maemo.org - Talk - Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

The problem is that when you plug in the USB cable, the N900 tries to dismount and make all of its SD partitions and the MyDocs partition available to the PC as external drives. If an image file on one of those partitions is mounted as the chroot on the N900, it can't dismount the partitions.

Estel

2012-04-20 16:21

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

@qole:
Negative, I don't use image file for ED at all - I have dedicated, independent partition for ED (on eMMC). Yet, as You can see from OP and my reports, MyDocs and SD card is unmounted *properly*, yet, MyDocs fail to mount again. It happens only, when ED chroot is active (i.e. mounted, not necessary in direct use).

Quote:

Originally Posted by saponga (Post 1194476)

i'm using Estel's image (thanks man !!! :D) but i couldn't map the "ç". Tried

Code:

key <BKSP> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ BackSpace,ccedilla ] };

but no sucess... Does anybody knows how to do it ?
Thanks.

Does it works for You on Maemo, via hardware keyboard remapping? If yes, just copy rx-51 file (as per my instructions from few posts back) into Easy Debian, and, from within it, execute setxkbmap <Your language code>.

/Estel

qole	2012-04-20 22:39

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

@Estel
When you do NOT have your chroot partition mounted on the N900, does your PC mount that partition when you connect the phone?

saponga

2012-04-20 23:39

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

=Does it works for You on Maemo, via hardware keyboard remapping?/Estel

Nope. But on Maemo i use the virtual kb. Right now im using on ED "dead_cedilla + c" but since i saw "ccedilla" on rx-51 im trying set it up. Never mind !!! Is just one more tap. Thanks for replay. Your .img rocks !!!

Estel

2012-04-21 00:55

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 1195119)

@Estel
When you do NOT have your chroot partition mounted on the N900, does your PC mount that partition when you connect the phone?

Nope, it only mount MyDocs and MMC as usual. With chroot mounted PC also mounts usual pair - the difference is that after closing mass storage mode, MyDocs isn't mounted again by N900, if chroot mount is present. MMC is mounted fine, ho ever.

Another weird thing is that, with chroot mounted, MMC in mass storage mode is accessible from both N900 and PC - that is, it doesn't get unmounted from N900, during mass storage mode enabling (no error about it being in use appears, and it's accessible for read&write for Maemo and PC simultaneously - with possible risk of filesystem corruption, if both would try to write same file at same time.

/Estel

Wille_W

2012-04-21 13:03

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1155288)

As for chromium extensions - I've already incorporated "Scrollbars anywhere", which is (AFAIK) most customizable "touch scroll" thing for Chromium. Using it, I was able to enable "drop and drag" (also on text/images), while still retaining capability to select text/drop page elements/whatever. I'm pretty sure everyone will find fancy customization mix for own liking. I also checked it for backdoors, at least as much as my limited skills permit ;)

/Estel

How does this work? Is it really included in your latest image? If so, how do I active it?

Thanks for your image!

Edit:
Found this on the command line...
CJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b81bc28: NP_GetValue return
[12594:12594:21132130036:ERROR:chrome/browser/extensions/extension_error_reporter.cc(53)] Extension error: Could not load extension from '/home/user/Downloads/scrollbars-anywhere'. Manifest file is missing or unreadable.

Estel

2012-04-21 17:44

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

IIRC, qole said that he fixed it in latest version of image (included already). Do You use version from His server?

In case You don't want to replace image just for that, You can (re)install extension manually, as per my instruction (bundled in last 10-15 pages of this thread, include "cheating" google store to actually download extension).

/Estel

Wille_W

2012-04-21 17:49

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1195467)

Image downloaded today from his server..

I will look into that and see if I make it.

//Wille

Wille_W

2012-04-21 18:38

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Hello again!

I have fixed the "Scrollbars anywhere" extension but now I can't get java applets to work.

GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: NP_Initialize
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: plugin_test_appletviewer
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: plugin_test_appletviewer return
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: NP_Initialize: using /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/../../bin/pluginappletviewer
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: NP_Initialize return
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: GCJ_New
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: plugin_data_new
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: plugin_data_new return
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x2b821c68: plugin_get_documentbase
Invalid pipe names provided. Refusing to proceed.

Any ideas? Does it work for you?

Wille_W

2012-04-22 10:39

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

I have been fighting with the keyboard shortcuts and found out that the .xbindkeyrc file dosen't exist in the chroot /home/user and because of that xbindkeys fails. Is this an error or is it changed from how the wiki says:

Note that the relevant file /home/user/.xbindkeysrc does not reside in the Debian image but in the home directory.

Should I move it in to the chroot or is there something missing in Estels image?

EDIT:
I have tried to move it in to the chroot and now the keybindings works! :) I'm quite sure that this worked in the old Estel image though, without copying the file..

Estel

2012-04-22 11:22

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

No idea, could You put a link to example site causing this problem?

Wille_W

2012-04-22 12:22

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1195798)

No idea, could You put a link to example site causing this problem?

Well, for me it never works but you could test on this site:
http://profs.etsmtl.ca/mmcguffin/lea...-drawingLines/

It should be a java applet there with black background and green lines.

HolgerN

2012-04-23 08:13

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

It seems to me that the md5sum in imagelist-fremantle-01 are not up to date.

I got for debian-m5-sulu.img.ext2.lzma
21c11b164acd0a730f740ceecd612da4

and for debian-m5-estel.img.ext3.lzma
cea873aa149dba449d3c54e7152fe12c

wheras in imagelist-fremantle-01
3,Estel,http://qole.org/files/,debian-m5-est...xt3,lzma,Large Debian 6 with LibreOffice,75d4d0a24d1b62424919accd0a1be9af
4,sulu,http://qole.org/files/,debian-m5-sul...t2,lzma,Debian 6 image by sulu (DE),90dea3dad97b336fa82a14be50e8fce4

impeham

2012-04-30 17:30

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Estel - just started using your new image - works great - i like this chromium theme :)

This is how i use it:
Created an ext4 partition on SD
Copied the ~3GB file to it
Mount it to /.debian

Is there a benefit to copying the image's files to the partition and use it directly instead of using the mount?

Thanks.

Estel

2012-04-30 22:59

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Thanks for Your appreciation :). As for running native partition vs loopback image - there is *much* benefit of doing so. Currently, You're not gaining (almost) anything over keeping image file in vfat. If You actually have files on partition, natively, You're benefiting running whole (Easy) Debian natively (chroot = native). Getting files out/to loopback image is second biggest bootleneck, next only to low amount of RAM.
---

In my personal opinion, "default" loopback-image configuration of Easy Debian is derivative from times, when repartitioning was "black magic", and qole wanted to save end-users need of doing it. In addition to that, even now, end user can try Easy Debian without changing anything in their filesystem, which is quite big benefit.

Honestly, though, repartitioning through GUI solutions is now trivial for everyone, both ones that have Linux background or not. I would not use image on loopback for any "real" work on Debian programs (especially, resource hungry, like browsers)

[unrelated rant]
Have anyone else noticed, that lately, we're placing web browsers amongst most resource-hungry programs? Hell, even LibreOffice runs better than lightest, feature-complete browsers, like Chromium. Iceweasel/Firefox is such Behemot'ish cow now, that it's even not worth mentioning.

At the same time, ancient microB works blazing fast, and do render most pages well (would render everything well, if we would be able to update underlying Gecko to more recent version - without loosing any speed...). Honestly, it would be 100% full-fledged browser, if we would be able to add few small features to closed UI (+ upgrading Gecko behind it would be almost trivial).

We already know who we need to stab endlessly, for closed microB UI? Suckers, they own this code fully, haven't and won't do *anything* with it ever, yet, they can't release it due to "business reasons".[/unrelated rant]

/Estel

impeham

2012-05-01 05:50

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Estel - how do you extract the image to the partition (and how to repack it back from a partition to image)?

Estel

2012-05-01 17:30

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

mount (empty) partition, mount image file as loopback (mount -o loop <imagefile>, if I recall correctly), then cp -a content of the latter to the former.

then, You need to modify .chroot file, pointing it to partition, instead of image file (refer to Easy Debian wiki for instructions about that).

/Estel

// edit

As for backing it up to image file, You just revert whole process - mount Your file (clear files there, if it's not empty), cp -a everything from partition into file.

freemangordon

2012-05-01 19:45

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

@estel - I didn't try the latest version, but in the one i have here, there is a bug in qchroot, causing the infinite (almost) mounting when easy debian is on external sd card (as a directory) and the partition in question is mounted in /media .

here is my fix, in /sbin/qchroot, hope it will be helpful

Code:

#Any external devices

  echo ... >/dev/stderr

  if [ `echo $CHROOT | grep '/media/mmc'` = $CHROOT ]; then

    # We are using directory on eMMC or on SD card so skip our partition from mounting

    MNTPART=`echo $CHROOT | cut -f 3 -d /`

    MNTD=`cat /proc/mounts  | grep -v /media/$MNTPART |  grep ' /media/' | awk '{print $2}'`

  else

    MNTD=`cat /proc/mounts | grep ' /media/'|awk '{print $2}'`

  fi

  for MDRV in $MNTD ; do

    echo Mounting $MDRV

    if [ ! -d "$CHROOT$MDRV" ] ; then

      mkdir -p "$CHROOT$MDRV"

    fi

    mount -o bind "$MDRV" "$CHROOT$MDRV"

  done

impeham

2012-05-02 07:45

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1200245)

After trying, i just remembered what was my problem in doing this the last time i tried to. here is what i did:

mounted the image with:
mount -t ext4 /home/user/MyDocs/debian-m5.ext4 /media/debiantemp -o loop,noatime

made sure that /media/debiantemp is empty

used 'mount | grep debi' to make sure MyDocs and mmc are not mounted (if they are then they are being copied too).

mount /dev/mmcblk1p2 /.debian

cp -a /media/debiantemp/* /.debian

the copy starts and i can see that the process goes well until something like 10 - 15 minutes of copying and then my device crashes.

i retried this for 3 times - it seems to crash everytime - probably at the same point.

checking space taken in /media/debiantemp ~1.9GB
checking space taken in /.debian (after restart after crash) ~500mb

Am i doing something wrong?

sulu	2012-05-02 08:29

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by impeham (Post 1200623)

Am i doing something wrong?

Assuming your partition is big enough you're not doing anything wrong.

The problem is the N900's watchdog*, which is supposed to reboot your phone if some process stops responding. Whenever you put the N900's CPU on full load for more than (say) 10 minutes (which can easily be done by file system I/O) you'll likely trigger its reboot routine.
You can alleviate that problem by running every program that's likely to trigger the watchdog with a lower nice priority:

Code:

nice -n 19 <your command>

Unfortunately that doesn't solve the problem because even if your program has a low priority (and therefore the watchdog will be served first) due to a high load caused by your program it might take too long to free the memory that the watchdog requires and the device will still reboot.

The only safe way to avoid the watchdog being triggered is to make sure the N900 won't be on full load for too long. So in your case it should help to not copy everything at once but to copy one (or some) directory at a time, wait until the load is down to normal again and then start the next one.

*) rant: In my opinion from a technical/hardware point of view the watchdog is the biggest flaw in the N900's design. I've had numerous reboots due to the watchdog, none of them being justified. There was no runaway process, I just wanted to do some task that did not finish within a few minutes (dist-upgrade Easy Debian, compile something, etc.).
So if someone has found a way to disable the watchdog completely (without putting the N900 in R&D mode) I'd be grateful to hear that!

@Estel:
While we're at ranting, I totally agree with your browser rant. Unfortunately text browsers like lynx or w3m don't work that great on the N900, but you might want to try chimera2 [1] in Easy Debian or dillo3 [2] once I've managed to dist-upgrade to Wheezy (which I can't do on the N900 due to the watchdog, therefore I've started to tinker with qemu on my PC).
Afair there was a "dillo3 on Maemo" thread some time ago (it might as well have been a youtube video I stumbled upon). Both browsers are severely limited in their functionality, but for simple browsing they should suffice.
There are also midori [3] and arora [4], which might be alternatives. They are supposed to be lightweight, but according to my experience that highly depends on your system and I haven't found out yet why that varies so much.

[1] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/chimera2
[2] http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/dillo
[3] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/midori
[4] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/arora

freemangordon

2012-05-02 09:14

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

by installing swappolube one should be able get rid of wd kicking

impeham

2012-05-02 09:17

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by freemangordon (Post 1200662)

by installing swappolube one should be able get rid of wd kicking

I have it installed with recommended settings but i can't see any option to disable this watchdog - what excatly di you mean?

freemangordon

2012-05-02 09:44

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by impeham (Post 1200663)

I have it installed with recommended settings but i can't see any option to disable this watchdog - what excatly di you mean?

you can't. could you try the settings bellow

Code:

       echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster

        echo 512 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/nr_requests

        echo 512 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/nr_requests

        echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/slice_idle

        echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/slice_idle

        echo 32 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/quantum

        echo 32 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/quantum

        echo 80 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

        echo 80 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

        echo 180 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

        echo 180 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

impeham

2012-05-02 12:22

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by freemangordon (Post 1200669)

you can't. could you try the settings bellow

Code:

       echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster

        echo 512 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/nr_requests

        echo 512 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/nr_requests

        echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/slice_idle

        echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/slice_idle

        echo 32 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/quantum

        echo 32 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/quantum

        echo 80 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

        echo 80 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

        echo 180 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

        echo 180 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

It works :) just finished the copy process successfully.
Man you just solved a long time issue i had with this device - every time i tried to copy a big file it crashed and i assumed the problem was that the N900 can't handle such big files because of some buffering issue - since it happened i got scared everytime i needed to copy big files from one place to another, so i started to do this only using N900 -> PC -> N900 back which was an annoying process. i'm glad to finally realize the cause of this.

What exactly from this settings do i need to keep permanent and how? does this affect anything else?

Thanks for the help

Estel

2012-05-02 17:12

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

It's worth to add, that having swap on microSD and ED partition on eMMC also helps with performance. Honestly, I haven't had any reboots, no matter if I lzma 3GB image file for ED (on device), copy <whatever> size/files count directory, or any other heavy I/O thing. Of course, I also modified files suggested by freemangordon, but I use slightly different settings (tweaked to my liking):

Code:

echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster

echo 256 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/nr_requests

echo 512 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/nr_requests

echo 7 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/slice_idle

echo 7 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/slice_idle

echo 4 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/quantum

echo 4 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/quantum

echo 125 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

echo 125 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

echo 250 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

echo 250 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

I must add, that combination of swap on (class 2) microSD and above settings, not only device doesn't reboot during heavy I/O, but is also fully responsible (seriously, @900 mhz, even during packaging ED image with lzma and compressions (1 above default), I can do other things on device without much problem!).

/Estel

impeham

2012-05-02 19:54

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1200857)

Code:

echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/page-cluster

echo 256 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/nr_requests

echo 512 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/nr_requests

echo 7 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/slice_idle

echo 7 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/slice_idle

echo 4 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/quantum

echo 4 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/quantum

echo 125 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

echo 125 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_sync

echo 250 > /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

echo 250 > /sys/block/mmcblk1/queue/iosched/fifo_expire_async

Tested copying 3GB file from NTFS disk on key to MyDocs and the opposite with your settings - works great - device is fully responsive during the copy process.

impeham

2012-05-03 12:16

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Is there a thread for results of these values manipulations? are they explained somewhere or just google one by one :)

Estel

2012-05-03 14:11

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

The latter, I'm afraid. It's quite required to understand what they're doing, as setting them properly is strictly correlated with Your usage patterns. BTW, that's why the default Nokia ones didn't worked well - we're using device way different, from what they though we may/will :)

impeham

2012-05-03 18:23

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Estel - i made a few performance tests - switched back and fourth from using the mounted image vs using directly from the partition.

I can say that launching debian applications from the partition is faster in about 5% - 10%, but there is one strange thing i found - chromium is VERY slow and almost non responsive. can that be related to these settings somehow?

when i used your previous image (chromium had a white theme) it worked much faster.

Do you have any idea why?

Estel

2012-05-03 19:10

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

No idea, unfortunately... Working fine here. Maybe You've hit swap fragmentation? Tried after fresh reboot?

impeham

2012-05-03 19:41

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

yep - didn't help. i'll play with it a little and see what i can find.

Thanks.

impeham

2012-05-04 10:08

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

While trying to use apt-get update i get the following errors - this prevents from installing anything now:

-------------------------------
Setting up libmagickcore3 (8:6.6.0.4-3+squeeze3) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libmagickcore3.postinst: line 5: /sbin/ldconfig: cannot execute binary file
dpkg: error processing libmagickcore3 (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 126
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libmagickwand3:
libmagickwand3 depends on libmagickcore3 (>= 8:6.6.0.4); however:
Package libmagickcore3 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libmagickwand3 (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
configured to not write apport reports
configured to not write apport reports
Errors were encountered while processing:
libmagickcore3
libmagickwand3
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
-------------------------------

What is this about?

sulu	2012-05-04 10:44

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

That looks odd. Can you install any other packages?
Is /sbin/ldconfig even in your image and if it is, is it executable?

impeham

2012-05-04 15:52

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by sulu (Post 1201752)

That looks odd. Can you install any other packages?
Is /sbin/ldconfig even in your image and if it is, is it executable?

/sbin/ldconfig exists and yes - it has all executable permissions.

I am not able to install anything because i'm getting this error - i intended to install apache (which had failed of course) when i found this.

impeham

2012-05-05 22:50

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

it seems i have mistaken - apache DID install, but it had a few errors. i checked again and it seems i am able to install/remove packages but this error always pops up at the end.

Estel

2012-05-06 03:56

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Haven't You though about starting from fresh image again? Lately, You seem to have many problems, that are hard to solve without knowing their source.

/Estel

impeham

2012-05-06 15:39

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1202424)

Haven't You though about starting from fresh image again? Lately, You seem to have many problems, that are hard to solve without knowing their source.

/Estel

I had only just one more issue - which i did solve (with chromium being very slow).

Eventually if i won't have a choice i will try from the beginning but as a last resort since i will have to install/set up everything again and it'll take some work.

I hoped someone here did cross the issue/knows how to deal with such an error since i'm not too good at these deployment issues.

Estel

2012-05-06 16:31

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

What was causing the Chromium slowdown issue for You? You haven't reported back about fixing it.

impeham

2012-05-06 21:24

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1202604)

What was causing the Chromium slowdown issue for You? You haven't reported back about fixing it.

You're right - i forgot to update - this is generally what solved the problem (after many changes i tried that failed):

1. I erased the "/home/user/.config/chromium" folder and let the application create it from scratch.

2. Overwritten the default hosts file with mine (to avoid commercials).

3. Removed the offer to translate pages.

That's what happens when you move to a new image - you forget these little tweaks that you did long ago - that's why i'm trying to avoid it.

I just started to backup the debian partition on weekly basis - like maemo to avoid taking any chances, but with the image that you uploaded i did not do anything which should have caused the issue i'm now having with the installation - at least nothing that i know of.

I'll probably have to revert back to the original image, but that'll have to wait unfortunately because lack of time...

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