Cacko Qtopia 1.20 missing "ar"

[stupkid]

Has anyone else noticed that the Cacko Qtopia 1.20 ROM is missing the ar command?  The link is there, but busybox was not compiled with the ar applet.  Does anyone know where I might find a binary of ar or some other way of getting ar?

Thanks!

[dtruchan]

ar is in binutils, you can find it here

[toadatrix]

I understand that ar has something to do with new format ipk files.  Could you please explain how it can be used to reformat an otherwise uninstallable ipk so that it can be installed on the Cacko ROM.  Thanks.

[toadatrix]

I installed binutils on my C860 with the Cacko ROM (v1.20).  I had a package called bing.ipk that didn\'t show up in the add/remove software utility.  I tried running the following after installing binutils:

    ar -x bing.ipk

It just gave me an error message saying \"x: applet not found\".  So how do I get ar to work after installing binutils?  Thanks.

[jerrybme]

I had a package called bing.ipk that didn\'t show up in the add/remove software utility.

That may be an ipk that was packaged for the OZ distribution which uses a different version of ipkg. So it doesn\'t show up in the GUI. Try ZSI for the ipkg package that installs OZ packages on Sharp based ROMs. You have to use the command line to install.

Something like # ipkg-new install /wherever/whatever.ipk

Additionally, if you just want to see what\'s in the ipk or extract the binary or manually install it. Have you tried #tar -xzvf whatever.ipk ?
That should extract the binary, data.tar.gz & control.tar.gz

I can\'t remember if the above works on OZ ipks, I know it does on Sharp based ipks.

Good luck,

Jerry

[toadatrix]

I installed the ipkg package to allow me to use ipkg-new to install OZ packages on my C860 running the new Cacko ROM (v1.2 March 5).  When I tried to run it to install a file I got \"invalid magic\".  What does that mean and what can I do about it?

[stupkid]

The \"ar\" issue on Cacko is this...

There is a link to busybox as /usr/bin/ar.  Busybox on the Cacko image was not built with the ar applet.  So, everytime you run the ar command from /usr/bin/ar you are going to get \"applet not found\".  This is a bug in the Cacko Qtopia image.  I recommend that you rm the link to busybox under /usr/bin/ar and then try the binutils, dev_img, or some other way of getting a working ar binary.

To convert the OZ packages to work on Sharp ROMs I have noticed that some are ar archives and some are tarballs.  Assuming that the binaries in the package will work on Sharp based ROMs you  can extract the contents of the package with \'ar -x whatever.ipk\' or \'\'tar xvf whatever.ipk\'.  This should result in three files the current directory control.tar.gz, data.tar.gz, and debian-binary.  The data.tar.gz contains the files, control.tar.gz contains package description, and debian-binary has the package version info.  Run the following to create a Sharp package:

tar cf - ./control.tar.gz ./data.tar.gz ./debian-binary | gzip -9 -c ] whatever_arm.ipk

As for the ipk-new install, I haven\'t tried that yet.  So, I have no suggestions.

Hope this helps.

[toadatrix]

stupkid,

Thanks for your suggestions.  Despite being a relative newbie to linux, I think I understand what you are saying.  What confuses me is that I installed binutils, but I couldn\'t figure out how to use it or see what, if anything, it did.  How do you use/run binutils after installing it?  Do I need to manually set up some kind of link to it or what?  Also, what is dev_img?  Thanks.

[Stubear]

binutils is not A program, it is a collection of small programs such as \"ar\" that is common on linux/unix systems. For a list of programs in side the binutils package run \"ipkg files binutils\".

dev_img is an image file containing all the files necessary to compile/develop on the Z.  It needs to be mounted before you can access any of the files on it.
Hint: try zgcc instead it seems to be more complete development environment.