Messages

1

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Append Nand Flash Partiton Info

« on: June 24, 2007, 01:25:50 pm »

Where would you plug in a serial cable?  On a C1000, for instance?

PS Thanks for the document re boot process, very useful.

2

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Append Nand Flash Partiton Info

« on: June 19, 2007, 07:19:43 am »

Here are two extracts from dmesg for beta1 running on c1000:

Kernel command line: console=ttyS0 root=/dev/mtdblock2 mtdparts=sharpsl-nand:7168k@0k(smf),59392k@7168k(root),-(home) jffs2_orphaned_inodes=delete EQUIPMENT=0 LOGOLANG=1 DEFYEAR=2006 LOGO=1 LAUNCH=q

Sharp SL series flash device: 1000000 at 0
Using static partision definition
Creating 1 MTD partitions on "sharpsl-flash":
0x00140000-0x007f0000 : "Filesystem"
NAND device: Manufacture ID: 0xec, Chip ID: 0xf1 (Samsung NAND 128MB 3,3V)
Creating 3 MTD partitions on "NAND 128MB 3,3V":
0x00000000-0x00700000 : "smf"
0x00700000-0x04100000 : "root"
0x04100000-0x08000000 : "home"

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Append Nand Flash Partiton Info

« on: June 16, 2007, 04:36:28 am »

Is beta1 on c1000 interesting?  If so, you`ll need to tell me where to find the info.  I dumped dmesg to a file immediately after booting but this does not contain any mention of mtd?

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Append Nand Flash Partiton Info

« on: June 15, 2007, 07:38:36 am »

This is surely the right way to go.  And maybe the NAND backup/restore problem can also be resolved?  This would be good as it is an impediment to the adoption of uboot.

I did some work around this issue some months ago - it seems to me that the partition table for the flash memory (or at least, a copy of it) is held somewhere in the first partition (the first 7Mb) and when the restore routine fails to find it there (because it has been overwritten by uboot) the restore then fails?

You say that "the nand partition physical layout is hard coded to kernel" but I don't understand how this can be true because the same kernel can be run on systems with different layouts, surely?

I wrote a script to mount NAND backup images on a linux desktop and in the course of doing this I tried to find the partition table so that the script could do the mounts automatically.  But I couldn't find it so had to hardcode the layout data in to the script ;-(

I'd like to get a comprehensive understanding of the boot process, so any comments are welcome!

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Dual Booting Pdaxrom And Angstrom?

« on: May 11, 2007, 06:40:44 am »

Is it possible to boot pdaxii13 from u-boot?  And if not, why not?
I'd like to have pdaxii13 on NAND and a debian system on SD and use u-boot to choose which one to boot.

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Debian And Uboot

« on: May 04, 2007, 09:34:00 am »

Let me just check this before I make an unwise purchase:  If I buy a 4G SD card but (for the time being at least) restrict my use of it to a partition covering the first 2G, then I should not have any problems?  (To be more accurate, I should not have any problems _in_addition_ to those which I would have had had I bought a 2G card instead?)
...

Don't buy SDHC SD card. Zaurus SD controller doesn't support SDHC.
I'm not sure that all nonSDCH 4G SD card will work correct on Zaurus.
Better test it before buy.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

SDHC is software, not hardware.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=160434\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Did you test it on Zaurus. I talk with kernel mmc driver maintainer.
He told me that need hardware support for SDHC.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=160447\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yes, that is my understanding as well - SDHC will not work.  Although this new format may (or may not, not sure) have exactly the same physical pinout as the old format, the way the pins are driven is different and the hardware logic in the old host devices (such as the Zaurus) cannot be made to drive the pins in the required way and no upgrade to the firmware which controls this hardware logic is capable of changing that.  But I'm guessing here, based on a quick search and scan of relevant documents...

Anyway, I've taken the plunge and bought a TS4GSD150 since that seems to be the (old format) variety which has the best/most reports on [a href=\"http://www.tyrannozaurus.com/?q=wiki/SDCompatList]http://www.tyrannozaurus.com/?q=wiki/SDCompatList[/url]

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Debian And Uboot

« on: May 03, 2007, 10:46:55 am »

2. Problem with 4G SD. Suspend/resume destroy FS. It's happen only with SD>2G

any fixes on this? does this only happen on a 4g partition or all 4g cards?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=160068\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Only on second part of 4G SD.
First 2G partition works correct.
"mkfs.ext3 -j" hang on second 2G partition.
If I create it on cardreader it also destroy fs after some times or hang PDA.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=160245\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Let me just check this before I make an unwise purchase:  If I buy a 4G SD card but (for the time being at least) restrict my use of it to a partition covering the first 2G, then I should not have any problems?  (To be more accurate, I should not have any problems _in_addition_ to those which I would have had had I bought a 2G card instead?)

[Very OT aside for those who enjoy syntactic teasers: having just used a "double had" in that last sentence, I am reminded of an English paragraph consisting of 2 sentences which involves 11 consecutive uses of the word "had".  I kid you not!  So here it is.  Try to punctuate this so that it makes sense:

Smith where Jones had had had had had had had had had had had the examiner's approval

It describes a difference in the answers which 2 candidates (Smith and Jones) give in a written English examination, and the attitude of the examiner to these answers.  Anybody who can punctuate that paragraph deserves the English Syntax Genius Award!  Apologies in advance for the blatantly English-language bias of this contribution.]

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Kphone working for PC to phone calls

« on: January 31, 2007, 05:35:28 pm »

If anybody has any better luck, I'd like to hear about it!  But I still think Ekiga, and possibly only on a 2.6 kernel, is the only thing that has a chance of working well.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=153077\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

do you have ekiga running on your zaurus ? it seg fault on mine...
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=153087\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

No.  Earlier in this thread, you said that you were trying to compile ekiga for pdaxii13.  Did you succeed?  If so, can you post it somewhere so that I can have a go with it?

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Kphone working for PC to phone calls

« on: January 31, 2007, 03:31:46 pm »

I have it compiled since months

http://z.drun.net/packages/kphone_4.2_armv5tel.ipk

EDIT:

just updated it, did not had menu shortcuts and icons.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=153016\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I've just installed 4.2 and in some respects it is an improvement on 4.04:

- it remembers your password without having to manually insert it into kphonerc, as before;
- it consistently registers with the SIP server on startup and (generally) holds the registration open after a call ends.  This was completely flaky in 4.04.  But I did still get a couple of occasions when I had to restart it in order to get re-registered.

However, on the downside, I never got even a squeak out of it!!!  No sound output whatsoever ;-(  I had the "ReadandWrite" setting selected, i.e., use the same device for both, and this device set to /dev/dsp.  These are the settings that *do* work (for me) in 4.04.  I tried with /dev/audio instead but it never even managed to get registered with this setting ;-(

If anybody has any better luck, I'd like to hear about it!  But I still think Ekiga, and possibly only on a 2.6 kernel, is the only thing that has a chance of working well.

EDIT: Turns out that the microphone *is* working.  A friend who I rang has a recording of me on his voicemail!  So just the output (speakers) not working.

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Kphone working for PC to phone calls

« on: January 31, 2007, 06:14:21 am »

I wouldn't waste your time with kphone, as a project it seems to be virtually dead and it never worked very well anyway ;-(
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

dead? Not yet [a href=\"http://sourceforge.net/projects/kphone]http://sourceforge.net/projects/kphone[/url]
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=152965\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yes, I stand corrected.  A new version was released in September for which the release notes claim that "The well known memory leaks are closed now".  So that sounds promising!

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Kphone working for PC to phone calls

« on: January 30, 2007, 11:17:37 am »

I have installed kphone 4.04, works when I change
audio to /dev/audio
But I get a segmentation fault after about 1 second ofr audio
any ideas?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=152911\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I wouldn't waste your time with kphone, as a project it seems to be virtually dead and it never worked very well anyway ;-(

The future (for zaurus users) is Ekiga!  And we are nearly there...(perhaps).  There is an Ekiga ipk available for r121 but I don't know how good it is because r121 is too difficult (for me) to work with.  But I think there is every good reason to believe it will work well - r121 is a 2.6 kernel with alsa sound, and this seems to be important for voip clients running on (relatively) slow processors.

Hopefully at some point soon some clever person/people will do one (or more) of the following:

- backport the existing ekiga ipk back to beta3
- sort out r121
- persuade the openzaurus people (who I believe have a 2.6 kernel rom which is fairly stable) that they really need to put together an ekiga ipk.

Of these options, the first is probably the easiest and most likely to happen, but the end result may never be as good because beta3 is a 2.4 kernel (I think?  I'm still on beta1 so I'm not sure.)
The second option (I'm increasingly convinced) is never going to happen.
The third option is a real unknown!  Why haven't they done it already?  A working voip client is such a boon (to me, anyway) that I'm at a loss to understand why it doesn't already exist!

If I could find well written documentation describing the steps required to set up a build system on a Linux desktop required for making and testing ipk's targeted to (say) a beta3 system... then I would have a go at option 1 myself.  Dream on...

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / No More Hope

« on: January 29, 2007, 11:06:54 am »

actually, the ONLY stable release on sl-c860 is BETA1 but....--- UHH... OPS! ----.... that's the ONLY release no one is developing for.[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=152444\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Actually I was using beta2 on my c860 instead of beta3. I found that the contrast keys didn't work in 3 , and at the time the developers had already moved on to beta4, so I went back. I haven't been able to flash r121 because if a couple of bad blocks (the last time I tried it anyway, several months ago), and I got turned off by the lack of NAND backup/restore capability in the 2.6 kernel ROMs. has anyone manged to work that out yet?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=152595\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Is this true about NAND backup/restore capability?  I can understand that the normal Service and Diag menus available on D+M+reset and D+P+reset respectively are no longer available because I believe the uboot system has overwritten them in the first 7Mb of the NAND.  But at least on the C1000, you still have available the backup copies of these menus on Fn+D+M+reset and Fn+D+P+reset resp. and both of these contain the NAND backup and restore options.  Is it the case that (some part of?) these don't work?  I know for sure that NAND restore on the backup service menu works because I used this to recover from my attempt to use r121 and get back to beta1!  Is it that the backup options don't work? or produce unrestorable backups?

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Where Has Pdaxrom.org Gone?

« on: January 29, 2007, 10:36:22 am »

Thanks for that Chero.  I've downloaded:

pdaXrom-1.1.0r121-Kathrin-akita-current.zip
pdaXrom-1.1.0r121-Kathrin-u-boot-akita-current.zip

but now what?  There used to be docs on pdaxrom.org to show the way, but where are they now?  I don't feel very confident about installing u-boot as I understand that it is possible to brick the zaurus while so doing?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=152417\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

To install pdaXrom r121 and uBoot:

-Do a NAND backup

-Put uBoot files on root of SD/CF card and put SD/CF card in Zaurus (one or the other)

-Open the battery door, hold down C+D, then press the reset switch. Mail and Power LEDs should come on, then turn off

-Remove SD/CF and put pdaXrom install files on the root of SD/CF (I believe you relpace autoboot.sh by doing this if you didn't remove the uBoot files to begin with).

-Put SD/CF in Zaurus, hold OK, and press the power button. You should get into the Emergency System. Say "y" to the prompt.

-Enjoy

EDIT: No, it's nearly impossible to brick a Zaurus software-wise.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=152422\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Thanks for that Capn_Fish.  As it turned out, my mileage did vary somewhat, mostly (I believe) because my CF media are formatted as ext2.  But I did get there in the end, and here is how for the benefit of anyone who might run into similar problems.  This all relates to a C1000.

- the C+D reset didn't work - this just resulted in both of the leds flashing continuously.  The solution was to use the usual option 4 on the Japanese menu accessed using OK+On/Off.  This got the uboot/emergency system installed.

- OK+powerbutton didn't work, where by powerbutton I mean On/Off or the reset switch - neither of these options worked.  Rather, it was necessary to remove the battery and then plug in the power adapter while holding down OK for about 10 secs.  This successfully booted the emergency system.

- the emergency system did not pick up and run the autoboot.sh on the cf holding the r121 system, presumably again because it was formatted ext2?  Or maybe because it was cf rather than sd?  Anyway, it was necessary to run the autoboot manually.  But first I had to get round another gotcha, namely that if I booted into the emergency system with the cf _already_ inserted, then any attempt to access the cf locks up the system!  And this despite the fact that df shows the cf as mounted and available.  The solution was to boot the emergency system to the bash prompt and _then_ insert the cf.  It automatically gets mounted and now it is properly accessible and I entered:

sh /mnt/cf/autoboot.sh /mnt/cf

Bingo.  After much ado and various points at which I thought I had indeed bricked my zaurus, I got r121 installed!  It only remained to run it...

Oh dear... this is bleeding edge stuff and I need my Zaurus 24/7.  I reckon it would take me a minimum of several days (if not weeks) of effort to get the new system into a usable state.  But I gave up after these 2 problems: USB widget fails to start up so I could not get the thing connected to my desktop machine and so get an ssh session going, and this is a starting point for getting any serious amount of configuration work done.  And then the final straw was that it could not read my 1Gb sd card.  Alarmingly, it correctly detected that it contained an ext2 filesystem and mounted it, but showed it as empty!  For a few horrible minutes I was convinced that it had deleted the contents of my sd card altogether.  In fact, once I had reflashed with my beta1 system, I could see that the sd filesystem was intact.  So how r121 could see it as _empty_ is really quite bizarre.

If there were a proper list of bugs and fixes somewhere (I can't find one?) then persevering with r121 would be an option.  But without this, every person who wants to test it has to trawl through hundreds of forum posts (like this one ;-) searching for the fixes.  In short, as a development process, this is a complete shambles ;-(  Pity, because it has great potential, but without the proper infrastructure in place, it is I fear ultimately doomed...

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Howto Mount A Systc100.dbk

« on: January 27, 2007, 02:54:20 pm »

I'm trying to use your script to mount a nand from a C860 (systc860.dbk), and while the rootfs comes out to 256 (32768/128), the command 'wc -c /dev/mtdblock1' comes up 0. Any suggestions? thks
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=152596\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I don't know anything about the 860.  Does it have a 128Mb flash same as c1000?  If so, you could find the size of the root (which you have above as 256) and then in the same way the size of the "user" partition, and then subtract the sum of those two from 128x8 (= number of 128k blocks in 128Mb) to get the size of the ROMFS.
But this can't work unless your systc860.dbk file is exactly 138428432 bytes, so that is the first thing to check!

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Zaurus - pdaXrom / Where Has Pdaxrom.org Gone?

« on: January 25, 2007, 12:53:40 pm »

Thanks for that Chero.  I've downloaded:

pdaXrom-1.1.0r121-Kathrin-akita-current.zip
pdaXrom-1.1.0r121-Kathrin-u-boot-akita-current.zip

but now what?  There used to be docs on pdaxrom.org to show the way, but where are they now?  I don't feel very confident about installing u-boot as I understand that it is possible to brick the zaurus while so doing?