Debian On SD

Debian On SD

I'm going to split this into three chunks now... standard Desktop Debian on SD using Squeeze/Lenny/Sid ( choose your poison, though only Squeeze is officially tested to work by myself, ) Emdebian GRIP install, and NAND install.

You can post feedback, bugs, etc.. on the following topics: GP32X: http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/57097-debian-on-an-sd-card/ OpenPandora Boards: http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/1819-debian-on-sd/

I'd prefer the GP32X boards as I'm slightly more active there.

Little Note to Wiki Editors

I change this a lot offline and then plaster the changes on during a new release.
If you're going to go changing this page, please contact me first so I don't accidentally obliterate your changes, or that you do changes to the style I've set out that I don't agree with!
This may well be against the "wiki spirit" .. but I spend days/weeks typing up these changes and testing them.. so a little consideration please :)

Desktop Debian

This is split into three main sections - Building from Scratch, Maintenance and Upgrades, Common Things To Do.

This documents the final 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 "brute force" releases. The 1.1 "debianized" release will take a while and not involve this process at all.

• Building From Scratch lets you customise everything from the outset, and lets you create your very own tailor-made distribution, rather than a pre-created one.

It does require a bit of Linux knowledge before diving in.. so if unsure, ask!

• Maintenance and Upgrades covers standard Debian maintenance if you're not usually a Debian user.

It'll also ( in the future ) cover how to upgrade your pre-built distribution with new drivers as the official OS gets updated.

• Common/Fun Things To Do will give you ideas on what to try in your new Debian installation.

Remember, this is a full desktop OS you now have squeezed into your hands, and feel free to share your cool ideas!

If you don't want to build from scratch, you have two choices;

• Grab a Minimal Install and continue from Desktop Environment
• Grab a full build.

The latest minimal is available here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-minimal-1.0.2.tar.bz2
The latest full builds are:

• LXDE - http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-1.0.4-grip.tar.bz2
• XFCE - http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-1.0.5-grip.tar.bz2

Remember to untar with permissions ( include p in your arguments to tar ) on to your ext2/3 formatted SD card.
For example: tar -xvjpf pandora-squeeze*.tar.bz2 -C /media/sdcard .

Default User details are:
username: pandora
password: debian

Changelog

Original Proof of Concept

• Released - 19th October 2010
• Based on Sid
• GDM
• GNOME
• Bit slow but workable

Release 1.0

• Released - 20th February 2011
• First release
• libts issues
• libpnd issues
• Overly fat with stuff
• Wifi issues for some people

Release 1.0.1

• Released - 23rd February 2011
• First documented release
• libts issues persist
• Most libpnd issues fixed
• Slimmed down to ~830mb
• Made Wifi issues worse and accidentally stripped out more than needed

Release 1.0.2

• Released - 22nd March 2011
• Replaced libts with evdev... doesn't cause X choking.
• libpnd should behave now, though the pnd services don't seem to get kicked till a terminal is opened, and even then they turn zombie.. eh?
• Added full dev setup.. so it's fat.. it's 1.2gig extracted.
• Replaced GDM with SLIM.

Release 1.0.3

• Released - 27th March 2011
• Effectively 1.0.2 with the WiFi and Session Management bug fixed.
• Much slimmer as it's done from scratch again without the dev setup ~805mb rootfs

Release 1.0.4

• Released - 4th April 2011
• 1.0.3 with lots of bugs fixed and based on Grip so it's got even more and super tiny in comparision.
• Contains; LXDE, GDM, Gnome MPlayer, IceWeasel ( firefox ) and Synaptic

Release 1.0.5

• Released - 9th April 2011
• 1.0.4 with XFCE instead of LXDE and a few bug fixes ( pandora-state's rc scripts being set correctly, and console key map .. see the relevant bits below if you need them, but other than that, it's exactly the same - just with XFCE instead of LXDE )

Release 1.1 Proposed

• Expected - May 2011 ( maybe )
• libts, amongst other libraries, using OpenPandora patched version.
• Pandora specifics wrapped as Debian archives.
• Pandora specifics repo to deal with updates to drivers from mainline.
• Perhaps an updated kernel using the patches from mainline.

Building From Scratch

This isn't for the feint of heart.. if you don't understand something - stop! Ask or read up on it before continuing. While I haven't mangled my Pandora or PC in any way from doing this, it's still possible to make a mess, so be careful!

This is split into many parts.. it's advised to go through this in order.

• Getting a Minimal Install from Scratch
• Desktop Environment
• Device Drivers and PNDs
• Users, First Boot Scripts and Permissions
• Reboot and Troubleshooting

Getting a Minimal Install from Scratch

There are two options here:

• Linux PC
• On Pandora

Linux PC

On a Linux PC, run debootstrap to grab the version you want. We shall be using Squeeze today:
sudo debootstrap --arch armel --foreign squeeze /tmp/pandora-debian ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian
Grab a large SD card, and repartition it to have one large ext2/ext3 partition and format as normal.
Copy all the files from /tmp/pandora-debian over to your new SD card partition.
Put it in your Pandora.
sudo chroot /media/mmcblk0p1 -- assuming it's in your first slot.
/debootstrap/deboostrap --second-stage
... this takes a while...

Pandora

Alternatively, you can run cdebootstrap on the Pandora itself, or debootstrap from within Debian... this bypasses the need of doing the second-stage madness.
Grab it from here: http://packages.debian.org/sid/cdebootstrap-static and select the armel package.
Download it to /tmp preferably, but your home folder will do, or anywhere you like. For now, I shall assume you downloaded it to /tmp
cd /tmp -- Again, if you downloaded elsewhere, change to that directory instead.
ar xv cdebootstrap*.deb -- We're using the archive tool to extract with verbosity our cdebootstrap package.
sudo tar -zxvf data.tar.gz -C / -- Now we're using tar to extract, with gzip support, again with verbosity, the file data.tar.gz, changing the Current directory to / so that it extracts systemwide on our NAND. We're running this command sudo so we have write permissions.
Now we just run cdebootstrap-static with a few parameters, and wait.
sudo cdebootstrap-static --allow-unauthenticated -f minimal squeeze /media/mmcblk1p1 -- What we're doing here, is we're allowing "unauthenticated" packages to be installed. As we don't, or probably don't, have the gnupg keychain stuff configured, all packaged will be "unauthenticated" regardless of whether they are or not. We're telling it we also want a minimal install of the squeeze release, and to install to where we have the mount point of Partition 1 of the SD card in Slot 1 - which you should have already partitioned and formatted as ext2!
This takes a while... perhaps longer than doing the first stage on the PC and second-stage on Pandora.

Setting up Apt

I've forgotten about this, as mostly it'll be set to the default Debian repository, but should you want to change it:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

UK people can set this to deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian main non-free contrib to get pretty much everything, or can pick whichever local Debian repository they like - but be warned that not all of them have an armel repo!
By default, debootstrap will likely only get main.. adding the non-free and contrib branches are optional, but bring in more stuff.

Desktop Environment

Now you have Debian, the world is yours for the taking! Or something like that...

Debian comes with a wide variety of desktop environments and window managers; from XFCE as you use on Angstrom by default, to KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, etc..
Now's the time to choose one of them to install.. be aware that the bigger they are, the longer they'll take to install and the more resources they will eat up while in use.. as a rough guide from heavy to light:

• KDE
• GNOME
• Enlightenment ( Squeeze has e16 .. and is faster than I expected )
• XFCE
• LXDE
• Fluxbox

Having recently tested KDE myself, it doesn't quite seem to work properly, so I'd avoid that for the moment... especially as it takes about ten hours to install!

We shall install LXDE as it's a bit more light weight than XFCE and still provides a reasonable mainstream environment. While I do prefer Fluxbox overall, it's a bit of a paradigm shift to use from your standard desktop machine.

If you haven't already, chroot into your environment.

sudo chroot /media/MEDIANAME

You should already be root, so we'll get on with the installing.

apt-get update

apt-get install lxde

This may well take an age, so go do something else in the meantime.
You may also want a login manager.. your choices are amongst XDM, GDM, KDM and SLIM to name a few. KDM is perhaps a bit heavy, whereas GDM works fairly well even though it's rather heavy too. SLIM is what you use on Pandora anyway, and XDM is rather basic but usable all the same. GDM is automatically pulled in via LXDE anyway, so we may as well just use that for now.

Additional:
Installing LXDE via the above command pulls in GDM by default.. if you use lxde-core instead, it removes a lot of the stuff that pulls in random things, and if you additionally use aptitude install --without-recommends lxde-core it should strip out even more. You will need to manually install less, zenity, and xterm for example. Zenity is especially needed for all the Pandora config scripts.

1.0.3 has slimmed stuff down again.
Once in the chroot jail, I've performed the following: aptitude install --without-recommends lxde-core slim lxterminal zenity less xserver-xorg-video-omap3 network-manager-gnome synaptic xfce4-power-manager apmd libnotify-bin gedit epiphany-browser eject gksu gnome-bluetooth python-dbus ca-certificates xinput busybox which will effectively pull in all the Debian specifics we'll be needing, gutting out a rather large amount of cruft.

Once it's done, we'll start tackling the Drivers.

Device Drivers and PNDs

We shall tackle these one at a time, as there's quite a few of them.

• X Display Driver
• SGX Drivers
• Keymap
• Nubs
• Touchscreen
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• Kernel and Misc Bits and Pieces
• PNDs

X Display Driver

Debian has a NEON-optimised omapfb driver. We shall use this, and pinch some configuration gubbins from Angstrom.

apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-omap3

We now need to create an xorg.conf .. though it'll be rather minimal as we only really want to overload what graphics device setup it has, so:
nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Module"
	Load	"extmod"
	Load	"dbe"
	Disable	"glx"
	Disable	"dri"
	Load	"dri2"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier	"DefaultLayout"
	Screen		"Screen0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier		"Screen0"
	Device			"OMAPFB"
	Monitor			"Monitor0"
	DefaultDepth	16
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth	16
		Modes	"800x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier		"Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier		"OMAPFB"
	Driver			"omapfb"
	Option			"fb"		"/dev/fb0"
EndSection

Most of this is pinched from the Angstrom xorg.conf minus the fb Option at the bottom, as our framebuffer has a different device node.

That should be all you need for basic X though.

SGX Drivers

Most of this has been pinched from http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian#SGX_Video_Acceleration - why rewrite the wheel?
This mostly works apart from a few caveats, so I shall repeat it here for future reference and to keep all information in one place, and I've uploaded the resulting tarballs for convenience.

You can either follow the above guide - substituting the BeagleBoard for the Pandora, or use the following preconfigured packages.
cd /tmp
wget -c http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/GFX_4_00_00_01_libs.tar.gz ~20MB Libraries themselves
wget -c http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/GFX_Linux_SDK.tar.gz ~220MB Demos and SDK gubbins

Technically, you don't really need that fat 220MB GFX_Linux_SDK tarball unless you really want it, or want to test the libraries are in place.
I'll cover installing both anyway...

Libraries

tar -zxvf GFX_4_00_00_01_libs.tar.gz
chmod +x ./install-SGX.sh
./install-SGX.sh
rm /devmem2_0.0-0ubuntu1_armel.deb - this is particularly useless to us... and why it dumps it at root, I don't know!

That package contains ES2, ES3 and ES5 libraries.. we're only really interested in ES2 ( haven't tried if ES3 or ES5 would even work! ) so:
cd /usr/lib
ln -s ES2.0/* .

Not hugely clean, but it works. For the brave, you could try ES3 or ES5 but.. you're on your own!

Demos/SDK

cd /tmp
tar -zxvf OGLES.tar.gz
tar -zxvf OGLES2.tar.gz

You can't run anything yet ( well, you might since you've chrooted in via Angstrom ) so we'll leave them in /tmp for the moment - or move them elsewhere - such as /opt if you're worried about Debian wiping out /tmp on boot.

Keymap

The keymap is actually stupidly easy, and I've missed how easy it is for quite a while now!
We shall steal them from Angstrom.. so open up another Terminal.
As of now, I shall prefix Angstrom commands with Angstrom and Debian commands with Debian so you know which Terminal to type them in.

Angstrom sudo cp /etc/keymap-extension-2.6.map /media/mmcblk0p1/etc - this does assume you've got your SD card mounted in slot one, and with one ext2 partition.. adjust as necessary.
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/skel/.pndXmodmap /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/skel - as above.

After some fiddling, if you stick the following into .xsession it'll actually get called...

whoami > /tmp/currentuser
killall -1 pndnotifyd &
exec startlxde

Of course, this is a bit hacky and hard-coded in that if you've chosen something other than lxde, you'll probably want to change that startlxde to something else!

1.0.2 does something really hacky and actually starts pndnotifyd and pndevmapperd as daemons directly.
It also starts up the xfce4-power-manager for a battery meter.

1.0.3 does something else again.. it does not have the killall -1 pndnotifyd & line, instead it has the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/pndnotifyd-init restart
sudo /etc/init.d/pndevmapperd-init restart

And has edited /etc/sudoers.d/99_libpnd to add access to those two lines without being prompted for a password.

1.0.4 is again different, and doesn't HUP pndnotifyd at all as it seemed to work without much issue just by starting the service differently, also, due to use of GDM, we do the xmodmap at GDM's startup instead in the following manner:
sudo nano /etc/gdm/Init/\:0 - the \ is needed to use : as a character!

#!/bin/bash
xinput set-int-prop "touchscreen" "Evdev Axis Calibration" 32 3936 125 3873 183
xmodmap /etc/skel/.pndXmodmap
loadkeys /etc/keymap-extension-2.6.map

The xinput line is for the evdev touchscreen configuration, if this is wrong, please run xinput_calibrator from a Terminal, and replace the line with what it gives you!

The loadkeys line also ensures that the console gets the correct keymap as well.

Thanks to chris_c for the GDM init hint, and mcobit for the loadkeys hint!

Should probably copy more over but, this'll do for now.

Nubs

The nubs just require some more config stuff to be copied over, and a few rc scripts to be setup right.
Angstrom sudo cp -R /etc/pandora /media/mmcblk0p1/etc
This also copies over configurations for the LCD backlight, some pmenu and mmenu stuff, and some PND configuration bits.

Angstrom sudo cp /etc/init.d/pandora-state /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/init.d - pandora-state restores nubs and backlight settings, as well as saves them on exit.

Configuration utils come in with the PND installation below.

Touchscreen

Current 1.0.2/3 Release

1.0.2 uses evdev instead of libts for the touchscreen. This doesn't really require any configuration for the most part, but does need to be calibrated.
You'll need a full dev setup on the Pandora for this, as you'll need to compile the xinput_calibrator - http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xinput_calibrator however it's fairly trivial once all the libraries are installed.

My values, which you should put into .xsession, are as follows: xinput set-int-prop "touchscreen" "Evdev Axis Calibration" 32 3936 125 3873 183 and you'll need xinput installed ( which you should've done above if following the 1.0.3 path. )

This is already done on 1.0.4 and xinput_calibrator is included should you need to re-run it.

libts for other releases

Debian apt-get install libxcb-dri2-0 xserver-xorg-input-tslib libts-bin
Debian nano /etc/profile.d/tslib.sh

#!/bin/sh
TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/event5
TSLIB_CONFFILE=/etc/ts.conf
export TSLIB_TSDEVICE TSLIB_CONFFILE

We'll do the rest of it on First Boot.
This will be fixed properly when WiFi issues settle, so I can finalize a build system and re-do everything as packages - including libts with the OpenPandora-specific patches from the git.

Wifi

Wifi is fun... most of it will come in the kernel and modules/firmware pack when we get to it, but there's some ancillary scripts and things that lay in wait to catch you off guard!
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/init.d/wl1251-init /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/init.d
Angstrom sudo cp /lib/udev/rules.d/50-compat_firmware.rules /media/mmcblk0p1/lib/udev/rules.d
Angstrom sudo cp /lib/udev/rules.d/compat_firmware.sh /media/mmcblk0p1/lib/udev/rules.d

The wl1251-init script uses busybox. While you could edit the script and remove the dependency on busybox, it's probably better to just install busybox if you haven't already, so that there are less changes to deal with - seeing as it's only about 600kB.
Debian apt-get install busybox

While we don't necessarily need Network Manager, it's a damn sight more easier to use than battering iwconfig et al from the Terminal:
Debian apt-get install network-manager-gnome
This'll take a long time as it pulls in quite a lot of stuff...

Bluetooth

Debian's bluetooth setup seems to kick in and work without issue.
Probably need to get a clean way to toggle it on and off - as it defaults to being on.

Kernel and Misc Bits and Pieces

The kernel *should* be easy... grabbing a fresh set would've been advisable, but this doesn't seem to come with everything so we'll steal from our running system again.

Angstrom sudo cp -R /lib/modules/2.6.27.46-omap1 /media/mmcblk0p1/lib/modules
Angstrom sudo cp -R /lib/firmware /media/mmcblk0p1/lib/firmare
Angstrom sudo cp /boot/uImage /media/mmcblk0p1/boot/uImage

Battery Monitor

You'll likely want to know how much battery power you have!
Debian apt-get install apmd
Debian apt-get install xfce4-power-manager
Somewhat cheeky perhaps, but it does work! see this post

If you add xfce4-power-manager & before exec startlxde in your .xsession, it'll start up automatically for you.

Misc Init Scripts and Things

There are a few random init scripts we need for things:
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/init.d/led-config /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/init.d - configure the LEDs properly.
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/init.d/usb-gadget /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/init.d - for initializing the usb gadget device - g_cdc for USB networking, for instance.
Angstrom sudo cp /usr/bin/usb-gadget /media/mmcblk0p1/usr/bin
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/profile.d/op_env.sh /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/profile.d - effectively just tells SDL to use tslib driver
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/default/leds /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/default
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/default/usb-gadget /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/default
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/skel/.asoundrc /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/skel

And some more stuff to install in Debian:
Debian apt-get install libnotify-bin

PNDs

There are some init scripts you need for the PNDs to work. These are:
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/init.d/pndevmapperd-init /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/init.d
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/init.d/pndnotifyd-init /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/init.d
Angstrom sudo cp /usr/bin/pnd* /media/mmcblk0p1/usr/bin - there are a few pnd binaries, these include pnd_info, pnd_run, pndevmapperd and pndnotifyd.
Angstrom sudo cp /usr/lib/libpnd.so.1.0.1 /media/mmcblk0p1/usr/lib - obviously nothing'll work without the pnd libraries!

There are a bunch of scripts and PNDs hiding in /usr/pandora.. we may as well grab them over as well.
Angstrom sudo cp -R /usr/pandora /media/mmcblk0p1/usr

We need to do a symlink to the library properly now, and clean up some stuff.
Debian ln -s /usr/lib/libpnd.so.1.0.1 /usr/lib/libpnd.so.1
Debian rm -rf /usr/pandora/mmenu - these are just PNDs that call the programs installed in Angstrom from MiniMenu. We don't have these programs installed on Debian so, they're useless to us.

RC Scripts

We also need to disable some things from running.. the first run script specifies the following:

update-rc.d -f samba remove
update-rc.d -f xinetd remove
update-rc.d -f avahi-daemon remove
update-rc.d -f apmd remove
update-rc.d -f usb-gadget remove
update-rc.d -f banner remove
update-rc.d -f portmap remove
update-rc.d -f mountnfs remove
update-rc.d -f blueprobe remove
update-rc.d -f dropbear remove
update-rc.d -f wl1251-init remove

We'll also need to add some bits to the rc.d script set.

Script Fixups

We need to fiddle with a few of the scripts - specifically led-config to add the dummy LSB information ( just rip it out of another script, and leave Required-Start, Required-Stop, Default-Start and Default-Stop empty, ) and pndnotifyd-init, pndevmapperd-init and pandora-state where you need to blank out the #adjust marker as it causes Debian to have fits.

If you don't do this, the nub settings won't save, for instance, and some system scripts are not guaranteed to start up.
The update-rc.d program will shout at you which ones, and essentially, it's just some tidying up that needs done.

It's now recommended to use update-rc.d to put these in rather than the old heavy handed ln calls:

update-rc.d led-config defaults 05
update-rc.d pndevmapperd-init defaults 30 40
update-rc.d pndnotifyd-init defaults 30 40
update-rc.d pandora-state defaults 05

The pandora-state is different on Angstrom than Debian as it didn't start up with it's usual bindings, which was annoying!

Users and Permissions

You may be wondering why Users haven't been done till the very end.. we've edited the /etc/skel setup which will be used to create your user details.

If you have already jumped the gun and created a user previously, all changes we've done to /etc/skel will need to be mirrored in your home folder!

Debian 'adduser <username> - obviously, replace <username> with what you want; for example adduser pandora.

One interesting thing I've noticed happens, is sometimes it'll happily create your user... then not give you full permissions to your own folder.. so let's beat it a bit.
Debian chown -R <username>:<username> /home/<username> - replacing <username> with your actual username; for example chown pandora:pandora /home/pandora

You'll probably want to use sudo, which will require you to be in the wheel group, which we are about to create:
Debian groupadd wheel
There's also few groups you'd want to be in, so we'll do that now.
Debian usermod -a -G wheel <username> - you know the drill now... example; usermod -a -G wheel pandora
Debian usermod -a -G adm <username>
Debian usermod -a -G audio <username>
Debian usermod -a -G video <username>
Debian usermod -a -G plugdev <username>
Debian usermod -a -G users <username>
Debian usermod -a -G netdev <username>

Technically, you could've done all this in the one line with adduser, but I'd rather keep it all separate so that if we end up with extra groups, we all know how to add them.

You'll also need to do the above for every new user you create for the moment.

There's a bunch of sudoers rules that are hidden as well that we need to steal ( I completely missed these twice - my thanks to sebt3 and DJWillis for pointing me to them! I thought the #includedir line was commented out due to the # ... *facepalm* )
Angstrom sudo cp /etc/sudoers.d/* /media/mmcblk0p1/etc/sudoers.d/

Finally, /tmp can sometimes go mad so we shall fix that just now too.
Debian chmod a+w /tmp

Reboot and Troubleshooting

auto/boot.txt

We need either an autoboot.txt or a boot.txt now or we won't be able to boot up Debian.
There's no difference between either, other than autoboot will cause the Pandora to automatically boot from SD if it finds it, whereas boot requires holding the right shoulder button as usual.
Debian nano /autoboot.txt - again, you could use boot.txt instead and press the right shoulder button during boot.

setenv bootargs root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rw rootwait vram=6272K omapfb.vram=0:3000K mmc_core.removable=0
ext2load mmc 0:1 0x80300000 /boot/uImage
bootm 0x80300000

All that's really left now is to reboot and catch any issues that may crop up!

First Boot

tslib calibration

First Boot should bring you up to GDM in all it's splendour. But Wait! The touchscreen! IT IS MADNESS!
If you've a USB keyboard, you can be one step ahead and do CTRL+ALT+F1 to jump to a terminal, but we're going to assume just the Pandora so we'll carry on and login.

Once LXDE has finished loading up, press FN+ALT+F2 and type "lxterminal"
sudo su
export TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/event5
export TSLIB_CONFFILE=/etc/ts.conf
ts_calibrate

Touchscreen should behave itself now.

Finish up installing any left overs

While root ( that's what sudo su does ) we shall finish setting up anything that didn't take during our chroot session in Angstrom ( bluetooth usually )
apt-get -f install
exit - jump back to our user so we don't accidentally mess things up

Cleanup

Potential clean-ups that should occur is packaging up the Pandora specific libraries and scripts into .deb files for maintenance purposes if nothing else. We can then either try and get them fed back into Debian, or provide our own Debian repo for Pandora.

The following should probably be stuffed into deb files for easier maintainability:

• libpnd
• pandora specific scripts
• SGX drivers
• kernel
• modules and firmware

Maintenance and Upgrades

Maintenance on Debian is very easy.. it's just a case of running sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade from a console, or using Synaptic ( see below on how to install if your rootfs didn't have it. )

Common Issues/Fun Things To Do

There's a wealth of power at your fingertips with Debian, so place your fun things to do here!
Also, sometimes there are odd issues, so if you fix something odd, place it here too.

Networking

Networking should work effectively the same as on Angstrom, but here's a run down of what to do anyway:

• Click the LXDE menu up.
• Click System Tools -> Toggle Wifi
• Click the Network Manager app between the process bar and the clock.
• Click your network - or select "Connect to Hidden Wireless Network" if it's not there and fill out the details.
• Fill out the keyring for your passwords to go into - so you only need to remember the one ;)
• The Network Manager icon should spin and then give you a strength bar as normal once connected.

Synaptic

The 1.0.1 release did not include Synaptic.. it's back in 1.0.2 and 1.0.3
To get it back for the 1.0.1 release, it's simply a case of doing:
sudo apt-get update - if you haven't done so for a while ( as in, days, not hours )
sudo apt-get install synaptic
Then wait for a while as it downloads and installs.

You'll find Synaptic under System Tools once it's done.

My PNDs don't work, why?!

Generally, it'll be because of library differences.. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to deal with this, but you've got the Debian armel repository at your disposal, so you should be fine for a while!

1.0.2 has some library compatibility with Pandora Angstrom but it's not complete. The PNDs of Wesnoth and BattleJewels will work for example, whereas SuperTux and GravityForce do not.

Library compatibility was achieved by pulling packages manually from older revisions, symlinking some libraries and pulling stuff from experimental.. it was trial and error so, is a tad iffy.

1.0.3 and 1.0.4 do not have library compatibility as it caused extra issues in 1.0.2, you'll need to either wait for 1.1 or pull in the needed libraries yourself.

Wifi and Session Management is broken?!

Pre-1.0.3 there was an issue with this.. it should now be fixed in 1.0.3 so if you don't want to update, perform the following:
sudo rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
sudo chmod +x /usr/lib/dbus-1.0/dbus-daemon-launch-helper
and reboot.. everything should now work properly.

My PNDs don't appear immediately?

This is an odd one.. by rights they should.. and I also don't quite understand why pndnotifyd kicks in when you open a terminal, but it does.

Therefore, if you haven't done so already, open up a terminal and then close it.. pndnotifyd then starts up and takes care of all the PND stuff for you.

This should be fixed in 1.0.4

I get no notifications in 1.0.3

This is actually because notification-daemon hasn't been installed.

Packages to add in 1.1!

Feel free to add packages here that I should include in the next release (1.1)

• wireless-tools
• x11-xserver-utils ( I keep forgetting this.. it's for xmodmap )
• xinput - for evdev's configuration
• console-tools - for chvt
• xterm - for failsafe console
• bash-completion - tis handy to have
• aptitude - somehow I forgot this.

Emdebian Grip

Most of the above can be taken for Grip, with the following changes...

Why Grip? It's much smaller and targeted for embedded devices... I originally was going to use Grip actually, but it was a bit buggered at the time, though it seems to be working now.
Additionally, Emdebian comes in Crush and Baked flavours... Grip is compatible with Desktop Debian, so we'll use that.. Crush is smaller again, and generally requires a cross-compiler to setup packages, and Baked is effectively what we do with Angstrom.

Emdebian could also in theory be shrunk enough to actually fit on NAND... which is something I'll be looking into - if only to document another alternative process to the Angstrom OE bitbake bonanza.

Multistrap

Grip's debootstrap is slightly different... it uses multistrap instead.

This allows us to use Grip's repository as the base, and Desktop Debian's repositories for anything else we might need ( omap3 drivers, for instance. ) This is also particularly useful for us when I get around to doing Pandora specifics compiled for Debian, as then we just add that repository as well.

Anyway, we need Debian running for this - be it on your Desktop ( or Ubuntu ) or on your Pandora ( recommended, as this guide assumes this is what you're doing. )
Install Multistrap - sudo apt-get install multistrap

You'll also need to mount an SD card somewhere manually.. I've mounted mine to /tmp/emdebian: sudo umount /dev/mmcblk1p1 && mount /dev/mmcblk1p1 /tmp/emdebian

Config File

nano multistrap

[General]
arch=armel
directory=/tmp/emdebian
cleanup=true
noauth=false
unpack=true
aptsources=Grip Debian
debootstrap=Grip Debian

[Debian]
packages=
source=ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian
keyring=debian-archive-keyring
suite=squeeze

[Grip]
packages=
keyring=emdebian-archive-keyring
source=http://www.emdebian.org/grip
suite=squeeze

sudo multistrap -f multistrap

Change /tmp/multistrap to where ever you want the debootstrap to occur.
Gotcha I had issues with it complaining about unauthenticated packages, just add --no-auth to your command line and it'll continue happily.

This shouldn't take too long ( was about half an hour on my Pandora ) and gives you a very sparse minimal rootfs of 192Mb.

The following multistrap config will give you what's in the 1.0.4 Grip rootfs

[General]
arch=armel
directory=/tmp/emdebian
cleanup=true
noauth=false
unpack=true
aptsources=Grip Debian
debootstrap=Grip Debian

[Debian]
packages=xserver-xorg-video-omap3 libxcb-dri2-0 libnotify-bin xinput
source=ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian
keyring=debian-archive-keyring
suite=squeeze

[Grip]
packages=lxde busybox network-manager-gnome xfce4-power-manager apmd gdm less sudo nano wireless-tools iceweasel synaptic gnome-mplayer x11-xserver-utils notification-daemon gnome-keyring
keyring=emdebian-archive-keyring
source=http://www.emdebian.org/grip
suite=squeeze

You could also add packages into the Grip and Debian configuration parts, and it will automatically pull them down and install them for you, be careful with what you pull in though, as not everything has been repackaged for Grip, so it will pull down the "full fat" variants from Debian instead.

You might get errors of unconfigured packages, just chroot in and run apt-get -f install to finish up.. if there are warnings about proc, ignore them till you reboot into the rootfs and re-run sudo apt-get -f install.

Chroot and Setup

Now we can just chroot in and setup as we see fit.
sudo chroot /tmp/emdebian - again, you may have mounted your media elsewhere.
sudo apt-get update

You can now just follow the Debian guide as above, with the added bonus of most packages will come from Grip and be pre-stripped of extra fluff.
I would recommend to get as much stuff as possible downloaded in the initial multistrap however, as it will automatically clean stuff up for you.

Debian On NAND

First of all,
WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS.
NO, SERIOUSLY, DON'T! THIS IS UTTERLY HACKY AND IT IS ON YOUR OWN HEAD IF YOU MESS UP.

Get a Debian Rootfs

Your NAND has about 475Mb for the rootfs to play with ( there are other partitions, remember! ), therefore Desktop Debian is a bit too large for our purposes - even 1.0.3's complete massacre still ended up too big by far; so we need to look at Emdebian, of which there are three flavours - grip, crush and baked.
We'll be using Grip, so follow the guide above for at least getting a working system on SD before going anywhere near your NAND.

We can use compression to get your rootfs down by 40-50%, but I'd still be vary wary of a large rootfs!

If you're lazy, grab my pre-made Grip rootfs, which includes LXDE by default.

Preparing the Rootfs

Boot into your rootfs for this, so we can ensure we're as up to date as we can be, then clean the apt cache, and then any crap we installed which we don't need any more, such as things which were installed as dependencies and the parent's been removed.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean

Additionally, you could wipe out the documentation ( if any ) and manually pull out unwanted packages. However, if you're pulling stuff out, you shouldn't have installed it in the first place! Go back to the start and do it again as punishment!

This post on the Ubuntu forums is particularly helpful: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=140920

Depending on your needs, you may also want to wipe out your home folder and reinstate it from /etc/skel
You'll also want to wipe out tmp - sudo rm -rf /tmp/*

Now shut down and either place your SD card in your PC. You can do this on Pandora, but you will need a lot of space.

Copy your rootfs somewhere.. I suggest /tmp/pandora-debian
mkdir /tmp/pandora-debian
sudo cp -p -r /media/my/sd/card/* /tmp/pandora-debian - this will preserve Permissions and copy everything Recursively.

We need to edit the fstab so that it can boot properly, if you haven't done so already.
sudo nano /tmp/pandora-debian/etc/fstab

# OpenPandora fstab.

rootfs               /                    auto       defaults,noatime      1  1
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0  0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0  0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      defaults              0  0
tmpfs                /var/volatile        tmpfs      defaults              0  0
tmpfs                /dev/shm             tmpfs      mode=0777             0  0
tmpfs                /media/ram           tmpfs      defaults              0  0

This should look familiar, as it's effectively your stock fstab minus the boot partition ( we have a kernel in our rootfs, if you've followed the above guides... )

We should also get rid of the autoboot.txt or boot.txt; sudo rm /tmp/pandora-debian/autoboot.txt

Creating the Image

You need mtd-utils in your Debian distro of choice. sudo apt-get install mtd-utils

Now, mkfs.ubifs can compress using either LZO ( by default ) or zlib and will get your rootfs about 40-50% smaller depending on what you choose. It's also possible to use a combination of both, which is what we will do later.. Of course, if your rootfs is full of pre-compressed stuff already, it's not really going to shrink a great deal.
For a full run down on mkfs.ubifs and co, see here: http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubifs.html

Download the flash kit: http://openpandora.org/firmware/pandora-flash-kit.zip and extract it to /tmp/flash. I suggest reading the README as well.

Now run these fun commands... what we're doing is we're making a ubifs image first, then making an md5 checksum.
We're also favoring LZO compression meaning we're mixing zlib and LZO to get the best compression we can.
sudo mkfs.ubifs -r /tmp/pandora-debian -o rootfs.img -m 2048 -e 129024 -c 4042 -x favor_lzo -X 20
md5sum rootfs.img > rootfs.md5

STOP! If your rootfs.img is getting close to 480Mb, you might not want to try and flash it.. it may be fine, but I would recommend 450Mb as an absolute maximum.

Flashing the Image

I shall repeat:
WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS.
NO, SERIOUSLY, DON'T! THIS IS UTTERLY HACKY AND IT IS ON YOUR OWN HEAD IF YOU MESS UP.

Stick the following on to a FAT32 formatted SD card:

• boot.scr - from the flash kit.
• rootfs.img - the image you've just created.
• rootfs.md5 - the checksum to the image.

Place it in slot 1 of your Pandora ( the left slot, ) reboot while holding the right trigger, select boot from SD, cross your fingers and pray to the Pandora Gods.

Once it's done.. reboot and see what mess you've made, assuming you get it to boot!
If you haven't got it to boot, on your FAT32 flasher card, add an autoboot.txt with the following:

setenv bootargs ubi.mtd=4 ubi.mtd=3 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs rw vram=6272K omapfb.vram=0:3000K
ubi part boot && ubifsmount boot && ubifsload ${loadaddr} uImage && bootm ${loadaddr};

As this will let you see what's gone wrong... I had to do this a few times, as I buggered it up myself...

Congratulations, you now have Debian on NAND rather than Angstrom.
Also, these instructions could easily be adapted to allow you to use any other distro that boots on Pandora.