3.5.4 Release Candidate
Marcin Juszkiewicz November 5th, 2005
Some time ago we released 3.5.4 Release Candidate. It has only images and kernels for testing - no feed provided (software from 3.5.3 can work). Some more infos here, bug raporting into bugtracker please (some stuff can be found also here).
Our 2.4.18 kernels got APM fixes so collie (5000/5500), poodle (5600) and tosa (6000) should now resume properly after suspend.
So if you have some spare time then backup your Zauruses and try 3.5.4-RC - we are waiting for any infos.
Remember to check md5sums before flashing!
Log of installation of 3.5.4RC to SL-5500 (58-6 size)
Bugs, suggestions, etc are flagged thus >>>
Under 3.5.3: download files, rename, copy to CF card.
Remove SD card, flash, remove CF card, boot.
Boot says something about not being able to synthesize pci hotplug
events, but otherwise it boots and installs packages as expected.
There still appears to be no way to grab a log or copy of this
procedure, and it scrolls off the screen too fast to make notes.
>>>Is there any way the boot/install log can be tee’d into a file?
Initialization looks fine.
Time zone defaults to UTC which is good. My network card isn’t
recognized by pcmcia/config, so it has to be a manual setting first
time round.
>>>”Get time from network” should be grayed-out when no network card
>>>is present.
Switched Tokyo to Dublin, set time, changed Week Start from Monday
to Sunday, changed NTP server to a local one. I’ve never
understood what Predicted Time is: it doesn’t seem to do anything
meaningful.
the script is doing something, but the delay would unnerve a novice.
>>>Add a “Loading…” popup or progress bar so users don’t get worried.
Skipped Personal Details because my businesscard.vcf is on my SD
card and I’ll copy it across later.
Opie starts up. Nice font, big improvement. Tabs are still ugly by
default though: not a serious problem, just aesthetics: they need
to be coloured and round-cornered a bit to add to the eye-candy.
No mail client, no FTP client, no browser. No problem for
initiates, big, Big, BIG problem for newcomers. Zaurus is
dismissed as “useless” unless it fires up Internet-ready first
time, every time. We seem to be missing a big trick here. Yes I
know there are problems, konq is unmaintained and dies on many
sites, but opie-mail works OK most of the time and it reads news.
>>>Add opie-mail and konqueror or opera at least, and add mail config
>>>Either fix konqueror (it’s very close) or cut a deal with opera.
>>>Fix bug in opie-mail IMAP where it fails to delete mail from server.
time I noticed that sdmgr did start up). Check the applet and it
says Empty Socket. Open File Manager and find that SD card
actually is there.
>>>Fix sdmgr to notify tray applet that SD card is inserted. This has
>>>always worked until now, so maybe it’s been broken by mistake.
Open a console, go to /media/card and run my script that copies my
backups of addressbook.xml, datebook.xml, businesscard.vcf,
todolist.xml, hosts, and config.opts files from the SD card into
the relevant places in /home/root/Applications or /etc. The
script also HUPs cardmgr to enable CF cards.
Re-insert the 64Mb CF card used for flashing, and it pops up a
window saying it’s not recognised and do I want to configure it.
This is new: an excellent idea, and it displays the recognition
string from the card. But DUUH this is the card you just flashed
from, right? So you know you can read it already.
>>>Ensure CF card used for flash gets added to pcmcia/config.opts if
>>>it’s not already in pcmcia/config.
>>>Fix cardmgr so it behaves normally for cards found in pcmcia/config
>>>and pcmcia/config.opts and doesn’t ask for them to be configured.
Really Bad Idea to make it default to suspend: WTF wants card
insertion to cause a Suspend?
>>>Fix cardmgr to default to Activate.
does identify my CF card with the string I had in my config.opts.
So it seems to read the file, but ignores it when a card is
inserted and asks for configuration anyway. Not good. Eject and
reinsert to test…nope, it still asks for it to be configured.
Configure it and the applet displays the right string.
>>>Is there a problem with the config applet writing to the .opts
>>>files?
It’s going to be a major problem if users have to configure CF
cards afresh each time they insert them.
Good menu for the card applet though. Definitely the way to go.
Inserted Ethernet CF card, which is wired to my DSL router. Applet
asks for configuration, same questions, same reply (activate),
plus it wants the driver (pcnet_cs). Same error: the applet then
displays the real name I had stored in config.opts. OK, at least
it’s consistent.
Open Network, yep, it grabbed an IP address from the DHCP server.
Looks like we’re online.
Configure Light & Power, looks good.
Configure Appearance, fix rotation to anticlockwise.
Check Calendar, Contacts, ToDo List, and Today, all working with
my copied data OK.
Open console and set root password.
ssh into Zaurus from a Konsole on my laptop. Time to zap all trace
of my previous 3.5.3 packages, even though 3.5.4 uses the same
repo for them, as they had gotten messed up. Space is tight on an
SL5500, so I’ve been keeping all the package-related stuff on the
SD card as the root partition is at 96%.
Remove the old /media/card/packages (actually move it out of the
way until I understand/remember what creates it and how :-)
Try an ipkg update. Oops. It can’t download http://openzaurus.org/
official/unstable/3.5.3-snapshot-20051024/feed/opie/Packages.gz
which is hardly surprising, looking at the name. Looks like it has
tried to autoconfigure itself using the kernel label or
something. Check /etc/ipkg.conf and sure enough there it is. Use
vi (spit, wash mouth out with soap and water, no emacs on the Z)
to get rid of the snapshot and date. Now ipkg update works.
>>>Fix /etc/ipkg.conf to use the right repo directory names.
ipkg -d sd install opie-mail (assuming the GUI package manager is
still unusable). Started off well, downloaded the IPKs, including
the lib deps, but then hung on libcrypto…maybe because there’s
no /media/card/packages to put them into? Hmm. No flicker from the
hub lights.
Ctrl-C is your friend. Damn, it wasn’t that, it was just hung
downloading. Note: the wget REALLY needs to display a progress
indicator while downloading in ipkg. Added libcrypto separately
via another ipkg install.
>>>Make wget in ipkg display progress.
having to make .desktop files by hand. Same bug as always: ipkg
fails to run ipkg-link add after installing. Do it by hand.
>>>Make ipkg produce a usable icon for installed binaries.
Restart Opie and there’s the mail icon…but Grrr same bug as in
3.5.3 and others: Could not locate application opiemail. WTF is
going on and WTF can’t it find the goddam binary?
which opiemail says it’s /opt/QtPalmtop/bin/opiemail, which is a
symlink to /media/card/packages/opt/QtPalmtop/bin/opiemail, which
is a symlink to quicklauncher. So presumably quicklauncher isn’t
smart enough to do a recursive basename on the lib deduced from
the value of $0, and gags on the reference.
Or something. Either way, both opiemail and libopiemail.so are
linked in, but there ain’t no way they’ll run. I don’t remember
how I fixed this before, but it involved the wholesale moving
around and softlinking of directories for days to get it set up,
which ipkg-link is not doing correctly.
Stop for the night, this is going to be a long and frustrating
task.
OVERALL
Some big and much needed improvements, especially in the flash and
install: congratulations and thanks to everyone who nhas worked on
this. Bugs so far are small and should be relatively simple to fix.
The card insertion popup will be fine when it works. There’s clearly
something radically broken in the way ipkg fails to leave the user
with a working icon, though, which is a bigger problem. And not
including a mailer and a browser in the default distro needs to be
sorted out.
///Peter
Tested with GPE
- Boot process run ok
- After loging, clock doesn’t draw properly. It shows a white frame.
- Wifi doesn’t connect to access point. I can see near networks with GPE aerial applet, but it looks Zaurus can not read signal levels. My access point give me some data as DNS, but wifi not works.
- There’s a overlapping between wifi, clock and battery applet.
You can see the problem on this link
Wifi applet doesn’t show Zaurus is connected because this image is created with “online screenshot” feature
Be sure to check the md5sums! trying both images, I was getting very frustrated until I did… I had to download the opie initrd twice and the gpe three times!
Peter: thanks for raport. some notes:
initiates, big, Big, BIG problem for newcomers.
5500 does not have free flash to add something into it. We already think what to remove to gain some free space.
Opera is closed source and we cannot distribute it. Konqueror/embedded suxx badly - we fixed it to get it atleast working. Opie-mail IMAP bug.. hmm.. have to check it.
Sharp SD interface support wont be added into pcmciaapplet (we used cardmon applet before). That ‘Empty socket’ comes from bugy kernel.
It’s already in a list of fixes.
Release will have it correct.
use -verbose_wget option with ipkg
no 2.6 kernel in the 3100 build.
So I cant test this. But I want help with 3100 tests.
Who maintained 3100?
regards
I just installed 3.5.4-RC + Opie on my SL-5600, it
works well, better than 3.5.3
The following tested okay:
USB networking between my Z and Knoppix box (ssh, scp)
Wireless connection using a D-Link DCF-660W
CompactFlash 802.11b card. Z can see my Linksys
AP but does not get an IP address via DHCP.
Can not restart the card, network applet complains
that it can not stop the card.
Resume works better, backlight seems to work better too.
holding down right side button used to hang system,
that appears to be fixed
For my second test tonight I tried .5.4-RC + GPE on my SL-5600.
Booted okay but after 90 seconds of a static GPE splash screen
the calibrate screen came up, which I used carefully.
After several setup screens that did not work as I expected
I noticed that up/down were reversed, that is to push a button
at the bottom left I had to touch the screen on the top left.
I checked the MD5 checksums on the 3.5.4-RC web page and on my
CF install media, they all match.
GPE image for SL-5600 is too big for the / part.
The filesystem is full so nothing can work properly.
For those curious about this release and wishing to test the install, but not knowing what to do with the released files, more detailed instructions can be found in http://openzaurus.org/wordpress/not-in-menu/install-on-sl-5500-sl-5600-revised/
Looks like I messed up when I tried to restore my SL-5600
to 3.5.4-RC + Opie (after having major problems with GPE image).
After a reset I get the Sharp update screen and I choose
the option to flash from my CF card (as I have done many times
before), but the sceen then goes blank instead of giving me
flash messages. I have tried various CF cards, and have
reformatted one of them — but no luck.
Does anyone have a suggestion for “unbricking” my Z?
PEK
Switching off the lcd on my 5500G does not work. This is a show stopper for me as it renders the zaurus as an audio player unusable.
hi, I just try GPE version, it didn’t start, it;s locked at splasscreen. so I did update to OPIE version and it’s working well.
thanks for very good work, new OPIE looks very nice, colors, fonts, there is not any big problems yet, so I am very happy
I have installed 3.5.4 Release Candidate successfully, both Opie and GPE initrd. Suspend now works on my SL-5600.
Using GPE on the 5600, I’m experiencing an issue that when I tap on the screen, the taps are registered on the opposite end… For example, to close a window (upper right), I need to click on the taskbar, (lower right).
I did verify the checksums, and they were OK.
Another person seems to be experiencing the same thing
“I noticed that up/down were reversed, that is to push a button
at the bottom left I had to touch the screen on the top left.”
These seems like a very good release candidate and seems like many of the bugs from previous versions have been cleaned up. Thanks for the hard work.
I just installed 3.5.4RC1 on my SL5500. It looks very promising but the main bug that I found is that the packagemanager seems to consistently fail to install packages to my SD card. It installs them but then fails to link them intelligently and so far every package I installed required manually symlinking to get it to work properly. Even when I used ipkg from the command line, the packages don’t seem to get symlinked correctly,either.
Just tried 3.5.4 RC, installed a treat (C750). Calibrated the screen, created a user account, logged in… and the stylus isn’t working (!). Darn.
Tried 3.5.3 to compare, and the stylus was working OK on that one - just didn’t detect the screen rotation etc etc. So close…
Looking forward to testing the next release! :o)
Greg: could you raport that ts behaviour in bugtracker?
oops - forgot to say, it was the GPE release I was playing with, rather than than OPIE.
Why not make SD card mandatory as root filesystem on SL5000/5500?
Installed 3.5.4RC1 on my ‘new’ 5600, OPIE installed & running on the first attempt.
Everything I’ve tried so far seems OK except it does not recognise the content of different CF memory cards.
Any card insertion is recognised, but whatever files are ’seen’ on the first card inserted after a reset (via file browser) appear on any later cards inserted, regardless of true content?
I’ve tried both formatting & reset sequence since flashing OZ, without any change (literally! - user info & text docs from when I had the Sharp rom in are still present…) I’m a new user, so apologies if I’m doing anything dumb.
Tried the new opie on 5500, Looks slick!
My Socket CF wifi card also works again.
Tried GPE
Worked too but seems less usable in terms of packages at first sight.
It would be nice if the rc images defaulted to more workable settings for the packagemanager, that would get you more testingresults too imo.
I’m running OZ3.5.4-RC1 on my SL-C3100 and all gone very fine except for the JVM.
We absolutely need to develop java gui based applications, but awt java application crash jvm with this log erxcept:
current locale is not supported in X11, locale is set to CX locale modifiers are not supported, using defaultSIGABRT 6* abort (generated by abort(3) routine, also SIGIOT)
si_signo [6]: SIGABRT 6* abort (generated by abort(3) routine, also SIGIOT)
si_errno [0]: Success
si_code [0]: SI_USER [pid: 1611, uid: 0]
stackpointer=0xbfffca80
About the above problems I found that the crash is caused by an exception “*** glibc detected *** /home/root/usr/local/j2re1.3.1/bin/armv5tel/native_threads/java free(): invalid pointer”.
Is it possibile to fix the glibc problem in any way?
Thank you!
3.4.RC on tosa, gpe. I have flashed R.C onto a cleaned tosa (after nando backup), before I ve been using opie, everything worked, I am only not satisfied with the poor text-programmes. For I am a philosopher who is writing, this is important. So gpe because abiword is available. But 3.5.3 is too bugy, so i have tried 3.4. It is really a big step forward, congratulations and thank you for your work!! Only one thing drives me crazy:
Wlan does not work, behaviour: network is detected, tosa is registered, web browser can display google, but nothing more. ipkg doesn’t update (starts with the process, then hangs.).
Is there a workaround?
By the way (sorry for this probably stupid question): How to install ipk’s offline? I am trying : ipkg install -d cf and then the path: /media/card2/… but I doesn’t work.
Ok, I ve worked out local install, but what’s wrong with wlan? Please give me a hint!