Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I prefer to transfer the image to a desktop Linux and run :
$ resize2fs name.img <size-in-MB>M
e.g. :
$ resize2fs debian.img 2000M

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Everything driver-related is a kernel thing and since Easy Debian runs on top of the Maemo kernel it can't make devices work that don't run in Maemo.
Your best bet would be to ask the kernel power team for support. But first try to find out if it's already supported. Try to find a how-to that describes how to make this modem/card combination run in regular x86 Linux systems without the use of GUI tools!
If you don't know how to do that please connect the modem with the card to an x86 Linux system and provide the relevant part of the output of:btw: Have you tried to run the Aero 2 card in the N900's internal slot?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I personally do not, but I know that it works. How to check if my N900 supports dualsim?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I tested rzr-rootfs and I edited some lines in qchroot script:
It prevents multible mounting for /var/run/pulse , /var/run/dbus etc.
And it fixes closechroot issue. ( Nothing to do; chroot not mounted!)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

hi guys, what is the last debian image? is a wheezy image? and is there a sid image?
is there a guide step-by-step to create a new clean image, starting to an .iso cd image? thanks for the future reply and sorry for english

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

You can use any of the following images (I suggest either sulu's or Estel's Wheezy armel upgrades):
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=137http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=137

I'm working on a brand new image myself (Debian Wheezy armhf), but I'm running into some Xephyr keyboard focus issues (among things, but this is the single most important issue).
If there's anyone around who can give me some tips to fix it, please pm me.

Edit:
armhf versus armel (every other Easy Debian image):
http://www.memetic.org/raspbian-benc...rmel-vs-armhf/
Hey, even the slightest of a performance bump should help, right? ;)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I prepared this for bodhi armhf but it should works on wheezy armhf.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I've run into several problems with wheezy - namely, gparted (*any* version, even old ones from squeeze or ancient from lenny) doesn't work, due to something being broken in new glibc.

Also, GIMP crashes, when option to put text is used (precisely, when you try to change font size or type). Haven't had time to trace it more :(

Things like that are keeping me from releasing polished wheezy image - I've managed to get rid of other problems from rcoliste's early version (being my squeeze version, dist-upgraded to wheezy). I've also did some user interface improvements, too. (more finger-friendly buttons and sizes, virtual keyboard on portrait mode occupying lower part of screen and integrating nicely with open programs, etc).

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

When testing is in freeze there isn't much going on in unstable either, so a Sid image doesn't make much sense (at least now). But you can dist-upgrade your Wheezy image to Sid at any time as long as you take the precautions that always come with a dist-upgrade.


Can we discuss this in public please - either in this or a new thread?
Solutions in enclosed environments tend to get lost (if they are found there at all).

Agreed! I did an armhf test my self some time ago (roughly at the time of the Wheezy freeze) but the result wasn't stable at all. In most (but not all) cases it resulted in a reboot right when an executable from the chroot was loaded.
On the other hand someone else (I think it was vi) did his own test at about the same time or slightly later and was sucessful. A discussion about that should be burried somewhere in this thread.
I also have to admit that some things concerning ED that differ from a vanilla Debian still are mysteries to me. So I may not be qualified to create an image from scratch.


Does this mean you recompiled /usr/bin/setfocus and /sbin/qobi-wmhint-fix on armhf?
If so, can you please post or link the source code in this thread?


Can you provide precise error messages please?
The Wheezy image I uploaded (plus some simple additional programs like abiword, geeqie, iceweasel) ran absolutely stable during my tests.
But I never tested heavier applications like gimp or GUI system tools like gparted.
(Having no need for that kind off programs myself is part of the reason why I don't want to release images for end-users.)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

gParted and glibc error:

It actually starts the UI, then closes a second after. As said, I've tried older incarnations of gParted, and it doesn't help in Wheezy - but, in Sid, everything is OK (thus I blame glibc). No idea, if it's same for desktop too, or effect of some miss-communication with Maemo's glibc ancient version? If the later, I'm afraid, that other, unknown things, may be affected too.

GIMP error:
What is interesting it happen only (AFAICT) when one use text tool (tool used to input text), *and" click on font's settings pop-up tool panel. Maybe it's related to it being made semi-transparent in latest version of GIMP? Just a wild guess. As long as you don't touch it, gimp works - you may even input text via text tool (but it's quite useless, as you can't change size, color or font, due to crash).

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

thanks for your reply. Sulu, does you upgrade with qemu, right?
p.s. Anyone can use last version of chromium (24.XXXX)?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I don't remember link to set-focus.c but I have sources.
Similar problems were with ubuntu >9.10. I think the reason was lack of "thumb kernel".

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Ironically, my third N900's wifi/gps hardware broke down a day ago, so I can't work on my armhf image until I get a replacement (and I'm not entirely sure I want that, considering the fact I now have 3 handicapped N900) (also: usb networking causes my N900 to crash, even though it's supposed to completely bypass those chips. What the hell?).

I support your idea of making a new discussion thread for ED-images, though (along with linking to all finished images directly on the wiki).

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I can confirm this behavior. Unfortunately I have no idea how to fix it or what may be the cause.

I can confirm this too. And have no solution either.
There are multiple similar descriptions out there which all suggest a problem with glibc or scim.
When I first reproduced this error I hadn't even scim installed. So I installed it, hoping it was just a broken dependency. But the error remained the same.
If your suspicion is true that this is due to the semi-transparent font panel then it should occur with other gimp tools as well, right?
I also read somewhere that it might be related to the fonts used by the application. So if there's a way to change the fonts gimp uses this problem might disappear. Unfortunately I have no idea how to do that.


Right! My N900's watchdog is way too snappish for larger upgrades (even with using nice and ionice). Others seem to be more lucky. So I'd suggest to make a backup of your image/partition and try the dist-upgrade directly on device. Since at the moment the differences between testing and unstable are quite marginal due to the freeze it should work. If your device reboots nevertheless, try to do it on another computer (another armel-capable device without a watchdog would be ideal, but since I have none I use qemu).

I tried version 22.x some time ago, but something is broken in chromium's armel/hf build.
I filed a bug report [1], but since its severity is only "important" I expected that it won't be fixed during the Wheezy freeze.
It might be helpful if somebody who has another armel/hf machine could reproduce the problem and add info to the bug report.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=696196

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

can you give me an easy guide to use qemu and debian image? i've tried to mount it several time without positive results, thanks for you reply and time :)

p.s. In my case if i try to upgrade with chroot it reboot but if i upgrade with synaptic e with no more than 30 packages at one time works fine.

I tried 25.x and crash too

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

You should try this.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

thanks i already try this method but if i upgrade by chroot the phone reboot anyway, unfortunatly synaptic e no more than 30 package is the only right way for me :(

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Well I can't speak for Sulu but, in a nutshell, this is how I do it (under Debian Squeeze):
Simply adjust "/mnt/somewhere" and "debian-something.img.extX" to suit your needs. Also you'll need to have at least qemu-user-static and binfmt-support installed for that to work (maybe more), use your favorite package manager to install them beforehand.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I would welcome a list of finished, stable images, as well.
I would like to update the list available on qole.org/files and the official Easy Debian installer.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I'm not sure if anything changed re stable images, since squeeze things, that you've already put into your filecache and installer (thanks!).

All work done afterward is about Wheezy - while those images work great, there are still some hard-to-hammer issues, like libgcc (see gParted problem) and GIMP segfaults while on text-insert mode.

If you consider image with above (and AFAIK, only above) flaws, + Chromium from Squeeze (due to upstream armel bug, not related to ED, and not likely to be fixed during Wheezy's freeze), I'll gladly prepare it (it have /home/user separated already, should work out-of-the-box).

Otherwise, I'm afraid nothing new will appear untill Wheezy enter Stable, and anyone cares to fix bugs pestering us in mainstream (and/or some ingenious person will have idea WTF is with glibc and GIMP on our side). Then, we will have oh so-much-fun with backporting those changes to Wheezy, either on our own, or just by using wheezy-backports (if available for buggy bits).

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

By the end of the month will be Wheezy stable
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgre...ng=wheezy-sort

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I hope someone will look at bugs submitted by us, then. sulu, do you think that glibc thing preventing gparted (and possibly, some other, still unknown things) t from working, qualify for upstream bug report, too?

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Please excuse my silly noob questions. I have only just discovered the joys of ED and spent the weekend and a bit fiddling with it and must say that IT IS FANTASTIC!

In trying to tweak it to my exact liking I have come across a few questions that I have not found answers to yet (yes, I have read TFM when I ran out of options, but doesn't everybody? :)).

So, here goes:

1) Iceweasel runs fine, even though it took me a while to get the shortcut actually appear. I do not know what I did to make it eventually appear; as far as I know, I followed the same procedure about 300 times (create the .desktop file, reboot) with no effect. After an attempt number 301 it suddenly appeared. Weird. Perhaps Catorise Plus has something to do with it. However, the real question is this. It throws an error on startup complaining about misconfiguration and then starts in funeral colours. When run from a command line, it says,
It is true that I had uninstalled the offending theme but I have also reconfigured LXDE to use a different one. Synaptic does not complain about the missing theme, only Iceweasel and Alsa Mixer. Where is the config file to make them use the default theme instead?

2) I do not intend to use ED to play music or videos, so I assume I can remove the relevant packages to save space, right? Perhaps I should have started with an empty image and build my way up rather than cutting my way down, but it's a bit late now...

3) Similarly, I am happy to ditch LXDE and use debbie for everything. Will OO, Iceweasel and the like continue working?

4) Do I really need network manager, wicd and wireless tools if ED uses the Maemo infrastructure to access the network? What is the absolute minimum I need for the network to work?
I think I've managed to answer it myself. Looks like I need at least wicd (plus dependencies). Network manager is not required.

I am slowly chewing my way through all the 291 pages of this thread but it might take a while. So sorry if my questions have already answered. A thread search did not bring up what I was after.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Yes, you can ditch it. BTW, it seems to me, that you're using outdated lenny/squeeze mix version. Currently, there are few stable version of ED fully dist-upgrade'd to Squeeze available (including barebone ones, where you would rather add things that interest you, instead of removing), and even experimental wheezy builds (with major problems inside, yet to be resolved).

Considering that you're willing to spend some work customizing, you may re-think basing it on already available Squeeze image. Or go though pain of dist upgrading yourself, as after that, half of your configs will get overwritten, or messed/unusable, if you decide to keep them in original form.

There shouldn't be any problems with it - except fact, that some programs (iceweasel, chromium), doesn't ever show right-click menu, when fullscreen, if runf rom within maemo (debbie and friends). To get them work properly with fullscreen, you need to run them from LXDE.

Once, I had habit of running resource-intensive things from Maemo itself, avoiding LXDE as middle-man, to save resources. Hoever, in practice _ much to my surprise - everything works exactly as fast (or as slow) in LXDE, if not faster. I have no idea why, maybe it have something to do with Xephyr optimizations, or whatsnot.

You don't need any of them, as it's chroot, so Maemo provides access. Hoever, there is a sad twist in debian packaging - if you remove network manager, apt-get will force you to install wicd, if you remove wicd afterwards, it will force you to install network manager. Then, you will have *both* wicd and network manager working, due to some bug in wicd de-installation (so it won't be installed for apt, but will be still present and working on system).

Only one way to get rid of them is manually delete files, or create fake network-manager (& friends) packages, containing nothing (dummies), that will replace real ones

Hope it save you some nn hours of getting hit by that bugs yourself and another couple of debugging, why the hell such bizzare things happne, and how to fix it ;)

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Thanks, Estel. I found some quirks with wicd/network manager inter-dependencies last night during a pruning exercise: I kept pruning until I lost the network and had to install things back manually. I had to install wicd and dependencies, but synaptic was happy with network manager missing.

Unfortunately, I kept fiddling with it and synaptic froze on me to the point that I had to pull the battery out. Needless to say, my Debian image ended up FUBAR so I will have to start all over. I guess I will start with a barebone image this time.

BTW I started off with w3e and upgraded to pure Squeeze bus as I say, that's all history now.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Has a workaround been found for this? I have just been hit by that. It was not too difficult to get out of that (though it did involve a liberal dose of typing sudo, umount and mount) but something like locking SD and MyDocs to prevent mass storage mode while ED is chrooted seems like an obvious solution.

What would be the pros and cons of installing ED in a directory on optfs? Not a loopback, not a separate partition, just a separate directory. One obvious advantage I can think of is that both Maemo and ED would share the same free disk space, resulting in less wastage. Are there any obvious drawbacks?

(Sorry if answered already; I can't claim having read all 291 pages thoroughly but a quick browse did not show anything.)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Very interesting idea - after all, it's "just" a chroot jail... I'm not aware of any such attempts being made before, and from top of my head, I can't give any drawbacks (except for that ED easychroot scripts might need modifications, to allow using regular directory, instead of image file or partition).

Maybe other people know something that I might have overlooked?

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Well, I've done it. Expanded the optfs partition (by the way, you do not need a PC to do it: at the cost of two reboots, my N900 could do it under its own steam, with only Parted coming to an aid) and copied ED under /home/debian. It required minor edits in three scripts although in retrospect, I think I could have done with even less.

The most annoying problem was that CloseChroot rebooted the device. The reason was the -m option in fuser. Any idea what it was there for? It seems to work fine without it, whether I use /home/debian or a loopback image.

Conclusions:

• It might be a placebo effect, but it seems to run MUCH faster than from an image. OpenOffice starts about twice as fast. I have no explanation for this. I would imagine that the startup sequence was limited by the CPU and memory speed, not IO, but there you go.
• Already mentioned sharing of disk space, meaning less wasted space. It has, however, two side effects:
  • BackupMenu backup of optfs now includes my ED too.
  • Looking for things using find takes that much longer.

The only potential disadvantage I can think of is that by sharing the file systems,, any corruption is shared too.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

It's not placebo, running from native filesystem instead of image file on vfat is *much* faster, and proven so, by some tests with timer. Huge programs like LibreOffice or Chromium/Iceweasel have shitload of I/O (well, rather O) at starting.
---

Nice to hear, that you've managed to do it without problems. Could you, for refference, list changes in scripts you've done?

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Some changes: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...postcount=2884
And then you need edit your /home/user/.chroot file
IMGFILE=none
CHROOT=/path/to/your/chroot/folder

Now you start and end your chroot session with old commands ( debian and closechroot ).

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Well, as I said, I later realized that I did not need to edit that much but that was only on editing my third script when I found out about using 'none'. I started off by using IMGFILE=/path/to/my/chroot/dir and leaving CHROOT alone. That required editing qmount to add a case for a directory which I later reverted.

However, valdur55's post did not cure the "Nothing to do" problem, I had to edit closechroot thus:
Basically, adding a test for $IMGFILE!=none in two places and removing -m in the call to fuser as it was causing aforementioned issues.

I have also edited qchroot to alter some mounts but that is just my preference and I am not suggesting that it should be in any way taken seriously. I just did not think ED needed to know about my entire /home tree (which would include ED recursively). Mounting user's home dir ought to be enough for everybody ;)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

After many months of constant development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 7.0 (code name Wheezy).
http://lists.debian.org/debian-annou.../msg00002.html

When will the new image Easy Debian of Wheezy?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

When somebody at mainstream will care to fix critical bugs we have reported ages ago :[ I have quite polished wheezy ED image, but it's no joy, if glibc is borked (so no gparted and friends), GIMP is borked, Chromium is borked...

/Estel

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Please forgive me a naive question. I've wanted to ask for a long time but felt too embarrassed. Finally the curiosity got the better of me :)

I was trying to implement "easier-than-Easy" Debian by adding Debian repositories to FAM but nothing happened. No Debian packages appeared on the list. Why?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

You'd need to view hidden packages too. But easier than Easy Debian isn't a good idea as it's not optified

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Of course I've checked hidden packages.

I am not too bothered about optification. I have 80 MB in root and was intending to install apps one at a time and optify manually.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

No errors during fapt-get update?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

Hopefully I may be able to tell you in an hour or so. I was fiddling with it to the point of getting myself into a boot loop so now I have to reflash.

Edit (a few hours later):
Reflashed, restored from backupmenu backup, added Debian repos and... it works! I don't know what I did wrong the last time. Most likely a typo in the URL or something like that.

But there is a small problem. I can't install anything from the Debian repos because the Maemno packages are so old that installing even the simplest Debian package requires to upgrade pretty much everything. (Which is how I ended up with an unbootable device in the first place. Tried to upgrade libc6 manually and ended up with a partial installation that went boom on the next reboot.)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I'm just in process of setting ED to use directory on /opt myself, and I noticed, that your closechroot modification contains something else (as addition to mentioned checks and removing -m):

Above bunch of tests got removed, and replaced by just [i]cd /proc; fuser "$CHROOT -k[/code]. Any idea, why it did all the trickery to decide between gfuser (in case of using /dev/mapper = using loopback file) or fuser (and fallback to fuser in case of gfuser absence, even for said loopback file) in the first time? Also, why you've decided to remove it?

I would like to (one day) sum up all fixes, add some more (like removing dependency on murrina night orange in *maemo's* repos, which mess with some non-ed GTK programs, making using them harder), then, upload new version of easy debian package. Thus, Imm interested, why gfsuer was considered better for some specific scenario (and ithus, if that code snippet is worth keeping).

/Estel

//Edit

A sidenote:

I do not recommend mounting /home/user *at all* in any form for ED. If you investigate latest (Squeeze and later) images, they contain onchrootmount (or smth like that) script, that gets executed from within ED, and umount /dev/mmcblk0p2 (for ED only). It's due to fact, that having /home shared between ED and Maemo leaves you with total mess, if you try to move your ED imgfile/partition content/directory content to another device, or share it with someone (like with images in this thread). Obviously, it would require to also distribute parts of your /home/, but only those related to ED - post-separating them is PITA.

BTW, I know, that mounting it in qchroot, then, unmounting second later by some on<whatever>chroot script is stupid. I think qole decided on this approach, as he wanted to avoid updating easy debian package in Maemo repos for all cost (probably, he didn't wanted to go through promotion to extras, again).

This is also going to be fixed when/if I come to releae updated version - so, as you have browsed trough those scripts already, is it only place where something related to /dev/mmclk0p2 or Maemo's /home/ is executed?

// Edit 2
Just finished it, everything works as OK. First impression - initial start is, obviously, even faster than with native partition - due to skipping mounting part. Thanks a lot valdur55 and pichlo for solutions on fixing ED scripts!

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing
 

I don't quite remember. It may have been something trivial, like gfuser not being present on my phone so what's the point checking. Why it was implemented that way to start with I have no idea. It worked for me in the simplified form. I am sure someone more knowledgeable can answer it better as this was the first time I found out about fuser :-)


Ah, thanks, good to know. I ended up having to do a bit more due to the fact that I started from the minimal (50MB) image and built up. That image turned out to be quite out of date so I might have done better starting from your Squeeze image and remove things.

I have since moved on to a bigger challenge, trying to install and run Debian packages directly without chrooting. I have not had much success yet as per a couple of posts above but now I have a spare device to thrash so I am not giving up yet.