Setting SYSDIR

Poking at the mt7620 wifi driver today, but I don't have a FreeBSD source tree in /usr/src. Trying to build spits out this message:

$ make
make: "/usr/share/mk/bsd.kmod.mk" line 12: Unable to locate the kernel source tree. Set SYSDIR to override.

Searching around, I could find others with this problem, mostly they had had forgotten to checkout a source tree into /usr/src . With a source tree in /home/user/code/freebsd I needed to set SYSDIR.

SYSDIR must point to the sys subdir in the FreeBSD source rather than the location of the whole tree(i.e. /usr/src). I modified my module Makefile list so:

SRCS=bus_if.h device_if.h opt_usb.h usbdevs.h if_run.c
KMOD=run_mt
SYSDIR=/home/user/code/freebsd/sys

.include <bsd.kmod.mk>

Reading: Babylon's Ashes, Cryptonomicon

5GHz Problems

Interference is a bitch, you should heed the warnings about cheap Chinese video systems they can make a lot of noise. This weather sat didn't stand a chance, Here is an article explaining what is going on.


Reading: Babylon's Ashes, Cryptonomicon

Are you a real hacker?

Pretty sure I am not, I lost the git branch with a new feature on it and it took an hour to find. I didn't delete it, I just couldn't remember where it was.


Reading: Babylon's Ashes, Cryptonomicon

Loch Brandy


Reading: Babylon's Ashes, Cryptonomicon

BIOS Engines

I read this cool article on trying to get the Purism laptop booting with coreboot instead of the proprietary bios. Quite a lot of people having been trying to open up the Intel hardware ecosystem in the past few years, all those closed bits make it very hard to say that hardware is secure.

It would be nice if we could leave the Intel world and use ARM or MIPS processors, but I think the graphics situation holds us back.


Reading: Babylon's Ashes, Cryptonomicon