[Announce] N900 maemo flasher as debian live image

[Halftux]

Hi today I want to share my live debian jessie 32bit iso image.

I created it for helping windows user and to have a quick and easy possibility to flash a N900 or to boot the rescue os. With hopefully nearly every pc (no clue about efi boot, I only have old hardware).

This should be a hybrid iso image. I tested it only with an usb memory stick.
It is pretty easy to install just dd it to your stick. Just make sure which device your stick is.

dd if=maemo_flasher_debian_live.iso of=/dev/sd?

For windows try something like

https://de.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_Stick#Download_ImageWriter (for older windows like xp)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ (newer windows)

or https://www.balena.io/etcher/

This live linux is a minimal debian, there is no window manager.
Maemo flasher and 0xFFFF are on board.
Rescue os could be found in /opt/n900rescue
libusb-0.1.12 installed

The image partition has a size of 162.97MiB.
With the available unused space on the stick, you could create another partition and copy the firmware files.
This partition needs to be mounted after booting.

What I tried so far is booting the rescue os and ssh to device.
Mounting another partition from stick.
At the moment I don't want to flash my N900s to much work to get the status back .
However I am really sure that this will also work
Testers and comments are welcome.

username: root
password: supermaemo

Download:

maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.1.tar.gz (zippyshare)
maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.1.tar.gz (mirror link without JavaScript fingerprinting bull****)
maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.2.iso (ddl)
maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.3.iso (ddl)
maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.4.iso (ddl)
maemo_flasher_devuan_live_v0.6.iso (ddl)


2fde6f1699334739f56f119131eb1214 maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.1.tar.gz
d68182f94e1493899935ad9b44f7b7db maemo_flasher_debian_live.iso
b890f956039c915a1be8daabf182c0f9 maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.2.iso
a145289210b874228a7e6627e646457f maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.3.iso
43DD4B33ACC030334A83CD71D4DEC94B maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.4.iso
D34543BE7E1C54F88A0B916B13F91245 maemo_flasher_devuan_live_v0.6.iso

[Halftux]

Version 0.6 devuan beowulf 32bit added package list
- added ftp
- added wget
- removed firmware-linux
- updated to devuan beowulf
- updated 0xFFFF flasher to 0.10

Version 0.4 debian jessie 32bit added package list
- added minicom
- added telnet
- added firmware-linux
- added cramfsprogs
- updated debian security packages
- updated 0xFFFF flasher to 0.8
- updated N900 rescue os to 1.3

Version 0.3 debian jessie 32bit added package list
- added console-data for keyboard layouts
- added N9(50) rescue image and bootloader /opt/n950rescue

Version 0.2 debian jessie 32bit added package list

- adb (Android 4.2.2 Debug Bridge)
- fastboot (Android 4.2.2 protocol for communicating with bootloaders)
- flasher 3.12.1 (N9/N950)
- dfu-util (openmoko, Motorola EZX[openezx])
- fiasco-gen
- mtd-utils

Version 0.1 debian jessie 32bit installed package list

- 0xFFFF v0.7 [by Pali]

The ‘Open Free Fiasco Firmware Flasher’ aka 0xFFFF utility implements a free userspace handler for the NOLO bootloader and extended features for flashing, dumping and getting information for the Nokia Internet Tablets. Thus it's a free alternative to Nokia's closed source flashing utility called flasher.

Supported operations currently include, but are not limited to:
* generating and unpacking FIASCO images on local device
* editing Maemo firmware packages
* flashing any kind image type to Maemo devices via USB
* "cold" flashing for devices with bricked bootloaders
* direct kernel boot without flashing it to NAND
* changing configuration of Maemo device (R&D flags, HW revision strings, ...)

Supported are the Nokia 770, N800, N810, N810w, N900, N950 and N9.

- maemo flasher-3.5

supported devices: N900, N810, N800, 770

- libusb-0.1.12
- ssh client
- mc

[Halftux]

Future ideas:

- adding rescue image and bootloader for N9/N950
- adding more keyboard layouts

If you have any wishes or tools to be added please make some suggestions.

[meego_leenooks1]

Direct link without JavaScript fingerprinting bull****: http://n950.ru/maemo_flasher_debian_live_v0.1.tar.gz

[Halftux]

Okay added a second version with more tools (second post).
Now with an user friendly ddl (first post).

[xiskillo]

Any chance to change the keypmap for another keyboard layouts than spanish?

The command "loadkeys" is not possible to use for me..

Thanks

[Halftux]

Originally Posted by xiskillo

Any chance to change the keypmap for another keyboard layouts than spanish?

The command "loadkeys" is not possible to use for me..

Thanks

I will look into it and try to add all available keyboard layouts. At the moment it is us_en.

[Halftux]

New Version 0.3 released.

Now it is possible to change the keyboard layout with loadkeys.
Added also n950rescue files.

[Ulle]

Thanks Halftux, this thread should be mentioned in wiki for easing of firmware upgrade: https://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_firmware .

I recently bought a used N900 in quite good state and last weekend I tried to flash it and restore from my older N900 via backupmenu.

Gosh, such an afford to get all the necessary tools, firmware files and information together. When I was finally through the whole procedure I thought, everything needed must be kept in one place.

So I use this useful thread to present a live image iso with all my stuff collected at my "just flash a N900"-project ...

https://www.magentacloud.de/share/xoaa7kitfk

* It is actually a standard Ubuntu 16.04.2 32bit Live DVD image - no passwords needed
* It contains the flasher tool AND latest firmware files for flashing N900 (rootfs and emmc)
* Standard Ubuntu desktop environment (english), with easy switching to other languages and keyboard layouts
* Terminal has the two complete flasher commands in bash history
* Links on desktop to short notes (local txt files) on how to flash and how to switch lang and keyboard
* Firefox with locally cached tabs for all bookmarks I found useful when flashing and restoring a N900

The iso image is quite big , 1.7GB (of course, the original Ubuntu image alone is 1.5GB).
But some people might prefer this to the small one by Halftux, where the firmware files must be searched and downloaded as an extra step.

The image was build with Pinguy Builder (which is preinstalled and configured) and everybody can extend it and build its own live iso image. An external disk with a unix file system is needed. All temp files and the final iso itself go there into one directory (the path to that dir has to be set in Pinguy Builder), so at least 5GB space ist needed. All user files and settings must be copied to /etc/skel before the build is started. From that dir the home dir for the live image user is generated during boot.

For booting off that iso I recommend setting up a multiboot usb stick https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...boot_USB_drive (different live iso files can be booted and the stick can still be used for fat32-data, no partitioning needed) .
And if GRUB2 is used as the bootloader on a computer, then it might even be possible to add a menuentry in grub.conf with the path to the local iso file in the line "set isofile=/..." . See the Ubuntu example menuentry ...


I hope my "new" N900 will last a while so that I don't need that iso for myself in the near future . But it might help others ...

Cheers, Ulle

[abuakram]

I need some clarifications on how to use this tool to reset the Lock Code of my N900...

I am running ubuntu so I can simply boot this image through a usb stick...

Now, here's my issue, how can I ssh my N900 and ssh is not setup, and I don't have access to the terminal to do that.

I need help here