Category Archives: CyanogenMod

Using Iperf for Collecting Data – Demo Pt 4

Today, I am going to take a look at Iperf and get it running between my server (written in Ocaml and running my laptop) and client (on an android phone). To avoid the issues with IP addresses, I will use the same Wi-Fi network for both the client and server so that both devices are behind the same NAT box and can address each other using the private IP addresses. In this case, (like before) I only need the IP address of the server, which I will get from connection information in Ubuntu 12.04.

Iperf is already installed the server (my laptop) from when I was using Iperf to test the network properties of Tor such as latency, bandwidth and packet-loss. This was before starting this blog. I assume that Iperf was not included in Ubuntu 12.04 and that I got it via “sudo apt-get install iperf” (someone please correct me if I am wrong in this assumption)

Getting on Iperf on the client (an android phone) is a little more complex. Iperf has an android application at the google play store but my android phone does not have an app store as its running CyanogenMod. The paragraph at the top of this wikipedia article explains why there is no build in google play store

The following instruction where taken from this YouTube video. To do this you will need a micro SD card and a USB adaptor

To get the Google Play Store on CyanogenMod:

  1. Download the correct version of gapps from here
  2. Copy the .zip file of gappy onto the micro SD card and put SD back into phone
  3. Reboot in recovery mode
  4. Select flash zip from SD card and then the gapp file
  5. Reboot android phone
  6. Sign-in to your Google account

Then I simply get the Iperf application from the Google Play Store by searching Iperf.

But…
The Iperf application on android don’t seem to work,  The application will load and allow me to enter an Iperf command, in this example I am simply entering -s and click Done, but then nothing happens. If I click the button with “off” on, it momentary turns green and says on before returning to off.
So as per usual its time for some trouble shooting checks:

  • Is the application for my version of andriod ? Yes, the application requirement is 1.5 or up and my version is 2.3.7
  • Is there network connectivity ?  Yes
  • Is the command that I’m test correct ? Yes -s is the example used for screenshots on Google play, also other commands like -c also don’t work
  • Is this a known bug ? nope, source here

I’ve posted the question on stackoverflow here

Whilst I wait and see if anyone can help with my problem. I am going to take a look into the world of Android terminal emulators to see if I could run Iperf this way instead if the android application still fails to work or maybe I can ssh into the phone and run iperf. CyanogenMod comes with a terminal emulator, which I will use for now

Running the Android Client – Demo Pt 2

[ Sorry but this is part 2 in the series, I have completed part 1 but will not be able to upload the article until tomorrow ]

This is the 2nd part of a series on my taking a look at the code here, to test it and then improve it if required. In part 1, I ran the Ocaml server on my laptop. In this part, I run the android client. Tomorrow (Monday), in part 3 I am going to get the client and server communicating. On Tuesday, I will hopefully collect some data that I can then extract in some suitable format. On Wednesday, I hope to run Iperf between my client and server to collect data and extract in some suitable format. On Thursday, I hope to have a day of collecting data using both the GitHub code and Iperf. Finally on Friday, I hope to use a statistics package such as MatLab to compare the data collected and see if there is a statistically significant difference.

Since I have managed to mess up my eclipse/android install (see part 1), this gives me a perfect excuse to set up eclipse with ADT Plugin on my desktop. I’ve also got my hands on a different android phone, since the code that testing was designed for API 10. The phone info is as follows:


Model: HTC Hero Andriod Version: 2.3.7CPU: ARMv6- compatible processor #34Available memory: 190MBMod Version: CyanogenMod-7.2.0-RC1-UNOFFICAL
Build Number: GWK74

THE BIG PLAN

The stages in setting up the Android ADK, Eclipse and loading the code that I’m testing on the Android device (spec above)

  1. Download the Android SDK (Software Development Kit)
  2. The SDK only installs the SDK tools so to install other parts of the SDK, I’ve got to open up the Andriod SDK Manager, this is done by cd’ing into the tools/ directory and executing android SDK
  3. To develop an Andriod app, I need to download the lastest Android SDK Platform-tools and at least on Android platform. The platform that I want is the one associated with Android 2.3.7 and API 10, I’m going to get the related SDK Platform. Documentation and System image.
  4. Download and install the latest Eclipse Classic
  5. Add the source of the ADT Plugin to the Repository in Eclipse and download the Developer Tools in via Eclipse
  6. Specify the location of the Android SDK directory in the Preferences panel of Eclipse
  7. Create a AVD (Android Virtual Device) in Eclipse with target platform 2.3.7 and API 10
  8. Download the code that I’m testing from GitHub
  9. Import the code into Eclpise
  10. Test Code on the AVD
  11. Plug in Android phone and test code on the Andriod phone

AND THEN THE REALITY

1

The Android SDK is avaliable from the Android Developer Site, the package for Linux is called android-sdk_r20-linux.tgz.

The download comes as a .tgz file, this can be extracted using: tar -zxf android-sdk_r20-linux.tgz after using cd to move to the directory that you downloaded the file to.

I’ve found that its useful the learn as your going along, the purpose of the arguments that you are passing to programs, so that you can then easily adjust the arguments in future to suit your needs. Using man tar, explains that -z means filter archive through gzip, -x means extract the filesand -f means that your next going to give the file name.I would highly recommend that when following tutorials with Unix commands that you use man to look up what the executable and its arguments do.

2

As with the last time I installed Android SDK, to launch the Android ADK Manager, I need to enter ./android SDK instead of android SDK. This then appears to work fine, but I would still be interested as to why I didn’t work as expected.

[To clarify This command is entered after you use cd to move into android-sdk-linux/tools]

3

I selected the required packages (that I’ve listed in the plan above) and download them, simple as.

4

(Read this whole paragraph before beginning to download Eclipse) I download Eclipse Classic 4.2 for 32 bits as a .tar.gz file and extract the file (like before using tar -zxf eclipse-SDK-4.2-linux-gtk.tar.gz ). To install Eclipse, I cd into the new eclipse directory, to find no configure file, so my normal method of installing from .tar.gz files, of using ./configure && make && sudo make install will now not work. I little bit of research highlights that installing eclipse its not as straightforward as it might seem and the best approach for integration into Ubuntu is to get it from the software center, though I would prefer to continue to use the command line, I’m happy to leave it for now and return to this point at a later date

5

I start up eclipse, select my workspace and go into Help > Install New Software. I add the ADT Plugin at the URL https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/. I then select the Developers Tools and install

6

With a slow connection,

you could be waiting sometime

I restarted Eclipse and configured the new ADT Plugin to link it to the Android SDK. On launching Eclipse, I’m presented with a Welcome to Android wizard (not used in the instruction at https://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/installing-adt.html)

7/8/9

Using the Eclipse GUI setting up a virtual device is straightforward. I navigate to the correct page on GitHub, download the code and extract as already done twice before and then I import the code as an existing Android project into Eclipse.

UNEXPECTED DIGRESSION

On loading the code, that I know should compile, eclipse highlights 2 errors and 13 warnings. As I’m just testing the code today before reviewing it next week. I will ignore the warming but deal with the errors as they prevent me from testing the code. The first error is from the line: import com.google.gson.Gson; I download the Gson project from googlecode and add it as an external libray to the project to overcome this. The second error is from the following line: public void onClick(View v). The error is that: The method onClick(View) must override a superclass method so this can be fixed by removing the above @Override annotation

10

Before I can run the code on the emulator, I create a new andriod project and add the code so far. I then use Run As > Android Application to test the code and it works

11

I put the android phone into USB debug mode, plug it in and run as. Again it works 🙂

“The best part about being a computer scientist is the feeling of satisfaction when something finally works”