For now the installer only knows the microdrive as the local disk but makes no friends with SD.
Perhaps an easier way is to make a backup of your pdaXii13 setup (seems Meanie has come up with a solution for this?) and let the microdrive taste Debian. You never know, maybe your Z ends up falling in love with it and asks for more...

I'm going to try to compile a new kernel for this. Anybody have any patch requests (not that they'll necessarily be used, but I'll most likely try)? The HostAP injection patch is already going to be used.

Sound and fastfpe (if they are not there) please!

Another short note:
Besides the Comments section, check out the Tips section as there are many handy tips there:
http://wiki.neilandtheresa.co.uk/Titchy_Linux/Tips

The tips page says:
"Hold the key to the right of Alt and tap the screen to perform a right mouse button click."
I tried but nothing happened. What to do?

[EDIT]
xev reports that "the key to the right of Alt" is mapped to Control_R (keycode 105).

Dang...I just started the build (I thought there was something I was supposed to do when it was asking about FPE... ). I'll probably do another one, though, as I probably messed something up here.

Just a tip for non english language... changing the locale is fast and works as far as I've tested.

Now running XFCE, Iceweasel, gnumeric, abiword and mousepad in Spanish.

I recommend trying Galeon instead of IceWeasel. It's lighter AFAIK, at least it runs quite nicely.

please patch for my a-data 40x cf 16gb card!
the pdaxii13 kernel recognizes it..maybe it is a simple option?
as well as sound and fastfpe

Fastfpe doesn't have a Makefile in it's dir, so as far as I can tell, I can't use it.

Do you know where there's a patch for said CF card?

EDIT: And what do people mean by "sound?"

I don't. Given that the pdax kernel handles it, I bet meanie might have an idea.

possibly it is something in ata, or pcmcia options?

ut seems to function on the generic sharp sl cf driver....?

the sound patches in the pdaxii13 kernel... again ask meanie, or eviljazz

For sound see here:sound

Not sure if its possible - I think eviljazz's stuff is for 2.4 kernels only at the minute...

OK, I'll wait for them to post (please do!).

On a brighter note, I'm getting the kernel to compile properly (a file was broken), so hopefully I be able to test it soon.

Is there any files relating to wm8750 in the debian kernel source?

I think so...But my Z won't boot after installing the new kernel, so it may not be useful.

I followed the procedure here:

http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/x50vHowTo#kernel

and copied the modules over (before flashing the kernel). Now when I press the power button, the screen flashes white for a split second, then nothing happens.

Ideas?

EDIT: Yes, there is wm8750 stuff.

What toolchain are you using? Native or cross compile?
The sound maybe as simple as merging evil_jazz's patches into the wm8750 files - but I'm guessing.

Cross-compiling using the toolchain in the link above.

Guess i'll have to get me a debian installation and have a play. Sorry can't help much right now.

this is gcc4, right? there wouldn't be fastfpe, would there? wasn't that a gcc 2.5 thing?

The A-Data 16GB card should be covered by some generic ata/pcmcia/flash options, one would think, since it worked on ubuntu dapper and in pdaxii13 with no extra mods..

Edit: one good reason to actually put some effort into support for the A-data is that it runs $100+ USD less than the sandisk, and gives performance on the Z that should be quite close or even identical to the "faster" sandisk (due to zaurus limits, not card differences, or a lack thereof). More interestingly A-Data is coming out with a 32 Gig Cf card. Between the low price and the upcoming bigger card, this might well be a popular conversion card, if it is working well on several roms

Well I must be keen: I re-installed it, but this time I chose testing (=lenny?) for the install. A few minor problems that I didn't see with etch.

It didn't set time and date correctly. I finally used date to sort that out.

It forces a password change at every login.

I hope someone can explain where to turn that off!
(sorted I used passwd --mindays 30 user)

When I did the recommended command for staring the gui, from the install page the login screen was too big for the zaurus.

Using startx sorted that out. I think I mean it's a bad idea to use xdm directly. But maybe the reboot had something to do with it working properly with startx?

I was clumsy in calibrating the screen. The tip about deleting ts.conf worked well.

Can't seem to get startx to work when logged in as ordinary user. Any suggestions?

Where is sudo when you want her?

Plus points:

It seems to me that the keymapping is spot on (I thought there were some glitches with the etch set up).

The stylus/mouse seems to be more usable and positive.

I've asked for a new forum down in the requests section. Hope some kind admin is paying attention.

General plusses: the wifi connection has never been so stable, seems quicker than my very limited experience with pdaxrom. Like the browsers.

RFC: what is the standard pim stuff really? I don't recognise it from Ubuntu.

I would think the next step would be to try epiphany running over webkit instead of gecko--it should be lighter, but still quite powerful

Here's a lesson: It doesn't appear to work to just install a new kernel, so I'm going to try to flash the kernel in the first place. Hope it works (I like my packet injection. It's a great trick for amazing friends/convincing them to set up WPA ).

WPA and some beautiful MAC filter??

Thanks for ZDevil screen caps.

I have no wifi / LAN card that can connect to internet. therefore the "failed to load codename message" cannot be evicted in the installation process normally.

I have tried the following command in the CONSOLE (in the very late menu options )



with the SD card having extracted the contents of the '/dists' inside the debian.iso and still no luck getting into the package selection screen (saying cannot find 'cdrom/dists/Release' file, and df gives the cdrom/ dir is mounted to SD card already). Has anyone got any workaround to get in that screen ?

[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]

It didn't set time and date correctly. I finally used date to sort that out.
[/quote]

I just set up ntpd and it's been right ever since.
[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]
It forces a password change at every login.

I hope someone can explain where to turn that off!
(sorted I used passwd --mindays 30 user)
[/quote]

No clue.
[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]

It didn't set time and date correctly. I finally used date to sort that out.
[/quote]

I just set up ntpd and it's been right ever since.
[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]
When I did the recommended command for staring the gui, from the install page the login screen was too big for the zaurus.
[/quote]

Yeah, but it's no big deal. I think the etch xdm is pretty cheesy, anyway. Are you using gdm? xdm works OK -- you just can't see all the window. You see enough.

[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]
Can't seem to get startx to work when logged in as ordinary user. Any suggestions?

Where is sudo when you want her?
[\quote]

Again, no clue, though I use xdm so I haven't tried. Try suid'ing root.

[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]

Plus points:

It seems to me that the keymapping is spot on (I thought there were some glitches with the etch set up).
[\quote]

iceweasel/icedove still ignores the Fn key, and @ is Shift-- not Fn--, which of course is good seeing as how you might want that key in icedove.
[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]
The stylus/mouse seems to be more usable and positive.
[\quote]

Mouse? That is the one thing I can't get working right. I plug in a usb mouse, but have to hold it sideways to be able to move it properly, due to the screen orientation. Since the kdrive server does not accept a config file, I am stumped. Clue?
[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]
I've asked for a new forum down in the requests section. Hope some kind admin is paying attention.
[\quote]
Great. Let us know when/if it happens.
[quote=tux,Sep 20 2007, 08:08 PM]
General plusses: the wifi connection has never been so stable, seems quicker than my very limited experience with pdaxrom. Like the browsers.

RFC: what is the standard pim stuff really? I don't recognise it from Ubuntu.

[/quote]

I agree regarding the wifi. I haven't tried it away from home yet, but with a working wifi-radar I have hopes, although the firmware on my Ambicom card is too old to support WPA.

As far as PIM stuff goes, I am using orage for a calendar (on all my machines, now). I want to be able to place a calendar file on all of my machines that I can use. I will not use gpe-calendar, since the last two times they changed the file format, old files were unreadable by the new calendar. So you cannot reliably use the damn thing if you regularly upgrade your system. I am using gpe-contacts, and might think of using gpe-todo, but I don't use a to-do list.

Orage is pretty simple, but it works, the calendar file is not buried 8 directories deep and inexplicable like dates (why in the evolution tree??), which file works?? It ain't real pretty, though.

If you hold fast to one version, I think gpe-calendar is prettier and has a better interface. I have not yet decided. You can actually get gpe-calendar for it, even though it is not in lenny. It is in sid, and you can install directly a single sid package if you want.

Let's get the separate forum going.

?? What link? I must've lost the thread you were responding to.

This one:

http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/x50vHowTo#kernel

I posted in the comments section of the homepage asking how the kernel was built in the first place, so hopefully that'll pan out.

I had these problems when I chose many of the modules from the "Load components from CD installer" menu during installation. Just choose the "select mirror" componese (and perhaps also ssh client) will avoid them.

PIM stuff: GPEpim, Orage (simple but handy), KOrganizer (looks very nice!) + KAddressbook, Evolution, JPilot, Hnb, Emacs (Org-mode or Planner mode), VIM outliner ... and quite a few others.

A few issues so far:

Hardware:

1) How to adjust backlight?

2) The Kanji key (the one to the raight of Alt) + tap won't produce right click.

3) Occasional screen flickering

4) Stylus pointer "jumping", quite noticeable when the stylus sticks to the screen

5) Sound doesn't seem to work. xmms plays but no sound.

6) Silkscreen keys and screen hinge switch are not enabled.


Programs:

1) Cannot install Galeon or Epiphany. apt-get complains about "Broken Package" because libxul0d fails to install.

2) scim-tables-zh seems broken, but other scim chinese stuff seem to work fine.

Screen rotation does work!!

Just use:

xrandr -o 1

And this is the portrait mode. You don't even need to specify the geometry. XFCE4 seems to handle this so well!

And
xrandr -o 0 = landscape
xrandr -o 2 = inverted
xrandr -o 3 = inverted portrait

But xev fails to detect the screen hinge switch (same with the silkscreen button). So it seems the kernel do not set up these keys.
A simple solution is to create a system menu entry for the rotation command. Alias and desktop shortcuts will also do.

about sound : there is a .deb-package on the Titchy site to "hack" sound.
According to the comments/bugs/tips it should work. (I'll test this evening)

http://wiki.neilandtheresa.co.uk/Titchy_Li.../Fixed/No_sound

Anyone got bluetooth with a billionton CF working ?

Chero.

Great. But where can i find the "zaurus-soundhack.deb" and the Angstrom ALSA userspace? There is no pointer on that page.

Also can anyone confirm if USB devices are working? I saw some USB libs and utilities in the package feeds. But my Z does not have network connection at the moment.

Thanks!

apt-get install zaurus-soundhack

I have to admit I'm rather tempted by this ARM version of Debian particularly as I run Debian on 3 machines at home.

There is a different version of Murphy's Law called Barry's Law:

'If it can go wrong then he'll make it go wrong'

In view of that I could change the microdrive in my C3100 for a new blank one and install on that. If I didn't like it or the installation failed miserably could I then replace my original microdrive and boot into my current operating system as normal?

If that is feasible where could I get a larger microdrive (8GB?) at a reasonable price preferably in the U.K.?

Ta muchly!

The sound stuff I haven't bothered with, yet, except to verify that I could here a *.au file catted to /dev/audio.

I am currently using a usb mouse and jump drive, and a printer. Just modprobe ohci-hcd. They work like a charm, except the mouse is sideways. I use a powered usb hub, but don't need it. I thought the Z provided very little power to the usb port, but it's enough for these devices. The power probably makes it easier on the battery, though.

I am trying to find someone to help me re-orient the mouse. It seems to think the screen should be in portrait mode, and neither the kdrive server rotation nor xrandr will rotate the mouse orientation, only the screen display.

Others have reported problems using non-standard microdrives. YMMV. So, what's so great about your current OS on the machine?

[Edit again]

My USB drive works after doing a modprobe ohci-hcd.

But when I connect my SE w800i phone via USB, I got this:


But that works under pdaX and OpenBSD.
Is there a fix for it?

It works!

Reinstalling: I think I know what I'm doing now!

I've picked the ssh component from the mirror section and I've decided to go back to stable. The login looked a lot neater.

I'd like to be able to boot into command line, log in and goto gui from ordinary user. I'll have to remember how I used to do this on older machines.

apt-get install sudo will solve one of my problems, if I remember add my ordinary user to sudoers.

Since my boxes run ubuntu, I think I'll head towards their way of working.

About pim, I use kdepimpi in the all platform version that can run from memory card or pendrive with my boxes. I use the Z version on my other Zs and the Archos.

I'm hoping that I can just put the files on a memory card, mount on this system and just click and run. If I can I'll report back.

If it won't, there is always the compile the source method?

But probably the easier thing would be to install korganiser and kdepim because I could just drop the Z data into the right directory and configure the kde apps to match.

I certainly don't fancy entering 600+ contacts from the keyboard again!

Another reason for dropping back to etch is that the lenny system started having wifi problems. The booting process showed that a hack was being loaded to get round a problem with my card and the messages started to be errors!

Anyway this distro has rekindled my enthusiasm for the 3200 and caused a good deal of late night over indulgence in caffeine!

I'm off to shred spam in the wiki.

possibly yet another reason to improve and refine the kernel (other than so that I can use it )

@adf

Have you tried to install Debian again with another SD card?
So far there are two theories floating around:

Theory 1: The kernel fails to handle certain CF cards/microdrives. We have yet to see the hard evidence.
Theory 2: It is a more general issue of SD card misbehavior (see Chero's post for the fix) that causes problem during extraction of the CD image, resulting in the failure to reformat the disk (it seems the reformatting tool is somewhere in the CD image). A number of users (tux, Chero, me, etc) have confirmed this.

How about supplying us some evidence for/against either of these?

Booting into the command line:
I posted a trick earlier on to kill and remove xdm (after upgrading to Lenny)
1) # /etc/init.d/xdm stop
2) Exit X
3) # update-rc.d -f xdm remove
4) Done

PIM data:
unison would be very useful here. No need to manually compare/merge/fix the differences between files.

As for brightness, I came across xbrightness (only available for Lenny and Sid), but it complains about the old version of randr in the system. The program requires 1.2 and it spots the 1.1 version in the system. I have searched around a bit in the package feeds but don't know yet how to get around this.

It took two attempts to reinstall. The first one cracked up with segmentation faults towards the end of the process. Don't ask what happened, I have no clue!

Perhaps an occurrence of BarrySamuel's law!

The problem then, after successful install, was that the wireless card stopped working. It didn't do that last night!

Maybe the fact that my cards are three old Zonet cards and a Pretec from the dark ages has a bearing on this? Perhaps I should get a new flashy wifi card. Any tips? [I]

It seems that the system now renames the wifi interface from the eth0 used in install, which is configured, to wlan1, which of course isn't!

I edited the interfaces file to reflect the change and went on my merry way rejoicing.

The gui is installing now.

I plan to install dhcp-client edit the interfaces file to suit, sudo and edit the sudoers file, alter the time before password change is forced and set the system time correctly.

I'll do a shutdown -r reboot and see what happens before I use the gui extensively.

Boy is this revising my patchy command line skills!

I'll make a note of your xdm tip ZDevil. Thanks again.

Hi,

Still somebody working on the kernel ?
I can't get "serial_cs.ko" loaded cause "8250.ko" gives errors about unknown symbols.
Without serial_cs I can't get my Billionton-bluetooth-CF running ...

Chero.

Well, I e-mailed neil and posted in the comments section asking how the kernel was originally built. I'm currently trying to just use the patched HostAP drivers from a custom-built kernel in the hopes they will work and I won't need to recompile the kernel.

My CF issues aside, it seems to me that this kernel, despite being a major step in getting a large distro on the Z, still needs to be tweaked quite a bit

I tried neil's solution:
1) apt-get install zaurus-soundhack
2) Edit /etc/default/soundhack. Set the volume level (0-100)
3) Run /etc/rcS.d/S50soundhack

But it doesn't work. xmms and a couple of games (such as xarchon) still play no sound.

The titchy linux wiki is down for the moment, so I can't check again.
I vaguely remember the bug fixed page says something like setting in OSS.
Has anyone succeeded here?

Just curious to know if Debian still fails to install on your CF with other SD cards (< 1gb).

Actually, I'm pretty convinced that meanie was right-- I haven't tried, under the assumption that the error saying the kernel couldn't see hda1 meant the problem was in recognizing the cf. I might try this weekend, though the sound problem isn't encouraging