OpenBSD Journal

Donations Needed for ACPI & Ports Development and... Undeadly!

Contributed by dwc on from the dept.

In a recent post to misc, Marco Peereboom (marco@) writes:

A few weeks ago I asked for a Sony VAIO on the list and some folks offered to give me root access. As much as I appreciated the offer I had to turn it down due to the nature of ACPI development. It requires frequent hard reboots when debugging hairy issues and this is really impractical when the machine is on the other side of the world and no real contact with the person manning it.

Anyway, long story short, Deanna Phillips' laptop died the other day and She is in a real pickle for a new one. Lets combine ACPI, ports development and undeadly work in one fell swoop.

I am taking paypal donations on slash@peereboom.us for a new or used laptop. I think we need about $1000 or so to get a laptop with the features we want to develop for. As soon as we get enough money in I will let you know. Any leftovers will be put towards the regular OpenBSD donations.

Please contact me off list with questions.

Thanks!
/marco

As most of you know, Marco (and others) have brought ACPI in OpenBSD a long way, and this is vitally important to anyone using not only laptops, but any newer computers that no longer support APM. Deanna's constant work in ports and here on undeadly.org is also something that benefits everyone, even if she doesn't like vi. You don't have to give a lot to make a difference here. Every little bit counts!

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Otto Moerbeek (otto) otto@drijf.net on http://www.drijf.net

    The problem of interrupt routing on modern i386/amd64 machines is even more imortant. More and more machines appear that NEED acpi to become useable at all.

    Even if your machine does not need acpi, please test. If you do not test and your machine is suddenly broken when you install a future release, you won't like it. Do not assume others will do the testing for you.

    Developers have a lot of machines, but not nearly enough to provide the broad test coverage we need.

    Comments

    1. By mk (130.225.243.67) on

      > The problem of interrupt routing on modern i386/amd64 machines is even more imortant. More and more machines appear that NEED acpi to become useable at all.
      >
      > Even if your machine does not need acpi, please test. If you do not test and your machine is suddenly broken when you install a future release, you won't like it. Do not assume others will do the testing for you.
      >
      > Developers have a lot of machines, but not nearly enough to provide the broad test coverage we need.

      For instance, recent Thinkpad models such as the X60 and X60s (and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same story with the T models too) will need to use an ACPI enabled kernel when running an MP kernel. Not doing so will cause the machine to take somewhere between 30-50% longer when compiling a kernel. This is because of, yes, interrupt routing issues. The machine gets killed with constant interrupts even when it is supposedly idle. Imagine what this does to battery time on laptops.

      This is important. Help make it happen.

      (All of you who modded Otto down obviously don't have any clue as to what is going on.)

    2. By Otto Moerbeek (otto) on http://www.drijf.net

      Oops, actually this post was meant as a reply to the acpi testing post... well, I guess it doesn't hurt.

    3. By Kevin (163.192.21.43) on

      I'd think that for a number of platforms, it should be possible to get by with just remote access. I have a ton of retired Sun hardware sitting in the lab here at the office, but which the company is not willing to "donate" particularly to an entity that isn't tax-deductible. But we could still plug it all up to power and ethernet and make the Sparc servers remotely available to developers...


      Any device with serial (or DRAC) console, LOM, and a working openBSD machine on the same switch should be recoverable from just about any state remotely.

      In a case such as the VAIO laptop, a remote power switch might also be necessary, but not difficult to arrange.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (219.90.242.204) on

        Remotely controlled PDUs dont work with laptops. Remember, laptops have their own power transformers (unlikely to be physically plugged into a PDU) and if you could remotely switch that, it would only be useful with a flat/dead/nonexistant battery.

        What you need is a remotely controlled monkey to hit the power button and plug/unplug the mains power. This monkey needs to operate 24x7 to accommodate developers differing locations and/or sleep cycles.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (151.188.0.238) on

          > Remotely controlled PDUs dont work with laptops. Remember, laptops have their own power transformers (unlikely to be physically plugged into a PDU) and if you could remotely switch that, it would only be useful with a flat/dead/nonexistant battery.
          >
          > What you need is a remotely controlled monkey to hit the power button and plug/unplug the mains power. This monkey needs to operate 24x7 to accommodate developers differing locations and/or sleep cycles.


          Nonsense, you just stated the solution. Simply pull out the battery.

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (219.90.242.204) on


            And no development related to the battery gets done? Is that important?

            Comments

            1. By Anonymous Coward (70.168.131.136) on

              >
              > And no development related to the battery gets done? Is that important?

              You got a point there. Forgot about that....

  2. By Anonymous Pimp (12.168.235.2) on

    Just sent $50

  3. By Anonymous Coward (82.40.182.26) on

    Is there an alternative to PayPal I can use to donate? I trust PayPal with money about as much as I trust Windows to be an internet facing system :P

    Comments

    1. By Fred Crowson (fredcrowson) on http://www.crowsons.net/puters/zaurus.php

      > Is there an alternative to PayPal I can use to donate? I trust PayPal with money about as much as I trust Windows to be an internet facing system :P

      You could donate direct to the OpenBSD project at:
      https://https.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/order
      or for europe:
      https://https.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/order.eu

      And the money might find it's way to Marco, but if it doesn't at least it will go to a good cause :~)

      Fred

  4. By ahafey (82.69.184.245) on

    Apologies in advance for seeming clueless...

    I see Daniel has a link like so for undeadly.org:

    https://secure.paypal.com/xclick/business=daniel@benzedrine.cx&return=http://undeadly.org/

    Is there something similar for this?

    Paypal says I don't need an account to pay you but I don't have recent experience (or patience) in the positive/negative of PP to want to give them all my details again.

    (I have an account which has been locked by the mists of time, I really need to clear it out and delete it).

    Thanks,
    Alex.

  5. By Anonymous Coward (67.72.98.45) on

    "I am taking paypal donations on slash@peereboom.us for a new or used laptop."
    Have you received enough donations yet?

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (60.51.119.7) on

      > "I am taking paypal donations on slash@peereboom.us for a new or used laptop."
      > Have you received enough donations yet?
      >

      I would like to propose OpenBSD to offer another solution for funding like:

      1. E-Gold
      http://www.e-gold.com/

      2. E-Bullion
      http://www.e-bullion.com/

      -meowmeowmeowmeow-

    2. By Richard Toohey (203.167.190.49) richardtoohey@hotmail.com on

      > "I am taking paypal donations on slash@peereboom.us for a new or used laptop."
      > Have you received enough donations yet?
      >

      Looks like enough has come in:

      http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=117043882602518&w=2

      Thanks to your generous donations a Sony VAIO will appear on my doorstep
      today. In fact the community was so generous that I was able to
      purchase a Fujitsu laptop as well which is the other problem child. The
      leftovers will be going to Theo.

      Thanks everybody!!

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