In case you're wondering what the update in Extras-devel is about, I removed the MurrinaNightOrange theme from the Easy Debian package and MohammedAG made a new package for it. The Easy Debian package now depends on the new murrinanightorange package. He wants to use it in a couple of his projects but it was conflicting with Easy Debian.

EDIT: For some reason, my version themed any commands called with sudo, which I really liked. The new separate package no longer does this. Does anybody know why that would happen?

It's now possible to make a bluetooth keyboard and mouse work fully in N900 Easy Debian. You need to hack a bunch of stuff to get it to work (see especially this post, this post and this thread), but I'm hoping to package this up for those wanting the Pocket Computer experience.

Ok so I put easy debian on and love the fact that I have real linux (sorry maemo but busy box?) now to learn from. I have even done an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and nothing broke. I do have 2 questions...

1) I have learned from tinkering that I can get logged in as root and directly into /root by typing debsu from maemo, and that I can bring the chroot closed by typing closechroot from maemo. But if I fire up debian through the desktop icon, it plops me into / not /root and if I cd ~ I am in /home/user, not in /root like the debsu command put me. Is there a way to have easy-deb-chroot plop me in as root in the /root directory when I use the desktop icon as opposed to having to do debsu from within the maemo terminal?

2) I tried from within debian to run the update-rc.d command to have some services I installed (such as mysql server and sendmail) start when I activate the chroot. but the command
"update-rc.d mysql enable" does not do the trick. It reports that it is creating links to /etc/init.d but still if I log out and bring debian down (either from the desktop app or by running closechroot) and then go back into debian, the service is not started. I am going to make a guess that since this in chroot that the scripts are not even getting read?

anyway it would be great to have both of these issues worked out as I am trying to make the debian chroot mimic a true linux environment (being in /root and having certain services started) as much as I can. after all the entire reason I bought this phone was to learn linux....

thanks for listening.

extendedping:

1. In Maemo, as root, edit the /usr/share/applications/hildon/debchroot.desktop file to have the following Exec line:

That will get the debsu behaviour from the icon.

2. See the startup scripts section in the wiki for information on starting services when you open the chroot.

HINT: You probably want $CHROOT/var/run/onfirstchroot.rc

thanks, going to look at these things now...

Sorry it's taken so long to reply - I was expecting an email to inform me that there had been posts on this thread.

I'm using version 3.2.1-4 from sid.

Apparently something has changed. I just loaded up one file and sure enough my N900 crashed. But since then I've only been able to get OO to crash, with the N900 staying alive. I don't know whether some update has made Maemo more stable now. I can't send you the file that did make it crash because it's the original work of a colleague and I'd need, at the least, to get her permission first.

But let me attach a file that consistently makes OO crash, and in the past has also made N900 crash. It basically happens when you scroll down to the bullet points. I had to upload it as a .zip as .odt's can't be attached.

FWIW it seems that the armel build of OO has some known problems. They've taken openoffice.org-base out of the repository as it didn't work at all. Possibly this is all something to report as a debian bug.

I have tried your file in my OO version 3.2.1-3, which is the current version in squeeze and I don't get any crashes.

I noticed the newer version in sid, but didn't install it after I saw that a rather larger number of other packages would get upgraded to sid as well. So perhaps the problem is with those. In that case it might be best to start all over with your Debian installation and only upgrade to squeeze packages.

I guess that means that easy-deb-chroot with Maemo-side fixed scripts will remain in devel or testing somewhat longer, because promotion will depend on those additional packages now, but anyhow, it's perhaps an advantage to have two installable versions, one with Maemo-side and one with Debian-side fixes of the keyboard focus. Both have their advantages imo - the Maemo-side improvements give a better integration of Easy Debian windows, while the Debian-side improvements are more deterministic.

qole, whenever you have nothing better to do, I would suggest producing a new Debian image where the Debian-side fixes are included, together with an upgrade to the squeeze version of OO, since that is working fine at the moment, while sid seems to have introduced new problems. (If you have the 1:3.2.0 version, I would even suggest that. It is a bit faster than the newer 1:3.2.1, and users would then have the choice between that and the current squeeze version.)

Since this is my first post to this thread, I'd firstly like to thank everyone involved (especially qole), but thanking everyone would take forever.

I am running into some problems though.


I second the idea that the wiki should include further explanation on Xephyr. I'd volunteer, but I'm currently lost, running two separate chroot partitions on external SD: one to load with bootmenu, and one to load from maemo with Xephyr.

I'd like to consolidate this into one simple partition, but...

The easy-debian partition won't boot from bootmenu-n900, and the debbootstrap partition won't load in Xephyr. The post I quoted doesn't quite fix this. I installed all the packages referenced.

For my bootable debian partition, when I call the debian-lxde script from easy-deb-chroot 0.9.53-1freemantle1, a window with a pointer shows up ( DISPLAY=:1 ), and then the terminals I've set to start in /root/.xsession load in separate windows ( DISPLAY=:0 ). The window manager (fluxbox) never loads. Otherwise it works fine if I use the easy-debian partition.

(EDIT: I can start the window manager from a chroot terminal however.)


For my easy-debian partition, I set an item in /etc/bootmenu.d/, but it never loads past the bootmenu screen. Otherwise it works fine from the bootstrapped partition.


Also, I am trying to find out how to mount and modify Maemo JFFS/NAND from a bootmenu setup, (so I don't have to reflash when I screw up something simple in Maemo). It would be very nice to have easy-debian setup for this purpose.

Any help would be appreciated as always.

I would suggest creating a new wiki page for such advanced topics as bootable Debian and then linking to that in the Easy Debian page. Otherwise the Easy Debian wiki might become prohibitively heavy reading, in particular for new users.