Ubuntu GCC > 4.4.x considered harmful!

Note: I’ve since updated the build server in question to Ubuntu 12.04, where the default GCC is 4.6.3. It seems that at least some of these issues have been corrected in GCC. Your mileage may vary. –Alan, April 28, 2012 I’ve been having some problems with Ubuntu 11.10’s default GCC (4.6.2) for some time now. […]

Linux pro tip: learn to read `top` and `free` correctly

People look at tools like free and top to see how much RAM their system is using, but they almost always fail to read the output properly. Learn to interpret this properly so you don’t freak out whenever you see something like this: At first glance it appears I only have 310 megabytes of RAM […]

Creating Debian packages for Linux kernels >= 3.0.0 in Ubuntu

The following sequence no longer creates a working “linux-headers” Debian package when compiling Linux kernels newer than version 2.6.x under Ubuntu (tested here with Ubuntu 11.04 and Linux kernel 3.0): cd linux-3.0 make-kpkg clean export CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=4 fakeroot make-kpkg –initrd kernel-image kernel-headers As noted in this Launchpad bug report for the `kernel-package` package, there is a […]

Custom kernel booting on CM7 on the Huawei U8150

Now that I’ve gotten the hang of compiling custom kernels for U8150 stock ROMs, I wanted to experiment with the dev builds of CyanogenMod* 7. To my surprise, with a little bit of hacking I was able to get a custom kernel to boot up on the latest nightly build of the IDEOS Dev team‘s […]

Fun with kernels on the Huawei U8150

For the hell of it, I’ve decided to play with the kernel that runs on my Huawei U8150. Like most other Android devices running Froyo, the U8150 comes with a kernel based on Linux version 2.6.32 (to be specific, it’s actually 2.6.32.9-perf). In traditional Linux version numbering, the farther the number is to the right, […]