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#81
Originally Posted by qole View Post
Some good news.
  • I've managed to hack the /var/lib/dpkg/status file so that it no longer complains about openoffice being broken. After installing openoffice.org, and then hacking the status file, I can install new stuff without problem. "apt-get upgrade" may break things again, however.
  • I've figured out how to make a .deb (thanks to PyPackager) and I've figured out how to add the line to the sudoers file as part of the install script. So I think I'll be able to have a "Debian chroot" .deb installer that will do all the magic for you by the end of this week. It will have all the scripts and icons, etc, but the actual chroot file will be a separate download. This will allow me to post the .deb here on itT. It will also allow you to download the chroot flavour of your choice. Stay tuned!
  • I've built a Debian chroot with openoffice.org, abiword, and firefox 3 with java and flash plugins. It comes to 750MB (uncompressed). This also includes a full samba client/server, along with some other goodies. I've put it into a one gig .img file that you will put on your SD card. (It is a purely English language install, but if you need other locales, I will have a small version that requires the user to install the apps themselves.) The .deb will mount this image file and then chroot into it. I just need to find somewhere that can host the 300MB tarball. Any offers? Please?
Good job Qole, I am looking forward to it.

bun
 
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#82
Ok, so I had an insomnia episode and you're getting a nice present.

Here is the Debian image file.


debian-chroot-apps-img.tar.bz2
[FileFactory.com]
[Pipeline's Mirror]

It is ~230 MB compressed, and 1GB uncompressed. It includes OpenOffice, AbiWord, Firefox 3 (Iceweasel) with Java applet capability, and Synaptic (for adding more fun stuff). To extract it, you need the same tar command (gnutar, found at elkins.org repo) that is used by several other projects here, including PenguinBait's KDE. You must drop the extracted image file (debian.img.ext2) in the root of (one of) your SD card(s). Assuming you have an N810 and you are putting it on your internal SD card, /media/mmc2, and you are at a command line in the place where you downloaded the tar file:

Code:
gnutar -xjvf debian-chroot-apps-img.tar.bz2 /media/mmc2
Alternately, you can install bzip2 (found in the extras repository, red pill for app manager) and do this:

Code:
bunzip2 -c debian-chroot-apps-img.tar.bz2 | tar xvf - -C /media/mmc2
If someone wants to host a mirror of the file on a better file host, please do. The free service that I'm using is slow and yucky! (FileFactory actually seems OK)

I have made an installable package that sets up root access, puts tested, working scripts in the right places, makes menu items for the Debian apps that people want (open office, abiword, and firefox 3). There are two versions, one for each of the two possible SD card positions.

Please find attached two .deb files. Choose the .deb that corresponds to the SD card where you put your debian.img.ext2 file. (mmc2 is the N810 internal card).

If I get some success stories, I'll start a new thread and make a big announcement that we're up and running with easy Debian chroot. I'll include more detailed instructions about untarring the image, including where to get the right tar version. Maybe I can even include it in the .deb and extract the file as part of the install? Any other ideas to make this easier?


Some notes / warnings:
  • This deb messes with very little in OS2008. After install, your tablet should remain much the way it was before. Please note, however, that, in order to run properly on the tablet, running Debian apps have access to a lot of stuff, and they can possibly do damage. This chroot isn't much of a "jail", on purpose. Sometimes, installing or updating an app will shut down or restart an important service on the tablet as part of the install. This can have some very interesting effects, sometimes causing the tablet to freeze or reboot. You can mount the image and chroot without the script if you need a better "jail" that doesn't have as much access to running servers.
  • Everything starts up really slowly, especially Iceweasel (since it has no splash screen). The tablet seems to be sitting there, doing nothing, sometimes for a long time. If you want to test your new chroot without using the command line, start with something smaller, like AbiWord or Synaptic or pop up the matchbox-keyboard.
  • The matchbox-keyboard menu item causes the matchbox keyboard (father to our tablet stylus keyboard) to pop up, or if it is up, the menu item makes it go away. There's no "hide" button on the matchbox-keyboard, so you have to use the menu item to hide it.
  • To run an application as user from the command line, type "sudo debian hilda <command>". If you need to run the app as root, drop the "hilda" from the command.
  • OpenOffice is completely Tablet unfriendly. There's no icon on the left-hand app panel. If you lose your OpenOffice screen, or you need it fullscreen, use the included "Make OpenOffice Fullscreen" (in the Extras menu). I would have made one for AbiWord too, since the AbiWord fullscreen hides all the menu bars, but AbiWord sets the window title to your document name so I have no idea what window to fullscreen.
  • I install the movable-windows hack for OS2008. You really need it for running Debian programs in OS2008. If you hate that, uninstall my .deb, or copy /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.orig back to matchbox.defs and everything will be the way it was before.
  • In an attempt to make the image file as tiny as possible, I purged all locales except en-US, en-CA and en-GB. I also deleted all of the doc files and the man files too. This has definitely broken internationalization, and it has probably broken other things too (ie the cups printing system). Please try stuff out and report back. I have made a nice clean Debian root file system available as an image, and you can set your locale and proceed to install everything you want, just the way you want it.
  • Previous posts have made it clear that there's some broken packages associated with OpenOffice. I hacked the Debian chroot's dpkg status file so it wouldn't complain, but don't upgrade the OpenOffice packages until you read here that the packages have been fixed, or you could be left with a broken install and now the Debian team has fixed the packages so they should update and be fine now.

Have fun!
Attached Files
File Type: deb easy-deb-chroot-mmc1-0.1-1_armel.deb (36.2 KB, 307 views)
File Type: deb easy-deb-chroot-mmc2-0.1-1_armel.deb (36.2 KB, 302 views)
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Last edited by qole; 2008-06-27 at 22:03. Reason: a couple of updates to the notes
 

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debernardis's Avatar
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#83
Originally Posted by qole View Post
Previous posts have made it clear that there's some broken packages associated with OpenOffice. I hacked the dpkg status file so it wouldn't complain, but don't upgrade the packages until you read here that the packages have been fixed, or you could be left with a broken install.
Hi Qole, the rootfs derived by Johnx debian beta 3, once openoffice was installed while its dependency trouble hadn't appeared yet, has no problems in apt-get updating and upgrading. Openoffice and other packages are kept at the current version.
Since the debootstrap is almost as large, why not publish a beta-3 derived rootfs which people can update without hassle?
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#84
Here is the empty 1 GB debian.img.ext2 file. I had to attach it with a fake .zip ending because itT doesn't recognize tar.bz2 files (yet). You can either rename it (remove the .zip) or just uncompress it the way it is. tar doesn't care about file extensions.

Untar it, mount it (using the chroot script if you want -- just chroot and then exit) and then put whatever you want into it:
  • The Basic Debian Sid Rootfs (don't forget to install and then configure locales) ... note that this is also a .tar.bz2 file, I mis-named it.
  • Johnx's bootable Debian rootfs. Remember to chroot without the script and do "apt-get remove --purge mpd" before doing anything else.
  • Be the first to get the Fedora ARM port up and running on the tablet. I couldn't get this rootfs' Yum to work for me, so I couldn't install anything, but I haven't used RedHat for years...
  • The Mojo Ubuntu "Grumpy" distro. I guess you would make a debootstrap of Ubuntu in Debian with a procedure like this using the script from this debootstrap.
  • PM someone running the new Diablo OS2007 and see if they'll give you a copy of their rootfs.
Attached Files
File Type: zip empty-debian-img.tar.bz2.zip (2.8 KB, 276 views)
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Last edited by qole; 2008-07-05 at 06:30. Reason: Openoffice packages are fixed now
 

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#85
Thanks, this is very useful. Nice to have 2 files i can drop on my devices and get openoffice, abiword, and umm some kinda weasel that looks like mozilla... no real depencies to worry about... simple to use as well.

It would be nice to resize to minimum file size though to make it easier/smaller to fit for those that will just use those 3 apps, and have another larger image for full version with working apt-get for heavy use.

Your FileFactory download went relatively quick, however if others want to try this out they can also use my mirror here :
http://wardenclyffetower.com/MaemoFi...ps-img.tar.bz2

Now if only i could apt-get install monodevelop

Last edited by pipeline; 2008-06-24 at 00:58.
 
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#86
Originally Posted by pipeline View Post
It would be nice to resize to minimum file size though to make it easier/smaller to fit for those that will just use those 3 apps, and have another larger image for full version with working apt-get for heavy use.
That's a good idea, the version I have there is kinda the b@stard child of both worlds. I stripped everything out to make it compress to a small file size, but then I dropped it in a big disk image with lots of empty space, just in case people wanted to install more. But I should make a smaller disk image that just fits the installed apps. I've applied for space on maemobox.org so hopefully I'll have an ad-free hosting service with a larger file size limit.

UPDATE: I did what you asked, here it is, but it isn't much smaller (730MB vs 1GB)

By the way, pipeline, are you a success story? Did it install OK for you? I'm asking because this is my first serious .deb and it installed fine on my vanilla OS2008 partition, others might have had problems. I want to start a new announcement thread, but I want confirmation that I've got a working package here.
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Last edited by qole; 2008-06-27 at 22:08.
 
pipeline's Avatar
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#87
Yes, it just plain worked as expected on my 810 (after my fumbling with file placement). I half expected to run into issues but for me all icons worked fine. Great job with first deb, looks like you covered all bases... icons, postinstall, sudoers, etc.

The hardest part was placing the 1G file via openssh (glitchy network adapter). That and i tried to delete a previous 1G ext file of mine before unmounting and it couldnt reclaim space so i had to reformat... not sure if thats an issue to warn of for future .ext2 releases since i see you leave mounted. Perhaps unmount is needed for safe deletion of any loopback filesystem.

So afaict its great as openoffice, abiword, mozilla appliance (maybe more once i get time to look around more) Now i just gotta figure some libxul depeendency error for monodevelop.

BTW stock 810 mmc2 2g fat partition here (formatted with file manager).

Last edited by pipeline; 2008-06-24 at 06:52.
 
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#88
Another thing which I strongly needed and debian brought is pdftk.
Pdftk is a gread adjunct for those who work with pdf documents because it allows to encrypt, decrypt, cut and paste pages and merge pdf documents. It was impossible to port to maemo since no java compiler is available, but is in the armel debian packages so it's easy to apt-get install and works allright.
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#89
Now I have to figure out what dependencies to give my package. I'm thinking at least gnutar, maybe also bzip2? I wish I knew what came "stock" on an N8x0. I want people to be able to set this up with a minimum of hassle, and I don't want a flood of, "how do I un-tar the file?"

The xarchiver project has both files in their repository.
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Last edited by qole; 2008-06-24 at 16:47.
 
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#90
Well, you could tar your tbz up with gnu tar and whatever other binaries are necessary, and a shell script to perform the extraction and maybe installation too.

Then it'd be:
Code:
tar xf bundle.tar
cd bundle
./install.sh
Oh, wait a sec, I just realized you're doing a .deb; ignore the above.

You don't need bzip2 if you have gnu tar; but bzip2 is in extras, and I don't think gnutar is. So bzip2 might be the better choice to ease dependency chasing.
 

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