Topics

1

Nokia Tablet / N900 Anyone?

« on: March 08, 2010, 04:48:50 pm »

I've just replaced my mobile phone and based on a good experience of the N810 I've bought an n900. Early days, but here are some initial impressions:

The UI is pretty usable and the zooming is very slick and smooth. Lots of RAM seems to keep everything moving along when multitasksing, but the write speed of the memory feels slow. No benchmarks, just gut feel.

Application availability is still poor. Things such as Abiword are starting to appear on extras-dev but overall, way behind the competiton. Come on, Nokia!

Hardware is great. Its fast. FM transmitter, fast GPS, real keyboard - everything you need.

My plan is to do relatively little tinkering on the phone OS itself, in order to keep it working as a phone! but easy Debian is installed and that seems to offer a great sandbox to play in without fear of breaking the phone itself.

More later. Anybody else got one?

2

Sharp PC-Z1 NetWalker / Netwalker Questions

« on: December 29, 2009, 03:10:19 pm »

Thanks, first of all, to those of you lucky enough to have netwalkers already for sharing your opinions and experiences. Much as I would love one of these devices myself, before I part with my cash I'd like to ask a few questions. Sorry if some of them are of minority interest but they are important to me ;o)

1) Does the wireless suppoty promiscuous mode? In other words, if you run tcpdump can you see UNIcast packets from other devices on the WLAN (not just your own traffic and multicasts from others)

2) Has anybody tried aircrack? Does the wireless go into monitor mode and does the kernel support packet injection?

3) Does it come with Python installed? if so, what version?

4) Does it come with PERL? If so, is it possible to install modules directly from CPAN, i.e. perl -MCPAN -e 'install My::Module'

5) Do java applications run OK? what is performance like?

6) How easy is it to zoom in or change the font sizes? For such a small screen I trust that the designers are not expecting 20-20 vision as a pre-requisite for ownership!

7) How good is Youtube performance?

Many thanks in advance for anybody who can answer any of these.

3

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Fluxbox And Angstrom

« on: March 27, 2009, 08:28:43 pm »

Hi

I've been having quite a lot of success running pocketworkstation under OpenZaurus GPE. I get the benefit of all the Debian apps but on an optimised and stable X platform. However, I've found that I just cant live with the matchbox wm which auto-fills the screen, but fluxbox-gpe is in the OZ feed and that makes the whole system feel just right. What a difference!

I'd love to now move up to Angstrom but every time I think I'm there I find a reason to stay with OZ. This time, I cant find fluxbox in the Angstrom feed. Is it there, or am I destined to stay on OZ forever?

4

OpenBSD / Cant Boot Openbsd

« on: January 11, 2009, 06:57:17 pm »

Thought i'd give my problem its own thread:

After installing OZ I decided to go back to OpenBSD. The install process went OK with my sets on a CF card and using all the microdrive for BSD. However, when it came to rebooting the Z simply dropped into the OZ splash screen with a kernel panic. I tried restoring flash and re-installing but now i get the Sharp splash scree and an hdd error.

I decided to completely clean the HDD usung the D+M menu (which takes a while) and re-installed again. Still no joy when it comes to boot. I'm stuch. Help!

Here is a df done from the emergency D+B menu

Code: [Select]

disk dev hda 4096 MB 4095737856 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7936 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device        Boot     Start          End         Blocks       Id     System
dev/hda4    *          1               7936        3999712+ a6    OpenBSD
cant understand why I've got hda4? doesnt make sense!

during the BSD setup my disk partition looks like this

Code: [Select]

             size           offset     fstype       [fsize   bsize     cpg]
a:    7999425           63        4.2BSD      2048    16384    1
c:    7999488             0        unused            0          0
EDIT
I should add that the installation will boot if I drop back to d+b linux shell and do insmod zbsdmod.o then ./zboot. Sorry, but I really dont understand what makes a machine actually boot but clearly something is wrong here.

5

OpenBSD / Obsd Packetsniffer? Tcpdump?

« on: October 06, 2008, 06:06:53 pm »

While I"m very happy that so many security and network apps are available for OBSD, I'm struggling to find a packet sniffer such as the ubiqutous tcpdump.

I believe that wireshark (ethereal) has been dropped from OBSD because of security concerns but surely there must be some way of knowing what's on the wire? What do other people use?

6

OpenBSD / Cleaning Up After Building Packages

« on: September 01, 2007, 05:27:21 am »

In spite of not having suspend/resume working I have been pleased with OpenBSD on my 3100 in as much as the process of building from the ports tree works remarkably well, even for a newbie like me ;o). I have managed to build over 90MB's worth of packages but my Z says it can do no more as the disk is full. As a consequence, I have decided to do a rebuild over the weekend and hope that the suspend/resume problem goes away!

Two questions:

1) Is there a procedure for cleaning up after building a port? there must be a lot of source code and temp files which are no longer needed. I guess that building via an NFS on another machine as documented on the planetofidiots website might overcome this.

2) I do not curently have any webspace to host a feed, but rather than keeping my 4.2 packages to myself, is there an area I can post them to? I have been focusing mainly on security applications so I have the following:

Code: [Select]

ORBit2-2.14.7.tgz                               libnet-1.0.2ap1.tgz
aterm-0.4.2p1.tgz                               libnetdude-0.7p2.tgz
autoconf-2.13p0.tgz                             libnetdude-conntrack-plugin-0.5p0.tgz
autoconf-2.52p1.tgz                             libnetdude-traceset-plugin-0.2p0.tgz
autoconf-2.59p1.tgz                             libnetdude-traffic-analyzer-plugin-0.3p0.tgz
autoconf-2.61p1.tgz                             libnids-1.20.tgz
bzip2-1.0.4.tgz                                 libpcapnav-0.6p0.tgz
cdparanoia-3.a9.8p0.tgz                         libxfce4mcs-4.4.1.tgz
cups-1.2.7p4.tgz                                libxfce4util-4.4.1.tgz
db-3.1.17p8.tgz                                 libxfcegui4-4.4.1p1.tgz
db-4.2.52p11.tgz                                libxml-2.6.29.tgz
db-tcl-3.1.17p3.tgz                             libxslt-1.1.21.tgz
db-tcl-4.2.52p3.tgz                             links+-2.1pre28p0.tgz
dbus-1.0.2p1.tgz                                metaauto-0.7.tgz
dbus-glib-0.73p0.tgz                            mozilla-firefox-2.0.0.6.tgz
docbook-4.4.tgz                                 mozilla-firefox-devel-2.0.0.6.tgz
docbook-dsssl-1.72.tgz                          mrxvt-0.5.2p2.tgz
driftnet-0.1.6.tgz                              mutt-1.4.2.3.tgz
dsniff-2.3p2.tgz                                mysql-client-5.0.45.tgz
esound-0.2.34p0v0.tgz                           mysql-server-5.0.45.tgz
eterm-0.8.10p0.tgz                              mysql-tests-5.0.45.tgz
etherape-0.9.0p2.tgz                            netdude-0.4.6p0.tgz
fam-2.7.0p2.tgz                                 netdude-traffic-analyzer-plugin-0.3p0.tgz
gconf2-2.18.0.1.tgz                             nspr-4.6.7.tgz
gdbm-1.8.3p0.tgz                                nspr-docs-4.6.7.tgz
gmake-3.80p1.tgz                                nss-3.11.7.tgz
gnome-doc-utils-0.10.3p1.tgz                    p5-XML-NamespaceSupport-1.09p0.tgz
gnome-icon-theme-2.18.0p0.tgz                   p5-XML-Parser-2.34p0.tgz
gnome-keyring-0.8.1.tgz                         p5-XML-SAX-0.14p0.tgz
gnome-mime-data-2.18.0.tgz                      p5-XML-Simple-2.14p1.tgz
gnome-themes-2.18.1p2.tgz                       popt-1.7p0.tgz
gnome-vfs2-2.18.1p0.tgz                         postgresql-client-8.2.4p0.tgz
gtk-engines2-2.10.1p0.tgz                       postgresql-contrib-8.2.4p0.tgz
help2man-1.29p0.tgz                             postgresql-docs-8.2.4p0.tgz
icewm-1.2.30p0.tgz                              postgresql-server-8.2.4p3.tgz
icon-naming-utils-0.8.2.tgz                     py-libdnet-1.10p1.tgz
imlib-1.9.14p5.tgz                              py-libxml-2.6.29.tgz
intltool-0.35.5.tgz                             python-2.4.4p4.tgz
iso-codes-1.0.tgz                               python-bsddb-2.4.4p4.tgz
iso8879-1986.tgz                                python-bz2-2.4.4p4.tgz
jbigkit-1.6p1.tgz                               python-expat-2.4.4p4.tgz
lcms-1.15.tgz                                   python-gdbm-2.4.4p4.tgz
libIDL-0.8.8.tgz                                python-idle-2.4.4p4.tgz
libart-2.3.19p1.tgz                             python-tests-2.4.4p4.tgz
libaudiofile-0.2.6p0.tgz                        python-tkinter-2.4.4p4.tgz
libbonobo-2.18.0.tgz                            python-tools-2.4.4p4.tgz
libbonoboui-2.18.0.tgz                          scrollkeeper-0.3.14p3.tgz
libconfuse-2.5p0.tgz                            sqlite-2.8.17p1.tgz
libdnet-1.10p2.tgz                              tcl-8.4.7p5.tgz
libgcrypt-1.2.0p1.tgz                           tilda-0.9.4.tgz
libglade2-2.6.1.tgz                             tk-8.4.7p1.tgz
libgnome-2.18.0.tgz                             vte-0.16.6.tgz
libgnomecanvas-2.14.0p0.tgz                     xfce-mcs-manager-4.4.1p0.tgz
libgnomeui-2.18.1p0.tgz                         xfwm4-4.4.1.tgz
libgpg-error-1.1p0.tgz                          xzoom-0.3.tgz
libmng-1.0.9p1.tgz

7

OpenBSD / Newbie Install Woes

« on: August 11, 2007, 06:15:04 pm »

Hello, this is my first post on this forum but I've had my 3100 for nearly 2 years and been through just about all the ROMs except OpenBSD so I thought I'd give it a try because I like X and want to use a 'native' system rather than a bolt-on or cut-down system.

I have decided to use 4.1 for now and I'm using this method to load the installer, and I've put the install sets on a CF card as I dont have an ethernet card for my Z (wireless only)

# insmod zbsdmod.o
# cp bsd.rd /proc/zboot

Everything seems to go OK. I get to calibrate the X screen and invited to reboot. At this point I copy the config file to /mnt/mtdflash2/pcmcia/config and reboot. The reboot gets as far as this, then gets stuck in a loop of getty messages.

init: kernel security level changed from 0 to 1
init: can't exec getty 'usr/libexec/getty for port /dev/ttyC0: no such file or directory
init: can't exec getty 'usr/libexec/getty for port /dev/ttyC1: no such file or directory

I've been through this twice with the same results. Any ideas what I can do?

8

Software / Sharp Rom Network Applet

« on: December 28, 2006, 06:48:36 pm »

The Sharp ROM's network applet appears to be inferior to the one used in Cacko releases in several respects. Notably:

The Sharp ROM can crash if the network card is removed at the wrong moment

and

When the lid is closed and then re-opened while a network session is active the Cacko ROM will automatically re-establish the connection but the Sharp one does not appear to do so.

Is there an upgrade that can be installed on the Sharp ROM? - I've got a C3100.

9

X/Qt / Wm's And Eyesight

« on: November 23, 2006, 08:01:33 am »

My eyesight is not what it used to be and I struggle to use the XQt apps for long.

I've previously tried pdaXrom which has the benefit of a zoom feature which was great for when my eyes were tired, but I got fed up with things like the poor suspend/resume so I'm back now toying between Sharp and Cacko Roms with XQt.

I'm currently using Meanie's Debian install on a C3000 with icewm but even the largest fonts can be a strain after a long day.

Are ther any WM's that offer zoom or magnify functions? or is is possible to run the screen in a lower resolution.

Sorry for my lack of knowledge of some basic WM stuff but I run a Mac at home and only use Linux on my Z

10

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Newbie Questions

« on: October 04, 2006, 11:54:43 am »

As a previous pdaXrom user I'm trying out the latest version of GPE on my C3000. There is much about it that I like, it is clear and fast and comes with many of my favourite security apps such as dsniff and driftnet. However, and sorry if there are lots of questions here:

Why wont Kismet work with my Ambicom wireless card? In kismet.conf I've set the source=hostap,eth0,hostapsource.

Is there an easy way to store different wireless profiles? I want one called "home" and one called "train" for using the Wireless on the trains and one for RF Monitor mode sniffing. pdaXrom made this very easy and I cant believe you have to go into a GUI to redefine the settings for eth0 every time you connect to a different network.

Has anybody got bluetooth to a GPRS phone working?

Is there a version of ethereal or even tethereal?

Has anybody tried running debian under GPE ? (this would enable me to get my missing apps)

Can I install X11 packages from pdaXrom feeds? I know they still use the older kernel so is there backward compatability?

On a lighter note,
Why does supertux not run?
Are there versions of frozen-bubble and tuxpaint?

Thanks in advance for any help.

11

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Installing Apps To C3100 Microdrive

« on: September 11, 2006, 06:35:36 am »

I'm fortunate to have a C3000 and a C3100. I've been using pdaxrom beta2 on the C3000 for a while and enjoyed the simplicity of installing applications because the whole of the microdrive is available.

However, frustrated by the bugs in the C3000 beta I've decided to install pdaxrom beta 3 on my C3100. While this is much more stable, one of the greatest frustrations I find is that installing applications is not so simple. It seems obvious to use the space on the microdrive so why is this so difficult?

I'd rather not install apps to CF because I use this slot for wifi or bluetooth cards.
I'd rather not install apps to SD as I have a debian chroot environment on SD and I'd like to keep that clean

There is no sign of my microdrive on df.                          
filesystem            blocks      mounted on
/dev/root             51200      /
none                    12288      /dev
/dev/mtdblock3     72704     /home
/dev/mtdblock3     72704     /mnt/user
/dev/mmcda1      499928     /mnt/card

Can I make an ext3 partition on the microdrive for installing apps?

What solution do other people here use?