Maybe this is the answer to upgrade

Well think I will try this out after trying out the last rootfs u put up. Will read up on compiling a kernel

Lenoch this was the last rootfs which was I able to boot successfully and update with no problems. Now will test the display environments. I have had to do a lot of reading

ok maybe i was wrong. updating for some reason causes wireless not to work after reboot!

ip link wlan0 up shows wl1251: ERROR could not get firmware. somethings broken somewhere after updating. n yet kernel shows its recognised and loaded !

new to all this developer stuff and google is not helping here. anyway installing scratchbox n trying to compile my latest kernel to see if that would work. made the mistake of trying this on my 64bit Fedora system n i run into plenty of errors (cos i didnt read enough )

lol sometimes I wish i had never looked at this thread cos getting Arch Linux arm to work has taken up my free time for the last month!! i could never get any of the new kernels to work (phone would go off (watchdog prob i figured but i couldnt get it working so had to flash RnD mode) ,using the latest rootfs with skry old kernel could boot but nothing working and lots of errors after update. so i realised i need to do another batch of reading and reading and reading online. i must say my basic understanding of Linux has improved so much and i started liking Arch Linux.

I liked it so much that i changed all my laptops from Fedora to Arch Linux. now i knew how to get things working! so i came back to my N900. compiled kernel with DTBS, added modules (which i failed to do previously), got the latest ARM7h rootfs, chroot into the system (had to read a LOT about that especially on PC to ARCM architecture), updated pacman, changed the keymap (nokian900-keymap), got a better font for my eyes (ter120n) ,installed iw,wpa_supplicant (wifi-menu doesnt work) . you also have to downgrade systemd from 231 (this version doesnt work properly (had to read about that too) and the system boots nicely.

ive installed xorg xinit and enlightenment. i now need to work on the keymap ( its described in the thread) and see what works and doesnt. feel really good about myself that i was able to sort all this out. remember i didnt know much about Linux n im not a programmer either

Nice job, any comments on how well it performs compared to M5? Did you try phone functions (ofono)?
Also interested in battery life after installing.

well it seems pretty quick and hardly uses ram. however ive spent most of the time on the console. nly now that im trying out desktop environment. as for phone calls theres a method in the thread here but thats not the main purpose for which im trying it out. its very useful to have a linux distro on my N900. even built and compiled some packages in the terminal easily.

i must say a big thanks to Skry and also Pali for the amazing work on the N900 upstream kernel. Its helped to get nearly everything working out of the box

Someone PM for a tutorial on how I set this up. Well this is what I did using what I gleaned from this thread. Don’t do this if ur using your N900 as your main phone and don’t know how to flash!! Plus using a Linux OS will help a lot. I use Arch Linux anyway. You can also set all this up in a Virtualbox if you want!

1. You need to have u-boot on your N900. The U-boot thread explains how to set it up.

2. You will need to compile the latest N900 DT kernel. Just follow the instructions on elinux.org/N900. This will have to be done on a Linux computer. In brief u will have to git clone the N900 repo, change into that directory. If u don’t know how to git clone you can also download the zip, unzip and change into that directory. Then follow the directions to compile. To edit the config file you have to do first " make rx51_defconfig" before

The problems I had was the compiler listed on that page "arm-linux-gnueabi-" I didn’t have since I was on 64 Bit archlinux. After research I replaced it with "arm-none-eabi-" after installing "arm-none-eabi-gcc 6.1.1-4" program on my laptop. Also if you are using that then u need to install "arm-none-eabi-binutils 2.27-1' to avoid compilation errors

3. The other problem I had was "make INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/mnt/target modules_install" which I didn’t understand and copied blindly! Basically this creates the modules to be used with the kernel. So you have to specify a directory where you want to place the modules so u can retrieve it later! So for example like I did u can make a directory where you can access or keep the modules. So I used a directory on my home partition titled ARCH. So like me u get "make INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/home/fred/ARCH modules_install". This will give u folder titled "lib" which contains your modules

4. So if u have followed the instructions u get a kernel zImage which you will find in the boot folder located in /arch/arm. Copy it to a location you can retrieve later

5. That’s the most trickiest part. It took me a week to read up on how to compile a kernel. If you get any errors just google. Everyone has had those problems before.

6. Next is installation of ARCH Linux Arm on the SD card.recommended partition size is 4GB. Just know your partition ID. Also the partition should be formatted as ext3,4. I formatted as ext4

7. Download the latest tar from this link http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLi...-latest.tar.gz and untar it to your SD card. You can do this on your laptop like I did or on the N900 itself. Its faster on the laptop tho. I just mounted my SD card on /mnt. It could be different in your case.

8. Next I recommend downloading the old rootfs that Skry originally did. That’s because it has very useful configuration files. The link is still available from ftp://bokmal.de/alarm-n900/alarm-n900-201306-rootfs.tar. Untar it to a separate directory on your computer.

9. Copy the zImage that you got earlier to /mnt/boot

10. Go to your modules folder and copy the folder "lib" to /mnt/usr/

11. Copy the files rx51_us.map" from skry rootfs. Its located in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/arm/. U would copy it to /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. This provides a keymap with useful shortcuts on the keyboard!

12. Also download an old version of systemd. The current version causes errors on boot so systemd doesn’t start. I got it from http://tardis.tiny-vps.com/aarm/pack...v7h.pkg.tar.xz. Copy it to /mnt/home/alarm. U will need it for later

13. Then unmount ur SD card and put it in your N900. On your N900 you need to create an item menu for your ArchLinux. A sample is given right on the first post of this thread. I had to add "rw" to ITEM_CMDLINE="root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rw rootwait init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd omapfb.vram=0:3M,1:3M,2:3M quiet" as ArchLinux would boot up as read-only file system.

14. The zImage needs to be changed to a uImage before u can boot. The instruction is in the uboot thread. If you want you can change to the boot directory on the sd card and perform the commands there.
Install package u-boot-tools and then run
mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 80008000 -e 80008000 -n zImage -d zImage uImage

15. If u have done all this , done your uboot item correctly, updated bootmenu when u reboot your n900 you shard have archlinux in the menu or whatever u named it. Select it and it should boot. That will get you to a console. The username is "root" and password "root"

16. Now you're logged in! I downgraded systemd as the current version 231 does not run properly. U can do this by changing to the directory where u saved the systemd tar. Install it by pacman –U systemd-230-7-arm7vh.pkg.tar.xz

17. If you want to use the n900 keymap you can edit the file /etc/vconsole.conf. Add the line KEYMAP=rx51.us.map

18. All the above can be done in chroot as well. However if u don’t know what that means then u cant try it. I did it on my laptop. However you have to use qemu-arm-static. It's explained nicely on this site "http://tinkering-is-fun.blogspot.com/2009/12/running-arm-linux-on-your-desktop-pc_12.html"

You can reboot and login again. What you do next is up to you. Look at the ARCHWIKI for details. U can choose to work in the console or install Xorg or desktop environment. I have tried LXDE (which) im comfortable with and Enlightenment . That’s a whole kettle of fish which I would describe in my next post.



Sorry if there are any errors. I'm an amateur just like you.

Hello! just got my n900 from ebay. already compiled the new elinux/n900 kernel and thought using it with alarm rootfs.
And then I stumbled upon this post, ... awesome!

Can't believe this is still active.

I'm on 64bit archlinux, too. When trying to compile the kernel I went with arm-linux-gnueabihf- as the CROSS_COMPILE toolchain.

is this right? would arm hard float work on the n900. "I read it's faster ..."

following your guide I got something working.

but the first odd thing was that my maemo didn't know how to mount ext4. I installed the correct u-boot with omap kernel from the uboot thread (with maemo programm manager).
how could this be? is it correct that this kernel does not support ext4 ?

Anyways, I reformated with ext3 and the alarm booted. I get a lot of [ok] and [failure] so I think systemd is running.

I even get a login prompt for a few seconds. But before I can log in the phone switches off.
are these symptoms of a wrong systemd version ? haven't had the chance to downgrade systemd to your version.
mb it's the hard float...

(writing this I realize that I can analyze the systemd journal files on an other system before jumping to conclusions, anyways, I'll hit this submit button now.)

Thank you so much!

I plan to use i3-wm + rofi launcher/switcher/whatever and python scripts arround ofono to play with mobile UI.

Oh this will be so much fun...

You need kernel-power