Building a 6502 computer

Posted on

I’ve been using 6502 assembly for some hobby projects recently, but only testing in an emulator. It’s about time to target some real hardware, so for the past few weeks I’ve been following Ben Eater’s 6502 computer tutorial.

I am a complete beginner when it comes to electronics, so I spent a bit of time making useless circuits to toggle LED’s, then jumped right in to building the simplest possible circuit exercise a 65c02 CPU, known as a NOP generator. I used a 555 timer and an inverter to get a 3Hz clock, which is quite a bit slower than my desktop PC.

I then extended the circuit to run NOP instructions from a ROM. I generated a ROM filled with the 6502 NOP instruction by printing a character to a file, then concatenating the file to itself times to fill the ROM.

printf '\xEA' > rom-original.bin
dd if=rom-original.bin of=rom-original.bin bs=1 seek=1 count=32768

I am using an open-source tool called minipro with a TL866II+ programmer to burn the ROM.

$ minipro -p AT28C256 -w rom-original.bin
Found TL866II+ 04.2.86 (0x256)
Warning: Firmware is out of date.
  Expected  04.2.123 (0x27b)
  Found     04.2.86 (0x256)
Erasing... 0.02Sec OK
Protect off...OK
Writing Code...  7.44Sec  OK
Reading Code...  0.77Sec  OK
Verification OK
Protect on...OK

Next, I tried to extend the circuit to blink some LED’s based on a programmed sequence. When I ran the program, the 65c22 I/O chip warmed up, and my row of LED lights did not blink. It turns out that I had mixed up the meaning of VCC and VSS, and applied a reverse voltage to the chip. I found a post from somebody else who had made the same mistake, and corrected it before the chip was damaged.

This program worked well initially, but the computer would sometimes crash when running at this slow speed, so I started running it with a 1MHz or 1.8MHz oscillator instead. I now know that this is because I had plugged the 65c02 and 65c22 clock inputs into the 555 timer output, when I should have been running it through the inverter first. The rising-edge and falling-edge times of the 555 timer are apparently not fast enough to clock these chips reliably.

The next step was to add an LCD and some RAM. My first attempt did not work, and it took me a few hours of troubleshooting to rule out any hardware problems. In the end it was a simple programming error, where I had used a jmp instruction instead of jsr in my test program.

So it’s not much, but it works! Based on some of the problems that I had while building this, it was definitely a good idea to start with a known-good design on a breadboard.

I’ve got a few ideas (and components) for extending this computer already, and I’m hoping to learn a thing or two about hardware and software along the way.

Building a tiny Linux gaming PC

Posted on

I recently put together a small form factor PC to use with my TV, with the aim of building a Linux-based, console-like gaming setup. This mostly went to plan, and is certainly a big upgrade from my previous hardware, which was based on a retired desktop computer.

I am writing a bit about it today, partly because it’s been an interesting project, but also to show a working setup for anybody who is attempting something similar.

Quick reference

The build is based around these components (PC part picker list here):

  • In Win Chopin case
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3400G CPU
  • Gigabyte B450 I AORUS PRO Motherboard
  • Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 Cooler
  • Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 RAM
  • Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB

Peripherals:

  • Sony DualShock 4 controller – Works over Bluetooth and can be used as a touch-pad.
  • 8BitDo SF30 Pro controller – Also works over Bluetooth, and can emulate an Xbox controller.
  • Logitech K400R wireless keyboard/mouse

Hardware setup

This is the smallest PC I’ve built with desktop parts, and there is not a lot of spare space in the case. I first put the everything together on my desk confirm that it would POST, then disassembled the case to make some modifications.

Three screws hold in the power supply, two torx screws hold the aluminium shell to the chassis, and two Phillips-head screws and some tabs hold the plastic front panel cover to the chassis.

In that last image, the motherboard almost fills the case, and a power supply has to fit in there as well.

My plan was to route the power cables around the back of the case rather than leaving them in the main cavity. This involved cutting out a square near one of the drive trays for all of the power cables to exit, and another for the ATX power connector to connect to the motherboard. I also removed a metal tab from the power supply, since I had cut out the metal that it was supposed to be screwed to.

There was an existing hole which I could use for the CPU power connector, which was already the correct size.

I then swapped the power supply fan for a Noctua A4x10 PWM so that I could control the fan speed from software. I do not recommend this, since it is unnecessary, and opening a power supply is an electrocution hazard.

Next, I got all of the cables into place, since there is no space to do this after the motherboard is installed

Once the power cables were in the right place, I added the motherboard, then connected the front panel I/O, feeding all of the excess cables to the space behind the case. This is a very tight fit, and I accidentally bent the case and squashed some cables before finally getting the plastic front panel to attach.

After finally lining everything up, I checked that the case closed, and re-attached the shell.

Lastly, I was able to re-fit one of the two drive trays, in case that is ever needed in future.

BIOS setup

This build uses integrated graphics, so the system memory is also being used as video memory. This means that RAM speed is more important than usual.

I enabled XMP to run the RAM at its rated 3200 MHz speed. This is higher than the highest officially supported speed of 2933 MHz for this CPU, but for me that was not an issue.

I set the built-in motherboard LED’s to blue, to match the default colour on the Sony DualShock 4 controller. This also meant that I would not need to get any RGB software working on Linux.

Some online sources suggest disabling the AMD Cool & Quiet function to get extra gaming performance, but I consider this advice to be out-dated, unless you’re overclocking. Instead, I am leaving this setting enabled, then automatically setting the CPU to ‘performance’ mode while gaming via software.

Once I got everything working, I disabled everything that I wasn’t using, and enabled Ultra Fast Boot. This makes the system start faster, but also removes the ability to re-configure the BIOS, because the keyboard will not work. The settings can be reset via a jumper on the motherboard if I need to get back into it.

Software setup

I installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I would suggest sticking with the Long Term Support version of Ubuntu if you are using it for gaming, since Steam is available in the package manager. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, sound and 3D-accelerated graphics all worked out of the box.

Configuring Ubuntu

These settings make Ubuntu act less like a desktop, and more like a Home Theater PC.

First I enabled automatic login, then cleared the password for the login keyring. This avoids needing to use a keyboard on startup, or getting prompted for a password when web browsers attempt to access the keyring.

Under power settings, I set “Blank Screen” to “Never”, and Automatic Suspend to “Off”.

Under screen lock settings, I set “Blank Screen Delay” to “Never”, and disabled “Automatic Screen Lock”.

Next, I set the theme to dark mode, the display output to 1920×1080 60Hz, and the audio output device to HDMI. The display is 4K, but compatibility will be challenging enough without adding scaling issues in there, so I’m using a lower resolution for now.

Lastly, I set up a tool called psensor to start on boot, so that I could check temperatures.

Installing applications

Linux gaming has advanced a fair bit recently, and since it is a large topic, I won’t try to cover in too much detail here. I’m connecting this computer up to a TV, so this type of setup is only suitable for games with controller support. Still, this includes:

  • Native Linux games.
  • Windows games running via a compatibility layer (WINE/DXVK or Proton).
  • Games for other systems played through an emulator.

An extensive catalogue is available through the Linux version of Steam, which I installed via the Ubuntu package manager. I could have set Steam to launch on startup and call it a day, but there are two other launchers which I installed alongside it:

  • Lutris (from the lutris-team/lutris PPA).
  • Retroarch (from the libretro/testing PPA)

Next, I installed WINE (32 bit and 64 bit), winetricks, and gamemode from the Ubuntu package manager, then Proton GE from GitHub. Proton GE is a widely-used Proton fork, which integrates fixes from upstream WINE. This gave me several different run-times for Windows applications, and simply switching between them or adding some environment variables has been sufficient to work around every compatibility issue that I’ve encountered so-far.

Lastly, I installed Kodi from the team-xbmc/ppa PPA.

Game testing

For this section, I’m listing out a few games from my library that I’ve tested. As a quick reminder, this is all running on integrated graphics, on Linux.

I was mainly checking that I could get a (subjectively) playable frame-rate, and that I could get two controllers to work in local multiplayer where available.

Steam

GRIP combat racing runs via Proton. It is a fast-paced racing game, has local split-screen multiplayer, and runs very smoothly at 720p.

Untitled Goose Game also runs via Proton. It has recently added a 2-player mode, and runs at 1080p with no hiccups.

The Tomb Raider reboot is available native for Linux. With low settings, it runs fine at 1080p, with the benchmark indicating a 99 FPS average.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, also available native for Linux, is a real challenge for this integrated GPU. I am running it at 1080p, lowest settings, though the benchmark comes back with just a 43 FPS average.

Lutris

Lutris has an Epic Games store installer, which runs the store-front under WINE. I decided to try it out, though it is easily the most buggy software mentioned in this blog post.

The only the only game I tested from there was Rocket League. Native Linux support was recently dropped from this title on Steam, but the Windows version from Epic runs just fine on integrated graphics, and has local multiplayer. I run it at 1080p.

I also tested the original Crysis by manually setting up a WINE prefix and adding it to Lutris. I run this at 720p, medium settings. After a few loops, the benchmark indicates that this averages 112 FPS, so I could probably increase the quality or resolution.

I also tested Crysis 2 via WINE, which had some concerns about my graphics card. I also run it at 720p, using the ‘Gamer’ profile. The benchmark indicates that this averages 60 FPS.

Super Tux Kart is an open source racing game, which can be installed via Lutris. This is a native Linux build, and runs just fine at 1080p. It has controller support and local multiplayer.

Wrap-up

This blog post touches on quite a few topics, so I’ve left out a lot of the details. If you’ve read this far, though, then it’s time to talk about down-sides. Some things did not work as planned.

  • Reading/controlling fan speeds did not work from Linux on this Gigabyte motherboard. This has worked so consistently for me on other hardware, that I did not even think to check for compatibility here. This means I can only set fan speeds in the BIOS.
  • The power supply is noisier than I expected under load. This is due to coil whine, not fan noise.
  • When using the 8BitDo SF30 controller over Bluetooth, RetroArch would pause for 10 or 15 seconds at a time. I tracked this down to the fact that I am connecting it as an Xbox controller, and RetroArch was attempting (and failing) to check its battery level. Connecting the controller after a core has launched avoids the problem.
  • I had hoped to run everything under Wayland, but the Epic Games store had terrible graphical glitches. Everything else on this page (Steam, Lutris, Retroarch) worked on Wayland, and this is apparently due to the way that this app uses OpenGL.

This setup works very well for me, and I am glad to be able to show that it’s possible to do some basic gaming without Microsoft Windows or a dedicated GPU. Still, there are a lot of trade-offs that come from this form-factor and platform, and that’s not for everybody.

If you’re using Linux or a Ryzen APU for gaming, or have tried building in the InWin Chopin case, then please feel free to leave a comment below. I would be interested to know about anything you’ve done differently, and how it worked out.

How to communicate with USB and networked devices from in-browser Javascript

Posted on

I recently combined a few tools on Linux to create a local Websocket listener, which could forward raw data to a USB printer, so that it could be accessed using Javascript in a web browser.

Why would you want this? I have point of sale applications (POS) in mind, which need to send raw data to a printer. For these applications, the browser and operating system print systems are not appropriate, since they prompt, spool, and badly render pages by converting them to low-fidelity raster images.

Web interfaces are becoming common for point-of-sale applications. The web page could be served from somewhere outside your local network, which is why we need to get the client-side Javascript involved.

The tools

To run on the client computer:

And to generate the print data on the webserver:

We will use these tools to provide some plumbing, so that we can retrieve the print data, and send it off to the printer from client-side Javascript.

Client computer

The client computer was a Linux desktop system. Both of the tools we need are available in the Debian repositories:

sudo apt-get install websockify socat

Listen for websocket connections on port 5555 and pass them to localhost:7000:

websockify 5555 localhost:7000

Listen for TCP connections on localhost port 7000 and pass them to the USB device (more advanced version of this previous post):

socat -u TCP-LISTEN:7000,fork,reuseaddr,bind=127.0.0.1 OPEN:/dev/usb/lp0

Web page

I made a self-contained web-page to provide a button which requested a print file from the network and passed it to the local websocket.

This is slightly modified from a similar example that I used for a previous project.

<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Web-based raw printing example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Web-based raw printing example</h1>

<p>This snippet forwards raw data to a local websocket.</p>

<form>
  <input type="button" onclick="directPrintBytes(printSocket, [0x1b, 0x40, 0x48, 0x65, 0x6c, 0x6c, 0x6f, 0x20, 0x77, 0x6f, 0x72, 0x6c, 0x64, 0x0a, 0x1d, 0x56, 0x41, 0x03]);" value="Print test string"/>
  <input type="button" onclick="directPrintFile(printSocket, 'receipt-with-logo.bin');" value="Load and print 'receipt-with-logo'" />
</form>

<script type="text/javascript">
/**
 * Retrieve binary data via XMLHttpRequest and print it.
 */
function directPrintFile(socket, path) {
  // Get binary data
  var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
  req.open("GET", path, true);
  req.responseType = "arraybuffer";
  console.log("directPrintFile(): Making request for binary file");
  req.onload = function (oEvent) {
    console.log("directPrintFile(): Response received");
    var arrayBuffer = req.response; // Note: not req.responseText
    if (arrayBuffer) {
      var result = directPrint(socket, arrayBuffer);
      if(!result) {
        alert('Failed, check the console for more info.');
      }
    }
  };
  req.send(null);
}

/**
 * Extract binary data from a byte array print it.
 */
function directPrintBytes(socket, bytes) {
  var result = directPrint(socket, new Uint8Array(bytes).buffer);
  if(!result) {
    alert('Failed, check the console for more info.');
  }
}

/**
 * Send ArrayBuffer of binary data.
 */
function directPrint(socket, printData) {
  // Type check
  if (!(printData instanceof ArrayBuffer)) {
    console.log("directPrint(): Argument type must be ArrayBuffer.")
    return false;
  }
  if(printSocket.readyState !== printSocket.OPEN) {
    console.log("directPrint(): Socket is not open!");
    return false;
  }
  // Serialise, send.
  console.log("Sending " + printData.byteLength + " bytes of print data.");
  printSocket.send(printData);
  return true;
}

/**
 * Connect to print server on startup.
 */
var printSocket = new WebSocket("ws://localhost:5555", ["binary"]);
printSocket.binaryType = 'arraybuffer';
printSocket.onopen = function (event) {
  console.log("Socket is connected.");
}
printSocket.onerror = function(event) {
  console.log('Socket error', event);
};
printSocket.onclose = function(event) {
  console.log('Socket is closed');
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

Webserver

On a Apache HTTP webserver, I uploaded the above webpage, and a file with some raw print data, called receipt-with-logo.bin. This file was generated with escpos-php and is available in the repository:

For reference, the test file receipt-with-logo.bin contains this content:

Test

I opened up the web page on the client computer with socat, websockify and an Epson TM-T20II connected. After clicking the “Print” button, the file was sent to my printer. Success!

Because I wasn’t closing the websocket connection, only one browser window could access the printer at a time. Still, it’s a good demo of the basic idea.

To take this from an example to something you might deploy, you would basically just need to keep socat and websockify running in the background as a service (via systemd), close the socket when it’s not being used, and integrate it into a real app.

Different printers, different forwarding

The socat tool can connect to USB, Serial, or Ethernet printers fairly easily.

USB

Forward TCP connections from port 7000 to the receipt printer at /dev/usb/lp0:

socat TCP4-LISTEN:7000,fork /dev/usb/lp0

You can also access the device files directly under /sys/bus/usb/devices/

Serial

Forward TCP connections from port 7000 to the receipt printer at /dev/usb/ttyS0:

socat TCP4-LISTEN:7000,fork /dev/usb/ttyS0

Network

Forward TCP connections from port 7000 to the receipt printer at 10.1.2.3:9100:

socat -u TCP-LISTEN:7000,fork,reuseaddr,bind=127.0.0.1 TCP4-CONNECT:10.1.2.3:9100

You can forward websocket connections directly to an Ethernet printer with websockify:

socat -u TCP-LISTEN:7000,fork,reuseaddr,bind=127.0.0.1 localhost:7000

Other types of printer

If you have another type of printer, such as one accessible only via smbclient or lpr, then you will need to write a helper script.

Direct printing is faster, so I don’t use this method. Check the socat EXEC documentation or man socat if you want to try this.

Future

I’ve had a lot of questions on the escpos-php bug tracker from users who are attempting to print from cloud-hosted apps, which is why I tried this setup.

The browser is a moving target. I have previously written receipt-print-hq/chrome-raw-print, a dedicated app for forwarding WebSocket connections to USB, but that will stop working in a few months when Chrome apps are discontinued. Some time later, WebUSB should become available to make this type of printer available in the browser, which should be infinitely useful for connecting to accessories in point-of-sale setups.

The available tools for generating ESC/POS (receipt printer) binary from the browser are a long way off reaching feature parity with the likes of escpos-php and python-escpos. If you are looking for a side-project, then this a good choice.

Lastly, the socat -u flag makes this all unidirectional, but many types of devices (not just printers) can respond to commands. I couldn’t the end-to-end path to work without this flag, so don’t expect to be able to read from the printer without doing some extra work.

Useful links

Some links that I found while setting this up-

Get the code

View on GitHub →

How to use a Radeon graphics card on Debian 9

Posted on

I have previously blogged about Radeon graphics cards on different Debian installs.

ATI has now released a new free driver which works brilliantly on Debian. In the past, Debian users had to choose between using the community-provided free software driver, or the proprietary one. Generally the proprietary driver was more feature-rich, but the free driver worked more reliably across upgrades. So now, you can safely ignore old guides and start using it.

Here’s how:

Upgrade

Make sure you are on Debian 9 (Stretch) or newer.

These steps apply to a fresh install.

Identify

You should use lspci to confirm that you have an ATI card.

$ lspci | grep Radeon
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]

Install firmware

You need to install a package called firmware-linux-free to get the driver working at all. If you want decent graphics performance, you will need firmware-linux-nonfree as well, which involves adding non-free sources:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the words “contrib non-free” to the end of your mirror:

deb http://.../debian/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free

Add the packages:

apt-get update
apt-get install firmware-linux-free firmware-linux-nonfree

And reboot:

reboot

What, that’s it?

Well, yes, for a fresh install that’s it. If your install is old, you might also have to remove old drivers or install the xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu and xserver-xorg-video-ati packages (in my case, these were already installed).

The Debian Wiki AtiHowto contains some more detailed information, most of which is not relevant for a simple desktop setup.

OpenWrt setup on Netgear WNR2200

Posted on

I recently wanted to connect some devices for a temporary setup, where a wireless LTE modem would provide Internet access. Unfortunately, one of the devices was not close enough to pick up the signal with its USB WiFi dongle.

net1

Because the modem does not have a LAN port, the usual “run a cable” solution was out. There’s a few other options, from range extenders, to getting better modem, or just upgrading to a “real” USB WiFi dongle. Before purchasing new hardware, I decided to try re-purposing an old Netgear WNR2200 as a wireless client and 4 port switch.

net-svg

In this setup, the LTE modem does the heavy lifting, with all of the wireless clients using it for LAN and Internet access. In the next room, the Netgear router is placed close enough to pick up the signal, and an Ethernet cable runs to the PC, beyond the reach of WiFi.

Deciding to re-flash

Replacing firmware is worth investigating when the hardware is capable, but you aren’t given the option to configure it the way you want.

The Netgear WNR2200 is a low end wireless router, and the vendor firmware does not support joining a WiFi network as a client.

2016-10-router

It also pays to update your research. OpenWrt added support for this router a few days after I bought it, but I hadn’t looked it up again.

Uploading firmware

My main resource was this page on the OpenWRT Wiki. Firmware is organised by wireless chipset, then by router model.

The file I used to update my router was named openwrt-15.05.1-ar71xx-generic-wnr2200-squashfs-factory.img.

This is simply uploaded on the Adminisration → Firmware Upgrade screen:

2016-10-router2

2016-10-router3

First impressions

The first thing I noticed was that I lost WiFi, and that the page I had bookmarked for logging in was no longer valid!

2016-10-router4

This makes sense, of course. The configuration will not be carried across from the vendor firmware, and a different web administration tool is being used.

The Linux userspace is very rich compared with vendor firmware. It has things like dmesg, SSH, ifconfig, ping, and even a networked package manager.

Configuration checklist

I performed all configuration through the web in this setup. The “LuCi” interface allows setting the WiFi chip into “Client” mode, and then searching and joining a network. Once this was done, I assigned it as the “WAN” interface, so that it occupied a single IP address on the WiFi network, and providing a NAT and wired, four port switch.

There are more advanced, bridged setups that are possible. You should investigate this if you want one network, so that things like printer auto-discovery and internal SSH work consistently. I was only interested in sharing the Internet connection, which is why the setup was so simple.

What didn’t work

USB, but I didn’t spend long on this either. I was considering using USB to connect the modem to the Netgear router. The Wiki suggests that this is now possible, but after installing some packages for “USB tethering” and rebooting, I had no luck. Typing lsusb, only the “root hub” was listed, and the device was not getting any power.

This was necessary for the setup, so I just abandoned it. The vendor firmware couldn’t use the USB port for networking either, so no real loss.

Quick guide: Running stock Debian on the Raspberry Pi 2

Posted on

At the time of writing, the ‘Raspbian’ port of Debian is often used on the Raspberry Pi. It was created to match the CPU architecture, for better performance. These reasons don’t apply to the newer Raspberry Pi 2, so if you’re a Debian desktop or server user, you can do away with the fork and just run Debian Jessie armhf.

The info from Debian is: https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi2

A bit more background about why this only applies to the Raspberry Pi 2-

  • The Raspberry Pi 1 uses ARMv6 chipset with hard floats
    • The Debian armhf port requires ARMv7
    • The Debian armel port doesn’t use hard floats, so is unnecessarily slow on the Pi.
    • So Raspbian was created for the Raspberry Pi 1’s ARMv6 w/ hard-floats, and gets the most juice out of the CPU on the Raspberry Pi 1.
  • The Raspberry Pi 2 uses ARMv7 with hard floats, so Debian armhf port is fine.

Install the image

Image is linked to from this page:

I will assume that your machine has an SD card slot. To find the device name, list out disks and look for one of the correct size, which appears when you plug in the card:

df

Download a copy of the image, extract it out, and dd the file on to the card:

wget -c https://images.collabora.co.uk/rpi2/jessie-rpi2-20150705.img.gz
gunzip jessie-rpi2-20150705.img.gz 
sudo dd if=jessie-rpi2-20150705.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M
sudo sync
umount /media/$USER/*

Plug in the Raspberry pi, and then log in. If you are using SSH, then arp-scan is a good tool to pick up devices on the network:

sudo apt-get install arp-scan
sudo arp-scan -l
ssh root@x.y.z.w

Configure pi- Things like screen resolution and HDMI go here:

cd /boot/firmware/
nano config.txt

Perform a software upgrade:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

Start fixing security defaults. Remember that this is not a clean install, so start by setting your own passwords:

passwd

Check that there are no other accounts with passwords set:

cat /etc/shadow

Regenerate all SSH Server keys (commands from here):

ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key -N '' -t ecdsa -b 521
ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key -N '' -t dsa
ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -N '' -t rsa

Lastly, generate some locales:

sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8 en_GB en_GB.UTF-8

Convert a PC to a HTPC with Debian and Kodi

Posted on

I recently converted an old workstation to run as a home-theatre PC (HTPC). I’ve noted down the setup here for others who are making an installation like this. Some steps depend on using a radeon chipset, and will need to be adjusted for your computer.

Hardware

First up, Desktop ‘towers’ are not a good form-factor for sitting in TV cabinets. If your PC is this sort of size, then source a small form-factor case and power supply, and load the computer’s components into it:

2016-02-htpc

I also used a Logitech k400r keyboard and mouse for wireless input.

Install Debian and apps

Write the latest copy of Debian Stable to a CD or flash drive (this is version 8.3 at time of writing), and install it on the computer. Check “Debian Desktop environment” / GNOME during setup.

After installation, open a terminal, and type “su” to get root privileges.

su

Edit the software sources to include ‘contrib’ and ‘non-free’, as well as ‘jessie-backports’.

nano /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

# jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free

# jessie-backports
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports main contrib non-free

Update sources and install Kodi:

apt-get install --install-suggests kodi

Also install the firmware packages that you may need.

apt-get install firmware-linux-free firmware-amd-graphics

Tweaks

Sudo

sudo allows you to run commands as root from your regular user account. Install the package and add yourself to the sudo group:

apt-get install sudo
usermod -a -G sudo mike

To apply the change, log out and back in again. The rest of this guide assumes you are logged in as yourself, and will use sudo where necessary.

Auto-start Kodi

Open the tweak tool, and locate the list of startup programs.

gnome-tweak-tool

Add Kodi to the list, log out, log in, and Kodi will launch automatically.

Auto-login

For a PC attached to a TV, user permissions are not so importnat, so set the user to log in automatically.

sudo nano /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf

Un-comment this block and enter your username:


# Enabling automatic login
#  AutomaticLoginEnable = true
#  AutomaticLogin = user1

Plymouth start-up screen

Install plymouth and configure grub to change the Debian boot sequence (a menu with timeout, followed by lots of text) into a graphical splash screen. This takes a bit of configuration.

sudo apt-get install plymouth

Set it up according to these instructions:

sudo nano /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

Set drm correctly for your chipset:

# KMS
drm
radeon modeset=1

Configure grub:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub
...
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
...
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
...
GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080
...

Update grub, set the theme in Plymouth:

sudo update-grub2
sudo /usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme --list
sudo /usr/sbin/plymouth-set-default-theme joy

Run update-initramfs to apply the changes

sudo update-initramfs -u

Samba

Samba will let you share folders over your network. A basic folder with guest read/write is simple to set up:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-share samba libpam-smbpass winbind
sudo usermod -a -G sambashare mike

Log out, and back in to apply the group change, and then share the Public folder over the network by right-clicking on it and opening the “Sharing Options”:

2016-02-samba-share

Gnome will warn that the folder as shared if you open it:

2016-02-samba-shared

Test the setup by typing smb://localhost into the address bar:

2016-02-samba-test

Overscan correction

In my case, I was able to set the TV to treat the input as a “PC” input. If that doesn’t work for you, then use xrandr in a login script:

Find the name of your input:

xrandr --query

Set underscan (get the horizontal and vertical values by trial and error):

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set underscan on
xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set "underscan hborder" 32 --set "underscan vborder" 16

Kodi plugins

Add these as needed. The Australian catchup TV plugins repository from GitHub worked well.

Kodi RSS

The RSS feed shows Kodi updates by default, and is part of your user profile.

2016-02-feed-file

Edit the configuration file, and adjust the paths to your news sources of choice.

2016-02-feed

Boot speed

Readahead is the tool of choice for boot speed optimisation. Install it, and reboot.

sudo apt-get install readahead
sudo touch  /.readahead_collect
sudo reboot

Desktop Apps

If you quit Kodi, you are dropped back to the GNOME desktop. These apps are simply to improve the desktop user experience.

Google Chrome

Download the .deb file for Chrome from Google, install with dpkg, and then clean up dependencies:

dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb 
apt-get -f install

Firefox

Download and extract the Firefox for Linux tarball from Mozilla.

Move it to /usr/share, and change the owner to match other applications there.

mv firefox /usr/share/
cd /usr/share/
ls -Ahl
chown root:root firefox
chown -R root:root firefox

Find the main menu editor, and add Firefox to the menu.

2016-02-menu

Name
Firefox Web Browser
Command
/usr/share/firefox/firefox-bin
Icon
/usr/share/firefox/browser/icons/mozicon128.png

2016-02-firefox-icon

2016-02-firefox-menu

Test the new icon by searching:

2016-02-ff

Auto-clear browser profiles

Because you don’t need a password to log in to the user account, you can add this as a bit of insurance so that your box wont remember any passwords or sessions.

crontab -e

This job removes the Firefox and Chrome user profiles each boot.

@reboot rm --preserve-root -Rf -- ~/.config/google-chrome ~/.cache/google-chrome ~/.mozilla/firefox ~/.cache/mozilla/firefox

VLC

For file format support, best to have another media player:

sudo apt-get install vlc

Result

You should now have a PC which boots into Kodi for media and TV, and lets you quit into a desktop to browse the web or run regular desktop apps.

2016-02-kodi

2016-02-gnome

On the 1GB RAM / dual core workstation, it still took around 45 seconds from the BIOS handing over control to Kodi being ready.

Update 2017-12-29: Re-installing this setup on an SSD shortened this time to 21 seconds. This includes boot, login, and an application start.

Getting a USB receipt printer working on Windows

Posted on

Note:This post is a Windows adaptation of an earlier post, Getting a USB receipt printer working on Linux, mainly in response to these questions.

In this post, I’ll step through how to get a USB thermal receipt printer appearing on Windows. The aim of this is to be able to send raw text to the printer, so that we can point a driver such as escpos-php at it. The printer tested here is once again this Epson TM-T20:

2015-03-printer-back
2015-03-printer-top

The directions below are for Windows 7, so your mileage may vary if you are on an older or newer version.

If you have issues following these steps, make sure you can locate your printer in Device Manager, and that it has “USB Print Support”.

Add the printer

Find Devices and Printers and click Add a Printer.
2015-04-windowsusb-01

2015-04-windowsusb-02

Add it as a Local printer, using the USB virtual port, probably USB0001:

2015-04-windowsusb-03
2015-04-windowsusb-04

Use the Generic / Text Only driver.

2015-04-windowsusb-05

Name the printer whatever you like, and then share it under the same name:

2015-04-windowsusb-06
2015-04-windowsusb-07

At this point, it should pop up in the window in the background, and also prompt you to Print a test page.

2015-04-windowsusb-08
2015-04-windowsusb-09

The test print is plain-text, and depending on your printer, will look something like this:

2015-04-windowsusb-10

Finally, you need to verify that your printer can be accessed locally, by typing \\localhost into Windows Explorer. If all goes to plan, you will see the new printer there too:

2015-04-windowsusb-11

Run a command-line test print

We now know that your printer is working, and can be accessed via its share name (even locally).

Test printing from the command-line. Fire up cmd.exe and try to send it some text to verify that it’s working:

echo "Hello World" > testfile
print /D:"\\%COMPUTERNAME%\Receipt Printer" testfile
del testfile

Printing something useful

This is where you start to see real results. Receipt printers are not just for printing plain-text. Many of them support a standard called ESC/POS, which contains formatting commands.

The snippet below, from this earlier post, generates some basic ESC/POS commands.

Install PHP if you don’t have it already, and call the below code foo.php:

<?php
/* ASCII constants */
const ESC = "\x1b";
const GS="\x1d";
const NUL="\x00";

/* Output an example receipt */
echo ESC."@"; // Reset to defaults
echo ESC."E".chr(1); // Bold
echo "FOO CORP Ltd.\n"; // Company
echo ESC."E".chr(0); // Not Bold
echo ESC."d".chr(1); // Blank line
echo "Receipt for whatever\n"; // Print text
echo ESC."d".chr(4); // 4 Blank lines

/* Bar-code at the end */
echo ESC."a".chr(1); // Centered printing
echo GS."k".chr(4)."987654321".NUL; // Print barcode
echo ESC."d".chr(1); // Blank line
echo "987654321\n"; // Print number
echo GS."V\x41".chr(3); // Cut
exit(0);

You would send generated commands to the printer like this:

php foo.php > testfile
print /D:"\\%COMPUTERNAME%\Receipt Printer" testfile
rm testfile

Scaling this up

The correct ESC/POS codes are quite tricky to generate with manually, which is why I put together the escpos-php driver. You can find more information on that at:

A simple “Hello World” receipt to your Windows shared printer would be scripted as (call this one foo2.php):

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/autoload.php';
use Mike42\Escpos\Printer;
use Mike42\Escpos\PrintConnectors\WindowsPrintConnector;

try {
	// Enter the share name for your USB printer here
	$connector = new WindowsPrintConnector("Receipt Printer");
	$printer = new Printer($connector);

	/* Print a "Hello world" receipt" */
	$printer -> text("Hello World!\n");
	$printer -> cut();
	
	/* Close printer */
	$printer -> close();
} catch(Exception $e) {
	echo "Couldn't print to this printer: " . $e -> getMessage() . "\n";
}

This would be sent to the printer by loading it from the web, or running the script on the command-line:

php foo2.php

The full ESC/POS snippet with formatting, coded up with escpos-php, would look like this (call this one foo3.php):

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/autoload.php';
use Mike42\Escpos\Printer;
use Mike42\Escpos\PrintConnectors\WindowsPrintConnector;
try {
	// Enter the share name for your USB printer here
	$connector = new WindowsPrintConnector("Receipt Printer");
	$printer = new Printer($connector);

	/* Print some bold text */
	$printer -> setEmphasis(true);
	$printer -> text("FOO CORP Ltd.\n");
	$printer -> setEmphasis(false);
	$printer -> feed();
	$printer -> text("Receipt for whatever\n");
	$printer -> feed(4);

	/* Bar-code at the end */
	$printer -> setJustification(Printer::JUSTIFY_CENTER);
	$printer -> barcode("987654321");
	
	/* Close printer */
	$printer -> close();
} catch(Exception $e) {
	echo "Couldn't print to this printer: " . $e -> getMessage() . "\n";
}

And again, this could be executed by loading the page through the web, or invoking the command directly:

php foo3.php

Getting a USB receipt printer working on Linux

Posted on

In this post, I’ll step through how to get a thermal receipt printer with USB interface appearing on Linux. The aim of this is to be able to point a driver such as escpos-php at the device. The printer used here is an Epson TM-T20, which is very common in point-of-sale environments.

I have previously written quite a bit about how to use thermal receipt printer protocols, but the previous printer I covered had only a network interface, not USB like this one:

2015-03-printer-back
2015-03-printer-top

The directions below are for Debian, but could be adapted for any other Linux.

Find the device file

Plug in your printer, and check that usblp sees it:

dmesg
[12724.994550] usb 8-4: new full-speed USB device number 5 using ohci-pci
[12725.168956] usb 8-4: New USB device found, idVendor=04b8, idProduct=0e03
[12725.168963] usb 8-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[12725.168968] usb 8-4: Product: TM-T20
[12725.168971] usb 8-4: Manufacturer: EPSON
[12725.168975] usb 8-4: SerialNumber: ....
[12725.175114] usblp 8-4:1.0: usblp1: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04B8 pid 0x0E03

This kernel module makes your printer visible as a device file, so that it can be accessed in the old-fashioned way. Find the new device file under /dev/usb:

ls /dev/usb

In my case, this was /dev/usb/lp1. The next step is to see if you can write to it:

echo "Hello" >> /dev/usb/lp1

Chances are, you will get a permission denied error at this point, so find out what group the printer is in:

stat /dev/usb/lp1

Which will show output something like:

File: ‘/dev/usb/lp1’
  Size: 0         	Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   character special file
Device: 5h/5d	Inode: 220997      Links: 1     Device type: b4,1
Access: (0660/crw-rw----)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    7/      lp)
...

This file is owned by group lp (“line printer”). If your username was bob, you would add yourself to this group using:

sudo usermod -a -G lp bob

If you plan to build a web-based point-of-sale system with this, then also add the www-data user to that group.

Now log out and back in, and the previous test should now be working:

echo "Hello" >> /dev/usb/lp1

Troubleshooting: Check usblp

If these steps don’t work, then your computer ether doesn’t have, or isn’t using usblp You’ll need to check a few things:

  • Install a different linux-image if the driver is not on your computer at all.
  • modprobe or insmod usblp
  • blacklist a vendor driver which has claimed the interface.
    • run lsusb -v and usb-devices (look for driver=)

Printing something useful

As a duplicated section from my earlier post, the printer uses ESC/POS, which means it accepts plaintext with some special commands for formatting.

A simple receipt-generator, foo.php, might look like this:

<?php
/* ASCII constants */
const ESC = "\x1b";
const GS="\x1d";
const NUL="\x00";

/* Output an example receipt */
echo ESC."@"; // Reset to defaults
echo ESC."E".chr(1); // Bold
echo "FOO CORP Ltd.\n"; // Company
echo ESC."E".chr(0); // Not Bold
echo ESC."d".chr(1); // Blank line
echo "Receipt for whatever\n"; // Print text
echo ESC."d".chr(4); // 4 Blank lines

/* Bar-code at the end */
echo ESC."a".chr(1); // Centered printing
echo GS."k".chr(4)."987654321".NUL; // Print barcode
echo ESC."d".chr(1); // Blank line
echo "987654321\n"; // Print number
echo GS."V\x41".chr(3); // Cut
exit(0);

And you would send it to the printer like this:

php foo.php > /dev/usb/lp1

Scaling this up

The codes are quite tricky to work with manually, which is why I put together the escpos-php driver. You can find it at:

The above example would be written using escpos-php as:

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/autoload.php';
use Mike42\Escpos\Printer;
use Mike42\Escpos\PrintConnectors\FilePrintConnector;
$connector = new FilePrintConnector("/dev/usb/lp1");
$printer = new Printer($connector);

/* Print some bold text */
$printer -> setEmphasis(true);
$printer -> text("FOO CORP Ltd.\n");
$printer -> setEmphasis(false);
$printer -> feed();
$printer -> text("Receipt for whatever\n");
$printer -> feed(4);

/* Bar-code at the end */
$printer -> setJustification(Printer::JUSTIFY_CENTER);
$printer -> barcode("987654321");
$printer -> cut();
?>

This would be sent to the printer by loading it from the web, or running the script on the command-line:

php foo2.php

Locking down your VOIP setup with a SIP Threat Manager

Posted on

If you run a Voice over IP network which is available from the Internet, then it’s quite important to lock it down properly, so that it isn’t hijacked for relaying spam calls at your expense.

This article will cover the steps you need to deploy the SIP Threat Manager from Allo, which you can think of as a security-focused SIP proxy & firewall.

Topology

For example, you might have SIP clients both on-site with your server, and also allow people with their own devices to connect directly from home. One of the simplest ways to harden this setup is to add a specialised SIP router between your server and the Internet, to filter connections and log security-relevant events:

VOIP network with STM

VOIP network with STM

This post will show you how to migrate your VOIP network to this more secure topology using Allo’s SIP Threat Manager..

The Allo STM Box

Allo STM front
Allo STM back

The STM itself is only small box, with two 100 Mbit/s Ethernet ports, and two USB ports. It is USB-powered, so one of these ports is for powering the box, and the other is for connecting external storage for log files. It is not power-hungry, and I was able to run it from a laptop USB port without any issues. Other than this, it’s externally a typical embedded network device: it has indicator lights, a power switch, a factory reset button, and a console port.

Allo STM internal

Internally, it runs a MIPS processor, which appears to host Snort on embedded Linux.

Initial Setup

Although the box advertises that it will work out-of-the-box, I found that it was easier to configure the box to match my network, than to re-work my network around the box. This section will simply show you how to get logged in and change the box’s IP address.

First up, I took a look at the console, which is accessible at a baudrate of 38400. It’s far from the most functional CLI around, so I only made use of the factoryreset function to get a clean slate. It showed a few of the open source packages running, such the dropbear sshd, lighttpd and crond among other familiar programs:

Please press Enter to activate this console. 
Starting pid 942, console /dev/ttyS2: '/usr/bin/maincli'
Shield STM Appliance Appliance
shield> factoryreset

Will output 1024 bit rsa secret key to '/etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key'
Generating key, this may take a while...
Public key portion is:
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAAAgwCKBcVlWK+UiiELbg2CNfOt9rNmj51dmyz7d10MgRfAk9XU9x+kmlMueCFEBMTchsaywigLw0yFqeMZ
Fingerprint: md5 50:5b:c2:64:d4:87:f8:86:ab:c6:e1:59:e4:16:c2:cf
Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
...++++++
...................++++++
writing new private key to '/etc/lighttpd/webserver.pem'
-----
ip: RTNETLINK answers: No such process
Jan  1 00:40:41 crond[875]: crond 2.3.2 dillon, started, log level 8

mount: mounting /dev/sda1 on /cf/disk failed

The CLI command show ip confirmed that the default IP of the box is 192.168.100.1, netmask 255.255.255.0. From a Linux laptop, you can change IP to something nearby and confirm that you can see the device with these commands:

# ifconfig wlan0 192.168.100.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
# arp-scan -l
Interface: wlan0, datalink type: EN10MB (Ethernet)
Starting arp-scan 1.8.1 with 256 hosts (http://www.nta-monitor.com/tools/arp-scan/)
192.168.100.1	00:17:f7:00:9b:0a	CEM Solutions Pvt Ltd

The STM is then accessible via the web address https://192.168.100.1, with the default credentials admin / admin.

STM login

The IP setup is located under Device → General Setup. Change this to DHCP or a spare address on your network:

STM IP config

Configuration

Now that you can access the STM from any device, your first task is to change the admin password. The button for this is in the top-right:

2015-01-stm-screen21

The STM only allows one session at a time- whilst it’s a good idea not to log in twice, this was a surprising limitation. At the STM does not act as its own SIP endpoint, my server was already able to contact the Internet through it at this point.

I quickly screen captured the available settings so that you can click through them. Some of these are SIP-specific, and others of which are general firewall features. One of the more interesting features which you can’t set up with iptables is location-based IP filtering. This could, for example, block problematic SIP calls coming from fraud hotspots in areas where your organisation doesn’t operate.

So once the network is set up on the STM, no changes need to be applied to your SIP server, other than its gateway or IP.

Notes

Whilst this box works as it’s supposed to, I found it to have an un-polished user experience.

  • The network interface labels on the box had a label over them with the opposite information.
  • The box is closed on port 80: It doesn’t reply to HTTP requests, even to redirect them to HTTPS.
  • The command prompt wasn’t as useful as other network devices.
  • I couldn’t get SSH login or NTP to work, although I didn’t investigate these in great detail.
  • The LAN interface (but not the WAN interface) did not light up when connected to a Gigabit POE network, but did work on a 100 megabit network.

However, there are some positives: The 100 Mbit/s interfaces are more than sufficient for voice traffic, the configuration was simple, and USB is a good choice of power supply for equipment which can be connected directly to a server.

Do you really need another box?

This depends on your setup. If your VOIP server doesn’t speak to the Internet, then this box wont fit into your topology.

If it only sees the outside world via an ISP-run SIP trunk, then this type of security is probably not necessary either. Security measures you would use instead are:

  • Use firewall rules to restrict connections so that only the SIP trunk can speak to your VOIP server.
  • Configure your VOIP server to “stay on the line” for calls (directmedia=no in Asterisk) so that the phones do not speak directly to the trunk, and disallow registration from the Internet.

If your VOIP server accepts connections from the public internet throgh SIP, then some sort of separate, SIP-aware firewall or proxy is highly advisable.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Allo (allo.com) for sending in the box which is used for this example setup.