Re: zaurus-debian success!

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 02:32:49AM -0700, steve wrote:
> For me, Action-Calendar toggles this, not Action-Contacts.  I think this 
> is what you meant because later:

Thanks, I'll need to look into updating the documentation.

> Calendar does not work as ctrl for me,

Can you add the -debug flag to fbvnc and check what key code (if any) the
Calendar button generates?

> which reminds me: do you know what works as ctrl in the text console?
> Fn+Shift doesn't work like it does in Qtopia, and I'm tired of
> switching to "Replace Battery" and rebooting my Z just because I pinged
> something while in the text console :-)

Try loadkeys, or recompiling the kernel with a fixed mapping. Sharp seems
to go out of their way to annoy people who want to use the console, on
the 7x0 they even broke scrolling in the default kernel.

> Do you know the Sharp ROM terminal command for bringing up the network, 
> or what is run at startup (after a reboot) that starts CF network 
> cards?  I can run "cardctl eject" to eject, say, my wired NIC, and when 
> I put my wireless card in, I don't know how to restart the network 
> stuff.  "dhcpcd" and "ifup eth0" don't work because eth0 isn't 
> detected.  "cardctl insert" works with no errors, but "dhcpcd" doesn't 
> start anything after that.  "cardctl status" shows my card as suspended, 
> "cardctl ident" correctly identifies my card. 

I don't know, either try running "cardctl resume", or editing the
appropriate file in /etc/pcmcia/* to make the card start powered up.

If anyone reading this knows how to do this, please say so - I've had
several people report this but nobody confirming which fix works for
which card.

> How simple would it be for me to make it so Rotate rotates the screen 
> clockwise instead of counterclockwise?  My IR port is on the left side 
> and I'm about to try to get a pocketop IR driver to work.

Not easy, it's hardcoded in the source code and would require significant
reengineering of the scaling and drawing code. I was meaning to fix that,
but it was never a priority so far due to lack of time.

> What kind of environment are you developing in?  Do you cross-compile 
> from your linux desktop?

Nope, I have an old iPAQ with a broken battery that I'm using as a
stationary networked compile server :-)

> Power management - the only thing that worked was when my battery got 
> low and it automatically dimmed the backlight, which was nice.  
> Attempted manual changing of brightness as well as suspending does not work.

Another issue that I can't fix due to lack of feedback from people who
got it working, and I don't have the time to experiment.

> apt-get/dpkg RAM shortage - this is actually a pretty huge 
> inconvenience, unfortunately, since the 5600 only has 32megs of RAM.

That should not be such a big problem - do you have memory dedicated to a
RAM disk? If so please change to a ROM that doesn't do that.

> Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/root                 22.0M    21.3M    768.0k  97% /

What's /dev/root really? And what's the output of "free"?

> As you can see I have extra space on /dev/mtdblock3.  Do you think it 
> would be fast enough to run from here?  I'd like to make a 24mb swap 
> file.  I'd have tried this already, but I don't know how to make a swap 
> file on  /dev/mtdblock3 so that zaurus-debian can see it, do you?  I 
> believe I could shrink /home via resize2fs and mount the remaining space 
> on /mnt/card/debroot/swap from the Sharp ROM, then do "swapon" from 
> zaurus-debian, or something similar.  Do you think it's safe to resize, 
> and would this work?

Swapping onto flash media is a bad idea, it's incredibly slow and will
wear out the flash chips much faster than a filesystem.

> Does the IceWM configuration on -base-v0.17 take up less RAM than 
> -big-?

Yes, it's an older version.

> Also I would not be opposed to trying an even lighter weight wm 
> (I use the minimalistic pekwm with everything hot-keyed so I'm not 
> worried about "user-friendliness," especially while trying to conserve 
> RAM on a PDA.) 

I'm running the "ratpoison" WM on my C750, which is about as minimal as
you can get.

-Klaus