Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

debernardis: I can't find the line "key <BKSP> { [ BackSpace ] };" for some reason. I found the line "<BKSP> {type[group1] = PC_FN_LEVEL2"n symbols{Group1] = [" Is that what I'm supposed to replace? Thanks.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Might be that you applied this hack: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=11 and you don't remind of it? :D (See the last paragraph).

This was to map function-backspace to delete.
I think that if you revert to what I reported before, you lose delete and gain escape - having escape is better imho.

Disclaimer: I've read that an erroneous editing of the rx-51 file might give several problems (continuous rebooting?). So beware...

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

One feature that xbindkeys provides that xmodmap doesn't offer is to set a combination key press function.

There should be no reason to edit the rx-51 file.

See here for more details:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=11

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

What's the correct URL for that xbindkeys thread?

--denis

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

So there's a maemo xbindkeys as well? Because I'm using the Debian xbindkeys.

If we used a combination key press function (like we did on the N8x0 tablets) to gain functionality, what would the combinations be?

I propose something like, "Ctrl-comma" to start "Function key mode" and then one of the keys with the blue numbers to press a function key. For example, "Ctrl-comma" followed by the R key would press F4.

What do you think? What keys would we make available in this "Function key mode"?

EDIT: Here's Jebba's post about xbindkeys

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Today I became a bit more foolhardy and tried to see how much I could do with Easy Debian where I was somewhat stuck with Maemo. I had expected to have to use this forum to help me out of the mess I was fearing to end up in, but I can now simply report success :D and ask for feedback before recommending my solution to others!

My problem was this: I need vpnc when I want to connect to some closed-off parts of the network of my workplace, and on my Debian laptop it just works. When I got my N900, I also installed vpnc on it, which is available only in extras-devel (vpnc 0.5.8-0m5). It worked great for me, except for some slightly dubious aspects: it sometimes didn't restore /etc/resolv.conf to its "localhost" setting, but somehow this didn't interfere with anything, at least as far as I could tell. Looking at the source code, I was also worried that the Maemo version of vpnc does check whether it's running under Maemo, but that particular check is always false on the N900, (it checks for an "osso"-related file, which doesn't exist on the N900, probably just exists in older tablets), so it runs a default behavior. Well, it did work for me, so there was no big worry. However, with the upgrade to PR1.1, vpnc caused quite a bit of trouble, which the great community here figured out quickly though. But I was now so suspicious of this package that I didn't re-install it under PR1.1, in particular since PR1.1 has changed a few things in dns handling. People reported no further problems, but this program might become a liability for future firmware upgrades as long as nobody really takes care of vpnc. So far, nobody seems to have touched it since early December.

So, after this long introduction, what I now did was to install vpnc under Easy Debian, i.e. nothing more than "apt-get install vpnc" in Debian chroot. I also installed ssh there, copying over /etc/ssh from Maemo to have the same identity when logging into my computers at work. I thought this would be a safe thing since Easy Debian represents something like a safe sandbox. On the other hand, I wanted to connect to the internet with it. Surprisingly, it worked without any difficulty! I start vpnc-connect under Debian chroot, get a new /etc/resolv.conf under Debian, and everything just works. I could browse closed-off parts of my network at work with Debian's iceweasel, and then also opened the Maemo browser, just to have a look what the error message would be. After all, Maemo cannot see my new /etc/resolv.conf file under Debian, I though. Big surprise: also the Maemo browser worked!!!:cool:

I'm now completely baffled. Instead of asking for help with something going wrong, I'm now asking for somebody to explain me while Debian chroot can possibly work so completely??? :D:D:D:

If nobody finds anything wrong with running vpnc through Easy Debian, this might be a good solution for people who keep asking about vpnc under Maemo, but are scared from using it in its present unfinished state. Would everybody agree that my procedure should be completely fool-proof as far as Maemo is concerned, because no files outside Debian chroot get changed. So even if the kernel gets confused because say vpnc crashes, there would be nothing in Maemo that a reboot couldn't fix. And the Debian image can of course be backed-up separately.:cool::cool::cool:

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

rebhana: one of the missions of Easy Debian was to make the chroot as "porous" as possible, with as little "sandboxing" as possible. So all sorts of system directories, like /dev and /tmp, get bound to the "real" Maemo ones. This means a surprising number of apps "just work" as if they are being run inside Maemo, but it also means that a Debian app can crash the whole phone or change the behaviour of Maemo apps (positively, like in the case of the Maemo browser working with Debian vpnc, or negatively, like doing an apt-get install of some apps can restart crucial Maemo daemons and crash the phone). In general, however, there are very few things that Debian apps can do that will persist past a reboot.

As for specifically why Debian vpnc works so well? I don't know. I'm really happy that it does, though!

I only wish GConf and pulseaudio worked as well. :(

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I understand. I did actually expect some possible interferences, but of a kind where a reboot should restore at least Maemo, if not the Debian image. Is there a noteworthy example of "the very few things that Debian apps can do that will persist past a reboot"?

At any rate, vpnc under Debian should be much safer than running the seemingly orphaned extras-devel version. That version hacks the Maemo file /etc/udhcpc/libicd_network_ipv4.script, which I find very worrisome, for who will take care of consistency with PRx.y?

Regarding why the Maemo browser has no problem with Debian changing routing and DNS settings - isn't it clear that it could not possibly see the new /etc/resolv.conf in /.debian? Perhaps it just accesses the original DNS server by IP address, since that setting is unchanged under Maemo, but all the data exchange is done with the new identity gained under vpn. Then it's no longer so surprising perhaps, but still :cool:

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Maemo stores a fair share of the system settings in the /home/user directory. If any of the settings directories get damaged or erased, it could be problematic. Also, using a Debian version of a product also available in Maemo (for instance, a Mozilla product that uses ~/.mozilla) might cause interference by changing settings to something that the Maemo version will crash with.

Nothing really serious has ever happened to me, and I've got my chroot open most of the time, but theoretically, it could.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Yeah qole, I guess it seems that way.

It's handled everything I've thrown at it so far on my N800.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=624

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hi Qole,

Been trying out EasyDebian since last week, I was already impressed with this before I read this thread all the way through.. now I'm blown away with the possibilitiesl

Summarising, (sorry if this is going off the current topic but there was a lot to read) I think removing IceWeasel and installing Firefox instead would be more beneficial. With some of the limitations in the mail client, Thunderbird would also be a welcome addition. Adding networking / samba to access network shares would help enormously in file transfer! I do think that an app to help create Maemo desktop shortcuts to Debian apps would help newbies like myself.

I'm happy to try the test versions of this as and when they become available, so i uninstalled EasyDebian and Easy chroot.
Now I'm trying to reinstall easy-deb-chroot from extras-testing and it says it's not installable - missing package 'bzip2'
Is this something I need to download separately? If so could anyone give me a step-by-step guide on howto do this?

You're working on a really great project here, and I'd like to help it succeed in any small way I can.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

there is no "Firefox" in Debian, due to licensing issues. Iceweasel is Firefox, and Thunderbird is called "Icedove" in Debian.

more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel


you need to run the "Debian Image Installer" from the menu, after you've installed easy-deb-chroot. this will download the needed rootfs-file for easy debian.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I cant get some programs to start under Chroot. I installed them with synaptic. They run well under Easy Debian , but i cant find out how to make them run under Chroot.
Mixxx for example works wounderfull in both. 2 other apps start perfekt in the Easy Debian Terminal, but Chroot dont find them.
What did i do wrong ?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Sorry, forgot to add...the icon for "Debian Image Installer" is not in the menu. The only one i can find after installing easy_chroot is 'Close Debian'.
I can't install easy-deb-chroot. This only appears in extras-testing repo

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Strange.. I updated the 'Extra Decoders' package, afterwards I tried installing easy-deb-chroot, and the bzip2 error was gone. now installed correctly.

Guess the update resolved the dependancy issue.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I'm sorry if this was answered before, I tried asking this before in this thread but I got no reply.

I would like to know how to use a big partition (4GB~6GB) in the SD card instead of the image file to use Easy-Debian.
I'm planning to create the ext3 partition using gparted in ubuntu. Is that the recommended way?

I looked at this post and it looks that I have to create an ext3 partition card and then create a /.debian folder and then modify the .chroot config file after installing "easy-deb-chroot". (The post refers to a partition on the MyDocs partition, does it work with an SD card?)

Is that it? Does running the application mounts the partition automatically then?

Any more steps or suggestions?
Thanks,

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hi,
Does Easy Debian take advantage of the n900's PowerVR SGX 530 GPU and 430MHz C64x+ DSP apart from the 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

AFAIK There is nothing that is inherently preventing Debian stuff using the GPU or the DSP, however, hardly any of the thousands of apps are compiled with support for those (as ARM Debian is far more generic than just OMAP processors). Except if by GPU you mean X, as it can transparently use any X extension which is available...

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Qole,

Small oddity. My remapping of the sterling, euro and cursor keys while working fine in Hildon are not fully functional in easy debian -- the cursor key remaps do not work, ie., Fn-Up, etc. I think I'll play with xbindkeys to try to get more reliable key remapping for easy debian.

--denis

Edit 1/30/09: Though, these PC_FN_LEVEL2 mappings work fine for Maemo, it turns out they are accessible on Easy Debian by shifting the Cursor keys... and not via Fn as they should. Wonder why?

Playing anew with xev / xmodmap under Easy Debian, I discovered that it is possible to get functional FOUR_LEVEL mappings. As a test, I did:

and the 4th level character ("¿") is actually available by pressing both Fn + shift simultaneously!

With this working, it should be possible to develop more flexible keyboard maps for use within the Easy Debian environment.

FOUR_LEVEL key mappings should work also in the rx51 keyboard configuration file for Maemo... but other than for characters that have a shifted state, I can't get them to work!

Xmodmap for Fremantle still doesn't work with the PR1.1 update. Something is broken with the keyboard remapping API that xmodmap uses with Fremantle's X11 server. Please vote on the open bug.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Anyone can tell me how can I install wine on easy debian?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

you can't.

wine is for x86 environments, but the N900 is based on an ARM architecture. there's no way to make it work.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@barbox: no you cannot install wine on easy debian. n900 runs on ARM processor. wine only runs on intel x86 processor.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Basically, xmodmap binds single keys to single keys... while xbindkeys binds key-sequences to actions.

For programming foreign characters and additional symbols, xmodmap should suffice. But the X-Server interface that xmodmap uses is broken in Fremantle.

Xbindkeys, as I understand it, can't deliver single keys... it delivers commands that are followed by CR. To program delivery of single / multiple keys with Xbindkeys one would need to supplement it with the Xmacroplay utility. Given the shortage of free keys in the N900 keyboard, I suppose mimicking something like a "compose key" with xbindkeys and xmacroplay ought to be feasible.

--denis

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Just curious, can I then run Lazarus/FPC under EasyDebian?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Maybe... with a lot of effort...

there are no ARMel packages for the lazarus ide or the freepascal utilities. they do exist for several other platforms though, so maybe you can cross-compile.
although i imagine cross-compiling a compiler to be a non-trivial task.

and to make things worse, the lazarus and fpc packages don't exist in the "Lenny" Branch, which is what Easy Debian is based on. so apart from having to port lazarus yourself, you probably would have to do that for a ton of dependencies as well. if it's possible at all (libc dependencies can kill you *g*).

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I looked at the freepascal website they have this:" ARM architecture
16 MB of RAM is required. Runs on any ARM Linux installation".

Maybe the best thing to do is give it a try and see what happens:cool:

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

delaroca and Addison:

You can use xbindkeys to deliver single keypresses by combining it with xvkbd -text, which is also installed in Easy Debian. I think I give details about that above. Look for "[F5]". I think it is in the Extras-devel version, check the ~/.xbindkeysrc after installing.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

hello here ! just tried easy debian and i found it quite good ! althought i don't really know how to tweak prefs to make it run faster lol
i find good openoffice but i don't understand why when it's been loaded without easy debian you can't turn on usb mass storage...
and i also have an issue with loading synaptic into easy debian, i need to use the command line "sudo /usr/sbin/synaptic" to run it because it was asking root password :S
but works well on maemo directly lol

my question is, has someone tried vlc on it ?? and what great apps is there to try ?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@titi974
I tried vlc but it (video) didn't work! I didn't spend much time on it...

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

>my question is, has someone tried vlc on it ?? and what great apps is >there to try ?

but mplayer/mencoder run fine.

one of my favourites so far was pitivi a video-editor. i managed to render a small video (5seconds) in dvd-quality. did cost me around 10 minutes render-time. :)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Gimp running on two LXDE desktops is really, really nice for photo editing on the N900.

Photo as taken with the N900's camera:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2700/...c30b4f9b_b.jpg

Photo after editing with the Gimp, including a complicated feathered selection to enhance only the background (volcano and sky) -- look at the line of bushes behind the girl to find the division...


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2760/...2ef099cf_b.jpg

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

i got the following problem, after updating source list of synaptic, while i want to download packages, there are always some failing

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Qole: what do you mean running gimp on "two desktops"?

And, thanks for the useful tip about using "xvkbd -text" to send individual keystrokes in combination with xbindkeys. It's a lot of machinery as opposed to using xmodmap, but when push comes to show, it will do! :-)

--denis

Edit: I tested "xvkbd -text" in Easy Debian and it works pretty much as it should... save for the problem that a bunch of warnings are output when testing in xterm -- which can be diverted with "2>/dev/null".

I compiled xvkbd for Maemo, but while it works for normal text, trying to send special chars such as in "\[ntilde]" or the equivalent "\[dead_tilde]n" do not work. Possibly, another bug with Fremantle's X11 Server?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I installed qtnx inside, and it working well inside lxde.
When I try to start it with debbie qtnx I can't get the keyboard to work.
Is it someway to activate the keyboard to work when running it outside lxde?


It's looks like the problem is qtnx and not easy debian.
I managed to get it started on meamo and it was the same problem there. So forget it in this thread.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hello all,

This is my first post and I want to start do congratulate you all for this great community!

I'm also trying (since yesterday) the Easy Debian (testing repository version)

Everything works great, except that when I tried do install my first package (from synaptic on the menu)

I selected the "Filezilla" package and said yes to all the required dependencys, after some package download activity it always fails on these 2 packets:

I have tryed to continue without these 2 packages but filezilla never works.
Do you have any idea on how to solve this?
Should I add any alternative repository?

Tnx in advance!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Qole: Are you running lxde with sound? I tried amarok and tried to load up one of my mp3s. I didn't get any sound, I got an alsa error instead.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

paulo_olivera: Hit the "reload" button before installing.

andyph666: No, I haven't figured out a safe way to get sound working in Fremantle Easy Debian :(

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I found a bug in Maemo that is affecting Easy Debian.

The "fuser" command doesn't work at all in Fremantle busybox (it is there, it just doesn't do anything). This causes strange effects -- the chroot is closed, but the applications keep running.

Installing the psmisc package from Extras-devel fixes the problem, but that package is problematic... it uninstalls the 'mp-fremantle-generic-pr' package, and I bet OTA updates will break without that package. Grrrr...

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thank you, after that, it installed without any error.

But then I try to use Filezilla it doesn't connect to any server. After inputing the server_address/user/pass/port when I do "quickconnect" the main window disapears and the filezilla process crashes.

Output timeline when starting Filezilla from a shell inside LXDE:
At this point, the Filezilla program window appears and the program seems and behaves normaly.
Now I fill the server_address/user/pass/port and press "quickconnect". At this point the process crashes and the main Filezilla window closes.

Output when the Filezilla process crashes:
Note: The only extra packages that I installed on this Debian were

- Filezilla
- Openssh-client

Do you have any idea on why I'm having this error?

Do you recomend any other sftp gui for debian?


Tnx in advance!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

According to this thread, a big YES!!!

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=429693

--denis

Edit: Why don't you compile your own in Scratchbox? It builds with no problem whatsoever.