Did you already try myPDA-Zaurus-Edition?

[dhns]

I was using special kernel v14a (currently using v15) from http://tetsu.homelinux.org/zaurus/kernel/ with a C760.
The package installed without error but when I rebooted it crashed, rebooted hung again at the gui. Was able to ssh into the machine and remove the package but qtopia would not start again even after reboot.
When I get some time to tinker I'll try again and take note of the error messages

That is really unexpected.

We do not touch the Qtopia file system or any of the standard libraries. What we do is to add a /home/myPDA file hierarchy and add the launcher Application to /home/QtPalmtop/bin.

The launch procedure is a shell script (/home/QtPalmtop/bin/myPDA.sh) which does the following:

1. telinit 2 to shutdown Qtopia
2. launch the Xserver (from x11zaurus)
3. launch daemons zapmd, ztsd (for the X11 touch screen), gdomap (for distributed objects)
4. launch the window manager
5. launch initial applications
6. sit there and wait for the window manager to quit
7. telinit 5 to reboot Qtopia

So I have no idea yet why the flash image could be touched. A potential source for a system crash migh come from simply using the zapmd, ztsd and x11zaurus binaries for which we have no source codes. They might do harmful things to the kernel we don't know.

One more thought: did you install to a memory card or to internal memory?

If you want to look into log files, the launch script and all applications write their stdout/stderr to /home/myPDA/Library/Logs/Console/theuser/console.log

-- dhns

[amrein]

many thanks for these open comments. We will think about it as we want do create something which is really useful and exciting and not something suggestively great...

If I have misunderstood the part in bold than I appologize.

[dhns]

Oh - did you really have to reflash? And a hard-reset was not sufficient?
That would be a serious issue we have to adress with high priority.

Which kernel and Zaurus model did you use?

-- hns

I was using special kernel v14a (currently using v15) from http://tetsu.homelinux.org/zaurus/kernel/ with a C760. Other than the kerenel and removal of the qm files to give English menus it pretty much a stock C760. Although I have been installing/removing a lot of packages recently while testing.

The package installed without error but when I rebooted it crashed, rebooted hung again at the gui. Was able to ssh into the machine and remove the package but qtopia would not start again even after reboot.

When I get some time to tinker I'll try again and take note of the error messages

We have found one issue that might have caused that result - although it is not to blame directly on myPDA-ZED.

There is a memory leak in the GUI system of myPDA which makes the processes grow and grow until suddenly, the Zaurus runs out of memory. This has the interesting effect that the kernel throws out other (system) processes!

The result depends on which process gets thrown out. If it is a kernel daemon or a GUI part, the Zaurus simply hangs. You might be able to ssh into the Z as the sshd does use parts of the now freed up space. In that case, simply kill the myPDAwm (window manager) and the system should sync and reboot back to Qt.

If you do a (soft) reboot, the file system is not synced. So this might corrupt the file system in memory. And fsck might not be able to repair.

And if the root file system is so damaged, processes may run havoc even touching the flash image - but we have no evidence or verification that this really happened to your Zaurus.

Finally a general note we think is important on this poll/question, "our" myPDA has NOTHING to do with a different project:

* myPDA FileBrowser - http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=523
* myPDA2 - http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=2049
* myPDA Launcher - http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=2110

Thanks again for testing and commenting

* myPDA-Zaurus-Edition - http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1974

-- hns

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myPDA-Zaurus-Edition
The best of two worlds
  http://www.dsitri.de
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[zmike]

I tried an early version but it really didn't run well on the C860 - it seems to be targeted at the 5500/5600 or did at that time.

Does it take advantage of the 640x480 screen now on the new devices?