Mini
The Macintosh worked with G.A.L. out of the box. Wireless connection worked perfectly with kernel driver.