On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 02:36:50PM +0100, Klaus Weidner wrote: > The Debian side of things appears to be working perfectly - I had *zero* > problem reports regarding the Debian userspace applications. People are > even running KDE and Gimp on their handhelds.
Great! > The way it works is as follows: > > - a customized kernel launches /sbin/debian-init.sh instead of > /sbin/init. Why do you need a customized kernel? For launching an alternate init process, you can use a kernel parameter: init=/sbin/debian-init.sh. > - the debian-init.sh shell script prompts the user what system should be > booted. In the case of the native system, it simply execs /sbin/init, > and boot proceeds normally. > > - for the Debian system, the sd driver module is loaded (from the > original flash ROM), and the Debian partition is fscked and mounted. > > - the bootloader then does a pivot_root and chroot, and proceeds execing > the /sbin/init on the storage card. I had thought about a setup like this, but this kind of functionality I think belongs in the bootloader. I had heard rumours of someone working on an improved bootloader for Zaurus devices, but I don't remember any names. > - no support for the hardware clock is available. The only way I found to > set the hardware clock is through the Qtopia time application. It would > be great if someone could extract the necessary code from it and > package it as a standalone program (or add support to "hwclock"). This should not be too much trouble, but I don't see it as a high priority at the moment. The code is out there. > - I haven't found the zapmd source, and it doesn't work quite right on > the C700 (the maximum display brightness available is darker than what > the hardware can do). I only have an SL-5500, so I can't help there. Where does zapmd come from? Is there some reason why normal apmd does not work correctly? > - Suspending with "irattach" running seems to crash the system. As a > workaround, I've added a "killall irattach" to the suspend script. The standard Debian apmd has hook scripts to handle this kind of thing. > - The bootloader currently only supports SD/MMC cards. To support CF > storage, it would be necessary to initialize the PCMCIA code in the > script, so that the block device for the card becomes available. > Preferably without needing to run any userspace daemons. I haven't had > time yet to do tests in this direction. Yes, CF support is problematic for this reason. > - The PIM app I'm using is jpilot, which works well on the C700 but needs > too much screen space to be useful on a 240x320 display. Also, it only > syncs with a Palm handheld, not with a desktop Linux. gpe or opie > would probably be more useful, but I haven't gotten them running in > the short time I spent experimenting with them. Ivan's opie packages are coming along nicely; they work quite well out of the box for me. > I'm a bit short on time at the moment, but I hope I'll get a release out > next week. The C700 is my highest priority (since that is what I'm using), > and I'll also try to do a release for the Zaurus 5x00 series. I'd like to experiment with your release; unfortunately my SD card is on loan for a project at work. Maybe when I get it back. -- - mdz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
