pjcj's notes

Sat, 28 Apr 2007

Setting up the N800

Here's the steps I have taken to flash my wife's N800 and make it useful.

Flashing

Get the linux flasher-3.0 and firmware image. Put them in the same directory on your linux box.
Update: get the latest image.
Switch off the N800, unplug the charger and connect the N800 to your linux machine with the USB cable.
As root, or a user with permissions to access USB, run

./flasher-3.0 -F RX-34_2007SE_3.2007.10-7_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f -R

Update: run

./flasher-3.0 -F RX-34_2007SE_4.2007.26-8_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f -R

Wait for the message

Suitable USB device not found, waiting

Switch on the N800 by either
- Plugging in the charger or
- Switching it on using the power button whist pressing the Home button
The image should now flash and the N800 will reboot

Get root

In order to do anything interesting, you'll need root access. This involves adding a repository and installing a couple of applications. The N800 uses the debian packaging system, so this will be familiar to anyone who is used to debian or ubuntu.

Add the repository

Catalog name Maemo Repository

Web address http://repository.maemo.org/

Distribution bora

Components free non-free

See http://maemo.org/maemowiki/MaemoReleasesRepositoriesDistros for more information.

Install osso-xterm.

Update: Also available here.

Install becomeroot by clicking on http://eko.one.pl/maemo/dists/mistral/user/binary-armel/becomeroot_0.1-2_armel.deb in the browser on your N800.

Start xterm. It's in the extras menu.

run sudo gainroot

set the root password

Red pill mode

Red pill mode is an (ex) easter egg providing access to some advanced features. Activate it by going to add a new application catalogue, setting the "Web Address" to "matrix" and pressing "Cancel".

See http://hildon-app-mgr.garage.maemo.org/redpill.html for more information.

Ssh

Install the ssh package.

Update: Also available here.

Configure

Perform whatever configuration you would like. For example:

Set the hostname - echo myn800 > /etc/hostname
Set up hosts - scp myserver:/etc/hosts /etc

Add packages

Other useful packages can be found at http://maemo.org/downloads/, for example:

wget

Install by clicking on http://mg.pov.lt/770/wget.install

Start the server by running x11vnc.sh&

vnc

Download http://mike.saunby.googlepages.com/x11vnc_0.8-3_armel.deb from http://mike.saunby.googlepages.com/x11vncfornokia7702 and install it using dpkg -i x11vnc_0.8-3_armel.deb.

In order to get mouse clicks working properly, you will need to add the string " -extension XInputExtension" to the ARGS string in the file /etc/init.d/x-server. For me, that leaves line 5 as

ARGS="-mouse tslib -nozap -dpi $DISPLAY_DPI -wr -nolisten tcp -extension XInputExtension"

Then reboot.

Gizmo

Install http://download.gizmoproject.com/GizmoDownload/gizmo-project_2.0.0.56_N800_armel.deb from http://www.gizmoproject.com/download.php.

rsync

Install from http://maemo.org/downloads/product/grsync/. (Doesn't seem happy to install. Perhaps it's only for the 770 after all?)

Claws-mail

Install from http://maemo.org/downloads/product/claws-mail.

Canola

Install from http://openbossa.indt.org/canola/help.html. Reboot after the installation. To enable clicking on items, run

gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/canola/plugins/uicontainer/free_click true
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/canola/plugins/uifolder/free_click true

Boot off SD

Why might you want to do that? Well, you get your root filesystem somewhere where it's not going away, you can make it as large as you need and, as a bonus, not being a jffs2 filesystem it will probably seem about twice as fast.

Partition the SD card

I've seen instructions for doing this on the N800. It seems easier to me to just plug a card reader into your linux box and partition it that way.

Make the first partition FAT16(6) and the second linux(83).

fdisk /dev/sdb

Format the partitions

mkdosfs /dev/sdb1
mke2fs /dev/sdb2

On Ubuntu, removing and reinserting the card should be enough to create the required devices to run these commands.

Get GNU tar onto your N800

The busybox tar just won't cut it, so you'll need to get the GNU version onto your N800. However you do that, you'll need somewhere to put it, so first

mkdir /root/bin

You can get tar onto the N800 using the N800 by downloading the tar .deb file and extracting the tar binary:

apt-get -d install tar  (you'll need to answer Y to the questions)
mkdir /t
dpkg -x /var/cache/apt/archives/tar*.deb /t
mv /t/bin/tar /root/bin
rm -r /t
apt-get clean

Or you could do a similar thing on your linux box, getting the .deb from http://repository.maemo.org/pool/bora/free/binary/tar_1.14-2.1osso_armel.deb (or whatever the current version is) and scp it across. That particular tar_1.14-2.1osso_armel.deb is also available from my site.

Or just download the thing from my site.

Mount the rootfs

mkdir /mnt/rootfs
mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock4 /mnt/rootfs

Copy the rootfs

The rootfs needs to be copied to newly created partition. Again, this can be done directly on the N800, but it seems easier just to do it whilst the SD card is connected to the linux box. On the N800:

/root/bin/tar cf - -C /mnt/rootfs/ . | ssh -l user myserver tar xvf - -C /media/usbdisk-1

Enable dual booting

This part is possible due to the work of Frantisek Dufka.

Download the initfs_flasher and unzip it.

tar xvzf initfs_flasher.tgz
cd initfs_flasher

Make sure the N800 has sufficient power, close all applications, disconnect from the network and open an xterm. Run the flasher

./initfs_flash

After the reboot, run

chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:mmc2

and reboot

shutdown -r now

Links

[/unix/n800] permanent link