Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I've tried to upgrade pulseaudio to modified one with LXDE desktop running, but results were the same. Maybe it's dependent on updates during dist-upgrade, so I'll try with fresh image.

I also noticed, that keyboard functionality regression is even bigger that I supposed - even when connected to N900 via VNC, keystrokes for "-" and other special symbols aren't recognized properly (while, obviously, in Maemo they're working without problem). So, it seems, that after copying whole layout folder, my keyboard settings are messed totally ;)

/Estel

// Edit

Just to let ya know - I've downloaded fresh image again (just in case), mounted (-o loop) it from linux machine, copied to dedicated ext4 partition on N900 (cp -a), and performing upgrade to squeeze. This time I'm trying with LXDE opened (which normally, would be not quite sane idea), will report how it turns out.

// edit 2

Just to help in debugging (I don't think it's important, but with so strange things, better to write everything) - because my dedicated ED partition is 3GB (I've used it on last try to dist-upgrade), I haven't used steps with creating temporary place for downloading archives.

Also, as I use swap on microSD with tweaked settings, I don't use -nice 19 at all - I don't have any reboot (or even unresponsiveness ) problems during upgrade.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

OK, after trying with fresh image *and* LXDE desktop open, dist-upgrade went without errors seen last time. Also, I was able to install "ugly" pulseaudio pack without problems, and sound is working fine.

Ho ever, I'm still unable to get special characters working - on N900 keyboard nor using external keyboard. blue arrow keep acting like AltGr (which is it in reality - just using Maemo special layout, pressing it and certain letters produce symbols from layer 3).

This is "blocker" for me, unfortunately, so any clues welcome warmly. qole, You've prepared original Easy Debian images with special maemo keyboard layout included - any suggestions, how to bring it back? I've tried copying /usr/share/X11/xkb to /.debian/usr/share/X11/xkb (from within Maemo) plentora of times, by plain recursive cp, cp -a, cp -a -f... to no avail. I feel, that somehow, fixing it must be trivial, I'm just too less experienced on those things.

Also, every time I open LXDE, wicd complains about not being able to "cope the user's Xauthorization file", thus not being able to run /usr/sbin/wicd as root (after that, it throws some other messages about killing UI etc.) Is it safe to uninstall wicd, given way we "share" maemo wifi connection? Also, when I try to purge/uninstall wicd, apt-get tries to install plentora of packages related to many connection types. Of cours,e ti doesn't try to install them via pure apt-get upgrade - so, I presume, that those packages are to substitute for what wicd was doing. Any ideas, how to proceed in our special chroot case?

Last but not least - this time I'm absolutely sure, that it's just my noobines, so be patient please. After dist-upgrade using repositories as per wiki page, I'm unable to find certain packages (for example, I tried to upgrade OpenOffice to LibreOffice, but I can't find it). Should i now add some additional repositories? I'm quite confused how it works now, as Squeeze is stable for certain time (how to maintain repositories in ED, to get not too-new versions, that will break everything).

Thanks in advance for any clues.

/Estel

// Edit

Of course, problems with keyboard occur only in LXDE - Ed programs started from Maemo shortcuts or 'debbie' works well.

// Edit 2

Also, I lost possibility (no matter if via LXDE or Maemo 'debbie') to invoke right/middle click by our elegant method of:
...(and similar) in /home/user/.xbindkeysrc. At the same time, binds like F1-F11 (via xvkbd -xsendevent) works fine - same for fullscreen, etc.

So, I suspect, that xdotool was screwed during dist-upgrade process. Another blocker, that I don't have idea how to fix.

From minor regressions - OpenOffice used via 'debbie' (or Maemo shortcut, it's same thing) starts in grey theme - grey document view etc (so it's very hard to see what You're writing). simple workaround for that is to...
...before running it. This way, we unset Maemo theme for that terminal session, and everything is fine again. ho ever, we need to do it every time we open new terminal and 'debbie' our program, so it's wise thing to create a script that does it before invoking openoffice. Then, we just modify Maemo shortcut to point to script instead of doing directly 'debbie openoffice.org').

This might happen for other programs to, and workaround should work for all of them.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

If Sulu or someone else with an upgraded image that they'd like to share wants to post their work to a free file sharing service, I'll tidy it up (put it in a nice fresh image, lzma it up, etc) and add it to my downloads on qole.org so everyone can get it.

It just seems silly that there's a bunch of you doing the same thing over again, especially since upgrading is the hardest and messiest thing you can do in a chroot.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Just add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

Of course, problems with keyboard occur only in LXDE - Ed programs started from Maemo shortcuts or 'debbie' works well.

// Edit 2

WFM but I had to install xdotool via
in chroot and my keybinding in .xbindkeyrc looks like this:

"xdotool click 3"
Shift+Mod5 + Up

Now I can perform right mouseklick by pressing Fn+Shift Up

I have to launch the "Set Deb HW Keys" before.

HTH & HAND

Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@qole
I'll gladly share my debian partition, but of course first I need to fix things that get broken in the process of updating. Also, I'm quite sure, that sulu is much more experienced in that, so his image (from fresh latest ED image dist-upgrade'd, as he promised to do after Christmas) is probably better candidate.

@magic_doc
Thanks a lot! Installing xdotool manually did the trick, now right/mouse clicks works on Maemo, 'debbie', and even in LXDE! I have no idea why xdotool went uninstalled during dist-upgrade...

Of course adding repositories also did the trick, so I was right about my noobiness ;) Still, I'm unable to install LibreOffice - libreoffice-core depends on ure >= 3.4.3, and our highest possible (as reported by repositories) is 1.6.1+ooo3.2.1-11squeeze4, which we have installed already. I've tried upgrading ure, but required version is nowhere to be found (probably, due to my noobiness again), and I'm little afraid to touch it more.

to be honest, I'm quite surprised, cause I remember, that few months ago it was possible to upgrade OpenOffice to LibreOffice in our lenny/squeeze mix (although, it was not working well without dist-upgrade). It's probably again something simple, but I'm not able to figure it out (yet).

---

So, the only remaining issues (detected so far) are:
So, any clues still welcome warmly - especially, for the "big" issue with keyboard mapping.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Sounds good! ...and spares me some ugly tests during the holidays. ;)

Just to clarify (please confirm if that's basically the same for your Polish layout):
I tried the German keyboard layout in ED and all the blue arrow keys worked EXCEPT for:
1) "," which is blue_arrow + "." on the German keyboard and is on the left_arrow key of the US layout.
2) cursor_up which is cursor_left on the German keyboard and is cursor_down on the US layout.
3) cursor_down which is cursor_right on the German keyboard and is cursor_right on the US layout.

So what does not work correctly for me is the lower cursor key row. "?" which is blue_arrow + "Ä" on the German keyboard (cursor_up on US keyboard) works fine. I made a complete diff between the directories /usr/share/X11/xkb of my Squeeze image and a stock Easy Debian image and they were identical (which is no surprise since both are simply copied from Maemo).
Currently I have no solution for the keyboard problem on non-US layouts. Frankly I don't even know if it ever worked for me since I switched to US layout the 2nd day after getting my N900.

It should be safe to uninstall wicd since it's just a chroot and uses Maemo's connection anyway. I've never used wicd on Easy Debian and since my dist-upgrade it's uninstalled. I've never had any problems with that.
Can you please post the output of apt-get when you try to purge wicd?

As magic_doc said, Squeeze still came with OpenOffice. LibreOffice is available in the squeeze-backports and so is the corresponding ure version [1].


Agreed! There you go [2]. This is a backup of my main working image. As you'll notice this image has quite some modifications compared to a standard Easy Debian image so I'm not sure how useful it would be to base a new Easy Debian image on that (fwiw you'll find the list of installed packages in the attached gz archive).
Apart from the obvious changes in the package selection it also contains the patched xserver-xephyr from squeeze-backports (package included in [2]) and a script /usr/bin/orientation to switch between landscape and portrait mode. TBH I don't use it since I have no use for portrait mode, so it's just a proof of concept. A rotated desktop looks best with its own panel configuration, so the orientation script also loads other panels. You'll find my panel configuration (and an identical copy of the orientation script) in the tar.gz archive attached to this post (when I figured it would be nice to include it the upload of my ED image was already in progress).

btw:
What's the point of having contrib and non-free in our sources.list? According to vrms [3] there are only packages from main in Easy Debian.

[1] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze-backports/ure
[2] http://hotfile.com/dl/137838612/7e3c...an.7z.001.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/137841590/7b46...an.7z.002.html
[3] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/vrms

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thank you too! The method Rebhana uses is much more elegant than mine was now I can right-click directly while holding FN- great!

Did you do a prior to try installing libre-office?
This is necessary for apt to solve the dependencies.
As sulu pointed out already, it should be available.

Another hint: to avoid complications I removed openoffice before and cleaned the apt-cache with
to free some space in filesystem because office-packages are quite big and running out of space while installing is no fun at all!

Hope this will work out for you!

CU Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@magick_doc & sulu
Of course, I've tried apt-get update after adding squeeze-backports. I'm also surprised, that apt-get shows ure as unavailable (broken packages due to ure not available). I'll try removing OpenOffice totally before trying again.

BTW, magic_doc - I'm glad my "troubles" resulted in something good for You too ;) You may also find useful, that Epiphany - with installed extension that allows scrolling page via middle-click - becomes much more touch-friendly, as You can use Rebhana's middle click (shift + tap), resulting in touch-scrolling page (like in microB) while shift is pressed. unfortunately, haven't (yet) found a way to achieve the same in Iceweasel.

In my case, blue arrow keys aren't working at all - that's it, I can't write literally *any* "blue" symbol. So, only basic letters and SHIFT'ed ones (so, i also have '.' and ',', but trying to use them with shift, I get '<' instead of ';', and '>' instead of ':'), + enter, backspace, ctrl, space and keys (left, right, up, down).

The most strange thing, is that it doesn't work for me even using US layout - that is, without specifying @setxkbmap pl in my /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart file. Executing 'setxkbmap' us or pl from withing LXDE result in only small change - using Polish layout, I can get polish special characters using blue arrow + letter (just like on desktop, AltGr - aka right alt - + letter does the same).

I've even tried setting Maemo layout to US - to no avail. Furthermore,
...and copying again my /usr/share/X11/xkb doesn't result in any improvement. Basically, I'm totally lost here :/

unfortunately, I decided to purge wicd before reading Your reply - I can confirm, that everything works fine, although, apt-get decided, that removing wicd requires plentora of packages (like bluez, or some usb-related, basically for every connection type) to be installed. What is strange here, when I now check apt-get install wicd, those packages aren't listed as unnecessary and prone to apt-get autoremove... Still, as I've said, it works well without wicd, and annoying message disappeared.

---

As for image qole requested - If You (sulu) haven't prepared very specific changes, I think that your image with portrait tweaks etc is good candidate for new ED image.

Ho ever, if qole would like to have dist-upgrade'd image of partition from pure v3e image, I'll gladly volunteer in installing vanilla ED image and repeating upgrade process again. Still, I'm not sure if it's of good use, because those goddamned keyboard layout problems I'm experiencing.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Update:
I've tried installing LibreOffice after totally removing OpenOffice and ure - sttill, same dependency errors. I ended up downloading ure manually from http://packages.debian.org/squeeze-backports/ure - ho ever, it now complains about uno, with simillar dependency problems. I'll try to manually install this one as well.

Still, I've no idea why apt-get reports such problems, given the fact, that my currently used repositories are:
I'm afraid it may indicate, that there is something terribly wrong with my packages. Why - as I've used clean v3e image (extracted into dedicated partition) and apt-get dist-upgrade'd it - I've no idea.

/Estel

// Edit

After successfully installing ure and it's dependency, now libreoffice-math complain...
...so, cursing, I'm going to manually resolve this one too.

// Edit 2

OK, after resolving this last missing package manually, LibreOffice finally installed via apt-get, and it seems to be working fine :) It turned out, that using LibreOffice tweak with:
... before executing it from within Maemo (without LXDE) isn't needed - it works ideally just out of the box. Also, LibreOffice works blazing fast (at least, on my device with dedicated Easy Debian partition setup), probably due to extensive code cleanup they've performed after parting way with damned Oracle. so, for everyone updating to squeeze and using Office suite - I strongly recommend updating from outdated OpenOffice to LibreOffice

I never though, that it will happen under current Maemo base, but it seems that there aren't any regressions caused by gconf2 updated via dist-upgrade (my keyboard issue don't seem to be related). So, as it looks now, only one thing left is blasted keyboard layout.

BTW, two questions:
1. On the updated /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart is a line:
...which wasn't present in our autostart before update. Should I keep it? If yes, what does it do exactly?
2. On the same file, (old) we had line:
... which isn't present in the default updated version. I've copied it to new autostart - is it needed, and what does it do?

// Edit 3

Another (very) minor issue - LibreOffice starts without problem if started from Maemo shortcut (or sudo debian), then 'libreoffice' but doesn't work via 'debbie' (or 'debbie libreoffice'). So, shortcut doesn't work - it start loading, and crashes. Output about error says something about "unable" and "java" ;) (can't check right now, as I'm doing backupmenu backup). such errors doesn't appear, when started via 'sudo debian'.

anyone have an idea, how to prepare .desktop to enable one-click LibreOffice? It may prove useful in case of some other applications, as it seems to be environmental variables related.

BTW, examining /sbin/debian (from 'sudo debian'), I see bunch of code lines, related specifically to OpenOffice (not only in comments, things called directly in code got OpenOffice in names). qole, any comment on these? Is it just obsolete, or should we modify it to suit LibreOffice?

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I've ended up mounting sulu's image under linux machine, next to my ED partition on N900 (via backupmenu USB mass-storage read&write), then deleting my /.debian/usr/share/X11/xkb folder (of course, under mass storage, it is /usr/share/X11/xkb, as /.debian/ exist only as mount point, when it's mounted under Maemo), and replacing it by corresponding xkb folder from sulu's image.

And, guess what? Blue arrow symbols are working fine under my PL layout (US too, of course) ;) I have no idea, why replacing it with my Maemo xkb haven't resulted in same "victory" (sulu, would You be interested in getting my Maemo's xkb folder, and checking diffs between it and one belonging to Your device?), but, nevertheless, I think now I got 100% working pure squeeze distribution image, with all applications upgraded to latest available version from squeeze-backports.

Of course, little question(s) from my last post still apply, same goes for "why" the hell I was forced to manually resolve LibreOffice dependencies, despite having squeeze-backports enabled (list of my enabled repositories posted few posts ago). Again, if someone with pure squeeze ED would like to check if installing LibreOffice is working via pure apt-get install libreoffice, that would be great.

/Estel