- <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
-for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
-time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
-will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
-ended up picking a
-<a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
-with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
-a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
-second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
-on that below.</p>
-
-<p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
-important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
-listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
-feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
-allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
-requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
-to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
-disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
-get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
-
-<p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
-X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
-significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
-hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
-good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
-I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
-needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
-
-<p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
-visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
-
-<p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
-lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
-with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
-I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
-reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
-default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
-reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
-report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
-Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
-kernel developers as
-<a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
-report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
-(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
-Lenovo forums, both for
-<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
-2012-11-10</a> and for
-<a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
-03-20-2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
-reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
-on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
-problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
-There is even a
-<a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
-available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
-minutes by writing to a file.</p>
-
-<p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
-contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
-requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
-firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
-Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
-hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
-fixed. :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
-trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
-spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
-picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
-X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
-Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
-this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
-with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
-with an expencive door stop.</p>
-
-<p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
-important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
-listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
-feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
-allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
-requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
-to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
-
-<p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
-wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
-to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
-individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
-used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
-new laptop now. :)</p>
-
-<p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
+ <title>New chrpath release 0.16</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
+find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
+analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
+useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
+the source. The company behind it provide
+<a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
+a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
+already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
+the Coverity system, and discovered that the
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
+<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
+projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
+fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
+check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
+checking of the chrpath project</a>. It was
+added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
+these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
+error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
+of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
+is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
+the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
+<a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
+mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
+publish a new release. These are the release notes:</p>
+
+<p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
+ <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
+ <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>You can
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
+new version 0.16 from alioth</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
+project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
+did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
+include a test suite check.</p>