720degrees Linux for the Jornada 720

Hah, excellent.

I don't know if you read all of my previous posts on Linux for the 720, but choice was always a big concern for me. I am always installing three different programs that do the same thing, essentially making the distribution like many mainline ones. I will include both pump and dhclient, as stated earlier.

Anyways, right now we are both working to the same goal - lets get something stable with lots of features going.

Really? Only 400k for the ipkg version? I guess I will try to slim it down... although it seems to load at the same speed. 1mb would be good, even two. If I could slim it down, perhaps there would not be two 12mb libraries going.

My wonder is if those huge libraries are because the build created many different executables, Xfbdev only being one of them. Perhaps the libraries have more in them just for those. I will figure out how to disable those extra executables later.

Another thing - until there is a working base of testing/unstable (which we really do not need, by the way), I will use stable. The only advantage I see to the unstable base is that many of the main packages are much, much smaller. Mb can be saved that way. Although, the new apt has this stupid authentification thing, and there are some other annoying *features* from the newer versions of some packages.

Oh, and for all to know - there will be a large drop in development over the next few days.

Tomorrow, I will take a break to continue learning C. On Friday and the weekend, I will be incredibly far from any computers, and cellphone service.

Snickersmd, tomorrow I will send you everything I have done, and I will get that second build to you. It may be smaller, it may not. Either way, you could tell me what new good stuff this binary has. And those 12mb libraries. - Oh, and see how much ram it consumes, compared to the other. I would hope that there would only be a small increase, but it could be a 2.6mb increase.

Shadowmaster, I will send you that last value for the battery applet that no one on this forum knows about yet.

Snickersmd, please contact Shadowmaster, and test the applet. Thanks.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-03-02 2:26 AM

PS.....I actually thought on something..... I can send u a little tool (made by myself) to test the average charging rate.... then I can implement it to calculate the remaining time.

Ok, I will run down the battery, give you your number, test the charging rate, and test Etch at the same time.

Get ready for this.

The Etch base gets the same no processes left error, even when I followed all your instructions on the site, except for running base-config (doesn't exist)

Now, unless if this is somehow related to Exim being unconfigured...

I'm not surprised, since I did post earlier that I saw the problem you were talking about and just never noticed it before. And I also acknowledged that I have the same problem on my updated Etch base.

Right now however, since the problem only occurs on shutdown, and shutdown is seldom done on a Linux-based Jornada since it necessitates a hard reset, I think we can safely ignore it for the time being until a solution presents itself. Ultimately we'll have to address the issue when fixing the shutdown process overall to acheive WinCE reboot and thus suspend in native WinCE. For now, I'm still concentrating on finding out where are my missing X config files, so I'll be ready for the binaries whether from you or ipkg.

Unconfigured Exim is a good theory. Easiest trial would be to completely remove Exim and see if the problem persists.

I doubt Exim is related. It seems like there is another package causing this problem. I have a good guess as to which it might be, but is too hard to prove. I think a good way to fix the problem is just to find out what is actually wrong with the system itself, and fix that.

But I am sticking with stable, anyways.

It's not exim, I know for sure now. I'm looking into the problem anyway, I have a few leads as to where to start.

Yeah, check innittab, the init scripts (no, it isn't them, but it sounds reasonable), and anything else that has to do with shutdown. It seems that something seperates the shutting off of pcmcia and the command after that.

Perhaps it could be a permissions issue? Like one of the script folders being given an invalid chmod? I know that the passwd upgrade changed a lot of stuff, but according to my tests, it did not cause the problem. And it was something before the sysv stuff, and before the initscripts. So, that leaves about 30 packages.

Oh, and do not do the dist-upgrade to test. The problem was also cause in upgrade alone, so that narrows it down to even fewer packages, as upgrade holds major ones back.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-03-03 1:18 AM

Updates:

Michael released Kernel 2.4.32-j720-10 a couple of days ago. The orinoco-backported version on the website has also been updated.

and PS and I are still hacking away at getting a working X going.

That's all for now.

X works on mine now, and I am now trying to get other windowmanagers working. I was thoroughly unimpressed with matchbox, it is weak.

EDIT: How do you right-click.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-03-07 12:58 AM

Ok, I am posting this message from my 720, using X. This is definitely taking how I look at Linux on this handheld much further. X is a joy to look at, but until right click is properly working, it is a pain to deal with. Also, there has to be some sort of way to get windows to default to the screen's resolution, rather than being larger than it.

Fluxbox looks like it was made to work on the 720, it looks incredible. I would post a screenshot, but since the mouse things are not working too well, I cannot select the screen.

I installed xmms, and will be testing an ogg file later, to see if I can get sound working well. Maybe I could even get console beeps.

Definitely more on this later - but bedtime for me.

Impressive PS! For the X you can use ion2 as window manager, just like the Matthis image. This wm is ideal for Jornada since it can be controled mostly by keys rather than touchscreen. If FluxBox works well, maybe that you should give also a try to Matchbox, an even lighter version of Fluxbox.

xmms and ogg? Hardtask, as xmms is already quite consuming for our Jornada even for MP3, and OGG decoding consumes more processor power than MP3. But anyway, give it a try. With Windows CE 3.0, I had installed WinAMP PAQ and it could play MP3 and OGG perfectly on the Jornada. For listening MP3, I think that I alreday sid that, but madplay is just the best program: excellent quality and just 10%-15% of CPU used, no FPU operations performed for decoding

Changing topic, I have received my Cisco Aironet 342 WiFi card. Man, this card is excellent, very supperior to the crappy USR2410. It has worked with the distro without problems, although, when driver is loadeda I have a new network interface: wifi0. Regardless of that I perform all the network setup to the eth0 interface and it works like a charm.

About my talking with Michael about the suspend issue... After the first response, I didn't received anyone more... So, no news for now. Snickersmd, I will be glad to try your battery hardware hack if you publish some schematics, steps and photographs and it's not complicated (I'm not very handy with hardware >_<.

Greets!

Uh oh, bad news. If I suspend 720degrees (yeah, the on/off button) with the Aironet inserted, returning from the suspension will freeze the whole system... (have to extract again the battery and put back to reboot the system).

Yes. Type the following before suspend: cardctl eject

After resume, type cardctl insert

You must be root.

No, matchbox is not like fluxbox. It doesn't look or work the same.

OGG actually sounds better at lower bitrates than mp3, making it better for devices with lower processor speeds. Currently, alsa does not recognize the sound. I might have to try OSS instead.

Also, I have to slim down the junk before I do much more, because I only have 12mb of space left.

Don't start popping your 720 open yet, we are busy with the issue. I am not refurbishing my 2 hour battery until I know how things are going.

-By the way, ShadowMaster made an excellent battery app suite, which includes the console program battstat, and the dockapp battlet. Both might need a bit more work, but currently they are way more accurate that using cat on /proc/jornada/battery, and the dockapp looks very cool. Especially on fluxbox with the Artwiz theme.

Edited by ProgramSynthesiser 2006-03-07 9:13 PM