Prebuilt Jornada 7xx linux image

Hello,

Thanks for all your hard work in getting this out. I've followed the instructions and get a "Warning: unable to open an initial console" on my J720 and it just hangs there. Any ideas?

RTFM,

First, thanks for all your hard work on this. The latest GPE stuff looks great, from your screenshots.

I posted a couple of pages back about lockups on my 720 -- your reply said you had created a 32MB swap for 720s. Did you just use a swap file, or did you create a partition?

My thinking was to resize my ext2 partition down by 32 MB or so, and create a "real" swap partition at the end of the card. That way, if that part of the flash card died due to overuse, I could just resize ext2 again, create a NEW swap partition, and go about my merry way.

I'm looking forward to downloading your latest version, and also very interested in the 2.6 kernel version...

Thanks again,

RLW


Edited by rlw 2007-04-06 1:00 PM

abowen500, it sounds like you got the permissions messed up by not properly extracting to the card. Were you root when you did the extraction, and did you extract directly to the card, or to your hard drive followed by a copy?

rlw: It wouldn't really make a difference... anyways, when the card "dies" if you write once to each block, it will automatically disable all the dead ones, and you can reinstall and continue on. There might be a way to do it without overwriting the whole card, but all I know is this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda (or whatever your card is) should write to each block. I hope I remembered the whole thing.

Anyways, your card is fine now, and it would be a while until you would notice any swap problems, so it isn't something to worry about just yet.

Thanks for the quick reply. I thought I was root when I did the extraction. I tried again but this time I copied the tarball to the cf card and did the extraction there. Seems to be working now . Sorry for not being more thorough the first time!

cppchriscpp: Opera is opie/qtopia only, and the currently available konq/e binary is also opie/qtopia only. Konq/e can however be built for X11, but that involves way too much work, and downloading too much nonsense in order to compile it. Firefox albeit slower than konq and opera really isnt *that* bad. It's faster than netfront on my 720 in hpc2000. The only thing slow about it is the initial startup time (7-10 seconds using swap), once loaded its fine in my opinion. Its also modern, not outdated, and every page renders like its suppose to. I still use dillo for basic browsing, but when i need to access hotmail/yahoo mail/ebay etc, thats where firefox shines.

rlw: I just use a swap file, always have. You could make a seperate swap partition i suppose, but like PS said, you probably wont notice much a difference.

Cheers.

Hello Handheld Users,

As you know this is my first post
Just got my first Jornada 720 about a month ago. Yeah I know, I'm pretty late.

Been reading a lot of sites lately, and wanted to say thank you to all of you for all the time and great info out there.

Also wanted to say thank you to RTFM for your help and hard work on this image.


I'm trying to get my wireless to work. I have a Cisco Aironet 350 card, and a 3COM the 092B model.
Can these work with Linux?

How do I get the drivers for these cards?


Also,
How do I swith back to HPC2000? Do I need to do a hard reset?

Thank you

You didnt read the README i assume. It states the Aironet 340/350 dont work with this image. (that card is supported by linux, but for some reason it bombs on the familiar base)

The 3com card, i guess would depend on what chipset it uses. A quick google search turned up no info on it. But because of the lack of info online about that card, theres a good chance its not supported. Its always best to buy the most commonly used and supported cards. Anything prism, orinoco, agere, lucent etc is very well supported under hpc2000 and linux.

Yes, just pull the batteries to return back to hpc2000.

Cheers.

Ok, i lied. I updated the gpe image again, nothing major. Just removed mpg123, madplay, and vlc as they didnt work great anyway, created an icon for mocp (audio player) and i added the apache web server. If you dont need or want apache, there is no need to redownload or reinstall. I swear, this will be the last update until kernel 2.6 is 100% working.

Also, i took some peoples advice and created 2 seperate archives to make extraction to CF that much easier. Both archives are in the main tarball.

Cheers.

Rasco: It is a strange problem with Familiar's module utilities. I'll send RTFM a kernel with the aironet drivers statically compiled in, which will fix the problem.

Nice work. I got the Opie image (did not see the gpe on that page - did I miss a different link?). I put it on a 512MB card that has had JLime installed (for a 680 and 690 I mess with ;-), and 720Degrees 2.6 kernel (base install - setting up apt to get the rest was more effort than I had time for).

However, I did have a difficult time figuring out how to extract the files from the download dir to the FAT and ext2 partitions (more used to Solaris tar without "j"-for-bzip2 option, and not having a -C for a cd operation). I finally did it this way (on Ubuntu) in case anyone else has such problems (seems possible source of some of the issues posted here?):
sudo su - [set up as root Id]
cd /media/usbdisk-1 [the FAT partition, mounted from /dev/sda1]
tar xjopvf /media/WinD/arch/linux/opiej7xx-RTFM/opie7xx-032807.tar.bz2 opie720-031907/fat [needed "o" to keep permissions while doing as root despite what I read about that in the tar man]
mv opie720-031907/fat/* . [move the FAT files up into the top level of the FAT partition ]
cd ../usbdisk-2 [cd over into the ext2 partition]
tar xjopvf /media/WinD/arch/linux/opiej7xx-RTFM/opie7xx-032807.tar.bz2 opie720-031907/ext2 [give it some time - flashcard/USB hub activity light flashes for some seconds after the command appears to have completed due to emptying file cache]
sync [just to be sure the file cache is caught up - no more flashcard/USB hub light flashing to confirm]
mv opie720-031907/ext2/* . [move the ext2 files up 2 level into the top level of the ext2 partition]
cd .. [get out of the mounted CF card partitions]
umount /dev/sda1
umount /dev/sda2
[pull the CF card out, and have fun]

This looks to be useful until the JLime and 720Degrees distros get it together (figuratively and literally - keep hoping they will join forces more completely, although there does seem to be fair amount of "cross-pollination" ;-)/

One thing I noticed is that the rotate option does not seem to work on my J728, which makes it a bit harder to work with some of the windows that go below the top of the task bar on the bottom such as the Wifi setup windows. Is that a known issue, or just my luck?

BTW, RTFM, have you looked into what it would take to get something like this working on your MoPro 900? I have one also, and think it would be an awesome Linux HPC with its USB host, large keyboard, and easily-viewed screen (even if Nyditot-like screen "enhancements" could be worked into the X config).

Thanks again, dude.
rokky

I'll update the opie and gpe images with PS's 2.4.34.1 kernel w/static aironet drivers as soon as its tested and sent to me. This will be a godsend for all you with currently nonworking aironet cards.

wrokon: Yeah, the rotate in opie is flaky, it works when it wants to it seems. Since you have a 728, you might be more interested in the GPE image, which i've spend quite a bit more time on. It has loads more installed then the opie image, and is far less buggy, and more polished. If you missed the link (its buried in this thread somewhere) you can access it via my main website.

http://720.b0x.com Click the linux link near bottom of page.

As for the mp900/900c, i havent really looked into it yet, but once a working kernel is made, there are numerous arm userlands which could be used.

Cheers.

Edited by RTFM 2007-04-07 6:38 PM

Well, gpe works pretty well; very cool! Thanks!

A few usage questions:

How do I set up my account (AIM) with Gaim, and use it? I click on the gaim icon, and it pops up a window with "Account"" at the bottom left, and what appears to be a dropdown box arrow at the bottom right, but I can't type or click anything with either.

How can I open links on pages in Firefox in tabs? Guess that is a general right mouse-click how-to issue.

TIA,
wrokon

Those are more general Linux questions... google.

Jlime and 720degrees are going to work together to port a different distro to the 720, just to get that done faster, among other things. 720degrees needs work, and we are almost at the point of getting a new site up and fixing all of the problems that have come up since the last base was developed.

Essentially, we are just short on development time. GPE and OPIE will eventually be added to the repository with the help of RTFM.

wrokon: Gaim is a little tricky. You can do it 2 ways. The easiest is to create your accounts, and adjust preferences in gaim on your desktop and transfer ~/.gaim directory to the jornada. Just remember to think small screen in doing so. Disable formatting toolbar, use text on menus instead of icons etc etc. The harder way is with the rotate button on the panel, in combination of some guessing with the 'tab' key to highlight the correct dialog box,(which you cant see) then pressing enter. Might take a few tries to guess right. Also note that in order to have sounds played in gaim (or any app w/sounds), my image uses bplay instead of play. Make sure to change prefs-> sounds to use bplay.

Firefox and tabs, without a 'right click' in X as of yet, the best i can say is.... ctrl+t opens a new tab, highlight the link and paste into new tab with ctrl+v.

Cheers.