Possibility of OS other than Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Hello everybody.

A simple question:
Is it planned to can run other OS on the N900?

Example MER or OpenMoko?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

There's nothing stopping you from getting rid of Maemo completely and running another OS so long as it can run on the same chipset.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

I'm not sure that all the features will work 100% though (knowing nokia and ti past endeavors with the tablets).
They promised that this one will be more "open", it's up to you to believe or not their promises.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Is it? Why not just look at the hard evidence? The frequent SDK releases being the largest and most obvious.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

SDK releases aren't enough to be sure that every piece of hardware will be fully working with a kernel from kernel.org (with or without patches)

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

I UP this tread .

What said Nokia about a port of MER in this N900?

If anyone has additional information.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Why do we need Nokia to weigh in on Mer on the N900?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Because Maemo 5 contains too many proprietary software.

I know that porting of MER in N900 contain proprietary drivers, but will always be better than Maemo 5.

And because if it exist a port of MER in N900, this is possible to make other FLOSS OS for N900. And diversity is always good.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

After Maemo Sumit, no news about this?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Mer was/is designed to bring Maemo 5 functionality to the N800/N810 devices since by hardware specs they can't run Maemo 5. It doesn't make sense to have Mer for the N900.

As for running other OSes, within the N900's hardware, you'd need to play in the SDK as GA stated; or wait for movements - like Mer - to prop up once developers have had sufficient time with the Maemo 5 SDK and N900 device.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Yes, you are free to port Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Android, Solaris, Haiku, or whatever to Nokia N900. The bootloader can execute a payload from a different partition. I don't see why that'd be different from Nokia N810 for which alternative OS are available, such as Easy Debian, Android, Mer, ... I think Mer folks continue to develop on Mer while OTOH I do not expect many people interested in alternative firmware before the stock one is deemed to be limiting factor. So, right now, you can expect people fiddling with the Maemo 5 OS. Its what comes standard with device.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Just FYI, it's Mer not MER :)

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Thank you. :D
And for the use kernel modules and binary blob proprietary (unfortunately required for some hardware ...), what are restrictions?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

i would love to put gentoo on the n900 but will need to investigate whats locked down etc, an os that compiles the binaries from source is perfect for arm hardware and you can cross compile pretty fast on modern hardware.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Mer was designed to be Maemo rebuilt in a better, more open way. It was started before Nokia told anyone Maemo 5 wouldn't be released for the Internet Tablets. The fact that Mer is bringing Fremantle technologies to the 770, N800, and N810 is simply a side effect of Mer:

• tracking Maemo's development
• prioritizing running on as wide a range of hardware as is feasible

This means (and Mer developers have already stated) that:

• Mer will be made to run on the N900
• as Harmattan SDKs appear, Mer development will incorporate their changes

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

For those wondering:

Yes, N900 can multiboot into other OS'es

(disclaimer: this needs a patch to /sbin/preinit. Patch will be in bootmenu package or upstream when final SW is done. USB networking doesn't work yet.)

Mer runs fine. Same bootmenu system as on 770, N800, N810. And yes, Mer will have a N900 port. You can probably even clone Fremantle to SD if you so wanted.

Way to multiboot will be having keyboard out when booting and using cursor buttons to navigate.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Thanks. What do you mean by "USB networking doesn't work yet"? Is that anything to do with USB host mode?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Ahh yes! Windows mobile?

I keed, i keed :D

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5?
 

Yes. Even Microsoft will let you a 60day evaluation for trying to do so.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

No, able to boot into a sorts of rescue mode where the device acts as a USB ethernet and you can telnet in and get a shell.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Sjgadsby and Stskeeps, thank you very much.

I'm happy now. :D

Well, from in-November, I'll help Mer.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

I have just committed the remaining puzzle piece of N900 bootmenu (thanks to fanoush for developing this fantastic software - has come in so handy so often for myself)

If the output of "dpkg -s getbootstate" shows Version: 1.0.35+0m5 on your N900, you will be able to multiboot.

WARNING: This is only for the very daring and you should have a FIASCO image ready for reflashing and have your data backed up before even considering to try this out.

fanoush: should we consider pushing this into Fremantle Extras-devel after a bit of polishing?

The package can be found at http://www.daimi.au.dk/~cvm/bootmenu_1.6_armel.deb and you need to dpkg -i it as root. You need rootsh installed.

For those who try it out - have fun multibooting your N900!

Some advices for those booting non-Maemo systems: Get a watchdog kicker very early in the process - this isn't handled magically for you by DSME like on 770, N8x0. It is a standard Linux watchdog interface. There's R&D flags to disable watchdogs.

It's November now. ;) Are you ready?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Before that, I finished the software I write at this moment.

But what planned it for Mer, in the future?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

I would love to have some beta testers trying to figure out why the keyboard doesn't work in Debian LXDE on the N900...

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

oh, totally missed this thread until today, thanks for pointing it in another thread
well, go on if it works for someone :-) I won't help much until I get the device.

My ideas about bootmenu for N900:

if it will live in rootfs I plan for it to be very initfs like i.e. self-contained. It should have its own busybox environment (statically linked and/or using uclibc) and live in its own place (/boot, /initfs, maybe even chrooted) so it will work even when someone thinks apt-get (dist-)upgrade with busybox removal and libc upgrade is a good idea.

Most of the time the breakage is either messing startup sequence later in the boot order or apt-get upgrade mess. 'rm -rf' moments or flash filesystem corruption is not so likely. And having it self-contained could help with putting it somewhere else too (own initfs partition if possible, built into kernel as initramfs). When based on N8x0 uclibc initfs environment we could also have same build of all the recovery tools embedded in bootmenu for N8x0 and N900.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

I've just tried this on a production n900 (the ones that were just shipped) and it does not work.
Menu is displayed, but any choice leads to a device shutdown.
I've got the "out of the box" partition layout.

Fortunately, the device boots properly if the keyboard is closed so i've not bricked my n900 (yet) :)

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Yeah, the keyboard closed this is your way out :) Does it even do it if you select -and launch- Internal flash?

Prod me on IRC and we can debug it.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Problem occurs only when the device is plugged on the USB cable, so it's not really an issue. Otherwise it works fine ... but i've only tested it with internal flash :-)

And thanks stskeeps for the help on IRC.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

So were you able to boot debian or what?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Bootmenu does not work for me. I've edited preinit to see what was the problem. It seems kernel modules for mmc card are not loaded at that time (even if i try to insmod them manually). I don't even see anything about them in dmesg (if I save it's output to file at that time). And if i try to copy lsmod output to file it results empty file at that time. And there are no mmcblk* in /dev.
What modules and in what sequence should be loaded for mmc support at boot time in preinit?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

MMC modules are loaded in bootmenu.sh. The bootmenu support in preinit doesn't work as such through console and all that stuff, it just calls /bootmenu.sh if keyboard slider is open.

Also, I just noticed I was pointing at the wrong URL. Fixed now.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Does VMware run on the N900?
Here you have Windows and Android running on the N800
http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-n800-...-demo-2635750/

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

When I was editing preinit I disabled bootmenu (I was trying it on clean system after reflash).
When I was trying to boot using bootmenu I've added mmc in menu, copied the system to mmc (actual i unpacked rootfs.jffs2 from firmware), but when I selected mmc in menu system booted from internal memory.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

I finally managed to mount card at boot time. It is strange that mmcblk0 and mmcblk1 devises were switched places at that time. After card mount pivot_root goes ok (root file system is now on card, i even could write a file on it after that). But the problem is that phone is constantly rebooting with card (at first it shows Nokia logo for some time, then black blank screen and than it reboots). Can the switched mmcblk0 and mmcblk1 devises be the problem? Is it possible to get some boot log to find what is wrong?
Can the /sbin/init be replaced by the init provided by busybox (maybe with cone init.d scripts rewritten)?

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Would it be possible in principle to use the bootmenu package to boot into an alternate kernel but keep the existing root fs?

I'm wondering whether this could be used in conjunction with the kernel mentioned in the wifi hotspot thread in order to achieve iptables/NAT without reflashing ("without reflashing" assumes that the bootmenu install goes ok ;) )

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Sadly my kexec experiments failed.

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Thanks for the reply.. I'm not sure kexec is what I'm after though. Isn't it for booting into a new kernel when one kernel is already running?

I'm afraid I don't know very much about Maemo, though I am reasonably ok with "normal" linux, so can I explain it like this? I would like something like a grub or lilo bootloader, so that I can choose a different kernel at boot time, but without reflashing the device, and boot into the existing filesystem.

"bootmenu" sounds like it might do this, but maybe bootmenu depends on kexec in some way I didn't understand?

Edit: Oh, hold on, I think I get it.. bootmenu is really for switching the mounts and init processes at boot-time, not for running a different kernel, right? I was thinking too much in terms of standard linux bootloaders. And hence, you would indeed need kexec to get a different kernel running...

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Running Android on N900

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

Frankly that would be awesome.

Even running Android with VMWare would be enough for me..

Re: possibility other OS that Maemo 5 on N900?
 

I just posted some 2.6.32-rc1 patches to make kexec work,
maybe give them a try:

http://marc.info/?l=linux-omap&m=126119434601815&w=2

They still do not work for rebooting the Maemo kernel though.

Regards,

Tony