Abstract for Freenix 2004

Bart proposed that the team submit a 3-5 page abstract to Freenix 2004, of which he and Keith are chairs. Possible topics:

work rewriting the CanBusLinuxDriver (including CANtelope)
overall progress on the FlightComputerSoftware since the Usenix paper.

Points to consider and areas of interest (from the above page)

open source
available online: Twiki, ?WebCVS
project reports
Usage and development experiences, good and bad
Free and Open Source Software Engineering is a special focus this year
- spec and design methods [eh, whats that? :-) ]
- testing
- reliability
- performance
- Team governance, admin, management [about PSAS, Twiki]
- Planning and forecasting [eh, whats that? :-) ]
- Measuring progress and assessing quality
Embedded systems

Submission deadline is 16-Dec-2003

CanBusLinuxDriver work

Brainstorm. Feel free to comment and edit.

Motivation

brief description of FC/LTC architecture
brief description of CAN bus
Goal: all aspects of rocket open source (CAN King -> CANtalope)

Starting point

MOPS board, Intel chip, Debian Linux 2.4.18
existing open source CAN driver
mods required
device model, capabilities and limitations
- no support for RTR messages
- use of read for RTR breaks normal driver model
- 1 device per message object doesn't make full use of the chip
- no support for select
- may not support telemetry bandwidth

Driver rewrite

learning to write a driver
- existing CAN driver
- prior Linux experience
- pointers to material on web
- Intel chip docs vs. experimentation with sucan
- interrupts
methodology
- borrow from existing driver
- build environment, system
- ssh/scp to FC/LTC
- serial port, minicom for driver kprintfs
general vs. specific use and requirements
- simplify simplify simplify

Tools

CAN King, motivation for CANtalope
- CantalopeHardware
- CantalopeSoftware
sucan interactive chip driver
- thanks to iopl
RocketView, unit testers, LTC, FC

Philosopy/Conclusions

specific mods still useful to open source community? should we care?
credit to previous driver
make best use of what you got; no compromises for generality
small steps
learning experience

-- IanOsgood - 03 Dec 2003

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