Matchbox Card Applet For Oz

[danboid]

http://bugs.openembedded.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308

Seeing as no comments have been made alongside my bug report other than my own I would presume that nothing has been done about this yet. I've come to highlight this bug again as having the matchbox-cards-applet working and pre-installed on the next OZ/GPE image would do wonders for the useability factor, as anyone who has used this tool under pdaXrom will attest. It eliminates the need to use the commandline when dealing with cards- very important to many (potential) OZ users.

Hopefully I'm just out of the loop here and its been fixed already

[lardman]

I agree this should be installed by default.

I'm not sure of the status though. Have you tried asking on IRC?


Si

[koen]

would do wonders for the useability factor
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Actually, it wouldn't. I tap on the icon and I get a (incomplete) list of cards with a green button besides them. How do I know what will happen when I tap on the item? I tried to tap on the sd item, but suddenly my c700 froze. Apparently it did something bad to my root-on-sd setup. On my ipaq it doesn't show the two pcmcia slots, only one. So how is that an improvement?
It would need to get rewritten to be able to claim 'useaility'.

[lardman]

Indeed, it may also be necessary to stop users from being able to easily eject the internal HDDs.

Anyone fancy learning to do some coding? It's a pretty small program from what I remember, and all in C so easy to understand.


Si

[danboid]

replies at last!  

I'm surprised how long it took to get some kind of response to this which I see as a full-on showstopper. This is a perfect example of how distanced most of the oe devs requirements and uses of a rom are from those of a normal user. Being devs they will use a terminal constantly so managing cards by a command is no big deal to them but your standard sharp/cacko Z user is much less dependant on the cli and I think most would prefer to avoid it totally if possible.

Koen:

What you say is totally true and you've raised yet another flaw of the current mb-card-applet that I forgot in my bug report- it shouldn't show the internal disk (why would you ever want to unmount that?) if present, only the status of the SD and removeable CF slot.

What I do mention in my bug report though is that the mb-card-applet under pdaxrom works just fine so why can't we use the exact same version (although I can't tell you what version that is)? I also mention that the mb-card-applet in 3.5.4.1 is a few versions behind the latest stable release, so maybe just upgrading will fix these problems?

If this app is working out of the box in the next OZ/GPE release then I can guarantee many more OZ converts, such as myself (the missing UK keymap bug would have to be fixed too though)

[koen]

What I do mention in my bug report though is that the mb-card-applet under pdaxrom works just fine so why can't we use the exact same version (although I can't tell you what version that is)? I also mention that the mb-card-applet in 3.5.4.1 is a few versions behind the latest stable release, so maybe just upgrading will fix these problems?
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We can't use the same one as in pdaX, since that would be piracy. The pdaX one contains copyrighted material (like the picture of the cards). The applet also isn't part of matchbox, so your claims of 'a few versions behind the latest stable' are also wrong.
The next thing that is a showstopper is the fact that the pcmcia interface it relies on will be removed in kernel 2.6.18.
To sum it up:

1) it allows people to shoot themselves in the foot
2) only users familiar with the applet know what it does, otherwise goto 1)
3) 'upstream' promotes piracy
4) wouldn't work with recent kernels
5) doesn't show the correct number of slots.

And FWIW, it has been in the feeds for a long time: [a href=\"http://ewi546.ewi.utwente.nl/tmp/hrw/fb/?action=details&pnm=matchbox-applet-cards]http://ewi546.ewi.utwente.nl/tmp/hrw/fb/?a...ox-applet-cards[/url]

[Hrw]

danbold: that applet was once added because someone requested it. If you really use it then extend it with needed features or find someone who will do it for you.

Current pdaX builder contain version 1.0.3 (OZ has 1.0.2) but the only change is usage of sudo to manage cards.

[koen]

danbold: that applet was once added because someone requested it. If you really use it then extend it with needed features or find someone who will do it for you.
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It's a modified version that removed the pirated stuff. Maybe Patrick Steiner, who did the clean-up to get it into OE, would be interested in hacking it further.

[danboid]

1) it allows people to shoot themselves in the foot

As you say, when run under OZ it shows your root drive and lets you try to unmount it. It didn't do this under pdaX so there SHOULD be no problem there.

2) only user familiar with the applet know what it does, otherwise goto 1)

That is more a problem of documentation and the distribution. I only knew such an app existed because I have also tried pdaX. For me the biggest revolution in the usability of X11 came when KDE and GNOME integrated one-click (OK, 2 normally) mounting and unmounting of discs. If they didn't do that well then I would have stuck with FVWM or whatever. OZ

BADLY

needs a tool to perform a similar function with removeable cards if it wants to stand a serious chance of replacing the crappix twins as the Z rom of choice

3) 'upstream' promotes piracy

Again, this is no problem as we could surely find some free graphics or create our own as replacements

4) wouldn't work with recent kernels

How recent? You make it sound as though it should be working with 2.6.17

5) doesn't show the correct number of slots.

Why did it work perfectly under pdaXrom? Is this due to big changes in the 2.6 pcmcia kernel interface?

I would love to help develop a replacement or try patching up this current app to get something working under OZ but unfortunately that is not an option as I don't have a Z. My dad has a c3000 but that is in France with him (as it often is) for another 5 or 6 weeks. He really wants to dump cacko for OZ so he does let me have the odd weekend to try out a new release sometimes but he needs it for his work so can't lend it me to mess with for extended periods. I'm too poor to buy a Z myself right now.

I know its not geared towards PDA use but another option could be using the Devicehandler util that has been developed for use with the ROX desktop. Have any of the OZ devs got to check this out as a potential graphical card management solution?

[Meanie]

use the cardmon applet from the 3.5.4 feed which actually works for unmounting SD cards. The one in the 3.5.4.1 feed is broken!

[danboid]

Thanks for pointing that out meanie, but can cardmon also be used to eject (turn off) and turn back on my CF wifi card? That is the main reason I want a gui card manager.

If cardmon can do all this then it should be installed in the default OZ/GPE image (once they've fixed whatever bug has arisen for it in 3.5.4.1 of course)

[desertrat]

Thanks for pointing that out meanie, but can cardmon also be used to eject (turn off) and turn back on my CF wifi card? That is the main reason I want a gui card manager.

If that's all you want and you don't get any joy with cardmon, then you could simply create a couple of scripts:

cardctl eject <slot # of your wifi card>

&

cardctl insert <slot # of your wifi card>

then map them to a couple of hotkeys and Bob's your uncle. I don't use any of those matchbox applets because they take up far too much precious memory.

[lardman]

use the cardmon applet from the 3.5.4 feed which actually works for unmounting SD cards. The one in the 3.5.4.1 feed is broken!

Isn't cardmon for Opie? We're talking about GPE here afaik.

That is more a problem of documentation and the distribution.

Indeed, feel free to add more docs/workarounds to http://wiki.openzaurus.org (not just for this)

3) 'upstream' promotes piracy

Again, this is no problem as we could surely find some free graphics or create our own as replacements

Someone has to actually get on and do this though...

5) doesn't show the correct number of slots.

Why did it work perfectly under pdaXrom? Is this due to big changes in the 2.6 pcmcia kernel interface?

I don't think pdaX runs on the iPAQ; this may be why.

4) wouldn't work with recent kernels

How recent? You make it sound as though it should be working with 2.6.17

There's no point in putting work into something which will be out of date within a fortnight is the point I think Koen is trying to make.


Si

[danboid]

Isn't cardmon for Opie? We're talking about GPE here afaik.

Yes. we are talking about GPE/X11 here. Is cardmon an Opie app? No use to me then.

Again, this is no problem as we could surely find some free graphics or create our own as replacements. Someone has to actually get on and do this though...

Graphics are nice but far from essential. A little pop-up menu with icons (just text would be fine) displaying the device name and status would be good enough for me, as long as it worked.

I don't think pdaX runs on the iPAQ; this may be why.

Eh? Just where did the iPaq come into this? I understand GPE started life off on ipaq Linux but I don't see how this relates to an app (mb-card-applet) that I saw running perfectly well on a Zaurus version of Linux/X11 (pdaXrom). How hard could it be to get this app working, with or without graphics (a green/red 'light' would do) under recent kernels?

Desertrat has proposed a good idea but even if that idea was implemented in the standard distro it wouldn't be as obvious and user friendly as what I'm proposing here.

Next OZ/GPE release will be a killer if this gets sorted!

[XorA]

I spent half a day looking at the mb-applet-cards code and it just isnt worth rescueing.

It is nasty, hacky, buggy and works by luck more than anything else.