Debian with Xqt

[smuelas]

I am running at the moment in my Z6000 with the standard ROM from Sharp and using packages from Xqt, the whole distribution from Debian under the X's of xqt.

Everything is very simple and anyone with a big card or microdrive (no smaller than 500Kb) and able to run Xqt can do it.

I will send some screen shots of different X-applications like Firefox, Konqueror, Kile, Kmail...etc.

Everything is based on Klaus's 'pocketworkstation', but using Xqt instead of Xvnc.

Just small drawbacks as some keys that don't work (three at the moment).

Qtopia running at the same time, everything from the standar software and other packages installed, continue to work nicely, so one can choose the best of both possibilities.

The only price to pay is around 4 Mb. of RAM but I find it extremely cheap for having this wonderful capability.

I have tested it for three days with no problems at all. I am NOT an expert and have modified just a couple of lines of standard scripts.

 You can contact me at    smuelas@telefonica.net


smuelas

[jamesm]

sounds pretty good, shame about it being on the Sharp ROM. Could you please post any URL's that you found helpful whlist doing this.

[gab74]

I'm interested in testing it !.
Please "Smuelas" can you send us all informations ?

[ShiroiKuma]

Yes, I'd be interested in doing this do.

Would you be kind enough to post a detailed guide on how to set it up.

I'm not an expert either...  

[kcurrie]

I too have been running Debian (using pocket workstation) on my Z 5500 (under OpenZaurus in my case) and absolutely love it.
I posted on /. recently about it and reposted it here:
Thoughts on the Zaurus

I've been meaning to slap together a page detailing how to run swap over NFS/SMB (or any protocol) so you can easily have this:

Code: [Select]

OZ #free
              total         used         free       shared      buffers
  Mem:        62388        54924         7464            0         1084
 Swap:       524280         1068       523212
Total:       586668        55992       530676
..yes, that's 512MB of swap :-)  Swapping over wireless isn't too bad, faster than wearing out my SD card, that's for sure.   Big compiles are no longer a problem!

The otter big thing I've been doing is running a COMPLETE remote root disk over NFS! Doing this allows me to have a 3GB remote root:
deb # df -H /
Filesystem             Size   Used  Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mmcda1            3.2G   1.3G   1.8G  42% /
..and allows me to easily have different images for development or testing out sw installs without messing up the 1GB  SD card in my Z until I am sure I want to commit changes.   A quick rsync allows for easy cloning of my SD card onto my remote root.

Using these methods you can run the complete Debian setup over wireless without even having an SD card at all.   This opens EVERYBODY up to Z development and the vastnumber (~15819) of ARM Debian packages avail up to everybody with minimal effort and no local diskspace requirements.

As a matter of fact, I compiled the latest version of GAIM along with the encryption plugin (gaim-encryption) AND the Sametime (meanwhile) plugin, for those of use who have to use  that IBM/Lotus beast.

See here:
http://undertow.2y.net/zaurus/bin/gaim-enc...ime-ARM.tar.bz2

Note this requires X to run.  

Anyway, I'll try to get together details on this in the next couple of days, and it'll be on http://undertow.2y.net/zaurus/

Cheers!

[smuelas]

I am unable to upload screen shots. On next tuesday I will open a web-page with those screen shots and all the steps necessary for installing Debian on Xqt and the needed packages.
Anyone interested should be able to install Xqt and go to Pocketworkstation web page.
Everything continues to run nicely and I am convince many people will like to use it.
Next message on Tuesday. Cheers

smuelas

[smuelas]

Please find a first "sketch" of the web page promised at address:

       http://w3.mecanica.upm.es/~smuelas/debianxqt.html

smuelas

[ShiroiKuma]

Hi:

I have followed your guide, taken all the steps.

However, when I try to start icewm, I get the following error:

Code: [Select]

IceWM: Warning: Locale not supported by C library. Falling back to 'C' locale'.
IceWM: using /home/root/.icewm for private configuration files
IceWM: Can't open display: :0.0. X must be running and $DISPLAY st.What is the problem?

What can I do?

[ShiroiKuma]

I figured that out. Turns out I need to enter

Code: [Select]

export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0manually every time before running IceWM.

Now it turns.

However I'm not sure what I should enter into /etc/resolv.conf file and what the syntax is. Can anyone tell me specifically.

Thank you.

[smuelas]

Hi rehorrericha,

I will input more information a.s.a.p. in the web page. Anyway, I will tell you what I do now.
First of all I create a file, once in Debian, in directory /root  with the name .bashrc. If the file exist already, I edit it and include the lines below:

export DISPLAY=0:0
xmodmap .xmodmaorc &

I stablish a link between  /root  and  /home/root  doing:

ln -s /root /home/root

I copy a file with the name:   .xmodmaprc   to /root.
This file contains the new codes of the keys to have everything available using the SL.6000's keyboard. I will explain in the web page how is the mapping modified. Also I will include this file in the web page.

Finally, I create a file with a short name, you can choose anyone like ini, begin...etc. and I put it in /usr/bin/
In this file I write a couple of lines for begining the Xssesion:

cd /home/root
export DISPLAY=0:0
/usr/bin/icewm &
nautilus (As I have included Nautilus but it is just a personal choice)

I made this file executable:  chmod +x ......

When I launch Xstart and in the console that appears, once having done chroot (or included it in a script) symply I write the name of this last file and everything begins.
Then I launch the bash shell, as I use quite a lot of alias and other things and to have the keyboard working in the right way:  "bash"

About your question related with /etc/resolv.conf  you must write a line like this one:

nameserver    188.23.12.223

but instead of theese numbers, the IP direction of your DNS.
If you have more than one DNS you can write as many lines as the one above, each with the IP direction of a new DNS.

As you don't lose Qtopia, you can launch the Wi-fi in the usual way, but the old file in Qtopia  /etc/resolv.conf is now unreachable, so you have to create a new one in the new root.

From time to time take a look at the space available in your card with "df". Debian is big and also some of its pacackages.

smuelas

[bluedevils]

I assume you meant minimum 512mb card is the minimum.  Do *you* run it on SD or CF?  If it is able to run with OZ, will it take advantage of the floating point performance enhancement?

[melonhead]

smuelas, good work on all these instructions.  I've been able to get Debian working with mozilla, gaim, kismet, etc.   I'll be trying your keyboard map tonight.

Something I've found is you'll also want to create a /etc/hosts file with at least the localhost entry or you won't be able to resolve the hostname of localhost.

I don't know how far along you are, but are there any optimizations/recommendations for speed improvements?  Everything I want to use is working but I'm greatly spoiled with my fast desktop and the zaurus seems slow. And any ideas how to get XMMS usable (very very choppy).

I have created a swap file, but that doesn't seem to help with my already slow SD card.

[Stubear]

Hmm, interesting attack at debian on X/Qt.

I went a slightly different way and actually use the chroot calling script that the install process creates, but editing the zvncserver file in {debroot}/usr/local/bin so that it doesn't call Xvnc and only start icewm and one rxvt - all exporting of DISPLAY etc are set by the vncserver script that debian installs.

If I want to run a X app that is not in the debian package, I open qconsole from qtopia, export DISPLAY and run the app - it then appears in X/Qt and all error messages are written to QConsole - great for debugging missing libs etc.

I'll have to try your way and see if there is any speed difference (although we are basically doing the same thing just getting there by different paths)

Stu

[ShiroiKuma]

Thanks Smuelas, for your help.

It runs now. One more question I have is I get a ton of these perl errors:

Code: [Select]

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
            LANGUAGE = (unset),
            LC_ALL  = (unset),
            LANG = "ja_JP.eucJP"
      are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").How can I remedy this?

[smuelas]

Thanks Smuelas, for your help.

It runs now. One more question I have is I get a ton of these perl errors:

Code: [Select]

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
            LANGUAGE = (unset),
            LC_ALL  = (unset),
            LANG = "ja_JP.eucJP"
      are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").How can I remedy this?

o.k., rehorrericha,
Now you are done with Debian, but remember that this is not the "stable debian" and that the packages from "testing" or unstable, change quite a lot in short time.
So, you can have some small problems that can be solved usually with no big difficulty and others that cannot be solved at all, at the moment but will be solved in a short time.
Your problem with those Perl messages comes from not having stablished the local environment. The way to solve it is to install the package "locales", so typing:
apt-get install locales
should be enough. During the install you will be asked to choose the "locales" to install -choose only one-  and which one should be your default. Once done, this problem should finish.
Also, I recommend you to upgrade the whole distribution -about a couple of hours.
This is done simply with:   apt-get upgrade.
Good luck ....

smuelas