Thread: how linux is the n900 and some easy debian questions
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fatalsaint is offline fatalsaint
2010-04-30 , 21:19
Posts: 3,428 | Thanked: 2,856 times | Joined on Jul 2008
#4
Originally Posted by extendedping View Post
I
And that is really my goal. Not to have a great geek factor phone/tablet, but instead to keep (what little) skills I have developed over the last year fresh when not in front of my computer or laptop. Linux to me has come to mean linux and certain (mostly networking related) apps such as samba, apache, dns, etc. I am just wondering if I get this phone how much of that stuff I can twiddle with or if I will just have the basic functionality that I have on my wireless router.
The N900 in a terminal will look identical to a Desktop based on Debian. The commands such as apt, dpkg, and such all exist on the N900 and it uses the same type of repositories as the Desktop Debian would.

The normal commands such as ls, cp, mv, etc are actually from something called "BusyBox" which gives you a "mostly" similar command to the desktop however it may be missing some switches. I haven't messed with dd-wrt, but if it's linux like Android is Linux (just the Kernel, none of the GNU userspace items or SysV boot process) - then the N900 will be more like "linux" (GNU/Linux) than the dd-wrt.

1) It is an actual install of a full debian to the "hard drive" of the n900 and can run any app that debian on my desktop could (though some horribly slowly)--???
For the most part yes. Some may segfault, or just crash, but all the ARM ported software will at least attempt to run.

2) chroot means the host maemo kernel is totally in control of running all the debian linux commands as opposed to debian's kernel--???
No, chroot just changes your "root" shell to be inside the jail that you specify. So the kernel of Maemo is controlling all the hardware, but the commands themselves are being run from Debian. You are not actually "booting" debian at all, simply running it's binaries to execute commands. (and in turn linking against the debian libraries).

3) The debian instance is run such that when started it appears to be running on the root of the device, but actually this is a fake root, totally isolated from the important system files in the maemo real file system--???
It's a real "root" in that it's mostly a full debian root installation, but it's not the active nor running/booted "root". It's what they call a "sandbox" or "jail" - everything within the chroot sees "/" as the "chrooted directory", not the real /, and it runs all commands from that area.

This is actually kind of hard for me to explain, hope I didn't confuse you further.

4) Once the easy-debian program is started, (if above is correct) there should be no boot time for the debian as it is actually being run off the maemo kernel--???
Correct. Debian is not actually booting, Maemo is handling all access to the hardware, sound, devices, etc. The software is running from within debian.

5) The debian kernel is actually not installed as part of the easy-debian/debian chroot program as it is not needed--???
Correct. The kernel is only used for booting and running the system, easy debian is not meant for that. Deblet (then Mer) for the N8x0 was meant for that and included the debian kernels.

6) Easy debian would then share the host ip information--??? or would it get its own ip address....
It would share the IP of the host. This isn't a full virtual machine because debian is not really "running".

7) I could (or could not) have the debian up as a server and use the maemo command line as a client--??? in other words, lets say I set up samba on the debian...can I use from the maemo terminal the samba client commands? or could I setup apache on debian and from the maemo browser actually browse to a webpage created on debian's apache server?
Yes but it would look like localhost, or exactly the same as if you setup samba or apache on Maemo.

HTH.
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Last edited by fatalsaint; 2010-04-30 at 21:21.
 

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