What Is The Oz Boot Process?

[mitt]

I would like to just boot to a prompt in the console, without ever running GPE or OPIE.  Then at my own leisure run them.  I can't find anything that explains the boot process of openzaurus.

Also I was wondering, I typed "killall gpe*" in the console in GPE just a bit ago and it exited GPE to the console, but now after I've rebooted I try the same thing and it doesn't kill anything, just says no processes were killed.  Anyone know why?

[mitt]

Ah hah, I've figured out an ok solution.

To cleanly exit gpe you need to make a little script that runs:

/etc/rc0.d/K99gpe-dm stop
/bin/login

If you don't run "login" it probably will just sit there after it exits gpe.

If you don't want GPE to start up at all, just edit the /etc/rc0.d/K99gpe-dm script.

Comment out the line "/usr/bin/gpe-dm" and add "login".  So:

#/usr/bin/gpe-dm
/bin/login

Then when it boots it will do a console login.  This probably isn't the best solution, because it sort of gets stuck running the K99gpe-dm script (you can see it in "top") an I imagine that some other scripts after it don't get run until that one finishes.  So, probably, just commenting that gpe-dm line out is a good first step, then finding the last script that is run on boot, and putting /bin/login at the end of it would be the best thing.

But with this solution all the hardware works, anyways.  Just run "gpe-dm" to load gpe.

I am using debian pocketworkstation and it runs smoother now.  I enabled X11forwarding for the sshd server (see /etc/ssh/sshd_config and ssh_config) so I can ssh to myself (127.0.0.1) from within the debian environment and connect to the pure openzaurus environment.  From there I can run any of GPE's programs, because it forwards all the graphics to debian's X server, which is very handy for running "gpe-conf" to configure the light and sound.  I actually ran "gpe-login" through ssh and it gave me a windowed login screen and it even loaded up my gpe navigational bar at the bottom of my screen.

Has anyone tried http://people.debian.org/~mdz/zaurus/index.html?  It's a more pure debian install that directly accesses the hardware (uses parts of openzaurus).  I don't think it works very well yet with the zaurus hardware, so I'm afraid to try it.

[lardman]

I tried it a long time ago - it's rather old you may have noticed, in fact I think it's still running the 2.4.6 kernel.

Give it a go and see is I suppose the best choice, however I'd be interested to know what you want from debian that's not available for OZ (I know there are things, just want to get an idea of what people want, etc.)


Si

[Hrw]

OpenZaurus use normal SysV init system.

edit /etc/init.d/gpe-dm script and change 'start' to 'istart' so it won't be started. Then you will need to run "/etc/init.d/gpe-dm istart" to get GPE started.

OPIE initscript has 5s keypause when you can abort start with keypress.

[koen]

OpenZaurus use normal SysV init system.

edit /etc/init.d/gpe-dm script and change 'start' to 'istart' so it won't be started. Then you will need to run "/etc/init.d/gpe-dm istart" to get GPE started.

OPIE initscript has 5s keypause when you can abort start with keypress.
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why not use 'update-rc.d'? That's the tool for the job.

[Hrw]

good point koen

[mitt]

Well, I've got another question here.  I'm very disapointed in the audio output, and I think it might be a problem with gpe.  I made a simple little program and compiled it in debian that uses portaudio.  It just plays sine waves and hardly does any calculations.  It barely works in the debian pocketworkstation thing; I have to put it down to 11025 kHz or else it will be really choppy sounding or freeze the system.  I tried it in GPE (i put the libportaudio.so file and whatnot where it had to go) and it ran but it was even choppy sounding at 11025 (and that's on a fresh boot without debian running in the background).

I run the same program on my pentium II 300mHz with 64mb memory and it only takes up about 2% of the CPU and I run it at 44kHz with multiple sine waves.  On the zaurus at 11kHz it takes up to 80% or more CPU and it doesn't sound very good.

Then, I got mpg321 into debian pocketworkstation and it can barely play an mp3.  I try to get it to play a 44kHz stereo mp3 and it chugs out the song choppy and slow.  I haven't tried it in GPE yet because I don't want to bother with moving all the libs for mpg321, but if it's like my little portaudio sine wave app, it will be even worse in GPE.  Also in GPE I couldn't get the memo recorder to work.  It would say it was recording and then on playback it would play weird screechy sounds.  However, the audio worked fine for me with the sharp ROM.

I assume other people out there are using standard OZ 3.5.3 with GPE and getting the mp3's to play well?

[lardman]

I run the same program on my pentium II 300mHz with 64mb memory and it only takes up about 2% of the CPU and I run it at 44kHz with multiple sine waves. On the zaurus at 11kHz it takes up to 80% or more CPU and it doesn't sound very good.

Sound like it may well be trying to use floating point instructions (and there's no hw fp on the Zaurus).

Then, I got mpg321 into debian pocketworkstation and it can barely play an mp3. I try to get it to play a 44kHz stereo mp3 and it chugs out the song choppy and slow.

See above.

I haven't tried it in GPE yet because I don't want to bother with moving all the libs for mpg321, but if it's like my little portaudio sine wave app, it will be even worse in GPE.

Try one of the integer only players which are par for the course with the Zaurus - on gpe you could try mplayer, gxine, and there's a couple of others whose names escape me atm.

Also in GPE I couldn't get the memo recorder to work. It would say it was recording and then on playback it would play weird screechy sounds. However, the audio worked fine for me with the sharp ROM.

I seem to remember hearing about this before - have you looked at the bugtracker to see what the issue is?

I assume other people out there are using standard OZ 3.5.3 with GPE and getting the mp3's to play well?

Indeed, they play fine using an integer-only codec.


Si

[mitt]

Oh that makes sense about the integers and floats.  My sine wave thing does a lot of float calculations.  I did "apt-get install gxine" and I got it playing the mp3's pretty well, though it was a bit slow because it loaded up so much graphic junk, and it couldnt' play at all with the visualizations.  I'll try compiling mplayer with no front end and see if that makes things better.

The two things I like about debian pocketworkstation that gpe doesn't have, as far as I know, is the "apt-get" thing (though I could live without this, just using ipkg), and I really like being able to have a large desktop that I can zoom out from.

Does anyone know if it's possible to make a larger zoomable desktop in GEP, or for that matter in any X windows system.  I know you can make a larger desktop than your screen, but I don't think you can zoom out and shrink everything down  and anti-alias it all, like with the vnc debian setup.

[lardman]

I did "apt-get install gxine" and I got it playing the mp3's pretty well, though it was a bit slow because it loaded up so much graphic junk, and it couldnt' play at all with the visualizations.

I don't know what the gxine from debian does, it's not necessarily going to work as most debian machines have fp hw available. That said, gxine uses plugins to perform the decoding so if you choose the same plugins from debian as you'd use if you installed it from the OZ feed it ought to work.

The two things I like about debian pocketworkstation that gpe doesn't have, as far as I know, is the "apt-get" thing (though I could live without this, just using ipkg), and I really like being able to have a large desktop that I can zoom out from.

apt-get is available in OE I think; the large desktop is something you'd have to implement into matchbox - have a talk to the devs on #gpe, they may be interested in it.

On the other hand, the way your system does zooming & on-screen keyboard is using a VNC viewer, therefore you could implement the same system on top of a GPE install (might be best to patch the X server to provide everything over VNC though rather than having to run a client & server on the same machine.


Si

[mitt]

Yeah, I was thinking that I could just run GPE as a vnc server, like I run debian.

Do you think that there is much slow-down in running the debian thing on top of OZ?  Would it be faster to run GPE through a vnc server than to run pocketworkstation through vnc?  Or I might be able to get the old debian flash image where it directly accesses the hardware, and run that through VNC.  But I don't want to bother with it if it won't be any faster.  

I was wondering with vnc, if when I play an mp3, it gets the sound from the debian thing and then sends it to the z soundcard, adding the extra step of the sound info going through the vnc client before it gets to the hardware.

Also, could you tell me how much CPU is used on your Z for playing a normal mp3?  Mine running gxine is still 70 % or so, but that least it plays.  I think you are probably right about how it isn't meant for handhelds, and that's slowing it down.

[obergix]

I would like to just boot to a prompt in the console, without ever running GPE or OPIE.  Then at my own leisure run them.  I can't find anything that explains the boot process of openzaurus.

Also I was wondering, I typed "killall gpe*" in the console in GPE just a bit ago and it exited GPE to the console, but now after I've rebooted I try the same thing and it doesn't kill anything, just says no processes were killed.  Anyone know why?
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You may use altboot to somehow configure some different boot scripts / options.

Note that it may not be that easy

My 2 cents.

[mitt]

Hey there, I've decided that just editing the in /etc/rc0.d/K99gpe-dm to call "/usr/bin/login" instead of /usr/bin/gpe-dm is a bad idea because there are, I believe, still more things to do in the boot process, which are neglected if you just skip right into login.  Does anyone know if this is true, or does it just go ahead and boot up everything after?  And if it is true, where would be a good spot to call "login".  I've searched through the init scripts and tried to find the last place to put a command but all my attempts seem to have failed.