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Linus about "const pointers"

The concept of the C-modifier "const" is often misunderstood. On a recent question one person asked why there was a "const" parameter to the kfree syscall.

What NAS?

I am still looking after an not-too-expensive but "good" NAS for my home network. There are quite a lot of differnet models out there, that will meet my expectations. Unfortuantly, I could not find a comperasion that shows all the features I want.

In this article, I try to assemble such a comperasion. But be warned: Its matched to the needs and features I want, sorted to the importance:

1. Supports at least Samba. FTP, rsync and other non-proprietary protocols a plus
2. MUST NOT use NDAS
3. Unit must use a "common" file system (I case of hardware-failure, I want my data back)
4. Enclosure must have place for all hardrives
5. RAID support. That is you need at least two physical hardrives.
6. Power efficient (otherwise I could recycle an old computer)
7. Silent
8. Should be able to run custom software. So this usually narrows down to a linux driven box with any access to it (to enable ssh for example)
9. Max. 350 € for 1 Terra Byte of gross storage.
10. Not-too short on RAM

Models over 350 are not reviewed at all. This is simply over my budget I planing to spend. (Of course, if the manufacturer would send me a unit for review... ;-) )

I took a closer look at these candidates: Maxtor Shared Storage II,  Western Digital My Book World Edition II, and finally the Thecus N2100. 

[Updated Dec 10 2007] 

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smartmontools on SATA

I had an annoying problem with my smartmontools. The startup script kept telling me, that it fails upon starting. Well, this was annoying but not critical.

But now that there is a new smartmontools package upstream, this discovered a bug: After installation, smartmontools barks in its postinst script as it fails to start. (See bugreport) 

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NavIT on Debian

Short and Quick: I packaged NavIt 0.0.2 for debian, and well, here is the NavIt Debian package: 

(update: read on where to get the latest version) 

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GCC for the AT90PWM316

BTW: I uploaded updated versions of my avr-gcc builds as debian packages: The files linked inlcude my patch to support the AT90PWM316*. The patch is already upstrea, and according Jörg Wünsche, it will be applied to the upcoming release of the official toolchain.

As the PWM316 chip is just a great device for lightning. I used the patched gcc already for a commercial project.

The story why I needed to create the patch reads as a WTF, and is therefore noteworthy: The hardware-team accidentially soldered the PWM316 into the circuit, instead of the PWM3B. As time was tough and new hardware not feasible in the projects timeline, I had to get the gcc running...

 Well, thats off-topic: Here are the files:

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Opensource Navigational Solution Released: NavIT!

NavIT 0.02 has been released!

Despite that the version is only at 0.02, NavIT is quite stable and feature-rich. And the best of all: It is Open Source! 

Lets quote from the website about the project:

Navit is a car navigation system with routing engine.

It's modular design is capable of using vector maps of various formats for routing and rendering of the displayed map. It's even possible to use multiple maps at a time.

The GTK+ or SDL user interfaces are designed to work well with touch screen displays. Points of Interest of various formats are displayed on the map.

The current vehicle position is either read from gpsd or directly from NMEA GPS sensors.

The routing engine not only calculates an optimal route to your destination, but also generates directions and even speaks to you using speechd.

Navit currently speaks 8 languages.

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Network Attached Storage

Last week, at a local groceries discounter, they has an NAS on sale, but were already out of stock at the time I was there.

To be more precise, it was actually an NDAS (<--warning: marketing speech. Read their FAQs for a bigger picture.), so afterall I am not mad that I was too late.

As I was not familiar with N(D)AS, I did some research, and found, that NDAS has some properties which I don't think they are appropiate for a NAS. Others would call this "just cost-optimized".

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