Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hello everybody,

first of all thank you for wounderful work, it is amazing!

But I have a question about these two binaries:

I would like to use the keyboard-focus-hack with xbindkeys completely on maemo because I have an application that runs on maemo quite well but has this keyboard-focus issue.
I can install xbindkeys in maemo as well, but when I use the two commands I copied from the chroot, I get this errors:

Would it be possible to compile it for maemo as well or is there another workarround possible?

Thanks in advance!

CU Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I too would love to have it compiled for maemo
I currently use
with easy debian installed, it will fix focus but symbol keys are different.
I'm not talented lke the people here so I don't know how to fix this but I too used easy debian's keyboardfix for maemo apps and it works (except symbol keys). A maemo version would be great.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=66215

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

The best solution would be to have the source code of these programs under an OSI approved license I think. This way everybody could recompile them on any platform.
During my tinkering with ED for the Squeeze dist-upgrade I stumbled upon set-focus too but I couldn't find any source code.

The XServer itself is MIT-licensed and since I'm pretty sure set-focus is compiled against some of its libs I guess the same license might be a good choice. WTFPL might also be an alternative.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Sorry guys for not checking this thread.
Those tiny apps have their source code in a thread on TMO.
I just checked my Garage git repo and it doesn't have the source! Shame on me!
I'll try to get you the source as soon as possible!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hi qole, You know, when I put my N9 in landscape I can imagine a nice little bluetooth keyboard underneath and easy debian on the screen.
Wish it could happen...

Regardless I want the thank all contributors for your efforts. You have made using Easy Debian a great experience. It still makes the N900 unique and, indeed, it's still irreplaceable for me.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I too long for Easy Debian on the N9(50). But I am blocked by the lack of an open kernel. Good news, though, it looks like the hacker-dudes are getting closer and closer to a usable kernel. Follow the roller-coaster over at forum.meego.com and watch joergw's open kernel page for progress, too.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I've tried "complete dist-upgrade to Squeeze" as in EasyDebian wiki:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Easy_Debian
Ho ever, despite following every step carefully, I still got few problems after update. I'll list all oddities - even that I think some of them aren't important, I'll keep them for the records, as it may help in debugging. Also, sorry in advance for possible obvious mistakes - this whole thing about what should and what should not work in chroot under Maemo is still kinda black magic for me.

1. After step "nice -n 19 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade", I get following errors:
2. Despite following 2nd critical fix from wiki:
...I still can't use any "blue arrow" symbol from N900 keyboard (regular and SHIFT'ed letter, arrows, enter, backspace etc all works). Furthermore, if I keep
...in my /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart (like I did before dist-upgrade), I can invoke my language special characters using blue arrow (so, it works literally as AltGr - right alt...). It has added benefit of availability to use USB/Bluetooth keyboard via extkbd in Easy Debian without any hassle - ho ever, the con is that I can't use any "blue arrow" symbol from N900 internal keyboard ;)

3. While trying to restore sound functionality in ED via method described in Wiki:
... I get following errors (pasting full output, to not skip something important):
I think this may be related to errors I've got trying to do dist-upgrade.

4. Upon every start, Iceweasel throws irritating warning:
http://lorienart.pl/cover/iceweasel1.jpg

(after cliking details)
...still, every configuration option in Iceweasel seems to be preserved (I haven't lost my config, opened tabs or whatever).

---

As you may presume, I'm totally lost here, so I'll be very thankful for any suggestions. Keyboard problem seem to be most important (for me), followed by failed things during update&pulseaudio restoration.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

All these dbus-related errors seem strange. :confused:

However, when I did the dist-upgrade I didn't do it exactly the way I described it in the wiki, I did it via debbie but thought that wouldn't matter.

So can you please try the following:
[Edit: forget step 1. The debbie command in step 2 will do the same anyway. Just make sure the Easy Debian desktop is not running.]
1. Ensure that the Easy Debian chroot is mounted but no Easy Debian X-session is running (e.g. by starting Easy Debian, closing the window but then NOT running the close-script or by running some trivial command via debbie).

2. After changing your sources.list and creating the temporary archives-directory run the whole dist-upgrade process via debbie from within Maemo:I think that sorts out the most of your problems. I'm not sure about wicd since I don't have it installed anymore but I thhink it should be solved too this way.

As for your keyboard problem I don't really know what's going on but I hope that's just a side effect of the strange state that the failed dist-upgrade produced. Although I'm from Germany I use the US layout on my N900, so any localization-related problems didn't occur to me. But I'll investigate on that if it turns out not to be related to the failed dist-upgrade.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks You very much for fast answer. I'll try that method - in meantime, just to let You know, I haven't used dist-upgrade from within LXDE - I just used "chroot" icon from Maemo (which, following qole's description, should work same way as "debbie").

Of course, I'll gladly test doing that from within maemo with "debbie", instead.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I had a closer look at the errors now and I guess I'll have to be absolutely honest now about what I did to upgrade to Squeeze since easy standard steps don't seem to work. :rolleyes:

Because the watchdog always rebooted my N900 during dist-upgrade attempts I first upgraded small chunks of packages (30-50MB download size) via debbie aptitude.
When I realized that nice could keep the watchdog calm and switched to that procedure half of my Easy Debian was already upgraded (yes I had lots of time that day ;) ). The whole X-server related stuff and probably even Easy Debian's dbus was a part of these chunks.

No idea if that will solve the problem but I think it's worth a try to manually upgrade dbus first. I can't even exclude that I upgraded pulseaudio from within the Easy Debian desktop (which might affect the dist-upgrade since Easy Debian's dbus is actually running) since I did a lot of tinkering with pulseaudio back then.

If that still doesn't work I'll try to reproduce the dist-upgrade with a stock Easy Debian installation while keeping the procedure as simply as possible and documenting the steps exactly.
But most likely I won't find the time for that before x-mas.

As for your firefox warning, I get that too. Eventually I just uninstalled the package that caused the popup (the commandline output still remains). Since it seems to work except for that warning I didn't investigate it any further. I'll add that to the regression list in the wiki article once I've identified the package again.

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

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@Estel
Thanks for your persistence.
Under (Maemo) Text Input setttings, I have English, Nederlands for Hardware keyboard layout. I haven't modified it in any way since I flashed global firmware.
With these settings, I also have the same issue with Blue Arrow symbols. I can't even type numbers.
Would you or sulu be so kind as to post just the working xkb directory here?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Yes, I'd like that. If we find a crucial difference it might spare others to replace their whole image.
Would you please provide the xkb folder from my image as well while you're at it? I'd do that on my own later but at the moment I can't.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

No problem - here (post attachments) is sulu's lifesaving xkb (sulu-xkb.zip), and one took straight from my Maemo - estel-xkb.tar (*not* suitable for Easy Debian, if one want working "blue arrow" keys - most likely, it's of interest only for sulu).

Sulu file zipped, to avoid stupid limitation of attachments (.tar is allowed, buy tar.gz not, meh!), so one need first to unzip it (safe to do on any system), and next, unpack from tar.gz to /.debian/usr/share/X11/, as per instructions in wiki (*don't* untar it under any w$ndows box, or face 'wraith' of lost file permissions settings ;) - best of all, untar it on N900 itself, straight to place of final rest [not MyDocs, due to same reasons as with windows machine!]).

/Estel

// Edit

qhubekela, maybe, by any case, are You using extkbd (program by freemangordon, that allow hassle-free usage of external keyboards, be it bluetooth or USB ones)? Sulu, and You? I wonder, if this problems may be related to way extkbd manage bringing/removing external keyboard(s) layout...

@Everyone
If we're talking about external keyboards - does anyone know a way of enabling usage of external keyboards with all it's goodies (layout) inside LXDE? I know bt-hid scripts from qole do exactly this, but they're conflicting with extkbd, offering many enhancements over bt-hid scripts. So, qole or anyone knowledgeable, what is the magic need to be done, if one want external keyboard usage inside LXDE?

Also, my questions from few posts ago (including one about OpenOffice-oriented code in debian script [one used by chroot.desktop]) still apply...

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

:)Many thanks

As for extkbd, yes I have it. I only use it with h-e-n. I also have US set there. I actually rarely use it.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Using sulu's xkb, You don't need to use english only, neither in Maemo settings, or in LXDE (writing just in case).

If sulu doesn't use extkbd, I bet my left shoe, that it is related. Not quite a bug - on itself, it doesn't break anything - but, need to be considered, while using Maemo xkb (folder) for any "external" purpose.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

No, I don't use extkbd, so you can keep your shoe. ;)

I'll update the upgrade instructions accordingly to take care fore this extkbd issue. It's not a big thing, basically one just has to backup the old Easy Debian xkb folder instead of reimporting it from Maemo.
However I'd like to have a solution for the extkbd-xkb folder in Easy Debian because that would allow to use the N900 as a true emergency computer by connecting it to a TV and a keyboard and working with the full Debian software instead of sticking to Maemo.

I did a complete diff of the two archives you provided. I had no idea how extensive the changes are that extkbd makes. :eek:
At first sight nothing there seems to be obviously related to the problems you described but I'm sure it's in there. I'll have to investigate it further.

Did you ever use Easy Debian with an external keyboard? If so, how did it behave? My guess is that it should behave like Maemo without extkbd.

Edit:
Argh! I hate Mediawiki! I just wanted to add the extkbd thing to the article (adapted #2 of "regressions") and stumbled upon the bug that Mediawiki can't handle monospace text blocks within lists that are numberes with '#'. So I changed all the '#' to a <ol><li> structure but now none of the monospace text blocks is recognized anymore. My desperate attempts with {{, {code and code{ were not successful. Can somebody who knows Mediawiki syntax please tell me how to restore the blocks?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks for the xkb guys!
This bug was hunting me for soooo long!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

No problem sulu - I've fixed monoblocks in wiki article (+ some minor typos, discovered during doing so). By the way, I think it's not a bug in Mediawiki - it's a feature ;) While using #, every new line is recognized as end of 'counting', so it does for 'shortcut' way of inserting monospace (separated by new lines, and prefixed by double space). Using <pre></pre> (and avoiding any new liners, <pre> insert new line on it's own!) fixes the problem.

---

During our latest research on xkb, I got idea, on how it may be possible to direct copy our Maemo (manually modified, as in Wiki article "Hardware keyboard remapping") keymap into ED - if proper ED xkb folder is basically Maemo one, maybe overwriting ED's rx-51 by our modified one, via...
... from within Maemo (as root, with ED partition/image mounted), would work?

And guess what, it *does*! So now, everyone can use own Maemo hardware keyboard mapping - even most fancy one - inside LXDE. Every special character, symbol or 'command' (for example, TAB) work flawlessly! Just remember, to set correct setxkbmap inside LXDE (via autostart script, or manually) - for example, my custom Maemo keymap, where I 'binded' dead_ogonek as 'blue arrow' + shift + a for pl keyboard, works with:
only (so, basically, everything is as it should be - there is no problem, if someone want to bind special characters to 'generic' layout as well - everything just works like with Maemo hardware keyboard remapping).

I'll test external keyboard tomorrow, but I'm 100% sure, that everything we need to get exact same result as with extkbd in Maemo, is to do to /.debian/usr/share/X11/xkb exactly same thing, as extkbd does to /usr/share/X11/xkb.

I'll talk with freemangordon about that, asking him to include Easy Debian support in extkbd. Now, when we understand how all of this work, it should be trivial to implement, for such talented coder.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks a lot!

Sounds reasonable. Please keep me informed!

I'm not sure if that would actually work but maybe we could instead just mount the Maemo folder /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr via the Easy Debian scripts and thus mask the original Debian folder. This would have three advantages over copying them:
1. We avoid interproject dependencies (Easy Debian - extkbd)
2. All this trouble with copying keyboard definition files during a dist-upgrade could be spared.
3. Any custom Maemo keyboard layout changes would take effect in Easy Debian immediately without having to do it all twice.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I'll test it ASAP - haven't had time during Christmas. Anyway, nice idea about mounting Maemo folder directly - will try this with external keyboard .I wonder if extkbd isn't modifying also other files inside '/usr/share/X11/xkb', to allow flawless usage of external keyboards - it seems so, as You've detected numerous changes in xkb folder. Maybe, during external keyboard, the rx-51 isn't even used? Instead, generic "desktop" geometries etc applied, would make sense (something similar to xkb that we have after dist-upgrade).

Meanwhile, what would be proper method to mount Maemo nokia_vdnr to ED, avoiding conflicts with chroot mounting? Just symlinking during runtime (from ED chroot terminal), or some other approach?

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Could anyone give me a hint, how to bind Alt (*not AltGr, aka right alt) to some N900 keys, using .xbindkeysrc or rx-51 (hardware keyboard remapping)?

I have finally found ideal* solution for N900 browser replacement - of course using Easy Debian, but running it directly under Maemo. The answer is *fanfares* Chromium! *not* a Chrome - that i would not touch using long stick, but lovely Chromium, that is blazing fast on N900 (using ED on dedicated ext4 partition)- mainly due to much lower memory usage - and using some tweaks, it's perfectly optimized for our touch experience. I've enabled 'dragging' method of scrolling pages, without sacrificing selecting text (or, particularly, any full-fledged browser feature), got 100% working spell checker and Lazarus form recovery, and it's fully working with extensions.

The last thing I need to make it 100% convenient for usage, is having working alt somewhere (for back/forward usage - now it requires 4 additional clicks to enable arrows, use it, and another 4 to disable). Everything else is working as it should, so with much relief, I kicked iceweasel out of device. I'll happily release set of tweaks needed to make it touch-friendly, after settling this last issue.

Unfortunately, every instruction I found google'ing, cover using alt as modifier, *not* binding it o some other real keys.

Thanks in advance

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Oh and just for fun, a very NOT easy Debian:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7020/6...bbe83936_b.jpg

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Isn't Xmodmap feasible? I do all my keyboard remappings with it.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hi All, I would like to know how to uninstall an application by chroot(under Maemo terminal). For example, I have installed lmms ans I want to uninstall it as it's to heavy and too slow.
Thanks in advance.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Considering what a crap a capacitive screen is, it's probably epic hunt to click any small button, even with voodoo capacitive styluses? ;)

---

As for image - of course sulu's image is great base, but as I mentioned in my former posts, I've managed to replace OpenOffice with squeeze LibreOffice (which isn't trivial for many users, as it required manual dependency solving) and Iceweasel got kicked out, preparing room for N900-wise tweaked Chromium (which may be also non-trivial to less able users, as it require downloading extensions manually, extracting it, and loading from directory via developer mode), which is much more usable as everyday browser on our device (effective and much less resource-hungry, especially RAM-wise)

I know that all manual steps aren't rocket science, and writing them properly in wiki should allow even the least tech savvy people to benefit, but, it's also quite time consuming - so, You may consider uploading already tweaked image, to make users life easier ;)

If that's what You feel fancy, I can upload my image today or tomorrow (is tar.lzma of use for You? it would be much less data to transfer, and You can unpack it into dedicated partition, then snapshot proper ED image from it. Of course, if it's too much hassle, I can backup it using other method as well).

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Your own tweaked image will be highly appreciated.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

hi qole glad to meet you

you can make easynitdroid with nitdroid e-yes

like easydebian with a chroot?:)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

How to make screenshoot in easy-debian running

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

The same here and with a new browser great!!!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Sulu, is it server-xephyr package, that gets installed during apt-get upgrade with squeeze-backports repository enabled, or some specifically modified one? If the latter is true, what's the nature and purpose of modification?

Qole, any comment on this? I would like to correct /apt/sources.list before uploading tar.gz of my ED partition. It's minor thing, but why prepare unnecessary "possible corrections" to feed up wiki page ;)

---

I've also come across minor issue, that I would like to hammer before uploading image. When running libreoffice from terminal, via 'debbie libreoffice', It got stuck on first logo, and following errors appear in terminal:
(message about locale is probably unrelated). Ho ever, everything works fine, when using Debian chroot shortcut (i.e. chroot with root access). So, it seems to be privileges-related glitch - any ideas?

/Estel