Debian installation


jontheramer2

Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2012
Messages
44
As Pandora is basically the same hardware for all, i'm not sure if i'm crazy or if I cannot really read. I followed all the Debian-on-SD (and Pandian as well) on Pandora and have a few points;

- it boots from SD
- I have Debian commandline

but

- all X configs give me a black screen and no way to get out
- I cannot get WIFI working (considering it's all the same hardware one would hope there would be a 100% fullproof ; do this then that will happen but no)
- sound does not work

Needless to say that under Angstrom everything works fine.

The tutorials contain instructions to get the above working via graphical tools; that doesn't work, but much worse, it gives very little clue why it does not work. Are there any commandline instructions how to get WIFI, X and sound working so I can make sure that even though X does not work I can get into the system externally without pulling the battery after the screen goes black once more?

Considering many people have triend and run Deb/Pand -ian i'm sure it's just me but I have no way of debugging it without breaking the unit in 2 out of frustration for having to reboot so often... If only wifi would work... But even then ; you cannot change the graphics chip in the Pandora so how can the standard settings *not* work for me ?

Thanks!
 
I am not sure where to start to try to help. The various Debian alternatives for the Pandora are quite different in how you install them so I am surprised that you end up with the same situation with all of them.

In any case, starting with X: have you look at the log files, specifically /var/log/Xorg.0.log?

For wifi, do you have network manager installed? or wicd? The latter works well in console mode.
 
I will try wicd... Once I have networking I can get somewhere but I tried wpa_supplicant etc and it all just doesn't work :)

Current setup is just a chroot to Debian which seems to work quite well. The only downside is that I cannot figure out how to safely kill the default window manager without killing the network; otherwise I would run i3 and have the best mobile tool there is :)

Oh and;

Psion 3 > 3a > 3mx > laptop > netbook > android phone > n900 > nexus 4 > nexus 7 > Pandora (rebirth)!

I did almost the same; I have a Zaurus in there somewhere and a Zipit z2 (with Debian; couldn't get that working well either, so always ran from chroot); currently my two tools (which I use on business travel; never have a laptop when travelling to China etc) are the Pandora rebirth + P8 max ; I use the latter for communication (skype, wechat, whatsapp, email, phonecalls) and the former for coding / server management. I am hoping the Pyra will be a combination of the two so I only need that. My biggest worry is the screen however; I live in spain and I go, for work, to Shanghai and Florida and Australia mostly; the open pandora is unusable in the sun because of the screen while the P8 is perfectly readable anywhere. If the Pyra has the same kind of screen and backlighting there will be *far* too little nits to make it usable unless you are in a depressing cold/rainy country (I am from the Netherlands; Pandora is readable in NL weather 360 days/year ...).
 
Back
Top