720degrees Linux for the Jornada 720

BTW If anyone on this thread has been watching the Jlime threads and forums, chazco has a working Windows-based installer. Our distro is not yet mature enough to be worrying about getting filebases out to people without Linux desktops, but we should keep an eye on that part of Jlime since it could easily be applied to our distro.

Yes, that is good. I was actually thinking about an installer way ahead, but it is good that it is being taken care of.

Continuing on, the cvs for X was way too tricky for my liking. Snickersmd gave up ages ago, but I stuck in, and after a couple of hours, I figured out how to checkout (download) the entire xc folder (the source we needed). It is rather large, at just under 300mb. Then I had to set up my crosscompiler, and after a bit of fiddling, kdrive is now compiling, along with a lot of other things.

If this succeeds (which it will eventually, considering how long it is taking on here, I am glad that it was too large to fit on my microdrive. ), it will make it much easier for us to package the program, like I said earlier. And things will be going our way, which is always good.

EDIT: Argh, it got an error with the fonts.

EDIT2: Haha, I think it was a PATH error on my part.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-02-26 5:03 AM

I know you can circumvent dependencies like this, but then it means that everyone who needs a certain ipk will need to perform the edits on their own installations. If you nip the problem at its source, the package control file, you can propagate the change throughout the distro for everyone who uses the package.

It may not even be an issue anymore if your kdrive compilation is successful. The only real reason for this problem is because we're trying to mix features and packages from 2 existing distros, and with your compiling of packages not already in Debian, instead of trying to make two distros play nice we're just adding/building onto a single one.

I'm happy that things for the 720 distro are moving along so fast now. To think the delay was all because of a slow shipper for your microdrive

That error was solved, now I get this:

DNARROWPROTO ts.c
ts.c:37:58: linux/h3600_ts.h: No such file or directory
ts.c:52: warning: no previous prototype for `TsReadBytes'
ts.c:82: warning: no previous prototype for `TsRead'
ts.c: In function `TsRead':
ts.c:85: error: `TS_EVENT' undeclared (first use in this function)
ts.c:85: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
ts.c:85: error: for each function it appears in.)
ts.c:85: error: syntax error before "event"
ts.c:93: error: `event' undeclared (first use in this function)
ts.c:104: error: `KdTsCurScreen' undeclared (first use in this function)
ts.c:104: error: `KdTsPhyScreen' undeclared (first use in this function)
ts.c:84: warning: unused variable `fd'
ts.c:86: warning: unused variable `buf'
ts.c:88: warning: unused variable `pressure'
ts.c:91: warning: unused variable `buttons'
ts.c: At top level:
ts.c:143: warning: no previous prototype for `TsInit'
ts.c: In function `TsInit':
ts.c:173: error: storage size of `cal' is

Anyone want to help figure out why?

EDIT: But yes, everything was centered around my microdrive. I thought I made that clear.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-02-26 5:55 AM

You are completely right, I like so much your approach. But you should think almost - nobody - will want a MTA as heavy as exim on the Jornada. However, there is no problem in removing it as I did after installation

Your package conversion method is also so good, making them compilant with Debian.



Then, I don't think that it is an interesting thing, as we are doing the same damage to the battery (and maybe that also to our Jornada) than removing it...



It's not possible to do a real suspend under Linux without a flashboard. It's a hardware limitation problem because the OS it's on the CF card. So our only choice is accomplish the very same that JLime... on the SA-1110 proccesor. Shutdown Linux and get back to Windows CE, that is it.



Well... we never know if someone will show up, but should think that almost possibly that person will not show up never; so we must workarround it ourselves.

PS is quite right with the RAM backup idea. As I could see when I tried to reboot the Jornada using the reset button, it's that the Jornada try to boot up Windows CE (HP Invent logo show up), but for some reason it won't continue, maybe because the RAM layout and organization at that moment is the one from Linux and not a WinCE like one. If we could modify the shutdown command to load a complete WinCE-like memory layout just before the halt, maybe that pressing the reset button would bring us back to Windows CE and finally suspend



Really nice approach, but... how to get that state? With a Jornada 720 emulator would be far easy, but how to get that with the real machine? However, maybe that a just booted WinCE memory image would do the trick.



Very interesting!!! But remember that the actual reboot is performed when we press the reset button. Would the initial wince loader understand a memory loaded like that? (I really don't know, just asking).

And quoting some PS text...


Strange... my 720degrees installation couldn't be smoother. Everyting is working like a charm, downloading the neccesary packages. I get lots of errors at the boot time with the tmpfs, but it looks like it is meaningless.

My WiFi card is a US Robotics 2410, with a PRISM2 chipset. However, I have ordered a Cisco Aironet 342, that I think that will be better for the Jornada. I assume that the 2.4.32 kernel has already support for it, right?

Everyone keep up the good work!!!

I have asked help for the reboot matter in the JLime forums, just here. Maybe that Kristoffer or someone else can throw us some light in this problem.

Update: I have tried again the shutdown -h now command. After the black screen I pressed the reset button, but this time holding the S key to try to enter on the diagnostics ROM. The HP Invent logo shows up again as well as the text ENTERING DIAGNOSTICS..., but the device freezes here again. But this let us know that the boot proccess is operative after rebooting Linux, as the bootloader reply to the S key pressed trying to load diagnostics utility. Give it a try!

Ah, my installer. Seems to be quite popular at the moment. As long as your distribution can be saved to a disk image (as in all partitons and what not) then it should support it. I'm going to pull it from JLime and create a generic one, so heads up.

Hi,
I would like to experiment with 720degrees, as a simple user(all I can do!!!!)

For that purpose I need some guidance on the following issues:
-How to install X from GPE as per Matthis's image?
-How to install ipkg? and if so will I be able to install packages from ipkgfind in handhelds?

Many thanks

oski

Oski, wait up. We are working on all the problems.

For the moment, X is rather inconvinient for us to send out, but we are working on packaging our own compilation. Then things will be much easier. If you want X now, you need to find the ipkg with xserver kdrive, install it, and run Xvfb. Of course it is more complicated than that, but that is all that I can help you with currently. Things may change today.

To use ipkg, you need the ipkg management system. Of course, since there is no binary to be found of it, I had to compile it myself. I will look for the copy of the binary I have, and then I can post it somewhere. But we are trying to get as far away from ipkg as possible.



Something tells me that the people who can help us out are already here. Maybe I am just crazy, but I think that there is a way around everything. Perhaps, even if we can never achieve a full suspend, we can at least achieve a better one than what we have currently. But there must be a way.

As far as pressing the S key, and it crashing, most probably the ram is corrupted after the reboot, and only when it can be cleared properly will the system reboot into CE. After all, it would be like a real reboot on a pc, the ram has to be completely cleared. Obviously, that is not happening here.

If we can in fact never fully suspend, I am definitely interested in the whole hibernate idea. Although, I would rather have it boot a fully loaded image of CE, then boot a fully loaded image of Linux. Sure, it would kill everyone's compactflash cards, but I have a microdrive. So there.

I think that you are right. Maybe that just clearing the RAM would allow the bootloader to detect empty RAM (ie: power failure) and then run the WinCE setup. That should be done modifying the shutdown binary (ey, opensource r00lz, right? we have the source code of shutdown, so we just need to add the mem clear to the source and then compile again)... but how do we clear the whole 32 MB? I think that it's clear that it must be a low level operation, ASM I think (C can use ASM code).



Let's go for simple reboot, and then to hibernation or other things. Hibernation is a good idea, since it would allow to have the two operating systems working, but as you say, better to have a Microdrive then

By the way, have you succesfully used your microdrive in the CF slot of the Jornada? How did you insert it? And my big question... if that slot supports CF type 2 cards, why in the hell the HP engineers didn't desing it in a way that a CF 2 card would fit also?

You remove the bottom cover - typeII didnt really exist when they were made, and they only seem to fit on the J7xx's.

As heavy as everyone thinks Exim4 is, I think I should point out the following:

The way that I left it on the image, is completely unconfigured and hence non-functional. I don't know if it uses (significant) system resources doing nothing, but I doubt it.

Secondly, you should all know that by default, and what is on this image, is NOT full Exim4 but its stripped cousin, Exim4-light. I am not saying this is better than replacing it with something else even lighter, but the way the default config stands, bloat aside, even users who do not change things will not be losing much.

And regarding my battery hardware hack...



You'll have to wait and see, nothing will be damaging about installing a hard reset / power switch. It's just a matter of introducing a switch in the circuit path, whether on the battery side or the Jornada side. If on the Jornada side, it *will* require solder work on the J720 mobo itself, and some of you will not be comfortable with that. But it can be cleanly implemented, you'll understand better when you see what I'm talking about.



I am fully aware of the hardware limitation of the ARM processor requiring the reinitialize code to be on ROM, thus making suspend seem like an impossible goal. It is not to say that someone briliant could come up with a code solution, but time will tell.



This approach really is easier than finding a code based suspend. And it is all the same issue. What stops us from shutting down linux cleanly, as PS has theorized over and over, is the fact that the RAM is not being properly initialized after Linux leaves. Putting a snapshot of memory into the RAM would solve this. And fetching a snapshot is not difficult either, if we get a good ARM assembly coder here to program direct memory access. If it is in fact too hard, at the least we have to fix the shutdown process to allow it to return to WinCE, which is where the problem is anyway.

...and Karloch's comments regarding PS's complaints of things not working...



That makes you the third person without problems with the base install. I haven't had any, and neither did oski. I was chatting with PS while he was dealing with these problems and most of them had to do with using older modules than the current release of Michael, and some of his other problems were with hardware known to be unsupported under Jornada Linux.



Yes, but your original card is already a good match. Whichever you use, both are supported by the kernel, and now that we have the sarge pcmcia-cs package (or etch, if you did a dist-upgrade) any card supported by that should work.



Of course!

Matthis only took X from GPE/Handhelds.org. It's there for everyone to take, search "xserver-kdrive" on ipkgfind.handhelds.org.

While I process the xserver ipks to become debs, I can also take my ipkg binaries and make those into an installable deb.

Sorry, but I have to get you on that one. My 340mb microdrive was made a long time ago, far far away - 1999 in Japan to be correct. And since our 720 was made two years later...HP was either trying to save space, or irritate us.

Yes, the microdrive is working in the compactflash slot. I had to pop off the compactflash metal cover, however. This causes less stability in inserting and removing, and I had to bend a pin back already. Of course, I am much more careful now. I might go about making my own cover, or cutting off the part of the cover that only fits in a cf card. However, it will not close then without my little wire innovation.

For snickersmd here, yes, exim4 is actually not too heavy. Sendmail is. The reason why I do not like Exim is because it does not work as well or reliably as I would like. Like I said, I will check out qmail, but I avoided it earlier because it seems to need to connect to an smtp server, instead of sending locally, thus making it a half-mta.

And yes, as long as the battery cutoff switch is on the Jornada, it will effectively be working like a power button on a laptop. Only rapid pressing will possibly cause damage to the battery.

And yes, the weird errors I was having are because I am a true Jornada Linux pioneer - thus I do everything the hardest way possible. And possibly the stupidest.