A Call for Help: Debian.

Wow, that's a hell of a lot of progress for one man! Any chance you care to show off some images of your 720 running Debian?

Heh. Thanks.

Well for some reason I cannot log in after I installed some packages (apt...argh), but when I get it running again (I always do...), I will whip out my trusty .3megapixel digital camera and 32mb cf card.

LOL, as for testing I will on the HP, I am in the process of looking for a MP790 though. Any chance it would be usable on a HP680? I could use it as a test machine only. the CF card it itching for some work!

So when are you gonna release a working version?

WOW....

When? As soon as I back up and remove my personal files I will release the console edition! Due to weird Debian things, it will be a 102.9+ mb download, uncompressing to 211+ mb! So have a 256mb cf ready!

I will try to send an email to the user when they first log in with instructions.

Right after that, I will begin experimenting with x. If anyone wants to help me with that once you have linux, go ahead!

Well I guess it is time for some good news. Yes, I know that many of you have been waiting for this....well...DEBIAN FOR THE 720 IS RELEASED!!!

Console edition only.

Current bugs: Fetchmail does not work! I modified the mail files myself to give the message that the mail system usually does, but for some reason, fetchmail is still not flushing my messages! I will release a fix as soon as that is fixed...obviously.

Some other little bugs will be fixed as we migrate to kernel 2.6 and other kernel-related fixes are applied. That counts for every other bug that I can think of.

Like I promised, you have plenty of my...erm...touches throughout the system. Unfortunately not enough! Heheh, I will add more in future releases. Do know that I only plan to make 2 releases, consider this the absolutely-stable-but-not-with-absolutely-everything-in-the-world release.

When I get everything perfect, I will make a fixed release. Also due is a X edition of the system. The second after I have the console one all squared away, I will pop the cf back in my 720 and start experimenting with X. I plan to have the X edition out very, very soon - as that is what many forum users will need.

Do know that I am doing to the absolute best of my ability, and to get this done I have been getting up and starting every morning, and working until 2am! So if anyone wants to invent the HPC Factor award for Crazy Linux Guru, I would gladly accept it. C:Amie?

Anyways, I do not want to hold you all up! The link to the tar.gz for the system and all the files you need on the FAT partition of your cf card is all right here: ftp://programsynth.homelinux.net/debian-j720/console-editionv1

By clearing out all of the junk that apt-get had left behind, I have now lowered the download size to 81.4mb, with the total extracted size at 184.9mb!!! That was a 36mb+ cut in size!

I will see about leaving my pc on, but if it is not, I will attempt to turn it back on at promptly 7:00 am my time, and leaving it on the whole day for downloads. Now do know that the limit for users to download at the same time is 10! I will most likely lower that to 5 because of the download size.
Please, someone mirror the files. Nick?

I would ask C:Amie, but the server is overloaded already - that would kill it.

I guess it is only for the 720?

LOL! I forgot about the photos! Well, I believe that some are in order... At my site.

C:Amie, could you look at them and determine if you will host them on Factor? You can size them down, and pretty much do anything except change the hostname from programsynth to C:Amie in the pictures...

Anyways, check out the pictures (and the story) here: http://programsynth.homelinux.net/debian-jornada.html

EDIT: Yes, it is only for the 720. Even porting to another strongarm HPC would be a lot of work, requiring different drivers and such.

Oh - I forgot to make it clickable the first time...

EDIT: I can't make it clickable! Eh...

ftp://programsynth.homelinux.net/debian-j720/console-editionv1

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2005-08-15 3:23 AM

Top marks! I suggest you have a worth with Kristoffer (the main lead of JLIME) and also keep up with M Gernoth (hope that's the right name) who now maintains the 720 kernel.

With a bit of hackery and fritzing around, this could be a superb resource. Congrats

Thanks.

Well, I already found problems that I did not fix before release.

Fetchmail is not getting emails, and the whole mail system seems to be messed up. If I could get pine on there, which is an entire mail solution, I could skip all this. So I will see what I can do about that. Next, my little eject and insert scripts are not working. Users will have to su and type cardctl eject before suspending, and insert after resuming. My fixmail script has no use as long as the mail system is not doing anything, and fixrootmail does not work. But then again, you should not be getting mail as root.

I am trying to install x right now, but that might be a bit hard, as I do not erm...know what device to use as a mouse. I will have to look into an old config that works. I..erm..also obviously need to work on my scripting skills.

The second that I get these other problems fixed, I will replace the download with one with fixes, and also with everything else that I wanted the console version to have. That will be release v2, the LAST release. It will be perfect anyways, so who cares?

The X releases will work the same way - a first nonperfect release, then a second that slams it. When they will be released depends on how well things go. Ah it is 1:30. I shall be going to bed soon then.

Don't worry I have a 512mb cf ready for any surprises!

I'm really amazed. Your work and speed are quite impressive, my most trustfully congrats. I'll be loking forward to the progress on your work. I'm really interested on it.

About, the X-Window system, once you manage to get it working you may want to use this as environment.

People like you keep our lovely Jornada's alive and kicking

Yes, choosing X will be interesting. It seems like the setup will be like so: There will be a normal X manager, probably kdrive, or some sort of low-memory using X, and a normal x window manager that does not use much memory either. For this I will probably use a lot of packages from past 720 linux setups. Next, there will be a pda-like X, using either OPIE or GPE.

I accidentally installed Xfree4 on my 720, and that absolutely will not do, unless if I had the 64mb ram upgrade. In other words, I will either figure out kdrive or downgrade to an older version of X. In the end, the X setup should be satisfactory.

Continuing on that, when I fix all of the bugs, and port pine to the 720, I will make my 2nd and final console release. When I release the first X version, it may or may not have these bugs fixed. But the 2nd X release will have those console fixes included.

When Jlime finishes, I will probably take some packages from their distribution and add it to mine, and possibly some 720-related things that they may have done. I am currently eagerly waiting for a working 2.6 kernel for the 720, as that will make this system a full alternative to CE, and I will be able to do more.

There is one more problem that I forgot to mention, and it is rather serious. For some reason, j720-tools or whatever the module was (I compiled it into my release of the kernel, instead of as a module) is not working properly. /proc/jornada is missing, which means that you can not adjust the brightness or contrast, and you have no idea how much battery power you have left.

Hopefully this will be fixed in the next kernel release, it is not related to Debian itself.

Why 2.6? Does it have some important feature for the J720 that the 2.4 has not?