Messages

1

Software / Latex For Zaurus?

« on: September 11, 2005, 10:35:49 am »

www.snowelm.com/~t/doc/tips/20031120.en.html
It's the first hit on Google for Zaurus Latex. I've tried it and it works well. Its a disk image that you have to mount by loopback. Instructions on the website.

Felipe
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Lyx somewhere available too?

2

General Discussion / Encrypted Volume

« on: September 09, 2005, 07:27:03 am »

How about using crypto-loop with aes-128 instead?

Alternatively i found fuse very interesting - you can encrypt anything and still backup/sync/copy etc on a per file-base instead of copying an entire filesystem image.

encrypted fuse "leaks" however, the number and size of the files...

3

General Discussion / Xscale 'monahan' 1.25ghz Coming Soon

« on: August 27, 2005, 08:54:04 am »

A convergence handheld device would be all of these things:  a cell phone, a TV, a radio, a computer, a GPS navigation system, a wireless network device, and a digital still/motion camera.

Let's dream for a while ;-)

But yes, this thing emerges from several directions at once...

But even if no physical and technical limits put a size limit for this, ergonomic considerations do so - the keyboard and screen needs some decent size to be of use.

Zaurus comes close to this for my opinion, it just could be thinner and lighter.

4

General Discussion / Xscale 'monahan' 1.25ghz Coming Soon

« on: August 25, 2005, 04:15:11 am »

we will see if and when Sharp will go for it ;-)

The Chip uses only 600 milli Watts and is said to have "25% more performance than the  Bulverde"

5

General Discussion / Chroot Gentoo Environment On 3100

« on: July 15, 2005, 08:16:48 am »

I'm not sure if this is news but I just got gentoo working on my 3100.  I'm brand new to the zaurus (my last pda was an apple newton!)  but not new to gentoo or linux.

Like to try same - where did you get the Gentoo for the Z ? How recent (portage) is it, can one "emerge sync" too?

6

General Discussion / SD users with ext2 FS: please share your experiences!

« on: June 25, 2005, 01:49:51 pm »

On the other side - SD cards do have wear-levelling, do they also have automatically relocation transparent to Z? I searched the net, but could not find any reliable note on this, just that "SD have ECC ... data are corrected before written back to host".
That does not sound like relocation, just ECC.
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See [a href=\"http://www.sandisk.com/pdf/oem/WPaperWearLevelv1.0.pdf]this whitepaper[/url]

SD and CF both have controllers that do a significant amount of abstraction between the logical operation requested by the host and the physical operations performed on the actual flash. On top of that, each vendor's controller behaves differently as they all make different trade-offs between cost, speed, and reliability.
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Thanks for that informations.

I read it that way, that the card uses some internal storage to remember the sector-mappings between logical an physical location.
So indeed JFFS2/3 is trying to do something not really required - additional wear-levelling (simply wasting cpu, though compression of files might speed things up a bit).

When the internal mapping-logic of the flash is flawed any filesystem get screwed up totally.

So what filesystem to use? vfat no links, loopbacked-ext2 on vfat a waste of cpu (and putting a dangerous additional level of potential failure in), native-ext2 at least sometimes failing, ext3 certainly too, confusing...

7

General Discussion / SD users with ext2 FS: please share your experiences!

« on: June 25, 2005, 04:37:30 am »

Some more thoughts on filesystems details:

What block size would be useful for certain type/size of Flashs?

Does it make sense to map them at the same size (as suggested in JFFS2) ?

If i read it correct, JFFS2 does automatically re-locate badblocks when detecting a write error, how do ext2/3 or VFAT perform? So far ein know, they only handle badblocks when specifically told so, which might account for a number of the observed problems here.

On the other side - SD cards do have wear-levelling, do they also have automatically relocation transparent to Z? I searched the net, but could not find any reliable note on this, just that "SD have ECC ... data are corrected before written back to host".
That does not sound like relocation, just ECC.

Reason is:
Especially for journalling a log wandering through a badblock might be very nasty.

Now JFFS2 (3) would be perfect to adress this problem, but when used for SD  - does it still make sense?

For all that different things to consider - a selection matrix would be nice:
(other things to consider is interoperability of course)

filesystem/card | vfat | ext2 | ext3 | jffs2
CF
MMC
SD
microdrive
(int. Flash?)

8

General Discussion / Cf Memory And Filesystems

« on: June 25, 2005, 04:19:52 am »

For comparison to SD/MMC - which filesystems work at CF modules?

Are there similar problems to expect? What brands recommended?

Especially interesting when one planes to exchange the microdrive with a CF  

9

General Discussion / 2gb Sd Card

« on: June 25, 2005, 02:29:46 am »

I don't know!

i loaded my zaurus up with everything and pure software covers 1gb (dont ask)  i need a 2 or 3 or 4 gb sd card.

I just purchased my zaurus c1000, case, poweradapter for us reasons and coming in within 2 days and i need a SD carc quick!

does anybody here use a 2gb sd card that actually works on the zaurus?  I know sandisk is making it but i have had serious bad expirience with them.
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Dont you have to chance to test your card in the store or (after asking for a compatible card) ask for exchange with another brand if it doesnt work?

10

General Discussion / SD users with ext2 FS: please share your experiences!

« on: June 25, 2005, 02:15:47 am »

Every one of my SD cards has failed me... I consider SD on Zaurus as 100% unsable.

This is frustrating when I have to use the CF for wifi.

Scott
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Question:


Do those SD-cards work flawlessly in other devices?

Maybe your SD-controller is broken...

11

General Discussion / Jffs 2 -> 3

« on: June 24, 2005, 09:58:31 am »

JFFS3 adresses many problems observed with JFFS2, see here:

http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/tech/JF...sign/node2.html

JFFS3 at:

http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/
source available via cvs or snapshot - someone give/gave it a test?

-

NAND vs. NOR:
http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/nand.html

Improvements to JFFS2:
http://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/jffs2/mount.php
http://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/jffs2/bbc.php

Comparisons of Filesystems:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4678

12

General Discussion / SD users with ext2 FS: please share your experiences!

« on: June 24, 2005, 09:08:12 am »

My experience with the Sandisk 512 SD is that it does not handle ext2 very well, it appears to format fine, it looks fine - it just doesn't work, even after numerous reformats.  I put it back to FAT16 and it functions OK, I formatted my old LEXAR 128 SD to ext2 and it works like a charm.  One thing I did notice was that ext2 handles application installs fine, but stalls out on simple file transfers - is this normal?
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Still wonder why that is - it should be independend what filesystem writes a block at the disk so far its contents are stored correctly.

Does the vfat simply not check as much as ext2 or what happens inside the chip?

Idea: can it be, that ext2 relies on ordered write inside the chip, whereas vfat doesn't and the chip doing some write buffering?

13

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Sl-c3100

« on: June 24, 2005, 09:00:17 am »

exchange kernels between devices, not change. This means you can't use a C3000 kernel for the C1000. It doesn't mean you can't change the kernel on a device.
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Ups, overread that - forgive - i'am not native english speaker.

I was told from trisoft.de that the 3100 will be the same as the 1000 plus the larger NAND only

...and if the price will be ok, it will proably be a 3100 for me, though i'd like one with additional internal Flash instead the microdrive unless there are other reasons to keep it.

14

General Discussion / SD users with ext2 FS: please share your experiences!

« on: June 24, 2005, 07:33:24 am »

ext2fs
jffs2
tmpfs...
[

Performance slowdowns at nearly full filesystem are certainly true for all filesystems, for journalling maybe little more than without, choose your poison ;-)

/tmp as tmpfs might be no choice either with so little RAM aboard.

The little microdrive would theoretically ease things down on read/write cycles, are there practical experiences/reliability available with that drives?
(I've seen normal IDE drives dying early in the office with all kind of manufacturers last years, smart-ide always finds the failure - after it already happened.)

One could still use a very cheap throw-away USB or CF - Flash as /tmp and swap...

BTW - when a file is written to disk or flash within a sync-period of the kflushd - will it actually be written twice or just once? One could set it relatively large value to safe some writes too.

Any plans/success with JFFS2 on Z?
beyond: https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showt...6&hl=jffs&st=15

Sounds really slow... and if the internal ROM is JFFS too - wouldnt it have to be that slow as well? Totally confused now...

15

General Discussion / SD users with ext2 FS: please share your experiences!

« on: June 24, 2005, 05:36:36 am »

My SD card is working in ext2 since I've bouht it (2 month ago) without any major problem ... just done an e2fsc on it and repaired a few bad sectors btw .... so I'm now crossing fingers and hope it wont fail in a few days/weeks
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Bad sectors, fsck's etc - does not sound all that reliable...
needs some comparision with VFAT - is it really better or does it just not get detected as often because of less checks in that FS?

What choices for filesystem are there at all?
Filesystems optimized for Flash's?

BTW - how to check the remaining life-time of Flashs before error?  just 'badblocks' ?
Operating temperature affecting lifetime?