Debian On An Sd Card


Ah.. I probably should've been a bit clearer there.. what I meant is that bits aren't configured, and the bits that aren't configured include that list.

However, I've just received my replacement Pandora so shall be having a look at this again as soon as immediate work commitments are out the way :) ( which is this weekend and towards the end of the month.. )
That and Squeeze has just landed, so will be looking forward to messing with that!
 
Stuckie said:
Ah.. I probably should've been a bit clearer there.. what I meant is that bits aren't configured, and the bits that aren't configured include that list.

However, I've just received my replacement Pandora so shall be having a look at this again as soon as immediate work commitments are out the way :) ( which is this weekend and towards the end of the month.. )
That and Squeeze has just landed, so will be looking forward to messing with that!
Click to expand...

Thank you very very much for your work. I'm waiting for a "fully functional" tarball!
I have my pandora since 3 day and it's FANTASTIC!

Debian 6 rules! :)
 
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And I've made a start...

Here is a _MINIMAL_ ( and I repeat this, MINIMAL ) rootfs of Debian 6.0
It will boot, but you've got pretty much nothing there... it's effectively what you'd get if you've just finished doing debootstrap.

So is this useless?
Not really.. I'm providing this for those that want to build up their own system with their own configuration stuff.
I'll be adding a desktop environment to mine soon, fix any driver issues, and let it go.. but for now, here's a minimal rootfs to play with.
--edit-- link removed, see http://pandorawiki.org/index.php?title=Debian_On_SD for latest releases --edit--
It also means I have an archived working base to start from should I bugger things up ;)

Extract this to an SD card and either boot with it for CLI glory ( with nothing installed, but hey, you've got NANO! :D ) or chroot into it from Angstrom, fire up Apt, and start customising as you see fit :)
I'll be doing my usual "brain dump" of configuration info as I go along anyway.

Default user details are;
username: pandora
password: debian

Root password is the usual randomised madness.. you can set this from your chroot if you need to.
 
Perfect!
Anyone can choose how to customize its installation! :)
I'll proceed with the installation of gnome ( some hours i think... )

Can you confirm that no drivers/modules are present at the moment? So no wifi, bluetooth etc etc...
have i understood weel?
 
The kernel modules and firmware folders have been pushed over.. so everything _might_ just work but as it's just a minimal install, there's nothing there to test things work yet ;)

Yes, GNOME will take a few hours... I'm probably going to go for one of the lighter ones first ( perhaps fluxbox just to get something running and I can test the drivers are all fine ) before going near something as large as that!

Need to wait till I get home though.. work work work..
 
Stuckie said:
The kernel modules and firmware folders have been pushed over.. so everything _might_ just work but as it's just a minimal install, there's nothing there to test things work yet ;)

Yes, GNOME will take a few hours... I'm probably going to go for one of the lighter ones first ( perhaps fluxbox just to get something running and I can test the drivers are all fine ) before going near something as large as that!

Need to wait till I get home though.. work work work..
Click to expand...
Have I mentioned lxde works nicely on pandora ;) - thx for making the booststrap available I'll take a look now!
 
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I've had a quick look and this is great!

I'd got as far as configuring apt (warning some mirrors dont seem to have arm packages! :-o ) and installed sudo to check its working. Then I ran screaming into a brick wall at

modprobe g

as theres no way to do _ without a pandora specific keymap, DOH!
I'll look again but its all really encouraging!

my next move was to get usb networking going as its simpler than wifi not to mention faster for installing stuff like lxde - did I mention lxde is rather good...

Thx Stuckie!
 
making a simple : ifconfig

is it presents the iwl0 ? do i need the usb-ethernet adapter ?

[ i'll test this tarball during this night... after my baby of 8 months "has gone in denial of service" in her bed ;-) ]
 
I've got Debian booting up into GDM and fluxbox now.. touchscreen is "active" but a bit mad as I haven't configured it yet.

I almost got 3D working this morning, but had to run off to work so, it's not quite there yet.
Haven't got a proper keymap for the Pandora yet, but I just use a USB keyboard for the moment to make sure everything works. Still got nubs to sort out as well, so some careful pinching of Angstrom scripts seem to be in order ;)
 
Stuckie said:
I've got Debian booting up into GDM and fluxbox now.. touchscreen is "active" but a bit mad as I haven't configured it yet.

I almost got 3D working this morning, but had to run off to work so, it's not quite there yet.
Haven't got a proper keymap for the Pandora yet, but I just use a USB keyboard for the moment to make sure everything works. Still got nubs to sort out as well, so some careful pinching of Angstrom scripts seem to be in order ;)
Click to expand...

Copying over eds scripts got me working nubs and overclocking :)

Couldn't quite figure out how to copy over the startup script which sets the saved settings though, so I just set my own values manually there.
 
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I have the SGX drivers up and running and was watching the bemused EvilSkull demo earlier.. seems good so far :)
Just fixed the touchscreen so it behaves itself and isn't inverted or otherwise mad.
Working on pulling down lxde and networkmanager just now.. see if we can get WiFi working and a desktop for the less insane ( though I still think fluxbox and rox is rather nice ) then I might go and release it!
Though I probably should get nubs and keyboard working correctly.. need to go back through this thread and look for the answers as people have already done it on previous releases, so it's definitely possible. ( like otherguy66 right above me with the nubs... that's what I get for not paying attention! *cough* )

It's not amazingly fast... as Debian compile for arm4t which is a few generations behind our arm7 capable Pandoras, and this is a full _desktop_ OS that you're getting here, but I'm sure there'll be some form of optimization that can take place to speed it up a bit anyway. The SD card may have some impact on it too, as mine aren't particularly fast.

Looking good though :)
Nice to be back hacking about too!
 
I shall have a look at NILFS once I've got everything else working - less unknowns the better, at the moment :)

Progress update from this morning's hacking:
Sound works ( actually, it probably just worked anyway.. I didn't have anything to test it with till this morning! )
Touchscreen calibrated properly.
LXDE installed ( which it did overnight.. )
Here's a picture ( though it's massive and I don't quite remember how to resize in the post.. )
lxde-evilskull-iceweasel.jpg
Yes, I still have the film over my screen from the replacement I got recently ( I still have the film over my Caanoo's screen too and I've had that a while! )

Probably would have gotten WiFi working this morning, if I had remembered to install wireless-tools *cough*

Interestingly, Xorg is hammering the CPU and "idling" at eating about 80-95% of the process time.
That will need to be looked at to see what it's up to...

-edit-
Fixed that... forgot to enable and disable some modules which the Angstrom xorg.conf does and I don't.. much snappier now :)
 
looking really great its a shame its all compiled arm4t, I'd be interested to know what happens when you run an arm7a executable - does the rest of the OS slow it down or is reasonably zippy

I hope it is mainly your SD card thats slow and arm4t code run near the same speed...
 
*blink*

A full native boot, and this advanced already?

_fuck yeah_ :)

Suck libpnd into it to get pnd-file support, and _win_ :)

jeff
 
NUBS! are in and working, though don't keep their settings on reboot.. probably a file permission somewhere being a bit off.
PNDS! are there.. you can manually call pnd_run but it doesn't seem to automatically scan and throw them on desktop/menu as yet.. working on it.
WIFI! is nearly there.. some issues with the firmware not wanting to load at the moment, but that seems to be more a mismatch in version as the one on the NAND is a different size to the one I grabbed in the modules package.. hopefully it's that.

Keyboard... suppose I should fix that too.. I've been using a USB keyboard and mouse setup so far, but the Pandora keymap is probably somewhat important.

Bluetooth I can't test as I have no bluetooth devices.. curiously, the bluetooth led does light up, so unless I've cocked up the led script, it should be on.

Have I missed anything?
Hopefully should have the Wifi thing fixed within half an hour, and I'll clean and upload it all for playing with :)

-edit-
Obviously a bit later now ;)
Wifi is being a right pain in the arse.. it's not getting the firmware sent to it - though the modules are loading up.
Everything else seems to work though! Minus my laziness in instigating the Pandora keymap.. that'll be done once Wifi is fixed.. then I shall release it.. promise!
 
Thought this was worthy of a new post to trigger interest in all those watching the topic.

Posting from Debian, on my Pandora :)
Shall clean it up a bit and upload soon.

--edit--
It's going through some testing to catch any oddness.. which there seems to be at the moment, bah...
Thanks to chris_c for being the guinea pig ;)
 
also posted via Debian on my pandora ! :D

While not ready for the casual user, Stuckie deserves all our thanks for a bang up job!

far more than just a "start" this is very good work, despite x getting choked which *two* insomniacs are looking at, its still responsive and no splurious tslib events on scroll bars to boot!

Engage hacking goggles everyone and let's dump all we discover here, no doubt Stuckie will be along after his bath to provide a nice shiny URL for all you would be hackers!!!

BRILL work mate ;)
 
Right... release time!
Thanks to chris_c for being the guinea pig and testing a few times.. specially with my script fail ;)

Be sure to untar while preserving permissions! (IE: sudo tar -xvjpf pandora-squeeze-1.0.tar.bz2 -C /my/ext2-formatted/sdcard )
--edit-- link removed, check the wiki for latest release http://pandorawiki.org/index.php?title=Debian_On_SD

This has the following configured:
Wifi
Nubs
Touchscreen
Keymap

Partially configured is the PND system.. you can run PNDs, but not sure it auto detects them, and it certainly doesn't seem to stuff them in LXDE's menu for some reason.. needs some fiddling I think. ( Though chris_c informs me that debian-menu.xml doesn't exist for LXDE, so that's probably what's causing LXDE's menu to go mad, and may be why the PNDs don't seem to show up.. )

Known oddities:
Wifi led lights up when you start it the first time.. doesn't light up the second time but is active.
Bluetooth led comes on.. doesn't quite seem to be configured.
Xorg can sometimes peg the CPU to 100% for no reason on boot.. -- edit, actually.. tslib seems the culprit for now.
Console cursor can appear in the top left for no reason as well.

Default user is:
username: pandora
password: debian

There is no root password.. use sudo passwd to set it if needed.

Enjoy :)
 
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