Debian On SD
Contents
- 1 Debian On SD
- 2 Little Note to Wiki Editors
- 2.1 Desktop Debian
- 2.2 Building From Scratch
- 2.2.1 Getting a Minimal Install from Scratch
- 2.2.2 Setting up Apt
- 2.2.3 Desktop Environment
- 2.2.4 Device Drivers and PNDs
- 2.2.5 Users and Permissions
- 2.2.6 Reboot and Troubleshooting
- 2.3 Maintenance and Upgrades
- 2.4 Common Issues/Fun Things To Do
- 3 Emdebian Grip
- 4 Debian On NAND
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.
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 build is available here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-1.0.4-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
Release 1.0
- First release
- libts issues
- libpnd issues
- Overly fat with stuff
- Wifi issues for some people
Release 1.0.1
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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 1.1 Proposed
- 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.
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. You should already be root, so we'll get on with the installing.
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 fun and comes in two parts - the mapping extension, and an xmodmap script.
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...
xmodmap ~/.pndXmodmap 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.
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. )
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:
rc0.d
ln -s ../init.d/led-config K05led-config ln -s ../init.d/pandora-state K31pandora-state ln -s ../init.d/pndevmapperd-init K40pndevmapperd-init ln -s ../init.d/pndnotifyd-init K40pndnotify-init
rc1.d
ln -s ../init.d/led-config K05led-config ln -s ../init.d/pandora-state K31pandora-state ln -s ../init.d/pndevmapperd-init K40pndevmapperd-init ln -s ../init.d/pndnotifyd-init K40pndnotify-init
rc2.d
ln -s ../init.d/led-config S05led-config
rc3.d
ln -s ../init.d/led-config S05led-config ln -s ../init.d/pndevmapperd-init S30pndevmapperd-init ln -s ../init.d/pndnotifyd-init S30pndnotify-init
rc4.d
ln -s ../init.d/led-config S05led-config
rc5.d
ln -s ../init.d/led-config S05led-config ln -s ../init.d/pndevmapperd-init S30pndevmapperd-init ln -s ../init.d/pndnotifyd-init S30pndnotify-init
rc6.d
ln -s ../init.d/led-config K05led-config ln -s ../init.d/pandora-state K31pandora-state ln -s ../init.d/pndevmapperd-init K40pndevmapperd-init ln -s ../init.d/pndnotifyd-init K40pndnotify-init
rcS.d
ln -s ../init.d/pandora-state S39pandora-state
Alternatively ( and this is what I did in Grip ) you can use update-rc.d to put these in, more or less.
update-rc.d led-config defaults 05 update-rc.d pandora-state defaults 31 update-rc.d pndevmapperd-init defaults 30 40 update-rc.d pndnotifyd-init defaults 30 40
Script Fixups
We also 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 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.
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.
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 debug root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rw rootdelay=2 console=ttyS0,115200n8 vram=6272K omapfb.vram=0:3000K ext2load mmc 0:1 0x80300000 /boot/uImage bootm 0x80300000
Alternatively, if you remove the console=ttyS0,115200n8 part, you will be able to see debug text as the system boots up.
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
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.
