How do I even begin?

Now why doesn't that sound like something that Snappy! would say? Whoever you are, please stop masquerading as him.

There should be a rule that guest users cannot use registered users' username or anything like it. Example: some as a guest posed as me using "tenjeangosi not logged in"

You know, I just thought of something. Snappy!, fix this!

Fixed!

Well I managed to finally get Debian working on my 720 - but it is not ready for the mainstream yet. I need to get user accounts working, and to make a generic root account and user account (not the one I use), such as programsynth (), with passwords like user and root, so that when you start linux, you don't start yelling explicatives! My main concern right now is getting user accounts to work. Then I can attempt to change the terrible PINK console text color to something more standard, like grey.

Also, some absolutely essential files that were not in by default (for reasons that I don't understand) need to be installed. (Such as mc, vim, pico...(or jpico ), lynx, links, x (i'm not sure if this should be in with the base distro - but if everyone wants it I will see), and some other stuff to make it USABLE).

One reason why I have avoided Debian in the past is because of its pitiful assortment of applications from the base install (what the cd installs too), and then you have to install a bunch of stuff just to make it worthwhile...anyways - if I get that far, I will add my own touches, gzip it to level 9 (eheh), and put it up for download. My goal is to skip the install (though I should finish my programming education...), and just make a file that you untar right to the card, and that's it. Currently this pitifully empty base (with junk, nevertheless), occupies 68mb. So I would not be surprised if I can get everything needed into 128mb, and absolutely everything into 256 (which causes me to wonder why I spent $50 on a 512mb...). For anyone out there with a very small card, I will be taking all the unusable junk out of this base install, and I expect to at least get it down to fitting on a 64mb card (you can buy 64mb cf's for $20).

By that time, kernel 2.6 for the 720 should be past developing stages, and with a little modification (if any), then we have a full working alternative to CE!

-Also, the scrolling is very slow. If anyone knows any way to speed it up... (I am not sure if the driver is a framebuffer or hardware), please post.

Ok, I just looked through the newest 2.4 kernel's source, and the video is via framebuffer, I guess that could be the cause for it being slow. And the cisco aironet's should all work.

EDIT: Hmm, bluetooth doesn't seem to be compiled in...

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2005-08-09 9:50 PM

Framebuffer you say? Uh oh...
I tried running GAPI on my device, only to find out I do not know the framebuffer address..
No way for me to find it, too. Is it autodetecting somehow? (Dumb question, Hope would do that to a person).

Unfortunately, the graphics memory architecture for earlier or most HPCs is in a similar state as that of IBM XTs 8088 or the earlier 8086 PCs where there is practically no standardisation of graphics, sound or most other interfaces. Only thing standard then was the ISA bus, RS232, LPT1 port (cannot remember the IEEE number) etc. Then came CGA, EGA and later VGA (MGA or MVGA or something came but died) which standardised the graphics solution based on a common graphics memory buffer, with start address at c800 (for CGA cards, e800 for ega, cannot remember the ones for vga).

Unfortunately, while PCs got its slew of graphics standards established and evolved up till today's 3D-spewing graphics cards, HPCs never quite evolve -- it went extinct. So there are a myriad of different graphics buffer implementation for various devices. Distros like hpcmips port of NetBSD has a list of *known* frame buffer values for a series of HPC devices, so for them, users can select according to their devices and have the right frame buffer settings.

By autodetect, most OSes actually do it by querying the devices through some known interfaces to retrieve the manufacturer and device id (and possibly device friendly name), and try to match a driver or device config file for it.

Well graphics and text work...they are just slow - like a 512kb graphic card working on framebuffer. (In newblish , the 720)

I am now facing a very annoying problem, and that is the fact that I still cannot get users to log in. I believe it has something to do with shadow. I learned that red hat 7 (kind of old - but so is debian 3) uses four files for log ins, /etc/shadow, /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and /etc/gshadow. I copied those from my system - running slackware 10.1, which is significantly newer, but it should work...Anyways, that allowed me to log in as root. But for some reason, user log ins are not working, I do not know why. If I could find out the root password and user rafael2k password that Debian came with, then things should work, I would just like if I could contact the person who made this.

If anyone knows why user logins are not working, please help.

Also, does anyone know how I can connect to my pentium 1 (which now has debian on it for obvious reasons ) with my 720 by using the serial cable?

hm? terminal...

AHAHAHAH! I BEAT YOU DEBIAN! I BEAT YOU!!! I deleted the .org files and the nologin files, and guess what? I BEAT YOU! YOU LOSE! YOU LOSE BAD!!!!



If anyone is able to understand that, they would know that user logins are now WORKING. That means that I can now get on to working with the rest of the system. Heheh, because of the fix, my console prompt says:

I have no name!@(none):~$

Hahaha...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&postid=1793126#post1793126 (this forum is so much better - Factor's, I mean)

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2005-08-10 6:54 PM

I am starting to get seriously annoyed....

Anyways - so everything was going fine, but then I discovered that the modules would not work! I tried loading the module for my aironet 350, and all it said was:

airo.o: unresolved symbol crypto_alloc_tfm
airo.o: unresolved symbol cryto_free_afm

WHY?!

Then I tried with an ethernet card - a 3CCFE574BT.

I assume that that means that it works with the 3c574_cs module. It loaded without complaining. But the card did not even light up! ARGH.

Any ideas?

ok, to reply to the title of the topic and bypassing everything else.

here's the answer
http://www.lowlevel.cz/log/pivot/entry.php?id=41

I have positive results with both the debian install and the familiar install (using his custom image).
His image works right out of the box for me, including the wireless Ambicom card I use with a pcmcia cf adapter.

The debian also booted, but due to my wifi using encryption, it didnt connect out of the box, but the card drivers and all did load successfully.

I used a Gentoo Linux live cd (2005, www.gentoo.org), booted from it on my winXP laptop, loaded pcmcia drivers, found my 256 cf card, cfdisked hde with 2 partitions, restarted pcmcia services (it needs to load the card driver again so that it sees the partitions for some reason), formatted the partitions, copied the fat stuff to the fat partition, and extracted the image to the other partition.
stuck it in the J, and all works fine, EXCEPT.

ofcourse, everything gets wiped, but after a shutdown/suspend/reboot, the J just hangs at the bootup logo. Onetime I got a warning about stuff still being in memory, and if I wanted to delete it, but the rest, it just hangs.
After removing all the batteries, and power from the unit, and hitting the reset a few times, it boots up again like a normal hard reset.
needless to say, I have went through the calibration of the screen numerous times today, but ah well.

I also tried the manual install of familiar, using their instructions, but that didnt work.
Ive spend some time trying to find a Gentoo Embedded distro for the J, but no luck so far, and am currently trying to find a netBSD image so that I dont have to compile the whole stuff.

Anyway, might be worth a visit, that page I mentioned at the top.

WHAT?! The sarge image is essentially what I have already done, but the guy got graphics on there! I will see if I can get the binaries of that from there....

ARGH the only reason why I am not DONE yet is because I do not have the resources to do so!