Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

This board posts about running linux on your webdt366
volkswagner
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by volkswagner »

Yet another reason to host our own torrents.  ;D

I will look into this deeper, so we as a community can make best use of all your hard work, quotaholic.
Nothing is ever easy, but if it is difficult you must be doing it wrong.
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by quotaholic »

That is one fantastic idea Volkswagner!

To keep pace with you:

I'll be out of the house all day today but tomorrow I will be putting time to a script that I just found. This is a Slackware script that writes a bootable image directly to a disk in an external cd burner. Up to this point the only scripts I found for this wrote the image to the /tmp folder. As storage is borderline nonexistent in a DT this script was impossible to use. Hopefully I can get this "CD burner script" to take and have an installable iso image to offer for next week.

Granted this post is off topic for the respective thread. I felt it was worthy of mention.

quotaholic
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by plane_crazy »

Quota

Used the Slax boot disk - dd'd the image to the disk. Got the same result but this time the DT booted up to a desktop. Opened a terminal and used "df". Output was:

/dev/hda1  1K Blocks=505964  Used=448664  Available=57300  Use%=89%  Mounted on= /

This all looks like what you posted. It seems to be working OK. Don't know why I get those "no space on disk" errors?

I have a 4GB micro SD card in the USB port and a 256MB CF card in the slot. How can I best utilize these to add more programs? I may be interested in adding tuxpaint, gcompris and childplay as Kluut did for the grandchildren.

Bruce

PS - I would use the chat (love it) but I am at work and "Big Brother's" firewall says NO CHAT!
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by quotaholic »

Yeah that no space left on drive is an odd one with numbers like those. Huh. Sorry to hear about big the brother thing.

Anyway I found this post by david_halliday that explains how to make sym links.

http://webdt.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6.msg479#msg479

Hope it helps

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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by plane_crazy »

Ok, so now that I have it running:

a) which folders should I move to make room for a couple of programs.

b) How do I install the new programs? Do they use the .deb files?

c) How do I remove the programs I don't want?

Bruce
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by gillespiem »

quotaholic  - I hadn't touched my webdt in a few weeks, and wanting to know about your progress I installed the Debian LXDE image you had posted - congratulations, things look great.

Good job on the image. I've got one question though - are you able to CTRL-ALT-F7 out back to the console on your device, or do you get a black screen? I had that issue on the image I've been working on, and on my device I have the same issue w/ the LXDE image. I'm curious if it's a video-driver issue, or just a configuration issue on my device itself.

Again, good work - keep it up.
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by quotaholic »

plane-crazy,

here are some folders that Volkswagner moved on his DT to free up quite a bit of room.
This is on a modified system.  I have sym links for /home, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, and /usr/local which were all moved to the CF disk.
To get an idea of how much you will be moving use this command:

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sudo du -hs /*
on my current tower computer the output looks like this:
6.1M    /bin
15M     /boot
4.0K    /cache
68K     /dev
35M     /etc
147G    /home
16K     /install-data
102M    /lib
4.5M    /lib32
0       /lib64
16K     /lost+found
4.0K    /media
68K     /mnt
339M    /opt
du: cannot access `/proc/599/task/599/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/599/task/599/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/599/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/599/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
0       /proc
860K    /root
18M     /sbin
8.0K    /scripts
0       /sys
4.0K    /test.sh
80K     /tmp
5.6G    /usr
457M    /var
My current system is Sabayon on the tower that I am using so it may look a little different. Its a very useful command for getting a quick idea of disk usage and where.

Anyway
This should bring you below 40 percent usage on hda1. This being the case I wouldn't hesitate to say use apt-get with an online mirror. With only 50 some megs free I would not use apt-get as the package list is really big once it decompresses. Both apt-get and synaptic are front ends for dpkg. If you have the .deb file saved locally to your
DT you can use:

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sudo dpkg -i foo.deb


to install foo.deb. To remove an installed package with dpkg we use:

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sudo dpkg -r foo
and drop the file extention.

Now to activate apt we need to adjust one file.

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sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Comment out the cd rom line by placing a "#" at the beginning.

Add these lines below:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian lenny main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US lenny/non-US main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

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ctl+o
to save

enter to confirm "sources.list" save

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sudo apt-get update

to download new package listing

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sudo apt-get install foo

to install a package named "foo"

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sudo apt-get remove foo
to remove a packaged named foo that is installed on your system

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sudo apt-get clean
to clean out the system of downloaded package files used during install


That should get you removing and adding some programs.

gillespiem, thanks for the thumbs up! I have not tried to switch ttys as of yet. I did find that with the autologin script I threw in fstab that doing so is kinda hard as its set for an automatic respawn. Sometimes it would respawn and sometimes it would not. Have you tried logging out of the gui to the login and then attempting to move over? My scripting on these events is amateur as well. It may be down to how I am calling the logout or the groups not being assigned correctly. This has been a significant learning experience for me and LXDE gave me the largest challenge in configuration. Not putting video driver out of the realm either. I cant use the geode-x11 driver - yet. Lots of bugs in launchpad on it currnetly. Vesa does ok but is very slow. There is a watchdog process which I think is geode related but not sure. Also worthy of mention, anything alix related or "geode 5535" optimized seems to have locked out tty's. iMedia was like this too and that is gentoo based. Still putting all these clues together...

quotaholic
Last edited by quotaholic on Tue Jun 02, 2009 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
volkswagner
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by volkswagner »

plane_crazy wrote: ...
I have a 4GB micro SD card in the USB port and a 256MB CF card in the slot. How can I best utilize these to add more programs? I may be interested in adding tuxpaint, gcompris and childplay as Kluut did for the grandchildren.

Bruce
...
I think the microSD in the USB 1.0 would be a performance hit with disk speed.

The 256MB CF may be on the small side.  You will need to get creative with your symlinks.  I have some notes, as I have been experimenting with symlinks.

After downloading and installing openSSH packages here is my disk usage.  /hdc5 and /hdc6 are partitions on my CF card.  The system in question is on the Debian5-LXDE.img

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Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1               505964    460644     45320  92% /
tmpfs                   124096         0    124096   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                     10240        76     10164   1% /dev
tmpfs                   124096         0    124096   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdc5              1438888     72052   1293744   6% /hdc5
/dev/hdc6              1502140    732592    693244  52% /hdc6
Moving /home reduced disk usage by only ~1%, while moving /usr/bin reduced disk usage by ~5%.

Here is how /usr is divided after moving /usr/bin:

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WebDT366:~# du -bhs /usr/*
13      /usr/bin
16K     /usr/games
82K     /usr/include
161M    /usr/lib
961     /usr/local
3.6M    /usr/sbin
89M     /usr/share
48      /usr/src
78      /usr/X11R6
As you can see /usr/lib and /usr/share have the greatest disk space consumed.

With the 256MB CF card, I don't think you will want to move /usr/lib.

My advice is move /home, /usr/share, /usr/bin, /var/lib, /var/log and /var/cache

Here is what I have moved to CF and the respective disk usage.  The following totals 201MB, and leave an internal disk with ~60% used and 40% free.  Please note my notes are not perfect and your mileage may vary.  The following numbers are on my current setup, which has several added programs, FireFox-3, Synergy, some bluetooth modules, SSH-server and Client, maybe a little more.

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webdt@WebDT366:~$ du -bhs /hdc5/usr/*
25M     /hdc5/usr/bin
94M     /hdc5/usr/share


WebDT366:/home/webdt# du -bhs /hdc5/var/*
37M     /hdc5/var/cache
42M     /hdc5/var/lib
3.6M    /hdc5/var/log
Make sure you login as root when performing the tasks, and don't remove the old directories until you do a successful reboot and verify all is well.

One major issue with having symlinks can lead to a chain of symlinks.  It appears the system does not like to honor a symlink to a symlink.  After I added Firefox I had to rename the symlink which launches the app.

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lrwxrwxrwx 1 root  root         31 2009-05-28 16:43 firefox-3.0 -> ../lib/firefox-3.0b5/firefox.sh
As you can see /usr/bin/firefox-3.0 is sym linked to /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/firefox.sh

So the program would not launch unless I ran /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/firefox.sh
Nothing is ever easy, but if it is difficult you must be doing it wrong.
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by plane_crazy »

Thanks a lot for all the suggestions guys. I will try them soon. Right now trying out MicroXP. I bought this to have fun and learn with and well..... I'm learnin'

Bruce
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by kluut »

About the keyboard button:
quotaholic, I am not sure I understand what you write above about evrouter 'duplicating the event handler', but maybe I am missing something.

I did a evrouter dump:

sudo evrouter -d /dev/input/event2

which shows

device  0: /dev/input/event2: Atlas ACPI button driver
Display name: :0
^[OP
Window "(null)": # Window title
# Window "(null)": # Resource name
# Window "(null)": # Class name
"Atlas ACPI button driver" "/dev/input/event2" none key/59 "fill this in!"

if I press the keyboard button.

So I created a evconf file with the following content:

"Atlas ACPI button driver" "/dev/input/event2" none key/59 "Shell//usr/bin/xvkbd  -geometry 798x175-0+375 -no-keypad"

Running
sudo evrouter -c evconf /dev/input/event2

indeed starts xvkbd (once) when the keyboard button is pressed.

Now I need to work on the script I want to run. Instead of just starting xvkbd I would like to toggle between bringing the keyboard to the foreground and minimizing it.
Also the current way doesn't show the keyboard if I am running a fullscreen application (tried with childsplay and rdesktop), so I need to figure out how to do that. Any input is welcome.
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by david_halliday »

I emailed the developer of xvkdb about adding the ability to send it a SIG_USR1 to uniconify the keyboard, but on further thought it looks like using devilspie to control windows may be better.

Dave.
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by kluut »

I'll check out devilspie. Thanks.

Something else: I found that by default, the oss emulation kernel module is not loaded. I noticed this because rdesktop seems to rely on it. You can load it on automatically on startup by adding the line

snd-pcm-oss

to the file /etc/modules

Now, if you run rdesktop like this

rdesktop -r sound:local  remote-ip

and sound will go to the webdt.
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by quotaholic »

The hard buttons come out of the box configured as? The directional pad also seems preconfigured. I tried a few different calls last night to get basic arrow keys associated with the d-pad but didnt get very far. The event handler(s) seemed to double as something that caused errors in mc but opened new tabs in iceweasel. I was using that script that I was given. Going to dig around the acpi area today to see if I can find the original event handler and either kill it or work with it. Using evrouter has had good results on the hard buttons but on the d-pad we seem to send two commands.

Try opening different programs and pressing those buttons. With nano open, the hard buttons seem to do different things. Evrouter will script a keyboard to a button but within different applications I am seeing that we are sending multiple commands. Are you seeing the same?
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by vinograd19 »

Are you talking about 4 buttons in the front and the joystick? If So xmodmap can configure it. just open "xev" in terminal to find out event numbers and then make the .xmodmap file in home directory like it was described here.
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Re: Debian5-WebDT366-LXDE-1.1

Post by quotaholic »

"....and there was much rejoicing"

Thank you Vinograd19!

After a little bit of playing and switching window managers I have this working.

A couple steps but not bad. The end result is working buttons upon seeing the desktop which is great.

Step one:

Make a file in your home directory titled ".Xmodmap". Please notice the period in front making the file hidden. File should look like this
keycode 74 = Right
keycode 73 = Left
keycode 72 = Down
keycode 71 = Up
keycode 70 = Return
keycode 69 = F14
keycode 68 = F15
keycode 67 = F16
Save file and make executable with a:

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sudo chmod u+x .Xmodmap
Step two:

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sudo nano /home/webdt/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml


Scrolling down a ways gets us to the keybinding section. At the end and before the last closing symbol- ""

add the following


 
    wicd-client
 


 
    pcmanfm
 


 
    xvkbd -geometry 798x175-0+375
 



If you inserted properly the next lines down should be:




save this as lxde-rc.xml


step 3:

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sudo nano /etc/X11/Xsession
Locate the following around the 7th line down:

"set -e

PROGNAME=Xsession"   


and insert this:
if [ -f $HOME/.Xmodmap ]; then
   /usr/bin/xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap
fi
The next two lines after this should be:

"message () {
   #pretty-print messages of blah blah"

Save this file as Xsession and reboot.

As long as you made /home/webdt/.Xmodmap executable you should have working buttons on reboot.

Thanks again to Vinograd for finding the root configuration of the atlas button controller. Until this point we were putting another layer on top of this method causing two actions from each event.

***Warning this method watches /dev/input/event2/ for events. If you start your DT with any usb devices plugged in you can cause a remapping of the button controller to an input other than /dev/input/event2 thus making this startup config useless. In my case a usb keyboard i was using came in under an event input and knocked the atlas controller over to event1 and the system never saw it. Plug in your usb devices after the desktop appears and all should go well.

hope it helps
quotaholic
Last edited by quotaholic on Mon Jun 15, 2009 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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