How to use IS_ERR and PTR_ERR? What do they mean?

From the kernel definition there are three macros:

1. IS_ERR - used to check, Returns non-0 value if the ptr is an error. Otherwise 0 if it’s not an error.
2. PTR_ERR - used to print. Current value of the pointer.
3. IS_ERR_VALUE - is explained a little bit more detail here¹.

I find this the most useful for kernel space programming. Used as follows- if ptr is the pointer you want to check then use it as follows:

if (IS_ERR(ptr))
     printk("Error here: %ld", PTR_ERR(ptr));

Apple IOS: How to backup health data to windows or MAC

This is an old post, but keeping it here for archival.

Before starting you need to have email correctly configured on your phone.

1. Start the health app
2. Navigate through "Health Data (folder with heart on it)" -> "All" -> Share icon in top right corner (the square box with the arrow on it).
3. When you do that you will be prompted for confirmation as below:

Linux: Easy solution vim caught deadly signal segv vim preserving files vim finished

Ran into this irritating problem when everything was initially working fine on my system.

I had copy pasted something into the command window by mistake which caused vi to crash and keep spitting this out. I am using a Fedora version.

Thing that I tried which did not work:
1. Rebooting
2. Uninstalling and reinstalling vi

Solution: Under your home directory there is a file .viminfo which contains all the cached vi information. Delete this file. It will get recreated afresh the  next time vi starts. Just deleting this file fixed the problem for me.

Linux: Solution Unknown symbol “__aeabi_ldivmod”

You might notice that while compiling for your 32bit platforms your kernel module compiles. However, when you are inserting it we see a failure (either at boot or while explicitly doing an insmod or modprobe).

The reason this "Unknown symbol in module" is seen is because you are in some instruction trying to do a 64bit division in the Linux kernel for an ARM platform (32bit).

Why is the symbol missing though if everything compiles. The compiler wants to do the 64bit div with slow library functions which Linux does not implement. So when the code is run, the symbol (__aeabi_ldivmod) is not found.

The solution to this problem is to use do_div() while including <asm/div64.h>.

Linux: Solution Fatal section header offset is bigger than file size

The error I was seeing while recompiling a driver:
fatal section header offset 32425246532452 in file 'vmlinux' is bigger than filesize=35524847

What helped was trying from scratch:

sudo make distclean
make menuconfig
make modules
sudo make modules_install

Perforce: Protected namespace access denied

I ran into this error when I was creating a new clientspec and tried to checkout a new tree with this clientspec. I was using

p4 sync ...

Protected namespace ... access denied

Found out through debugging that this error was not being generated due to a problem with the permissions on the local directory but rather because the clientspec was incorrectly pointing to a non-existing path on the repository. You are trying to access some part of the repo that is not setup or you dont have permissions to access. Run p4 client and fix the clientspec, and things should work.

Fix the client spec and things work.

p4 shelve equivalent in Git with an example

The equivalent of p4 shelve on GIT is stashing.

Say I have modified the file on my repository and I see the following:

techmuser@gw2:~/repositories/softlockup_repo/scripts$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
        modified:   vimrc
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Now to shelve these changes, 

techmuser@gw2:~/repositories/softlockup_repo/scripts$ git stash
Saved working directory and index state WIP on master: 80e892a Track git aliases.       modified:   generic_aliases
HEAD is now at 80e892a Track git aliases.

Windows: Creating a disk catalog for your external hard drive

On my windows machine, I wanted to create a disk catalog that I could use to see the movies I already had watched or downloaded from my provider.

1. I found that the easiest way to do this is by creating a text file which has a list of all files on the external drive from that directory and saving that info to a file.
2. When needed, search the text file which is used as a catalog.

Creation of the catalog is very easy. For your destination path (on the external drive),  do the following:

1. From the windows start menu, type and search for "cmd"
2. This will launch the command window.
3. In the command window run the following command:

DIR "F:\path\to\dir" /s > "C:\List.txt"

This command assumes that F:\path\to\dir is the directory which you are planning to list. The catalog file is the C:\List.txt file which can be read and searched like a normal text file.

For making a catalog from any directory use something like this in a .bat file:

DIR /s > "Catalog.txt"

Thought Experiment: Why not have multiple woofers for each channel

Ever wondered why there is a single subwoofer and multiple small speakers for higher frequencies?
Because the human hear can only distinguish the higher frequencies spatially. Why?
Because of the wavelength. The base (subwoofer) is the lower frequency sound which is usually a few HZ which would typically have a wavelength of the order of 10s of feet. Hence in this case, the two human ears which are placed less than a feet apart on our head cant differentiate between base sound  from different channels. Hence we only have one subwoofer for the base sounds and multiple smaller  speakers (5.1 or 2.1 stereo) for the higher frequency sounds.