[Debian] Running Debian in a chroot - Page 18 - maemo.org

psykosis | # 171 | 2008-07-05, 22:59 | Report

Hey Qole - what is your secret to have Xephyr/IceWM having an icon under OS2008 to switch back? I have been manually wmctrl'ing it back up, but a simple "task" to switch back would be hot.

qole | # 172 | 2008-07-05, 23:25 | Report

I wrote a tiny Python app that pops open a window in OS2008 called "IceWM", then I used wmctrl to find the window ID, then I open Xephyr inside that window using the -parent parameter.

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Amarantus | # 173 | 2008-07-08, 12:22 | Report

As an alternative to OS2008 which is better debian or kde ?

Benson | # 174 | 2008-07-08, 12:54 | Report

Originally Posted by Amarantus View Post

As an alternative to OS2008 which is better debian or kde ?

That question really doesn't make horribly much sense; I think you misunderstand what's going on here.

KDE runs as a window manager and associated apps on top of OS2008; not an alternative to OS2008, but to Matchbox and some Hildon apps.

Debian is a full free-standing distribution; the topic discussed in this thread, though, is using Debian in a chroot, so you have OS2008 running, providing all system services, and Debian providing applications and their (library) dependencies. You can run Debian as a boot-time alternative, but that's discussed in other threads... It's currently the most viable ITOS replacement, IMO, but Android also works (on N810s, mainly); just not many apps there yet.

HTH

Amarantus | # 175 | 2008-07-08, 13:57 | Report

Thank you Benson. Maybe I didn´t express mylself right , what I mean is it´s better use maemo with kde for productivity apps lilke koffice or use debian in chroot ? But you re right debian is much more intersting , especially if I could use java apps.

Benson | # 176 | 2008-07-08, 15:23 | Report

You can use Java apps without (or with) either; Jalimo uses GNU classpath, same as Debian's java implementation, IIUC, just easier with Debian chroot since you don't have to set it up yourself...

Koffice is faster, I think, than OOo, but OOo is more compatible with MSO, and more full-featured in general.

BoxOfSnoo | # 177 | 2008-07-10, 12:56 | Report

I haven't noticed others posting this question since the release of the easy install..

I am booting from MMC, and have 2.7G left on that partition, plenty I probably won't use. How can I either a) install the image file onto this (ext2) partition or b) install on mmc1 and transfer it over? I presume there's a lot more to the installer than unpacking the bz2 file...

I am downloading the image file to my desktop now, and deleting all my mp3s from mmc1...

Thank you, looking forward to trying this out!

BoxOfSnoo | # 178 | 2008-07-10, 14:46 | Report

Ok, still downloading the image, but I have a thought. Is everything else set up after the basic install and before downloading the image?

How about this:

immediately after the existing export= lines in /sbin/debian

Code:

 if [ "$DEBIAN_IMG_ALT" != "" ]
  then
   export IMGOTHER=`ls -1 ${DEBIAN_IMG_ALT}debian*.img* | awk -v RS='Â¥' '{print $1}'`
 fi

and then, in the appropriate spot...

Code:

   export IMGFILE=$IMGMMC2
 elif [ "$IMGOTHER" != "" ]
  then
   export IMGFILE=$IMGOTHER
 else

All I would need to do is export the DEBIAN_IMG_ALT= variable setting before running the script. This should keep it easy for basic use and allow advanced users to be more specific.

Any thoughts?

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qole | # 179 | 2008-07-10, 16:18 | Report

BoxofSnoo: That's cool!

I still think the ultimate thing would be to have the debian chroot script search the root fs as well as the mmc cards for image files, as well as unmounted partitions. If it finds multiple image files and/or unmounted partitions, it will ask you which you want to mount. This would let you chroot into other copies of maemo as well as debian, ubuntu, etc. You could have several images on your various cards and choose which one to chroot into...

... This is my plan for the next version of the "Easy Debian" package...

BoxOfSnoo | # 180 | 2008-07-10, 17:11 | Report

That would be awesome! But... probably take too long each launch...

Otherwise you could rescan on demand and use something like this:

Code:

find / -name debian*.img* 2>/dev/null

The 2> err redirect is purely to prevent seeing the common "too many open files" error. You could use grep or awk to filter just the ones you want, and get them into a list for on-the-fly selection...