Tag Archives: usb

Close Call

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After 72 hours the USB webcam is still running. No signs of memory leaks or other problems. Looks like the 2.3.99 kernel is begining to be pretty stable. Back around 2.3.62, the USB/CPiA combination would blow up after about 24 hours.

We had a close call with someone trying to crack our machines last night. We get seemingly constant port scans and crack attempts these days anyway. In this case someone had cracked a machine at our upstream ISP with an IP that was specifically allowed to get through our outer security layers. Fortunately they weren’t very good. They spent a couple of hours trying buffer overflow exploits on ftpd on several of our servers and then gave up. Made for a few minutes of excitement this morning though.

CPiA Drivers

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The DPRG RoboRama 00.a was held Saturday and, for a change, I made it out there to watch. It was the first time in a while I’ve made it to a contest. I took a few photos for those who missed it. If you’re in the Dallas area and would like to come to the next contest or a regular meeting, check the calendar for time and locations.

I got a chance to download and compile the Linux 2.3.99-Pre5 kernel yesterday. If you’ve followed my news page for long, you’ll remember I’ve been playing with the Linux USB support for my CPiA-based Zoomcam camera. It’s been several revs since I last had things running and it took a few compiles as well an email or two exchanged with the CPiA driver authors to get things working again. The USB CPiA driver has been merged with the existing Parallel Port CPiA driver. This means smaller, more efficient code than two completely seperate drivers but the downside is that the CPiA driver is no longer in the USB driver tree and you have to compile the CPiA components as modules and then use modprobe to install them after the system boots. Anyway, while vidcat produces better quality images, I’m trying out the webcam utility from XawTV. At the moment it’s just a boring shot of the conference room here at NCC updated a couple of times minute. If it doesn’t blow up after a day or two maybe I’ll point it something more interesting.