As I said in my post:

I'm not that confident with command line/linux stuff yet, I'm still learning, just didn't want to mess it up

We can't all be guru's..............

davedickson: your problem is my fault. It is the error techdork found. I will get a new version out today...

Got it working...great work!!!
Just one question.
How do you change the appearance? I've going through Settings>Appearance and played around with a lighter colour but when you apply and close, it doesn't change the appearance. Any ideas?


Many thanks

Guide to using a partition instead of an image file

version 0.1

These are the steps I followed to get things working:

- First, make a backup with the backup tool in case you screw up things.
- Refuel your battery before starting
- Clean up your "MyDocs" folder a bit; in other words (re)move (big) user files/folders (like mp3, video). This will speed up the process in step 1 dramatically.

Hint: cd to /home/user/MyDocs and type in "du . -hs". This will tell you how big the MyDocs folder is. 1GB took me ~40mins to copy to the SD card.

Step 1
Create the partition (/dev/mmcblk0p4): Follow the steps in this article: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...333#post434333

Note1:
Make first a folder named ".debian" in the root (mkdir .debian). You will use this folder to mount the newly created partition to.
Above article mentions "/debian" but use "/.debian" in order to avoid the maemo tracker-indexer process indexing this partition.
Note2:
Download the file "debian-m5-v2-rootfs.tgz" instead of the one named in the mentioned article (thats an older one). If you don't have "wget" already install it with "apt-get install wget". To speed things up; it is even better to start downloading this tar immediatly to your pc and copy it over to your device using scp/winscp/usb cable.
Note3:
Be warned! The download can take >1hour. The extraction takes about 20-30 mins! Check your battery level before starting!

Step 2
Install the package "easy-deb-chroot" using the application manager on the device. This will install the package "easy-chroot" too.

Step 3
After installation of "easy-deb-chroot" modify the .chroot config file. Open up your terminal and modify the /home/user/.chroot config file.
Uncomment line: IMGFILE=/dev/mmcblk0p4
Uncomment and modify line to "ext3": IMGFS=ext3

Step 4
Test it! Commandline or GUI.

Commandline: Open up a terminal and execute: debbie oowriter

GUI: Go to the app list on the device. After installation of "easy-deb-chroot" you will find a bunch of new icons here like: "Close Debian", "Debian Chroot", "Debian LXDE" etc. Touch the icon "Iceweasel Web Browser". This will start Iceweasel (Firefox).

Step 5
Read Qole's blog about using the scripts provided by the "easy-chroot" package: http://qole.blogspot.com/2009/03/eas...for-maemo.html

Got it up and running now, it wasn't a major issue, just wasn't sure how to fix it

Thanks a lot for this it works really well, few issues keyboard/speed but besides that fantasic.

New fixed version, 0.9.35-2fremantle1, in the Extras-devel repository. Please update!

murat: Thanks for your partitioning howto.

If you install easy-deb-chroot instead of easy-chroot, you will get easy-chroot plus a bunch of extra things that make running the Debian chroot easier (including wget ).

In step 3, you can edit /home/user/.chroot and change

Then you can simply run

to start the app as user rather than root.

You also get the new LXDE scripts.

ARGH. I need to upload yet another version; that one's broken, too.

Wait and install 0.9.35-3fremantle1...

EDIT: Extras-devel is fixed, new version installs properly

Qole; excellent job! I've modified the howto according to your hints. Please have a look at it.

Btw; v 0.9.35.2-fremantle worked fine with me. Have not discovered any bugs (except the keyboard focus problem in LXDE).

With the installation of easy-deb-chroot scripts the whole thing seems to works even smoother! The main performance killer seems to be io (keep an eye on top results). With an ultrafast SD card this could be partially solved.

To deal with lost keyboard (after switching away from LXDE and switching back) I put the "Fix LXDE keyboard" icon on my desktop for easy access.

I could make a script that constantly checks for lost keyboard focus, but it would probably be a drain on the battery...

Probably it could be more ergonomic to hook the fix lxde script to one of the few hardware keys, like the cam button. It could be possible to hack the camkeyd app or the other one, working with the proximity sensor, to issue the lxde fixing script.
I don't know if I'm able, if they're in Python maybe, if they're in C definitely no

EDIT the developer(s) think to make it a daemon which can run customized actions for each application. Good! See here