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Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 1:28 pm
by quotaholic
Hello,

This one is huge, literally. I had the goal of making a bluetooth gui work within 500 megs and this is it. I had to upgrade to debians unstable branch to get the latest blueman to install. Once I had all the libraries installed and blueman built I was at 437mb taken on the drive. So I put in the E17 desktop shell and called it a day. E17 is amazing on a DT. I should have done this ages ago.

Seriously in 20 megs E17 puts in icons, desktop, file manager and ENDLESS configuration. Even keybindings in a gui environment. The handling of menu items and scripts is excellent so placing icons with associated scripts should be easy. But theres more...

E17 has a profile called "Illume". Its a great deal like matchbox window manager except it is leaps beyond with respect to fit and finish and presentation. The on-screen keyboard looks like the keyboard on the iphone or ipod touch. Illume makes apps run full screen and one at a time as it is meant for embedded devices.

Software included

Wicd - Network manager
Blueman 1.10 - Bluetooth Manager
Btscanner - Bluetooth scanner
Iceweasel - Web browser
Anyremote, Ganyremote and anyremote2html - remote control program
Bottlerocket - Control X-10 devices
Xvkbd - Virtual keyboard

I just found bottlerocket which is a x-10 device control program. I am in hopes that making icons that control devices is possible. On E17 we one can have animated icons allowing a wide variety of feedback and interactivity. Latest blueman should allow bluetooth personal area networks as well. With the Anyremote program possibly we can control some devices.

I had to use a network mirror for this install so 40 megs went to apt for keeping a list of packages. No room left for much else but if you want to remove things then install feel free to use apt-get as its aimed at debian.org/sid. Less than 3 percent of the drive is available. Sorry.

I'll get off my soapbox after this statement. I am so impressed with how well E17 works on the DT's. Fast, responsive, and just amazing fit and finish. Overwhelming almost. You will be amazed! I plan on making one more of the 500 meg images without blueman so that I can include more efl applications (enlightenment foundation libraries). Then I am going to make a 1gb E17 based image. 

Thank you Rasterman!


Here is the image.

Download WebDT366-E17.tar.gz from FileFactory.com

md5 is in the archive

quotaholic

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 5:29 pm
by volkswagner
Way to go quotaholic.  I am downloading at the moment.  I can't wait to try it.  Kill the suspense for me....does this also includes hard buttons, or does the .Xmodmap how to work with E17?

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 8:06 pm
by quotaholic
Out of the box the buttons should work just like the last image. This time I aimed the wireless button at wicd.

Xmodmap was the method used for mapping of the buttons. All the same F_ keys were used associating the same keycodes so the .Xmodmap file in /home/webdt is exactly the same.

If anyone wants to change anything:

Enlightenment has a settings dialog box with lots of "tabs". This is found under Settings and again Settings Panel from the main menu. Scrolling to the "input" tab and seeing keybindings on the left side, it was only a matter of clicking "add" and then pressing the hard button on the DT. From there it grabs the current mapping and asks what action on the right you want to associate. This one section is quite robust. Many calls.

If you add an application:

Open the application from the terminal. On the upper left corner of the running program click the icon. In the drop down menu there will be an "edit icon" option. Choose this to add the application to Enlightenments inventory. Now it should be in the listing of applications and one can add it to the "dock" or the menu's. 

E17 works a little different than most things I have ever seen. The eye candy vs footprint and cpu cycle is better than anything else I have used. Still in heavy development so it may segfault depending on what you are doing. Hopefully it works well for you.

quotaholic

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 12:55 am
by akhileshss
I could not get my Cisco airo 350 card working with this image. Anyone facing similar issue?
BTW, the distro rocks. Remove some bluetooth and other packages and it simple rocks with abt 80 MB free space. E17 rocks...

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:52 am
by ionbladez
I keep annoying you guys but does it include the bluetooth audio support? lol.

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:04 am
by quotaholic
If alsa were installed base level support would be there. If you are looking for a gui based support then I apologize. I struggled with the thought of either including audio or including web browsing and web browsing won.

The missing element is the audio. There was not enough room on the drive. If you eliminated iceweasel and all the other apps like anyremote and btscanner then you may have enough room to apt-get audacious and the audacious-plugins. At that point you would have full audio support. I transferred some files and paired with two devices so I am hopeful that the audio portion works as well. I may have spoke too soon on personal area bluetoooth networks as that function may require a dhcp server be installed.

Not to sound like a stuck record but the 1gb chip is a hurdle eliminator in this situation. Not only is the i/o ~8x faster the added storage allows for video, audio, and a well rounded set of apps to be installed.

I am trying to build emphasis today. That and possibly giving blueman-0.19 another try. Emphasis is an enlightenment based audio player. Everything in E17 is really small and light. I will let you know if I have good results.

quotaholic

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 2:20 pm
by ionbladez
Damn, well I don't have a wifi card, everything I run has wifi integrated into it.
I need to get my hands on an ambicom wlan card. wll1100x I believe. Sure it's Wireless B, but it's something I know debian supports.
it's CF also, so less power consumption.

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 5:55 pm
by volkswagner
akhileshss wrote: I could not get my Cisco airo 350 card working with this image. Anyone facing similar issue?
BTW, the distro rocks. Remove some bluetooth and other packages and it simple rocks with abt 80 MB free space. E17 rocks...
I also had an issue with WiFi connection using airo 350.  I am not sure what the issue was.  I have been messing with a couple different machines (non-WebDT's) with wireless issues.  This has caused memory loss for myself.  I can not tell you exactly what corrected it, but here is a list of possibilities.
  • Move unit closer to wireless access point
  • Make sure wicd preferences set card to eth0 (or wherever your card shows up)
  • A couple reboots later I had wifi working
Another reason I am not totally sure what "fixed" the problem, is I first started messing with the /etc/network/interfaces file.  During my first edit I made a syntax error.  this caused errors when trying to manually restart networking.  Oddly I had wicd finding my access point before locating the error.  I have since restored the file to original condition, so I don't think altering the file had any effect.

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 6:20 pm
by akhileshss
I saw that iwconfig/iwlist shows the interface to be managed and I see the airo_cs and airo modules in lsmod. Hence I believe that the driver is there, but may be faulty.
lspcmci shows the correct card also.
I see that ifconfig also shows device, and its mac id.
I see that wicd cannot see the essid in scan as the backend "iw" commands do not show anything. Hence, I think something wrong with the driver.

On further investigation, I saw that the kernel is 2.6.26 in our image. On searching on the net, people on ubuntu faced this issue with this kernel and I found on some developers list that the issue has vanished in 2.6.27+ kernels.

Can anyone pls update the kernel and try it?

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 8:29 am
by quotaholic
Not sure that updating a kernel will have any positive effects. In fact I am betting that if one updates their kernel they will be breaking the penmount driver and calibration utility. 2.6.29 is a good kernel for penmount for anyone willing.

Logic:

This is the same kernel I am running. This is the same kernel that has been in all the debian based images I have released.

The only things that have changed here are the libraries and tools that wicd uses to make its connections. That and wicd updated to a newer version.

Try connecting via the command line. Manually issuing a dhcp request. It sounds like everything else lines up.

Wicd offers a neat feature of autoconnecting to a network. This has caused problems in the past in slowing systems and making wicd act quirky. If wicd is aiming at things that are not there it can create problems. Before I make a dd image of my hard drive I uncheck the "autoconnect" box in wicd and eliminate the "persistent-network-rules" in /etc/udev/rules.d to eliminate the lock on my air cards mac address.

I am thinking that in your case that wicd is still aiming at wlan0 which is how my air card associates. In stead of using the gui tool to qualify driver sanity use the cli tools to bypass wicd. OR try pulling your air card and boot up normally and see if your system slows down then. If not go in to wicd and change the config files to aim at eth0. Wicd uses tools like dhcpcd or dhclient and the wireless-tools package to make its connections. We need to use these same tools and see the output before we can assume a driver or kernel problem. 

quotaholic

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 6:34 pm
by akhileshss
I agree with you, wicd uses a number of tools and each of them can be a possible source for error.
So lets line up what would happen and check:

1. kernel boots and pcmci  driver loads.
        - This works as I can see the correct card in lspcmi
2. the cisco airo and airo_cs modules load up which give them their identity to be recognized as wifi interface.
3. the networking layer comes up, makes this interface available. We can hence see these devices in ifconfig -a
4. the wifi tools like iw* commands come in handy to instruct the whole stack to check avaiable network ssids by scanning them
5. once we select the essid, the encryption and authentication protocols kick in and form a connection with the access point.
6. IP is reserved using DHCP and then everything works.

My network scan using iw* commands dont show any essid. Hence I believe that the driver is playing some mischief as generic network layer for linux cannot play bad games.

Please let me know if I misses anything in my reasoning.

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:54 am
by quotaholic
Even though I sat in CCNA classes for over a year I am not knowledgeable enough to validate each step the operating system takes to initialize a driver. I can say that in the same exact configuration both Volkswagner and I had the ability to connect to the internet utilizing the same platform. Only we are on the older version on wicd. This driver, kernel and card combination has been used in every debian based image I have produced. I do not see how is yours different. What I do see as being different is the os level tools used to access the driver/hardware.

The cisco drivers seem to grab eth0 in the end and that was the jist of what I was pointing towards about Volkswagners post. If wicd is configured to aim at another port (wlan0) it can cause some of the issues you are reporting. If I switch from g card to b card I get some hiccups yes but in two to three reboots wicd associated to the new card eliminating the hiccups.

I would have to reference the osi stack to point out that there are several steps to associating a wireless networking device to both the operating system and then to the network it is being aimed at. Again I am not an expert at that relationship so I wont comment on it. I will say that many of the tools in "sid" are still in development. Sadly I dont know why two machines are working and your is not. "Sid" is not supported so I cant really submit a support request from the team working on it.

Shortly I will be releasing a lenny based e17 image. As its not built on unstable software hopefully it will work better. My main goal in the image you are utilizing was the bluetooth that you removed. I apologize it is not working the way you intend to use it.

quotaholic

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 12:15 pm
by ionbladez
Just thought I'd drop by with some repositories to some debian binaries.

http://www.morphix.org/debian/binaries/

I remember using this a couple times back on my old pc.
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/S ... 6721.shtml

Java:
http://packages.debian.org/sid/openjdk-6-jre-headless (very minimal, for NO GUI Programs)



Some emulators:

*Super Nintendo*
http://mirror2.corbina.ru/debian/pool/n ... /s/snes9x/

*Gameboy/Gameboy Advance*
https://files.bountysource.com/file/dow ... 1_i386.deb

For those who want P2P:
http://apt.debianchile.org/frostwire/po ... frostwire/ (need a working JAVA install - not OPEN JDK)

I'm not sure if any of the links I posted will work, but they are for archiving purposes only.
Whoever CAN install them, Do it.
If you complain about errors, you should'nt have tried to install it.

That's just a couple programs I use sometimes.
SNES9x for the win.

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 8:44 pm
by akhileshss
quotaholic, you precisely pointed out what was wrong... cisco driver grabs eth0. Once I pointed wicd to wifi0, all sorts of wierd things happened. I then tried all sorts of combinations and then suddenly read ur post to get enlightened :) eth0 works with cisco 350 card. sorry for causing so much of trouble to everyone here.

BTW, I should be thankful to you for introducing Enlightenment image. I simply love E :) I was a fan of E16 long time back, but E17 had simply simply simply aumzed me with the kind of capabilities it packs in such a small footprint !!! And thank you for bringing E17 to webdt :) You dont know what you have done for me :) You have actually made the DT usable for me in practical life... For me. you have made my WebDT more than a toy... more of a tablet for me. Thank you so much :)

Re: Debian-Sid E17 image for the DT

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 7:49 am
by quotaholic
That is fantastic news, I am glad that things are working for you!

If you have some hard drive space consider checking out http://packages.enlightenment.org for a look in to their apt repo for more EFL based applications.

I agree with you that E17 is a good match and allows for a nicer user experience on the DT platform. I hope to learn some edje scripting soon so that I can custom tailor some apps to work better on the DT.

Credit needs to go to Volkswagner for identifying eth0. Thank you for your nice words!

quotaholic