Problems With Pdaxrom 1.1.0beta3 Sl-c3100

[daniel3000]

Hello,

opening a new thread for discussion about several problems I have with pdaXrom 1.1.0beta3 on the SL-C3100.

Flashed it with 121MB root fs size.

* Setting date and time:
After a suspend it always falls back to some date like August 17th 2005 and time 23:50 or similar. I have tried setting the time via the GUI and via "date -s" command.
When I set the time via date -s prior to "startx", it does not suspend and reports the time correctly. But after a reboot (without startx in between), it falls back to Aug 17 00:24:54 UTC 2005!
(Seems as if two parallel times are counting: a hardware clock which is not updated when using time -s and the software clock which uses the date -s time... I have seen something like that on MS-DOS machines before)
EDIT: This issue is solved:
I had to stop the atd daemon in order to let the hwclock tool access /dev/rtc. then, after setting the software time with "date -s", a "hwclock --systohc" also set the hw clock correctly, and the time survives a reboot!


* After setting the time with date -s or the GUI, the Z suspends. When using the GUI it wakes up again, when using date -s it doesn't.

* The Z sometimes suspends without me having told it to and no suspend timeout could have elapsed. Maybe has to do with date/time issues (timeouts running too quickly?)

* When installing packages via the ipkg command or package manager GUI, the root fs fills up and packages cannot be installed because IPK files are stored in the root fs before they are installed. Any way to tell the package manager to use another temp storage for the IPK files?

* When installing using the ipkg install [packagename] command, I often get 404 errors when it tries to download package with name "__.ipk". Why does it try that?
I have set up quite some feeds and with "ipkg update" they are correctly read in, no communication errors when updating.

* Sometimes after a suspend the taskbar applets are almost all gone (including the clock). Only the card eject applet is still there.  What could be the reason?

* Once on poweron after a suspend the GUI was not operable at all. Time counted on the clock and mouse cursor moved when I moved the USB mouse, but nothing else worked. Even after subsequent suspend / wakeup cycles this didn't change. required a reset. (Not even Ctrl-Alt-Del etc. worked).

* After installing kdepim/pi 2.2.7, kopi-apm and atd (dependency of kopi-apm), kopi alarms do NOT wake up the zaurus (ko/pi running, Z suspended, ko/pi configured to use internal alarm feature). Did I miss something or does this not work reliably?
EDIT: This is solved now with the issue above setting date and time. Alarm now works!

* Where to start if I want to develop on-board (mainly for compiling ready-made console applications such as mutt, nano etc.)? Is it snough to install the relevant packages such as gcc, make etc.? Or is there an all-in-one package somewhere?


...well, if I cannot resolve some of these problems, I may have to switch back to Cacko again, because I need a reliable machine. I need my calendar and contacts one keystroke away, but I'd have found it nice to have a full-featured X system as well because of the compatibility and the large software base which can be used. So please, could you help me with these issues? It would be so nice if I could stay with pdaXrom!

Once everything is up and running I will provide a detailed description of all problems and solutions, and my setup in general, similar to the Cacko description I have published here:
http://www.daniel-hertrich.de/zaurus/zps

Thanks a lot
daniel

[daniel3000]

One more issue:
How to enable the mouse scroll wheel? It would be nice if, like in Cacko, it would allow me to scroll in agenda views in KO/PI or on the console or in text documents...

[ZDevil]

Hi. Maybe not of much help. Just a few quick replies from a dummy.

Flashed it with 121MB root fs size.

Same here. I did it all the time for all versions. No problem so far. My machine is C1000.

* Setting date and time:
After a suspend it always falls back to some date like August 17th 2005 and time 23:50 or similar. I have tried setting the time via the GUI and via "date -s" command.
When I set the time via date -s prior to "startx", it does not suspend and reports the time correctly. But after a reboot (without startx in between), it falls back to Aug 17 00:24:54 UTC 2005!
(Seems as if two parallel times are counting: a hardware clock which is not updated when using time -s and the software clock which uses the date -s time... I have seen something like that on MS-DOS machines before)
* After setting the time with date -s or the GUI, the Z suspends. When using the GUI it wakes up again, when using date -s it doesn't.

Date and time setting work perfectly for me. Both the GUI and the date -s command work as expected. (Date and time fall back to 1st Jan 1970 under Beta4 after reboot, though.)

* The Z sometimes suspends without me having told it to and no suspend timeout could have elapsed. Maybe has to do with date/time issues (timeouts running too quickly?)

No issue in my case. Suspend and resume both work normally.

* When installing packages via the ipkg command or package manager GUI, the root fs fills up and packages cannot be installed because IPK files are stored in the root fs before they are installed. Any way to tell the package manager to use another temp storage for the IPK files?

Did you try to select the destination in the top right ("Install On: ...") of the Package Manager GUI?

* When installing using the ipkg install [packagename] command, I often get 404 errors when it tries to download package with name "__.ipk". Why does it try that?
I have set up quite some feeds and with "ipkg update" they are correctly read in, no communication errors when updating.

Do you mean xxx_armv5tel.ipk?  Simply xxx.ipk is for Sharp/Cacko.

* Sometimes after a suspend the taskbar applets are almost all gone (including the clock). Only the card eject applet is still there.  What could be the reason?

How about change the window manager and desktop?  I highly recommend icewm (with the
very nice configuration tools compiled by igorekk here: https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=18283 ) + Rox desktop (for instance, see http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/jedhead/static...ic050213-150726 ). I am beginning to like it on my newly (re)flashed Beta3.  

* Once on poweron after a suspend the GUI was not operable at all. Time counted on the clock and mouse cursor moved when I moved the USB mouse, but nothing else worked. Even after subsequent suspend / wakeup cycles this didn't change. required a reset. (Not even Ctrl-Alt-Del etc. worked).

No issue here. So can't help. Sorry ....

* After installing kdepim/pi 2.2.7, kopi-apm and atd (dependency of kopi-apm), kopi alarms do NOT wake up the zaurus (ko/pi running, Z suspended, ko/pi configured to use internal alarm feature). Did I miss something or does this not work reliably?

This is also what I am concerned about. Whether the alarm is working or not would be the deciding factor for me to fall back to KO/Pi. Otherwise I may stick with the speedy and easy JPilot.      To my mind, the Palm PIM data format is relatively easy to handle and exchange with various applications. There are a non-GTK and a GTK2 version available in the forums and the feeds.  

* Where to start if I want to develop on-board (mainly for compiling ready-made console applications such as mutt, nano etc.)? Is it snough to install the relevant packages such as gcc, make etc.? Or is there an all-in-one package somewhere?

I know barely the ins and outs of compilation, but I still manage to use the native SDK to compile some small nice apps. Just mount the zgcc image (and if necessary change the paths in /etc/profile to match the version number of the zgcc), turn swapfile on, and you are ready to build things on the fly. It's really big fun!  

...well, if I cannot resolve some of these problems, I may have to switch back to Cacko again, because I need a reliable machine. I need my calendar and contacts one keystroke away, but I'd have found it nice to have a full-featured X system as well because of the compatibility and the large software base which can be used. So please, could you help me with these issues? It would be so nice if I could stay with pdaXrom!

Agree. I think there are many users (like me) who are not *nix experts or gurus and are eager to use Zaurus for work, study and all sorts of practical purposes. It's not that they are particularly ignorant or stupid. It's just that different people have differet needs and not everyone in the world is (and should be) a natural born hacker.  (Of course learning and being able to tweak and get thiings work is in itself part of the great fun...    )

Once everything is up and running I will provide a detailed description of all problems and solutions, and my setup in general, similar to the Cacko description I have published here: http://www.daniel-hertrich.de/zaurus/zps
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=137774\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Oh, please go ahead! Handy tips for users (especially beginners and non-gurus) are always badly needed.  Thanks in advance!  

[ZDevil]

EDIT: This issue is solved:
I had to stop the atd daemon in order to let the hwclock tool access /dev/rtc. then, after setting the software time with "date -s", a "hwclock --systohc" also set the hw clock correctly, and the time survives a reboot!
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=137767\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

So what about the atd daemon then? You still need that to get the alarm to work, right? Thanks!

P.S. Dunno why my post above turns into a mess in display. Sorry for that.

[daniel3000]

Date and time setting work perfectly for me. Both the GUI and the date -s command work as expected. (Date and time fall back to 1st Jan 1970 under Beta4 after reboot, though.)

I have solved this issue now. See original post's EDIT. :-)

No issue in my case. Suspend and resume both work normally.

good. So it should work. Probalby my problems had to do with that date/time issue. Will have to observe that.

Did you try to select the destination in the top right ("Install On: ...") of the Package Manager GUI?

Sorry, I was not clear.
I don't want to install the IPK contents somewhere else. They still should go to the root fs. I just want the package manager to temporarily store the IPK files somewhere else. The manager downloads the IPK and stores it (in flash, currently) then it installs the IPK and deletes it again.
If I have only 16MB left in the root fs and it tries to download and install a 9MB package, it will be able to download it, but will not be able to install it afterwards, because only 7MB are still free.

Do you mean xxx_armv5tel.ipk?  Simply xxx.ipk is for Sharp/Cacko.

No. I mean literally "__.ipk" (two underscores dot IPK).
I have searched google and found a few hits, but nothing helped me to eolve that problem.

How about change the window manager and desktop?  I highly recommend icewm (with the
very nice configuration tools compiled by igorekk here: https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=18283 ) + Rox desktop (for instance, see http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/jedhead/static...ic050213-150726 ). I am beginning to like it on my newly (re)flashed Beta3. 

I'll probably do that some day, but not yet. I have first to find the essential software I need, make it work, then care about look and feel and fix issues like that which are not that essential.

This is also what I am concerned about. Whether the alarm is working or not would be the deciding factor for me to fall back to KO/Pi. Otherwise I may stick with the speedy and easy JPilot.      To my mind, the Palm PIM data format is relatively easy to handle and exchange with various applications. There are a non-GTK and a GTK2 version available in the forums and the feeds. 

After fixing the date/time issue, a test alarm worked well, even when the Z was in suspend.
I think I have to take care that KO/PI is always running, i.e. never close it, othrwise the Z may be woken up by atd but the alarm will not ring.
Will have to observe that now.


Thanks for your thoughts!

daniel

[daniel3000]

EDIT: This issue is solved:
I had to stop the atd daemon in order to let the hwclock tool access /dev/rtc. then, after setting the software time with "date -s", a "hwclock --systohc" also set the hw clock correctly, and the time survives a reboot!
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=137767\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

So what about the atd daemon then? You still need that to get the alarm to work, right? Thanks!
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=137780\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yes. I must restart atd after setting the time.
Probably the Date/Time applet in pdaxrom should check for atd and handle it (stopping, then setting time, then restarting). I'll look into that later. I think I have to learn a lot of Python in order to be able to change such things :-]

daniel

[daniel3000]

How can I enable German Umlauts with Fn-o, Fn-a, Fn-u and the "ß" with Fn-s?

thanks
daniel

[daniel3000]

When I install Meanie's pdaXQTrom packages
thunderbird
firefox

I get problems:
firefox, called form console, just quits without any message on stdout or stderr.
thunderbird reports

Code: [Select]

/usr/lib/thunderbird-1.0.7/run-mozilla.sh: line 158: 5849 Illegal instruction
    "$prog" ${1+"$@"}
What could that mean?

gnumeric first cried for libgoffice, after installing the goffice package in meanies feed, it now wants libgsf. We'll see...
gnumeric is a must-have for me. Is there another version directly compiled for pdaxrom?

Abiword 2.4.4-2 by meanie works nicely after installing the libiconv-1.9.2 package from the feeds. Otherwise it reports missing library libiconv.so.2.

Are there versions of these applicatoins compiled for pdaxrom with the libc iconv functions instead of using libiconv?

Thanks
daniel

[desertrat]

EDIT: This issue is solved:
I had to stop the atd daemon in order to let the hwclock tool access /dev/rtc. then, after setting the software time with "date -s", a "hwclock --systohc" also set the hw clock correctly, and the time survives a reboot!

I made a little script to fix the date:

Code: [Select]

/etc/rc.d/init.d/atd stop
sleep 3
rm -rf /etc/localtime
ntpdate pool.ntp.org
hwclock --systohc
hwclock --utc
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/SOME/ZONENAME /etc/localtime
/etc/rc.d/init.d/atd startI run it now and again when I'm on a network.

* The Z sometimes suspends without me having told it to and no suspend timeout could have elapsed. Maybe has to do with date/time issues (timeouts running too quickly?)

Almost the same problem here, except that the screen blanks out instead of suspending. This is despite the fact that I have set the suspend and screen off times to zero minutes for both battery and AC power.

* When installing packages via the ipkg command or package manager GUI, the root fs fills up and packages cannot be installed because IPK files are stored in the root fs before they are installed. Any way to tell the package manager to use another temp storage for the IPK files?

Download ipk manually and use the command line to install, it's quicker anyway - the gui has to read the info about the installed packages.

* Sometimes after a suspend the taskbar applets are almost all gone (including the clock). Only the card eject applet is still there.  What could be the reason?

Has already been suggested, use icewm. I made the switch to icewm when I upgraded from beta1 to beta3. Now I'm not sure what is responsible, beta3 or icewm, but the system has been much more stable, I can go for weeks without lockups. Now the most common reason why I need to reboot is because of Firefox (see below). Also suspend and resume times are a lot quicker. With matchbox, when resuming it seems to restart the WM so the apps gets redrawn etc and takes ages when you have a number of apps opened.

* Where to start if I want to develop on-board (mainly for compiling ready-made console applications such as mutt, nano etc.)? Is it snough to install the relevant packages such as gcc, make etc.? Or is there an all-in-one package somewhere?

As mentioned, just the get mountable image it's convenient and very easy to setup. You can also install the required packages separately but that will eat into your root fs.

I get problems:
firefox, called form console, just quits without any message on stdout or stderr.
thunderbird reports

Code: [Select]

/usr/lib/thunderbird-1.0.7/run-mozilla.sh: line 158: 5849 Illegal instruction
   "$prog" ${1+"$@"}

I sometimes get a similar error with Firefox - it crashes and when I restart it I get that error. Unfortunately the only thing I know that "fixes" it is a reboot

-- cheers

[ZDevil]

How can I enable German Umlauts with Fn-o, Fn-a, Fn-u and the "ß" with Fn-s?
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I suppose that can be done straightforwardly by modifying /etc/X11/kb/akita.xmodmap .

When I install Meanie's pdaXQTrom packages
thunderbird
firefox
I get problems:
firefox, called form console, just quits without any message on stdout or stderr.

I use the firefox package from the official Beta1 feed ( [a href=\"http://mail.pdaxrom.org/download/1.1.0beta1/Zaurus-7x0-860/feed/]http://mail.pdaxrom.org/download/1.1.0beta...s-7x0-860/feed/[/url] ), and not Meanie's pdaXQTrom version. It runs well. Can be called from console successfully. Startup can take only less than half a minute.

Abiword 2.4.4-2 by meanie works nicely after installing the libiconv-1.9.2 package from the feeds. Otherwise it reports missing library libiconv.so.2.
Are there versions of these applicatoins compiled for pdaxrom with the libc iconv functions instead of using libiconv?

I also found that many existing useful apps still depend on libiconv and have to be recompiled to use libc iconv.  

I don't want to install the IPK contents somewhere else. They still should go to the root fs. I just want the package manager to temporarily store the IPK files somewhere else. The manager downloads the IPK and stores it (in flash, currently) then it installs the IPK and deletes it again.
If I have only 16MB left in the root fs and it tries to download and install a 9MB package, it will be able to download it, but will not be able to install it afterwards, because only 7MB are still free.

It seems the downloads will go to /home/tmp/ipkg. Perhaps a symlink to somewhere else will do?

[InSearchOf]

QUOTE(daniel3000 @ Aug 8 2006, 12:13 PM)
I don't want to install the IPK contents somewhere else. They still should go to the root fs. I just want the package manager to temporarily store the IPK files somewhere else. The manager downloads the IPK and stores it (in flash, currently) then it installs the IPK and deletes it again.
If I have only 16MB left in the root fs and it tries to download and i[]nstall a 9MB package, it will be able to download it, but will not be able to install it afterwards, because only 7MB are still free.

Change this....
dest tmpinst /home/tmp/ipkg/inst
to
dest tmpinst /mnt/*device*/*tmp/ipkg/inst

or just /mnt/*device/ whereever... in your /etc/ipkg.conf...

It is the very last line

Late

[daniel3000]

Great! Thank you guys for all the valuable feedback. Now I'll have to try around.
I will create NAND backups now and then when I have a clean setup, so I can always go back to the last clean setup without having to do everything again.
Saved me on ehour of work already, when I tried to install a selection of packages from the feeds, which was oviously too large. The root fs was full, and I don't know if the package manager quits cleanly in such a state, so I reflashed the NAND backup and restarted installing :-)

Now I install in smaller chunks and will install less important things to SD.

I'll report about my progress here.

One question, though:
I have added a lot of feeds to ipkg.conf, this results in some packages being listed four times in the "Available" tab of the GUI-based package manager.
Is there a way to control from which feed such a package is installed if only one of the four occurrences is chosen? Do the packages with the same name and version differ in the different feeds?
I am afraid that this method of installing packages may install incompatible versions, e.g. if it takes the "kustreader" package from the 7x0-8x0 beta 1 feed rather than from teh Cxx00 beta3 feed (jsut an example).

How can this issue be solved (or does it have to be solved at all)?

Thanks so much
daniel

[adf]

my workaround has always been to add feeds gradually. I start with the machine feed (for me and you 3100) add all the software I want, then add the general feed, add software from them, then add the contribs (cutnpaste--there are a lot of 'em) etc.

kind of a pain, especially as you'll want to install lots o stuff you might not need from the 1st feed or 2 just in case.

[daniel3000]

my workaround has always been to add feeds gradually. I start with the machine feed (for me and you 3100) add all the software I want, then add the general feed, add software from them, then add the contribs (cutnpaste--there are a lot of 'em) etc.

kind of a pain, especially as you'll want to install lots o stuff you might not need from the 1st feed or 2 just in case.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=137871\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I considered such a way, but there are dependencies which can only be resolved if all the feeds are in the list at once.

Well, for now I think I have to hope the packages are correct.

daniel

[daniel3000]

Most applications I start start in a way that the window is large and doesn't fit the screen or that the window is smaller than the screen.

Is there a way to tell the window manager that aplcation XY should be started in a maximised, i.e. fitted to screen, window?

Thanks
daniel