Debian On An Sd Card

[Stuckie]

There isn't one on that, it's scrambled as default on an Ubuntu install, so use sudo.

The account on it is.
user: ubuntu
pass: pandora

 

[canguy247]

There isn't one on that, it's scrambled as default on an Ubuntu install, so use sudo.

The account on it is.
user: ubuntu
pass: pandora

Sorry, forgot about that. My rootfs wouldn't start without using a maintenance shell (which requires a root password) so I had to use Angstrom to do the fsck.

Thanks for all of this! Can't wait until it is usable.

Canguy

 

[Stuckie]

Quick status update...

Lucid seems to have issues with the sgml-data package - it causes apt to die with Illegal Instruction, and won't progress further. I had thought it was going to be a bit twitchy as apt kept randomly segfaulting while downloaded packages anyway... so, forget about Lucid for the time being.

I'm just transferring a minimal install of Maverick to an SD card just now ( the only seed that rootstock seems to allow me to do, for some reason. )
I'll get that to pull in ubuntu-netbook via a chroot and see if that works any better.. failing that, Jaunty's all you're going to get, it seems.

Either way, Debian works, so I'll refocus my efforts on getting that up to speed once I've finished testing Maverick.

 

[xopher]

Lucid seems to have issues....

I grabbed the rootfs of 9.10 for the n900, it boots, again no wifi, touchscreen coordinates are inverse, behaves differently than the 9.04 version you've been working on but 9.10 does boot if you want to check that out it's here: http://mohammadag.xceleo.org/public/NITUbuntu/NITUbuntu.tar.bz2, I applied the pandora keymap in x and used the angstrom kernel. Touchscreen is annoying

In the 9.04 I got the wlan0 to be seen by iwconfig but not ifconfig, it gets cranky (freezes). I'll play with the debian now also.

EDIT: I'm messing with the 10.10 kubuntu image now. It works with the Nintendo USB ethernet adapter. I've installed ssh and have been plugging away at it. I've seen keyboard active outside of X, and have had the touchscreen move but it is seriously erratic. If I get any further with something you can at least log into physically I'll share if no one else has yet. Bluetooth is also working if you're inclined to set up a PAN connection you can get a terminal session

EDIT AGAIN!!! I have keyboard and mouse input on Mavrick, mouse behaves identical to Stuckie's Jaunty rootfs....3 minutes to get to the desktop....yikes

EDIT AGAIN: Seems the touchscreen is being recognized as 2 input devices....mouse0 and event5. The mouse0 is only recognized on the lower half of the screen and the touchpanel (event5) is in total reverse for it's coordinates. I'm using evdev as the driver for the touchscreen. Anyone have any suggestions?

EDIT: I have WIFI (with led)!!!!! I am finding this page very helpful..... http://vminko.org/gentoo_manuals/pandora and I was led there by this page..... http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/55661-procnetwireless/ It's 3:15AM I should get to sleep

Recap:

Working
---------
Bluetooth
wifi
keyboard
touchscreen (inversed coordinates)
leds

 

[Stuckie]

Wow, very nice!

Unfortunately, work got in the way again so I've still got a half-finished Maverick install on my Pandora at the moment Work is going to be utterly mental the next month as well, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to continue playing with it, but seems you've got a hellova lot of stuff sorted already

In regards to the touchscreen, I can fix that
You'll need to use the xserver-xorg-input-tslib driver instead of evdev.
You'll also need to grab the libts-bin suite, and set up your .profile as I've mentioned in the first post of this thread.
I'd check if /dev/event/input7 exists .. as that should be the touchscreen from what I've seen it being identified as.. if it is actually event5, you'll obviously need to put this in properly to the .profile.
Once you get it configured via launching ts_calibrate as root, that should be it working properly.

If ts_calibrate is being a bitch, as it was with me and why my first image has a root password set, if you sudo su and then manually export the TS arguments into that shell, it should give ts_calibrate enough of a hint what to do. At any rate, you'll likely need to log out and back in to refresh X's settings.

Hope that helps, and congrats on getting this far.. it's fun meddling around with things like this, isn't it?

 

[xopher]

Hope that helps, and congrats on getting this far.. it's fun meddling around with things like this, isn't it?

Thanks and yes. It is like an awesome puzzle game. I've been kicking around the idea of tinkering with Maemo now. Unfortunately if I have success with that I can only post a tutorial. I don't want to get in hot water (unless the company is worth sitting in hot water with) for distribution. I'll try your hints for the touchscreen. I'll either make progress or post my progress when I really feel stumped for someone else to kick it about.

 

[xopher]

Quick update here on the Kubuntu Maverick image. I have the touchscreen working properly now (well it follows touch, no clicking yet)!! Getting a little excited . I have all inputs recognized now. Here is the output for ls on /dev/input:

by-path event0 event1 event2 event3 event4 event5 js0 js1 js2 mice mouse0 touchscreen0 uinput

Seems the problem I'm having at this point is the wireless. dmesg says about it:

"[ 52.769902] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready"

I'm still going; and once I solve these two things I think I may finally be able to tar a rootfs and share.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

edited: awesome grammar skills and, I just heard sound, sound is working, now input via touchscreen is working.....it is quite slow in reacting, haven't tried a right-click yet. There are still a few more quarks also, one being I have to log into the session it kicks me out then the 2nd time it logs in fine.

 

[Stuckie]

Very nice!
I'm still a bit behind you in terms of getting my own image up and running.. I'm still at the lack of input stage due to driver hiccups ( that and it sometimes decides it doesn't feel like booting fully, throws a kernel panic, or just stops midway and only a CTRL+ALT+DEL from my USB keyboard will cause it to do anything much )

Though looking at those pics, you've got the ubuntu-netbook set going, I might set mine off again to do a ubuntu-desktop set; for choice and all that

The double login thing may be due to memory.. did you set aside some swap space at all? I noticed when fiddling with Debian you really need swap space or things die pretty quick in much the same manner you describe. Damn these desktop distributions are becoming quite heavy, aren't they?

 

[xopher]

sometimes decides it doesn't feel like booting fully, throws a kernel panic, or just stops midway and only a CTRL+ALT+DEL from my USB keyboard will cause it to do anything much)

The double login thing may be due to memory.. did you set aside some swap space at all? I noticed when fiddling with Debian you really need swap space or things die pretty quick in much the same manner you describe. Damn these desktop distributions are becoming quite heavy, aren't they?

I have the same issues at boot for sure, I reboot and wait it out. I also have the ureadahead issue it makes boot take a little longer but patience. I found that when you think it's stuck a good bit of the time if you exercise patience 95% of the time it (s-l-o-w-l-y) works through whatever it's doing.

When I look at the .xsession-errors it complains about unconnected dbus items and no "PowerDevil" profile. I'll watch the processes from htop while ssh'ed in to see if memory is an issue. My tarball didn't start bluetooth or wifi upon first boot so after attempting to log into X it crashed back to greeter, I logged in again became impatient, rebooted and the devices came up, next boot from tarball rendered me a blackscreen, 3rd boot able to ssh in again....logging into X PowerDevil complains again then I get the desktop. So it seems to be in the same state as my original setup. It may require some extra booting, a USB LAN adapter for ssh, usb keyboard, or a bogus xorg.conf to kill X on boot to ctrl+alt+Fn+1 (going to first tty but keymap is off some Fn combos still don't work) to really interact with it but I'll upload my progress. Do you think after that I should begin a new thread for Maverick Kubuntu or keep it all here?

 

[xopher]

OK, here is the Maverick Kubuntu image, download is close to 600MB, extracted you'll use approx 1.5GB on your SD card:

Here

If you've been following this thread you know the current issues but to recap:

------------------------------

S-L-O-W (stylus may not seem to provide left click input, it does; it's just that slow)

Wireless gets firmware but reports "device not ready"

Sometimes you have to log into Plasma multiple times before being presented with the desktop (it kicks
you back out to the greeter)

Sometimes boot will hang and not complete, even when it does not be patient...once you boot it enough you'll know when it is going to boot properly or not.

Works with Nintendo Wii USB LAN dongle, (I've been using this method to ssh in while booted to avoid chroot)

All hardware is recognized by the OS but I have not yet configured xorg for nubs etc, keys and screen are configured ATM.


login is root
passwd is zzz

You will need to modify the included boot.txt to match your card's partition configuration as well as /etc/init.d/swapon to point to your swap partition or get rid of it and place it in fstab.

I did not create any accounts but I did find after adding a user things were a little smoother after logging in via the greeter

-------------------------------------

Maybe some performance tweakers can get in there and help it run better? I'm going to continue to work on this but the time I can devote to it will be minimal right now, I want to see if Maverick Netbook edition is less heavy on resources. I think that's it for the moment. Have fun kids!

 

[Stuckie]

I thought you had used netbook edition! Well, the standard Ubuntu version I have is netbook edition.

I haven't had time to upload it though, or run through the changes you suggested.. I didn't get out of work last night till 11.30pm so yea, it's a tad mental at the moment, and work comes first of course.

If you need a mirror for that giant file, let me know and I'll shove it up on my server

 

[xopher]

I thought you had used netbook edition! Well, the standard Ubuntu version I have is netbook edition.

I haven't had time to upload it though, or run through the changes you suggested.. I didn't get out of work last night till 11.30pm so yea, it's a tad mental at the moment, and work comes first of course.

If you need a mirror for that giant file, let me know and I'll shove it up on my server

I was considering adding the suggested steps to your Jaunty rootfs because it seems to perform soooo much more fluidly. The mental part seems to be where to focus efforts

 

[mcobit]

Would this:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RootfsFromScratch
be of any use?

It reads like you can build your rootfs and add just network functionality and for example the lightwight lxde desktop to start with.
Other software can be downloaded with apt afterwards.

 

[Stuckie]

That's what I've been using... there's a lot of issues with that unfortunately:

Rootstock is buggered at the moment ( there's a big bug report on it somewhere ) in that you can't perform anything other than a Minimal install on a PC.
Once you transfer it to the Pandora and start running apt, if you're going anywhere near the ubuntu-netbook or ubuntu-desktop meta-packages, you're looking at a good day or two of it downloading and configuring - assuming it doesn't segfault and die!

Bit annoying but ah well.. I haven't gone looking for an earlier version in the hopes that that fixes it.. far too busy at work

 

[otherguy66]

Hey all. Having fun with the Ubuntu Jaunty install. Copying over Ed's scripts from the firmware gave me overclock and mouse nub control with no issues. I got slightly stuck though: Which script do I need to modify to run commands when the system boots? At the moment I stuck it in '.bash.rc' but they only activate when I log with the Terminal application.

The default sound is glitchy, but I had success with mpg123 and madplay, so the sound itself runs full speed.

I had problems apt-getting with the chroot in Zaxxon, but copying over the DNS resolver file sorted that out.

I also got pnd_run to launch a few PND files, but only a couple worked (eg. Milytracker, VBA and Mame) so I'm guessing it's a missing library issue?

Ran pnd_notify and it managed to pick up PNDs on my SD card and add them to the menu/desktop, but they don't launch (and Ubuntu had problems with them being 'untrusted'). Icons also don't always appear, and stuff only appeared on the menu when I ran it as sudo or chmodded /usr/share/applications to be writtable.

Good stuff so far though! Just need to get those drivers and the PND system up and running, change the default settings to be Pandora friendly too. I noticed XFCE takes absolutely forever to launch... why is that? I installed 'xubuntu-desktop' so maybe that's the problem?

Edit:

What's the plan? Which distro are we sticking with then?

Also, is it possible to access the NAND? Some sort of file system merge might be easier for launching PND files maybe?

I also found the Zaxxon scripts for loading and saving nub/lcd/etc. settings on boot and shutdown. Where can I put them to make it work with Ubuntu?

 

[xopher]

I've taken a step away from this due to frustration (rebooting over and over again started to remind me of boring sex) and getting a few new toys. I kind of sensed it was coming to that for me which is why I posted the tarball of my progress in case someone else wanted to pick up where I left off. I'll probably pick it up again at some point I just don't know when.

 

[otherguy66]

Is Stuckie still onboard? I don't have to hacking skills to go alone!

 

[Stuckie]

Yep, just work is ludicrously insane just now so I don't really have a great deal of time to do anything much, and I haven't looked at it in a while
I personally would rather stick to Debian rather than messing with Ubuntu, which has been a severe pain in the arse so far to deal with so far.

Not sure when I'll get some time to go back and fiddle, I'm afraid.

 

[trevormacro]

I finally manage to install the debian on my SD card. When I log in, I get the desktop displayed then I'back back to the login dialog box

Why ?

 

[Stuckie]

Sounds like you might need swap space and/or it's not enabled for some reason, as I remember running into that issue.

If you're sure you've got swap space configured, just drop to a terminal ( CTRL + ALT + F1 ) and enable it manually ( good 'ol swapon /dev/whatever ) and you should be good.