Pnds Not Detected


cosam

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I was discussing this with skeezix in PM but I thouhgt I'd bring it here in case others have this problem. I'm using the xfce desktop and PND files aren't being detected automatically. I have them in /pandora/menu on the SD card, but also tried /pandora/desktop and /pandora/apps (which I came across in some config file somewhere). I tried two different SD cards, both formatted FAT32. I tried the Minimenu GUI, but it gets stuck in a loop initialising and looking for applications.

The strangest thing is that it did work, at least once. I've seen PNDs appear in the menu and this is also how I run the Hotfix and Codec pack. Maybe one of the updates didn't take, and needs running again? I have half a mind to reflash the firmware and start again, but I've no idea how to do that.
 
look in here http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/53637-first-boot-its-asking-for-a-login-and-password/ for the firmware and how to reflash

or just download this file

http://notaz.gp2x.de...5-01-Zaxxon.zip

Quote

* Extract the contents of this zip to root (main) directory (folder) of your
SD card. Fat32 and ext2 filesystems are supported.
* Make sure the pandora is turned off (remove the battery in case it
crashes or doesn't turn off by using normal means).
* Insert that SD card into pandora's first slot
(it's the one closer to headphone jack).
* Press and hold the right trigger ('R'), then turn the power on
(if you have battery removed, insert it while holding R).
* A menu should appear on screen. Select "boot from SD1" using the d-pad by
pressing B or X.
* Wait for flash process to finish. Connect the charger to be sure the battery
doesn't run out while flashing. Press enter when asked to do so.
* The device should turn off, press power (without holding R) to turn it back on.
It should then start it's first boot process which migh take up to 15 minutes,
be sure to wait for it to finish, otherwise firmware corruption might happen
again.
 
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Thanks for that. That'll teach me to post about problems I had the night before without reading up on the latest ;-) The reflash was pretty painless and we're all up and running again now.

BTW, is it OK to just pop the SD cards out or are you meant to unmount them first? I've tried unmounting using the desktop icon, but that doesn't work (Can't open /media/.hal-mtab).
 
Why not remove all the pnds (move them to /foo or something) and see if minimenu strts - if mm can't get past figuring out the apps then something is very odd - corrupted pnd file or sd is my guess or a bad flash (?!) .. I'd start at the least odd end though and assume corrupted pnd that somehow hangs things

jeffphone
 
Everything good after a flash? Weird :)

and yes you can generally just pull them out, but make sure nothing is writing to them or surely it'll go bad :)

We should make a Conf ui to select caching or uncaching sd mounts .. Hmm!

Jeffphone
 
skeezix said:
Everything good after a flash? Weird :)
Yeah, all working after the reflash, but I was able to reproduce part of the problem by introducing a bogus PND file. The result is that no PNDs at all were listed in the menu, which I thought was a bit odd. Removed the bad PND and everything worked fine again (this wasn't the case before the reflash).

and yes you can generally just pull them out, but make sure nothing is writing to them or surely it'll go bad :)

We should make a Conf ui to select caching or uncaching sd mounts .. Hmm!
I always feel a bit icky pulling stuff out before unmounting... bad experiences in the past. Probably an irrational fear, though. I assume there's some kind of mechanism to ensure all buffers are flushed to SD after each write?
 
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SteveM said:
and yes you can generally just pull them out, but make sure nothing is writing to them or surely it'll go bad :)

We should make a Conf ui to select caching or uncaching sd mounts .. Hmm!
I always feel a bit icky pulling stuff out before unmounting... bad experiences in the past. Probably an irrational fear, though. I assume there's some kind of mechanism to ensure all buffers are flushed to SD after each write?
They're just mounted with sync option.
 
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can you post the bad pnd somewhere? I'd like to know what about it causes the system to get 'hung up on it', so I can build a workaround into the code. Also, I can tell you whats wrong with the pnd :)

jeff
 
skeezix said:
can you post the bad pnd somewhere? I'd like to know what about it causes the system to get 'hung up on it', so I can build a workaround into the code. Also, I can tell you whats wrong with the pnd :)
I can't get either of these to work, although I don't remember which one it was that killed the whole detection thing.

http://www.cosam.org/computers/pandora/frotz-2.43.pnd
http://www.cosam.org/computers/pandora/simh-3.8.pnd

(I think that last one has the same problem as FUSE did, with the execute perms being dropped.)
 
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I've found that PNDs aren't auto discovered on my system until I run an app. So whenever I insert and SD just run CPU speed (works with any app) and exit again, then PNDs have been updated.
 
pnd files are auto-discovered after insert/eject (and some other things), at the .desktop level

minimenu is currently set up to only discover when it is run/re-run; if you insert/eject while mm is up, you hit Select -> Rescan. (This was a design choice, so that it would nto slow you down when you eject/insert. I will add a conf item to enable auto-rescan soon.)

jeff

stevem -- I'll take a look; those have been around awhile .. coudl be bad libs in there or who knows what, but they certainly should not break the autodiscovery. I'll check whats up.
 
In my current prototype pandora, one of those pnd files crashes minimenus scan (!!), so minimenu just keeps trying to reload over and over. (as a crash proof, minimenu relaunches after a crash, so the user isn't stuck.) NEat :) I'll take a look :)

jeff

frotz is okay, so its that simh one.
dang, simh has like 27 odd apps within it; I'd have to look through each one to see if one of them is a problem, or perhaps the system just doesn't like having so many in there at once .. I think I set the upper limit to 20 ort something, but it shoudl nto crash anything.

So there is probabyl a libpnd bug that crashes, but why don't you try to narrow it in for me :) Likewise .. I doubt you want to have a pnd-file that spits out so many apps; probabyl best to have one, and then pop up a zenity list of subapps and let the user pick one, to avoid flodding trheir menu/desktop :)
 
skeezix said:
dang, simh has like 27 odd apps within it; I'd have to look through each one to see if one of them is a problem, or perhaps the system just doesn't like having so many in there at once .. I think I set the upper limit to 20 ort something, but it shoudl nto crash anything.
Expect the unexpected! ;-)

So there is probabyl a libpnd bug that crashes, but why don't you try to narrow it in for me :) Likewise .. I doubt you want to have a pnd-file that spits out so many apps; probabyl best to have one, and then pop up a zenity list of subapps and let the user pick one, to avoid flodding trheir menu/desktop :)
I'm not sure where to start. All the executables work, so there are no library issues (IIRC they don't use a lot more than libc) and all the PXML applications are generated, so they should follow the same pattern.

BTW, Is there a recommended way of launching terminal-based apps from a PND? Just now I'm experimenting with "xterm -e" and "terminal -x" but neither seem to work correctly in all cases. Any ideas how such a program can be run full screen?
 
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pnd_run /path/to/pnd

Note thatin the case of multiple apps per pnd, you can specify which one, but it defaults to the first one.

BTW .. try making a zenity picker to list the subapps and go that direction; I mean, I'd be afraid to copy that pnd over, if it'll add 30 options to my game-tab or whatever :)

jeff
 
I just tried downloading the SNES for Pandora:
http://apps.open-pandora.org/cgi-bin/viewapp.pl?/Emulator/snes9x4d4p.inf

I get a file: dl.pl
Not a .PND file.

What do I do here?

Danks,

Link
 
Mjlink said:
I just tried downloading the SNES for Pandora:
http://apps.open-pandora.org/cgi-bin/viewapp.pl?/Emulator/snes9x4d4p.inf

I get a file: dl.pl
Not a .PND file.

What do I do here?

Danks,

Link

I believe that may be the perl file that handles the downloads on the appstore. They probably just need to fix it. In the mean time, you can download SNES9x4d4p on the Archive, as well.

-God Ginrai
 
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God Ginrai said:
I believe that may be the perl file that handles the downloads on the appstore. They probably just need to fix it. In the mean time, you can download SNES9x4d4p on the Archive, as well.

-God Ginrai
Good Look!

Danks!

:D
:)
 
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skeezix said:
pnd_run /path/to/pnd

Note thatin the case of multiple apps per pnd, you can specify which one, but it defaults to the first one.
That's the opposite of what I want to do, but it does bring me to a related point. Say I have a command-line only utility and I want to distribute it as PND. How does one make the utility runable from a terminal? Can a directory somehow be added to $PATH?

What I actually want to do is select an app in the menu and have it open in a terminal window (or full screen terminal). I've been messing with the "terminal" program which would work if it wasn't for the scroll bar which can't be disabled by means of command line arguments. I'm having no luck with xterm - it works fine, but the default font is minuscule and it won't let me change it.

BTW .. try making a zenity picker to list the subapps and go that direction; I mean, I'd be afraid to copy that pnd over, if it'll add 30 options to my game-tab or whatever :)
There's no way to "hide" icons so they don't show up for a particular PND? A zenity selector would work but doesn't make much sense in this case as the individual programs aren't really related to each other. Maybe I'll just split them up into smaller groups.
 
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SteveM said:
Maybe I'll just split them up into smaller groups.
Just tried this - it works. One thing though: in minimenu, all the individual apps get the icon from the PND, not the one defined in the XML for that app.
 
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Couple things --

You can invoke xterm for sure, to run a command; xterm -font <foo> (xlsfonts to get a list), etc, works great; I used that for years back in the day (I wanted it so every xterm I popped up woudl have a slightly different background colour and foregroung font colour, to help differentiate them. So I specified all that gunk on the command line from a sh-script of course :)

We currently don't support automatic adding to the user path (security risk), or adding to shared lib pool, or extending the base filesystem .. ie: we thought about it all and built some approaches, but in the name of security and simplciity for day-zero, to gather user feedback etc, we didn't put any of that in for now.

If you don't want to emit an app, don't emit it :) (Or file it to a different category than standards, perhaps?) If a pnd-file spits out piles of apps, the user can suppress some of them using a .ovr file (or at least I meant to allow that, I think I built that, but I forget offhand if I included that one or not :) The normal behaviour is for a pnd to spit out its apps and be available to the user.

As to icon -- the current pnd-format has a design limit -- in pnd-file-form, the icon is appended to the file for ease of access; thats the icon specified when you make the pnd-file; it is used for all pnd-apps in that pnd-file. If you unpack the pnd-file into a directory type app, then the individual icons can work on a per-applet basis, but we've not tested that in months since pnd-file is the normal use. (yes, we will extend the pnd-format to support more features over time, but we didn't want to risk breaking the firmware for awhile, so we didn't reengineer the pnd-format lately ;)

jeff
 
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