Debian Etch Recovery.img (part 2)

[wicknix]

Thanks to everybody messing around and figuring a great deal of things out. Without a few of your posts i wouldn't have been able to whip this up so quickly.

This is just a base debian etch debootstrap with a minimal set of applications
added to get you started. I added a few applications/utilities from the default
OS to make connecting to wireless networks easier and for mounting USB/SD cards.
Added extra kernel modules for ntfs/ext2/tun/smbfs and a few other goodies.

Some additional (not included in base debian etch) apps included are:

Iceweasel - GUI full featured web browser (with flash4, vlc and mozplugger plugins)
Elinks - console (text only) web browser
CenterIM - console instant messenger
WeeChat - console IRC client
Sylpheed - GUI email client
SnowNews - console news reader
Wireless-lan - GUI wireless app to scan and connect to wireless hotspots
VideoLan Client - GUI media player
Cplay - console audio player (plays mp3/wav/mod/sid/xm/s3m/au etc)
Xip Flash - GUI shockwave flash player
Xaumix - GUI volume control
Gqview - GUI image viewer
Xpaint - GUI paint and image manipulation program
Urxvt - GUI terminal emulator
Htop - console process monitor
Xcalc - GUI calculator
Calcurse - console calendar - todo list
Midnight Commander - console file manager and ftp client
Leafpad - GUI text editor
Aptitude - console package manager
Ltris - GUI Tetris game
Grun - GUI run prompt

This list of installed apps is small to keep size down but to have 'some' basic
functionality out of the box. I used quite a few console based apps also to keep
size down versus their larger GTK/X11 alternatives.

I removed all the manpages and docs also. They took up about 25MB of space. OUCH!

I added the default OS's 'desktop-backend' to aid in mounting and umounting USB/SD
cards. Beats doing that by hand. I added menu entries under "devices" for this.

PLEASE NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU UNMOUNT USB/SD CARDS BEFORE POWERING DOWN! FAILURE TO DO
SO WILL FREEZE THE MACHINE AND YOU WILL HAVE TO HIT THE RESET BUTTON! ALSO UNMOUNT
BEFORE REMOVING YOUR SD/USB CARD OR IT WILL FREEZE THE SYSTEM!

Use aptitude or apt-get to add or remove software.
Recommended software (but not installed to save space in recovery.img) are:
abiword (word processor)
gnumeric (spreadsheet)
streamtuner (online radio tuner)
dillo (lightweight web browser)
mrxvt (tabbed terminal emulator)
gentoo (2 paned GUI file manager)
gftp (nice light graphical ftp client)
bluefish (html editor)

This recovery.img once installed uses about 440MB leaving you with about 560MB free.
Be carefull not to install HUGE applications as you will run out of space quickly.

I hope you find this a more hassle-free and ready to go base to start working with.

Download here: http://www.filefactory.com/file/ag515a8/n/Recovery_DebianEtchX11-wicknix_img

Cheers.

[wicknix]

For those that want it to boot into X11 right away you can do this. ( i have on mine ).

First create a password for root  *Very important for this to work properly*
Open terminal and type:  passwd root     hit enter, follow the prompts and enter a password.
Now in terminal type: apt-get install xdm   hit enter and wait until it finishes installing.
Open midnight commander (file manager in menu) and edit /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup
Remove the # so the line reads      xsetroot -solid rgb:8/8/8     and save the file.

Now edit /etc/jwm/jwmrc and change the logout/exit/restart line to these to enable shutdown.

<Exit label="Log Out" confirm="true"/>
<Program label="Power Off">killall -9 desktop-backend | shutdown -h now</Program>

Save.

Reboot.

Your machine will now boot into a graphical login prompt and upon logging in will load right into the desktop.


(With some grunt work your xdm could look like this. This is not the default look. I had to mess around editing files to get it this way.)

Cheers.

[Whiskers]

You're a hero!  Downloading now.

[Unhban]

Yes, cheers Wicknix! It seems nice and light and with apt-get how can we go wrong!

But I have a bug to report already!  So will start a bug thread.....

Ta again. Unh.

[LilYoda]

Couple of questions

Which modules for wifi did you take?  mewto and I apparently have hardware that works only with the 3MX 1.1 modules

Does someone know the way to make a xmodmap the default, starting at xdm level?  I can't figure it out, so it's a massive pain to reset to the customized french keyboard every time I open an xterm

[wicknix]

Actually i've never changed any modules from my default kernel (v66). Just added a few extra file system modules. So my default OS, Retro, Etch and 3MX rc1 through rc3.1 all use the same wifi module.

As for adding xmodmap command to xdm edit /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup and add your code there.

Also when using xdm i added "shutdown -h now" to jwm's exit menu and labeled it "Power Off".

Cheers.

[LilYoda]

Thanks for the xmodmap tip.  I'm trying to figure out how to best update keyboard for console and X, so that solves X (and for console, I'm almost there as well)

[cy8erpunk]

Thanks to wicknix and all the others who have taken us this far.

I've a few things to add from my tinkering around with the system:

1) I updated my sources.list to add the backports.org repositories:

"deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free"

This allowed me to install Pidgin (which i prefer to X-chat) and a few other things which aren't in the main repos.

2) The "wireless-lan" GUI from the default OS doesn't work for me, it gets past authorisation (WEP, WPA e.t.c.) and then fails with "Invalid IP" error. Have found that the dhclient stage of connecting to wifi fails because dhclient already seems to be running, putting pkill dhclient into /etc/rc.local seems to have fixed it for command line connection, but "wireless-lan" still fails.

3) I have installed IceWM and ROX-Filer, which works rather well as a "full desktop-like" solution. All the scripts which initalise the modules seem to be gone now, perhaps they were in the init scripts for Jwm (wicknix, can you confirm?) I'm trying to piece it all back together and rebuild the IceWM menu in the style of the Jwm one, along with installing the "IceBuntu" theme and Human icon theme (make my LLL look grown up)

4) Due to installing IceWm, whichever scripts are used to initalise support for USB-Storage have gone too, which means I'm having real bother getting my flash key to mount. After modprobing the usb-storage modules, I can see the SD card, but still no flash key. Any ideas?

5) On a lighter note, I've installed prboom, Audacity, Abiword, Gnumeric, mplayer, and hydrogen. All are working fine. I'm going to try an apt-get for epiphany-browser to see how it performs on our machines. I may even have a stab at compiling the "optimised" version of mplayer from the Ingenic website. All this is fairly dependent on me getting my flash key mounted though, lol.

Cheers all, Colin.

[wicknix]

Yes, the scripts and/or commands to load the kernel modules and start/stop desktop-backend (for mounting sd/usb) were started by JWM. If you havent removed JWM yet look at /etc/jwm/jwmrc towards the middle of the file and you'll see how i started/stopped them.

If you DID remove jwm i'll try to remember the commands and you can make your own scripts and/or edit icewm's menu to initialize them.

The kernel module script i made is located in /etc/init.d/ called 'load_modules.sh'
To start the auto mount program just call /usr/local/bin/desktop-backend (can only start after X11 is running)
To stop desktop-backend i used 'killall -9 desktop-backend'

I also would recommend installing idesk (for desktop icons) and conky (desktop system monitor) if you want that "grown up look". I tried gkrellm, but just like in 3MX rc2 once running it knocks out the FN/shift keys, so dont install that.



Cheers.

[wicknix]

Well, some observations about Etch on these minibooks.

The Good:
Large package repositories with loads of goodies.
Can easily install native compiler and development packages.

The Bad:
20% of the packages don't work due to broken HAL and DBUS when using 2.4 kernel
VERY slow boot up. Takes what seems like 5x longer to boot than default OS or 3MX.
Slow loading of desktop. Doesn't matter which WM i choose they all take ages to load fully.
Lack of up to date packages and/or lack of packages found in default OS or 3MX. (fbreader for example)
Installing packages eats up A LOT of precious space and fills a 1 gig nand very quickly.
Packages/apps not optimized for embedded use, meaning slower load and response times and larger file sizes.

Either way, fun to play with, but i find it too dang slow and troublesome for daily use.

Cheers

[fluxit]

The Bad:
-snip-
Packages/apps not optimized for embedded use, meaning slower load and response times and larger file sizes.

Speaking of which, have you tried upx?

The compiled binary on that page for mipsel works great on 3mx(I haven't tried it on etch.)  It will shave many megabytes off of your install with no downside other than the time required to figure out what will work after having been compressed and what wont.

I use the following script to maximize compression, while saving a backup copy(-k) for an easy compress, test, delete backup(or restore) cycle.  I'd say 80-90% of program binaries will compress by 50% or more and still function properly. 

Libraries can also be compressed now, though I haven't tried that yet.

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
upx -k --lzma $1


[FezzFest]

I have exactly the same problem as Colin. The Wireless-LAN utility doesn't work right. If I try to connect, it says 'Connected. Aquire IP...' and after a while it says 'Connected. IP adress invalid'.

I have tested it on both WEP and WPA Accesspoints. The WPA one is my own, the WEP AP is my neighbours.
I really need WLAN, if it doesn't work, I won't use my TrendTac till I have...

[wicknix]

If the gui wireless app doesn't work you'll have to manually start your connection from command line. There is a wifi script located in /usr/local/bin you can use and edit to your liking.

Cheers.

[mikst]

Hi all,

I can't get no further than mipsbook login screen,

What do i put in the login and the password for it to boot up please?

[wicknix]

Hi all,

I can't get no further than mipsbook login screen,

What do i put in the login and the password for it to boot up please?

Log in as root (no password by default). Then type startx to launch the desktop.