poulsback live stick v2026.11.09c [Ubuntu 11.04, EMGD 1.8]

[ishad0w]

A bootable Ubuntu 11.04 (i386) live USB image and its offline build
kitchen with Intel's EMGD 1.8.0.2032 driver installed and configured, for
every GPU that EMGD 1.8 drives: GMA 500 (PCI 8086:8108, Poulsbo, Atom
Z5xx) and GMA 600 on the Atom E6xx (8086:4108, Tunnel Creek), both
PowerVR SGX535. On the rest of the GMA 500/600 family (Atom Z6xx Oak Trail,
8086:8109) and on any other machine, the stick still boots and its device
report records everything it can read.

A device report in one boot. If you own a GMA 500 or GMA 600 machine, with
or without EMGD support, please run it once and send us the result (section 5).

Tested on a Dell Inspiron Mini 12 (1210, 1280×800), a Fujitsu LOOX U/G90
(1280×800, LVDS panel without EDID) and QEMU; no Atom E6xx machine has been
tested yet. A Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 (GMA 600, Atom Z670, which EMGD 1.8 does
not drive) gives a device report without the driver parts.

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1. What is this?

GMA 500 netbooks, UMPCs and tablets from 2008 to 2011 use a PowerVR SGX535
GPU. Intel's last Linux driver with 2D, OpenGL 2.0, OpenGL ES 2.0 and VA-API
acceleration for it is EMGD 1.8, built for Linux 2.6.38 and the X server 1.9
ABI, that is, Ubuntu 11.04. It does not build on a current distribution.

This stick boots exactly that system on any GMA 500 machine, from the stick and
RAM, without touching the internal disk. It solves the three things that
usually stop a generic EMGD image:

• Panels without EDID. Many UMPCs (the LOOX among them) have no EDID on the
  internal panel, and EMGD then needs exact timings in xorg.conf. At boot,
  poulsback-panel-mode reads the panel timing from the video BIOS (VBT) and
  writes it into /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Panels with EDID use the EDID.
• A dark backlight. EMGD's default configuration can leave the backlight
  at 0 %. The stick sets it to 100 %.
• Per-machine settings. SSH keys, an xorg.conf and an early-boot script
  go on the POULSBACK drive, which any computer can write. The image itself
  never needs rebuilding.

2. Highlights

• Device report. Boot menu entry 3, "Collect a device report": about one to
  two minutes, nothing to type, then the stick offers to power off.
• A drive any computer can open. Partition 2, POULSBACK (FAT32), is
  readable and writable on Windows, macOS and Linux. It holds the reports and
  all settings. The data partition (ext3, logs and captures) is partition 3
  and grows to the end of the stick on the first normal boot.
• Fits a 2 GB stick. The image is about 1.4 GiB unpacked.
• One compressed image (.img.xz) that balenaEtcher and Rufus write
  directly.

3. Release files and SHA-256

The version is the build date plus a letter for that day's build.

File	Size	Description
poulsback-natty-stick-2026.11.09c.img.xz	268 MiB	The disk image (1409 MiB unpacked), xz-compressed
poulsback-natty-stick-2026.11.09c.files.sha256	12 KiB	SHA-256 of the Poulsback files inside the live system
poulsback-natty-kitchen-2026.11.09c.tar.gz	210 MiB	The offline build kitchen (section 8)
SHA256SUMS	1 KiB	SHA-256 of the files above and of the unpacked .img

56306b5c77b20ecd70843dd44a9d7e2208de0ee5172bb7e92bab946501088eeb  poulsback-natty-stick-2026.11.09c.img.xz
5144173af012a9e37c5fbc5c6e2765a591dbd88482e8ea499083647370442fe1  poulsback-natty-stick-2026.11.09c.files.sha256
fa07743e422a44f058865458ae3c743c9af78a8daa3737d1f5156289c20b6676  poulsback-natty-kitchen-2026.11.09c.tar.gz
40190258ab9ac1e3d78e792032c2f2a0c71476c57f0e788129c6174ee01c5b07  poulsback-natty-stick-2026.11.09c.img

4. Quick start

Step 1: Check the download

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing

Step 2: Write the stick (2 GB or larger; everything on it is erased)

• Windows or macOS: open the .img.xz in balenaEtcher or Rufus and write
  it to the stick.

• Linux: replace /dev/sdX with the whole stick (check with lsblk):

  xz -dc poulsback-natty-stick-2026.11.09c.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress

  The kitchen's write-stick.sh writes only to a removable USB disk and
  verifies the written bytes.

Step 3 (optional): Add your SSH key

Open the POULSBACK drive on any computer and save your RSA or ECDSA public
key as ssh/authorized_keys.

Step 4: Boot (BIOS mode)

Choose the stick in the machine's boot menu:

Entry	What it does
1 (default)	Text console (poulsback logged in), SSH and boot logging. /etc/X11/xorg.conf is ready; sudo poulsback-start-x11 starts X11, Openbox and xterm.
2	The same, and X11 with Openbox and xterm start by themselves.
3	Collect a device report (reads only, then powers off).

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5. Send us a device report

1. Boot entry 3, "Collect a device report".
2. Wait until the screen says DONE, then press Enter. The machine powers off.
3. Plug the stick into any computer and open POULSBACK, folder reports.
4. Post pbr-…-summary.txt in the
   device reports discussion
   and attach pbr-….tar.gz.

The report reads the system and its devices, the firmware tables (video BIOS
and panel data, SMBIOS, every ACPI table) and the display registers. Where EMGD
drives the GPU, it also starts the driver and X, lists the OpenGL, OpenGL ES
and VA-API features, and runs a short benchmark. It never opens the internal
disk. It keeps whatever it could read: a part that fails is listed in the
summary, and the rest is still saved.

The report includes the machine's serial numbers, UUIDs and network
addresses. Please read the summary before you post it. To leave them out,
boot entry 1 and run sudo poulsback-collect --redact on its console. Private
keys are never collected.

GPU at 00:02.0	What the report covers
8086:8108, 8086:4108	everything, including the driver, GL and the benchmark
8086:8109, 8086:4100–4107	system, firmware and display registers (EMGD 1.8 does not drive these chips)
anything else	system and firmware

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6. Inside the live system

Access

• Console user: poulsback, password poulsback, sudo without a password.

• SSH: keys only, from ssh/authorized_keys on POULSBACK. The stick gets
  its address by DHCP on the wired port and prints it on the console with its
  id (pbstick-xxxxxx) and host key fingerprint. The id and host keys are made
  at the first boot and kept on the data partition (stick/hostkeys/).

  Ubuntu 11.04 has OpenSSH 5.8, which has no ed25519. From a current OpenSSH
  client with an RSA key:

  ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -o HostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa -o PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa poulsback@<ADDRESS>

Software

Category	Included
Kernel and GPU driver	Linux 2.6.38-16-generic (i386); EMGD 1.8.0.2032 (emgd.ko, emgd_drv.so, emgd_dri.so, the PowerVR user-space libraries)
X11	X server 1.9 (1.10.9-down1.9.2.901.2, the 1.9 server EMGD needs on Ubuntu 11.04), Openbox, xterm
GL, GLES and 2D tools	glxinfo, glxgears, es2-info, x11perf, rendercheck 1.6, apitrace 3.0, the Mesa demos
Video	vainfo, FFmpeg 0.6, MPlayer
Development	gcc 4.5, make, cmake, dkms, gdb, strace, ltrace, Python 2.7
Poulsback helpers	poulsback-collect, poulsback-panel-mode, poulsback-start-x11, poulsback-selfcheck, poulsback-data-hook
Lab tools	/opt/poulsback-capture, /opt/poulsback-s4, /opt/poulsback-s5: the GL and 2D test programs and benchmark scripts of the project's lab runs

Useful commands

# Release, kernel, tools, keys, partitions, network:
sudo poulsback-selfcheck

# The panel mode from the video BIOS, and the mode written at boot:
sudo poulsback-panel-mode
cat /var/run/poulsback-live/panel-boot.txt

# Start X11 + Openbox + xterm from the text console:
sudo poulsback-start-x11

# The GL driver in X:
DISPLAY=:0 glxinfo | head -n 25

# A device report in a running session:
sudo poulsback-collect

# Stop the logging, unmount the data partition and power off:
sudo poweroff

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7. Settings on POULSBACK (no rebuild)

Each setting is optional. They are read at every boot, before the GPU driver
and X start. Windows line ends are fine.

POULSBACK/
├── README.txt
├── reports/               # device reports
├── ssh/
│   └── authorized_keys    # your SSH public keys (RSA or ECDSA)
├── x11/
│   └── xorg.conf          # a complete xorg.conf that replaces the automatic one
└── init/
    ├── init.sh.example    # copy to init.sh: a shell script run as root at boot
    └── rootfs/            # files copied onto the live system (init/rootfs/etc/x -> /etc/x)

The stick checks that POULSBACK is its own partition, mounts it read-only,
copies these files to RAM and unmounts it again. init/init.sh runs after the
automatic xorg.conf is written and before EMGD and X start; its output is in
init-hook.log in the boot's log directory (/var/run/poulsback-live/current/).
init/init.sh.example shows how to start X at boot, allow SSH password login
and set the backlight.

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8. The kitchen: poulsback-natty-kitchen-2026.11.09c.tar.gz

Everything needed to rebuild or change the image, offline and without root:

• build.sh, vm-check.sh (three boots in QEMU, about 3 minutes),
  write-stick.sh, collect-test.py (host test of the device report);
• overlay/: the stick's own files (upstart jobs and poulsback-* scripts);
• capture/: the lab tools' sources and prebuilt i386 binaries, and the
  rendercheck 1.6 source;
• drivers-emgd/: the EMGD 1.8 packages and the X server 1.9 packages;
• apt-repo/natty/: an offline Ubuntu 11.04 i386 package repository, so a
  rebuild does not depend on mirrors that no longer exist;
• base-builder/: stage 1, the builder of the live base system.

Rebuild with a change of your own:

tar -xzf poulsback-natty-kitchen-2026.11.09c.tar.gz
cd poulsback-natty-kitchen-2026.11.09c
# edit files under overlay/ or capture/, then:
./build.sh natty --version v2026.11.09d
./vm-check.sh build/poulsback-natty-stick-2026.11.09d.img 52224 /tmp/vm-natty

build.sh takes ../poulsback-natty-stick-*.img.xz as its base (or
--base PATH) and writes the new image to build/. Host requirements: xz,
zstd, fakeroot, squashfs-tools, e2fsprogs, dosfstools, mtools,
python3, and qemu-system-i386 for vm-check.sh. The kitchen's README.md
and README-emgd.md have the details.

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9. Known issues

• BIOS mode only. The stick has no UEFI boot loader; firmware set to boot
  only UEFI does not start it.
• Some BIOSes reject some sticks. If you see only a cursor and then the
  boot menu again, try another stick.
• The first normal boot can be slow on slow sticks. Growing the data
  partition took many minutes on one stick. Let it finish before you power off;
  /var/log/poulsback-grow.log shows when it is done. A report made in the
  meantime is still saved to POULSBACK.
• EMGD 1.8 does not drive GMA 600 on the Atom Z6xx (Oak Trail) or
  8086:8109. The report then skips the driver, GL and benchmark parts.

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Legal & Educational Disclaimer

All third-party trademarks, proprietary drivers, BIOS/VBIOS firmware images, documentation, and software packages included or referenced in this archive remain the property of their respective copyright holders — including Intel®, IEGD, and EMGD (Intel® Embedded Media and Graphics Driver) (Intel Corporation), PowerVR® / SGX535 (Imagination Technologies Limited), Windows® (Microsoft Corporation), Ubuntu® (Canonical Ltd.), and respective system OEMs (Dell, ASUS, Fujitsu, CompuLab, Sony). Open-source and upstream packages retain their original licenses and copyright notices.

This project is an independent hardware-preservation and interoperability-research effort and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Intel Corporation, Imagination Technologies Limited, Microsoft Corporation, Canonical Ltd., or any hardware OEM. All materials are provided strictly for non-commercial educational, interoperability research, and legacy hardware preservation purposes ("as is", without warranty of any kind). If you are a copyright holder and have any concerns regarding archived legacy binaries, please open an issue for prompt review or removal.

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This discussion was created from the release poulsback live stick v2026.11.09c [ Ubuntu 11.04, EMGD 1.8].