Successfully tested with the Radxa ROCK 4C+ but could/should also work with other boards compatible with rsdk.

Download: rsdk-docker-build.sh

rsdk Docker Build Script

Build RadxaOS images for ARM single-board computers using Docker.

Requirements

• Docker
• ~10GB free disk space
• sudo access (for binfmt_misc setup)

Quick Start

chmod +x rsdk-docker-build.sh

# Build with defaults (creates rock-4c-plus-bookworm-kde-YYYYMMDD.img)
./rsdk-docker-build.sh --product rock-4c-plus

# Specify suite and edition
./rsdk-docker-build.sh --product rock-5b --suite bookworm --edition cli

# Custom image name
./rsdk-docker-build.sh --product rock-4c-plus --name my-custom.img

Output

Both compressed and uncompressed images are created automatically:

• <name>.img - Uncompressed image
• <name>.img.xz - Compressed image (xz -9)

Default output directory: ./output/

Supported Boards

Common products: rock-4c-plus, rock-5b, rock-3a, zero-3w

List all available products:

./rsdk-docker-build.sh --list

Options

• -p, --product - Board name (required)
• -s, --suite - Debian suite (optional, default from config)
• -e, --edition - Edition variant (optional, default from config)
• -o, --output - Output directory (default: ./output)
• -n, --name - Custom image name (default: product-suite-edition-date.img)
• -r, --repo - rsdk repository URL (default: official RadxaOS-SDK/rsdk)
• -l, --list - List available products
• -h, --help - Show help

Using a Custom Fork

To add support for custom editions or boards:

1. Fork https://github.com/RadxaOS-SDK/rsdk
2. Edit the fork with your changes, e.g. src/share/rsdk/configs/products.json
3. Build using your fork:

./rsdk-docker-build.sh \
  --product rock-4c-plus \
  --edition cli \
  --repo https://github.com/yourusername/rsdk.git

Example: Adding CLI edition to rock-4c-plus:

{
    "product": "rock-4c-plus",
    "supported_suite": ["bookworm"],
    "supported_edition": ["kde", "cli"]
}

Notes

• First build takes 30-60 minutes
• Uses QEMU for ARM cross-compilation
• Runs entirely in Docker containers
• Requires privileged mode for loop devices
• Default repository is official RadxaOS-SDK/rsdk

After sifting through numerous other alternatives I settled on Apple’s Custom Email Domain with iCloud Mail, pretty easy choice in the end since it’s a lot of bang for the buck and easy to setup.

The only little snag I ran into was setting up the mail account in my Outlook Mobile (Android). Setting it up as an iCloud provider was easy but then it automatically used my @icloud.com address and no option to change that to my custom address but after numerous tries I finally found the correct configuration via IMAP.

Apple ID App-specific Password

First you need to setup an app-specific password at appleid.com as described here.

Outlook Mobile Configuration

Email Address: daniel@example.com
Display Name: Daniel Wikar
Description:

IMAP Host Name: imap.mail.me.com
Port: 993
Security Type: SSL/TLS
IMAP Username: <your-account>@icloud.com
IMAP Password: <your-app-specific-password>

SMTP Host Name: smtp.mail.me.com
Port: 587
Security Type: StartTls
SMTP Username: <your-account>@icloud.com
SMTP Password: <your-app-specific-password>

Using StartTls as the Security Type for SMTP was the key in getting it to work.

Also confirmed to be working with the excellent K-9 Mail and should work with any third-party client supporting SSL/TLS + StartTls.

Kinvolk, the company behind Flatcar, was also acquired by Microsoft recently which piqued my curiosity even more.

I wrote up this little step-by-step bare metal installation guide and to be able to follow this method you would need to have a spare Linux instance with Docker. I used my OpenWRT router once again but you could also use WSL2 on Windows, a Raspberry Pi with Docker or whatever you prefer.

1. Create password

Using your existing Linux/Docker instance create a password hash to be used in the config.yaml for Flatcar.

docker run --rm --interactive --tty fscm/mkpasswd --method=SHA-512 --rounds=4096 yourpassword

https://www.flatcar.org/docs/latest/provisioning/cl-config/examples/#generating-a-password-hash

2. Create config.yaml (Container Linux Config)

I created a directory /home/daniel/ignition and this minimal config.yaml.

nano config.yaml

In the password_hash section paste the hash from 1. I also added a static IP (additional comment under 6) and made my user a member of the sudo group.

passwd:
  users:
    - name: daniel
      password_hash: "$6$rounds=4096$this_is_where_you_paste_your_really_long_password_hash"
      groups: ["sudo"]
networkd:
  units:
    - name: enp0s25.network
      contents: |
        [Match]
        Name=enp0s25

        [Network]
        DNS=1.1.1.1
        Address=192.168.100.252/24
        Gateway=192.168.100.1

https://www.flatcar.org/docs/latest/provisioning/cl-config/examples/

https://www.flatcar.org/docs/latest/provisioning/config-transpiler/configuration/

3. Transpile config.yaml into ignition.json

cat config.yaml | docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/flatcar-linux/ct:latest > ignition.json

https://flatcar-linux.org/docs/latest/provisioning/config-transpiler/

4. Setup local webserver

Setup a local webserver to host the ignition.json file and serve this during the Flatcar installation. I decided to share the directory /home/daniel/ignition using port 7080 in order to not conflict with an existing webserver.

docker run --name nginx-ignition -v /home/daniel/ignition:/usr/share/nginx/html:ro -p 7080:80 -d nginx

5. Local installation

Everything is now prepared and we’re ready to boot into a live version of Flatcar either via ISO or PXE on the target machine.

Using netboot.xyz you can pass the ignition.json already during first boot but since we’re going to do a local installation we can skip this step.

Once booted you will automatically be logged into a shell on the console without prompting for a password.

Now it’s time to transfer the ignition.json file locally using the webserver from 4.

wget http://192.168.1.1:7080/ignition.json

If you are unsure of your disk setup you can check this with…

lsblk

And you then perform the installation by running…

sudo flatcar-install -d /dev/sda -i ignition.json

6. Network configuration (Optional)

During my first installation I specified the wrong interface name (should have been Name=enp0s25) in the config.yaml and I haven’t figured out how the automatic naming works so on my second try I ran…

netstat -i

To list all active network devices…

Kernel Interface table
Iface             MTU    RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR    TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
docker0          1500        0      0      0 0             7      0      0      0 BMU
enp0s25          1500    58858      0    420 0         26959      0      0      0 BMRU
lo              65536        0      0      0 0             0      0      0      0 LRU

Then I modified config.yaml with the correct interface and transpiled again through step 3 before installing 5.

Done

Now you should be able to ssh into your freshly installed Flatcar Container Linux instance.

Full documentation is found here.

Good luck!

Inspired by this forum post but I couldn’t get it to boot straight from http so instead I did the following.

1. Created a tfpt-directory in the root of OpenWRT

mkdir tftp

2. Downloaded netboot.xyz.kpxe and netboot.xyz.efi locally

cd /tftp
curl http://boot.netboot.xyz/ipxe/netboot.xyz.kpxe -o netboot.xyz.kpxe
curl http://boot.netboot.xyz/ipxe/netboot.xyz.efi -o netboot.xyz.efi

3. Modified /etc/dnsmasq.conf to act as TFTP server

nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf

Add this block to the end of the file.

####################################
# TFTP Server custom configuration #
####################################
enable-tftp
tftp-root=/tftp
dhcp-boot=netboot.xyz.efi

/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

(Couldn’t get the BIOS/EFI identification to work so I manually switched between netboot.xyz.kpxe and netboot.xyz.efi)

4. Finally a crucial but hard to find configuration change for OpenWRT

Disable the LAN interface to announce itself as a Local IPv6 DNS server which in turn somehow conflicted with the iPXE DNS lookup (even though booted in IPv4 mode).

Available through the OpenWRT interface. Network -> Interfaces, LAN -> Edit, DHCP Server -> IPv6 Settings. Untick this box if ticked.

Identified through this thread.

Done

Good luck!

During my career I have come across two different groups of people, as always there’s really a spectra between the two but to be able to clearly describe the distinguishable differences I’ll focus on the extremes; Thinkers and Repeaters

So what’s the characteristics of a Thinker? They think for themselves, have a mind of their own and have the ability to create new creative/critical thoughts out of thin air based on their own experience and competence. Nothing is taken for granted and they don’t trust blindly, everything has to be proven and evaluated. They welcome external input for inspiration, challengement or enlightenment - but this is something they consciously evaluate to validate, oppose or reshape their own thoughts.

“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” - Peter F. Drucker

The Repeaters on the other hand can seem and sound very initiated, they can be charismatic and well-spoken but the actual words coming out of their mouths are based not on thoughts of their own but rather the words of other Thinkers or Repeaters. They depend on other people to do the thinking for them to repeat and present as their own, be it colleagues, subordinates, consultants or other external parties with or without agendas of their own.

Repeaters have a hard time (often unknowingly) separating right from wrong, A from B, facts from opinions, helpful thoughts from hidden agendas, etc.

Repeaters repeating the words of other Repeaters often end up in a ‘whispering game’ where the actual initial thought from a Thinker is lost or messed up along the way.

The lack of true understanding can even make the Repeaters’ claims end up in a complete jumbled mess where the ‘thought’ in one sentence is opposed already in the next (again unknowingly).

Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s really hard to distinguish a Repeater from a Thinker. There are professional and clever Repeaters who have built their whole career in being experts at repeating other’s thoughts as their own and doing it really well.

For some nuance it’s hard to be a Thinker in every single domain but there are clearly severe drawbacks in being a Repeater within your main profession, both for yourself and for the actual Thinkers around you.

So, are you a Thinker or a Repeater? How about your manager? Your colleagues?

Crossposted @ LinkedIn

Ever since the release of Excel 2016 a compatible SQL Server Data Mining Add-in has been missing. There has been numerous requests for Microsoft to release an official update but so far this hasn’t happened.

Having Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 installed side-by-side has been used as a workaround to get the Excel 2013 DM Add-In semi-working also for Excel 2016. The following registry hack is allowing the otherwise blocked installation to proceed for Excel 2016 without the need for an actual Excel 2013 installation.

1. Download Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 SP4 Data Mining Add-ins for Microsoft® Office® (Latest official version)

2. Insert the following entry in the Windows registry (.reg file here but use at your own risk)

3. Proceed with installation which now shouldn’t complain about missing Excel 2010/2013

During my career I have encountered numerous different ERP systems, vendors, consultants and specialists. Something that has struck me as common for many (but not all) ERP professionals is the lack of understanding for the need of other enterprise applications and/or integration of the same. Many also seem to favor customizations within the ERP rather than making it a part of a service-oriented landscape with other enterprise or business unit specific applications.

“Documentation? Well, we do have some ER diagrams but they’re not complete or up to date.”

“Why would you like to extract data out from the ERP?”

“Services? Interfaces? We’d suggest you to take a look in the database if you really need some of our data.”

“We already have that in our ERP, not as good but it would still be better to use that.”

“Integrate? Wouldn’t it be better to just migrate the data into the ERP?”

Anyone with similar experiences or maybe the opposite?

Details on how to connect it through Power BI Desktop can be found here: Connect to SSAS Multidimensional Models in Power BI Desktop

Setting up the Power BI Gateway: Manage your enterprise data source - Analysis Services

Happy dashboarding!

You can find the actual video here, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jepSqjGkuxE. I extracted some of the most interesting bits into snippets below together with some personal comments.

Perspectives

Personally I only have experience with BI in AX2012 R3 but have been working with the Microsoft BI stack outside of AX since 2007. The experience of AX BI has been a bit so-so especially since we often want to combine the data from AX with historical data and/or data from other sources. I still see the BI features in AX mainly as operational, analytics closer and more integrated to the business processes.

Workspaces

Moving from the role centers into more personalized and process-centric views - a welcome change.

Flavors of reporting in Dynamics AX

Reporting still feels a bit scattered. Interesting to see whether the new BI features in SQL Server 2016 (such as Datazen) will be leveraged in the on-prem version of AX7.

How a developer consumes aggregate data in AX7

“Aggregate Measurements” becoming an alternative to the SSAS cubes. Initally it was unclear which underlying technology is actually used (In-memory OLTP, Tabular Models, etc) but during the Q&A it was “demystified” by talking about the SQL Server columnstore indexes and read-only secondaries. I have a feel this can’t be all to it (same Aggregate Measurements deployed twice to enable Excel self-service analytics?) and it require further detailing ahead.

In-Memory Real-time vs SSAS Cube

Developer view in Visual Studio. Notice the options for both InMemoryRealTime and SSAS Cube.

AX 2012 BI capabilities are GREAT - but hard to implement

Agree to all the boxes in red. Good to see the AX team acknowledging and aiming to fill the gaps.

Aggregate models - Deployment choices

Here we can see the difference between the two deployment options. Nonclustered Columnstore Index (NCCI) or SSAS. Multi-dimensional or Tabular not mentioned - referring to MDX a give-away for MOLAP?

AX7 - Power BI

Not much to mention here apart from it becoming a two-way integration of Power BI. Data out from and reports/dashboards back into AX.

Data extraction / Data mashup

It was once again expressed that if you want to extract data from AX to integrate into an external data warehouse DIXF is the way to go. If you want to consume data irregularly for data mashups exposing queries through OData will still be available much like today.