[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Host Identity Protocol on Nokia 770

[From: Andrey Khurri]

Dear all,

I have been working on porting HIPL (Host Identity Protocol for Linux) 
userspace applications to my Nokia 770. The purpose of it was to try HIP 
protocol with a mobile device such as Linux based Nokia Tablet and more 
specifically to run HIP base exchange in between tablet and other 
devices, i.e. i386 PC. Among the others goals HIP aims at better 
mobility and multihoming support for the communicating peers. It 
introduces a new name space, the Host Identity name space while 
decoupling the transport layer from the internetworking layer. I won't 
write here a whole HIP's overview. You could find more about HIP 
protocol from www.infrahip.net

My practical issues here are the following:

I have HIPL userspace applications as a debian binary package for the 
Nokia 770. I have created it inside Scratchbox and installed it on the 
tablet using Application Installer or app-installer-tool. HIP base 
exchange seems to be working however I didn't experiment much on that 
yet. So additional tests are needed to see if it might run into a 
trouble. The one I got was that I was not able to add an IPv6 address on 
my tablet to use with an interface (i tried bnep0, wlan0). For instance, 
on my PC it's done simply with "ifconfig eth0 inet6 add 3ffe::1/64". 
Therefor I couldn't run base exchange on the tablet that would use IPv6 
addresses instead of IPv4. In general HIP is implemented to support both 
IPv4 and IPv6.

1)
So far having ready-to-use hipl debian package for Nokia 770 I would 
like to make it available for others.
As I understand the process I should put it to Applications Catalog on 
maemo http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog. Is that right?
What would be desired documentation for hipl usage on the device?

2)
In order to run HIPL applications some modifications to the Linux kernel 
and patches are neccesary. With regards to this I recompiled Nokia 770 
kernel as Maemo HowTo http://maemo.org/maemowiki/HowTo_KernelCompilation 
describes it. The question now is that what would be the most convinient 
way to provide end users with this new kernel?
I don't think one who wants just try hipl on Nokia would like to hassle 
him/herself with kernel compilation. That's why I suggest I should make 
new kernel image available also.

On Maemo.org website I only found the way of using flasher utility to 
deploy newly created kernel image to the device. I am wondering would it 
be possible to create a debian binary kernel package to install right on 
the device. By the way, isn't the "su-18-kernel_*.deb" we build inside 
the Scratchbox the needed one? The HowTo assumes to install this package 
inside the Scratchbox ARM target and then just use 'zImage' to deploy 
onto the device. You see I've got a misunderstanding here so could you 
please clear my mind in this aspect.

Another thing I would like to ask is about feasibility to have few 
kernel images on the Nokia at the same time and choose one using a boot 
loader as it usually happens with normal Linux mashines?

3)
It would be really nice to find interested people who would be keen on 
experimenting with hip on Nokia 770. Any 
questions/advices/ideas/comments/feedbacks are highly appreciated either 
within this maemo mailing list or individually via email. Looking 
forward hearing from you.

Best regards,
Andrey



-- 
Andrey Khurri, Researcher
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT)
Tel: +358 50 384 1510
Fax: +358  9 694 9768
andrey.khurri at hiit.fi