Nostr notes by elly

Welp, after spending 3 days and nights debugging my workstation I ...

2026-05-11T03:38:18Z

Welp, after spending 3 days and nights debugging my workstation I can say with 100% certainty that all issues I've been having recently are caused by silicon degradation.

First it was PCIe, then random (sporadic) lockups every ~month or so, then issues with USB controller, then iGPU and then lockups became so frequent that it became unusable (2 - 3 per day). AMDGPU issues might even be related to this.

Cleaned the system and put it together, but I expect it to crash while I will be sleeping... so I guess it's time to look for a normal motherboard and CPU (thankfully I can get used MSI DDR4 board which doesn't have BootGuard and 14Gen i5 for roughly ~300EUR and it's going to be 20% faster than the current setup as well).

This concludes a 3 year-old experiment, if you're thinking of buying cheap pre-production hardware that fell from the back of the truck in China: Don't. It's funny at first, but save yourself the headache.

- 5 litres of water next to the desk - windows covered to keep ...

2026-05-04T14:29:11Z

- 5 litres of water next to the desk
- windows covered to keep the bad UV light from penetrating the "basement"
- two fans (one under the desk) at ~50%
- echo 180 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon5/pwm2

Ah yes, it's that time of the year again :akko_tired2:

you're right, it's a Foxconn T60N871 (802.11g) from an ...

2026-04-21T11:19:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…7wny
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you're right, it's a Foxconn T60N871 (802.11g) from an Acer TravelMate 2700

replace the wifi card with USB port and plug usb wifi dongle in ...

2026-04-20T19:33:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…3azg
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replace the wifi card with USB port and plug usb wifi dongle in it's place /s

Huh, apparently UFS provisioning burns OTP fuses, so LUN ...

2026-04-16T01:12:55Z

Huh, apparently UFS provisioning burns OTP fuses, so LUN assignment cannot be changed after the fact :akko_thonk:

If that's true, I should be able to just take the uMCP off the board, solder/bodge it to cheap JMS901 controller, dd LUN2 backup onto the flash and it should work after re-balling it back onto the phone's motherboard.

Bit worried since I haven't done microsoldering in years so I definitely lost precision, but it should be fine if I take extra time and be careful to not rip any pads off

Ordered the controller board, fingers crossed (but for now I sadly have to shelf that project)

nah, you need a DA (Download Agent) and preloader. This ...

2026-04-15T11:47:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…cyf4
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nah, you need a DA (Download Agent) and preloader.

This would've been recoverable if Motorola left USB_BOOT testpoint on the board, but I can't find it so the only way of recovery that I see right now would be pulling uMCP (UFS+DRAM on a single package), running bodges to cheap USB UFS controller board, restoring LUNs/storage externally and re-balling it back onto the board)

welp, I got it to run... and I think it wiped my UFS clean, not ...

2026-04-15T09:25:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…rjqf
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welp, I got it to run... and I think it wiped my UFS clean, not sure if it's recoverable at this point... :neocat_facepalm:
```
F0: 102B 0000
F3: 1001 0000 [0200]
F3: 1001 0000
F7: 4C01 0000
00: 1005 0000
F3: 1001 0000 [0200]
F3: 1001 0000
F7: 4C01 0000
01: 102A 0001
02: 0007 8000
03: 1005 0000
BP: 0880 0288 [0001]
EC: 0000 0000 [2000]
S7: 0700 0061 [0000]
CC: 0000 0000 [0005]
T0: 0000 007D [000F]
T1: 0000 0000 [0000]
T2: 0000 0125 [0101]
System halt!
```

because PGPT is corrupt and my backup doesn't work for some ...

2026-04-14T18:47:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…qvpw
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because PGPT is corrupt and my backup doesn't work for some reason:
```
***9.platform_init pass***
***init sysob partition tbl first.***
check gpt header signature failed.
check gpt header crc failed.
pgpt header is not invalid.
Read partition from pgpt failed.[0xc0030008]
```
I recovered it enough to make it boot again (previously it would only throw a BootROM loop), but it gets corrupt again if I flash anything and userdata has like 1MB of size (which is obviously incorrect, should be 110GB).

Also got PGPT and SGPT backups from mtkclient (which cannot write to the device with this SoC) but it doesn't seem to work and penumbra can't write the entire LUN (as far as I can see)

well, this package doesn't seem to offer Linux binaries ...

2026-04-14T18:23:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…fq79
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well, this package doesn't seem to offer Linux binaries :blobcatblep:

(It's fine, it's long overdue anyway. I bypassed stuff manually by installing VxKex, patching DLLs which gave me much more up-to-date tools like Python 3.14 but it's becoming more and more unfeasible)

RIP parition table :neocat_floof_explode: ...

2026-04-13T23:32:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…3n58
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RIP parition table :neocat_floof_explode:

It lives! :neocat_floof: ...

2026-04-13T16:48:49Z

It lives! :neocat_floof:

apparently not, it still takes 4 minutes. Oh well :akko_shrug:

2026-04-13T16:19:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…9cuy
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apparently not, it still takes 4 minutes. Oh well :akko_shrug:

well, I assumed pmbootstrap chroot already had it installed... ...

2026-04-13T15:54:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…u5z8
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well, I assumed pmbootstrap chroot already had it installed... but apparently not?
```
/ # apk add gawk
WARNING: opening /mnt/pmbootstrap/packages/systemd-edge/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz: No such file or directory
WARNING: opening /mnt/pmbootstrap/packages/edge/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz: No such file or directory
(1/1) Installing gawk (5.3.2-r2)
Executing busybox-1.37.0-r31.trigger
OK: 1452.4 MiB in 298 packages
```
will report if it helped with link time :blobcatsalute:

I guess it's just legacy stuff (much like SATA drives are ...

2026-04-11T19:40:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…vhls
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I guess it's just legacy stuff (much like SATA drives are enumerated as /dev/sdX in Linux)

Welp, looks like upstream changes to uclass broke mediatek ufs ...

2026-04-11T19:36:39Z

Welp, looks like upstream changes to uclass broke mediatek ufs driver, so that will need some debugging...

But it works on older U-Boot tree, so I don't have to deal with annoying LK. Since I can now boot this phone using U-Boot's EFI implementation, it's time to pet some penguins :blobcat3c:

hmm, my friends convinced me to open GitHub sponsorships/Ko-Fi ...

2026-04-11T14:47:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…tzz7
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hmm, my friends convinced me to open GitHub sponsorships/Ko-Fi some time ago, but I just felt... weird asking for donations? I always feel like I'm not doing enough to warrant it... but on the other hand there are people who ask for donations by doing nothing but reading articles on YouTube so :akko_shrug:

If people would be willing to chip-in for a 3D-printer, I would certainly appreciate it:
- https://ko-fi.com//ellyqw
- https://github.com/sponsors/ellyq

I have quite a few projects sitting in "projects drawer" because I don't have access to one. I can always ask a friend to 3D-print something and ship it my way, but it's not really a feasible strategy for prototyping...

El Psy Congroo

2026-04-10T23:13:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…clny
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*El Psy Congroo*

MAC address randomization on wireless interfaces is a default ...

2026-04-10T22:42:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…89zk
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MAC address randomization on wireless interfaces is a default setting in NetworkManager these days AFAIK, it drove me nuts at one point (because my home WiFi has WPA3-only and strict ACL)

I disagree, pmOS is just a Linux distro on your desktop. ...

2026-04-10T18:47:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…am3v
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I disagree, pmOS is just a Linux distro on your desktop. You're in charge and decide how it's going to work.

I wouldn't trust *any* iOS or Android phone with my personal data (like conversations with family/friends), but I have no issues doing the same on pmOS because I configured, hardened and containerized it to my liking and I have FDE enabled which stands even against state-level attackers.

Stock Android from $VENDOR is absolutely NOT private or secure. Pre-installed bloatware spies on you, while state-level attackers can pwn you in many ways (either with RCE zero-day malware, or with cellebrite which exploits USB HID quirks).

I probably will do this to motorola-vicky instead, because it has ...

2026-04-09T21:06:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…lyuq
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I probably will do this to motorola-vicky instead, because it has a completely plastic chassis (so I can 3D-print new casing) and I can steal I2C lines and power needed for keyboard controller relatively easily.

Biggest challenge would be:
1. Inability to afford a 3D printer
2. Figuring out how keyboard mechanisms worked in HTC TyTn II for example and replicating it

I thought it was obvious? Anyone who ever looked at iOS or ...

2026-04-09T15:44:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…upnu
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I thought it was obvious? Anyone who ever looked at iOS or Android logs knows that every single notification you ever received is stored in the logs, and are transferred to new devices if you use migration assistant or encrypted backup.

It's a valid and big attack vector, that's why I personally have notifications enabled to just tell me which app it is and why i'm getting a notification, no other context. Especially since push notifications are handled by Google/Apple's servers so if you can MITM it, you can collect a lot of sensitive data.

Power button on this phone feels pretty nice :akko_giggle: I got ...

2026-04-09T01:02:06Z

Power button on this phone feels pretty nice :akko_giggle:

I got annoyed because buttons on this phone have terrible quality and don't register presses when case is off.

While poking the board with oscilloscope to find UART I found a testpad that was shorting to ground when I pressed the power button, so here we go.

Also found that shorting two pins around the battery connector makes phone boot with only USB attached (both testpads had same voltage with battery connected and USB cable plugged in) so I can attach a MCU to toggle power on/off and turn phone on/off by setting pins high or low, I should have some octocouplers in parts drawer.

Sadly still no UART, I *really* don't want to deploy a Windows VM just to use some Chinese software to get schematics for this but it should be much easier to find it now.

Someone sent me memory dump from that software and it looks like it opens a tunnel to China (geoblock), authenticates over HTTP with cookie and downloads PDFs from "http://down.dzkj16888.com/down/51/pdf/$VENDOR/$MODEL/$FILE.pdf";. I probably could pwn it and archive all pdfs they host on that server but I don't have enough spoons :akko_tired:

It just... never crossed my mind? I know we could forward it to ...

2026-04-08T20:12:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…9296
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It just... never crossed my mind? I know we could forward it to SMBus (which is just fancy I2C, that's how RAM SPD data is parsed and VPD EEPROMs on PCIe cards in servers) but somehow using iGPU I2C for this never crossed my mind

WAIT, this looks remarkably simple... Since it's just an I2C ...

2026-04-08T20:08:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…0wt0
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WAIT, this looks remarkably simple...

Since it's just an I2C bus, we could pinmux it in coreboot and write a driver to forward console output to it (similar to how it's done with LPSS) and grab it over DVI/HDMI/DP with something like a Pi Pico. It would make it possible to develop/debug boards without RS232 or even laptops without opening the chassis :neocat_hyper:

Nostr event nevent1qqsx9x6umkas7w4vtfa7mjljms8et5kzz5luj2rt5dstseadk37d6xgzyq46gadpxs8tm8uwcf7ezu7dglmchhn0tpmq7yu9gvpm567k7w5nqv4cp3h

2026-04-02T16:18:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…7hnh
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https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/linux-install-manually

It’s real, IBM used it when I worked there (early 2020s). Still better than crowdstrike, which required specific kernel versions and slows workstations to a halt. I still remember when GDC got spit out into Kyndryl (absolute meme of a company) and within months of announcing partnership with Microslop banned usage of Linux on workstations. Then they gave me a top-spec 2019 16in MBP that used 100% od the CPU and lagged… during the Teams call with the client. It was the reason why I’ve quit that job.

you’re joking until you find out about “Microsoft Defender ...

2026-04-02T16:08:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…um0n
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you’re joking until you find out about “Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection for Linux”

Can you tell that this driver was written by catgirls? ...

2026-04-01T19:30:54Z

Can you tell that this driver was written by catgirls? :neocat_pat_floof:

Huh, apparently modern toothbrushes are compatible with ...

2026-04-01T01:27:06Z

Huh, apparently modern toothbrushes are compatible with qi-standard

Heh, apparently Zinwa Q25's firmware is made out of ...

2026-04-01T00:05:23Z

Heh, apparently Zinwa Q25's firmware is made out of chocolate.
I tried to boot mainline kernel I've been working on for past 2 days on unit belonging to @Remiberry and it bricked itself so hard that she's having trouble recovering it with mtkclient :neocat_floof_explode:

I guess I *could* replace LK with something saner (which would mean porting U-Boot to MT8781V SoC) but that will be even more work... and I likely would need schematics (PMIC etc)

I would say that Strasbourg was the prettiest place I've ...

2026-03-28T09:30:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…r3aw
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I would say that Strasbourg was the prettiest place I've lived in so far overall and one of prettiest places I've ever been to tbh

@Remiberry bought a replacement board for Blackberry (Zinwa Q25) ...

2026-03-27T12:34:51Z

@Remiberry bought a replacement board for Blackberry (Zinwa Q25) and nerdsniped me into mainline bringup (as it is tradition).

Looked at dumped DT, so far it looks like the SoC is quite similar to MT8183/MT8186 on Chromebooks so it shouldn't be too difficult to get working on mainline:

- MT6789/MT8781V (G99/G99 Pro) is basically the same SoC, 6x A55 and 2x A76 (MT8183/MT8186).
- MT6366/MT6358 PMIC (confusing strings, MT6366 would make it the same as MT8186 in Google/Corsola while MT6358 would make it the same as MT8183 in Google/Krane). Both supported in upstream.
- I/O block (i2c, spi etc) from MT6983 (Dimensity 9000).
- Weird touchscreen (i2c 0x11e00000 addr 0x67). DT says Synaptics S2716B, Kconfig says gigadevice, header says novatek, makefile says omnivision... and downstream kernel just ships pre-compiled object... what the hell?.
- Orient-Chip OCA72390WPAD audio amp at i2c 0x11015000 addr 0x58, ST21 NFC 0x08 on the same node.
- MT6375 charger at i2c 0x11017000 addr 0x34 plus wl2868c PMIC at addr 0x2f on the same node.
- wallComputer BBQX0KBD (BlackBerry keyboard controller) at i2c 0x1101a000 addr 0x1f
- UFS at 0x11270000 (mt8183-ufshci... wtf?)
- MicroSD slot (SDHC) at 11240000
- Smasnug S5KJN1 camera
- Sony IMX111 camera
- Little Kernel used as firmware (MTK BSP), unsure if they fused the BootROM (hope not)

I've been procrastinating making a website/blog for... 5 ...

2026-03-25T04:27:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…shxd
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I've been procrastinating making a website/blog for... 5 years now :blobcatnotlikethis:

If you want to dig into that rabbit hole: ...

2026-03-25T03:58:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…zrsf
_________________________

If you want to dig into that rabbit hole: https://anilist.co/user/ellyqw/

Only 9 options? That's not fair ...

2026-03-25T03:35:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…p2m6
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Only 9 options? That's not fair

same with sweets, buying chocolate and thinking "I'll ...

2026-03-25T01:14:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…vens
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same with sweets, buying chocolate and thinking "I'll slowly eat it throughout the week" is probably the biggest lie I keep telling myself

How it started: "I want to have a phone running Linux" ...

2026-03-24T21:17:29Z

How it started: "I want to have a phone running Linux"
How it's going (in 2026): "Got a pile of 5 phones and a clock on my desk. One of them runs Linux decently well, one runs Android because it has working (good) camera and third is used to have working calls. The alarm clock is bricked... again, and I will soon receive another two phones for mainline SoC bringups".

I wonder where does it end... I need a stand for all those phones :neocat_shocked:

I'm just being silly so got this account plus ...

2026-03-24T19:46:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…6xkf
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I'm just being silly so got this account plus elly (unhinged edition, now with 100% more gay) (npub1v49…yrk3) (previosly on ARPA but RIP ARPA) for truly unhinged shitposting. It's pretty comfy with external client (like Tokodon), default mastodon UI is unusable

turns out bisecting DRM is even more of a pain in the butt than I ...

2026-03-24T08:45:13Z

turns out bisecting DRM is even more of a pain in the butt than I thought :akko_tired:

🎶 welcome to the land of bisecting upstream regressions 🎶

2026-03-21T23:54:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…3gte
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🎶 welcome to the land of bisecting upstream regressions 🎶

I mean, I can relate... (maybe I went too far, but I'm also ...

2026-03-04T21:58:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…gtd5
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I mean, I can relate... (maybe I went too far, but I'm also just freakin' tired)
https://mail.coreboot.org/archives/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/CMMTIGZFCGWC57BK3WCHQQNC3D7523EP/

Can recommend TesseracT's albums from early 2010s, hang in there :blobcat_huggies_sad:

hey, look at it this way - if we would meet our teenage selves ...

2026-03-04T21:49:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…zph2
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hey, look at it this way - if we would meet our teenage selves they'd think we grew up to be pretty darn cool (at least I hope so)

critical digital infrastructure I noticed I wasn't getting ...

2026-03-04T15:38:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…qfw5
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critical digital infrastructure
I noticed I wasn't getting DHCP requests from that thinclient anymore, doesn't seem to react to power presses... rest in pepperoni. I'll investigate once I get some proper sleep.

Worst-case I can migrate w2k install to this beautiful nugget or ThinkPad X230: https://www.nowatron.cz/download/245/datasheet-lexcom-3v900d.pdf
Probably will finally deploy the CI runner (Intel NUC 12 Pro) and Chromebox/LattePanda Mu (I finished the project and client told me I can keep it and have no use for it, so it would be perfect for hosting stuff for friends - 6W idle, 64GB(I think?) eMMC, 8GB LPDDR5. I re-did the coreboot port for this because DFRobot's code is utter dogpoop, so we can even do remote attestation on it with LinuxBoot sind scheisse :blobcat3c:

ah yeah, that makes sense then. Maybe some kind of projector ...

2026-02-07T17:11:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…73a5
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ah yeah, that makes sense then. Maybe some kind of projector (although modern ones also seem to have those stupid "features"?