Pdaxrom1.1.0beta2-akita Post-flash Issues...

[Ragnorok]

- I've read lots of positive things about pdaXrom since RC10, the last time I tried it.  It is much improved, to be sure.  Stability, for one, appears to be nailed.  Despite lots and lots of poking around, it's not crashed, segfaulted, or even hiccoughed one single time.  GOOD FORM!  Suspend works flawlessly, the UI works pretty well, and overall it's plain well done.
- But.  There's always one of those.  (sigh)  Here's my list:

1. Windows, dialogs in particular, still have a habit of painting themselves completely off the screen.  They can usually be moved back, but in some cases, like "QtConfig", are simply too large, and the bottom part is plain not available, including any buttons that may or may not be down there, like "Ok" or "Cancel".  AbiWord (AWESOME program) never shows its status bar, because I suspect it's painted off the screen as well.  Some AbiWord dialogs also appear almost completely off the screen, such that they cannot be moved back, but fortunately when this happend, the "Cancel" button was visible.

2. I have a Symbol Spectrum 24 CF WiFi card that everyone on the forum says should work.  It's the older yellow-sticker "tooth surfer".  Cardctl info says it's a Spectrum24 LA4100, and /etc/pcmcia/spectrum.conf has data in it for that exact card, manfid and all.  Despite what cardctl reports, the UI says there is nothing in the CF slot, and the light never comes on, no matter what I've done so far.  spectrum_cs is loaded, but not bound from what I can tell.

3. The "bundled" software seems a bit weak.  No samba, no PIM (that i've found), no dhcp (for the USB to auto-configure to a desktop).  Since WiFi won't work, I can't download anything.  Since samba isn't present, I can't download it to a desktop and copy it over, though static IP on the desktop makes the Z ping-able.  DNS didn't function, so I couldn't surf via the desktop, which is when I turned to WiFi.  I can't find ftp on it anywhere, nor telnet.  SSH doesn't let me transfer files, AFAIK.  So it's a really cool isolated system, at present.

4. X won't run as a non-root user.  That's apparently fixable, as jerrybme has it working, but I haven't found enough information to get the "desktop" to load as other than root.  While the machine may be a one-user unit, connecting to the 'net as root is just begging for trouble, as far as I'm concerned.

5. Active software doesn't appear on the task bar anywhere.  I can only find things by going to main desktop and clicking "Active Tasks".  That's not a good way to have to do things.

- I'm REALLY impressed with how will pdaXrom "looks and feels", overall.  Very, very impressed.  I'm certain these things are all addressable, solveable, etc, but searching OESF doesn't appear to have yielded any of those solutions.

- First is 'net link, wired or wireless.  Then I can look for samba, KDE/PIM, etc, etc, then I'll at least be back where I was before I flashed pdaXrom, and the PDA will be usable.  After that I can poke at other stuff more or less at my leisure.

- Can some one help me out with this?  Thanks for your time...

[desertrat]

1. Windows, dialogs in particular, still have a habit of painting themselves completely off the screen.  They can usually be moved back, but in some cases, like "QtConfig", are simply too large, and the bottom part is plain not available, including any buttons that may or may not be down there, like "Ok" or "Cancel".

I'm not sure this is something that can be addressed by pdaXrom. In general I find that Qt based programs are much better behaved than gtk ones. The biggest gripe I have about the gtk based programs is the file dialog, which opens at a huge size, is non maximiseable (ie you can't use CTRL-ALT-M to quickly bring it down to size), and it doesn't remember its settings between each invocation!

AbiWord (AWESOME program) never shows its status bar, because I suspect it's painted off the screen as well.  Some AbiWord dialogs also appear almost completely off the screen, such that they cannot be moved back, but fortunately when this happend, the "Cancel" button was visible.

Never had problems with Abiword,  CTRL-ALT-M to maximise the window and next time you start it it'll remember the window size setting. But yes dialogs are still a problem.

The good news is that you should switch to using IceWM (it really is a gem, I really ought to start a new thread expounding its virtues )

The default settings for icewm tells programs to keep their windows and dialogs to within the screen size. Most gtk based programs seems to honour this setting (with the exception of Inkscape which has hard coded it minimum window size).

3. The "bundled" software seems a bit weak.

I agree that the choice of software included in the base install could be better (IMO), but it does get slightly better with each release.

No samba, no PIM (that i've found), no dhcp (for the USB to auto-configure to a desktop).  Since WiFi won't work, I can't download anything.  Since samba isn't present, I can't download it to a desktop and copy it over, though static IP on the desktop makes the Z ping-able.  DNS didn't function, so I couldn't surf via the desktop, which is when I turned to WiFi.  I can't find ftp on it anywhere, nor telnet.  SSH doesn't let me transfer files, AFAIK.  So it's a really cool isolated system, at present.

First of all there is a dhcp client. OK, apart from the comment about no PIM (what do you need a PIM for? that's a job for your PDA (Palm, wince)   ), basically you're saying there is no easy way for you to transfer and install software. Not quite true.

The easiest way which will work with practically all modern desktops is to configure the Z as a usb storage device: if you're using matchbox, go to [System Tools] > [USB], select "Storage" and choose the appropriate disk partition to be used as usb storage.

If you're using a network aware DE such as KDE then an even easier and better way is to use SSH/sftp (yes SSH does allow you to transfer files). The advantage of SSH over say NFS or Samba is that it's "stateless", NFS and Samba does nasty things if you have stuff mounted and your connection breaks.

And as a last resort you could fall back to the modern version of "sneakernet" which uses CF/SD cards instead of floppy disks  

4. X won't run as a non-root user.  That's apparently fixable, as jerrybme has it working, but I haven't found enough information to get the "desktop" to load as other than root.  While the machine may be a one-user unit, connecting to the 'net as root is just begging for trouble, as far as I'm concerned.

The recently released beta3 has much better support for non-root users.

5. Active software doesn't appear on the task bar anywhere.  I can only find things by going to main desktop and clicking "Active Tasks".  That's not a good way to have to do things.

Again, icewm will solve this problem. It is fast, very configurable, full of features, and has a tiny memory footprint.

-- cheers

[Armagon]

1. Windows, dialogs in particular, still have a habit of painting themselves completely off the screen.  They can usually be moved back, but in some cases, like "QtConfig", are simply too large, and the bottom part is plain not available, including any buttons that may or may not be down there, like "Ok" or "Cancel".  AbiWord (AWESOME program) never shows its status bar, because I suspect it's painted off the screen as well.  Some AbiWord dialogs also appear almost completely off the screen, such that they cannot be moved back, but fortunately when this happend, the "Cancel" button was visible.

I'm not sure if you know or not.  You can hold down the Alt button and then click on any part of a window to drag it.  This is still a nuisance when the window is larger than the screen, but it works.  

I do see the status bar for Abiword, especially when it is maximised.

You may find some other useful shortcuts like this on the keyboard and mouse page.

3. The "bundled" software seems a bit weak.  No samba, no PIM (that i've found), no dhcp (for the USB to auto-configure to a desktop).  Since WiFi won't work, I can't download anything.  Since samba isn't present, I can't download it to a desktop and copy it over, though static IP on the desktop makes the Z ping-able.  DNS didn't function, so I couldn't surf via the desktop, which is when I turned to WiFi.  I can't find ftp on it anywhere, nor telnet.  SSH doesn't let me transfer files, AFAIK.  So it's a really cool isolated system, at present.

According to your sig, you have a C1000.  If you go to the USB applet (X menu -> System Tools -> USB), and change it to "Storage", you can specify a storage spot to use (either your SD or CF card.)  Then, it will act like a USB storage device (like a USB key or a digital camera).  You can plug it into a modern OS and it will detect it automatically.  Windows XP does just fine.  Kubuntu 5.10 sees it as eight separate devices, but will happily mount it for you and let you get at your files.  Take a look at the (unfinished) Communicating With Your PC page.

It is indeed possible to use SSH to transfer files.  Actually, you'll use protocols on top of it -- namely SFTP or SCP.  See the Now What section of the Networking with Linux doc.  [And, just yesturday, I figured out how to make my Z access the internet, over USB, with the help of a linux laptop.  I just wrote that up in a newer document - Networking with Linux over USB.

4. X won't run as a non-root user.  That's apparently fixable, as jerrybme has it working, but I haven't found enough information to get the "desktop" to load as other than root.  While the machine may be a one-user unit, connecting to the 'net as root is just begging for trouble, as far as I'm concerned.

I believe this issue is being worked on, and that Beta 3 makes it easier to run things as a non-root user.

5. Active software doesn't appear on the task bar anywhere.  I can only find things by going to main desktop and clicking "Active Tasks".  That's not a good way to have to do things.

Agreed.  You will have to find a different window manager.  XFCE, in particular, looks interesting.

- Can some one help me out with this?  Thanks for your time...
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I'm documenting stuff as fast as I can!

Armagon

[Meanie]

well, I ran into the same annoyances as you did and fixed most on my C3000 and now it happily does everything (well almost, there are still a few enhancements I wanna make) I need. Have a look at this page: http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/custom-pdaxrom.html
The C1000 is similar to the C3x00 so most of the info should be useful to you.

For the usb networking part, it isn't that difficult to setup. I documented it for the Sharp distro, but it should be almost identical for pdaXrom. see here: http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/cus...html#networking

[Ragnorok]

- I knew people here would help me out.  Thanks!!!
- For starters, I didn't know what "Storage" was for.
- Secondly, in my slavish desire to just transfer the files, I didn't even think about "sneakernet".  D'oh!!!
- Thirdly, I haven't forayed into alternate window managers, and didn't realize they would help that much.
- Fourthly, I wasn't even remotely aware that "Alt" would allow window to be dragged from any part of it.  Very nice!  Not a "solution", but certainly a workaround.

- I'll be putting these suggestions to practice today, at least to some measureable degree.  I'm really jazzed about having a real X-based Linux install.  Anton has done simply stunning things with Cacko, but he's limited by the older Qt version, and adherance the Sharp ROM format overall, imho.

- I'm under the impression there is very little FM (of RTFM fame) to be reading for pdaXrom, Armagon not withstanding.  I'll look where he's pointed, but if this impression is incorrect, and there is FM (of RTFM fame) available in general, that could be useful.  Won't look if I don't expect to find!  (vaccuous grin)

- Thanks again!!

[Ragnorok]

- * sigh *

- I'm done.  Snagged a bunch of stuff from the pdaXrom feed, like icewm, and used the "Storage" USB setting to drop them on an SD.  Started off by installing icewm & icewm-pdaxrom.
- This fragged X.  Utterly.  After lots of poking around and finally searching the forum, I got the original mbsession symlinked back and at least X would load again.

- But the "Storage" aspect of the SD went all wonky on me ... I could use it once, then I'd have to reboot to get it to connect again.  It wasn't like this before icewm was installed.

- Then the SD card would mount rw, but as soon as I tried do anything with it ... *poof* ... it says it's ro, and sure enough, even though just after insertion mount says it's rw, now it's ro!  I can't do anything with the SD!

- X seems to use a lot of scripts from /usr/bin, so what I was trying to do is copy the contents of /usr/bin to the SD card, so I could dump that to a desktop and examine things on a full-sized screen.  Then I'd use that research to try to fix icewm.  But I've been thwarted at every turn.

- I'm sure I'll try this again in another six months, because it's certainly much better than it was.  BUT it's still not ready for prime time, imho.  Bundled software is too anemic, it takes far too much twiddling to get more functionality than a really cool desktop, and it appears too unstable to even allow that twiddling to take place.  Nothing ever appears in /var/log messages to indicate what may be wrong, and very little appears on the console.

- I still firmly believe pdaXrom is an awesomely fantastic idea, and will continue track its development very closely.  I only have one Z ... I can't have it offline for days on end to fiddle with this very cool system.

- Bummer.

[desertrat]

Started off by installing icewm & icewm-pdaxrom.
- This fragged X.  Utterly.  After lots of poking around and finally searching the forum, I got the original mbsession symlinked back and at least X would load again.

Sorry, I should've mentioned that the default config for icewm wants to run ROX. If you install all the rox-*.ipk stuff then icewm will start (not sure whether all are needed but I played safe and installed all). Alternatively you could simply edit /usr/bin/icewmsession and change it to use matchbox (uncomment one line and comment another), or if you don't want/need a pretty background just comment out both.

-- cheers

[Ragnorok]

...(snip)...Alternatively you could simply edit /usr/bin/icewmsession and change it to use matchbox (uncomment one line and comment another), or if you don't want/need a pretty background just comment out both.

-- cheers
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- Did this ... no-go.  That's when I restored mbsession.  Icewm simply refused to function, and it refused to generate any errors on the console or in any identifiable log, so it was impossible to figure out why it wasn't working.  It would load the crosshatch X screen, with the "X" cursor, it would sit there for about thirty seconds (during which time I could move the cursor around), then it would simply dump back out.  Again, no errors generated anywhere.  Simply load, wait, bail, repeatably.

- Then the SD thing cropped up, and that was the last straw.  Why would it magically revert to 'ro', when after reboot mount clearly showed 'rw'?  That's the kind of instability I can't tolerate.  X freaking out is one thing, but I could revert that to the base window manager and get it going again.  I can't accept file systems freaking out on me and not allowing me to manipulate their contents.  I didn't change fstab or anything ... the SD just flipped out ... again repeatably, again no errors or logging that I could detect.

- I'm no stranger to Linux, btw.  This system just doesn't appear to generate much in the way of logs.  I admit I didn't look for a syslog daemon to see if I could bump up its log level.  Perhaps I should have, but I didn't think of it until just now.

- But I am very interested in what pdaXrom represents.  I'll hold off a while and give it another go later, after I've read more, and Laze & co have worked on it some more.  Maybe I should have just flashed beta3 instead of beta2?  (shrug)  I'm willing to try that, too, but not right away.  I'll have to wait 'til I have a good block of hours to devote to this again.

- Thanks for your time, and your suggestions...

[karlto]

Hi Ragnorok

Don't give up - I'm sure you'll suddenly find success and it'll all be downhill from there :-)

I haven't tried icewm on pdaXrom, but I use xfce4 all the time and it is really fast, stable, and is much better at resizing and positioning windows than many others. The only caveat is the panel, which is best dealt with by ignoring it and installing fbpanel. Xfce is good because it will install alongside matchbox/openbox without destroying any settings or files - just type a different command to start X with different window managers. See Chero's feed and instructions in this forum.

SD card problems have been common in the past, but I thought they were largely ironed out; perhaps using the later version might help you out with a bug here?

Good luck

Karl