Dare to Dream?

Plankton - An excellent theme - very clean & elegant … and a nice looking email client.

I gave Claws email a try before setting up the default client… but since they are being ported from a desktop base, the toolbars/menus occupy much of the reply window’s screen. This default email client (picture above) is as simple as it gets & seems to be very effective to me! A few more mouse clicks (on the menus) is much better than constantly hiding the keyboard to check what you have typed.

Mutt… was a bit too much to set up - when my pizza & Mickey were waiting for me

Dual booting your N800 has many advantages…

• You can always have a backup of your original OS (on the flash)
• When booting off the Memory card, you have full 1/2 gig at your disposal!
• Experimenting with distros like sardine is worth it!

So… how to go about it? A few tips for you - so that you dont have to spend those reckless 7 hours like me

I have an N800 so I can only speak about this device… but with what I’ve read & seen on the #maemo channel, N800 uses the rootfs method while the 770 uses the initfs method.

As a thumb rule, we need to follow this guide - http://www.maemo.org/platform/docs/howtos/howto_dualboot_bora.html

…except copying the rootfs part. I tried copying the rootfs (maemo-sdk-rootfs.tar.gz) but was unable to get it booted up! So I followed the tar/untar method described at http://maemo.org/maemowiki/HowTo_EASILY_Boot_From_MMC_card - this method gets you an exact replica of your N800’s filesystem - very good considering you already had lots of settings on your device.

So in essence, this is all what you have to do (I had 1 gig card in my internal (inside the cover) slot)

Procedure…

1. Create an ext2 partition on your memory card - I also created a 100 megs swap - use cfdisk or gparted (your choice)
2. insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.18-omap1/mbcache.ko
3. insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/current/ext2.ko
4. mkdir /opt
5. mkdir /floppy
6. mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /opt #—-> this is your memory card’s ext2 partition
7. mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock4 /floppy #—-> this is your current rootfs
8. tar cf - -C /floppy . | tar xf - -C /opt
9. umount /floppy /opt
10. shutdown -h now
11. Connect your N800 to your Linux box using USB (do not poweron/charge right now)
12. flasher –set-root-device mmc
13. Insert the charger into N800 & you will see a success message
14. Reboot your N800

Some points that you need to take care about…

• Use GNU tar - busybox’s tar had an issue with copying file paths which have more than 100 char length. You can find GNU’s tar from http://penguinbait.com/tar.gz
• Use ext2 file system - I had read on InternetTabletTalk that journaling filesystems are bad for the memory card.
• You dont have to format the memory card from the device itself. Just insert the card, connect the device via USB, unmount the card on your computer (if its automounted) and then use gparted/cfdisk to partition it.
• When copying files from the flash device to the memory card, omit the “-v” option in tar. By not using the verbose option, you will speed up the copy process by almost 50%.

How to temporarily boot from internal Flash? - Just remove the memory card while booting up. Thats it!

How to Undo the stuff…

1. Connect your N800 to your Linux box using USB (do not poweron/charge right now)
2. flasher –set-root-device flash
3. Insert the charger into N800 & you will see a success message
4. Reboot your N800
5. The device will now boot from the internal flash in future.

My device

Good luck

Managed to get the dual boot working perfectly!

Expect a How-To first thing tomorrow morning!

A big thanks to [s-ndh-c]

Its been more than 6 hours at a stretch that i’m trying to dual boot the N800 - planned to get stable Hildon App Framework (HAF) running from flash & get Sardine (Bleeding edge HAF) running from the mmc. But after first trying the initfs method my device was rebooting endlessly!

Now am giving the rootfs method a last shot (this time with GNU tar)

I’ll post my results tomorrow morning… right now, i’m bit too tired from staring the 2 monitors from past 6 hours!

PS: The guys on #maemo have been really helpfull - specially [s-ndh-c]

As Laurent mentions here in his post to maemo-users, getting ping/telnet/traceroute to work without resorting to install a new busybox package is easy. Infact, here is the data.tar.gz file in question (N800 dosn’t has “ar” & I was planning to do all of the mentioned steps on my device itself).

Ping on my N800 - in action…

BTW… thats interesting - the screenshot/load/processes applet hides itself while taking the screenshot

Boy… HowDoiBecomeRoot2 really saved me from the hassles of reflashing my device to gain root. Once you have Xterm & Dropbear on your system running, gaining root is as simple as ssh’ing to your device’s localhost from the xterm as root & using password - “rootme”.

You should follow HowDoiBecomeRoot2 for exact steps if you are interested.

Once this is done, configuring VPN on the device was peanuts! Check out scriptkiller.de’s VPNC packages. I wish I could have posted my N800’s pic accessing RH’s vpn… but…!!!

Happy hacking!

First - thanks to everyone who helped me in getting the device…

The Nokia team - without whome this couldnt have started in the first place…

Sunil Uncle - without whome, I wouldn’t have had any chance to buy this device! Thanks Uncle

Darryl - Who brought the device from US… thanks man!

[edit]
Oh yes, how can I forget Kevin - He was the guy who told me that N800 was out & pointed me to the Developer device program Thanks Dude
[/edit]

Okay… so this post *should* have been via my shiny new N800, but the poor dude is running dangerously low on the battery & i’m sure that, it wouldnt make it through for a blog entry

The device looks ultra cute, very bright screen - but as with all other Nokia phones, has a shaky back-flap! I might need some celo-tapes to keep it still.

My mouse, the N800 & the E61 (Potato) - Took this picture to put the size of N800 into perspective BTW… that reminds me that I still have to cook up a name for the N800…

I already have some bugfixes in mind - regarding the software I was using during my return journey & will soon start filing the bug reports against them

But till then… I need to find some screen protectors & a zipper cover for the poor soul - dust is eating him raw!

If it runs on Debian, there’s no doubt that it’ll run on Fedora!

I’ve been playing with Ubuntu in my VMWare for quie some time now - to get Bora up & running, but everytime I was running into some strange errors - they could have been because of vmware! I even tried downloading the Maemo Appliance from VMWare’s website - but the download seemed to be corrupted all the time!

…then an idea struck - If it runs on Debian, what’s stopping it to run on Fedora rawhide? - Nothing!

I quickly killed the vmware & installed Bora as per INSTALL.txt of Bora release & voila! My FC was running Maemo SDK in about 25 minutes flat!

Now some real porting fun can start! Hurray!