In short, the key is to enable GPIO ports during boot when the system has not raised the securelevel yet.

[Tags: gpio, raspberrypi]

#!/bin/sh
# Turn ALIX2c front LEDs into running LED
# http://www.gifninja.com/Workspace/59f3f22e-5f40-4937-936c-1dc0d6fbe690/output.gif
#
# Copyright (c) 2010 Hubert Feyrer <hubertf@NetBSD.org>

# PROVIDE: alixkitt

$_rc_subr_loaded . /etc/rc.subr

name="alixkitt"
start_cmd="alixkitt_start"
stop_cmd="alixkitt_stop"
pidfile="/var/run/${name}.pid"

alixkitt_sleeptime=1.0          # 0.5

alixkitt_setled()
{
        gpioctl -q -d /dev/gpio 6 $1
        gpioctl -q -d /dev/gpio 25 $2
        gpioctl -q -d /dev/gpio 27 $3

        sleep $alixkitt_sleeptime
}

alixkitt_start()
{
	touch $pidfile
        (
                alixkitt_setled 0 0 0

                while [ -f $pidfile ] ; do
                        alixkitt_setled 0 1 1
                        alixkitt_setled 1 0 1
                        alixkitt_setled 1 1 0
                        alixkitt_setled 1 0 1
                done
        ) &;
        echo $! >$pidfile
        echo Started pid $!
}

alixkitt_stop()
{
        if [ -f /var/run/alixkitt.pid ]; then
                read pid <$pidfile
                echo Stopped pid $pid
                kill $pid
                rm $pidfile
                alixkitt_setled 1 1 1
        fi
        exit 0
}

load_rc_config $name
run_rc_command "$1"

left:	gpioctl -d /dev/gpio 6 2
middle:	gpioctl -d /dev/gpio 25 2
right:	gpioctl -d /dev/gpio 27 2

[Tags: alix, gpio]

Before I go into the details, let me add a hint on the "source-changes-full" mailing list, which is like source-changes, but the mails there also contain diffs of the changes (as long as they are below 1MB in size). The -full list is not archived on mail-index.netbsd.org, and I must have missed the announcement. It's definitely useful!

So, what interesting changes have there been to NetBSD-current recently? Here we go:

• New / updated drivers:
  • sdtemp(4) reads the on-DIMM temperature sensors following the JEDEC Standard No. 21-C Section 4-7.
  • gpio(4) got support for Intel ICH southbridges as found on Intel SS4220-E (ICH7) and Acorp 6A815EPD (ICH2) motherboards
  • lom(4) supports the LOMlite "Lights Out Management" boards found on Sun hardware like the LOMlite found on the Sun Netra t1 and the LOMlite2 found on Sun Netra T1/X1 and Sun Fire V100/V120.
  • An initial version of a SD/MMC driver for the Winbond W83L518D (and probably W83L519D) Integrated Media Reader with PNP bus attachment glue was added.
  • acpiwmi(4) was added to added, to further support ACPI development. See the specs for more details.
  • piixide(4) now supports Intel 3400 SATA
• New kernel interfaces and library functions include:
  • getdate(3) and getdate_err(3) were added according to POSIX.1 and the Open Group
  • RAIDframe was sped up massively when checking parity after a system crash with the help of a parity map. This work was done during this year's Google Summer-of-Code.
  • A "netbsd.inet.icmp.bmcastecho" sysctl was added to disable replies to the broadcast address.
  • Floating point functions f{min,max,dim}{,l,f}(3) were added
  • udl(4) adds support for DisplayLink DL-1x0/1x5 based USB LCDs and USB-VGA adaptors
• Random other additions and changes include:
  • hdaudioctl(8) can be used to manipulate hdaudio(4) devices
  • The NetBSD/playstation2 port was removed due to a lack of developer support. It's still available in CVS.
  • The NetBSD/i386 bootloader now knows a "dev" command to list available boot devices and their size.
• Newly imported and updated 3rd party software includes:
  • pfsync from OpenBSD 4.2, adopted in this year's Google Summer of Code.
  • PF from OpenBSD 4.2 was imported.
  • Multicast DNS ("Bonjour") support was added, based on Apple's mDNSResponder. Enable with "dns: mdns" in /etc/nsswitch.conf.
  • GNU binutils were updated to version 2.19
  • Many of the bazillion of X.org components were updated - ways too many to note in detail.
  • BIND was updated to 9.7.0b1
  • Flex 2.5.35 was imported
  • A new m4(1) was imported

• NetBSD implements traditional Unix file access control, which is based on permissions for reading, writing and executing for any of a file's owner, its group, and the rest of the world. Concepts in the form of Access Control Lists (ACLs) exist for more fine grained control, but they are not available with NetBSD. Yet.

  Elad Efrat is still workin on the kauth(9) framework, and as a side-product, he has implemented Access Control Lists on top of kauth(9).. The code is not fit for production use yet, but we can stay tuned to see more of this.

• When you have a machine running virtualization, you usually dedicate a portion of the machine's RAM to each of the VMs. You (usually) cannot spend more RAM for VMs than you have RAM in the host, obviously... until you use some sort of virtual memory for the VMs themseolves. Which is what the Xen "balloon" driver does, inflating a Xen VM's RAM as needed.

  Those interested in a driver can find a balloon driver for Xen3 dom0 by Cherry G. Mathew now, who's looking forward to your comments!

• Coming newly to NetBSD, developer Marc Balmer writes: ``NetBSD has had support for General Purpose Input/Output devices since the 4.0 release, when the GPIO framework from OpenBSD 3.6 was imported. Since the import of the GPIO framework into NetBSD, I have reworked larger parts of that subsystem in OpenBSD to address some problems and drawbacks''. More details on his motivation and details can be found on his homepage, and Marc has posted about his recent work on updating NetBSD's GPIO framework.

  See Marc's posting for details on changes in the API, prominent changes, security aspects and more.

• When you run a Xen DomU which has its file system on a vnd(4) disk and which has a number of disk images which are again put together into a raidframe(4) volume which may in turn contain further images for vnd(4), raidframe(4), cgd(4) and possibly others, tearing down the whole stack on system shutdown can get hairy.

  The situation is known, and David Young has put some work into this area. For now, he can properly detach raid units. See his posting for an example session.