Debian On An Sd Card

[FouDuBassan]

Hi!

I know it's not really the place, except if we consider some pre-built kernel in the proposed images, in addition to the distro's packages.
I've seen interesting things concerning the wifi chipset of the pandora in the kernel.
Does anyone have information on how well the pandora and its devices would work with a new kernel? Maybe about the port, availability, of patches to work against the current tarball?

Also I have seen someone asking for a kind of menu at the boot, which could be just great.
Would it be possible, without being a waste of time, to have a booting process asking for the device from which to boot, and maybe for the kernel version?

BTW Stuckie, can you add net-tools to the package list for version 1.1 please? Many thankx!

Cheers.

 

[chris_c]

Hi!

I know it's not really the place, except if we consider some pre-built kernel in the proposed images, in addition to the distro's packages.
I've seen interesting things concerning the wifi chipset of the pandora in the kernel.
Does anyone have information on how well the pandora and its devices would work with a new kernel? Maybe about the port, availability, of patches to work against the current tarball?

Also I have seen someone asking for a kind of menu at the boot, which could be just great.
Would it be possible, without being a waste of time, to have a booting process asking for the device from which to boot, and maybe for the kernel version?

BTW Stuckie, can you add net-tools to the package list for version 1.1 please? Many thankx!

Cheers.

I had a (quick!) look at building a more modern kernel, but must have missed some pandora specific patches as it failed

I cannot help but thinking the open embedded is really holding the Pandora back, I can only assume that's the reason for such an
out of date kernel??? all the omap2/3 stuff from TI seems to be in the latest stable mainline kernel.

I've a feeling that the latest kernel would make a difference with the wifi driver...


Stuckie as far as releases go, would it not be better to just release a single NONE xwindows rootfs with aptitude installed, then people can install whatever desktop, afaict the pnd stuff is all none xwindows dependent, so as long as the cli rootfs can run something like pcsx-rearmed (also not dependent on Xwindows) then everything else is good to go...

 

[xopher]

Stuckie as far as releases go, would it not be better to just release a single NONE xwindows rootfs with aptitude installed, then people can install whatever desktop, afaict the pnd stuff is all none xwindows dependent, so as long as the cli rootfs can run something like pcsx-rearmed (also not dependent on Xwindows) then everything else is good to go...

I think this is a good idea too

 

[chris_c]

It also has the benefit of poor Stuckie not having to make 1,001 different rootfs, each flavoured to peoples wants...

 

[FouDuBassan]

+1 even if, for 2mb, I don't really care that a window manager is there or not, really...

 

[TitanUranus]

I'd happy installing my own window manager. As an added bonus, when it inevitably pisses me off I won't be able to blame someone else (not that I'd ever do that). Now it seems the official boards are not as popular as here, and I understand why. But I made a mistake and posted this on the official boards when I'd have gotten more response here:

Ok, I have a couple of questions - as yet I haven't tried what I intend because I'm very tired and would only get frustrated. I figure though I can guess a few of the short comings in my plan, and if I ask my questions tonight before I go to bed, there may be a couple of useful answers waiting for me and I can start refreshed tomorrow (all being well).

First let me explain what I want to do, I want to boot from my 2.5" passport HDD (which runs nicely using the Pandoras battery as a power source by the way). Obviously that would be a bit insane for normal use, but currently I have my desktop PC on 24 hours a day, at night I listen to old radio shows and download torrents while I sleep, something the Pandora can do using much less power - yes it would be plugged into the mains drawing power for its self and the attached 500gb 2.5" HDD - and probably with the battery removed (and clocked at 500mhz). To gain speed and save ANY writing to SDHC since I'll have a large capacity HDD connected anyway, I'd like to boot from HDD partition 1 (which will be an over generous 5gb for the OS) the most of the drive will be partition 2 for storage, and another small partition 3 for swap (2gb sounds nice!).

The main points I wonder about are as follows, can I boot from a USB HDD? If not, can I set up a small boot partition on an SDHC which will set the root to sda1 and load the OS from there? What will the boot.txt contain? I'd guess: root=/dev/sda1 and if booting from SDHC then "ext2load mmc 0:1" will work, but if I can boot from HDD WTF should I replace "mmc" with? Is it as simple as "sda 1" (as with lots of linux stuff it usually makes sense but only once the proper answer is revealed to you - my "guesses" are invariably close, but not right).

My next major question, which could save me finding out the hard way, could I make the root filesystem EXT4 (oooh, don't you just love the dangerous speed of EXT4?). I suspect that booting from EXT4 is a no-go area, so if I made a small fat32 or ext2 partition with the boot image on it but make the root fs a larger EXT4 partition would that do the trick, or are we not able to use EXT4 yet?

Are there any other hideous (and probably glaringly obvious) traps I'd need to avoid? I'm a linux noob, but I'm a fairly quick learner so I don't feel totally out of my depth or anything, I'd just like someone with more knowledge than I have to warn me of obvious mistakes I may make that would seriously tax my ill educated arse (where my brain resides).

It'd be great to just bung 50 torrents and leave them seeding/downloading overnight, while soothing music plays over my superb audio system, in the knowledge that my PC won't turn my bedroom into a baking oven. As an added bonus it might gain the earth an extra billionth of a nanosecond lifespan by reducing power consumption.

I'm off to bed now, sweet dreams everyone, or have a good day depending on where in the world you are.

My questions still stand. I have spent a while today trying to boot from the HDD without any luck (or brains). I ended up installing 1.0.4 LXDE on an SD again, just for something to play around with. Looks like I might have to sit around for a while in a hospital tomorrow (got some tests that will no doubt take forever) so I'd like to get it running nicely. I might use the Pandora to hack into the hospital computer and change my medical records to say I'm a super healthy man with a great life expectancy. Then I can nip out and get some excellent life insurance - ha ha.

 

[xopher]

I recall seeing a thread where someone had spoke or at least made a casual mention of booting via the USB port, don't recall who (maybe torpor)though but it was in these forums, they used a flash drive but the hardware shouldn't matter unless you're finding yourself with a race condition where the drive doesn't spin up fast enough for mount? Can you try booting an OS via a USB flash drive and see if the results are different? Good luck in the white room tomorrow.

 

[TitanUranus]

Thanks. I've mislaid the cheapo SDHC reader I bought from poundland or I'd try the SD card I've already installed debian on. If I find it (or if I pass poundland I'll pick one up) and try it. I first tried to see boot/autoboot.txt could be seen on the HDD but it wasn't picked up in the menu. I then tried making a boot.txt in a small partition on the SD card which would set root to SDA1, it read the boot files alright from SD, and the HDD light did flicker for a moment but it was just a black screen from then on. I tried several variations for the boot.txt to try and direct it to read from the HDD but nothing I did worked. I probably need to spend a bit more time playing with it, but I'm tired and can't concentrate.

Also, I tried updating the 1.0.4 image with the files needed to get PND's to run, but must have missed something somewhere. When trying to run (I tried quite a few) it'd get a CPU spike, then a few seconds of SD activity, another CPU spike and generally nothing, though occasionally a black screen would pop up for a few seconds leading me to get my hopes up and then disappoint.

I also tried out Arch linux, now there's a minimalist distribution if ever I saw one! Well, I do recall running unix on my C64 once, I think that might get the award for "Microscopic OS of the Millennium".

 

[chris_c]

as far as the pnd stuff goes it shoves fail logs in /tmp as pnd-somthing-or-other worth a look can sometimes help...

theres a delay parameter in autoboot.txt isn't there, you might need to up it to get usb devices spinning but that *shouldn't* be an issue....

 

[xopher]

Digression, love that signature chris. Sorry, carry on.

 

[Stuckie]

For some reason, the other board doesn't send me notification emails - even though I've set the flags in my profile.. so yea, posting here will get more attention.

I'm going to be away for the next couple of weekends but quickly:

The main points I wonder about are as follows, can I boot from a USB HDD? If not, can I set up a small boot partition on an SDHC which will set the root to sda1 and load the OS from there? What will the boot.txt contain? I'd guess: root=/dev/sda1 and if booting from SDHC then "ext2load mmc 0:1" will work, but if I can boot from HDD WTF should I replace "mmc" with? Is it as simple as "sda 1" (as with lots of linux stuff it usually makes sense but only once the proper answer is revealed to you - my "guesses" are invariably close, but not right).

I'm not particularly sure on this, as I dn't have a spare USB boot device myself.
That said, I'd probably have the kernel load from SD ( the ext2load bit ) and point root at the drive.
Additionally, if your boot.txt has "console=ttyS0,115200n8", remove it as you'll be able to see kernel spam on the LCD and might have more of a chance figuring out what it's up to!

My next major question, which could save me finding out the hard way, could I make the root filesystem EXT4 (oooh, don't you just love the dangerous speed of EXT4?). I suspect that booting from EXT4 is a no-go area, so if I made a small fat32 or ext2 partition with the boot image on it but make the root fs a larger EXT4 partition would that do the trick, or are we not able to use EXT4 yet?

I don't think UBoot understands ext4 yet, so I'd definitely not boot from it. The rootfs might be ok though, assuming we have support in the kernel.
If your HD is already partitioned as EXT4 and Angstrom picks it up, it should be fine.
Should.
Maybe.
Possibly

Are there any other hideous (and probably glaringly obvious) traps I'd need to avoid? I'm a linux noob, but I'm a fairly quick learner so I don't feel totally out of my depth or anything, I'd just like someone with more knowledge than I have to warn me of obvious mistakes I may make that would seriously tax my ill educated arse (where my brain resides).

Other than the boot.txt being without the console part so it doesn't get redirected to serial, I can't think of anything.. at least that way you should be able to see what UBoot is attempting to do.

As always, if you run into trouble, post and I'm sure someone will have a poke about

 

[quartercast]

I've actually gone back to 1.0.3 as I had more problems with conflicting libraries on 1.0.5. In particular, I couldn't downgrade libc6 and libc-bin to stable without borking the whole dependency tree.

Tip: if you're going to build and compile software on your pandora, I'd suggest using 1.0.3.

EDIT: Actually it seems the touchscreen is a lot more responsive in 1.0.3
EDIT2: And I like the terminal a lot more in LDXE (xterm sux), the menus seem to be more zippy in LXDE too

 

[skeezix]

I just set up 1.0.5 (xfce squeeze 6.0.1) on a nice 8GB SD card and fired her up.. pretty swank

toggle wifi -> terminal -> apt-search <whatever> -> nothing ..
apt-get update
apt-cache search <whatever> -> awesome
apt-get install gcc ..... weird error about lib depend
apt-get install python-qt4 -> weird error about libpython2.6
apt-get install libpython2.6 -> weird error about python interp proper
dpkg -l | grep python ... oh wait, python 2.6 and libpython 2.6 already present .... wtf?

Is apt-get all fubar with these builds?

apt-get install git looks like it might work, but my wifi just hung; doh .. reboot and try again

jeff

I reeeeeally want to know if pyqt4 works on pandora without my having to do major port-suffering; time is super tight for me these days Figured your debian woudl be an easy way to try it.. slirp it down and see, and then package up the deb contents into my pnds, say.

 

[skeezix]

stuckie .. if you happen to hav e tiem to burn *haha!* and can get pyqt4 (python-qt4) installed, try this as a test -- pops up a Hello World button when run. If that works, totally let me know how; running my game client on-pandora would make me happy

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""PyQt4 port of the script/helloscript example from Qt v4.x"""

import sys
from PyQt4 import QtGui, QtScript


app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)

engine = QtScript.QScriptEngine()

button = QtGui.QPushButton()
scriptButton = engine.newQObject(button)
engine.globalObject().setProperty('button', scriptButton)

engine.evaluate("button.text = 'Hello World!'")
engine.evaluate("button.styleSheet = 'font-style: italic'")
engine.evaluate("button.show()")

sys.exit(app.exec_())

 

[Stuckie]

This looks like Emdebian and Debian repos having a conflict... you could try removing the Emdebian repo in /etc/apt/sources.list ... or you could grab 1.0.3 as it's the last "full Debian" release I did and has a bunch of dev stuff already preinstalled ( hence why it's a fat bugger. )

Think I might be just going back to using straight Debian as although Emdebian certainly pull out and shrink down a huge amount of cruft; it's somewhat unstable at the moment still. A shame.

I'll have a look on Monday, hopefully.. I'm not at home just now, and have no Pandora with me.

 

[FouDuBassan]

Hi

I don't know about going back (and from) 1.0.3 to install software, but as far as I tried, I would also recommand to drop lxde: it gave me a good ergonomic feeling at first, but it is unstable... I would also suggest to add a swap to your SDCard, because lxde or xfce plus one term and 2 other applications like a browser, and you're already out of memory...

 

[chris_c]

odd lxde has been, like debian rock solid for me! - in fact better than open embedded

you might think you're out of memory - but I bet you still have a heap of cache in use...(get it - see what I did there )

Having a swap file *significantly* slows the Pandora, it can be painful to watch!

Its quite possible to have a terminal and a browser and one or two apps running, once the kernel has released the cache memory, just cause free says 0 free memory doesn’t mean you've run out! -

remember this is an embedded machine not a full desktop with 1+ GB of ram, you shouldn't expect it to be running the same number of concurrent applications!

 

[FouDuBassan]

It's an embedded machine, and does perfectly its job.
With lxde I've seen menu disappearing, or applet not working, task bar changed with missing applets on a new session (still not sure what was that reason that left me with nothing than just 3 icones and the background numerous times already). I had, but less by far, some issues with xfce with a task bar disappearing.
About the running apps: gjiten, Anki, a term, scim. The browser is already too much with 4MB memory left (the swap has been used at the opening of the second tab on the try that I did). With a swap, I don't see anything slowing down, but that kind of apps may just be the reason: no need to be super reactive to still handle correctly screentouch and keyboard action.

odd lxde has been, like debian rock solid for me! - in fact better than open embedded

you might think you're out of memory - but I bet you still have a heap of cache in use...(get it - see what I did there )

Having a swap file *significantly* slows the Pandora, it can be painful to watch!

Its quite possible to have a terminal and a browser and one or two apps running, once the kernel has released the cache memory, just cause free says 0 free memory doesn’t mean you've run out! -

remember this is an embedded machine not a full desktop with 1+ GB of ram, you shouldn't expect it to be running the same number of concurrent applications!

 

[quartercast]

I've found LXDE to be a lot more responsive touchscreen-wise, and the terminal is better too. I'm sure you can install your terminal of choice, but having re-installed debora that many times it's nice to work with build 1.0.3 and LXDE off the bat.

 

[FouDuBassan]

You're right on this point, and I don't really understand why this is the case btw: no need to push and wait for one or two seconds with lxde compared to xfce. About the terminal, in which sens do you find it better? I only see the fact that even resized, it happened to resize itself with the prompt just behind the taskbar, regardless the configuration option, which is a pain in...

I've found LXDE to be a lot more responsive touchscreen-wise, and the terminal is better too. I'm sure you can install your terminal of choice, but having re-installed debora that many times it's nice to work with build 1.0.3 and LXDE off the bat.