January 7, 2010
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU!
This year started off with a shitty taste in my mouth. First off, Yoggie is completely out of stock of their hardware. Secondly,
PAYPAL STOLE MY MONEY! So I had some confusion with a buyer who ordered his adapter then immediately canceled his order.
I refuned him his money, but then he filed a reverse charge against the order, and paypal took all the money in my account and put
a freeze on it. I've talked with them over the phone, through e-mail, and they can't "review" the situation for 30 days.
WTF?!
Let me be frank, FUCK YOU PAYPAL! You've made a good amount of money taxing my orders in 2009, and then you start off the
new year doing this shit....horrible idea on your part and you will loose time or money because of this, I promise.
So yeah, Happy New Year's....JanusPA's are on hold right now. This whole situation is fucked up, and I'm really pissed.
If anyone knows a better system than paypal, then please let me know.
Dec 15, 2009
I finally received the firmware for the SD WiFi card. About time. I've had this thing for about a year and haven't been able to use it.
Get this, the compiled date on the Firmware is Jun-09, 2009. I bought this card late last year, and they said it supported Linux. Well, they totally lied.
The open source drivers came out 2 months ago, and they just sent me the firmware. What a pleasure this has been....waiting 9 months for wireless.
I'm swamped with holiday stuff, so expect wireless for the JanusPA around new years.
Happy Holidays!
Oct 13, 2009
Good news about the wireless. Spectec released drivers for linux on Oct. 7, 2009, or 6 days ago. I've made progress, but found more issues...of course.
First, the new kernel build scripts Yoggie provides the public will cause people to brick their devices....I got 2 dead ones now. The good news is I figured out what is happening. The build scripts
Yoggie provides will build your kernel, but it will create a compressed kernel which usually isn't a problem...but it is with embedded hardware, and I'll tell you why.
The hardware uses a ARM architecture for the CPU, which requires a different type of bootloader. This is the equivalent of a BIOS on a normal PC.
This bootloader is called U-Boot. U-boot doesn't support booting compresses kernel images, and the result is "Start Kernel....." on the debug console and it never does anything.
The solution was simple but painful, don't compress the kernel. Flash a uncompressed kernel to the device. Too bad it cost me two units.
My mistakes are your gain. I'd rather fuck my own hardware up a few times to figure out what not to do then brick all of yours. :)
Back to the point, WiFi. I got the new kernel working, I got the drivers compiled. So what else could possibly go wrong, right?
Get this. Spectec released the drivers, BUT NOT THE FIRMWARE! They don't know if they can release it or not, because of legal blah blah blah wtf ever.
Drivers without a firmware is like using a car with no engine....it just doesn't work.
I'm kinda pissed off about it all. All this research, development, testing, fixing, testing, fixing, and testing again just to find out they didn't even shit the damn firmware for the WiFi
device. See, I'm so mad I just spelt "shit" instead of "ship".....err.
The only up side to all this hard work is the fact that you, the user, will only have to shell out about $40-$50 dollars for a Spectec WiFi device versus the $105 for an Atheros device. Saving forty
to sixty dollars today is easily a months phone bill or part of some other bill we all deal with every month. Point is, I'm trying to save everyone else a few bucks because times are hard right now
for lots of us.
I'll have an update as soon as I hear back about the firmware... (Hopefully not in another 6 months!)
Aug 11, 2009
I'm very disappointed with Spectec. They said before I bought the WiFi card that they supported Linux and would provide drivers. After months of
trying to get them to give me some type of Linux support, they finally admitted they have none. I bought a P.o.S. So now I've been looking for a
Atheros based SDIO WiFi Card, and I found one. The Atheros based chipsets are supported by the madwifi drivers, which has lots of support and I know how to make it work.
The downside it's $105 USD for a Atheros based SD WiFi card!! Ouch...that's a lot of money to support WiFi.
What do you think, is $105 worth having Wireless on the JanusPA?
And we can forget about the WiMAX....for now.
May 30, 2009
Yesterday I received the Spectec WiFi SD Card(802.11b/g).
The kernel that the Yoggie hardware ships with does not support SDIO for the SD/MMC card reader. The SDIO stack was implemented in the kernel with version 2.6.24.
So, this means I need to build a new kernel for the device. Rebuilding the kernel isn't that scary, but pushing a new kernel to all the devices freaks me out.
I will be testing this over and over again until I feel comfortable that nothing will go wrong.
Next...Spectec is developing a WiMAX SD card. This is very exciting!
More to come...
May 27, 2009
I received the debug board from Yoggie a few weeks ago. It was very nice of them to finally put these out.
With the debug board, I can finish working on the new kernel and Uboot for JanusPA.
For those of you who do not know what Uboot is, think of it like the BIOS on your normal PC.
Yoggie is shipping their devices with a very old version of Uboot, which results in a slower boot time (about 60 seconds).
With the latest version of Uboot and a new kernel, I can get the boot time back down to the 10 second boot time that I have with the Gumstix hardware.
I've also order a Spectec SD Wireless B/G card. The goal is to be able to make JanusPA support wireless.
Many users have asked "How do I use JanusPA with a wireless hotspot?" Right now, you don't. I'm hoping that will change soon.
Also, I've been working on the web interface. I've got the layout and design finished, now I just have to get all the CGI scripts on the backend (inside JanusPA) working.
Lots of work to be done...but it is getting done slowly.
Please remember, I'm just one person, and the only one working on JanusPA.
So if progress is slow, it's because I'm been swamped in other work. Working on JanusPA is not my full time job, it's a side project.
May 19, 2009
New updates have been out for awhile, I just forgot to blog about it.
The updates for version 3 are:
- On boot, if a default OpenVPN config is found, then OpenVPN will launch instead of Tor, otherwise Tor will start.
- Updated start / stop scripts for Tor.
- januspa-update.sh was updated. NOTE: This will cause a "error" when you update. Just ignore it, nothing broke.
- During boot, if the internet was not connected, then the correct time could not be acquired. This is now fixed.
February 29, 2009
Hi everyone,
The first update for JanusPA is now available. It includes:
- OpenVPN
- OpenVPN sample scripts to launch OpenVPN
- Added Start / stop scripts for Tor
- Added Start / stop scripts for OpenVPN
- Updated the iptables rules
- On boot, it checks for a default OpenVPN config. If one is NOT found, it will launch Tor by default.
You can update your JanusPA by logging in over SSH, and running " /sbin/januspa-update.sh "
Depending on how loaded the Tor network is, you may have to run it two or three times for it to work
As a reminder, JanusPA's update server is running as a hidden service on Tor. This means that your IP address will not be revealed to the server when you get updates, and anyone who may be
watching/filtering your traffic (China..) will not know what your downloading or where you are downloading it from. :)
For those of you who are going to be using your privacy adapter for OpenVPN, here is how it works.
When JanusPA boots, it checks for the "/etc/openvpn/default/openvpn.config" file. If it finds that file, it will launch OpenVPN using that file. You want to place all your keys and certs in the
"/etc/openvpn/default/" directory. You can either rename your OpenVPN config file to "openvpn.config" or use "ln -sf openvpn.config" to create a sym-link to your existing config
file. Also, you can find scripts to start/stop openvpn in the "/etc/openvpn/scripts/" directory.
Documentation videos have been recorded and will posted online after some minor editing is done. They will demostrate how to use JanusPA with a single PC, multiple wired PCs, a WiFi access point, and
a WiMAX router. Online documentation should be updated by the end of the weekend too.
The web interface is still being worked on. If you have any ideas or features you would like to see in the web interface, please let me know.
On a personal note, this is taking a lot longer than expected. I'm working 2 jobs right now, and working a JanusPA feels like a third job. My contract at my primary job (Mon-Fri, 8-5) will be ending
at the end of March which will free up about 40 hours a week of my time. My hope is that by the end of April I'll be able to get a WiFi SD Card working with JanusPA. This would allow you to use your
privacy adapter as a wireless client. It's going to take a lot of time and testing, but I'm confident that it will be possible to make JanusPA support WiFi. (FYI, I work on WiFi / WiMAX all day at
my primary job at Intel. :)
February 18, 2009
I would like to appologize to everyone for taking so long on getting out the next update.
I've been helping out users with their JanusPA's, and finding a few bugs along the way that I need to get fixed.
I'm also working on much more documentation. Most of this is coming from you, the users, so if you have a problem, please let me know.
February 8, 2009
OpenVPN has been tested and works as expected.
Next thing to do is generate the connection scripts and iptables rules. After that, I'll publish an update.
February 7, 2009
THE WAIT IS OVER!
Today I started taking orders for JanusPA. The order page has been updated and you can now order it online.
I've already had a few order come in today, and will be mailing those out tomorrow.
February 6, 2009
It's finally finished...again! JanusPA is now working on the yoggie hardware.
It only works with Tor at the moment, but requires zero-configuration for it to work. OpenSSL and
OpenVPN are having problems cross-compiling. The update script is full functional, so when I get
OpenSSL, OpenVPN, and ProxyChains compiled and tested, I'll release and update. I'm working with
my room mate, who is a website designer (far better than me), on the web interface. I'll be doing
the CGI scripting and he'll be working on the UI. If you want, you can SSH into your device and
look at how it works. Just becareful not to break or brick it. :)
I'll be setting up the order form and PayPal this weekend. After that's done, I'll start shipping JanusPA.