Re: welcome to a new update all diablo os2008 users!
 

yeah, I can fully admit this being my own limited understanding. As mentioned, this time I borked it all myself by chewing the wifi support prematurely. The last time was a hung boot. I can see how initfs and kernel should simply need the boot loader menu reimaged so now it's a matter of seeing it happen on my own device.

(edit because I'm slow today and closed before I was finished): offhand, is there documentation on how the initfs integrates? I know the general process is initial byte code -> RAM -> bios -> initfs -> kernel (or kernel -> initfs). Is there some subtle difference with maemo or am I just not thinking it through?

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

It's 256MB, but it's using jffs2, a filesystem that compresses data (both to fit more on, and especially to avoid wearing out the flash), so you get around 512MB of data on it (depending on the data, of course).

No, there's no SD slot under there -- the SD interface is used for an SD-compatible SMT chip. You'd have to desolder that, then solder on some fine wires running to an SD socket or soldered directly onto an SD. Doable, but only with appropriate skills+equipment. Nobody with said skills and equipment has seen fit to do it yet, though.

And that 8GB is invalid -- there are 16 and 32 GB SDs, and 16GB microSDs available now. I hope you've looked at craves1's adapter thread? He's manufacturing (and soon selling) full-size SD adapters that convert the external miniSD into an internal SD; two versions are available, and possibly a third for people who are good friends with a rotary tool. (The latter will permit the standard battery door; the former are for a custom bulged battery door w/standard battery, and for adding to the door that comes with a Mugen 3.6Ah battery.) If 16GB would make you happy, one of those should do the trick.

Re: Thanks You Sir
 

the flash is 256, the 2Gb has been discussed heavily and noone has figured out a way to upgrade it without major brain surgery.
/edit
and there is a thread to use a 32GB card going, plus 16Gb micro cards are out (but pricey)

Re: Thanks You Sir
 

hm.. drat, so it's not just the plastic casing over a removable SD slot that I can swap and clone? That saves me hacking up the chassis under the back panel at least.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

I'll have to let you know if more than 16 gig will make me happy once I fill my 8 gig though by then a mini larger that 8 gig will probably do just fine. I think it's more the percieved feeling of a hardware downgrade by giving up the internal SD slot.

I did the same thing with my Palm before the N800. "upgrading" from T5 to LifeDrive seemed like a hardware downgrade. It was the newer unit but platter drives, slower cpu and some there functions left out that the T5 had. In the end, the N800 was the first device that was actually an upgrade from the T5.. so I upgraded. Now, the T5 is only used for bluetooth stuff I can't yet replace under maemo.

Good to know about the internal slot before I go hacking up mine though.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

uh oh.. i got this trying to install osso.

Some packages could not be installed. This may mea n that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are us ing the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug re port against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
osso-software-version-rx34: Depends: kernel-diab lo-flasher (= 2.6.21-200835maemo1) but 2.6.21-2008 35maemo1rotation is to be installed
Depends: libsdl-mixe r1.2 (= 1.2.6-4) but 1.2.8-1 is to be installed
Depends: xserver-xom ap (= 1:1.3.99.0~git20070321-0osso20083101) but 1: 1.3.99.0~git20070321-0osso20083101rotation is to b e installed
E: Broken packages
~ $

Re: Thanks You Sir
 

No, it's MoviNAND. Most likely it's a KMBDG0000A, though it could be a KMAKG0000M. Either way, someone with the right tools and knowledge of how to use them should be able to double their N810's internal storage. And if the N810s use KMAKG0000Ms, then an upgrade to 8GB is possible.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Updated before I headed into work and gave it a thorough work over.

On 3 UK 3G but MicroB is responsive and faster than it used to be in parts. Youtube is much better to use than before and the video controls are responsive to the touch rather than waiting a year and a day just to pause video.

Boot times are noticeably quicker too I think. Modest (as usual) is a massive disappointment and only serves to slow down the tablet and cause me immense amounts of stress, grief and pain as it struggles to process gmail IMAP with the speed and understanding of a ninety year old Victorian trying to learn C++.

Usually, when I'm on Wifi and the device suddenly crawls to a halt, you know that Modest is trying to comprehend the concept of web e-mail accounts and IMAP. I've deleted my g-mail account details from the tablet to solve the problem ;)

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!: All the issues I have found
 

Oh, now *that* REALLY pisses me off.

I have the internal card reformatted as ext2 so that I could use it as a default user space. And the way I normally did this was to symlink /home/user/MyDocs to that. So, kaboom.

What in the almighty hell is a .deb doing even glancing sideways at the /home directory? That's the user's playground. You DO-NOT-TOUCH the user's playground. Ever.

GRARGH.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

OK, sorry if this has been answered before. Sliderotate seems to have been updated for 36-5, but I am unable to properly install it.

If I go through xTerm, I can install it, BUT it uninstalls osso-software-version-rx44, which would disable the future software SSU. It says there is a problem with xserver-xomap when i try to install osso.

Is there a way to get sliderotate and osso-software-version together?

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!: All the issues I have found
 

That's what I'm doing too and the update was smooth without a problem.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Why the *hell* do we have to have an "OS Feature Update" package?? Why can't we update like EVERY OTHER Debian system?? Package by package whenever they're *ready*.

Damnit, this update did not install correctly, it busted my apt, and it reflashed my initfs even though it did not install.

Now I go to reflash.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

its to "help" those non-linux users "grasp" app manager...

thats also why there is a red pill mode, even tho i wish sometimes there was a "power user" mode that showed some of the info that red pill does...

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Well, if you want to patch Application manager up a bit to better allow the use-case (with an toggleable option, preferably), then I'm pretty sure we can work something out for the community distribution.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

No problem with this update for me except for deleting my bootmenu options.

However, my tablet seemed to slow down quite a bit with the last upgrade after I cloned the OS to SD. With this update on top of the other one, it seems even slower now.

It seemed faster before I did the cloning. The internal OS seems alot slower now overall. I may have to reflash and just forget the clone to OS. Or, strictly use the cloned os primarily. Although, the only difference I see is a very slight speed in booting and app loading on the cloned OS vs. internal OS. Otherwise, no substantial big improvement.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Hi,

Unfortunately I do not have the time to read through the last 42 pages of this thread so if possible could somebody please help with a summary.

What I have learned so far is:

1 If you are booting off an external card you will need to redo the boot menu
2 If you have screen rotation the install may fail (leads to reboot loop)
3 If you have a problem with the install you will need to re-flash
4 You need to make sure you have enough space (on the internal drive) before you start

Does this sound about right?
Is there anything else to go on this list?

If we get a definitive answer I will create a new thread just to save people searching too far and I will correct this post.

Cheers -John

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Well,... I for one feel the need to defend this guy... Identify the specific causes?!?!?! How on Earth is anyone supposed to do that when the darn thing keeps rebooting in an endless cycle??? Please read on for more well intentioned chastising...

Well, I certainly hope that it leaves an impression of poor quality... I too have experienced the endless reboot errors on my N800, not only after one upgrade, but after re-flashing and re-upgrading... Shame on Nokia for fostering an Alpha test on us... Potentially dangerous modifications?!?!? This is LINUX we are talking about!!! Modifications are the very life-blood of Open Source!!! We deserve better QA, especially since we purchased a consumer product that is little better to Nokia than a test-bed for their VOIP-phone of the future...

Again, understatement. IMHO you owe this guy an apology...

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Yes, one doesn't know why it keeps rebooting: no log, not a single error message. Ditto for the Application manager: one doesn't know what's going on when packages are installed (one doesn't even know what packages are installed), one doesn't know when something fails. While problems can often be solved after seeing logs / error messages under Unix, this is not possible here.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Wrong. It's possible, but only if you've anticipated the potential for trouble and cloned to an SD. When you have a non-booting system with a HDD, you can pull it, put it in another system, mount it read-only, and go look at logfiles, etc. Or you can boot off removable media, and examine it. The same is possible with the tablet if you either were running off SD (you can look at the SD in another system) or if you were running flash and have a bootable SD.

There's also some tools that may be ionstalled in the initfs to give you a USB networking (with telnet/ssh) or USB serial connection. This gets you a shell before it loops and you can diagnose/repair things from there.

While there are some issues with this update, they mainly boil down to packaging and package-deployment issues. There is no real inability to diagnose failures, and anyone who can't clone to SD probably couldn't diagnose the failure in any case.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

It would help if you were more specific ;P

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

as johnpad mentioned, the update may fail and lead to an endless reboot if rotation is installed. if so, does uninstalling the rotation ensure a "seamless" update? i think many users like me just want to be reassured about this before going for the update..

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

I'm not aware of any evidence to support that. AFAIK, all existing rotation packages prevent the update from starting in the first place. The main culprit for reboot loops seems to be the preinstalled documentation and media.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

But the point is that most users don't anticipate and don't clone to SD (users don't always have a SD or have space on the SD anyway).

With other systems (e.g. Debian), this isn't needed: boot messages are output to the screen, so that one can see what's going on and possible errors. This is not always convenient, but still much better than having nothing at all like on the tablet. Moreover, one can enter single-user mode from the firmware, so that one can try to fix things.

Sounds really interesting. Any more information, please?

No, this needs to anticipate. One should really be able to diagnose the failure without anticipating and without having a spare SD. This isn't much a problem for this failure as it occurs for many users, so that some of them can diagnose it. But some other uncommon failures could really be hard to diagnose.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

dependencies tab, being able to see what lib versions are installed (libpurple0, im looking at you)...

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Something is different on the tablet of every user for whom it's failed. No-one's going to be able to pin down what's common if what's been done to them isn't clear.

"Specific causes" meant - if it's failed for you - what, exactly have you done to the tablet since you last reflashed it? Saying "nothing, it's the same" and then later it turns out "well, I installed sliderotate" (not mentioning any particular user, here) means something was done.

Software doesn't fail randomly, unless there's a hardware failure. Something is different which is causing reboot loops etc.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

I had the same problem. I had .documents linked to a folder on the internal mmc card, and the update process kept failing. The log read: mv: cannot rename '/usr/share/pre-installed/MyDocs/.documents/*': No such file or directory

After creating a new folder .documents under /usr/share/pre-installed/MyDocs with some dummy file in it, I could finally install the update successfully.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Some users said that the SSU broke their bootmenu, so how would this solve anything concerning the endless reboot loop?

Moreover this wiki page doesn't mention the tools to get USB networking before the reboot (http://wiki.maemo.org/USB_networking is silent on this point too).

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Unfortunately not everyone remembers everything what they did since the last reflash, including things not done as root (as the SSU behavior also depends on user space, as it was shown).

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

I cannot understand why SSU installs anything to user's home directory at all. Home directory is for user to do anything he wants and trying to make a deb which works there 100% is not a easy task.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

- there is a config file which includes the list of isntalled packages. I believe this is the source document for the GUI package manager. If you can't see the list of installed packages in your GUI app, you can instead get it from the text file directly. When upgrading between versions, I've copied this to reference when needing to know what nifty package I previously had installed. I'd give the location and name but I'm at work and can't confirm currently. Other's here will know where it is though (thought it was /etc/dpkg/ or /etc/apt/.. maybe a var. believe the file was packages.installed or similar)

- in terms of logging, I've considered adding syslogd to my install but I want to minimize what writes to the flash memory ratehr than hit the chips write limit any faster than I have too. I've had to many usb flashdrives hit there limit to rush my N810 into retirnment. You can install syslogd though if prefered.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

You haven't worked with Windows much. :D

(sorry, I know it's completely off topic but I couldn't resist after giggling at that line a few times. Well written software will give an indication of why it has failed though; even if us humble end users don't know how to read that indication.)

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Simple, take the jffs2 image the initfs_flasher generates and store it on your computer.

The USBNet article is a slightly different subject. The README for the initfs flasher contains all the relevant information.

In summary, hold down the menu key and plug in a USB cable.

Yes, well, they surely remember if they did something, and not report having done nothing when it's clearly not the case. Black periods are a symptom of a possibly severe neurological disorder. :rolleyes:

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Update:

I had some time this morning so I figured I'd leave my internal OS install to update. It hit a non-responsive update server and failed leaving me with a partial update; the majority of packages seem to be hanging at the GUI's "downloading" status bar. I grabbed any package related too networking that didn't hang on download but figured the wireless networking would be chewed the same way I managed to break my SD install's connectivity. Now that I've had a chance to reboot and check, my internal install is detecting wireless networks as it should so I can continue the updates when the servers stop hanging my downloads later.

This also means that I can grab those same .deb and bring them to the SD to install from local storage. This will fix the networking issue of not detecting any wifi signals to connect too. Now, provided the updated OS does not go into looped rebooting or a hung partial boot, I'll be able to try the update and boot menu reflash rather than fixing issues beyond my comprehension by recloning.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

I regularly retrieve the output of "dpkg -l", but this gives too little information about the status of the tablet.

Perhaps it could be disabled at the end of the boot.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Hang on a second.

It's unfortunate that some have performed actions on their tablets that interfered with SSU, and they don't recall offhand what those actions were, but doing so in the first place was a risk they chose to take.

I have said this numerous times but I guess it is still not resonating with everyone: Nokia cannot possibly test for every single possible configuration out there. And the community has done some really far out things! (that's not meant in a bad way-- I think it's cool).

The above is not an excuse for "alpha products or poor QA" as one poster mistakenly alleged. It's just reality. And comparing Maemo to long-established linux builds (as some have) is a bit naive.

None of the problems with SSU are wilfull maliciousness on Nokia's part as some seem to believe. They are the result of something irregular. And while statements like Jaffa's about doing a little investigation may seem trite, doing so and reporting back through bugzilla is the only way that the Maemo team can acquire the information necessary to prevent future problems.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Fine with me, as long as they alert users that the supplied documentation is an integral part of the operating system. Such a feature is uncommon on mainstream OS so many users may be surprised that deleting such documentation may cause the update to fail. If this is not poor quality insurance on a software release, they would better provide warnings when deleting such files!
Otherwise, in a more constructive way, they could try to provide some fixes and learn from their mistakes.

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

I feel like I must be speaking some alien language.

Isn't the last part of your post what I just said?

The documentation issue has been bugged and I am confident it will be addressed. Reporting it, voting on it and discussing it are all parts of the feedback and correction process. Have you voted on that bug yet?

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Hi,

I updated my n810 last night and found out that WLAN "selection connection" is NOT working properly. It keeps "searching", but no wifi network shows up! Though it still connects to my home wireless router as it was saved in the profile. The WLAN taskbar icon is grayed out... :(

Anyone else is having similar problems? How do I fix this.

Any help will be very much appreciated.

-DX

Re: Seamless Software Upgrade v4.2008.36-5 is out!
 

Yes. Please see bug # 3749.