Messages

1

Zaurus - pdaXrom / .xinitrc From C1000 Beta4 Matchbox Please !

« on: March 12, 2007, 10:25:49 pm »

can't get emergency system runing with r121 after uboot flashing...
thanks
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If you can get the emergency system to install from beta4, then you should be able to use the kernel.img, autoboot.sh and rootfs.img from r121 to flash the system.

How old is your C1000? There's some issues with booting on the really new ones.

2

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Compile Error On Float Point Problem

« on: March 12, 2007, 10:20:39 pm »

It took me a long time of playing around on an already slow machine just to get the gcc  toolchain's source-code to build.  Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance.
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The [a href=\"http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/]Linux From Scratch[/url] project has notes on building an entire toolchain, you should read up on it. It shouldn't be too different to adapt to the 3.6 GCC. If it doesn't work, try to find the archived older versions.

It's a long process to get it right - you have to build GCC, use that to build Glibc, then rebuild GCC to link against the newly-created Glibc. Since pdaXrom already has Glibc built, you can probably skip most of that.

Read up on the whole thing, though - it's pretty enlightening.

3

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Wiimote On Zaurus!

« on: March 12, 2007, 03:11:46 am »

I had to delete my package announcement because I simply can't get CWiid to work with our packaging system. Bloody annoying, but for the adventurous, you can install it from source on your own!

CWiid is a collection of tools to interface the Wii Remote with Linux. It compiles under pdaXrom if you just steal some headers from Debian

This will probably only work in r121 or newer.

First, get the source: cwiid-0.5.01.tgz .  Unpack it to wherever you unpack your source.

Other packages you will need:

bluez-libs>=3.9 (check package announcements)
bluez-utils>=3.9 (also in package announcements)
linux-kernel-headers (see foonote)
gawk (in main feed)
bison (also main feed)
flex (main feed)

Once everything's installed, go back to the CWiid source and do the ol' ./configure && make && make install.

To access with a gui: type wmgui. Though it's pretty slow if you enable the accelerometers or extensions.

To actually use it for input: You'll have to insert the uinput module: "modprobe uinput". After that, press 1+2 on the Wiimote and type wminput. The default mode uses the tilt sensors to move the mouse, maps A+B to the mouse buttons, and maps the d-pad to up/down/left/right. Other configs are stored in /usr/local/etc/cwiid/wminput. Pass "-c [name of config file]" to wminput if you want to load another.

For more information, the homepage is here.


---

Anyway, getting this in a usable package is baffling me. It does some weird symlinking when you make install; it doesn't work in any prefix other than /usr/local. I'm going to bug the author about this, but if anyone else can package this in the meantime, great!

Footnote: Getting the right kernel headers is a task. Here's what I did:
- Downloaded Alien (you'll need perl)
- Got the linux kernel headers from Debian/ARM here.
- Untar Alien and change to its directory. Run "./alien.pl -t [name of kernel package from Debian]".
- Untar the resulting .tgz file and copy everything in usr/include to /opt/native/arm/3.4.6-xscale-softvfp/armv5tel-cacko-linux/include

And you're done. I have an ipk made up, but it's fairly large and I'm only on a 56k connection here. I'll have it uploaded tomorrow.

4

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Where Should New Packages Go?

« on: March 12, 2007, 01:27:18 am »

Or close the current one, since it's a mixed bag of 2.4 and 2.6 packages. Make a new thread for each.
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Not a clear enough distinction. I've tested my Gngeo package on beta3, beta4 and r121 without issues. Covers both kernels.

Actually, I think the only time the kernel version is an issue is when you're dealing with kernel modules, or base libraries like BlueZ.

I'm in favor of the classic/r121+ split, though since Pdaxii13 isn't exactly old, it might need a different name.

For that matter (sorta OT, ignore if you will) is Pdaxii13 different enough to call it a separate distro?

5

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Run Something On Suspend/resume

« on: March 08, 2007, 06:20:24 pm »

... maybe with a little fiddling I can also get the display to turn off when I close the lid.
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The display -does- turn off when you close the lid, at least ideally. I've only ever gotten it working consistently by blocking out the lightnpower.py lines in the home dir's xinitrc. Of course, then the system won't suspend automatically. I'm looking into how OpenZaurus handles it right now.

6

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Run Something On Suspend/resume

« on: March 08, 2007, 11:48:28 am »

Well, the hinge stuff is handled by a daemon called switchevd... apparently it's part of a package from OpenZaurus called zaurusd. There's configuration scripts for it in /etc/sysconfig/clamshell, should be pretty easy to figure out if you've played with the APM scripts.

(Time to edit the Wiki, I guess.)

For suspend/resume, well, I haven't found any of that yet. There's a lot of power-related patches to the kernel - it might not even be user-configurable. I'll keep poking around. However, the APM scripts still work if you call the apm command to handle suspend/resume.

Switchevd certainly does NOT handle the power switch... it's somewhere in the kernel, I'm pretty sure.

7

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Compile Error On Float Point Problem

« on: March 07, 2007, 03:30:35 am »

Would replacing libgcc with the altered floating point calculators necessitate a whole new rom?  I realize I'm out of my depth here, but I don't intend to stay there.  I really  want to get fortran working natively.
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As has been stated, you can't mix floating point implementations, so you'd have to rebuild the entire system.

Of course, EABI allows you to mix-and-match... just, you -still- need to recompile the whole system to be EABI aware :/

8

Zaurus - pdaXrom / New Packages Announcement

« on: March 07, 2007, 02:57:25 am »

BlueZ-libs and BlueZ-utils 3.9

Newer versions of BlueZ! This was part of my failed attempt to get the Zaurus talking to a Wii Remote. As a side effect, however, you can now use bluetooth HID devices with pdaXrom.

This will probably only work with the 2.6 kernel betas - don't know about beta3 or pdaxii13. I'd love to hear about how well they work!

BlueZ Homepage

9

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Roadmap For Pdaxrom?

« on: March 07, 2007, 02:36:37 am »

Sounds like a lot of work.  Please keep us posted on your progress if you can. Many of us (particularly myself) could really benefit from more documentation on this process.
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To that end, I've started a [a href=\"http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Etched_Marble]Wikia Scratchpad[/url] and a blog to keep track of everything. Aside from college and work, I have a couple of other side projects (namely, videogame programming) so I can't guarantee I'll be updating at a rate everyone will like, but at least I'll be updating. The whole point is to create a trail that motivated people can follow to find out how a Linux system works.

I'm calling the whole thing the "Etched Marble" experiment. The name is supposed to reflect the fact that I'll be configuring everything to run Enlightenment DR17.

Aaaaand of course, I'm gonna stay active in the pdaXrom community. Which reminds me, I compiled some more up-to-date versions of BlueZ...

10

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Roadmap For Pdaxrom?

« on: March 06, 2007, 11:54:42 am »

3. Why didn't you try to get on the pdaX dev team?
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Well, when the call was issued, I didn't know nearly as much about pdaXrom's internals as I do now. That, and I'm not confident I can keep up with more experienced devs.

Obviously, I need to play around with OpenEmbedded a lot more - I've tried it in the past, but never got around to fiddling with any configurations. I'm going to keep pursuing my own avenue (basically Linux from scratch) as an educational endeavor.

I'd really like to thank the pdaXrom team for porting U-Boot - makes things vastly easier.

11

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Roadmap For Pdaxrom?

« on: March 06, 2007, 11:16:37 am »

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/ already has that (and more), and it was used to bootstrap the debian eabi port you linked to as well.
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I've checked out Angstrom, but couldn't get it to do anything useful - there's not enough documentation, and its X implementation is weird.

Actually, this reminds me of one of the big reasons I use pdaXrom in the first place - OpenEmbedded's X server can't let apps go fullscreen, and it can only display at 640x480. This makes it absolutely horrible for video, emulation, and games. It's also a lot slower at redrawing, for some reason. Angstrom might fix these problems in the future, but there's no guarantee, and I'm not inclined to wait.

12

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Roadmap For Pdaxrom?

« on: March 06, 2007, 01:32:58 am »

I realize that I'm asking a REALLY big question here, but I also want to make sure I don't end up doing a lot of work for nothing.

From what I've seen, pdaXrom is using some pretty old software - glibc 2.2, XFree86, gcc 3.6, etc. These are all pretty fundamental subsystems, so I can't just compile a new version and drop it in. This is causing me trouble because some of the software I'm trying to port over (especially CWiid) rely on features only available in the newer versions.

What I seem to be drifting towards now is developing yet another Zaurus ROM, with everything compiled natively (I am very patient). Thanks to u-boot, this is actually quite doable, the only thing holding me up so far is making a kernel that can boot properly (almost there!). The thing is, I'd rather NOT start a project altogether seperate from pdaXrom, because I'm going to have to borrow a lot of code from pdaXrom to make it work, and because I have a bit of loyalty

So, my specific questions are:

-Is the pdaXrom team even thinking about updating glibc, switching to xorg, and building with gcc 4.1/EABI yet?

-Is anyone else interested in a more bleeding-edge, pdaXrom-like distro?

-If I manage something useable, will it be possible to merge it back in to pdaXrom somewhat? (I'd be in charge of keeping it compatible, of course.)



(For those of you who missed the memo, EABI is totally awesome.)

13

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Mpd And Friends

« on: December 05, 2006, 12:14:21 am »

Can you provide a mpd.conf so that the music stored on /mnt/cf2 can be played ?
I am using beta3 as root.

My ipk installs a sample mpd.conf to /etc. It's well commented, so should be easy to understand. Everything you need should be in the first block of settings. I don't know your exact setup, so I encourage you to edit it on your own. Keep in mind that MPD will fail if any of the directories it needs to write to don't exist - I would actually consider this a bug. I'll see about filing a report

and another question:
I'm still looking for a graphical player which is able to play shoutcast streams.

Very good question! Made me find a feature I didn't know about. MPD can handle streams, so therefore, glurp can as well. Just open the playlist dialogue and click the plus sign, then select "add URL". Conversely, if you install MPC (which you should anyway, even if you plan on using glurp) just type "mpc add <url>".

MPD is also capable of creating shoutcast/icecast streams on its own, though I haven't enabled this in my build. I'm working on a more complete build, though certain aspects of pdaXrom are getting in my way.

14

Zaurus - pdaXrom / New Packages Announcement

« on: December 04, 2006, 02:52:14 pm »

MPD and friends - homepage
mpc_0.12.0_armv5tel.ipk
mpd_0.12.1_armv5tel.ipk
glurp_0.11.6_armv5tel.ipk

Low-power music playing goodness! This version of MPD just has Tremor (Vorbis) and MAD (mp3) support, so it should run without any extra packages. Allows gapless playback and crossfading on the Zaurus.

You need to edit /etc/mpd.conf before it'll run.

If anybody wants support for more formats (FLAC, AAC, Musepack, and Mod are possible) just send me a message and I'll see about doing an updated version.

MPC is a scriptable, command-line client for MPD. Glurp is a GTK+2 based client, and is very nice to use - however, it constantly polls the daemon for information about the current song, so it takes up a notable number of CPU cycles to have it running. The music will keep playing if you close it, though (one of the main advantages of MPD).

You can also use Glurp/MPC to control MPD on a remote host - it's a simple setting in Glurp, and you just need to set the MPD_HOST variable for MPC.
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15

Zaurus - pdaXrom / New Packages Announcement

« on: September 27, 2006, 02:56:29 am »

GnGeo 0.7

Peponas made a new version of everyone's favorite Neo Geo emulator

This time, the binary is stripped, so it should take a little bit less RAM.

Still meaning to set up a repository. I'm also going to see about making an ipk for the Universal BIOS. Also need to get Epiphany working

UPDATE: The Universal BIOS ipk is a no-go, as their license explicity prohibits redistibution. However, you can get it here: UniBIOS download page
Just unzip to /usr/local/share/gngeo and run gngeo with --system unibios. Makes playing games a lot easier.

DOUBLE UPDATE: Seems the Universal BIOS actually doesn't work on the Zaurus. Which is very odd, because it works just fine on my PPC desktop, so it can't be a processor issue. PM me if you can get it working; if you can't, well, you can get the necessary BIOS files from any complete MAME set (neogeo.zip, unzip to /usr/local/share/gngeo again).

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