Older blog entries for LaForge (starting at number 184)

Ramblings on German battery law

Germany has laws for everything, including batteries (Batteriegesetz).

In order to be able to e.g. import products with batteries from outside the EU and sell them inside Germany (or the EU), you need to be registered as a battery manufacturer/importer. You also need to become member of one of the registered/accredited companies that take care of recycling the batteries (i.e. put small boxes in supermarkets where people can put their old batteries).

What's funny is that there is absolutely no lower boundary for that for small businesses. What that means for my company: I need to pay 1 Eurocent for each LiIon powered mobile phone to that recycling company.

I guess at current estimated volume, we will have to pay something like 1 to 2 EUR every year. The recycling company won't even send us an invoice if the amount is

So all this comes down is an exercise in buerocracy. We need to send a monthly report on the quantities every month, and there's a hard deadline that needs to be followed.

Furthermore, we need to put fancy stickers on each of the battery, covering at least 3% of the battery surface. That means opening every box, removing the battery from packaging, putting the sticker on it and re-packaging the box. Modern batteries normally have the symbol printed by the manufacturer, but we're talking about Motorola C1xx phones that have been produced from 2005 to 2008 here.

I certainly don't object to manufacturers or importers having to pay for the recycling. But if recycling is actually that cheap, and we're talking about single-digit EUR amounts per year, the administrative overhead (time needed for making the monthly reports, putting stickers on the batteries, etc) costs something like 100 times the actual recycling cost. Is that really worth it? Why not have a lower threshold for small businesses?

Syndicated 2011-09-06 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Major bugfix release of SIMtrace firmware

At the CCC Camp 2011, the Osmocom SIMtrace project was a major success. Not only were something like 60 units out of our initial batch of 100 units sold, but the SIMtrace workshop was so successful that it had to be held three times instead of once.

During the workshop we discovered a very annoying bug which I wasn't able to solve immediately. Depending on the combination of phone/simcard used, the SIMtrace would disconnect from USB and the phone would claim there is no SIM card inserted.

The debugging went like this:

• SIMtrace was resetting very early in/after the ATR
• the reset reason was diagnosed as being a watchdog reset
• the watchdog was triggered by an IRQ storm from the USART
• the IRQ storm was caused by the firmware not clearing some parity error / overrun related bits

However, at that point I couldn't further find the cause of the bug. I assumed it was related to the PPS/PTS, but couldn't really point my finger at it. If we sniff the PPS/PTS wrong, then of course our baud rate is different from the real baud rate, which in turn would cause perceived parity errors and the like.

I'm grateful that most people still didn't loose their interest in simtrace and happily bought the unit and/or attended the workshop.

After a bit more debugging after the camp, I have now solved the bug. I simply never realized that the TCK (ATR checksum byte) is only present in cards that support T=1 as well as T=0. However, some simpler SIM cards like the ones that we issued for our test GSM network on the camp only do T=0 and thus don't transmit TCK.

The old code thus considered the first PTS/PPS byte (0xff) as the TCK, and didn't recognize the PTS/PPS correctly.

Firmware version v0.2 fixes this problem. I've released the firmware update, now also available from the wiki

Syndicated 2011-08-16 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Update on the GSM network at the CCC Camp 2011

During the past weeks, I've been trying very hard to get to a technical solution for the setup regarding the private GSM network that we intend to operate at the CCC Camp 2011. Unfortunately, despite puting in way too much time that I don't have, no really good solution appeared. There were times when I was wondering if it would happen at all - mainly due to the lack of properly integrated / tested RF related issues like PA, LNA, duplexer, combiner, etc.

But it seems just in time Dieter came to the rescue. So now we have pretty much figured out the equipment and settled on a configuration. We'll have 2 Nokia Metrosite BTS with a total of 5 TRX, each running at 5W using borrowed equipment.

During the next 10 days, all the parts like antennas, cabling, plugs, adapters and the BTS units themselves should arrive at my place. Let's hope there are no serious fuck-ups that cause something to not arrive in time.

So all in all, there's a 99% chance we will have a functional GSM network. The Nokia A-bis support in OpenBSC will be brand new, so there might be some glitches here and there. But then, that's part of the fun. I'm already very curious to see what kind of coverage we get. I guess if we do things right, it should reach well into Finowfurt itself, and not just barely cover the camp grounds like we had at HAR 2009.

Syndicated 2011-07-22 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

US government closing data centers and give up their independence

Sometimes I really think I must be dreaming. Who in their right mind would propose something like closing something like 800 government-owned data centers and outsourcing all the data to the cloud/>?

As a government, you

• make yourself dependent from a private company to supply essential infrastructure
• introduce single points of failure (technically, administratively)
  previously, you had 800 data centers, maybe each of them not as reliable as the advertisements of the cloud provider - but it is unlikely that all of them go down at the same time
• give up control over who physically owns and has access to the data
  In fact, you will have a hard time even finding anyone at all who can tell you where your data is physically located. Maybe even out of the country?

Now you can argue that all those things can be put down in contracts as service level agreements (SLAs). That's true, but as we say around here: Paper is patient, meaning no paper is going to help you after data has been copied or was lost, and if you suddenly fail to provide basic services of the public administration.

The distributed nature of self-hosting your data and applications has key advantages in terms of security and reliability. Why would somebody give that up without a broad discussion? And we're not talking about some private company where nobody but their shareholders care if they loose data or go out of business. We're talking about the public administration here.

People seem to have lost perspective on the overall advantages of a heterogeneous, distributed setup.

Syndicated 2011-07-21 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

On the recent THC release on the Vodafone femtocell

I am mainly posting this to prevent any more people mailing me about this release. There's nothing really spectacular here.

Starting from 2009 on, the usual suspects (aka OpenBSC developers) have been looking at various 3G femtocells, including the Vodafone one (I have 10 of them here). Aside from that Alcatel-Lucent design that Vodafone uses, we've also looked at the Cisco/AT+T/ip.access design, as well as the Ubiquisys/SFR one. With some effort you can root all of them, and you can then make sure they don't connect to the respective operator but to an IP address of your choosing.

The protocols are vendor-dependent. The Vodafone femtocell uses a version of RANAP (the protocol between RNC and MSC in UMTS) behind an 8 byte proprietary header. As RANAP is specified in the 3GPP, it was pretty easy to build a small piece of code that interacts with the unit.

Ubiquisys (used by SFR) uses the UMA protocols, and the Cisco/ip.access/AT+T design uses a proprietary ip.access protocol called URSL (sort-of a "progression" of the 2G RSL to UMTS).

Supporting them from OpenBSC is not easy. While the call control and SMS transfer protocols of 3G are identical to GSM, everything below doesn't really bear much resemblance. I would guess it would take at least a man-month to get basic signalling, call + SMS support working, if not more.

Given the fact that the femtocells all speak their vendor-proprietary dialects, and given that they often come with license terms that only permit the use of their firmware in combination with their gateway located at the operator network, we never thought it is a high priority item for us to work on.

What you also have to consider, is that their output power of 20dBm is even less than the 200mW of typical small-scale GSM BTS, and that they typically only support the operation of 4 concurrent phones. Nothing that you would be able to run e.g. a conference telephony network on.

Furthermore, due to the wide channels (5MHz), it is very likely that all available sprectrum has been auctioned off/licensed to commercial operators, so it's almost impossible to get something like a test license. In GSM with 200kHz channels, there's often still a guard band or some unallocated channel that can be used.

If you really want to have some free software + femtocell based 3G network, go ahead and do it. The option existed for years now, ever since femtocells started shipping to the market. All of them are some form of embedded Linux systems. Rooting them isn't really different from rooting a Linux based WiFi router / DSL modem. So what's that new about the THC release? That a vendor of Linux embedded devices chose a trivial password? If you're surprised by that, I guess you haven't taken apart many embedded devices then.

Syndicated 2011-07-14 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

SIM-unlocking the Openmoko phones?

I think it's quite funny that SIM-unlicking vendors like RebelSIM actually advertise that their products are compatible with Openmoko, as you can see in this PDF file.

What's funny about this? Well, Openmoko phones have never been sold with any form of SIM or Operator locking. The entire idea was to have a phone that is under the control of the user, not the operator...

Syndicated 2011-07-06 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

SIMtrace v1.0 prototypes are working out of the box

After the debacle with various wrong footprints in the v0.9, I'm very happy to announce that the SIMtrace v1.0 hardware is working fine. All footprints correct, schematics correct, layout/Gerber correct. All we had to do is solder the components, attach it to USB, flash the firmware and use it.

Here's a picture of the board (sorry, my soldering is not very clean):

Early next week we will be ordering a batch of 100 units from the SMT house we have chosen.

Syndicated 2011-07-02 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Unbelievable statements in GPL related case in the Supreme Court of Mauritius

I've recently received some documents regarding a court case at the Supreme Court of Mauritius.

The plaintiff is a company called Linux Solutions Ltd. in Mauritius. It seems to be covering an alleged breach of an NDA between a contracted freelancing developer and a company in Mauritius. That contractor (the defendant) has apparently published some of the work he had done while contracting for the plaintiff.

While none of that seems to be clearly connected with the GPL, what is extremely disturbing is the sworn affidavit / oath by one of the executives of the plaintiff. It says things like:

5. Licenses of open-source software like "Linux" and "Asterisk" have no copyright restrictions which in effect puts no restrictions on their use or distribution. As a consequence, any work which is derived from the open source software as conceptualized, created, installed and managed, by the Applicant becomes the ownership of the Applicant.

6. In the light of the above, therefore, the applications, configuration files and features so developed by the Applicant are the sole property of the Applicant, make up the knowledge base of the Applicant, make the basis of its business operations, and are highly confident in nature. The applications, configurations and features have been built and acquired by the Applicant through important capital investments and manpower over a period of time.

So let me phrase this more clearly: Somebody, under oath is stating at the Supreme Court, that GPL-Licensed software (which the Linux kernel definitely is), has no copyright restrictions? And that any derived work is the sole property of whoever created the derivative? What kind of pot are they smoking in Mauritius?

If there's anyone in the Free Software legal community interested in filing some kind of legal document to the Supreme Court of Mauritius to clarify this issue, feel free to contact me for more details on the case. No matter whether the defendant has broken some NDA, I think it's unacceptable to see such ridiculous claims being made at a Supreme Court.

In case you don't believe it, here are some scanned samples:

Syndicated 2011-06-27 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

AVM trying to spread FUD about the Cybits case

Unsurprisingly, AVM is now trying to claim their legal action is not related to any GPL violation. This couldn't be further from the truth.

In both the court hearings (in two independent cases), AVM has repeatedly declined to make a clear statement that the modification and installation of modified version of the GPL-Licensed parts (like Linux) is acceptable to them.

We have raised this question in front of court and out of court, and AVM was not willing to make such a declaration. If they had, I don't think I would have had much reason to join the lawsuit on the side of the defendant.

I have no connection to Cybits (the defendant). There has never been any business or other relationship to them, and they have not been involved in funding my legal expenses. To be honest, I don't even care about child filtering software in general, no matter from which vendor.

But I do care about the GPL, and the freedoms it grants. The GPL is intended to allow any third party to modify, recompile, re-install and run modified versions of the respective GPL licensed program. Any court order / verdict / judgement that tries to undermine this freedom is a substantial danger to the Free Software movement - and as such I will do what I can to prevent it.

AVM has stated in front of the court that AVM releases the source code compliant with the GPL, anyone can download, compile and use it - just not on OUR hardware. There you can clearly see their attitude: They see the FritzBox as their hardware. Last time I checked, the unit is not rented by AVM, but is legally sold to the customer. It is his decision to do with it what he wants. Under the terms of the GPL, it is his decision to install whatever software on the hardware, including modified versions of the GPL licensed Linux kernel.

Just imagine a world, where you buy a Laptop from HP, with Windows pre-installed. Now further imagine that there is a third-party software vendor (e.g. Canonical with its Ubuntu). Now imagine that HP was suing Canonical for offering different software that runs on their hardware. This is the kind of analogy that you need to think about.

I don't think AVM is truly understanding the daemons they are calling here. If they actually manage to get a finally awarded judgement that deprives third parties of their rights under the GPL, AVM will have violated the GPL, specifically clause 6: You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. And what would that mean? That the GPLv2 is revoked and AVM looses the right to use the GPLv2 licensed software they use in the product.

Syndicated 2011-06-24 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

First working prototypes of Osmocom SIMtrace design

Last winter I was working on some hardware and software that can be used to trace the communication between a SIM card and a phone and called it Osmocom SIMtrace. At that time, I was simply recycling an old OLIMEX development board for the AT91SAM7S micro-controller.

But since the firmware for the micro-controller, the host software as well as the wireshark plug-in has been written now, it would be a shame if I was they only user of the project. Therefore, Kevin Redon and I have spent some time in polishing and improving the design, as well as generate some actual prototypes.

Unfortunately a number of mistakes were made (both on the design side but also wrong component pin-outs) so there was a need for significant re-working.

Nonetheless, we now have some 5 functional prototypes, a picture can be seen in the Osmocom Wiki, where you can also find the schematics

We're now having a second version of the PCB built, this time hopefully with correct footprints for all parts. Once that is verified at the end of next week, we will give "go" for the production of a small batch (100 units).

Interested developers will be able to obtain the resulting hardware from mid-August onwards. We also expect to be offering them at the Radio Village of the 2011 CCC Camp.

Tracing the SIMPhone protocol can be useful in a variety of cases:

• Observing the behavior of operator-issued SIM cards in terms of which SIM Application Toolkit or Proactive SIM features they use.
• Debugging aid while developing and interoperability testing of your own SIM toolkit applets
• Prototyping and development of SAT blocker or other SIM card firewalls which restrict the security or privacy threats originating from untrusted operator SIMs or potentially compromised SIM cards.

Syndicated 2011-06-22 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog