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As written in previous post I got the driver for Omnikey 4040 cardreader to work eventually. I also noticed two other things later.

First, you’re not supposed to remove the reader while operating system is running. It completely freezes kernel, it doesn’t panic but nothing responds either. Not even the magic REISUB sequence.

Second, it polls really often. Powertop reports about 80-90 wakeups for [kernel core] cm4040_do_poll (cm4040_do_poll). That’s more than you want for something that doesn’t have to be super-responsive and that you don’t use most of the time. Apparently having the source code of the driver it’s easy to fix. Now, if you’re familiar with drivers then what I’m going to suggest is probably not a proper but rather a hack fix but it has the advantage of working . So in the driver code there’s a line which reads:

#define POLL_PERIOD msecs_to_jiffies(10)

I simply edited it to read:

#define POLL_PERIOD msecs_to_jiffies(250)

Any bigger value like 500 made the reader less responsive than I considered reasonable. With that value Powertop now reports 4 wakeups which is indeed roughly 25 times less and only about 1.3% of wakeups with few other apps running.

Edit: some picky applications time out with 250. I needed to change it to 100 so that smartcard login with rdesktop would work.

People mostly write about customer support when it’s crappy. This is an exception.

I was getting tired of having smartcard reader that connects to USB, the wire is absolutely annoying and it’s so easy to forget it at home when leaving. So I bought an Omnikey 4040 that connects to PCMCIA. First try was fail, Flex computer shop sold me wrong reader and I didn’t notice until I got home. They were totally fine to replace it though .

Next I tried setting it up. Another fail. There seems to be a kernel driver which didn’t work. I then filed a support request with HID Global Corporation. Two weeks later they sent me driver code that compiles for my kernel (2.6.32) and works too.

I then put it to another test. Tried to sign a document with new still in development phase id-card software from Smartlink. Signing hanged application. Oh, well, it’s not announced stable anyway. However web-based signing actually worked with a website that is known to be tricky.

When you look at the picture you’ll notice that id-card software warns that the site isn’t using up-to-date API when accessing card and you’ll also see that the document signed is wrong, I only signed a local txt file. But, it actually works on linux and quite well, which is awesome!

Edit: Correction: It didn’t really hang, it just takes longer than expected to respond .

It would be a shame not to blog about MozCamp so here comes a really late post on the topic.

After a little more than a year of calendar translations and some months of Mozmill tests for calendar I was invited to attend this really nice event.

• Location: Prague.
• Point in time: 3-4 October 2009.

At this point I have to thank Clint Talbert who confessed dropping my name. Sadly he couldn’t come himself.

Given the number of interesting talks I really wish I could’ve split myself into three or so: two for talks and one for socializing . Nevertheless met all those nice people I’ve communicated with via IRC so far and of course some more great Mozillians.

Noting down here some afterthoughts:

• Listening to Gandalf’s talk made me realize that it would be really nice to have a Mozilla Communities site for Estonian translation instead of two separate and rather inactive sites currently live. Not sure if this fits into busy everyday agenda any time soon. Maybe it might fit into Sander’s (thinking out loud here ).
• L20n is going to very useful for languages like Estonian bringing localization flexibility without burdening native English developers with all the details. I once mistakenly thought it can’t be but Mozilla is obviously bending borders with it as with many other newer technologies like native ogg support, multitouch and accelerometers support in browser.
• SUMO talk. Sort of got me interested. Anyone willing to step in and localize some of the most popular articles?

From the quirkier side of this world:

• A man at the airport’s bus stop speaking English, Russian, some languages I don’t know and knowing some Estonian words. Saying that it’s cold compared to India. I’m still wondering if he had just arrived from there or so.
• Internet access at Andel’s hotel. “Internet access is 100% FREE but strangely, to go online, you must first choose a pricing plan then choose a number of units and then press on “Submit”. That will connect you to the internet.” Talk about usability.
• A must have link in a Mozcamp post – Chris Hofmann parodizing Steve ballmer.
• Facebook acting up entire time, continuously hanging my Windows session before loading up. I guess that was the collision of open and proprietary?
• Yellow penguins seen on the boat trip

Finishing up with a picture I didn’t miss as I was most likely checking out at the time this was taken on. Oh, and of course, thanks to both William and Irina for organizing the event!

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