Pandora Emulator For Pc/linux?

[Yoyobuae]

I thought the conclusion was that real programmers use the emacs command:
C-x M-c M-butterfly

 

[dschroeter]

If someone wants to "try out the look and feel of the Pandora", it is perfectly possible to just build an i386 of Ångström and use that. Then you *can* use virtualization.

Anyone want to give instructions for dummies like me on how to do this? Preferably with Firefox baked in and at the right resolution?

 

[Mr.Confuzed]

If someone wants to "try out the look and feel of the Pandora", it is perfectly possible to just build an i386 of Ångström and use that. Then you *can* use virtualization.

Anyone want to give instructions for dummies like me on how to do this? Preferably with Firefox baked in and at the right resolution?

I'd love to, but I haven't figured it out yet. Thankfully the angstrom website has a compiler built in, but I'm having trouble getting the image to run in Qemu. When I feed it the tarball, it just tells me it's not a bootable disk. The image I compiled online is here. (30 or so megs, only there for 3 days)

Not having any luck with converting it either...

 

[dflemstr]

If someone wants to "try out the look and feel of the Pandora", it is perfectly possible to just build an i386 of Ångström and use that. Then you *can* use virtualization.

Anyone want to give instructions for dummies like me on how to do this? Preferably with Firefox baked in and at the right resolution?

I'd love to, but I haven't figured it out yet. Thankfully the angstrom website has a compiler built in, but I'm having trouble getting the image to run in Qemu. When I feed it the tarball, it just tells me it's not a bootable disk. The image I compiled online is here. (30 or so megs, only there for 3 days)

Not having any luck with converting it either...

You can't use the tarball directly; you have to first create a disk image (with "dd if=/dev/zero of=whatever.img bs=1M count=512") then make a file system on that image with "mkfs.ext3 whatever.img". You can then copy over the contents of the tar'ed rootfs to that image with "mount -o loop whatever.img tmp; cd tmp; tar xvf ../rootfs*.tar.bz2". Then you'll need to get GRUB into the image somehow, but I don't know the exact commands right now. I'll look into it later and maybe post a complete guide if you're interested.

EDIT: seems that the Ångström image builder has been updated since I used it last; might be that it can bake a preconfigured image for me, let's see...

 

[Mr.Confuzed]

You can't use the tarball directly; you have to first create a disk image (with "dd if=/dev/zero of=whatever.img bs=1M count=512") then make a file system on that image with "mkfs.ext3 whatever.img". You can then copy over the contents of the tar'ed rootfs to that image with "mount -o loop whatever.img tmp; cd tmp; tar xvf ../rootfs*.tar.bz2". Then you'll need to get GRUB into the image somehow, but I don't know the exact commands right now. I'll look into it later and maybe post a complete guide if you're interested.

EDIT: seems that the Ångström image builder has been updated since I used it last; might be that it can bake a preconfigured image for me, let's see...

Oh yeah, GRUB. I think last time I used linux, the CD installed it for me. Oh well, I'm going down this route already...

Knowing nothing or tars or rootfs, would it be possible/simpler to install GRUB on the rootfs tarball I have? Maybe I should have selected ext2 in that online wizard.

Right now I'll see what I can do with Qemu's included linux installation.

 

[dflemstr]

You can't use the tarball directly; you have to first create a disk image (with "dd if=/dev/zero of=whatever.img bs=1M count=512") then make a file system on that image with "mkfs.ext3 whatever.img". You can then copy over the contents of the tar'ed rootfs to that image with "mount -o loop whatever.img tmp; cd tmp; tar xvf ../rootfs*.tar.bz2". Then you'll need to get GRUB into the image somehow, but I don't know the exact commands right now. I'll look into it later and maybe post a complete guide if you're interested.

EDIT: seems that the Ångström image builder has been updated since I used it last; might be that it can bake a preconfigured image for me, let's see...

Oh yeah, GRUB. I think last time I used linux, the CD installed it for me. Oh well, I'm going down this route already...

Knowing nothing or tars or rootfs, would it be possible/simpler to install GRUB on the rootfs tarball I have? Maybe I should have selected ext2 in that online wizard.

Right now I'll see what I can do with Qemu's included linux installation.

A tarball isn't a file system; it's a file archive, so you can't do anything with it (not run it in QEMU, not install grub to it). It's like trying to open a zip file in MS Paint: won't happen. You have to create a file system to do anything first.

Oh and if you aren't on Linux you're pretty much screwed since you'll probably need a lot of tools that aren't available on another platform when creating the image.

 

[Mr.Confuzed]

A tarball isn't a file system; it's a file archive, so you can't do anything with it (not run it in QEMU, not install grub to it). It's like trying to open a zip file in MS Paint: won't happen. You have to create a file system to do anything first.

Oh and if you aren't on Linux you're pretty much screwed since you'll probably need a lot of tools that aren't available on another platform when creating the image.

Hold on, you're telling me that I need Linux to install Linux. That's bull. I'm on Windows and I would guess that dschroeter is too. I mean, if I have to I'll get out my old copy of Knoppix, or maybe Cygwin will work. Regardless, I know it will work somehow.

Ok, so a tarball is a file archive. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to presume that it can contain a file system, as in the case of an iso file. But if you say it won't work, that's fine.

 

[dflemstr]

A tarball isn't a file system; it's a file archive, so you can't do anything with it (not run it in QEMU, not install grub to it). It's like trying to open a zip file in MS Paint: won't happen. You have to create a file system to do anything first.

Oh and if you aren't on Linux you're pretty much screwed since you'll probably need a lot of tools that aren't available on another platform when creating the image.

Hold on, you're telling me that I need Linux to install Linux. That's bull. I'm on Windows and I would guess that dschroeter is too. I mean, if I have to I'll get out my old copy of Knoppix, or maybe Cygwin will work. Regardless, I know it will work somehow.

Ok, so a tarball is a file archive. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to presume that it can contain a file system, as in the case of an iso file. But if you say it won't work, that's fine.

I don't think that I got my point across...

A .tar file is an accumulation of files, like a .zip file. A .tar file is basically just a long data stream with files glued together one after another (tar was used as a file container on cassette tapes originally). A .zip is similarly structured, except that the data is compressed in a .zip file.
An .iso image is an actual file system image (with the ISO9660 file system on it), meaning that you can copy it byte-for-byte to a CD and it will work, and it is generally therefore not used for general file storage, like a .zip is. The conceptual difference between an .iso and a .zip/.tar file is that the .iso contains a master file table, that makes it possible to randomly find any file on the disk without having to scan the entire disk every time. The same goes for EXT2 or EXT3 file systems (commonly stored as .img or .ext2/.ext3 files when represented as files): they have various file tables and structures that makes it possible for the operating system to find files quickly on them. Those tables and structures are needed by the OS so that it can find files and operate quickly. That's why you can't use a tar file for a file system, because if you had been able to, the OS would have had to scan the entire tar drive (that's maybe 512 MiB big) every time it tried to access a file, which isn't something you want.

Also, yeah you can pull it off on Windows but you'll have to find implementations of the "dd" tool, the loopback device interface driver, the UNIX "mount" tool, etc, etc, in order to be able to create the image you need (in case the online builder doesn't do this for you nowadays). Good luck with that.

 

[dschroeter]

I'll look into it later and maybe post a complete guide if you're interested.

Yep, very interested. This seems like the next best thing to owning a Pandora for us non-devs. A guide would be ideal but even an image with Firefox and a couple of games baked in would be tons of fun.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Green Light.

 

[Mr.Confuzed]

I don't think that I got my point across...

A .tar file is an accumulation of files, like a .zip file. A .tar file is basically just a long data stream with files glued together one after another (tar was used as a file container on cassette tapes originally). A .zip is similarly structured, except that the data is compressed in a .zip file.
An .iso image is an actual file system image (with the ISO9660 file system on it), meaning that you can copy it byte-for-byte to a CD and it will work, and it is generally therefore not used for general file storage, like a .zip is. The conceptual difference between an .iso and a .zip/.tar file is that the .iso contains a master file table, that makes it possible to randomly find any file on the disk without having to scan the entire disk every time. The same goes for EXT2 or EXT3 file systems (commonly stored as .img or .ext2/.ext3 files when represented as files): they have various file tables and structures that makes it possible for the operating system to find files quickly on them. Those tables and structures are needed by the OS so that it can find files and operate quickly. That's why you can't use a tar file for a file system, because if you had been able to, the OS would have had to scan the entire tar drive (that's maybe 512 MiB big) every time it tried to access a file, which isn't something you want.

Also, yeah you can pull it off on Windows but you'll have to find implementations of the "dd" tool, the loopback device interface driver, the UNIX "mount" tool, etc, etc, in order to be able to create the image you need (in case the online builder doesn't do this for you nowadays). Good luck with that.

Oooh, I see what you're saying. By the way, the great wikipedia says that zips have a "central directory", so they could be used for a file system, but are probably still not ideal for that. To be honest, I just assumed the tar would work because Qemu-img recognized it.

Just to be clear, when I said it was bull, I meant that it was crap, not that you were lying. I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually, but even a guide with Linux commands would be helpful.

@dschroeter: If everyone gets a green light, I'm thinking there will be a LOT of traffic accidents.

Merry Christmas, anyway.

 

[WizardStan]

Hold on, you're telling me that I need Linux to install Linux. That's bull. I'm on Windows and I would guess that dschroeter is too. I mean, if I have to I'll get out my old copy of Knoppix, or maybe Cygwin will work. Regardless, I know it will work somehow.

To clarify this, you don't need to be on Linux to install Linux, it's just that Linux more or less comes with all the tools necessary for creating a virtual machine built right in (or downloaded from the repository), and Windows forces you to search the internet and piece things together yourself.
In Linux, it's trivial to create a file, mount that file as if it were a hard drive, format the "hard drive" to some file system, and copy everything you need into it, and then just pass that file to Qemu for virtualization. Windows... not so much. What would probably be easiest is to get Knoppix or some other boot disk, temporarily boot into Linux to create, format, and load the img file with an operating system, and then back out to Windows (if that's where you're most comfortable) and run the Windows virtualization softwares.