Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Also is there any way I can expand the ext2 img file? I can't do much on a 1gb

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

You could create a partition on your sd card, then copy the image file onto it, then you just need to make sure everything points to the partition rather than the image file. I think this method still works.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Hi Empire and D'ohboy:

Here is a new step-by-step, using the new scripts that I've written since that old how-to. These steps replace #2 to #5.

1. Gain root.
2. Mount your image file on /floppy (put the name of your image file in the command, if it is different than the one I use):
3. Mount your empty partition on /opt (use the correct partition here):
4. Copy all the files from your image file to the partition:
5. Unmount everything:
You don't need to reboot anymore.
You still have to point your .chroot file to the new partition as in the howto above.

(EDIT: I'm just doing this procedure in reverse right now, for my new Easy Mer. I've set everything up in a partition, now I'm copying it all into an image file for distribution.)

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Greetings:
Whilst I did not wade through all 69 pages of material here, I did read over half of them (1-17ish and 52-). Good stuff in general, but some of it appears to be outdated a bit (not surprising given the original dates on the thread).

Thought I would provide some updates from the perspective of a new installer of EasyDebian.

First, nice job with the install procedure. The simple straight-forward instructions on page 1 work as advertised. Looks like qole has been keeping that one up to date!

Second, for other newbies, there are two ways to expand the EasyDeb filesystem size. Method A involves creating a dedicated ext2 partition on your card (internal or external) and copying the EasyDeb stuff to that partition. How to do that is well documented about 6 posts above this one.

Method B involves resizing the EasyDeb image file itself. The only post I could find on that one is no longer correct (it suggested just copying resize2fs from the debian partition to the OS2008 one... That no longer works, as that program now has deps). However, you _CAN_ still do it provided that you have access to a computer running a reasonably recent version of Linux (download a LiveCD if you need). Follow these steps:
0) Make sure you aren't running EasyDebian. For me, I physically removed the card and plugged it in to my Linux box. If you are using the USB cable, make absolutely sure that Nothing Debian is running on the machine. A power cycle is suggested!
1) Make a copy of the Debian Image for safe-keeping in case something goes wrong.
2) Run e2fsck -f on the file image. Elsewhere in the thread, it is suggested to run this after, but resize warns you to run it first, do both!
3) Run resize2fs <imagefilename> 2G As pointed out somewhere above, if you are still doing this on a FAT partition (default for memory cards) you need to respect the 2G filesize limit.
4) Rerun e2fsck -f on the suddenly larger file. This is just to be safe!
5) Recopy/install your new larger file into same place as the original (depending on how you got it into the Linux system in the first place. I just had to re-install the card)
6) Enjoy more space to install stuff.

I haven't tried it, but using dd and mke2fs you can create a second 'disk' that you could mount similar to the easy debian main 'disk'. If I understand the commentary correctly, you should be able to just add some lines to the debain chroot script to mount the second 'disk'. Not quite as nice as a full 8 Gig partition, but may be a nice compromise for people.

Finally, in trying to run the apt-get upgrade which is almost always a good idea after installing from a static image. There are some errors. Seems that /usr/share/man has some missing subdirectories (man5 among others). This will cause libc6 to fail, and most of the rest of the upgrade as well. Just cd (from a Debian terminal window) to /usr/share/man, and mkdir man5 (and any of the other numbers that are missing).

I'm still waiting for the upgrade to finish, but the next item on the list will be gcc/g++. If I run into problems with it, I'll post. Maybe even solutions too. Please note: I am fully aware that apps compiled with Debian gcc may (probably) are not compatible with OS2008. One of the things I use my Nokia for is portable development. Prior to EasyDeb, I have had to wait to get back home or to the office to try out code changes. Annoying when I am on a longer trip. Now, thanks to EasyDeb, I will be able to squash bugs on the road. Then with subversion, upload tested code to the repository.

Thanks again qole for putting this together. For me, EasyDeb finally allows me to do all that I actually bought the Nokia to do. 256M really isn't enough to install the full C development chain. And whilst I could have done a boot-from-card approach, there are reasons why that did not appeal to me.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Just a couple of notes:

'sudo closechroot' will make sure there is nothing Easy Debian related running and it is completely unmounted. You should do this before pulling the card that has your ED image / partition.

I'm really not a fan of the image resize option. Make a new partition. Really. It is better in the long run.

The most recent Debian image file has had the man pages stripped out with 'docpurge' to save some space.

Easy Debian isn't really designed for an apt-get upgrade. But, if you may run into elschemm's problems installing other software. So those tips about the man directories are quite useful.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

As of last week, this error still occurs. It doesn't seem to cause a problem, but it pops here and there. (Ex. Step 3 for copying the image file to a partition 'qmount /dev/mmcblk1p2 /opt').

I tried a simple apt-get install libuuid, but it doesn't know libuuid. Anybody know what package to install to fix this small annoyance?

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Could you please try:
Yes, I don't know why it isn't installed for everyone... It should have installed automatically...

UPDATE:
Yikes, maybe the fact that I'm using the newer version in my repository rather than the broken version in the diablo repository (conflicts with e2fsprogs) is the problem...

UPDATE2:
Where the heck is e2fsprogs for Diablo? :mad:

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Ah! An interesting question. I couldn't find it either. That's why I suggested pulling the card and using a Linux distro to bump the size on the file.

BTW, you were right. Looks like a separate partition will probably work best in the long run; for me anyway. I hate having to guess on the split size for the FAT/ext partitions though. I wish Sandisk would hurry up on the Class6 16GB cards!

(I still need the FAT for some limited WIndows use.)

I'll let you know if your apt-get suggestion works in a bit. The tar/copy is still in progress and has the CPU pegged.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

OK. I didn't notice that it is libuuid1 (one), so after failing on libuuidl (ell), I thought I'd try something odd:
And.... It worked (also grabbed libuuid1). Started Debian chroot, no more error. E2fsprogs does _not_ show up under application manager for installable progs though! (And of course, since I did it with apt-get it doesn't show up in currently installed packages either)

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

elschemm: What repositories do you have enabled?

As far as I can see, e2fsprogs is not available for Diablo, so you either have Chinook repositories enabled, my repository, or the debfarm repository.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Hmm. Looks like I do have
repository.maemo.org/ chinook free non-free

I wonder when that got added!

I also have catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com/certified
and catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com/non-certified but I suspect the one above is where it downloaded it from.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Hooray! qwerty12 is going to fix the problem.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

After that and the .chroot edit above it still boots to the img. The partition its all on is on 1 partition and the only partition

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Empire: Make sure you have properly edited the .chroot file. There are some lines that start with # and these are just examples. The # makes those lines into "comments", and they are ignored by Easy Debian. Find the IMGFILE line with no # at the beginning and make sure it says =/dev/mmcblk.... something ...

If it does, try
and post the results.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

FYI: Don't use the Chinook e2fsprogs with the latest Diablo. I am 90% certain that is what caused a reboot loop. It's the only thing I can think of that I changed between the error and the last EasyDebian reboot. :(

I just spent the last 24 hours re-installing everything. Bummer.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Interesting! The e2fsprogs that I just promoted (with qwerty12's help) into the Diablo repositories are the same version as the ones in the Chinook repositories. I can only hope that there's no problems there (especially since I plan to make them a dependency!)... :(

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Thank you! It works! The problem was the sample config had # before everything.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

A question:
I have been able to download and install a whole bunch of the development libs that I need. They all installed in /usr/lib. There are a couple that I use that I need to compile by hand (which works, BTW), but they install in /usr/local/lib.

It looks like Easy Debian is only set up to search for stuff in /lib and /usr/lib. I've been trying to find the correct config file to change to add to that path, but I'm not having any luck.
So far I've tried .profile in my home and roots home directory, /etc/profile, /etc/bash.bashrc, and roots .bashrc. No joy.

I can get changes to take effect in the osso-xterm by putting them in the /home/user/.profile, but these do not seem to be inherited by Easy Debian. Does anyone know the correct place to make these additions in Easy Debian.

Update:
You did too good of a job qole! I forgot this was a chroot! Chroots don't inherit permissions from their pre-chroot parent and don't (at least yours doesn't) run any kind of login script, they just 'show up' with a root prompt at the top of the chroot tree.
So, now on to discover how/who Nokia/packager does their chroot. Some versions can be persuaded to pass in a new $PATH at chroot. And/or always run a certain program (like a login shell).

Also, should anyone else feel the need to roll their own, the debian chroot system does have /etc/ld.so.conf (well, actually it's in ld.so.conf.d) set up for /usr/local/lib in ldconfig, but it since it was never run and/or (not sure with debian) /usr/local/lib was empty, it doesn't look there. Re-running ldconfig fixes that problem.

Re: Easy Debian without the apps
 

I ma trying to install the empty debian using the instructions above but I have a problem trying to run the moutn command. I simply get this:

I'm not sure where to go from here - if there are any tips you could provide, I would be most grateful :).

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers,

Neil

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Neil:

Use this command to mount image files now (it uses my newer scripts):

Replace "/media/mmc1/debian.img.ext2" with the name of your image file.

You don't need to do any of the insmod stuff, nor do you have to do the dmlosetup line.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

After a couple days of tinkering, I still can't figure out where the chroot is getting it's default path information under sh. :confused:

But, BASH is much easier to change. Change /etc/passwd so that 'root' and 'user' use /bin/bash instead of /bin/sh. Then alter /etc/bash.bashrc (under the EasyDebian chroot) and add
PATH=${PATH}:/any/other/paths:/more/paths
to the end of that file. If you don't want to do the ldconfig I mentioned earlier, you can also add a LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the end of this file. (Don't forget to export LD_LIBRARY_PATH). Ldconfig is the cleaner way to go though (for the purists out there).

PS1 (the default prompt) is set in /etc/profile. Mod it to your hearts content.

Finally, if you want to be able to 'su user' (so you aren't root all the time), you will need to change /etc/login.defs. You will want to change the line that starts with ENV_PATH to be the non-root users default path. If you want to 'su back to root (say from LXDE), you might want to do the root version right above it too.

There you go. A working set of environment variables for development.

Add in this cable mentioned in this thread attached to a USB keyboard (Walmart) and I'm good to go!

Great part is that none of this affects my 'default' maemo environment (different lib versions, etc), and since the partition is on the external card, it doesn't die if I have to reflash!

For those worried about space, I took the full EasyDeb package, ran localepurge, bumped it to a 3G partition, downloaded most of the Gnu toolchain, subversion, a couple of (largish) custom libs, xmeacs (hoping to use with usbmouse.deb (didn't work)) and the current projects I am working on. I still have about 1.5G of my 3 left.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

OK. One more question.

If I use the regular maemo xterm, or the debian chroot (which is just the regular xterm running a specific comman), then I have access to all the changes I made to the rx-44 file. Tis very nice. When I plug in my external keyboard via the USB port, it uses a standard 104-key layout. In other words, by 810 HW keyboard works the way I programmed it to, and my USB external works the way the keys say.

But, if I fire up LXDE things are a little different. It looks like qole made good on the promise to grab the .Xmodmap file from someone and stuck it in. Took me a while to notice, because they chose about the same mods as I did (great minds think alike?). The problem is that Xmodmap overrides all keyboards, not just defines a keyboard.

This is a problem because (for whatever reason) Nokia did some odd things with their (American) keyboard. For instance, on a regular US keyboard, the 'plus' key is a shifted 'equals'. On a Nokia N810 US hardware keyboard, you get the equals from FN 'plus'.

So, with the .Xmodmap in place, I lose the ability to press = and ".
(since the Xmodmap relegates them to Fn-land).

I can copy the xkb files from the Maemo section to the debian partition (in fact qole's scripts do that automatically), but they don't seem to work.

When take out (via a mv) the .Xmodmap-keymap file, all I get is the standard US keymappings.

So, Maemo is doing something with the xkb files that LXDE is not. Seems like it should be fairly straightforward to find the difference and fix it, but so far I have not had any luck.

Does anyone else out there have more experience with using xkb? Specifically in either setting up LXDE to use (all) the maemo kbd files, or where in maemo the X config files are (so that I can compare them to the LXDE versions.

Thanks

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

I don't have an N810, so I can't comment much on your problem. But I can say that there are two .Xmodmap files, one for the N810 and one for the N800. Perhaps you could switch to the N800 one for your external keyboard? The two files should be clearly named in your home directory...

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

They are, and I could either do that, or swap the file in and out (rename via script as needed). I was hoping to come up with a way to gain the native ability to 'do the right thing automagically'.

That is not possible to do with .Xmodmap (unless you do the fileswitching), as the two keyboard layouts are exactly the opposite of each other at least for the +/= key (Nokia uses unshifted +, standard keyboard uses unshifted =).

It looks like LXDE does have the ability to do xkb. I just need to find out how Maemo 'knows' how to map each keyboard to the correct xkb file, then figure out how to map that into the chroot environment (since at least some of the paths aren't the same).

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

BTW, qole: are you still actively working on the .ext image file for
the Debian image? If so, would you be interested in some 'pruning' that can be done to cut the size down? It should be at least a couple of megs, but might be more. Lots of little files scattered here and there that got left over from things it looks like you pulled from the image (icewm stuff, for instance) or from 'debianisms' that you aren't using (since it isn't a full system).

If you ever plan to release a newer version of the image file it might be useful.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

elschemm:

If you want to make a pruned, lean-and-mean rootfs for me, I will gladly use it in a future release. I just did an update last month, but I'll do another one if you can strip out a significant amount of cruft...

You can either post instructions for removing the cruft, or I will give you upload privileges to my server and you can upload a tarball.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Thanks. I just grabbed a copy of the file again and copied it to my big work computer. I'll keep two versions. One that's stock and one that has my changes. Then if I find enough I can email you the list of files.

BTW: Is there any particular reason that you have the file tarred? Tar does not compress things at all, in fact it makes things slightly larger than the original. It's only about 10K for your current image, but thats 10K of wifi-download plus the untar time.tar

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Thanks, I would appreciate that (as would many others, I'm sure).

You've got a point. Why not just compress the file instead of tarring and compressing?

I guess it was just a habit... I tar and compress the rootfs file (for good reason, it contains many many files), so I just automatically did the same for the image file.

I'm not really a developer, everything I've done here someone else in the forums patiently taught me :)

I wonder how much extra time is added to untar and un-bzip2-it instead of just un-bzip2-ing it?

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

On my Dual-Quadcore 3.2 GHz with a high speed SATA drive, untarring only took a few seconds. But, thats slightly more hardware than the N810 has. :)

For comparison, the bunzip takes 36 seconds.

So, using this totally un-scientific info, you _might_ be able to save 15-20% of the time. Have to try it for real to see for sure.

Frankly, I suspect it will depend on the memory card. Since there is only the one file, it should amount to a file copy from the device to the device. It's going to have to pass into memory first, since I don't think tar would be smart enough to issue a direct disk copy. The read is going to be sequential, as well as the write. I've read a few places that SD cards don't handle that as well as random. Of course, since you are alternating the read and write, maybe that's not an issue.

For somebody with a 'cheap' Class 2, it will likely take longer than someone with a 'well designed' Class 6. (I'll leave the arguments on which vendor is which to other threads)

If memory serves though, there was an issue in one of the EasyDeb threads about people using an older/non-gnu version of tar to untar it. Removing the tar would solve that dependence.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Bummer. Not having a lot of luck with the xkb stuff.

From what I have found, it looks like Xephr is hardcoded only to look at event0 - event3 (from strings). I'll have to see if I can find the source code somewhere and verify that.

You can mostly fix the problem by changing the following lines in the n810 .Xmodmap-keymap file:
keysym plus = plus plus equal
to keysym plus = plus equal equal
keysym apostrophe = apostrophe apostrophe question
to keysym apostrophe = apostrophe quotedbl question

The plus/equals key will still be backwards on the USB keyboard, but at least you can type an = now (shift-+).

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Having just trashed my debian partition (long story), I just re-downloaded the squeeze image. Just so I could test this, I downloaded the img file (I'll copy it back to the debian root fs partition with the instructions a couple of pages back).

The untar takes a LOT longer than I would have expected. It takes about 6 minutes. If I recall, the whole install is supposed to be about 15, so cutting that untar out will make a large difference in the second stage install time for EasyDebian.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

So I have been test Debian Squeeze on my N800 is it me, or do YouTube videos not work well with Iceweasel? I get no sound, is there any way to update Flash?

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Just purchased an N810 and wish to install Gimp and Office.
Selected Maemo.org>Downloads>Office etc.>Turbo Easy Debian for Everyone>install . I eventually got the following reply:
'Unable to download easy-deb-chroot.
Application package not found.'
This has happened on a number of occasions. In some instances the N810 was downloading a what I presume
was the installation file(>670kb) to completion but then the above message was always displayed. On no occasion was the
'big file' downloaded. On each occasion I checked and found that no new files were installed.

Where am I going wrong please?::o

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

deejay: Ensure that your N810 is running the latest firmware, 43-7, called "Diablo". Use the Nokia Internet Tablet Software Update Wizard, found here. Update the firmware like in this video.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Hi q (hiIQ),
Many thanks for the solution. N810 was shipped in 2007 with
early version of firmware (Got it in London last Thursday for £209 .Shop clearing old stock to make room for N97?). Had to use Windows to get the firmware updated but once updated everything OK. ...and Gimp is great on it.
deejay:D

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

I've got a clone setup (OS on internal 2 GB card, 8 GB external) and when I go to Synaptic and search for an app, it hangs - I don't know if it's being slow or if it really did hang. Is there an alternate way to install http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show...?content=10217 ?

*EDIT* It's just slow, I've got the results now. Should I turn on virtual memory?

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Yes, you really need virtual memory for a lot of Debian apps. You can also get more speed by choosing the "Set CPU to Performance mode" icon.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

I noticed in the youtube installation video that it looked like a package type install.

In other words, the guy was installing Easy Debian and Open Office and other apps at the same time.

I know this may sound weird but I don't want Open Office but would like the graphic apps instead.

So, do I have to install this whole bundle first and THEN UNINSTALL what I don't want?

Thanks!

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

You have the general idea, yes.

As part of its installation, Easy Debian downloads one whopper of a file to either your tablet's internal or external card, your choice. That big file is like a virtual hard drive, and it comes with Debian and a number of popular applications already inside it. Easy Debian then performs various bits of magic that lets those Debian applications run from within the big file.

The big whopper of a file has been pre-made and tested by qole, and it's a non-trivial bit of work, so he can't easily create customized versions for different people. That said, he does accept donations on his web site, and I suppose a sufficient donation might encourage him to volunteer extra assistance.

If you do try Easy Debian, please proceed cautiously as you begin uninstalling and installing applications. For starters, there's only so much free space in the big file, and should that space run out mid-install, Easy Debian will become unhappy. Also, adding and removing Debian applications will cause other, supporting bits of Debian to be likewise added to, or removed from, the big file, and should those updates go too far, there's a chance Easy Debian may stop working.

Re: [Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!
 

Inkscape doesn't seem to be a huge addition (I added it to my image file no problem last night), and Gimp is one of the pre-installed apps in the current version, so there's two of the best graphic apps.

What other graphics apps are you thinking of?