Linux Kernel 4.9 and a (not so) happy Jornada 720

I have one suggestion to start. What do you think about collecting all the "How-to's" in here and add them to your site. Very often I come here to check on some things, but this thread is now huge and I have a hard time finding the "How-to" that I'm looking for. Having all instructions handy in a single place would be great! Another option would be for C:Amie to create a dedicated Devuan/Debian section on the HCL and have all the instructions we put here available in there too.

You only need the zImage, since you already extracted the modules.

But you better remove the modules folder from /lib and start over again by extracting the modules folder with its contents from the modules31681.tar to /lib.
Your filesystem should then contain a folder structure like /lib/modules/3.16.81/

Then you can insert your card and look with lsmod if the module has loaded, if not load it manually (modprobe libertas)

Regards
Stefan

OK, finally, some progress!

Did as you instructed.....

After inserting card the 'Power' light on card is lit green.

 
# lsmod 

 

Module           Size     Used by 

 

libertas_cs      1575       1 

 

libertas         42111       1   libertas_cs 

Now, how to get card working? ('Link' light is off)

Tried ip link set dev wifi0 up and ifconfig, iwdconfig, ifup, etc, but all say 'cannot find device 'wlan0', etc......

????

Thanks!






Edited by ArchiMark 2020-11-04 9:29 PM

Modules are loaded fine which means that the card is working with the driver. Now to have it connected to your network, I bet the easiest way is just to use wpa_supplicant. You can check the scripts I posted above (except the first one that updates my card's firmware). Just install wpa_supplicant package and run the scripts I posted. To install wpa_supplicant the easiest way is to have an alternative way to connect to the internet and run "sudo apt install wpasupplicant" to install it. You could use a wired Ethernet card (if you have one), or you could temporarily create an open (open as in "no password" hotspot with your phone for the Jornada to connect to. To connect to an open access point first you need to initialize your card:

 
ip link set dev wifi0 up 

obs: replace "wifi0" above with the correct name for your WiFi card. You can find the correct name with the "ip a" command.
Then use iwconfig to connect to the open hotspot:

 

iwconfig wifi0 essid "Your_SSID_without_quotes" mode Managed  

obs: again, replace "wifi0" with your WiFi card name and "Your_SSID_without_quotes" with the name of your open network
Finally, invoke the powers of DHCP to get an IP on the network

 

dhclient -v wifi0 

This should get you online. After that you can use apt to update your packages and to install wpa_supplicant. Once that is installed, you can redo the process using wpa_supplicant which will take care of everything and will get you online on a WPA network.

THANK YOU, ntware for your help and detailed instructions. Greatly appreciate it!

Will do as you suggest and report back.

Hi!
The wpa_supplicant package is already installed on my rootfs images!

Regards
Stefan

When I first downloaded it (about a month ago) it wasn't. I had to apt-get install it. I haven't downloaded any other version of the rootfs since. Just kernel updates.

Some good news....

I used my old Socket 10/100 ethernet card and it connected to network OK....but really slow.......

Didn't have time to do more with the Ambicom wifi card yet. Will try later today.....and report back.

Think with all the issues with WiFi cards....maybe that would make a good separate thread on the forum related to WiFi and any other network issues.

Just a thought.....

Hi,

I just registered since I have a Jornada 720 and I wanted to say thank you for all the hard work you guys are doing! Just managed to put the files on a 1GB CF card and booting up devuan Linux from there. Then, added a couple of .deb packages from the debian-armel distro with Midnight Commander etc. Manually picking and installing is a bit tedious so have ordered a PCMCIA network card from ebay and also found the memory chips there for the 128MB upgrade.

Have a couple of questions for you:
1) How do more recent CF cards compare speed wise? Mine is at least 15 years old, it was the first one I bought for a Canon EOS 400d, thinking to get the Transcend 64GB from Amazon

2) Is there a way to change the keyboard mapping to a german keyboard on the console? For X11 I managed to do it by running dpkg-reconfigure locales and setting de_DE.utf8 as a default plus dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and picking the german keyboard. Surprisingly this worked for X11 but not on the console. Also tried adding the console-data package and configuring it, but didn't change anything.

3) I'm thinking of recompiling a couple of packages for the armv4 since I imagine the kernel BX emulation might degrade performance. What do you guys think? Is it worthwhile?

Cheers,
timo

I finally got a CF adapter and could test Devuan on my J728. My experience with it was that it mostly works. Internet works great (dhclient and a ne2k card), it boots faster than I expected too. I had to figure out what key was the "/" (it was the alt gr, latam keyboard). To turn on/off the backlight I had to use "/sys/devices/platform/jornada/jornada_bl" instead of "/sys/devices/platform/jornada/jornada_lcd," same for the brightness. A few commands such as sudo don't work, "error while loading shared libraries: ./libxxx.so.x.x: file too short," being libxxx different depending on the program. startx never starts and after a few seconds it errors out (I can copy the error messages if necessary to debug). Finally rebooting into Windows CE results in a very bright screen, almost white, and the brightness controls of Windows CE don't respond, the only solution is to factory reset it. That makes it a bit inconvenient as my battery is old and I can't keep Linux on standby. I can help you debug the issues if you point me in the right direction (I'm a Linux user but I've never tried to compile a distro or debug it so I don't know what to do).

One viable solution is to break down the discussions of everything into their own dedicated threads in this sub-forum, e.g. wifi CF/PCMCIA, keymapping, WPA, etc. Posting the useful tips and help from this giant thread to their corresponding new threads may help too. My 2 cents.


Edited by hpcboy 2020-11-06 2:04 AM

Hi _dev_null,

would you be open to sharing the kernel config and patches you made to your linux kernel?
I tried several ones, the 3.x series seems to be the most useful one. I could compile a 4.x and 5.x one but they got stuck booting. I then ended up using the 3.16.81 version too with the BX emulation patch however the LCD contrast and brightness isn't working although the modules are enabled and visible with lsmod.
Also, how did you get the apm and sound working?
Would be great to have these patches so could apply to other kernels too.

Another thing I wanted to share is this:

You can install packages with apt to the CF card connected to the PC by using qemu and a systemd-container:
$ apt install qemu binfmt-support qemu-user-static systemd-container
Then, assuming your CF card is mounted at /media/CF

$ systemd-nspawn -D /media/CF
Now the filesystem from the CF card is mounted in the container and using qemu to run the binaries in there. In particular, apt-get install ... will work properly.
This way I put dosbox and other nice tools on it :-)

see actual post below...accidently posted twice

Edited by joval 2020-11-17 4:44 PM

Congrats! Debian on the j720 sounds amazing. I confess to know very little about linux os...so much of what is posted is all greek to me

Can anyone post or has anyone written some simple to understand instructions on how to get it up and running? something like: 1. download image from site 2. burn image to cf card...using ? windows or ? linux only program. 3. place cf card into cf card slot or only the pcmcia slot 4. boot into wince 5. access cf card root directory and click/run ? file. 6. type x..y...z... commands to install and or run debian or devuan. 7. tap screen here to bring up menu to access programs. 8. download or install apps this way or that. 7. set up wifi cards using xyz commands etc.

ntware: did you get a new j720 after your previous one took a tumble down the stairs? It's great to know you can actually post on the web with the J720!!!

Can someone part the sea and clear up my confusion ( er, on the subject at hand, that is)...am I missing something that is already available regarding the "how to install Devuan or debian??"

Fantastico!!!!

Edited by joval 2020-11-17 4:39 PM

joval, check out dev_null's post on page 1 with link to his webpage about Devuan and how to install.