Debian Etch Recovery.img (part 3)

[wicknix]

Happy New Year!

Anyway, to kick off the new year i created a new Etch recovery.img. I now have auto mounting and unmounting working through the file manager without the need for desktop-backend from the default OS. So that's good news. Boot time is now a bit quicker also. Other than a non working battery monitor everything else should work without a hitch. I also rebuilt pidgin, mtpaint and snes9x and included them (not via dpkg/apt so you can't remove them easily). Now we have a fully working pidgin, unlike debian's old as dust version. I made other tweaks and whatnot also. Debian is still slow compared to the default OS and 3MX, but hey, can't have it all right? It's still quite usable once up and running.

Here's a screen of the mounting/unmounting used in this version. Neat eh?  

As always download from http://3mx.taita.co.uk  
The login is root, password root (it uses xdm to login which requires a password)

Cheers.

Edit: There are 2 versions v3 and v4. The only difference is that i included skipstone browser and changed the enable_wifi.sh script (in /usr/local/bin) to auto connect to open wireless / hotspots in v4.

[wicknix]

The following is a list of packages to install that will give you most everything needed to compile most software. Use it to either update packages on Etch or to build packages for 3MX as 3MX is binary and library compatible with Etch. This will add about 200mb to a fresh install of v3/v4 leaving you about 415mb free. It's recommended to build on an SD card or the second nandflash.

apt-get install build-essential binutils-dev autoconf automake1.9 libtool bzip2 cmake gettext libreadline5-dev libpth-dev libpng12-dev libncurses5-dev libpango1.0-dev libpcre3-dev libatk1.0-dev libcurl3-openssl-dev libgtk2.0-dev libid3tag0-dev libmad0-dev libungif4-dev libltdl3-dev libsdl1.2-dev libasound-dev libdirectfb-dev libesd0-dev libao-dev libcairo2-dev libcurl3-gnutls-dev libglib2.0-dev libgnutls-dev libssl-dev libncurses-dev libxft-dev libxv-dev libsdl-gfx1.2-dev libsdl1.2-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-net1.2-dev libsdl-sound1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsmpeg-dev

Don't forget to run 'apt-get clean' afterwards to delete the downloaded .deb files that are no longer needed. Free's up quite a bit of space.

Hopefully this will get more people involved in building software for these machines. It's how i built all the new software in 3MX Ultra.

Cheers.

[jon_doh]

Loaded it on awesome!!!!! but not a hope of getting my networking working............. any pointers??

[wicknix]

What kind of network? It connects to open/unsecure in about 20 seconds. For WPA you have to edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and add your SSID and password. Then run:

echo 1 > /proc/jz/iwifi
wifiup eth1
wpa_supplicant -Dzydas -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
dhclient eth1

You could also edit the /usr/local/bin/enable_wifi.sh and add the wpa_supplicant line to it. Unsecure and WPA both work ok on mine. Have not tested WEP yet though. Good luck.

Cheers.

[scorn]

What kind of network? It connects to open/unsecure in about 20 seconds. For WPA you have to edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and add your SSID and password. Then run:

echo 1 > /proc/jz/iwifi
wifiup eth1
wpa_supplicant -Dzydas -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
dhclient eth1

You could also edit the /usr/local/bin/enable_wifi.sh and add the wpa_supplicant line to it. Unsecure and WPA both work ok on mine. Have not tested WEP yet though. Good luck.

Cheers.

After some searching, I worked out exactly this solution for myself yesterday :-).
However, although the networks connects OK (WPA-PSK in my case), it soon hangs if I push too much data through it.
Has anyone else had this problem?

Wired ethernet connection to the same network is fine and seems to carry a decent payload without issue.

[Unhban]

Hi scorn. When you say it 'hangs' does it actually hang forever, or for, say, a minute and then clear itself?

I've certainly found that sometimes my wifi with the LLL seems to have a bad moment or two, and never thought it may actually be the LLL hanging for a short while. I use the LLL two walls away from the wifi router and thought that was the problem....

BTW, I've never had a problem with the mobile broadband dongle, a Huwaei E220, using the 3 telecom service in the UK.

Unh.

[scorn]

Hi scorn. When you say it 'hangs' does it actually hang forever, or for, say, a minute and then clear itself?

I've certainly found that sometimes my wifi with the LLL seems to have a bad moment or two, and never thought it may actually be the LLL hanging for a short while. I use the LLL two walls away from the wifi router and thought that was the problem....

BTW, I've never had a problem with the mobile broadband dongle, a Huwaei E220, using the 3 telecom service in the UK.

Unh.

Unhban,
  It appears to tie up any process which is using the wifi connection indefinitely and they cannot be killed. The UI is fine, but activity never (>30mins) returns.

I had to power the machine off. 

[jon_doh]

Hey Wicknix,

Thanks for the advice i'll try it on my machine tomorrow (its wpa btw)......... i'm a bit of a linux newbie so i need to ask stupid questions like "OK now i know how to get it on there how do i switch it on"

[lemon dexter]

Well, what can I say? Yet again "thanks to Wicknix", of course!

With a few hours to spend over Christmas, I started to "roll my own" OS from this working Etch as a start. Almost to my surprise I'm 99% at my "ideal" LLL package. OK, it won't do all the fancy and resource intensive things which we know these things won't do, but it does most of the things I want on a daily basis, and is certainly a fully-fledged netbook in my view. I've got a fully working Abiword (no bugs), a version of FBReader (0.8.17) with the 90 degree flip screen, fully-working Icedove with HTML email support, Scuumvm games with full sound support, a choice of Xpdf or epdfview for PDF files, etc, etc. I've also got a choice of working Vodafone PAYG 3g modem support or an LG (Orange) 3g phone acting as a modem (using pppd or Wvdial whichever you prefer). Suffice to say I'm chuffed!

To build this I used the dual boot uImage (with screen brightness control) booting one copy with all the dev pkgs installed on /dev/nandflash2 to compile the bits I needed (e.g. FBReader), while building my custom Etch-based OS on /dev/nandflash. I used Checkinstall (an early compile) to create mipsel.deb packages so I could reinstall things if things started to go wrong (which happened a couple of times!). I've also "discovered" Iceape, which fits about half way in performance terms between Dillo and Firefox 3 and is doing everything I want in terms of basic browsing (but obviously lacks the plugins that you may use to get YouTube vids and stuff, but I've still got FF for that). But Iceape reminds me a bit of Netscape Navigator days, so it also offers a bit of reminiscing!

Anyway, the main point here is to endorse Wicknix's view that we can all work to get these things to work for us and have a hugely satisfying time doing it. I'm happy to share more details on how I got to where I am (including uploading any apps I've successfully compiled for this particular OS version), but I have one function yet to resolve - the dreaded battery indicator!!

So bottom-line: Can anyone provide a step-by-step guide to get run_desktop, desktop-backend plus the nice icons etc and all the other calls working for this particular release only my brain's dead?! I've also forgotten how to get a proper English keyboard working!

Help!

[wicknix]

Glad you're having fun creating what you want.

The battery thing is harder than it should be. The SoC used in these machines "fakes" /proc/apm which gives false battery readings (always 106%) which sucks because any standard battery monitor you could apt-get reads /proc/apm

I removed desktop-backend after i figured out how to mount the drives without it. I wanted 'proper' debian with no cheap hacks. Without it however the battery applet wont work. But if you try to include it it will break the way the system now mounts drives.

So... we need some brainiac to figure out what desktop-backend looked for to get the proper battery status. Once we know that we could write a simple bash script or create a small binary to handle it.

For now just use the cpu/mem applet (click it to cycle cpu/mem). The memory screen shows current uptime. I usually powered off and recharged after i reached 4 hours to be safe.

Cheers

[blackberry]

How to install "fbreader"? With depositary www.fbreader.org
does not work ... And the system is a beauty! If another indicator
batteries installed!

[lemon dexter]

Blackberry - the FBReader repository won't work as it only has "big machine" packages. In order to do a native compilation I used Wicknix's development "apt-gets" as above, but it also needs working versions of a few more libraries. For this particular platform you'll therefore need to apt-get libexpat1, libcurl3, libbz2 and libfribidi0 debian etch packages (or use the synaptic app). A couple may be installed already (I can't quite remember!). You also need to ensure gtk+ is installed. Most of this is on the FBReader site. The bits then missing are therefore a compilation of linebreak1 (not available from the main Debian Etch repo but source available from later ones e.g. Lenny) and the main FBReader package - I used 0.8.17 the same as in Wicknix's and Xenium distros ('cause it worked). A bit of a game but worth it!

Wicknix (re battery indicator) - there are references to /dev/MiniPC in the desktop_backend executable. Does that ring any bells?!

[blackberry]

FBReader and copied all libraries from the base distribution.
Error on startup: "dir == 0..." ((.
Read by "more /mnt/sd/book/book.txt"...))

[lemon dexter]

Blackberry - looks a bit more like a runtime configuration problem than compilation? Have you got an .FBReader directory with some XML files in the root directory? Did the compile all go though OK with no error messages, only I found it called for everything it needed and worked first time after a "make install". Also try it with an ebook - I find the plucker .pdb files work very well (from Gutenburg etc) - but make sure the SD card is mounted if that's where they are. Not sure I know what else it may be.

[blackberry]

All the same error remains.
Now I read both "cat / mnt / sd / book.txt | lynx-stdin"
This is a very good way of reading books in the console!