IBM has published the following new technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its DeveloperWorks website. They cover a range of interesting (though not necessarily embedded) technical topics, primarily related to Linux and open source system development. Some require free registration. Enjoy . . . !

• Detecting and Correcting I/O and Memory Errors — SoCs (systems-on-chips) are often deployed in communications, storage, network processing, and mission-critical embedded data processing systems. It is impossible to fully prevent data loss, but engineering due diligence is required to ensure that systems are as safe as practically possible given current data coding methods for error detection and correction. Find out how to build error recovery into your SoCs.
• Home, Sweet, Cyber Home — Real-life houses seem to be remarkably resistant to cyberfication. Even with broadband reaching more and more households, we haven't seen any sort of explosion in beeping, blooping, massaging, or robot houses. We've found the flying car; now where is the cyberhouse?
• Transforming the Mac Mini into the Perfect Multimedia Machine — The previous articles in this series show you how to create a scriptable, network-connected appliance that can play back still images and scale them to fit an arbitrary display window. This article explores the technical issues in video playback, and shows how a blend of hardware and software achieves good performance at a reasonable cost. Also, Lewin Edwards reveals that MP3 does not mean MPEG-3, which alone is worth the price of admission.
• Fortune Cookies through the /proc Filesystem — The /proc filesystem is a virtual filesystem that permits a novel approach for communication between the Linux kernel and user space. In the /proc filesystem, virtual files can be read from or written to as a means of communicating with entities in the kernel, but unlike regular files, the content of these virtual files is dynamically created. This article introduces you to the /proc virtual filesystem and demonstrates its use.
• LPI Exam 102: The Kernel — Welcome to the next step in studying for the Linux certification exams. This top-rated series helps you build fundamental skills on Linux systems administration. In this tutorial (the first in a series of nine tutorials on exam 102 topics), Ian Shields introduces you to the kernel on Linux, and in doing so, begins preparing you to take the Linux Professional Institute Junior Level Administration (LPIC-1) Exam 102.
• The future of Eclipse Communication Framework — The Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) is a new Eclipse project devoted to providing an open source framework supporting the creation of communications-based applications on the Eclipse platform. This article gives gives you a quick glimpse into ECF and an example that demonstrated one of the many capabilities the framework provides, and its future direction.
• Build UNIX software with Eclipse — Eclipse is an excellent open source IDE and has many helpful features. It runs on any UNIX platform with a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) (Version 1.4 or newer) and an SWT port, such as Linux, Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX. Learn how UNIX developers looking to move to a friendlier, graphical IDE from the traditional command-line environment can use Eclipse with their existing code.
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about C Types — How large is |char| on a 60-bit machine? What's a trap representation? How can |free()| change its argument into a null pointer? Learn about these questions and more in the third article in our series on C types.
• First look at Service Data Objects for C++ — Service Data Objects provide a means of describing the structure of a graph of data elements and a means of loading a particular instance of the data based on that graph description from any data source. SDO also provides the ability to track changes to the graph of data as it is used by an application. In this article, you are introduced to the API you need to work with Service Data Objects from C++.
• Build your own Java performance profiling tool — Profiling is a technique for measuring where software programs consume resources, including CPU time and memory. This article provides a list of best-of-breed features you might look for in an ideal profiler and explains why aspect-oriented techniques are well suited to achieving some of those features. It also introduces you to the JDK 5.0 agent interface and walks you through the steps of using it to build your own aspect-oriented profiler.
• Better code testing with JUnit and FIT — The beauty of Framework for Integrated Tests (FIT) is that it enables the customer or business side of an organization to get involved in the testing process early (i.e., during development). Whereas JUnit's strength lies in unit testing during the coding process. This article shows you how to combine the best of FIT and JUnit for better teamwork and effective end-to-end testing.
• The Java Good Housekeeping Theory — Putting your toys away when you are done is always a drag, but if you dont take the time to do it, you will have a huge mess over time. Garbage collection does an awful lot of the cleanup for us, and it simplifies development and eliminates entire categories of potential code errors, but some java resources still require explicit action on our part. This article discusses the limitations of garbage collection and identifies situations when you have to do your own housecleaning.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.