Help Me Put My Old Z To Use Again!

[TronDD]

It's been years since I've booted up the Zaurus.  Always kept it around as I would occasionally be inspired to play it with it once in a while.  It's time again!  Only now, I have forgotten my user and root password to openBSD (somehow I've remembered by password for the forum).

I know I can boot into single user mode to reset, but I can't get it to a boot> prompt.  If I start the Zaurus with D+B it boots directly to a linux login.  For which, I naturally cannot remember the credentials for either.  Otherwise I'm at the usual 'wipe it all out and start from Zaurus defaults' menus.

I'd like to not have to start everything from scratch.  I wouldn't even know how to set up the Zaurus software anymore.  How can I just get to the BSD boot> menu?

EDIT:  Ok, I figured out thelinux prompt is the emergency linux and I can get in as root with no password.  Can't get the BSD installer to mount the drive.  Really, what I want to do is just look at what's on there and save anything off I'll need again then do a clean BSD install.

Tim.

[TronDD]

Never mind.  Messing around in the BSD installer trying to figure out what the drive and partition was to mount it, the installer blew away my partition table so I lost everything.  That didn't take me long to fail catastrophically.

Oh well, on to 5.4!

I'd still like to know how to get to the boot> menu, though...

Tim.

[TronDD]

So after trying to get linux reinstalled, as fdisk blew away the whole drive, I decided to go full disk openBSD and found the appropriate boot loader.

Got BSD installed no problem, but spent a day trying to get wifi working.  They changed the whole process since the last time I worked with it.  Had to simplify the network configuration to get it going.

Now I spend a week and a half compiling from ports to put together a usable environment.

I guess I'm mostly talking to myself here...but, why not?

Tim.

[ArchiMark]

Hi Tim,

Good timing!

At least one person (me...) reading your posts and with great interest. As I just got interested in using Zaurus again....and thought about trying OpenBSD which I have never used before. But interested as it is about the only OS that is still updated for Zaurus....

Have some linux experience (debian, arch, etc...) but never BSD.....so, interested to learn and try it....

Also, if it's possible, would like to have Zaurus multi-boot, so, that I can easily switch to different OS's....but don't know if this will work with OpenBSD.

Please see this webpage and let me know if you think this approach is doable or if I should avoid it if I try OpenBSD.

OmegaMoon-Zaurus

Any other pointers for an OpenBSD noob?

Thanks!

Mark

[mathemajikian]

Hi Tim,

Good timing!

At least one person (me...) reading your posts and with great interest. As I just got interested in using Zaurus again....and thought about trying OpenBSD which I have never used before. But interested as it is about the only OS that is still updated for Zaurus....

Have some linux experience (debian, arch, etc...) but never BSD.....so, interested to learn and try it....

Also, if it's possible, would like to have Zaurus multi-boot, so, that I can easily switch to different OS's....but don't know if this will work with OpenBSD.

Please see this webpage and let me know if you think this approach is doable or if I should avoid it if I try OpenBSD.

OmegaMoon-Zaurus

Any other pointers for an OpenBSD noob?

Thanks!

Mark

I used to dual boot OpenBSD on my Zaurus with Cacko. I wrote a FAQ on how to do this somewhere in this forum. Just do a search and it should pop up. I'm sure it's possible to do the same thing with other distros.

[ArchiMark]

Hi Tim,

Good timing!

At least one person (me...) reading your posts and with great interest. As I just got interested in using Zaurus again....and thought about trying OpenBSD which I have never used before. But interested as it is about the only OS that is still updated for Zaurus....

Have some linux experience (debian, arch, etc...) but never BSD.....so, interested to learn and try it....

Also, if it's possible, would like to have Zaurus multi-boot, so, that I can easily switch to different OS's....but don't know if this will work with OpenBSD.

Please see this webpage and let me know if you think this approach is doable or if I should avoid it if I try OpenBSD.

OmegaMoon-Zaurus

Any other pointers for an OpenBSD noob?

Thanks!

Mark

I used to dual boot OpenBSD on my Zaurus with Cacko. I wrote a FAQ on how to do this somewhere in this forum. Just do a search and it should pop up. I'm sure it's possible to do the same thing with other distros.

Thank you for your input!.....

Will look for your FAQ.....

 

[TronDD]

Also, if it's possible, would like to have Zaurus multi-boot, so, that I can easily switch to different OS's....but don't know if this will work with OpenBSD.

Before I messed up the hard drive partitions, I was dual booting the Sharp Qtopia with a custom linux kernel and OpenBSD.  I think that's easiest since it's the "OpenBSD way".  Never used kexecboot, though.  Looks like it should work and be the most flexible.  You have a few options for multi-boot.

Hardest thing about installing OpenBSD is figuring out the numbers to use to make your partitions with fdisk.  I think it's in sectors and not something for humans like size in some scale of bytes.

Once you get OpenBSD installed, there are some good tips here on configuring for the Z: http://www.planetofidiots.com/zaurus/

Tim.

[TronDD]

I fought for a couple days to get my wifi card working.  They changed the tools and configs since the last version of OBSD I had on here.  My card, and back then OBSD itself, only supports WEP.  Interesting to see WPA in OBSD now.  They were adamant about not implementing it because it wasn't considered to be secure enough.

The old install of OBSD was connecting to my network (of course I couldn't log in to check settings) but when I reinstalled it would not connect.  Turned out that the new driver/tools don't support WEP with shared key authentication.  I had to change my router to open and it all worked easily after that.

Compiled my favorite minimalist window manager, wmii and copied some customizations from another system.  I am having one weird problem which I am not sure what piece of software is to blame.  But in xterm, most of the time I hit the 'v' key, it interprets it as a paste command and pastes in whatever is in the buffer.  Really annoying when I use vi all the time!  I have to find a 'v' somewhere and select it so when I hit the v key is pastes in the letter v.  I am blaming xterm at this point since I haven't noticed the problem anywhere else but I don't use v that often anywhere else.  I'll compile another terminal emulator and see what happens.

Compiled dillo for a web browser.  I think that was one I used to use.  It doesn't support javascript so is of limited use these days.  I want xombrero but it's GTK+3 and webkit based.  After 2 days of compiling it failed on glib2.  Not sure why that fails.  Also when looking at the list of dependencies, it was huge.  Somehow something wanted GTK+2 in addition to GTK+3 and something wanted python while something else wanted ruby.  Might as well install the whole ports tree to get this one minimalist web browser.

Going to play around with glib2 and see if I can get it to compile.  Maybe turn off some compiler optimizations.

Tim.

[ArchiMark]

Hi Tim,

Good timing!

At least one person (me...) reading your posts and with great interest. As I just got interested in using Zaurus again....and thought about trying OpenBSD which I have never used before. But interested as it is about the only OS that is still updated for Zaurus....

Have some linux experience (debian, arch, etc...) but never BSD.....so, interested to learn and try it....

Also, if it's possible, would like to have Zaurus multi-boot, so, that I can easily switch to different OS's....but don't know if this will work with OpenBSD.

Please see this webpage and let me know if you think this approach is doable or if I should avoid it if I try OpenBSD.

OmegaMoon-Zaurus

Any other pointers for an OpenBSD noob?

Thanks!

Mark

I used to dual boot OpenBSD on my Zaurus with Cacko. I wrote a FAQ on how to do this somewhere in this forum. Just do a search and it should pop up. I'm sure it's possible to do the same thing with other distros.

Thank you for your input!.....

Will look for your FAQ.....

 

Found a FAQ, but it is specifically for those who have already installed OpenBSD and want to upgrade it.....

Is this set of instructions OK?

OpenBSD Install - PlanetOfIdiots.com

[ArchiMark]

Also, if it's possible, would like to have Zaurus multi-boot, so, that I can easily switch to different OS's....but don't know if this will work with OpenBSD.

Before I messed up the hard drive partitions, I was dual booting the Sharp Qtopia with a custom linux kernel and OpenBSD.  I think that's easiest since it's the "OpenBSD way".  Never used kexecboot, though.  Looks like it should work and be the most flexible.  You have a few options for multi-boot.

Hardest thing about installing OpenBSD is figuring out the numbers to use to make your partitions with fdisk.  I think it's in sectors and not something for humans like size in some scale of bytes.

Once you get OpenBSD installed, there are some good tips here on configuring for the Z: http://www.planetofidiots.com/zaurus/

Tim.

Thanks for all your input, Tim!......

Did you install OpenBSD by having network connection or having files on a card?

[ArchiMark]

I fought for a couple days to get my wifi card working.  They changed the tools and configs since the last version of OBSD I had on here.  My card, and back then OBSD itself, only supports WEP.  Interesting to see WPA in OBSD now.  They were adamant about not implementing it because it wasn't considered to be secure enough.

The old install of OBSD was connecting to my network (of course I couldn't log in to check settings) but when I reinstalled it would not connect.  Turned out that the new driver/tools don't support WEP with shared key authentication.  I had to change my router to open and it all worked easily after that.

You can't use WPA on your network?

Compiled my favorite minimalist window manager, wmii and copied some customizations from another system.  I am having one weird problem which I am not sure what piece of software is to blame.  But in xterm, most of the time I hit the 'v' key, it interprets it as a paste command and pastes in whatever is in the buffer.  Really annoying when I use vi all the time!  I have to find a 'v' somewhere and select it so when I hit the v key is pastes in the letter v.  I am blaming xterm at this point since I haven't noticed the problem anywhere else but I don't use v that often anywhere else.  I'll compile another terminal emulator and see what happens.

I gave up on vi a long time ago....seems so klutzy to use to me at least.....

I use nano typically, works easily and does the job for me.....is it available for OpenBSD?

Compiled dillo for a web browser.  I think that was one I used to use.  It doesn't support javascript so is of limited use these days.  I want xombrero but it's GTK+3 and webkit based.  After 2 days of compiling it failed on glib2.  Not sure why that fails.  Also when looking at the list of dependencies, it was huge.  Somehow something wanted GTK+2 in addition to GTK+3 and something wanted python while something else wanted ruby.  Might as well install the whole ports tree to get this one minimalist web browser.

Going to play around with glib2 and see if I can get it to compile.  Maybe turn off some compiler optimizations.

Tim.

Any chance of using Firefox or chromium?......I know that Firefox will be a bit slow, but it works....don't use chromium much, but did find it fast...and works on sites...

[TronDD]

My network card for the Zaurus does not support WPA.  Back when I bought it, OpenBSD did not support it either and had no plans to so that is what I went with.  My router and all my other devices can do WPA but I never upgraded to it so I could support my Z.   A USB network "card" with WPA would be ideal.

Yes, nano is available.  Vi, or Emacs, or anything else with a lot of keyboard input takes getting used to.  I am comfortable with what I know in Vi, but I know maybe 1% of what it can do.

I'll bet Firefox will run, but it will be awfully slow.  Probably unusable.  Fennec, the version for phones and such is available and might run better.  I'm going to try it and see.

Tim.

[TronDD]

Turns out, glib2 probably has a few bugs in arm that prevent it from compiling.  It was found and fixed in netBSD and I assume is the same problem in openBSD.  Have to either look for a different release or try to apply the netBSD patches...

EDIT:  Hmm...interestingly, I found an arm package of glib2 so I downloaded that.  pkg_add installed it, so I'll retry compiling xombrero and see what happens.

Tim.

[ArchiMark]

Thanks for your updates, Tim...very helpful to hear your experiences as I'm new to OpenBSD....

Well, I managed to install OpenBSD 5.5 today on my 3200!....

UPDATE - Just saw that you responded to my post over on the other thread - THANKS!

Haven't tried wifi card yet, used my Socket ethernet card and it worked from the start...

Only issue I'm having, and it's a weird one, is when I'm using xterm, I can't type the letter 'v'....have tried all the other letters and characters and they work OK....but no 'v'......

Obviously, makes it difficult to do certain things if you can't use the letter 'v'......

When I exit from X and get back to console, I can type a 'v'....works OK......

Any idea how to fix this or what might cause this strange behavior?....

Also, wanted to try installing nano using pkg_add, but I can't find package repo location for version 5.5. Do you know where it is?
Or can I use version 5.4 repo?

Thanks,

Mark

[TronDD]

Trying to get xombrero to build.  It ends up with a lot of large dependencies.  It dies on cmake.  Something about unable to bootstrap cmake.  Capturing the error so I can take a closer look and see if there is anything I can fix here...

Really a decent web browser is all I want here.

Tim.