Hi all,

After some delay, here is an updated armhf image,

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/asset/by-id/136

It loads into XFCE desktop and includes all of the optimizations mentioned in http://wiki.debian.org/EfikaMXOptimizingPerformance (this means, ngetty, ramzswap, slim, wicd, etc. NOTE: No 2D/3D drivers have been included, as I'm in the process of converting these to multiarch and setting up the repository for easier download via apt-get. Stay tuned.

The outcome is that after logging into XFCE, it has consumed ~190MB RAM, leaving the rest free!

For a start you can login as root (password: root) and just run adduser to create a normal user, as usual in Debian.

Installer script

However the good news is not just the image, but the script which built the image:

http://people.debian.org/~markos/armhf/ ... mhf.tar.xz

This -includes the linux-image debian package, hence the size.

It's supposed to be run natively on an Debian/Ubuntu armhf system -not necessarily an Efika. Or if you're feeling adventurous, you could do that on Gentoo, after installing debootstrap, parted, pv (that's just a pipe progress viewer, still a handy util). After downloading the tarball, just extract it somewhere -as root:



Then cd into the armhf-image folder and run install-armhf.sh:



The first argument can be either ssd or mmc depending on whether we're installing on an SD card (mmc) or the internal SSD. This is due to the fact that boot.scr and fstab have to be setup differently in each case.

The second argument is the actual device to install to, the choices here are usually /dev/sda or /dev/mmcblk0.

The third argument enables the generation of an compressed image of the just-installed device -this is how the image was made.

So in order to install to the internal SSD, you might want to call:



While installing to an sd card and generating the image can be done with the following call:



Now, if you want to tamper with the packages installed, feel free to change the file packages.extra and add/remove packages as needed. Similarly you can install your own kernel by changing the relevant entries in the field and providing the appropriate kernel package.

In general the script is quite simple and can be easily modified to do things that you want. However it's a temporary measure until we get proper Debian Installer support -which will not be long, FYI. However if you have any suggestions about what to include in the script by default, feel free to do so!

Enjoy and happy hacking!

Nice work Konstantinos!


Johan.

Thanks, I used it for a few minutes already, and works great. I suspect, that Gnome will be replaced with XFCE on many computers. Where I work, 100+ workstations will be changed to XFCE when the next Ubuntu LTS arrives.

One note for those starting with an update, like me: the default source is ftp.us.debian.org in /etc/apt/sources.list. Currently updating does not work from here, it's inconsistent, some packages seem to be unavailable (404 error). Most likely a mirror sync problem.

So, if you live in the US, have some patience until it's fixed, else replace us with your country code (for example I changed to hu), and you will have a faster download and a better maintained mirror.

Thanks for the note Peter, I'll add a note for that in the readme -which will be in the next revision.

PS. Ah, by the way, since a few days, LibreOffice is available for armhf -the metapackage is not yet however, so you will have to install the packages individually, eg. libreoffice-writer. :)

Hi,

Before all, thanks Markos to all your great job !

I quickly made a crossbuild of an image (with my own script, still in developement phase) and get your kernel installed into my rootfs.

I do not have my own built kernel, because I cannot find any method to build armhf in crossbuild on my squeeze debian i386 (for now).

I copy the firmwares into /lib/firmware/rt*.bin, like in your script.

I modify /etc/init.d/udev to comment the 2.6.31 testing (which enable udev).

I boot up my armhf, fresh built sdcard and I get, with wifi enabled, a kernel panic (divide by zero) ;


I go to make more tests...

Edited :
It's a little bit out of topic, do your prefer I make another post to not put noise in yours ?

No more kernel panic...
my rootfs (wheezy) mixed with your kernel !

Thanks

Nice work !

I had an SD card based on the previous image, with some personal changes (Xfce replacing Gnome, mostly), that I further updated according to your other, performance-related post ; and now this one, all shiny and ready to use :)

Other than the problems mentioned below, everything seems fine. Well-integrated, feels faster than the previous image (on the same SD) and almost as fast as the internal SSD's default Ubuntu, *despite* the low-end SD card.

I have however serious problems with power management on the debian-armhf front. As in, not having any, initially.

On the new image, Xfce's power manager settings would not even give me the options to set suspend modes. Only logout would be available from Xfce's logout icon (no restart / shutdown options).

Two things I did seem to have solved that problem : making sure my user is a sudoer (with ALL=NOPASSWD:ALL), and... nuking slim and going back to lightdm.

Now I get all the proper suspend options in Power Manager, and the restart and shutdown buttons on logout. As per my settings, the machine will even go into suspend mode on lid close.

It won't always wake up on lid open, however. When it doesn't, an additional short press on the Smartbook's power button wakes up the machine and brings up XScreenSaver's dialog.

But at this point, the machine responds *only* to the power button -- no keyboard, no mouse. A cold boot is the only way out.

I have a feeling that I'm missing something really basic and silly... Any ideas ?

Thanks.

Any hints on getting sound to work with a ssd install and a Genesi Smartbook?

working on that, seems it needs a profile in pulseaudio, William Schaub has fixed that on armhf, and I'm going to test it next and then include it in the script/image -longterm goal is to include it in pulseaudio upstream.

If you don't care about pulseaudio you could just remove it.

I'm unclear. . . Should I install pulseaudio? Does that enable audio?

I'm running it from an SD card, and my problem is, that kernel modules for sound are not loaded. But after a simple:

I was able to play my flac files with perfect quality. Luckily, pulse audio is not enabled (if you have good ears and/or high quality sound samples, you know what I'm talking about, for the rest pulse audio is not a problem :-) ).

you can add /etc/modules as :


and in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules


hope it helps...
sYs

Thanks for the modules tip! I did not compile my own kernel on Linux for some time now, and start to forget such basic things. On FreeBSD one can't do any interesting thing without compiling an own kernel, so I'm more up to date there :)

I don't know where the other two module names are coming from, I don't have them on my system. On the other hand I have "gpu", which is commented out in your example, loading that leads to some ugly kernel messages.
Also, Wifi works fine without that module. It's faster and more stable than with the Maverick image, where transfer speed is not always so great.

Libreoffice: one can now simply use , and all dependencies are installed. I could edit and play my FOSDEM presentation. And this is the tough part, as for docs and spreadsheet there are other apps, like AbiWord & Co., but not for presentations...

Looks like a problem with kernel/slim/consolekit. I've the same problem, and after googling around I found this page:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130154

It looks like a more recent version of slim is needed:

http://svn.berlios.de/viewvc/slim/trunk ... iew=markup

Sound is the best ever on the smartbook. I had this sound quality only 1+ years ago with Ubuntu. The strange thing is, that the kernel version is the same, and pulse audio is removed also from Ubuntu. Still, on Debian there are no cracks and other background noises. Just as it should be :)