Remote control for Adam Audio active monitor speakers by dmach

Description

I own a pair of Adam Audio A7V active studio monitor speakers. They have ethernet connectors that allow changing their settings remotely using the A Control software. From Windows :-( I couldn't find any open source alternative for Linux besides AES70.js library.

Goals

• Create a command-line tool for controlling the speakers.
• Python is the language of choice.
• Implement only a simple tool with the desired functionality rather than a full coverage of AES70 standard.

TODO

• ✅ discover the device
• ❌ get device manufacturer and model
• ✅ get serial number
• ✅ get description
• ✅ set description
• ✅ set mute
• ✅ set sleep
• ✅ set input (XRL (balanced), RCA (unbalanced))
• ✅ set room adaptation
  • bass (1, 0, -1, -2)
  • desk (0, -1, -2)
  • presence (1, 0, -1)
  • treble (1, 0, -1)
• ✅ set voicing (Pure, UNR, Ext)
• ❌ the Ext voicing enables the following extended functionality:
  • gain
  • equalizer bands
  • on/off
  • type
  • freq
  • q
  • gain
• ❌ udev rules to sleep/wakeup the speakers together with the sound card

Resources

• https://www.adam-audio.com/en/a-series/a7v/
• https://www.adam-audio.com/en/technology/a-control-remote-software/
• https://github.com/DeutscheSoft/AES70.js
• https://www.aes.org/publications/standards/search.cfm?docID=101 - paid
• https://www.aes.org/standards/webinars/AESStandardsWebinarSC0212L20220531.pdf
• https://ocaalliance.github.io/downloads/AES143%20Network%20track%20NA10%20-%20AES70%20Controller.pdf

Result

• The code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/dmach/pacontrol

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Contributing to Linux Kernel security by pperego

Description

A couple of weeks ago, I found this blog post by Gustavo Silva, a Linux Kernel contributor.

I always strived to start again into hacking the Linux Kernel, so I asked Coverity scan dashboard access and I want to contribute to Linux Kernel by fixing some minor issues.

I want also to create a Linux Kernel fuzzing lab using qemu and syzkaller

Goals

1. Fix at least 2 security bugs
2. Create the fuzzing lab and having it running

The story so far

• Day 1: setting up a virtual machine for kernel development using Tumbleweed. Reading a lot of documentation, taking confidence with Coverity dashboard and with procedures to submit a kernel patch
• Day 2: I read really a lot of documentation and I triaged some findings on Coverity SAST dashboard. I have to confirm that SAST tool are great false positives generator, even for low hanging fruits.
• Day 3: Working on trivial changes after I read this blog post: https://www.toblux.com/posts/2024/02/linux-kernel-patches.html. I have to take confidence with the patch preparation and submit process yet.
  • First trivial patch sent: using strtruefalse() macro instead of hard-coded strings in a staging driver for a lcd display
  • Fix for a dereference before null check issue discovered by Coverity (CID 1601566) https://scan7.scan.coverity.com/#/project-view/52110/11354?selectedIssue=1601566
• Day 4: Triaging more issues found by Coverity.
  • The patch for CID 1601566 was refused. The check against the NULL pointer was pointless so I prepared a version 2 of the patch removing the check.
  • Fixed another dereference before NULL check in iwlmvmparsewowlaninfo_notif() routine (CID 1601547). This one was already submitted by another kernel hacker :(
• Day 5: Wrapping up. I had to do some minor rework on patch for CID 1601566. I found a stalker bothering me in private emails and people I interacted with me, advised he is a well known bothering person. Markus Elfring for the record.

• Wrapping up: being back doing kernel hacking is amazing and I don't want to stop it. My battery pack is completely drained but changing the scope gave me a great twist and I really want to feel this energy not doing a single task for months.

  I failed in setting up a fuzzing lab but I was too optimistic for the patch submission process.

The patches

1

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Kill DMA and DMA32 memory zones by ptesarik

Description

Provide a better allocator for DMA-capable buffers, making the DMA and DMA32 zones obsolete.

Goals

Make a PoC kernel which can boot a x86 VM and a Raspberry Pi (because early RPi4 boards have some of the weirdest DMA constraints).

Resources

• LPC2024 talk:
• video:

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Linux on Cavium CN23XX cards by tsbogend

Before Cavium switched to ARM64 CPUs they developed quite powerful MIPS based SOCs. The current upstream Linux kernel already supports some Octeon SOCs, but not the latest versions. Goal of this Hack Week project is to use the latest Cavium SDK to update the Linux kernel code to let it running on CN23XX network cards.

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Improve various phones kernel mainline support (Qualcomm, Exynos, MediaTek) by pvorel

Similar to previous hackweeks ( https://hackweek.opensuse.org/projects/improve-qualcomm-soc-msm8994-slash-msm8992-kernel-mainline-support, https://hackweek.opensuse.org/projects/test-mainline-kernel-on-an-older-qualcomm-soc-msm89xx-explore-mainline-kernel-qualcomm-mainlining) try to improve kernel mainline support of various phones.

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Create a DRM driver for VGA video cards by tdz

Yes, those VGA video cards. The goal of this project is to implement a DRM graphics driver for such devices. While actual hardware is hard to obtain or even run today, qemu emulates VGA output.

VGA has a number of limitations, which make this project interesting.

• There are only 640x480 pixels (or less) on the screen. That resolution is also a soft lower limit imposed by DRM. It's mostly a problem for desktop environments though.
• Desktop environments assume 16 million colors, but there are only 16 colors with VGA. VGA's 256 color palette is not available at 640x480. We can choose those 16 colors freely. The interesting part is how to choose them. We have to build a palette for the displayed frame and map each color to one of the palette's 16 entries. This is called dithering, and VGA's limitations are a good opportunity to learn about dithering algorithms.
• VGA has an interesting memory layout. Most graphics devices use linear framebuffers, which store the pixels byte by byte. VGA uses 4 bitplanes instead. Plane 0 holds all bits 0 of all pixels. Plane 1 holds all bits 1 of all pixels, and so on.

The driver will probably not be useful to many people. But, if finished, it can serve as test environment for low-level hardware. There's some interest in supporting old Amiga and Atari framebuffers in DRM. Those systems have similar limitations as VGA, but are harder to obtain and test with. With qemu, the VGA driver could fill this gap.

Apart from the Wikipedia entry, good resources on VGA are at osdev.net and FreeVGA

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