Hello,
here is an easy installer which installs a bootstraped Debian "squeeze" Image on the internal flash (which will wipe MyDocs!)

https://github.com/DennisHeine/DebianOnN900

to set your wifi access data, edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.cfg from within maemo (simply mount /dev/mmcbll0p1 somewhere)

root password is changeit

Flaws:
screen callibration is missing (you have to run set.sh manually from a terminal)
no phone is installed
no network manager is installed
fn-key not mapped yet
windowmanager is not autostarting

I'm currently working on an updated version to get those fixed.

Hope you like it,

Dennis

Support for Squeeze ended 3 years ago (5 if you consider, that LTS does not cover anything beyond x86). Is there a reason why you don't use a more recent release?
If you still want to chroot into the system from Maemo, then you should be able to use Jessie after patching glibc. [1] I can provide you patched packages.
If you don't care for chroot, I'd suggest to go straight to to Buster.

You may also want to consider contacting @wicket, who ran a pretty similar project called DebiaN900, but abandoned it in favor of the Maemo Leste project, which you should have a look at.

btw: The N900 supports armhf, it's just Nokia's stock kernel for Fremantle that doesn't - "kernel power" does.


[1] https://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?...postcount=3138

maybe i'm going to do that next, but i will have to finish this one first. it's a pain to get the omap and modules and all that stuff together ^^
the reason i'm using squeeze is that it uses the same kernel version as the maemo kernel, so it is possible to simply copy the kernel modules.

So I've heard, which is why I always steered clear of this topic.

I suspected something like this, but Fremantle uses Kernel 2.6.28 while Squeeze uses 2.6.32. So I'd expect it to be easy to recompile the modules, but I'd be surprised if the resulting modules were actually binary compatible.

Wheezy should still be fully functional on 2.6.32 (and probably 2.6.28 - at least it works in a chroot).
Jessie is a slightly different story. It still boots on 2.6.32 (but by default not on 2.6.28, hence the glibc patch), but Systemd requires a newer kernel, so some things won't work.
Stretch won't work on 2.6.32 anymore, or at least the amount of patching glibc would require is far beyond my skills and would likely mean to fork it.

Another problem is that most tutorials out there are not working, because they require quemu-arm-static which would have to be compiled manually. at least, there is no armel build for it in any repository thats compatible with the provided libc.

the only tutorial i have found is:

https://wiki.debian.org/MaemoAndSqueeze
in combination with
https://n900.elektranox.org/installation.html
(i had to heavily tweak the tutorials and to combine them to get everything working)

about binary compatibility of the modules: they don't really care, because you can use the 2.6.28 kernel for squeeze
some guy kindly provided it at
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pal...12.04-1.tar.gz
(so saying "it uses the same kernel" wasn't really correct - the build is using the same kernel.)

afaik, the main problem for building a new kernel is that the blockdevice support, and fbcon have to compiled into the build. also, current patched kernels for the N900 are broken (necessary drivers are missing), so it will be necessary to find a working build. but that is something for the future, when the final squeeze image is finished. most stuff is fixed allready, the dpi etc have been changed for the small display and some other stuff. currently, i'm trying to find a working phone software which is compatible with ofono.

they do provide N900-patched kernel sources:
https://elinux.org/N900
at
https://github.com/pali/linux-n900

the last two versions of the 4.x kernel i tried failed with a missing rx51_defconfig build target, so i'm going to try the latest 3.x next.
(edit: just checked the repository. the v3.12-rc1 seems to support it.)

also, something seems to be draining the battery. i'm charging my phone with 2A, and it's still going off after a while being drained.

there are really dozens of problems to get a working phone up, which is usable in daily life.

Hi Dennis,

As sulu mentioned, I worked on a similar project. Instead of providing an installable image, I wrote a couple of scripts to facilitate building your own kernel and Debian distribution with various tweaks. I haven't used it for some time and it's unmaintained, it should mostly work but it's possible some dependencies have changed and that may mean that some stuff is broken. If you're still interested, you can find it here:

https://github.com/dderby/debian900/

There is a also a link to the related thread with more information in my signature.

Having said that, I recommend you check out Maemo Leste, which is the main reason I orphaned my project. Its basically modern Debian/Devuan with mainline Linux (currently 4.15.7 with patches for PowerVR) and Hildon. It's still in pre-alpha but it's actively developed and the first alpha release is expected in the next few weeks. The only "gotcha" is that if you want to run Xfce or something other than Hildon, you can't, at least not out-of-the-box. I have managed to run other desktop environments/window managers with a few hacks but this process could be made easier. I was looking at this months ago but then lack free time meant it never got done. Hopefully I'll be able to submit some patches for this in the near future.

Hi wicket,
thanks a lot, maybe it can help me building a newer debian release. i'm giving up the old one now, it's pointless unless i can get ofono to work. creation of the /cmt device seems to fail, or something else like that. i found a softphone with ofono support which was running after fixing python2.6 and compiling gnutk, but is useless without a running ofono...

thanks again, by now you helped me with the power button problem: sed -i 's/\(action=\).*$/\1'$POWER_BUTTON_ACTION'/'
$MOUNTPOINT/etc/acpi/events/powerbtn-acpi-support
that keyboard patch could become handy too, currently i'm mapping keys using autokey.

the only problem is that i don't want to use qemu-arm-static.

EDIT: *holdstheguntohishead* speech support patch is for kernel 4.x

Am I correct in assuming, that your primary goal is to get GSM telephony working under Debian?

exactly. getting GSM telephony and the modem working using the N900.
it will require some effort, because the latest kernel that is available hasn't got a patch required to enable speech support. maybe i can patch it in manually, but i dont know how much of an effort it is yet.

Out of selfish motives I recommend you to join the Leste team, because afaik so far GSM is not a primary goal and besides power consumption GSM is my main reason for sticking with Fremantle.