Unintentionally trashing the Vista installation on a Dell computer

One decade back, I was installing operating systems quite often. Win 98 was broken every now and then, and Linux was developing very quickly.

Meanwhile I’m very reluctant in updating operating systems. It just takes too much time to set up the system, to reinstall all required applications and to do all the configuration work. Or the other way around: It’s just a waste of time.

However, there are circumstances where your machines need some healing hands.

#1: N900 Upgrade

This week, a much anticipated update for the Nokia N900 was finally released. I was eagerly waiting for it, as I hoped that it would erase »The Big Bug«. The update was advertised as an »over-the-air«-update, installable via a wireless network connection. Unfortunately, the device didn’t offer the update on my machine. After waiting for a couple of days, I got suspicious and searched the web for the reasons.

Obviously the device performs some checks first, and in case certain circumstances occur, it denies to offer the update. The reason might be that I enabled an additional repository and installed (only) a couple of extra software packages. Further, the N900’s operating system is not installed to the 32GB flash memory. Instead, it lives in some wee small extra partition of about 200MB. I’ve never understood why it is designed this way and why the space is that limited. Unfortunately, the Debian-like operating system stores each package in a folder in this small partition, further reducing its size.

So I ssh’ed into the phone and tried to install the update using apt-get. It told me that it wants to download about 100MB of packages and that there was not enough space left. I created a folder on the 32GB flash drive and symlinked to it. Now the update packages were downloaded and the update went fine – halfways. I saw some warnings during the update, and finally it stopped.

So I did it the hard – by reflashing the device. I downloaded the current firmware image and a GUI tool for the Mac. Unfortunately this tool failed to complete the flashing process so the device was bricked. I tried again using my Linux box and everything went fine now. As all personal data lives on the 32GB storage which was not touched by the flashing process, I just needed to reinstall some additional software packages (mainly those for mapping) and was back in business.

#2: Reinstalling Vista from a recovery CD

The backlight of the display on my Dell notebook was broken (it appeared as a defective contact, as the backlight switched off every now and then). I’ve a service contract and hoped they would replace it as soon as possbile (»next business day«). Surprisingly, there was some (bi-daily) mail exchange where they told me what to do – one bit of information per message.

First they asked me to install some BIOS and driver updates, though I wrote in my initial message that I’m running Linux on the machine and that everything looks like a hardware defect. I wanted to do them the favour and booted Vista from the (seldom used) NTFS partition. After downloading and installing the driver updates, Vista prefered to show a blue screen at each attempt to boot it. Doh.

Dell further asked me to run a diagnostics tool before booting the operating system. This led me nowhere, as the backlight of the display always switched off while the tool was running.

Next they offered to catch the device and to repair it off-site. The device would be unavailable for up to two weeks. Hey guys, there was a reason why I spent the extra bucks for the on-site service.

Finally, after almost two weeks, a technician dropped by and exchanged the display. Heck, I didn’t remember how bright the display once was :) .

I do not really rely on the Vista installation, but I boot it every now and then to compile and test some code of my own. Due to some file system errors, problems with KDE after upgrading Ubuntu, the broken Vista installation and the fact, that the 15 GB partition was too small for Vista (yes, Vista needs at least 10GB for its installation, 2GB for a swap and 2GB for a hibernation file), I decided to set up the complete machine anew.

I backed up my home directory and used the Kubuntu installation disk to repartition the hard drive.

The Vista installation went halfway straightforward thanks to the Dell recovery CD. But later on I got stuck as there was no driver installed for the wireless network adapter. I tried to install it from an additional CD that came with the device, but to no avail. I finally downloaded some drivers from the Dell page and got it working, but this still was a challenge as it was not obvious which file to download and install. This was surprising as I passed the service tag of the device to the online support system.

Finally Vista insisted to download and install plenty of huge updates. I read »Usability Engineering kompakt« meanwhile :) .

#3: Installing Kubuntu 10.04 LTS

This one was simple. Insert the CD, enter some data, select the right partitions for installation and let the installer alone for a couple of minutes. After booting the system, plug in the USB hard drive containing the backup of your home directory and copy the files back to the hard drive. Log in and feel comfortable.

Conclusion

It was good luck that it was a rainy sunday. I really hate those bread- and senseless installation orgies. I hope the machine will now run until it gets replaced.

La Maison du Sel en Wissembourg

Finally the rainy days are over. The warm and sunny weather conditions allowed for the first mapping trip to Wissembourg by bike – the biking season finally has started.

I mapped a lot of details along the way. Some short breaks every now and then and finally a nice supper at the destination took time. Luckily »Deutsche Bahn« (a german railway company) provided public transport back home.

The location services of the N900 are pretty good, but there are also some weak points:

• The N900 uses assisted GPS (AGPS) to get its position really quickly. If however no callular net is available, it needs ages (up to twenty minutes) to get a GPS fix. I’ve also seen such a behaviour on one of Garmin’s premium GPSrs, but only every now and then. The N900 does it each time it is outside the network of my provider. I guess the behaviour could by improved by saving an almanac to the device, but appearently the N900 doesn’t do it.
• The first fixes the GPS subsystem delivers to the requesting application are sometimes really far (and I mean far) away from the actual position. This makes it difficult to check the trip’s length at home. I’ve never seen such a behaviour on the Garmins I used, and I consider this being a software bug.
• Modern vehicles use screens with a vapour deposited metal layer. This hinders the GPS signals flowing into the vehicle. If the Garmin’s have a fix outside the vehicle, they are usually (but not always) capable to keep the fix after entering the car or train. The N900 today had difficulties, but as the WBT I also used today did not really do much better, I guess there were really bad GPS conditions in the train.
• The big bug requires a second device which is more reliable for collecting tracklogs. Both Maep as well as Mapper loose their tracks in case you must hard reset the device.

Here’s how the tracklog recorded in the train looks like. Note that it should follow the rails precisely:

The device is an almost perfect gadget anyway. All I want to say is: If you reliably want to collect the tracklogs of your trips, just get an additional logger. The N900 is an exccellent general purpose device. It is not a specialized GPS receiver and logger.

Jester (openclipart.org, by Johnny Automatic, public domain)

It’s not the first time it happened, but I was surprised anyway. I was hiking along the french-german border. I only ran Mæp and Waypointcatcher. I didn’t use osm2go to save some battery power. Even without Waypointcatcher not running, Mæp caused the device to crash four times. This usually happens when the device’s interface is locked, so you just notice that the device does not respond as soon as you try to unlock it. The only thing that helps is to remove the battery and boot anew. As data roaming is about 7¢ per 10KB of data (sic), I could not use AGPS. Thus the device needs up to twenty minutes to get a GPS fix after a reboot.

Unfortunately Mæp drops the recorded track after such a forced reboot. But hey, no prob, I have the WBT-201 running as a backup.

Was it really running? Yes, it was. The weather conditions have been excellent, many trees still had no leaves, and the valley was not too narrow. No problem. Really? Well, back home I was baffled. That’s what the track of the WBT looks like in JOSM, the Java openstreetmap.org editor:

A track of a WBT-201 in JOSM

This track is totally weird and requires a lot of imagination on my end to recognize the tracks and trails I’ve been using. The WBT is a cool device, but again I’m disappointed by the quality of its tracklogs.

The question is why the device crashed. I already mentioned the »Big Bug« (#8689 has been closed as a duplicate). Let’s see whether Nokia manages to provide a bugfix via a maintenance release. In the worst case they won’t, as they might be busy as bees working on MeeGo. Sigh.

Fern near Blumenstein Castle

The N810 is a great device and the perfect mapper’s companion, but the N900 is even better and a joy to use. Here are some applications I use on a regular basis:

• Mapper (formerly known as Maemo Mapper) is a very cool piece of software. It supports almost arbitrary map tile sources, including those of openstreetmap.org. It provides tons of features, though some of them are buggy, do not work as expected or drop data¹.
• Mæp is much more basic than Mapper. I thought it would consume less battery power, but appearently it doesn’t. Actually, the CPU indicator often is up while Mæp is running. Like Mapper, it contains some bugs², and as Mapper, it will even drop the recorded track under cetain circumstances I didn’t figure out yet. I like it anyway, as it is very simple to use. Just start it, import the track containing your planned trip, enable track logging and that’s it. Nevertheless it would be great if it would be more reliable when it comes to data savety.
• osm2go, written by the author of Mæp, is an excellent mobile editor for openstreetmap data. I use it all the time when I go hiking. It automatically saves both the edited data and the tracklog quite reliably, and its usability is excellent on the N900. If you are in desperate need of a mobile mapping editor, I know of no other which can cope with osm2go.
• I use Waypointcatcher when I just want to set a point for later mapping (»Postbox on the right hand side.«). Due to the excellent weather these days, I haven’t managed to make it an easy to install package yet. If you are interested in the code, just drop me a line.

All in all there’s still no way to record tracklogs reliably on the N900, so I still use an independent WBT-201 logger. Mapper and Mæp both consume energy and will drop the tracklog under certain circumstances. osm2go seems to be more reliable than the other two candidates, but it consumes some extra battery power. There’s a GPS desktop applet which is capable of creating tracklogs, but the last time I tried it it triggered some nasty side effects, so I removed it.

I’m thus considering to add track logging capabilities to Waypointcatcher one rainy day.

¹ Mapper Bug Tracker
² Mapper Bug Tracker

Anguis fragilis

This weekend was an excellent one, providing very good weather conditions to do some mapping by bike. The Bienwald, a huge area of wood where I still seem to be the (almost) only mapper who collects data, still serves me well to combine three hobbies of mine – nature, riding my bike and mapping for openstreetmap.org.

I really love the smell of the pines during warm days in spring. You can see all kinds of animals – including crane flies, though. The Bienwaldmühle, including a traditional german restaurant, serves great food. The rest in their biergarten took too long, so the way back home included twilight – which was a good thing, because you can see even more animals (like foxes, roe deers etc.) which usually are not seen during daylight.

I collected a lot of missing ways, names of ways and names of the wooden parcels. Though it is the third year I’m mapping there, still a lot of details are missing.

I used the WBT-201 as an autonomous logger to track the whole trip. The N900 did a good job, but I left it alone until I crossed the rhine to save some battery power. This is necessary as one of my two batteries only lasts for about three hours – though I switched the device to offline mode. The two batteries have been sufficient for the whole trip, but I now know I will need a third one for whole-day-trips.

Lizard on the Loewenstein

When I took the above picture, I missed the zoom lens of a dedicated camera. It was not possible to get closer to the lizard, as it otherwise would have escaped. Of course noone would ever request a cell phone to provide an objective slot :) .

The images have been taken during a mapping trip near the Gimbelhof, a hamlet in the woods near Lembach. I’ve visited three ruins of medieval castles:

Nearby you’ll find two further ruins, the Frœnsbourg and the Fleckenstein. The latter one is a partly reconstructed tourist attraction.

Here’s the Gimbelhof as seen from the Loewenstein. I used the landscape mode of the camera. While the branches in the foreground are captured well, the target itself is rather blurry. What I wanted to achieve is the opposite. Obviously I need to learn how to use the device correctly:

The Gimbelhof as seen from the Loewenstein

Here’s the same problem again, the Fleckenstein as seen from the Hohenbourg, using the landscape mode. Maybe the auto mode would have been more sufficient:

Fleckenstein as seen from Hohenbourg

Here’s a typical fault when taking pictures: Overexposure due to heavy sunlight. The sun was on the left, so the blue sky appears as a white area and the front wall of the Hohenbourg ruins appeares too bright. The right hand parts of the image however appear too dark:

Hohenbourg Overexposure

This image is too dark. I should have adjusted the exposure time a bit. Additionally I’m not pleased by the depth of focus and the placement of the target:

Hohenbourg Depth of Focus

In this image I’m not pleased with the depth of focus at all. While the stones right in front of the camera position and the tower seem to be OK, the stones in the second quarter of the image are rather blurry. I have no clue yet how I can avoid such a result in the future:

Hohenbourg Depth of Focus

Two further pictures, both showing the Hohenbourg (fr) as seen from the Wegelnburg (de). I tried to circumvent the lack of depth of focus and the overexposure using two techniques, which both didn’t help much. Again I used the landscape mode of the camera. I did focus apart from the target, pressed the camera button halfway down and then moved the camera to the final viewport. Appearantly the camera still has adjusted the exposure time, which was a bit surprising:

Hohenbourg as seen from the Wegelnburg

In the second image I included more of the sky area in order to get less overexposure. It didn’t help much:

Hohenbourg as seen from the Wegelnburg II

Obviously I’m in need to learn more about the N900’s camera, especially how to cope with depth of focus and exposure times. What I’m missing compared to the Canon cameras I’ve used:

• Pressing the camera button halfway down and moving the camera afterwards should preserve the exposure settings.
• Better control of the focus. The in-screen focussing area is rather large. I guess the camera software internally works with some multi area focus, as the Canons can do. If so, I miss the possibility to switch to a centered focus if desirable.
• A (if possible live) histogram would help a lot to avoid overexposure.
• A stitch mode, which preserves the exposure time for a series of images was a very cool additional feature.

If you think the N900’s camera is crap, judging from what I’ve written above, you’re completely wrong. It’s not exactly fair to compare a built-in camera of a handset to a dedicated camera. If the camera is not good enough for you, just keep on carrying your SLR with you each time you leave home :) .

Photo with Geotags

I’m still impressed by the features, the versatility and the usability of the N900. I’m also still impressed by the quality of the built-in camera. It does not beat my Canon A650, but it gets close enough to leave the Canon at home when riding the bike. Plus the 5MP images are more handy than the quite huge 12MP images of the Canon.

I still need to figure out how to cope with its focus and exposure settings, though. Most people might be pleased with the results of the auto mode, but I’m not. There are limits for automatisms, and in such cases you need to help the camera manually. Of course this requires more knowledge about photography at the user’s end.

Here are some wishes for the further development of the (excellent) camera application anyway. Try to find out the main difference of the following photo compared to the one on top of this posting:

Photo without Geotags

Got it? Yep, the latter photo has not geocoding information embedded. How comes?

When you take a picture, the camera application grabs the current location information (latutude and longitude), connects to the internet and contacts a server to get a location name by doing reverse geocoding. After this process was successful, both the geocoordinates as well as the location’s name are added to the meta data section of the image file. That’s just great and makes it unnecessary to do the geocoding by correlating some tracklog to the photos after the trip. Thanks to anyone involved.

Recently I’ve been hiking along the german-french border. The phone indicated that it will connect to a french provider (actually »orange«) if necessary. To avoid roaming costs, I set the N900 to offline mode, which, according to the manual, disables cellular, WLAN and bluetooth connectivity. The GPS subsystem, however, still was working, which was a good thing to keep my navigation application up and running. In offline mode, the camera behaves as follows:

• While taking a picture, it asks whether it should disable the offline mode to do the aforementioned reverse geocoding. There’s nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it shows this as a modal dialog each time you take a photo. The dialog comes up right at the moment when you press the camera button half down to focus the object to capture. As the dialog is modal, you can’t take the picture before you have cancelled the dialog. That’s really a showstopper when you try to capture a moving target.
• During my last test, the dialog was not shown while the button was pressed down halfway, but when the image was being processed. That’s better, as it does not prevent you from taking a picture. It still kept asking for each individual image, though.
• If you cancel the dialog, the camera won’t connect to the web to do the reverse geocoding. However, it subsequently also denies to write the latitude and longitude to the image file, though a GPS fix is present.

This triggers the following requests:

• Do not alert the user while he’s interacting with the camera application, e.g. alert about missing web connectivity while the image is being processed, not while the user is taking the picture.
• Write latitude and longitude to the image’s metadata if a GPS fix is present, regardless whether the reverse geocoding was successful or not.
• Alert the user only once a session, not for each individual picture.

The camera application remembers the last used mode persistently. The Canon, however, automatically falls back to auto mode each time you switch it on. IMO it would be great if the N900 behaved the same. In case you want to take a snapshot and you notice that you are still in video mode, which you used three days ago, it might be annoying :) .

Nevertheless the battery only lasted for two and a half hours. This really is very poor. Maybe Mapper needs more CPU than on the N810. I’m curious whether I’ll get better results during the next trips or if the uptime will remain the same. In either case, I’m desperately wating for the second battery I purchased to arrive.

I logged the track both using the N900 and the WBT-201 (aka G-Rays 2 ). Surprisingly, the track of the N900’s built-in GPS receiver was more accurate as the one of the WBT.

Plane drawing curves on the sky

Again I was mapping using the N900. I permanently had Mapper, osm2go, FM Radio (respectively an audio player) plus a text editor running. Additionally I took a couple of photos.

Some fungi catched with the N900's camera

Again I’m quite impressed by the quality of the device’s camera. The only thing I miss is a manual focus. Which IMO is a problem of luxury.

The fully charged battery powered the device for 3 hours. The N810 was capable to last up to four hours, but a comparison is invalid. The N810 did not provide cellular connectivity, I never used it to play audio and I seldom used it as a camera. Plus the battery capacity of the N900 (BL-5J, 1320mAh@3.7V) is almost one sixth less than the one of the N810 (BP-4L, 1500mAh@3.7V).

Additionally I was again trapped by “the big bug“, which I assume has an impact on the battery. I really hope this bug can be solved rather sooner than later.

All in all I think the power management of the N900 is excellent. If you think 3 hours is very poor, just use the N900 like an iPhone: Avoid multitasking whenever possible :) .

For the N810 I bought (and used) a second battery for mapping trips. I just ordered one for the N900 as well. If necessary I’ll order a third one, which will be surely enough even for all-day mapping trips.

The Heilbach meanders the Bienwald

I grabbed the occasion of today’s excellent weather conditions for my first mapping tour with the N900. I used it for my continued effort to map the Heilbach for openstreetmap:

I left all the other gadgets I used until now (mp3 player, Canon camera, external bluetooth GPSr, N810) at home and only grabbed the N900 to check if it really can replace the previously used armada. To anticipate the result: yes it can. I’m quite impressed and really content with the device. It’s a great digital companion. You should read on, though, to learn more about some pitfalls and shortcomings to avoid frustration.

Camera

I tried to take some pictures using the built in camera. I was especially interested in its macro mode and the result of close-up pics of fungi and the like. Less surprisingly it is not as good as my Canon A650. But it gets very close, so I learned my lesson. Here’s a picture taken with the N900, showing small deadwood fungi:

Small fungi on pine wood

Here are some small lichen. On the A650, I have of course more control over the focus. But the auto mode of the N900 does a good job:

Cladonia (cup lichen) near the Heilbach

The following fungi appeared in light red and black colours. The image did not preserve the original impression, but I doubt the A650 did better. Unfortunately I left it at home. Otherwise I could have taken a comparison picture:

Deadwood serving some fungi as a habitat

Additionally the camera software will automatically add GPS coordinates to the photos when geotagging is enabled via the menu of the camera software. No more struggling with correlating the photos to GPS tracklogs. I’m really pleased with the camera. I still need to test it under bad light conditions, though.

GPS Receiver

A track crossing the Heilbach

The GPS Receiver of the N810 was rather weak, so I always used an external bluetooth GPS mouse. While the G-Rays 2 was not that pleasing, the Blumax always served me very well, except for the one time it accidentally got bricked.

The more I was surprised concerning the accuracy of the N900’s GPS signal. Thanks to AGPS, it finds the current location quite quickly, and today’s mapping was a joy with the positioning signal that the N900 provided. I expected some deviations, but I would say it is almost as accurate as the Blumax. I will create a comparison track during the next mapping tour.

Mapper (formerly known as Maemo Mapper)

Maemo Mapper has seen some overhaul compared to Maemo 4, and I’m really grateful that there is some ongoing work. I’m not really used to the new version yet, which now provides some on-screen-controls:

Maemo Mapper on Maemo 5

It provides OpenstreetMap Mapnik tiles per default. However, unlike the version on the N810, it currently fails when trying to add To add a repository for tiles of Osmarender or the »Reit- und Wanderkarte«, a map which is optimized for horseback riding and hiking (available for de, at, ch and northern italy only), ensure you select the proper type in the dialog where you add the tile URL. The Reitkarte consits of two layers, one for the base graphics, one for the details. I added the following two tile sources, while marking the second one as a tile layer. The type I selected is »XYZ_INV«:
http://topo.openstreetmap.de/base/%0d/%d/%d.png
http://topo.openstreetmap.de/topo/%0d/%d/%d.png

Mapper currently does not support the plus-minus buttons on the top of the device, but there are on-screen-zoom-controls. Loading tiles and especially exporting the tracklog to a file is much faster now, and after a system crash (see below) the track has not been lost (which happened quite frequently on the N810).

It’s really a great “must have” application.

osm2go

Detail - Bank of the Heilbach

I used osm2go excessively on the N810. Sometimes I was struggling with it, especially when selecting objects. The preset menu was slow and sometimes hard to use.

On the N900, I was completely overwhelmed with its usability. It was snappy, selecting objects was a joy and it is much more finger friendly as on the N810. Of course it still requires a stylus to draw the geometry objects. Frankly, I hope Nokia will ship the next device with a resistive display and a stylus still. I cannot imagine that a tool like osm2go can reasonably be used with someones fingers only.

The Big Bug

Deadwood dams up the Heilbach

There is a known bug which will freeze the whole device, requiring a hard reset. It might be a driver issue and affects several applications, like Mapper, osm2go, and Mæp. I knew about the issue before the trip, and have been affected a couple of minutes after I started both Mapper and osm2go. I hope there will be a solution for it, as this bug is one of the main reasons why Mapper is only available via extras-devel.

Circa one hour later, both Mapper and osm2go started to behave weirdly again. The system was not frozen, but both applications didn’t respond properly but have been very busy to show all kind of weird stuff in their viewports. Restarting the applications did not help, so I rebooted the device.

Battery Lifetime

Water of the Heilbach flowing off

I left home with the battery not fully charged. The two reboots might have had an additional effect. I permanently used Mapper, osm2go, the GPS subsystem, cellular internet connectivity and took several pictures.

The battery was drained after two hours, which is very poor compared to the four hours the N810 did provide. But I think this is mainly due to the mentioned bug (and the reboots it triggered). Anyway, even 4 hours were not enough for a 100km biking trip, so I need to purchase a second battery.

Settle Down

Gravel bank in the Heilbach

Though I needed to perform two hard resets, I’m really impressed by the device, its capabilities and the software tools that are available for it. I’d like to give credit to the crowd of the @maemo-developers mailing list who helped me with some coding issues, Alberto Mardegan, the current maintainer of Mapper, who patiently helped me to get used to Mapper on the N900, and Till Harbaum, the author of Mæp and osm2go, for letting me play with his two N900 (I still apologize for having removed the weather applet from your desktop :) before I bought mine. Thanks, guys.

I considered the N900 too expensive for bying for some time. But I finally could not resist. Et je ne regrette pas.