[Jesse Gilles]

I was able to successfully build corecdp-base-image on CentOS 5.6 using the EPEL repository and python26.

[Jesse Gilles]

We don’t officially support using RHEL 5 since the python version is too old to run bitbake.

However, there are extra packages available for RHEL that include python 2.6 that makes running bitbake possible.

Then you could try building the CDP image (including toolchain) on your RHEL system.

Look at the information available:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

You’ll need to install the python26 and git packages. Then when you run bitbake, you’ll need to use python26 to run it. Assuming you are at the top of the corecdp dir, you can run:

python26 bitbake/bin/bitbake

I have verified that I can actually run bitbake in this manner, but I haven’t finished building the toolchain or image yet to know if it will all work though it looks promising.

Jesse

[Jesse Gilles]

Try it again and specify a name for the file in your SRC_URI and the corresponding checksum, following the example I gave before. The newer version of OE/bitbake does allow the syntax you gave (no name needed for the checksum if there is just one source tarball in SRC_URI), but the version in CoreCDP does not. So, add “;name=some_value” to your SRC_URI and then use the same name in specifying your checksum as below:

SRC_URI = "http:/something.com/something.tar.gz;name=some_value"



SRC_URI[some_value.md5sum] = "123abc"

[Jesse Gilles]

You should be able to do this with the current release of CoreCDP without changing your bitbake version. checksums.ini is there in the current release, but you can also specify the checksum in the recipe and it will work even if it isn’t in checksums.ini. The main difference between the current OE tree in CoreCDP and newer versions is that you have to give each source file a name in order to specify the checksum.

Example from the linux_2.6.32.bb recipe:

SRC_URI = "${KERNELORG_MIRROR}/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-${PV}.tar.bz2;name=kernel 

${KERNELORG_MIRROR}/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/patch-${PV}.2.bz2;patch=1 

file://defconfig"



SRC_URI[kernel.md5sum] = "260551284ac224c3a43c4adac7df4879"

SRC_URI[kernel.sha256sum] = "5099786d80b8407d98a619df00209c2353517f22d804fdd9533b362adcb4504e"

[Jesse Gilles]

This is confirmed — building on Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 is not currently supported but will hopefully work in the next CoreCDP release. Please use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for now.

Jesse

[Jesse Gilles]

Are you seeing this issue with an unmodified version of sms-utils?

[Jesse Gilles]

You should be able to add modules in that manner (modifying defconfig).

After you modify defconfig, you either need to edit the bitbake recipe and increase the PR variable (indicates a new package revision and forces a new build) or clean the package (bitbake linux -c clean) and then rebuild your image.

Jesse

[Jesse Gilles]

Marcus

1. Yes, the unit comes pre-flashed with a working Linux system. It should boot up and have an IP address of 192.128.2.1, which you can ssh to. See http://www.multitech.net for more information.

Regarding the serial debug cable, your settings are correct (115200, 8N1). If you power off the CDP, attach the serial debug cable (with your terminal software running) and then power on the CDP, you don’t see any U-boot messages?

Can you verify that your serial port on your PC is working by using it with a different device?

2. Booting the kernel from the SD card is not currently supported (would require a bootloader change). It is technically possible to have the root file system on the SD card, but we don’t currently have any documentation on how to do this so it would be up to you. There should be enough information online from other sources though.

[Jesse Gilles]

Hm, it appears there is something wrong with the recipe. I had the same problem when I tried building it. Not sure what the issue is offhand. There also doesn’t seem to be any changes to the recipe in newer versions of OpenEmbedded.

It seems to hanging running gjavah, which is never exiting.

One thing you can do to debug stuff is to run ‘bitbake rxtx -c devshell’ which will pop up a shell in the work directory for the recipe. Then you could try running some of the commands in the recipe by hand and maybe debug it. The scripts generated from the recipe are in the same dir as the log file, you can look at run.do_compile.xxxx (xxxx is the PID).

[Jesse Gilles]

When I have my SD inserted in my CDP on boot, the /media/card mount shows up in /proc/mounts. If I remove the card, it disappears from /proc/mounts pretty quickly.

Yours doesn’t do this?

[Jesse Gilles]

The CDP has java support using jamvm (which provides the java virtual machine). In general, one should be able to compile the apps into a jar file, copy it to the CDP and execute it.

[Jesse Gilles]

It doesn’t cause any errors when you write to /media/card because it is just a regular directory until a device is mounted at that location (which happens automatically when you insert the SD card).

You can see this behavior just by unmounting the filesystem (umount /media/card) and then inspecting the /media/card directory. If you create files in that directory when the SD card isn’t mounted, they will stay there and be visible whenever the card isn’t mounted.

You could read the file /proc/mounts which shows the currently mounted filesystems.

[Jesse Gilles]

The linker options to gcc need to be at the end. Try moving “-lyaml -lesmtp” to the end of the list.

[Jesse Gilles]

Python 2.5 or greater is required due to the newer version of bitbake being used (which is much faster than the older version). If you can upgrade to python 2.5, it may very well work, but we haven’t tested building CoreCDP with CentOS 5.

Unfortunately, the OpenEmbedded wiki page is rather out of date.

[Jesse Gilles]

Which tty port are you running the commands on? Only /dev/ttyUSB3 supports the full AT command set. If you need access to the full AT command set, it is recommended that you initiate your PPP link on /dev/ttyUSB4 which leaves USB3 open for other use.

This is mentioned as a note on the “Accessing Hardware Interfaces” page: http://www.multitech.net/developer/products/cellular-development-platform/hardware/accessing-hardware-interfaces/

[Jesse Gilles]

Depending on the CDP model you have, sending AT commands while PPP is running may not be possible. The MTCDP-E1, MTCDP-G2 and MTCDP-EV2 only provide one serial port device that takes AT commands, so if PPP is running, the port is in use.

The MTCDP-H4 (HSPA) does provide numerous serial device ports, which allows you to use one for PPP and use others for AT commands while simultaneously.

http://www.multitech.net/developer/products/cellular-development-platform/hardware/accessing-hardware-interfaces/

As far as reading/writing to the serial port from Java, I can’t give specific advice, but I assume it will be similar to other languages running in Linux. The serial device port is treated as a regular file and you can do read/write IO operations on it to send commands and read back the response.

[Jesse Gilles]

Yeah, running ‘kill -9’ is certainly not graceful, but that sends SIGKILL which will forcefully terminate the process immediately.

If you run just ‘kill’ or ‘killall’ with no specific signal, then they send SIGTERM by default, and pppd will actually hang up and shut down gracefully. So it only feels not graceful 🙂

[Jesse Gilles]

Try “killall pppd”

[Jesse Gilles]

You should be able to use microcom, but the AT commands have to end with a CR. You will probably also want to tell microcom to exit if stdin and the output are idle for a while (-t option, specified in ms).

Example:

echo -e “atir” | microcom -t 100 /dev/ttyS1

Hope that helps.

[Jesse Gilles]

I don’t believe this is possible, however, when you schedule a fax, you get a fax entry key back that uniquely identifies the fax. You can then use this key to query information about the fax and to find out when it completed. Look for the <fax_entry_url> element in the schedule response.

Please refer to the documentation on the FaxFinder Web Services API page. You can find an example of how to query information about a fax using the fax entry key under the “Retrieving Fax Entries” section.

[Jesse Gilles]

I’m not sure why this would be. The CDP does not block ping requests by default. If you are able to SSH to the CDP then you don’t have a network connectivity problem. Is there a specific reason you need to ping the device? Do you have a dedicated network adapter in your PC with the IP address of 192.168.2.2? Or are you changing the IP address on your adapter when you connect to the CDP? Is it possible that your firewall settings on your PC are changing when you reconfigure the network adapter? Just thinking of possibilities…

Another thing to try to make sure it isn’t related to your PC (though I know you said you can ping other devices from your PC), would be to put your CDP on your LAN and try to ping to/from other devices/PCs on your LAN.

[Jesse Gilles]

Two things:

You probably want to specify the specific port that should be forwarded in your rule and possibly the protocol (UDP/TCP). Also, the “–to” option I believe should be “–to-destination”.

Example using port 80 for TCP:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d 166.30.11.22 –dport 80 -j DNAT –to-destination 192.168.1.212

[Jesse Gilles]

Perhaps the URL to the cover page in your example incorrect?

Are you able to download the cover page using the URL provided? I noticed the IP address was 192.168.168.240 and thought that could be a possible typo…

If you are able to download the external attachment, perhaps try scheduling without a cover page to see if the issue is indeed related to your cover page URL and not the external attachment.

[Jesse Gilles]

There is a utility for linux systems called “sshpass” that allows you to initiate ssh sessions and use a password for authentication from a script. You can either run all of your commands in this manner, or use sshpass to upload the authorized_keys file before you do other ssh commands using RSA authentication.

Also, as you are probably aware, ssh access to the FaxFinder is intended for administration/debug purposes only and any modification to the FaxFinder will not be supported by Multi-Tech.

[Jesse Gilles]

You can access the console by using the serial debug cable and connecting at 115200 8N1. Hope that helps.

[Jesse Gilles]

A couple more thoughts:

1. If you upload files with scp to the userspace directory, you will have to delete them yourself after scheduling.

2. If you upload SSH keys to the FaxFinder, they will be lost if the unit is rebooted.

Hosting the file on an external web server is a little simpler from this standpoint though I recognize it is another service to maintain.

[Jesse Gilles]

What model and firmware version are you using?

With the 2.1.0 firmware, the sending XML limit is 6MB for FF130,FF230 models and 11MB for FF430 and FF830 models. Keep in mind this limit is applied to the entire request posted to the web server (so effective file size limit is smaller due to base64 encoding with inline attachments).

Unfortunately, the “/ffws/v1/data/userspace/admin/report.pdf” part of the example references a feature that wasn’t fully finished/supported but managed to make it’s way into the documentation. The feature was to allow the ability to upload and fetch files from the FaxFinder through the web API.

It is partially functional though and here are two ways you can use it. The second method is what you are referring to.

1. Use the full HTTP URL to a file hosted anywhere the FaxFinder can fetch from (this is probably the recommended method if this works for you).

<url>http://example.com/myfax.pdf</url>

2. Upload the file as mentioned using scp to the following location on the FaxFinder, assuming you are logging in as admin to post the XML: /usr/local/ffweb/data/userspace/admin/myfax.pdf

And then set your url to:

<url>/ffws/v1/data/userspace/admin/myfax.pdf</url>

Hope that helps.

Jesse

[Jesse Gilles]

You don’t need any extra software and you shouldn’t even need to change any settings in Outlook or your Exchange server if you have a DNS server and can add a DNS entry for your FF830.

Set the hostname of the FF830 to match the DNS entry and then you can send mail from Outlook using an address of “FAX=NUMBER@HOSTNAME”, where NUMBER is the number you want to dial and HOSTNAME is the full DNS name of the FF830 (and matches the hostname configured on the unit).

For example, email to:

FAX=5551212@ff830.mydomain.com

You would add a DNS entry on your DNS server to point ff830.mydomain.com to your FF830 IP address, and configure the FF830 hostname to be ff830.mydomain.com. Also be sure to enable T.37.

Your Exchange server should then be able to lookup ff830.mydomain.com in DNS and forward the mail to the FF830.

[Jesse Gilles]

I also added a link to it on the Getting Started page.

[Jesse Gilles]

It is under the Application Development section:

http://www.multitech.net/developer/products/cellular-development-platform/development/creating-a-custom-image/

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