Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Got another issue now...hope someone can please advise....

ED (Estel's image file...) was running OK....until I did 'apt-get upgrade'....seemed to go OK, but while it was in process of unpacking and installing some items, I left the room for a few minutes...and when I returned N900 had rebooted into backupmenu....so, I assume that ED crashed and N900 reboot or ?

:confused:

In any event, when I rebooted, it booted up to Maemo OK....everything seems OK....

However, now when I click on 'Debian LXDE' it looks like it's going to open....ie, display goes black, I see 'Debian LXDE' at top of display with little spinning wheel thingie next to it....does that for about 15 seconds and black window disappears and I'm back at Maemo desktop.....

Any suggestions as to how to get Debian working again???

Thanks!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

try reinstalling debian choot this may help .i hope

i think maybe you did something wrong to the image if reinstalling DC didnt solve the problem then you may need a new image or wait for Estel's reply he may got a solution for you

./sifo

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks for your help.....tried reinstalling Debian chroot, but still no go.....

???

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

It doewsn't have anything to do with chroot, neither any package was broken. It's jsut that, due to bad (Maemo, not Debian - on last few pages of this thread You've listed swap settings You should use, both Maemo and ED benefit from it) swap-related settings, + swap on eMMC instead of microSD.

This made device unresponsive for too long during Debian's apt-get upgrade, and rebooted device. In turn, this FCKD Your ED image. You may try to fix it with fsck.ext* /dev/mmcblk*p* (put number instead of *, corresponding to ext type You've used for Debian image, and provide proper storage/partition numbers) - remember, to try it on *unmounted* debian image.

In case fsck doesn't help, You must start with new image from scratch. Unfortunately, it's common thing to happen - although, after unexpected reboot, I perform fsck from backupmenu before booting (I got ED started at every boot, via event.d script), thus I've never had image corruption that would destroy my ED image.

Generally, if - after crash - You fsck image before running Ed again, 99% of times You'll be fine. ho ever, if You mounted it already and tried to proceed, it may be screwed beyond repair. Just try, and report back.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks for your detail reply...

Decided to be safe, so, I deleted current image file....then copied over the file again from my microSD card....however, it started copying file and since it's such a large file, I stepped away from my N900 for a few minutes...came back and I saw the backupmenu again!

So, something happened and N900 rebooted again....

I choose backupmenu option to do fsck, it found some errors, did it again, and this time no errors......then rebooted...

N900 booted up OK to Maemo...I see that 108.3MB of image file was copied over before N900 had crashed...

Copied over estel image file again from microSD to N900...tried ED and voila! it is working again....

Regarding swap, you are saying that I should use eMMC for swap space, not microSD, correct?

What settings would you recommend for this? (you mention that I had stated my swap settings on recent previous post, but I think that was probably someone else....)

If I have swap set up OK, then it should be OK to do 'apt-get upgrade'? (upgrade was downloading about 220MB....)

Thanks!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Nope, I recommend You to use microSD for swap, and absolutely *no* swap on eMMC.

As for recommended settings, impeham asked for them just few pages ago, please search in this very thread.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

OK, got it now....somehow I thought you meant the opposite.... :o

Yes, saw that and this too:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Swap_on_microSD

Thanks again for all your great help!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I tried to run gCompris via Easy Debian - my Son loves to play it, and Maemo version is quite outdated. It works ok (although, loads quite slow initially), but sound isn't working.

Here is error message, as seen in console:

Any ideas, how to fix it? I would really, really be grateful for any advices. Other than sound problems, it's really comfortable to play.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

The main problem is that ED has no HW acceleration for video decoding (and never will have). Therefore video in ED will never actually work because the Cortex A8 is just too slow to decode videos in real time (maybe except for some 240p videos).

Just a suggestion for the next image:
Having an ext3 file system is not optimal. Use ext2 if you want to reduce flash write cycles caused by journaling or use ext4 if you want journaling. fsck.ext4 is way faster than fsck.ext3.
I don't know if the stock Maemo kernel fully supports ext4, but I guess most - if not all - ED users use KP anyway.

I think I can clear this up. Do you remember that I had to macgyver a fake Squeeze pulseaudio package that actually contained the Lenny version to stay compatible to Maemo's pulseaudio protocol version?
So what you have now is a Lenny pulseaudio with a Squeeze gcompris that thinks it can rely on a Squeeze pulseaudio, which in this case causes trouble.

I believe I have a better idea for a new pulseaudio package which actually contains the correct pulseaudio version and is compatible to Maemo. But in order to do that I have to recompile pulseaudio, which I can't do on the N900 due to the watchdog. I already have an armel qemu VM set up but that comes with huge performance penalties (8-10% of the x86 host CPU seems to be reasonable), so I intend to wait with any actual work until Wheezy is frozen, which is scheduled for June.
I will then try to create a minimalistic Wheezy image containing the proper (but recompiled) pulseaudio which will be able to run iceweasel 10 too btw. (I already tried to backport iceweasel 10 to Squeeze by reproducing what the people at mozilla.debian.net are doing for i386 and amd64 but gcc4.4 for armel is too buggy for that and I didn't succeed in compiling gcc4.6 on Squeeze armel either, so I finally gave up on that.)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Just curious as to what programs people are using besides the ones that come with the ED image file?

Hope it's OK to ask here, if not. I can start a new topic....

FWIW, I installed gcc/g++, make, cmake in ED.

Then I was able to compile the CLI ToDo program 'Task' <taskwarrior.org> on my N900, very cool!

So, what programs do you use in ED?