Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@sLumPia:
Afaik this is a problem with python being compiled on Debian-based armel/hf distros. I've read that it sometimes goes away after recompiling python.
I hope that this problem disappears magically in Wheezy due to the change from the buggy gcc 4.4 (at least on armel/hf) to gcc 4.6.

I've never used Blender, so I have no idea about its performance requirements. But given the brilliant works that are created with Blender I'd expect it to be rather resource hungry.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I recall many many many moons ago a Mandlebrot Generator running on my CPC6128 which was left running overnight and did indeed produce a magical image by time I woke up in the morning.

I suspect the same timescales will be required here :)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

blender is unusable. it runs and launches, but it's so slow you can't do anything in it, the UI also takes 3/4 of the screen, you can't see much.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

try opening it via terminal, where You (as previousl line)invoked

unset GTK2_RC_FILES

---
I've noticed, that Easy Debian's xbindkeys keep CPU in C# state, not allowing it to properly enter C4. It also generates 200+ additional wakeups on completely idle device.

Although, power waste created by it isn't dramatical (or hard to notice at all, as I've been using it for a year, without feeling something is wrong...), it is here so, EasyDebians xbindkeys are depreciated.

Maemo's xbindkeys work well, use same config file, and doesn't include this bug - MPU enter's C4 properly, and no additional wakeups noticed - so, I encourage everyone to switch for Maemo's one, + edit /usr/share/applications/hildon/xbindkeys, replacing line:
...with:
Of course, it will work only with Maemo's xbindkeys installed.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hi Estel,
do you mean run it like this?
unset GTK2_RC_FILES && blender

try it, still got the same error.

@everyone else,
hm....so blender is not usable? d*mn
although to "wow" people is one of my motivation, but if it is not usable what the point of installing blender?
*sigh*
d*mn you nokia, why can't you put 1gb ram on n900?
*sigh*

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

No idea if result is same as for doing it in two explicit lines, but it was meant to make UI more usable, not as a fix for errors. unset GTK2_RC_FILES unloads Maemo theme.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks again Estel, I recognized this behavior of debians xbindkeys before, but my workarround was to "killall xbindkeys" regulary as I never have easy-debian up all the time.
I am testing your solution let's see if there are major drawbacks in the battery lifetime with the maemo xbindkeys permanently on...

EDIT: one useful addition: to use Rehanna's middle- and rightklick-Hack one have to install/copy xdotool in maemo too! Now it is perfect!

Have a nice weekend!

CU Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hm, strange, right and middle click work for me, and I haven't had to copy anything from ED to Maemo :)

As for Maemo's xbindkeys and it's impact for battery - I've thoroughly tested it with powertop, and impact is non-existent.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

The relevant part of .xbindkeysrc looks like this here:

This means I need the xdotool-binary available under maemo or am I wrong?

I noticed no higher battery consumption so far, looks that you are right ;)

CU Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

You're right, I got xdotool installed via Maemo's repos. I have no idea if xdotool from ED also introduce additional wakeups, or not - you could check it via powertop (as for Maemo's xdotool, i'm perfectly sure than it doesn't wake up CPU unless necessary).

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I also installed the maemo-version now.
Thanks again for pointing this out!

CU Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Trying to do the above, but need some clarification to avoid screwing up N900 (which is running nicely now....), hope you can please advise....

You say to edit '/usr/share/applications/hildon/xbindkeys'. However, I don't find that file, but I do have a file in hildon called 'xbindkeys.desktop'.

Do you mean to edit that file?

If so, I have a line in that file that now says:

Thanks for clarifying....

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Yes, it's this file. Of course, after modification, it will work *only* if You have Maemo's xbindkeys installed (only one from extras-devel repository was tested by me).

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks for clarifying....

Yes, I installed 'xbindkeys' from extras-devel....

OK, so, I should be good to go after I edit the file....

:)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@Estel, could you give me a clue about why my key mapping doesn't work if i start libreoffice using your .desktop file ? It works perfectlly if i invoke that from LXDE. Your help will be very appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

erm, maybe you're using ED-only xbindkeys? try using Maemo one instead, maybe.

As for rx-51, it's working fine for me both in Maemo, ED programs run from within Maemo, and Ed via LXDE, if rx-51 copied as I've suggested. No other ideas, why it doesn't work for You...

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

can i open google chrome from x terminal chroot?? i mean without going in LXDE mode

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

You can, but I would suggest using Chromium instead of Chrome. Also, running Chromium from LXDE seems to be actually faster (!), and isn't affected by bugs, that doesn't allow You to see right-click menu while in full-screen.

I used to run Chromium without LXDE, but switched to starting it from within LXDE and it's really, really better experience.

BTW - *don't* run it via chroot terminal with root privileges (icon with debian logo), or You will lock Your configs to root. Use "debbie chromium-browser" (or any name of program You want to run) instead.

The above apply for most programs, not only Chromium.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks ! that was useful for me :)

Edit : im trying to run a facebook flash app when it is starts loading the browser closes ! is there anyway to do that ? im using v3e image and i used iceweasel for that :)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

[root@chroot: /]apt-get install chromium
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
chromium-bsu chromium-bsu-data libalut0
libdirectfb-1.2-9 libfribidi0 libglc0 libopenal1
libsdl-image1.2 libsdl1.2debian libsdl1.2debian-alsa
libsysfs2 libts-0.0-0 tsconf ttf-uralic
Suggested packages:
libportaudio2
The following NEW packages will be installed:
chromium chromium-bsu chromium-bsu-data libalut0
libdirectfb-1.2-9 libfribidi0 libglc0 libopenal1
libsdl-image1.2 libsdl1.2debian libsdl1.2debian-alsa
libsysfs2 libts-0.0-0 tsconf ttf-uralic
0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 110 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/3846 kB of archives.
After this operation, 7959 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LC_PAPER = "en_IN",
LC_ADDRESS = "en_IN",
LC_MONETARY = "en_IN",
LC_NUMERIC = "en_IN",
LC_TELEPHONE = "en_IN",
LC_MESSAGES = "en_GB",
LC_IDENTIFICATION = "en_IN",
LC_MEASUREMENT = "en_IN",
LC_TIME = "en_GB",
LC_NAME = "en_IN",
LANG = "en_GB"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
syntax error: unknown group 'crontab' in statoverride file
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@seanmcken
it is
apt-get install chromium-browser
:p i tried chromium it brings me a totally different pacakge with strange sounds :)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

thank u very much friends

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

chromium-browser command works better for opening the browser i need help again can u plz tell me how to add this in queen beecon to make it as shortcut on screen?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Ask in queen beecon widget thread?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

As some of you might know, the next Debian release "Wheezy" went into Freeze on june 30th, which means that the developers will concentrate on bug fixing now instead of adding new program versions.
This in turn means that dependencies won't change that much anymore, making custom package builds less prone to breaking by simply becoming outdated.

As suggested earlier I finally took that chance to create an Easy Debian image completely based on Wheezy, which Estel and qole generously agreed to host [1] (Thanks for that!).
It is a very minimal image with little more than only a working LXDE desktop. There is no web browser installed, no office suite or whatever one might expect to find in an end-user's image.

Since Wheezy, although in Freeze now, is still Testing, this image is intended for people who know how to handle Testing. And I trust that some of these users will eventually put together an image for brave end users with all the appropriate software.
For instance, Iceweasel 10esr can be installed from the repository. (Chromium currently isn't available in Wheezy armel due to a bug [2].)
I intend to create a similar image when Wheezy is released, so this image is is sort of a release candidate to find out what can be improved. Any tips are welcome!

Some facts about that image:
md5sum (unlzma'd): 6aa2bd305a99b9d9f9e21b092aa5659e
size: 2GB
file system: ext2
default keymap: us (with some minor changes; details follow)
bugs: So far I've only encountered one bug. sudo doesn't set the $PATH variable correctly. All the sbin pathes are missing. You have to become root by calling sudo su to get the sbin pathes correctly. Atm I have no idea what causes this, nor how to fix it since I don't use sudo on my regular computers. If anybody knows how to fix this, please let us know!
others:
a) Due to Maemo's ancient pulseaudio version I had to patch the pulseaudio-related packages in the image. In contrast to the packages in Squeeze this time it's the real Wheezy pulseaudio version 2.0 with only the protocol version patched down to 15 as suggested by thomasjfox [3] (Thanks a lot for that!). The packages currently installed in the image are:
You'll find all the patched packages, including the ones currently not installed, created from pulseaudio here: [4]
Since the packages had to be patched this means that they MUST NOT be replaced with regular Wheezy packages if you want to have sound in Easy Debian. Therefore I set them on "hold" so they will not be automatically upgraded by newer versions. If for some reason you need newer packages than the ones that are currently in the image (because they are required as a dependency) rebuild the packages after patching them yourself or contact me and I'll build new ones (it may take some days until I'm able to provide new ones)!
b) Just like in the Squeeze image I had to replace the xkb folder after the dist-upgrade, so the xkd-data package shouldn't be upgraded too or you'll have to copy it over from Maemo again. When I copied the folder I forgot that I altered my keyboard definition slightly. Users with US layout will notice that "£" and "€" will produce "<" and ">" instead, Shift+Alt+"." will produce "|" and Shift+Alt+Space will produce Escape. If you want an unmodified us keymap copy /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/rx-51 from Maemo to the Wheezy image!

[1] image@Estel: http://lorienart.pl/debian_wheezy0sulu.img.lzma @qole: http://qole.org/files/debian_wheezy0sulu.img.lzma
[2] Chromium armel bug: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=674728
[3] pulseaudio patch by thomasjfox: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=34
[4] patched pulseaudiopackages@Estel: http://lorienart.pl/pulseaudio_patch...reeze.tar.lzma

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

As for [4] - here it is:
http://lorienart.pl/pulseaudio_patch...reeze.tar.lzma

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I've been using this raw wheezy image and testing it has been working REALLY well for me! thanks for the work put in!


the issue I've had for a long time (on all previous images) with drawing on gimp via debbie has been fixed

http://i.imgur.com/4VUgF.png

I no longer have to go through LXDE to use drawing programs :)

and the best thing is MyPaint v1.0 also works!

http://i.imgur.com/eSXVx.png

http://i.imgur.com/9WuKF.png

one problem: I can get pressure sensitivity, but the screen behaves as if the (left click) press is always on hold, so the strokes end up being continuous..

here is what I mean:

http://i.imgur.com/HJ9WY.png
^^ I made four individual wriggly brush strokes from left to right, but they all connect together


This is my temporary fix:

-change the stroke setting in preferences from

http://i.imgur.com/3L1Zj.png

to a regular mouse setting and disable pressure sensitivity

http://i.imgur.com/gWJtF.png


is there something I can do to fix this "hold" issue? I also tried changing the settings on GIMP to get pressure sensitivity

http://i.imgur.com/5NUnl.jpg

and it works but then I can't click anything outside the canvas (e.g, I can't click save or close on the menu boxes, making gimp unuseable) (because again, I suspect it behaves as though left click is on hold)

edit: also this issue occurs in both debbie (chroot) and LXDE.

but in debbie both programs detect the input as "TSC2005 touchscreen" and in LXDE it detects two inputs, "Virtual core XTEST pointer" and "Xephyr virtual mouse"

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I've run quassel, but keyboard doesn't work (can't focus on window?).
It seems that input still works on terminal instead of quassel window (I run it directly via chroot).

Anyway what's strange - when I ran quassel from lxde it ran only quassel-client...

Any ideas ? kbd fixes posted on wiki didn't helped me :(

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hey Sulu,

Could you please write small "tutorial" for upgrading Squeezy image to wheezy, similar to one You did for upgrading *to* Squeezy? I would put it in wiki, then. Of course, I suppose it includes more than just "dist-upgrade" - installation of new, custom pulseaudio, and such things.

I'm personally interested in it - I would like to do upgrade keeping my current image, instead of starting from scratch, with a fresh one. It would not only save me downloading gigabytes of files over slow network access, but also, more importantly, help testing compatibility with existing (and working well in Squeeze) programs. Diary of steps needed for upgrade would also help in debugging any possible issues with images.

Thanks in advance,

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I had the same problem with some debian apps running natively under maemo.
I have this line in my .xbindkeysrc, and I am using xbindkeys under maemo natively (installed via apt-get):


and a /home/user/.kbdactive like this (x11-utils needed to be installed to use xprop):

Works for me with kdepimpi-package natively under maemo and libreoffice ran via debbie.

The only thing could be done more elegant is the set-focus: it must be invoked using debbie because the binary does not work under maemo natively, it drops this error:

Does anybody have it compiled against actual maemo to make this work?

CU Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

@lonk:
Thanks for sharing that info! Unfortunately I'm no graphics expert at all, so I can't help you here.

Confirmed! The quassel window doesn't get the keyboard focus when started via debbie (even after clicking into it - mouse focus works). This however doesn't seem to be a global problem (maybe qt-related?) since e.g. uzbl and apparently gimp work fine via debbie.
Unfortunately I have no idea so far how to fix it. Did quassel via debbie work fine in earlier images?

Is it supposed to do something different? I don't know quassel (except for the very brief test I ran to confirm your findings). According to the package description [1] I'd think this is normal.

Of course, I will do that - eventually.

quick and dirty:
Compared to the Lenny->Squeeze upgrade this time the dist-upgrade was even harder because I couldn't do it on device at all since the watchdog always rebooted my N900 at some point even with your (or freemangordon's) swap settings.
So I set up a Debian armel machine in qemu (I just copied kernel and initrd from [2]). If you have some other armel/hf hardware without a watchdog (e.g. Raspberry PI) I suggest to use that instead of qemu!
In that armel system I mounted the Squeeze Easy Debian image (make sure to mount all the ED bind mounts too - for reference you can check what's mounted in Maemo when ED is running).
After that's done it's pretty straight forward: chroot into the image, upgrade your sources.list and just do the dist-upgrade.
Once this is done you can copy the image back to your N900, as usual copy the xkb folder from Maemo into the image and install the patched pulseaudio packages (or patch them yourself the way I described in my last post if you prefer that).

Please let me know if you need further information! I'd like to have the final description in the wiki in a form that makes every advanced Debian user able to reproduce it.

Do you know where to obtain the source code?

[1] http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/quassel
[2] http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/qemu/armel/

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks a lot, I'll try to do update on my "full of stuff" image before going vacation trip, and report back what is working, and what isn't :)

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I hope that this is it:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=425218&postcount=7

The post is from 12-13-09, the binary I am using

download: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=32

with debbie has timestamp 12-16-09, could be the same if were lucky.
If it won't work one can send a pm to qobi maybe he can help us.

Thanks and good luck!

CU Michael

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I've just started upgrading my image to Wheezy (just = 2 hours ago ;) ). Well, "only" 875 MB to download, and 725 more - as compared to current image size - space will be used...

I'm upgrading on device itself, without any problems (in fact, I'm doing other things on device, simultaneously, without considerable slowdown). sulu, are You using swap on microSD (only, without any active on eMMC) too, or only settings proposed in this thread?

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I'm using 768MB swap on microSD only, my images are on emmc and I tried freemangordon's, your's and the default swap settings. And I niced apt-get down to minimum priority during the ugrade. None of that prevented the watchdog from rebooting my N900.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Well, I've dist-upgraded it successfully, now going to start messing with it. whole upgrade went smooth, without nice'ing apt-get, and I was able to do other things on device while upgrade progressed - like reading TMO, conversing via SMS or GSM (voice).

One minor thing - dist-upgrade wasn't able to deal with 4 packages, log below:

Any ideas about those 4 2 packages, sulu? Also, is there any reason for keeping cpp-4.4 gcc-4.4-base (additional 2, mentioned at the beginning of log) kept on hold?

/Estel

// Edit

I've fixed problem with avahi-daemon, by purging it, then:
...and installing avahi-daemon again.

Cause of problems with network-manager remain unknown, as error from it's postinst script isn't very helpful, but I've purged both it and network-manager-gnome, which triggered auto-installation of replacement one, wicd. This one doesn't return failed postinst, and configures properly (I hope). I seems to remember something related in times of mix->pure squeeze update?

// Edit 2

Nah, wicd doesn't work, just like it refused to work in times of squeeze update, needed to kick it out again. Sadly, no idea why network-manager doesn't configure properly - only one info that it returns, is failure of postinst script, resulting in "error exit code 1". It's a pity, that it doesn't tell anything more - for example, avahi posinst also returned exit code 1, but also info about "user avahi already exist", so I was able to fix it.
---

Other notes - LXDE loads considerably slower, initially (why?)

Chromium bug mentioned by sulu should be fixed now, and chromium updates well - yet, when I try to start it, terminal splits "Restricted memory violation". WTF?

// Edit 3

Despite purging everything that had "wicd" in name, I still se ugly wicd window on startup of LXDE, asking me for password, then, another one, complaining about "unable to connect to wicd d-bus interface" (same error was present, when wicd was installed), and 3th one, about "wicd control panel being disabled due to previous errors" (this one also present with wicd installed).

WTF, again? anyone have idea, which package I get to kick in butt, to get rid of that? It's possible, that this is thing responsible for slower LXDE start - after closing all damn error messages + pop-up notification about "being not connected", LXDe is fast as always been.

// Edit 4

everything else - like LibreOffice, GIMP, etc works reliably and fast. I I would be able to hammer mentioned bugs (or, someone will come with a solution, which would be nice), I'll prepare end-user wheezy image, with same things installed as in squeeze (but otherwise, being 100% wheezy).

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Sounds like either I got a very bad or you got a very good N900. Maybe I should try if my backup N900 works better.

There's no reason I know of. Just "unhold" the packagesand run the dist-upgrade again!

You neither need network-manager nor wicd since all network stuff is handled by Maemo. Just purging both shouldn't make any difference unless you have other packages depending on them. In that case it might help to create a virtual package that does nothing more than to "provide" e.g. wicd (in Debian packaging terms).
I think I can build and upload such a virtual package this evening.

I've noticed that it loads a bit slower, but I wouldn't call it "considerably" - maybe it's a second or so. I believe it's the usual phenomenon of software getting fatter as development progresses.

I noticed that too. I'm still trying to gather information to add to the official bug report.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks a lot for You reply, sulu. I'm convinced, that slow start of LXDE is due to WICD sh*t starting, despite that I've literally purged everything that had wicd in package name, same for network-manager and it's dependencies. Still, I get prompts and errors mentioned earlier, on every LXDE start:
wicd asking for password
wicd complaining about inability to connect to d-bus
wicd complaining about it's interface being disabled
finally, ugly pop-up saying that i'm not connected...

Of course, internet access works nevertheless, thanks to Maemo providing it). any idea, what may be causing this, and what else I need to nuke? :)

Other than that, and chromium problem, there isn't anything else wrong.

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I invesigated a bit and found that set-focus was never meant to run natively under Maemo.
But I guess I got you wrong the first time since I thought you implied otherwise. Sorry for that! I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to development outside the ED chroot, so if somebody ports set-focus to Maemo that somebody won't be me.


I think I've found the reason for this problem.
quassel explicitely needs to get the keyboard focus. In LXDE it gets it automatically since LXDE already has the focus which hands it on to quassel.
In Maemo via debbie however it does not get the focus automatically. Therefore one has to call debbie set-focus <quassel-window-id> manually after starting quassel. Then it works.

Unfortunately there are two further problems:
1. quassel opens two windows in certain situations (e.g. for initial account setup). The quassel main window has the window title Quassel while the additional window is called quassel (notice the different cases!). Usually the set-focus calls are pretty robust since the id is checked for both cases:Unfortunately in this case that causes trouble since the result would be ambiguous.

2. quassel takes some time to load the window. Therefore set-focus can't be called immediately since there is no window yet to obtain an id from. So we have to wait, but on the other hand we'd have to be fast enough to get the id before any additional windows are loaded since that would cause the ambiguity problem again.

The only realistic solution I see at the moment is to call set-focus manually after starting quassel. An end-user friendly way to do that could be an xbindkeys macro as suggested by magic_doc here [1].

@Estel:
That whole wicd thing sounds very strange to me. I don't think I can be of any assistance without seeing first-hand what you describe.
Can you please upload your image just the way it is now so I can investigate it?
If you give a public link (which I'd prefer over a PM for various reasons) please add a big fat warning that it's a buggy image!
I won't be able to make any reasonable investigations before monday.

[1] http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...postcount=2790

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

sulu, thanks for will to look at it. I'm packing image and will upload it afterwards. In the meantime, as some possible pointers, here is output of find -name *wicd* invoked from within ED chroot:

Few dozens are just var things from dpkg, but later, It seems that many things are left despite purge'ing, and I feel urge to rm them all, but I'll wait for comments :)

/Estel