I am wondering if there is a standard solution to a problem that I am facing. Say you are developing an embedded Debian Linux device. You want to have a "test farm" - a bunch of copies of your target hardware running a lot of tests, while the development is ongoing. For this to work automatically, your automation setup needs to have a way to fully re-flash the device, even if the image previously flashed to it does not boot. How would that be usually achieved?
Debconf17 has come and gone by too fast, so we all could use a moment looing back at all the fun and serious happenings of the main event in the Debian social calendar. You can find my full photo gallery on Google, Flickr and Debconf Share.
So, just to start this thing off - I am quite biased in the regards of this car as I am now working for BMW for a year and this is my company car. Also I have not had the pleasure of testing its direct competition. But I still wanted to share my experiences with this rather special product. I have now driven 20 000 km in this car, so it is time for a first review.
Instrukcija lidošanai tiem, kas sen to nav darījuši :) Derēs gan Ryanair, gan AirBaltic (es pieminēšu, kur ir starpības). Instrukcija tika rakstīta pāris radiniekiem, kas sen vai nekad nav ceļojuši un pārpublicēta šeit - ja nu kādam noderēs :)
Ievērtējam šo video:
So a couple weeks ago I was on a 1900 km trip from Latvia to southern Germany. On the second day I was still in Poland when my tank was running low. I stopped at a Shell station and looked at the pumps. I know that I needed diesel fuel and there was a choice - a black pump with Diesel followed by red pump with Shell VX Power Diesel and then a bunch of green pumps with gas. So I too the red pump and fuled up. The engine ran great, I was soon in Germany and going down autobahn with very nice speed. After a few hours the gas tank was rnning low again and again a Shell station was the first I found. I stopped there and saw the exact same pumps as in Poland - a black Diesel followed by red Shell VX Power Racing and a bunch of green pumps. I picked up the red pump again, filled my tank and drove on. After some distance I noticed that I was getting some interruptions of power and maybe slower acceleration, but it was not severe enough to make me to stop. So I drove on. All 300 kilometers to home. While sometimes speeding up to 180km/h. Only when I got to home and slowed down to city speeds did I notice that the power interruptions were more serious and also that the check engine light was on. So on Monday morning I got up early, got in the car, started it (without any problems) and drove to the nearby Mercedes dealership.
2015tā gada 23jā martā es saņemu savās rokās savu pirmo auto. Tas bija Mercedes C180 CDI 2012 un tas bija un ir lielisks auto. Šajā bloga ierakstā es atzīmēju gan sev, gan citiem cik man šis pasākums ir izmaksājis. Raksts tika atjaunots līdz auto tika pārdots.
After a long contemplation about what I want to do with my life and just as long a negotiation, I have accepted a job offer at BMW and will be moving from Latvia to Ulm, Germany in January 2016.
At the end of the previous part of this tale of travel and cars I was being dunk around the heavy waves of the azure variety against the hard stones of the Med coast near Nice, France. The next stop was a wild card before going to Venice and so a small hotel was chosen high above a mountain lake in northern Italy. This meant that the whole day was to be spent crossing the top of Italy from Med to Alps. Italy has very nice paid motorway system that makes crossing large distances easy, but not really cheap. One larger drive cost just over 40€ alone. But there are benefits - the speed is nice (not autobahn-nice, but still) and there is also the amazing thing called AutoGrill this looked like just a regular road-side fast food joint, but that was until we looked closer. There was a wide selection of nice salads, there was a freshly grilled meat pepared per order lots of wine by glass and a huge selection of Italian wines and pasta to buy. It was amazing. Maybe because our expectations were rather low, but it was truly good food. We saw many AutoGrills after that, even outside of Italy, but the ones outside of Italy were not as great.