Debian *early beta* Release for N800/N810!
 

Got anyone's attention?
(Link to the wiki page: http://www.internettablettalk.com/wi...p?title=Debian )

What this is: a downloadable early beta, tarball of Debian that you can boot from your SD card.

Who this is for:
* Linux gurus who run alpha and beta software for fun
* People who want to try and improve how Debian runs on the NITs
* People interested in having Debian running on a tablet so they can get Hildonized apps for ITOS working right on Debian/Maemo.
* People who just want to play with it.

Who this is not for:
* End users
* Sensible people who expect finished software.
* People who don't like the command line


What works:

* X11
* Hildon Desktop!
* Touchscreen
* Wireless (even WPA!)
* CPU frequency scaling (cpufreq)
* Bluetooth
* suspend-to-ram: works, seems reliable (echo mem > /sys/power/state) (watchdog will kill your device in 60 seconds though :/)
* backlight control: works, access to all 128 levels. (echo 90 > /sys/platform/

What doesn't work:

* Sound (is a dsp task. we might need to borrow gstreamer libs from maemo to get this to work)
* Power Management (is largely done through dsme, this could be difficult)
* Buttons (I can get a keycode with showkey, but they don't work in X11)


For more info: check out the wiki page: here.

I know people will have a lot of questions, and I don't mind answering them! However, please read the FAQ on the wiki page I just linked before asking questions. And if you ask a question and get an answer, please add both to the FAQ. Thank you and happy hacking!

-John

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Looks great -
Now since everyone knows they are gurus they'll download it and start complaining that it doesn't work they way they want it to!!

Under what doesn't work you did NOT mention teletransport and I can't seem to get it to work?

What am I doing wrong??

Beam me up Johnx!!
:)

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

On the Sharp Zaurus PDAs, Debian is one of the foundations (with Ångström) that people have recently been using to boot Google Android environments. Maybe it would work on a tablet too ?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

- excellent work! will be looking forward to this...

- it'd be great to get to the point where there's good hardware support and a bare-minimum (text-based) install w/networking... most folks (i believe) would be able to take it from there... (this would be a flexible approach, rather than say, 'here's the install with such-and-such a gui desktop'...

- i was not aware of the hacked init-fs? it'd be nice to have a URL in the wiki? (but yes, i will look for this)...

- tks for posting this... adds a new dimension to the IT i wasn't aware of...

- anyone have any good URLs for a starting place on alternative IT booting/setup/desktops?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Wow, thank you. Trying to debootstrap Debian was one of the first thigs I wanted to try when receiving my n800. But now you have done it. Cool Job.

Next thing should be creating a own repo.


You should Link this in the wiki article:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ght=debian+770

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

First, I'd like to say thanks for all the encouragement. :D It's always nice to see.

Interesting idea. It almost certainly would work with a little hacking. The one big thing that stands in the way right now is that applications that want to draw directly to the framebuffer (like mplayer -vo fbdev) have no problem writing to /dev/fb0 but what they write never shows up on the screen. Since Android relies on writing to /dev/fb0 we might have a problem until this can be worked around.

Believe me, I'm interested in hardware support too, so this should improve. I'm always interested in help though, too. :D As for a text based install with networking...That might be fine for the N810, but without a keyboard the N800 users won't get very far I think. I don't know of any onscreen keyboards for the framebuffer console. As it is I used the slimmest install of X11 (which I think everyone will want on their tablet anyways). All this does is drop people off into an xterm and an onscreen keyboard. From their they can setup networking or do whatever else they want.

Here's the "Boot from MMC" howto: http://maemo.org/community/wiki/HowT..._From_MMC_card
It applies to 2008OS as well since fanoush updated his initfs.

Well it's my thread so I might as well plug the wiki page I made. heh. Basically if you're using fanoush's initfs all you need to do is point the initfs at an filesystem that contains /sbin/init . init will be run and can do whatever it wants to the rest of the system. I really do need to see what it's handed in terms of mounted filesystems though. :/

Done! Remember, it is a wiki. You *can* just add it yourself. :P

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Is this because Xomap is hogging the framebuffer all to itself, or something?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Yesterday it kicked me out of the wiki, as soon as I logged in.

One problem that I have seen on the N800 of a friend:
When trying to write big letters, matchbox-keyboard closes.

Can someone confirm this?


Ah can't await my n800

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

@kotzkind: Yeah. I can confirm that shift and control both cause matchbox keyboard to crash. Something seems to be up with keymapping in X. I'm looking forward to any help so hopefully your N800 comes soon. :D

@dblank: This is before Xomap is running. There might be some special trick to initialize the framebuffer.

also it seems like the wiki was kicking people out as soon as they logged in. It only happened to me in firefox not opera so I thought it was a problem with cookies. It seems to work now in firefox for me, so I'd appreciate if anyone who wanted to update the wiki try again and tell me if it still doesn't work. Thanks!

BTW: updated wiki and first post in this thread with current status.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

My friend said that when x.org is installed (xomap is still used) shift and ctrl works.
x.org doesn't work, so don't remove xomap.

Does someone know what xomap is?
An changed x.org or something like this?

Edit: Ok it's an optimized xserver.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Even as I type this, a new tarball is uploading to my server. Since the last time I've removed quite a lot of my ugly hacks in favor of some nicer hacks by the fine folks who are putting the Maemo/Hildon packages together for Debian. What's new with this release? The big news is that this release has a basic Maemo/Hildon desktop. What that means is that getting Applications from ITOS into Debian is easier than ever. To make leafpad run all I had to do was change the dependencies in the .deb to reflect the package names that Debian uses. Hit the Debian wiki here for more info and the download link: http://internettablettalk.com/wiki/i...e=Debian#HOWTO

-John

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Ok, I'm very sorry for my ignorance but I would like to ask:

All the parts from How I did it: to Wireless are not needed right if I use beta2 of your debian port?

Also will I be able to use the kismet & libpcap obtained from here http://eko.one.pl/maemo/index.php?pa...Fbinary-armel/ meant for maemo or will I have to use a special debian version or grab it from an debian repo or compile it myself (in that case, is any changes to the source required and is it compiled in scratchbox or on the N800 running debian itself)?

Thanks.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

That is correct. The only thing you need to look at are the release notes. I've left "How I did it!" up there as a history lesson. :D

One of the reasons I wanted Debian on my N800 was the incredible wealth of software ready and available for it. Debian maintains a port to the ARM architecture (armel) that has ~90% of the packages available on the desktop. That includes kismet. :) So, as soon as you boot into Debian (and have some form of networking setup) just issue:
Sure. Tell me how it works for you. :)

-John

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Thank you very much for that. I only have a 1GB SD card (filled with data) at the moment so when I get another 1GB card I will want to try out the port. I will say how it works for me when I get a chance to try it out (hopefully very soon).

Thanks for the reply again. Also thanks for this release again :D, I wish kismet wasn't broken on OS2008.

BTW: Great work on this.

P.S I've uploaded (or rather got ftp2share to do it) the beta 2 file to some free webhosters. Unfortunately, I have no webspace of my own to upload there.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Sure. I really don't mind answering questions about this stuff. The first post was just to set people's expectations properly about what this is and isn't. Maybe I scared away too many people though...

Kismet should work ok with a little bit of hacking in the latest OS2008. I forgot where I saw the thread but I think it's definitely possible to make it work.

BTW, thanks for the mirror. :)

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Great. :). I think this is a very good "preview".

I tried following the instructions I found about OS2008 but it still quits on me. Ah well, hopefully, it will work for me in debian.

No problem :).

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hi folks,

FWIW, I debootstrapped a SID in my 770 following Johnx's howto (cheers chap!) and it worked. I have to add that the "bonus" section is a gem if you don't know what to do with that unusable debian on your card.

Cheers,

U

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Follow up post:

debootstrapping work no problem. A couple of issues though with tslib and equiv. For some reason equivs refused to cooperate to I had to repack the dependencies for Xomap. Other than that, nothing, everything is just peachy. Oh, Xomap doesn't get repacked with /etc/init.d/x-server (it doesn't even exist in the original OS - OS2006) but that's no bother.

Back to my debian :)

U

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hi, this is my first post here.
I'd like to know, what should i do to load xfce4(or another) instead of hildon/maemo desktop?

I've installed xfce4 but i dont know how to switch to it.

Thanks!

EDIT: Im using chroot on maemo to install everything(using maemo wifi connection) prior to restart and boot debian. After updating the system and installing xfce4 i cannot open the roxterm terminal in debian.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

@zuachs: You'll need to be able to log in from a desktop to issues the commands at this stage. Get usb networking or wireless working. After that you just need to restart the x server (stop & start it) to kill off hildon desktop, then export DISPLAY=:0 and run xfce4-session (or is it xfce-session?). I do wonder why roxterm doesn't work for you though...

-John

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

@johnx: thank you for the reply. I'm not too much expert in this, sorry, I'd like to set up the xfce4, or another one, to be the default WM instead of hildon, so when I boot to debian it loads automatically. I think I need to edit some script to disable hildon start and add "exec startxfce4" or something like that. At this time, since I can't open a roxterm(it loads and exit very quickly, weird no?) to enable the wireless connection, I use chroot from a maemo terminal :/

Thanks! :)

EDIT: just to know where I enable/diable the hildon desktop and matchbox from loading and set xfce4 to load instead of them.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Quick post here.

I got e17 running on my 770 and it's pretty fast. Thought I'd drop you a line since this thread + SID on 770 are somewhat related threads.

Cheerios folks!

U

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

I have xfce4 installed but I'm only able to run it using chroot and the vncviewer, but when I boot debian it loads hildon :( I don't know how to set xfce4 as the default :(

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Just a note, Firefox (iceweasel) doesn't run under Debian armel yet, don't waste your time installing. Here's my post (with picture) in another thread.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hi,
Yesterday, i tried it with my N810 and successfully booted into Debian on sd .
Touchscreen works ,but no buttons and internal-keyboard works ...
I did "cp /mnt/initfs/usr/share/hal/policy/10osvendor/10-xkb.fdi /usr/share/hal/policy/10osvendor/" ,
and also did "mv /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/X11/xkb-orig && cp -a /mnt/initfs/usr/share/X11/xkb/ /usr/share/X11/xkb/" , but had no luck with them.
Does anyone help getting internal-keyboard and buttions worked ?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Okay,
finally i got internal-keyboard of my Debianized N810 worked,
and i"ll try to add some instructions to Wiki...Thanks.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hi
I have problems..

In unpacking debian-armel-n800-beta2.tar.bz2 into n800 is warning post (Error exit delayed from previous error)

After reboot n800 non boot in MMC2

where is problems ??

Thx

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Could you try unpacking it again, and this time save the *all* the output of the command you used to unpack it. Something like this should do it:
tar jxvf foo.tar.bz2 2> errors.log 1> output.log

Then post errors.log and output.log up here. Thanks!

-John

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hi, ondra1234.
Did you use tar installed by default to unpack?
Busybox's tar has some bugs so you need to use this one.
http://repository.maemo.org/pool/mae...osso_armel.deb

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hi
I getting after http://www.thisweekinnuclear.com/KDEonN800.html

errors.log

/tar-temp/bin/tar: ./lib/dsp: Cannot open: File exists
/tar-temp/bin/tar: ./mnt/initfs: Cannot utime: Read-only file system
/tar-temp/bin/tar: ./mnt/initfs: Cannot change mode to rwxr-xr-x: Read-only file system
/tar-temp/bin/tar: ./mnt/initfs: Cannot change ownership to uid 0, gid 0: Read-only file system
/tar-temp/bin/tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

output.log has 1,5MB looks OK

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

What entry do I make in boot.conf when flashing fanoush's initfs to make Debian correctly boot from the first partition (ext2) of my external SD card on my N810?

Thanks.

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

It should be something like this:

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

That works! Thanks!

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hey, fix your sig, then!

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Hi!
How did you manage to get the n810 hardware keyboard to work?
Can't seem to find it in the wiki...
Cheers
Anders

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Nice things are happening here!

However I still believe that all work is moot if access to the hardware specification and source code for the system software is not granted for the general public.

See this bug for details: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1584

Post what you want to see opened up.

Eternal Booting of Debian
 

I formatted mmcblk0p4 as ext2, mounted it as /opt (using Millhouse's "nupdate.sh" script, I confess) then downloaded the Debian tarball, checked the md5sum, and untarred it to the root of the partition. It all went smoothly, I checked and rechecked, yes, I had formatted the right partition, yes, I had untarred everything...

I then rebooted and chose my new Debian install from my boot menu...

My N800 has been sitting at the "Booting from mmc4 (mmcblk0p4 ext2)..." screen for 20 minutes or more.

I'm going to kill it, I think; any ideas what might be wrong?

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

@qole: Yeah, 20 minutes is definitely too long. It should bring up usb networking early in the boot process. Is there any chance you could try hooking it up to a desktop and trying to login and get some more info (such as boot messages, etc)?

I plan to do a new release in the next week or so. I still haven't got sound working, but I do have a couple changes in mind. My goals for the next release go something like this:
-boot messages should actually display during bootup!
-Include support for rotation if you have a rotation enabled kernel.
-switch to xfce for the desktop for now.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

-John

Re: Debian "Sneak Preview" Release for N800/N810!
 

Interesting... I got it to work by re-doing the initfs_flash script after installing Debian. It actually didn't take very long to boot this time. An interesting artifact; the screen was still blank and white, but I got a mouse pointer on the screen so I moved the pointer around. It revealed a NOKIA logo as it moved across the screen!

I am kind of amazed; I didn't expect to see the Hildon desktop. Is there any way that I can get dropped to a root terminal by default, or to a menu of window managers? I wanted to try XFCE4, but I have no idea how to exit the Hildon WM.

By the way, the hildon-style pop-up keyboard is very cool!

USB Networking on Windows XP
 

This is kind of cool.

This site has instructions and a linux.inf file that you can use to get Windows XP working with USB networking and the tablet. I have Cygwin and SSH set up, so this is great.

Still trying to get it to work, however ;)