Current Status Of Tosa In Feb 2010

[James_L]

Allow me to introduce myself, and have been involved with the Zaurus since the SL-5500 came out. (I'm probably the first person to get mplayer working.) I used to run OZ and such, but got interested and involved in other projects, given the lack of support of collie (especially the sd, which finally got working) I recently saw an SL-6000L on ebay, and got it. Alas, the current state of support, wasn't as I thought it was from my looking at various sites.

Currently the status of Zaurus for me, broken down by category:
General:
2.6.29 works, except for usb.
As far as I can tell, there is a conflict due to the way the tc6393 chip is accessed. The chip is only accessed via dma, but ohci-tmio and associated ohci calling it with due to patches, which use dma_*_coherent calls, which can't be called with interrupts disabled. Resulting in basically killing any ability to use it after that. If this were fixed, I would consider it fully usable after the distro specific issues (mostly keymaps) are resolved.

I'm working on tracking down what the problem is, but I honestly have not too high of an expectation of success, given my lack of experience with that portion of

2.6.33-rc8 has a compilation error which I have resolved. However, there are issues with the backlight. See: http://www.mail-archive.com/zaurus-devel@l...g/msg00189.html for more information.

Now, with that angstrom (dev branch):
Opie
Angstrom works mostly with opie, however, keys aren't right (this will be a common theme) Other than that, it works. Networking can be used via the CF slot. Though there isn't a web browser I've gotten working on opie, so I'm not using it. It by far has the best keymap, but even that lacks, as the numlock doesn't work.

X11 (GPE)
Similar situation with opie, though the keymap is also messed up, there are no numeric keys, Fn+ doesn't even work.

Zubuntu:
Using 1.1 (I think, 9.04 based) and the same 2.6.29 kernel most things work, as configured, it will boot such that the touchscreen is rotated in an odd way. Prior to booting, you need to copy /etc/keymap-2.6 from angstrom. You must logout from X. Then run ts_calibrate. The keymaps are messed up badly in X. I have not managed to generate one that works. Currently, I'm messing with Shepard's, which is fairly close, resulting in most keys being displaced one right or left.

According to some people in #ubuntu-arm, 9.04 is the last version for which it might work on armv5, without some serious recompiliation, which they said would take months. (I found that surprising, given how any other build system (gentoo, OE) I'm familiar with would give a usable system within at MOST a week, on anything relatively modern. They seem to have a problem with cross compilation, or something, it wasn't very clear.)

I've tried emailing the guy (cortez) whose blog is omegamoon, unfortunately, I haven't gotten any response. This, if I could get it working, might well be the best way to go.

Sharp ROM:
Works mostly, and what I've mostly been using, due to the usb bug. I have not tried X/Qt.

I'm mostly on freenode IRC as James_L, and frankly, I'd love to help or have other people with tosas help me.

I'd love any thoughts others have.

[undrwater]

You said networking can be used via the CF slot.  Any luck getting the prism2usb working?  I think there are one or two people working sporadically on the Tosa kernel, but it doesn't get much love.  

For usable web browser, I've used e17 / illume with fennec or midori.  Both load and respond acceptably.  

I tried zubuntu as well for a while.  I figured out how to get the screen rotated into protrait by default.  Once I used the base angstrom system then copied the rest of the rootfs from zubuntu over.  That worked pretty well.  All the same problems with the keymapping.  That's why I've liked illume...it provides a nice software keyboard.

Latest problems I've had (couple of months ago),  are the loading of kernel modules...none seem to get loaded, so I've got no sound, and of course no wifi.

For questions about kernel stuff, you can ping Jay7 on #oe (freenode irc).

Do you have the latest english sharp nand btw?  It's a rare commodity around here these days.

[cycojesus]

Hi, nice to see some activity here.

Recently I've slowly started to setup Armedslack on my tosa, on-going effort can be seen @ ArmedZed on github.

For now I have a booting and functional kernel config, correct keymaps for console and Xmodmap, packaging for tslib, zaurusd and some others minor software. ts_calibrate is working, X is working.

At this moment I'm facing 2 major issues :

• touchscreen under X is behaving strangely (mirrored horizontaly and vertically)
• the xmodmap doesn't seem to load under X (tested working in Zubuntu)

My short-term goal is to use it with FBReader (got a package for it already working).

«Voilà», any help/hint concerning the issues would be appreciated

[undrwater]

Recently I've slowly started to setup Armedslack on my tosa, on-going effort can be seen @ ArmedZed on github.

Great!

For now I have a booting and functional kernel config, correct keymaps for console and Xmodmap, packaging for tslib, zaurusd and some others minor software. ts_calibrate is working, X is working.

Which kernel?

At this moment I'm facing 2 major issues :

• touchscreen under X is behaving strangely (mirrored horizontaly and vertically)
• the xmodmap doesn't seem to load under X (tested working in Zubuntu)

have you tried dropping Angstrom's tslibs in place of the ones you compiled?

My short-term goal is to use it with FBReader (got a package for it already working).

Long term goals?  I've got a CF GSM card for data and voice that I'd like to get working...   FBReader would be great tho!

Did you attempt to get sound or wifi working?

[cycojesus]

Recently I've slowly started to setup Armedslack on my tosa, on-going effort can be seen @ ArmedZed on github.

Great!

For now I have a booting and functional kernel config, correct keymaps for console and Xmodmap, packaging for tslib, zaurusd and some others minor software. ts_calibrate is working, X is working.

Which kernel?

Armedslack's glibc (if I understand correctly) expect a kernel > 2.6.31 so I had to make my own which proved surprisingly easy
I started based on OE's 2.6.29 .config
At this moment I have a 2.6.31.12 that I consider good and I'm working on a 2.6.33 (working but the screen looks funny, very dim and maybe flickering or something...)
I'll try with the patch pointed in the first post here ( http://www.mail-archive.com/zaurus-devel@l...g/msg00189.html .)

At this moment I'm facing 2 major issues :

• touchscreen under X is behaving strangely (mirrored horizontaly and vertically)
• the xmodmap doesn't seem to load under X (tested working in Zubuntu)

have you tried dropping Angstrom's tslibs in place of the ones you compiled?

Haven't tried that yet, I suspect more a misconfiguration of X as it's working well with ts_test. I'll try your suggestion, with Angstrom's or Zubuntu's

My short-term goal is to use it with FBReader (got a package for it already working).

Long term goals?  I've got a CF GSM card for data and voice that I'd like to get working...   FBReader would be great tho!

Did you attempt to get sound or wifi working?

Not really any long term plan, just get the thing up, running well and document the process
Armedslack is a straight (official) port of Slackware on ARM so modulo minor ARM specific compilation issues everything possible on Slackware (everything...) is possible on Armedslack. Packaging FBReader was just a matter of using the slackbuilds scripts from slackbuild.org and setting ARCH=arm  I develop the slackbuilds on my laptop (running slackware64) and then package and test directly on the Z. The only thing is that compiling on the Z is slow , some hours for FBReader, so maybe I'll compile in qemu in the future

I didn't try sound and wifi yet. Sound is compiled in the kernel, I'll see if alsamixer shows something. For wifi there's a staging driver in 2.6.33, not tried yet.

Maybe I'll upload the compiled packages somewhere...

EDIT: this zaurus-devel list looks worth the watch http://www.mail-archive.com/zaurus-devel@l...g/msg00096.html

[cycojesus]

Happy to announce that touchscreen is working fine in X now

[James_L]

Happy to announce that touchscreen is working fine in X now

Not bad, I just pulled my /etc/pointercal from zubuntu, if you'd like to compare, unless you did something else?


Somewhere between 2.6.30 and 2.6.33 the tosa screen got broken in terms of being useful. I've only tested 2.6.29 and 2.6.30 so far (I got distracted from fixing that problem.) I don't think it's just the backlight either, for me, I can usually see the screen via reflection, but when trying .33 it was totally blank as far as I could tell. Unfortunately, I don't have a serial port to try and see what's going on there.

As far as sound, I recall it working on my 2.6.29 (which per a request on the angstrom user mailing list, I'll put up when I get time, should be Sat at the latest). So it should work for any 2.6.29. Though http://www.omegamoon.com/blog/index.php?en...ry090716-153753 suggests it's broken in his version of 2.6.31.

I note that you mention "ohci doesn’t like to suspend", do you have usb host working? As for me, while it sorta works (lsusb responds) anything actually trying to use that, like a thumbdrive or the built in wireless, drags it to a halt. Investigating it seems like ohci-hcd got changed between .29 and .33, and at a guess, may work.

Major Outstanding issues I see (please mention any forgot):

• LCD broke in .31 - .33
• USB broken in .29 and .30 (possibly fixed by .33, but I can't tell)
• Sub USB: prism2_usb may be broken, as well as usb being broken. I can't verify this either way though.
• Sound may have broken in .30 or .31

[cycojesus]

Happy to announce that touchscreen is working fine in X now

Not bad, I just pulled my /etc/pointercal from zubuntu, if you'd like to compare, unless you did something else?

Note that all this is with a 2.6.31.12 kernel.

I haven't recalibrated recently, ts_calibrate and ts_test were already functional. (my /etc/pointercal:
-8451 0 32820681 0 -11275 44314980 65536
)

What I did, after reading http://www.conan.de/touchscreen/evtouch.html was to neutralize /dev/input/mice as described. Now I have a working xorg.conf with the tslib driver. I read @ http://www.mail-archive.com/zaurus-devel@l...g/msg00087.html that tslib doesn't like switching to console and indeed the Z freeze if I kill X so my next step will be to try with xf86-input-evtouch (or xf86-input-plpevtch ?) tonight or tomorrow.

Somewhere between 2.6.30 and 2.6.33 the tosa screen got broken in terms of being useful. I've only tested 2.6.29 and 2.6.30 so far (I got distracted from fixing that problem.) I don't think it's just the backlight either, for me, I can usually see the screen via reflection, but when trying .33 it was totally blank as far as I could tell. Unfortunately, I don't have a serial port to try and see what's going on there.

As far as sound, I recall it working on my 2.6.29 (which per a request on the angstrom user mailing list, I'll put up when I get time, should be Sat at the latest). So it should work for any 2.6.29. Though http://www.omegamoon.com/blog/index.php?en...ry090716-153753 suggests it's broken in his version of 2.6.31.

I do have a semi-functional screen with 2.6.33 (and 2.6.32.9 which has the same issue), it's rather dim but the backlight is definitly on. I remember I improved the dimness a little bit by maxing /sys/<something>/{actual_,}brightness to 512, small improvement but real. I've seen mentions of 15 or 16 being the max so maybe I'll try that again also.

I note that you mention "ohci doesn’t like to suspend", do you have usb host working? As for me, while it sorta works (lsusb responds) anything actually trying to use that, like a thumbdrive or the built in wireless, drags it to a halt. Investigating it seems like ohci-hcd got changed between .29 and .33, and at a guess, may work.

I've seen this mentionned maybe on zaurus-devel. I only know that resuming from suspend doesn't work. I wrote that as a note to try building a kernel without ohci and see if suspend works.

For usb host (and usb networking) I'd have to find my cables... I know I have them I just can't find them right now...

Major Outstanding issues I see (please mention any forgot):

• LCD broke in .31 - .33
• USB broken in .29 and .30 (possibly fixed by .33, but I can't tell)
• Sub USB: prism2_usb may be broken, as well as usb being broken. I can't verify this either way though.
• Sound may have broken in .30 or .31

I once built the prism2_usb module (in 2.6.33 I think), modprobe'd it but it didn't seem to work at all (ifconfig and iwconfig didn't show anything). It'd be nice to have but it's not very high in my priorities.

Now I focus on getting a good keymap in X, which apparently will mean having to deal with xkb, I've found some files to start from. Then suspend and then the rest

[James_L]

I've started poking around your git repository, unfortuantely, your instructions on building it aren't that helpful, specifically this: "build and install SlackBuilds/crossed-linux" is that a slackware specific thing, or is there some way of doing that outside of slackware?

(It's been AGES since I looked at slack, and I think the last time I used it was zipslack transfered with floppies...)

[cycojesus]

I've started poking around your git repository, unfortuantely, your instructions on building it aren't that helpful, specifically this: "build and install SlackBuilds/crossed-linux" is that a slackware specific thing, or is there some way of doing that outside of slackware?

(It's been AGES since I looked at slack, and I think the last time I used it was zipslack transfered with floppies...)

SlackBuilds are shell scripts that build Slackware packages. (in very short a slackware package in just a tar.gz archive with 2 optional files, install/{doinst.sh,slack-desc}. Building a package consist in compiling, installing in a temporary directory ($PKG in the scripts) and then call slackware's makepkg from this directory to assemble the package itself.)

SlackBuilds/crossed-linux/ is a slackbuild that I made to package a cross-compiled kernel so I don't have to fiddle making symlinks in /boot each time I compile a new kernel. Now since you're not running slackware on your computer this is of little use to you obviously... You could use to config-2.6.31.12 to cross-compile your own kernel and copy the files manually.

Now to replace this step. Let's say that your cross compiler is in $CWD/armv5te/bin
[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']$ ls $CWD/armv5te/bin
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-addr2line
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-ar
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-as
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-c++
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-c++filt
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-cpp
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-depmod-2.6
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-g++
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-g77
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcc
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcc-4.3.3
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gccbug
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcov
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-generate-modprobe.conf
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gfortran
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gprof
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-insmod
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-insmod.static
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-klcc
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-ld
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-lsmod
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-modinfo
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-modprobe
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-nm
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-objcopy
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-objdump
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-ranlib
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-readelf
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-rmmod
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-size
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-strings
arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-strip
[/div]

You'd do something like this :
[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']
$ cd $LINUX_SOURCES
$ cp $ARMEDZED/SlackBuilds/crossed-linux/config-2.6.31.12 .config
$ ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=$CWD/armv5te/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi- make oldconfig
$ ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=$CWD/armv5te/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi- make
$ ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=$CWD/armv5te/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi- make modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=$ARMEDSLACK_ROOT
$ cp arch/arm/boot/zImage $ARMEDSLACK_ROOT/boot
$ cd $ARMEDSLACK_ROOT/boot
    # in doubt about how kexecboot's mysterious ways
    # let's try all of what the internet has to say...
    # Kexecboot: http://projects.linuxtogo.org/projects/kexecboot/
    #        and http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/demo/kexecboot/
    cat <<EOF > image.nfo
Armedslack-current
EOF
    cat <<EOF > kernel-cmdline
rootfstype=ext3 console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 noinitrd dyntick=enable
EOF
    cat <<EOF > boot.cfg
LABEL=Armedslack-current
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
APPEND=console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 noinitrd dyntick=enable
root=rootfstype=ext3
EOF
[/div]

the the minirootfs can be found here : ftp://ftp.armedslack.org/armedslack/armed...ols/minirootfs/

Hope this helps, I'll clarify the steps in the git.

Meanwhile I've tried many ways to setup the keyboard in X without success so far... This xkb thing makes HAL look friendly and simple in comparison, what kind of sick mind could possibly come out with such an unholy nightmare is beyond me  
[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']
$ xmodmap tosa.xmodmap
[/div] still has no effect and I can't see why.

[James_L]

I've started poking around your git repository, unfortuantely, your instructions on building it aren't that helpful, specifically this: "build and install SlackBuilds/crossed-linux" is that a slackware specific thing, or is there some way of doing that outside of slackware?

(It's been AGES since I looked at slack, and I think the last time I used it was zipslack transfered with floppies...)

SlackBuilds are shell scripts that build Slackware packages. (in very short a slackware package in just a tar.gz archive with 2 optional files, install/{doinst.sh,slack-desc}. Building a package consist in compiling, installing in a temporary directory ($PKG in the scripts) and then call slackware's makepkg from this directory to assemble the package itself.)

SlackBuilds/crossed-linux/ is a slackbuild that I made to package a cross-compiled kernel so I don't have to fiddle making symlinks in /boot each time I compile a new kernel. Now since you're not running slackware on your computer this is of little use to you obviously... You could use to config-2.6.31.12 to cross-compile your own kernel and copy the files manually.

the the minirootfs can be found here : ftp://ftp.armedslack.org/armedslack/armed...ols/minirootfs/

Hope this helps, I'll clarify the steps in the git.

I'll mess with that (and what I snipped) and see about getting it working.

Meanwhile I've tried many ways to setup the keyboard in X without success so far... This xkb thing makes HAL look friendly and simple in comparison, what kind of sick mind could possibly come out with such an unholy nightmare is beyond me  

Code: [Select]

$ xmodmap tosa.xmodmap still has no effect and I can't see why.

I've had some problems with that on zubuntu, which I think is using something very close to what you are. I did get some of it working via Corgi's xmodmap, however, note that many of the keycodes aren't the same (1st and 3rd rows are shifted, row 2 is random), but at least it I could tell xmodmap was doing *something*. None of the tosa keymaps I tried (which I think I lost) worked. The command I made it invokes specifically is: "xmodmap /etc/X11/kb/Shepard/xmodmap"

Additionally, I had to replace /etc/keymap-2.6.map (grabbed from an Angstrom image) before the console would work properly. (and even then sometimes the numbers wouldn't, which I think is a problem of the keymap.

[cycojesus]

I'll mess with that (and what I snipped) and see about getting it working.

hope it'll work for you

Meanwhile I've tried many ways to setup the keyboard in X without success so far... This xkb thing makes HAL look friendly and simple in comparison, what kind of sick mind could possibly come out with such an unholy nightmare is beyond me  

Code: [Select]

$ xmodmap tosa.xmodmap still has no effect and I can't see why.

I've had some problems with that on zubuntu, which I think is using something very close to what you are. I did get some of it working via Corgi's xmodmap, however, note that many of the keycodes aren't the same (1st and 3rd rows are shifted, row 2 is random), but at least it I could tell xmodmap was doing *something*. None of the tosa keymaps I tried (which I think I lost) worked. The command I made it invokes specifically is: "xmodmap /etc/X11/kb/Shepard/xmodmap"

Additionally, I had to replace /etc/keymap-2.6.map (grabbed from an Angstrom image) before the console would work properly. (and even then sometimes the numbers wouldn't, which I think is a problem of the keymap.

The thing is that my .xmodmap is working just fine in Zubuntu. I'll try immediately to load it using the absolute path. Nope, nothing...

Note that there was a big update in ARMedSlack recently, especially X, see ftp://ftp.armedslack.org/armedslack/armed...t/ChangeLog.txt

[James_L]

Alright, I just got a serial cable, so hopefully I can see what's going on with it.

I'll try some of the newer kernels and see if I can't figure out what's up with them.

[James_L]

Alright, I just got a serial cable, so hopefully I can see what's going on with it.

I'll try some of the newer kernels and see if I can't figure out what's up with them.

2.6.33 is showing some odd problems. It boots once each time, and it's somewhere running out of memory, udev quickly gets killed by the oom killer. If anyone wants to investigate, I've got a log off the serial port. I'm currently trying via disabling things until something works. It's tending to just stop (screen and serial) most of the time, unfortunately.

2.6.29 has the problem of (as I've probably stated) calling dma_free_coherent with interrupts disabled. I may have found a possible problem with the particular code problems, relating to a few checks which apparently caught it, possibly indicating it should be using a different path, I'll test this and find out.

[sdjf]

about triggering the OOM killer, I am not sure if this will help you, but did you know we can modify the parameters in bdflush which trigger OOM stuff?

 cat /proc/sys/vm/bdflush

that shows the settings. i had to change it on my collie, I think by overwriting it with an echo command.  but don't know if you can get that changed when you can't get past booting.

i think bdflush parameters are in one of the startup scripts, i just don't recall which one now, and not finding it easily.