[Debian] Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

This is a development thread. For discussion about *using* Debian on the N8x0 please head over here: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ghlight=debian .

I decided to start a thread for discussion about further development of Debian on the tablets. I realize that my documentation for how I actually put Debian on my N800 is somewhat lacking, but the truth is it was really an evolutionary effort, with lots of false starts and blind alleys. I'm going to redo my whole install over the next couple days, and do it *the right way* while documenting all my steps. That should give anyone interested in further development a better start.

Something else I'd like to discuss here is how to proceed. Is there enough interest in continuing to refine this that we should actually try and get a real project page setup? Who is interested in doing what, and how can I help you get started?

Thanks for all your support and interest! :D

-John

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I'd be happy to help on this project (I already have keymaps to contribute!).

A SF page would be great, and would provide hosting, IMO (Not my original idea, JohnX proposed it).

EDIT: Also, a way of charging while running Debian would be nice. Maybe it can be stolen from Maemo (I can't BELIEVE that they ditched APM!)?

EDIT2: And a custom kernel with modules people may find useful (such as USB-Ethernet chipsets, maybe USB-VGA drivers, while keeping it compatible with OS2008)

EDIT3 (last one, hopefully, for this post): And for right clicking, the GTK thing is unnecessary. The Zaurus world is using XBindKeys to do it.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

For using XBindKeys, see this post:

http://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?...6&st=0&start=0

It's post #4.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Ditched APM? This isn't x86, and doesn't have anything resembling a PC BIOS, so I'm pretty sure APM is completely irrelevant. I think bme is running anyway, but haven't checked; are you sure it's not charging?[/quote]

That's awesome, but really a completely independent project. I'm not thinking of any kernel modules that would be useful only under Debian, so this would have much broader utility than Debian.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I applied for a Garage page. I'd like to get away from doing big "tarball" releases anyways, in favor of packages that can be added to a vanilla debian armel install to provide tablet specific support.

It does charge while Debian is running. bme runs from initfs. All of the functions normally handled by APM can be done some other way. This isn't really a big problem in the long run...

Packages with additional modules seem like a great idea. This kind of modular approach seems like the most sane idea going forward.

This is another reason I'd like to move away from a monolithic root tarball: Having packages that provide different ways to emulate right/middle click seem like a much better idea then trying to force one official way on people. As a N800 user, I don't really want to sacrifice two of my very limited selection of buttons when I can just tap and hold.

-John

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I agree that you should post a lean-and-mean setup as the core install. I would love to see a minimal bootable Debian system as a tarball / deb with add-on debs for various features / functionalities. The Garage is brutally restrictive when it comes to file sizes.

Having done a lot of Debian apt-get installs on the tablet that turn a 100MB rootfs into a 600+MB bloat-system, I've grown to appreciate how much of your initial development is getting that lean, bootable core with none of those bloaty, unecessary packages, but also including custom rebuilt packages from maemo / Nokia to support the hardware.

Over on our chroot discussion page, we've managed to get a minimal Debian rootfs to compress down to 28MB. I guess the problem is that you can't boot to a terminal, because killing the Xomap X server makes the device reboot. So I think your XFce route is still probably the best. If anything, you could go even more lean and not include any WM at all, just start a full-screen X-Term in the core package.

You could have a separate deb in the project downloads for device-specific (not available from Debian repos) window-manager addons.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

In the end what I'd like to do is just be providing a couple custom packages (or scripts the automatically build those packages). Users will just use debootstrap (or a script will use it for them), which will just go out to the debian servers, download some packages and assemble a rootfs. Maybe we'd provide a couple virtual/dummy packages to depend on sets of software, in the same way that "xfce4" depends on everything needed for a basic xfce4 desktop.

Of course, we or someone else could provide a nicely configured debian rootfs if they wanted, but I don't think that's an ideal situation. It makes upgrading as annoying as reflashing and is also hard on bandwidth.

Does all that seem reasonable?

-John

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Also, it's not clear to me (I haven't really looked :o) what, if any, files in the Debian rootfs are actually closed-source Nokia stuff; if any of those are there, it's technically a legal problem to distribute that rootfs. (Not practically a problem at this stage, but certainly something that should be cleared up.) Scripts to build any necessary packages containing limited-distribution stuff from your own firmware seem like a good solution here. But IANAL, of course.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

That is an excellent idea. The user already has those files, they'd be just copied over by the script to the correct places.

BTW: I found my debootstrap rootfs has a locale problem when I chroot to it and start installing stuff; what files do I copy over from ITOS to make the Debian apps shut up about not having the right locale configured?

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

shouldn't you do "dpkg-reconfigure locales" ?

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

OK, I guess it was charging. Sorry for the mistake. :eek: How about making the LEDs work, then

That's awesome, but really a completely independent project. I'm not thinking of any kernel modules that would be useful only under Debian, so this would have much broader utility than Debian.[/QUOTE]

How is it an independent project? Modules for common USB-ethernet chipsets would be nice to have, or for FUSE (if they're not there already). A kernel/set of kernel modules providing common functionality is completely in line with running Debian, IMO.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Well, it's a separate project because it works with Debian, and without Debian, equally well. It strikes me as ******ed to collect them as part of the Debian project when that only makes them accessible to a small portion of potential uses, and gains no benefit. Is there a benefit that I'm missing?

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Hmm...That I'm too lazy to make my own project? :)

I'll just end up compiling my own personal kernel, then. No problem.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I think that the biggest thing to focus on now is getting X11 working fully again. A recent round of updates borked it.

Is there a newer version of Xomap we could build/use? Does Diablo ship with a later version?

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Just wanted to give notice of some work me and johnx have been working on the last weeks..

We have basically made a debian installer for the NITs that debootstraps and creates a proper debian image (without having to fetch a huge tar.gz), on the tablet itself.

So far status:
* Sane Debian setup - works just as well as a standard Debian
* Proper fsck - remounting the root file system read-only so the OS can actually fsck the FS.
* X11 is working with touchscreen support
* WLAN works (with WPA2 too)
* I've had xfce4, afterstep etc. working already

You can view the technical information at http://wiki.maemo.org/Debian_for_NITs_development on how it's done.

If anyone is interested in contributing packages or ideas how to proceed from this foundation/or have comments, either contact me/johnx or reply in this thread :)

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I'd add in the right/middle clicking trick, and updated keymaps, if they're not there already. I have keymaps (both Xmodmaps and keymap.maps, both the standard set up and a customized one), and can provide details on how to set up the clicking.

Glad to hear this is still being worked on! I thought interest had stalled.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Here is a list of bugs that i have incounterd while testing Debian beta4:

* The browser fails to launch (input/output error)
* Xfce4 sessions manager fails
* Matchbox has conflicts with the window manager settings manager (doesn't support it :()
* The vertual keyboard has no input (might be my falt :p)
* No splash screen
* The "debian" section of the xfce4 menu is not visible (if you tap on the debian menu it does nothing)
* Some windows are mis-shapted and buttons/text on the screen are displaced
* The top panel on the top of the screen crashes when you try to re-locate it
* No rotate application (this has ben addresed by Stskeeps)
* No way to safely exit Debian (the xfce4 power menu fails and as stated above i can't use the keyboard in the terminal, could be my falt :p)

Those are the bugs i have incounterd so far. This may verry depending on how it was installed. (I used my N800 for the install only, no ssh.)

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Regarding b-mans post..
Okay, let me just explain a bit about how things work in nit debian.

Basically the default environment 'nit-env-stskeeps' that is installed is a mix between xfce4 and matchbox, so that causes bugs like bug 2, 3, 5 and the last one.

The environment also intentionally does not depend on a web browser.

If you want to change to full xfce4 you can apt-get remove nit-env-stskeeps and the.Debian alternatives system will cause xfce4 to boot up instead next boot, but may be without networkmanager applet etc.

the dialog problem is simply cos of screen size i guess.

Do me a favour and report bugs on the trac page of the project so we can keep track of them :)

Regarding environments i recommend you look at /nit-base-packages/nit-env-* and see how to make a Debian package with an environment of your own others may have use of.

You can build a package in /n-b-p by dpkg-deb --build directory and then dpkg -i directory.deb to test.

Debian menu is prolly empty cos not that much is installed that isn't shown in main xfce menu.

Panel moving and virtual keyboard does sound like a bug so please file on trac.

Apologies for odd post structure, in a car with tablet and grps:)

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Wireless still doesn't work for me =-\... dunno wth is wrong with my NIT..wpa reports an unable to post association with driver error when it tries to associate to 00:00:00:00:00 ... very odd.

I was having similar problems when i did just the wireless part on Johns beta3... i eventually got it working in beta3 so chances are I will here too, but for some reason wireless is just proving not to be plug and play for me =-(

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

i re-loaded the beta4 from svn and it got up to the point of loading nit-env-x .. i just wanted a basic x system.. it failed on dependency of n810-slideout-kbd-xmodmap.. for some reason the files were in the nit-base-packages but the deb wasnt built. So from there i built that deb..installed nit-env-x and icewm.. set the root password and rebooted.

now icewm starts ans the touchscreen works perfectly but the n810 keyboard doesn't work at all.. running xev shows no input and i cant even type the normal letters in a terminal.

also xvkbd constantly repeats the last clicked key so that makes typing with that a pita. Anyone know how to get X to see even the basics of the n810 keyboard??

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

ok that problem with the keyboard was fixed by

because the install was interrupted the hal and dbus weren't working right.. now for my wireless.. i've found if i enable ssid broadcasting i can get a good connection for about 10 minites.. it doesn't like hidden ssid's for some reason.

Anyway.. after the 10 minutes it kicks me off and won't reconnect... and wpa_cli shows it trying to connect to my ap mac but says

Over and over. This wireless is kicking my *** and the only thing keeping me from staying in debian.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Do you use nm-applet or networkmanager or raw wpasupplicant?

Regarding the n810-slideout-kbd-xmodmap i forgot to include it in installer config.py, but it should be in SVN right now. Still a alpha release :)

(I am off to the mountains of poland with my tablet the next days, so wont be on.)

Please report any issues with the system to http://trac.tspre.org/projects/nit-debian :)

Try see if it has something to do with Wifi powersaving? Look into the wifi_powersave.py script and disable this init.d script and see if it helps? /etc/init.d/dsmetools

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I use nm-applet but i watch the process manually in the shell with wpa_cli.. its still an old habbit of mine from manually configuring wpa with linux before the GUI days :)
No problem-- the structure was there.. was all i needed.. and i know its alpha..please dont take any problems i put in here as a negative to all of your hard work. I have the upmost respect and admiration for all of you guys that have put all this together.

good luck and have fun!!! I'm still not all that familiar with trackers... thats why I haven't usd it yet :)

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

will do! anything to try at this point is something.. thanks!

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Have you also tryed wifi-radar? It uses it's own demon at startup so it runs fairly independent of the network-manager witch could also help for some things. It's also so far ben the most relyable and easy to use wierless manager that i've ben using.:) The only problem i have had with it is that if their is a ton of wierless connections around it becomes a little laggy.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I'll take a look at that as well.. Since I turned SSID broadcasting on my router back on I am able to get connected and stay connected for a seeming random period of time before getting cut off.. but I am always able to get back on now.. don't have the problem with the association anymore.. not sure what changed.. I did reload beta4 though.

I will load wifi-radar and see if it stays connected overnight.. and if it does I'll try masking the SSID again and see if it can handle that as well.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Ok you Nit-Debian people... can you guys tell me whats outputted with these two commands.

find /dev -group audio
lsmod

for some reason getting sound is kicking my butt. I dont have /dev/dsp or /dev/dsptask/pcm3 or anything of the sort... im wondering if i am supposed to and how to get them if so. I have all the alsa stuff loaded and am tinkering with /etc/asound.conf but I'm just not getting it. (remember my nit-debian installer crashed).

Regarding sound, I think johnx is working on it. It is also on bug tracker as not working right now:)

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Oh??? Could have swore it was working in beta3 ... hrm...

Fair enough.. I'll keep tinkering with it and if I find anything will let you know.

Well nit-debian is made "from scratch", as in its Debian for tablets "done right", with structured hacks to get things working on tablets, whereas beta3 was a evolved debian image, so beyond some borrowed hacks it shares no common code :), but i guess people calling it beta4 may contribute to that confusion.

It's better to see nit-debian as a new way to run Debian on the tablets, a sortof cleanup effort/future proof solution from previous ways.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Well they were both bootable debian's that run on the tablets..

The point is the guy who seemingly put out beta3 is one of the guys working on nit-debian.. which logic would then seem that if he was able to get sound working in beta3.. even if you start from scratch.. the same thing should work to get sound working in the next release, no?

Where the did the initial image in the beta series come from?? it had to start from scratch at some level did it not?

And when you move from beta-x to beta-x+1 .. a "cleanup effort/future proof solution" is typically what it's about :).. you always cleanup previous beta problems while fixing the flaws.

The reason I call it beta4 is that both the beta series and the nit-series have the same guy working on it.. even though the nit-series has a few more people on the project; and a lot more enhancements since beta3.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Hello, i know that this is a bit off-topic but today i was able to successfuly install GNOME:D:D:D!!!, BUT when i booted debian up it went into a login screen (not a boot login) but the gnome login screen and i've discoverd a FATAL PROBLEM!!:(:(, I am using a N800 so i have NO way to actually log in since i have no keyboard.:(.....Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!:eek::eek::eek::eek: and what's even worse is that even though my touchscreen is responding, the kursor on the screen will NOT move, my guess is that this is because when i installed gnome, i believe that it installed a nother x-server?? I installed this on a "nit-evn-x" install. Is it possible that i could create some kind of hack that could fix theas problems???, I am sorry for being so frantic about this, it's just the fact that this install took 8 HOURS to download and install.


EDIT: I also wanted to add that i used "apt-get -f install gnome" not "apt-get -f install gnome-desktop-environment".

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

haha! good job man.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Well, what happened is that gnome installed gdm which is a display manager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_display_manager) , not a X server. That display manager runs /usr/bin/X without parameters which means that it won't be having touchscreen things added to the command parameter :)

I'd personally just ssh into the tablet and apt-get remove gdm, or configure it to act like /etc/init.d/x-session and provide the right parameters :)

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Thanks, I've decided to edit gdm instead of uninstalling it but i am not quite shure on how to edit the file, can you help?? Here's my x-sessions file and my gdm file:

X-SESSIONS:

#!/bin/sh
. /etc/default/x-server.defs

tablet_setup()
{
USERNAME=`cat /etc/tablet_user`
/sbin/fb_update_mode manual
su - -c "startx -- $XSERVERARGS" $USERNAME &
}

case "$1" in
start|restart|force-reload)
tablet_setup
;;
stop)
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/start-x-session {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
exit 3
;;
esac



GMD:

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: gdm
# Should-Start: console-screen acpid dbus hal network-manager
# Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $remote_fs
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: GNOME Display Manager
# Description: Debian init script for the GNOME Display Manager
### END INIT INFO
#
# Author: Ryan Murray <rmurray@debian.org>
#
set -e

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/gdm

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

if [ -r /etc/default/locale ]; then
. /etc/default/locale
export LANG LANGUAGE
fi

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

# To start gdm even if it is not the default display manager, change
# HEED_DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER to "false."
HEED_DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER=true
DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER_FILE=/etc/X11/default-display-manager

case "$1" in
start)
CONFIGURED_DAEMON=$(basename "$(cat $DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER_FILE 2> /dev/null)")
if [ -e "$DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER_FILE" ] && \
[ "$HEED_DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER" = "true" ] && \
[ "$CONFIGURED_DAEMON" != gdm ] ; then
log_action_msg "Not starting GNOME Display Manager; it is not the default display manager"
else
log_daemon_msg "Starting GNOME Display Manager" "gdm"
start_daemon $DAEMON
log_end_msg $?
fi
;;
stop)
log_daemon_msg "Stopping GNOME Display Manager" "gdm"
set +e
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/run/gdm.pid \
--name gdm --retry 5
set -e
log_end_msg $?
;;
reload)
log_daemon_msg "Scheduling reload of GNOME Display Manager configuration" "gdm"
set +e
start-stop-daemon --stop --signal USR1 --quiet --pidfile \
/var/run/gdm.pid --name gdm
set -e
log_end_msg $?
;;
restart|force-reload)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/gdm {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}"
exit 1
;;
esac

exit 0


also, is there a way to make the matchbox-keyboard launch at startup so i can log in?? I have a N800 so that may be the only way to actually gain acsess to gnome :(

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

If I had to take a stab in the dark...

original
New

Although I'm not exactly sure about the USERNAME spot.. in the x-session it uses a su - and uses the username to run it as.. with GDM I don't think you need to.. so I just added the XSERVERARGS you need from the /etc/default/x-session.defs file.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

an update on me... i installed the latest deb for chroot... added xpice to debian.. changed the /sbin/debian .. all i had to do was comment out the home drive mount, the passwd and group copies, and modify my /home/user/.chroot to reflect my environment..

it worked. internet worked, going to test sound...

biggest issue right now is n810 keyboard function keys didnt load obviously... and launching mine causes the reverse behavior i explain in my xmodmap thread. not sure i want to copy the x files i had to in my thread... not sure what that'll do to the bootable side.

(obviously had to install wmctrl and xserver-xephyr in debian.)

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

I shure hope this works:o, this is the second day in a row that i had to spend getting Debian and Gnome installed properly. The second biggest problem that i've incounterd is that i have no way to actually log in to gnome. I really need a way to eather bypass the login alltogether or possibly figure out a way to launch the vertual keyboard in the login so i can enter my user name. Is there enny known method to accomplish this?

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Try the command line stuff here..

http://www.linfo.org/automatic_login.html

gdmsetup from an ssh terminal.....

and im attaching a screen shot of my debian just cuz i want to :P -- this is running from chroot.

Re: Continuing development of Debian on NITs
 

Thanks!:D, I was reading that article you provided and it said that you still needed to type some stuff in still. Is it possible to just hack the gdm script to also execute the matchbox-keyboard?
Such as "exec /usr/bin/matchbox-keyboard", if so, ware shuld this be located in the script?, I am so, so close to getting gnome to function properly and i am probibly going to be one of the first people to get a complete gnome desktop and that's exciting! :D

EDIT: also wanted to add that i tryed the "gdmsetup" command and that did not work:(.