[PORT] Ubuntu 11.10 Native (Alpha 0.0.4)

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castrwilliam

Senior Member
Dec 15, 2011
212
340
Phoenix
HowTo: Pandora on TP Ubuntu 12.10 final

Just so you all know Pandora doesn't work with Gnash. even on a fast amd64 box. If you want it, though, you can still get it by installing this:
Code:
sudo apt-get install pianobar

You'll need to create ~/.config/pianobar/config (make sure to create that subdirectory first.)
Follow this post to get it working:
https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar/issues/324
 

sfrappier

Member
Dec 15, 2012
5
11
Anyone get Unity working on 12.10 yet...

Hello everyone:

First off - wanted to give thanks for all the people that have contributed to this thread - I've had a blast getting Ubuntu 12.10 to run on my touchpad - well worth it.

I started with the Ubuntu 12.10 cd image and used it to create a root fs - I then chrooted and did many updates to it (made sure to set initctl back) and ported the kernel as needed. I'm at a point now where the touchpad boots, loads lightdm, allows me to change the network connection (wifi works), but after lightdm and the login, unity does not start.

The cause looks to be centered around the fact that the freedreno drivers for Xorg do not support DRI or DRI2. Unity tries to start up a software based open gl renderer, and basically everything just falls apart.

I was able to set onboard and gnome-terminal to start automatically so I could at least debug further. I just finished a dist-upgrade to correct some other remnant issues, but it seems to be working well.

If anyone has gotten unity to work, let me know - a kernel, modules, and freedreno drivers that are specific to 2.6.35-palm-tenderloin and the current (build 13) of Xorg would go a long way. :) - there are so many different kernels that I've seen in this thread - one source would be nice (or a reference to the pages I should be looking at...)
 

castrwilliam

Senior Member
Dec 15, 2011
212
340
Phoenix
I'm not sure why you don't use my latest 12.10 final as a base for Unity work (mine's smaller than a CD and is based on Ubuntu Core), but the only kernel that I know of that will both support EXA under Freedreno under Xorg ABI 13 and work with the touchscreen/Bluetooth/USB OTG/Wi-Fi/everything else you need to actually use the tablet is mine, at http://github.com/willcast/ubuntu-kernel-tenderloin branch "jellybean" (but it's pretty buggy right now and I don't recommend it for a daily driver.)

If you can contribute to the kernel, please do, I'm not the best at debugging kernels.

Should you choose to compile it, make sure to reconsitute the uImage with the old ram disk and install it in the real boot partition (mmcblk0p13). Or just wait for me to finish my kexec installer in the other trending thread on Other Dev. :D
 

sfrappier

Member
Dec 15, 2012
5
11
I'm not sure why you don't use my latest 12.10 final as a base for Unity work (mine's smaller than a CD and is based on Ubuntu Core), but the only kernel that I know of that will both support EXA under Freedreno under Xorg ABI 13 and work with the touchscreen/Bluetooth/USB OTG/Wi-Fi/everything else you need to actually use the tablet is mine, at <sf - snipped> branch "jellybean" (but it's pretty buggy right now and I don't recommend it for a daily driver.)

If you can contribute to the kernel, please do, I'm not the best at debugging kernels.

Should you choose to compile it, make sure to reconsitute the uImage with the old ram disk and install it in the real boot partition (mmcblk0p13). Or just wait for me to finish my kexec installer in the other trending thread on Other Dev. :D

castrwilliam:

Appreciate the input - the core reason I went down "starting from scratch" was to truly understand what actually had to change in order to support Ubuntu 12.10 on the Touchpad. Many of the issues that I tackled were addressed in this thread, but others (such as the baremetal compile bug in libdrm with the kernel) were documented elsewhere...my goal is to get up to speed enough to help out as much as possible and requires me to dig a bit deeper :).

I have been following your kexec progress as well. Sadly - I am not a kernel debugger, but one of my bigger goals throughout this process (and now that I have a stable Ubuntu running), is to try both the jellybean kernels and to also look at the 3.7 and 3.8 branches from kernel.org.

After the initial posting that I put on here - I now have xfce, and lxde running perfectly on 12.10. My image is a bit bigger then yours as I'm compiling on the ARM device (after I got the initial cross compile to work) so I have many of the dev packages installed.

xfce has issues (known bug) with touchscreen devices - you can't resize/move the windows very easily. ldxe works great - using onboard as well and now I'm just cleaning things up...

I have also checked out (git) your kernel as I see you're actively working on it - I can't promise much, but if I'm able to squash a few bugs, I'll definitely send you the code.
 

stdinov

Member
Jan 15, 2013
12
2
Reboot Ubuntu?

Hello guys,

Thank you for the wonderful work with Ubuntu for Touchpad. I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on my TP and experienced the following two issues so far:

- on my first boot in Ubuntu, I tried to set the brightness of the screen through the Set Brightness option in the menu - the screen turned off (went black). I needed to wait the battery to get empty in order to go to the moboot menu. After loading again the Ubuntu everything was ok.
- I tried to rotate the touchscreen through the menu option - the screen remains to be drawn in lanscape, but actually it is rotated - I can find my virtual keyboard keys on other places on the screen. However after I try to login, only the background image is shown and nothing else happens.

Sharing my issues, I have two questions:
- how can I reboot the Ubuntu with the hardware keys, because I often get in this situation to not have the virtual keyboard shown, I haven't connected the TP to the WI-Fi yet, so I don't have any access to the Ubuntu
- how do you guys debug the kernel and the Ubuntu in such situations? Do you have any usb tools, so you can connect the device to a PC and get access to the cmd and fs?

Thank you in advance!
 

kicker22004

Senior Member
Mar 28, 2008
425
122
OnePlus 9 Pro
OK well not a lot I can do to help you with the debugging question... However you should never let the touchpad die... If you get a lockup just hold power +home for around 10-20 seconds and your touchpad will reboot.
 
Jul 16, 2012
31
3
Hello guys,

Thank you for the wonderful work with Ubuntu for Touchpad. I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on my TP and experienced the following two issues so far:

- on my first boot in Ubuntu, I tried to set the brightness of the screen through the Set Brightness option in the menu - the screen turned off (went black). I needed to wait the battery to get empty in order to go to the moboot menu. After loading again the Ubuntu everything was ok.
- I tried to rotate the touchscreen through the menu option - the screen remains to be drawn in lanscape, but actually it is rotated - I can find my virtual keyboard keys on other places on the screen. However after I try to login, only the background image is shown and nothing else happens.

Sharing my issues, I have two questions:
- how can I reboot the Ubuntu with the hardware keys, because I often get in this situation to not have the virtual keyboard shown, I haven't connected the TP to the WI-Fi yet, so I don't have any access to the Ubuntu
- how do you guys debug the kernel and the Ubuntu in such situations? Do you have any usb tools, so you can connect the device to a PC and get access to the cmd and fs?

Thank you in advance!

Strange that Set Brightness doesn´t work for you, it works fine for me. You can probably set it manually by typing "setbrightness #" in the terminal without quotes and a number from 4 to 255 in place of # with 255 being the highest and 4 being the lowest brightness.

About the screen rotation, it doesn't work for me either, but I used this shell script by castrwilliam to do it through the terminal (you'll need to go to the specific post for the download link):

I just made another shellscript to rotate the screen manually. Extract the attached tarchive, as root, in the root of your Ubuntu filesystem to install.

To go vertical:
Code:
sudo tsrotate v

To go horizontal:
Code:
sudo tsrotate h

This will install the archive, (download and run under Ubuntu only PLEASE):
Code:
sudo tar -xvzf /home/ubuntu/Downloads/tsrotate.tar.gz -C /

Can't really help you with kernel debugging, sorry. Also the virtual keyboard can be brought up in the login screen from the upper righthand corner. When logged in you can open it from Applications>Universal Access>Onboard and it appears as four squares in the upper righthand corner. Click that and go to preferences, then enable "Auto-show when editing text".
 
Last edited:

stdinov

Member
Jan 15, 2013
12
2
Thank you guys!
The reboot key combination is very useful. Also I succeeded to connect to a Wi-Fi with WPA2 Personal and installed openssh. An application update notification appeared to me and I installed the proposed updates (apps and libraries only). After this the TP reboots when I try to boot Ubuntu. Can I install any apps on this?
I suspect that installing libusb-dev also crashes the Ubuntu.
I will try to make a detailed report what works and what doesn't work for me.

Cheers
 

Sl@nzer

Senior Member
Jul 30, 2012
54
16
New version of Ubuntu 12.10
Hello everyone. It's been a while since I released 12.10 (beta 1 at the time) for TP. It was quite large and somewhat buggy, with a few regressions from
12.04.

I am proud to present you with a completely reworked, fully up-to-date new version of Ubuntu 12.10.

What works:
- USB OTG
- Touchscreen + Service (ts_srv_0, ts_srv_90)
- GNOME 3 - fallback only
- Sound (only through the speaker for now)
- Wi-Fi (NetworkManager)
- Bluetooth (tested, HID k/b visible from gnome3)

Useful features (now mostly in the right places):
- Multi-Threaded Memory Compression (zram) and Swap (already present on all TouchPads)
- Proper fstab mounts: sdcard, read-only boot and read-only webOS root
- udev kernel patch, fixes the "failed to recieve ctrl connection: Function not implemented" error.
- Many more kernel modules, examples: CIFS/SMB, NFS v3/v4, LED triggers, and more.
- Tiny kernel and initramfs, both compresssed with LZMA instead of gzip (3.3MB down from 5.4MB)
- Zenity powered GUI enabled brightness changer (Applications->System Tools->Set Brightness)
- Zenity powered GUI enabled screen rotator (Applications->System Tools->Touchscreen Rotation)
- PulseAudio bypassed and replaced with ALSA dmix/dsnoop for gstreamer (fixes crashing Rhythmbox/Totem)
- Spiffy console font, t.fnt.gz (set at boot)
- All legacy init scripts that are Touchpad related have been ported to Upstart.
- No sudo password prompt. This is needed for the zenity scripts to function properly!
- Command line battery information script: /usr/bin/battery
- Brightness changer (setbrightness) will still work from cmdline, just use the brightness # as an argument
- Freedreno (still no ExA)
- Symbolic links from user directory to SDcard save wasted space for music, pictures, downloads and videos/movies
- Far smaller than before (516 MB down from 836MB)

logins
login: ubuntu
password: ubuntu

login: root
password: root

download links (You'll need all four!)
Kernel [3.3 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?4y2adpjdvrhl2lh
Part 1 [200 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?190elok4akdw482
Part 2 [200 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?hhiyp0w8jef5p5w
Part 3: [104.62 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?4u49m34xmftlx9h

install instructions
(You'll need at least MoBoot to be installed already.)
1. If you don't already have Ubuntu on your TP, run the "4GBPartition.sh" but not the other scripts. Either way, BACK UP.
2. Install my new, modified kernel in /boot. (The modules and Freedreno driver are already included in the tgz.)
3. Download the TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz.1, 2 and 3 files from MediaFire to the root of the SD card/internal storage of the TP.
4. Run the following commands in novaterm:

Code:
mount -o remount,rw /boot
cd /media/internal
cp uImage.Ubuntu /boot
cat TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz.* > TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz
mkdir -p ubuntu-root
mkfs.ext3 /dev/store/ubuntu-root
mount /dev/store/ubuntu-root ubuntu-root
cd ubuntu-root
tar -xvpzf ../TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz
cd ..
umount /dev/store/ubuntu-root
sync
mount -o remount,ro /boot
reboot
5. Select Ubuntu in the moboot menu to boot Ubuntu 12.10 final!!

installing ubuntu for the first time..i have a noob question..how do i install the kernel
 
Jul 16, 2012
31
3
Look back three pages (page 79) for instructions on the kernel, I explain it there. (I just refer to castrwilliam's post, because it's already in his instructions)

Yes USB-OTG is supported if you have a powered usb host cable. But I wonder if you should be installing this tux-world, seeing that you're having so much trouble with it. It could potentially break your device.
 
Last edited:

Isles487

Member
Oct 18, 2012
6
0
Thanks!

I wanted to say thank you to everyone that has contributed to Ubuntu on the Touchpad, directly or indirectly.

I used a chroot off and on in WebOS, and while it was always fun, I was frustrated that the full experience- with keyboard and mouse, was just not there. CM9 is awesome, but this is just something else. Full Ubuntu, with bluetooth support that's working well. I'm having a blast with it. I'm also pretty happy that sound is working, and as I'm typing this I'm listening to some music. Great job, all.

Btw, thanks also for the latest version-12.10. The install instructions were simple and easy to follow.
 

stdinov

Member
Jan 15, 2013
12
2
Hello guys,

I've installed synergy software on my TP with Ubuntu 12.10 and my PC with Ubuntu 12.10. Everything is just fine, but I can't see the mouse cursor. Can someone help me with turning it on?

Also I need some help from the port maintainers - when I install some packages my Ubuntu installation gets corruped - it can boot anymore, it is put in a reboot cycle. How can I debug this? Please give me some debug steps and overview on the package system - why some packages could lead to installation corruption? For example - installing LibreOffice leads to installation of OpenJDK which reboots and corrupts the Ubuntu. If you give me some guidelines how can I trace/debug and fix such issues, I think I can help myself and others.

Thank you in advance!
 

castrwilliam

Senior Member
Dec 15, 2011
212
340
Phoenix
Hello guys,

I've installed synergy software on my TP with Ubuntu 12.10 and my PC with Ubuntu 12.10. Everything is just fine, but I can't see the mouse cursor. Can someone help me with turning it on?

Also I need some help from the port maintainers - when I install some packages my Ubuntu installation gets corruped - it can boot anymore, it is put in a reboot cycle. How can I debug this? Please give me some debug steps and overview on the package system - why some packages could lead to installation corruption? For example - installing LibreOffice leads to installation of OpenJDK which reboots and corrupts the Ubuntu. If you give me some guidelines how can I trace/debug and fix such issues, I think I can help myself and others.

Thank you in advance!

Oh man. I had that problem at one point when I was installing GNOME onto my modified Ubuntu Core install. Then, it corrupted my /etc/{passwd,shadow,groups,gshadow} and I had to start over...

I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, because I only had it happen twice in a row and then it stopped after I installed gnome-core seperately. But... I'd try to ssh into the TouchPad and do the installation from there, because then you can get a permanent copy of the output from dpkg, and hopefully the last package to be installed.

Sorry about that, though, I thought that had been resolved.
 

stdinov

Member
Jan 15, 2013
12
2
Oh man. I had that problem at one point when I was installing GNOME onto my modified Ubuntu Core install. Then, it corrupted my /etc/{passwd,shadow,groups,gshadow} and I had to start over...

I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, because I only had it happen twice in a row and then it stopped after I installed gnome-core seperately. But... I'd try to ssh into the TouchPad and do the installation from there, because then you can get a permanent copy of the output from dpkg, and hopefully the last package to be installed.

Sorry about that, though, I thought that had been resolved.

So, after 2-3 restarts, my Ubuntu got back and I continued the installation of the OpenJDK and LibreOffice. I think the crashes were due to low memory. I started to monitor it with "top". I succeeded to install Eclipse, Kdevelop, cmake and some other small packages without crashing or corrupting the installation.
Can you point me which X manager has the lowest memory footprint so I can install and try it?
And again I want to ask how can I turn on my mouse pointer? I have a mouse pointer on the login screen, but right after I log in, it dissappears and it is really hard to use Synergy without the mouse pointer.
Can you guys share your battery usage and how much time you can use the TP with Ubuntu on battery? Has someone tried to optimize the battery usage?
 

viper3two

Senior Member
Nov 20, 2008
121
26
First off, I would like to thank the developer for all the hard work on this port. I am really enjoying it. I have one issue I am unable to solve, and I am a linux newbie, so I am trying things but it is not working out. I did the initial install on the OP, and it went well. No issues at all except my screen was a little laggy, but it is alpha, I understand. I have been reading through this post and saw that there was an upgrade to 12.10. I installed it, the install went perfect. One glaring issue I have with this install...my wireless just quits working all the time. It sees the network fine, I connect with a WPA2 password and it works...for a few minutes, then it just quits. The only thing I can do is reboot.
Is there anything I can do or try to make this work better?
Anybody else having this issue? Would it be worth trying a reinstall?
Thank you for the help in advance....
 
Last edited:
Jul 16, 2012
31
3
Its a known problem with the wireless connection. I'm also having trouble with the network at times; mostly that it can not connect to begin with. However, when I remove the wireless connection from the list and then reconnect it works again for me. Perhaps this works for you as well.

About the mouse pointer, I usually enable the option to show the mouse location when pressing ctrl. Don't know if it can be made visible with the current Freedreno driver.

Also, Freedreno seems to have progressed quite nicely with XBMC working on the developers Touchpad! Link to blogpost
I'm just having some trouble getting the Mesa version to work here. I installed his latest libdrm version, then installed his latest Mesa version, but I haven't a clue on how to enable it as the new video driver. Anyone have any pointers?
 
Last edited:

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  • 41
    WARNING, DRAGONS AHEAD!
    IF YOU DIDN'T ALREADY KNOW, BY INSTALLING THIS, YOUR WARRANTY IS PROBABLY VOID! I won't be responsible if your TP bricks, needs doctoring, catches fire, skins adorable puppies and kittens, BBQs your "crown jewels", eats your children, starts WW3, explodes or commits seppuku!



    Special thanks go to:
    • jcsullins - The guy who made all of this possible by creating moboot, and he created kernel patches that fix the weird-ass framebuffer glitches, and he made the userspace touchscreen driver. This guy is a f**king GENIUS!
    • jeanfrancis - pointed me towards better-initramfs, as well as showing me some code on pointing that initramfs to an LV.
    • crimsonredmk - showed me the Arch Linux documentation for the TP, and wrote the original instructions for getting Arch Linux on the TP, which I have taken and adapted.
    • The CyanogenMod Team - For creating CM7, and getting it working on the TouchPad.
    • perpe - made a working rootfs to get it booting while I was busy :)

    Installation instructions: http://code.google.com/p/hp-touchpad-ubuntu/wiki/Installation



    Apply to join the dev team! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGJYWDJJbUNKT0ZlanZSVVB4aElTZHc6MQ

    CHANGELOG:
    Alpha 0.0.4:
    Code:
    - Kernel panic on boot issue should now be fixed
    - Location of sys files changed
    Alpha 0.0.3:
    Code:
    - Added userspace touchscreen driver
    - Hopefully fixed kernel panic on boot
    Alpha 0.0.2:
    Code:
    - Patched framebuffers to prevent color and mouse cursor glitches
    - Released kernel sources
    Alpha 0.0.1:
    Code:
    - Initial Release
    12
    12.10 version 2 [NOW MORE USER-FRIENDLY!]

    New version of Ubuntu 12.10
    Hello everyone. It's been a while since I released 12.10 (beta 1 at the time) for TP. It was quite large and somewhat buggy, with a few regressions from
    12.04.

    I am proud to present you with a completely reworked, fully up-to-date new version of Ubuntu 12.10.

    What works:
    - USB OTG
    - Touchscreen + Service (ts_srv_0, ts_srv_90)
    - GNOME 3 - fallback only
    - Sound (only through the speaker for now)
    - Wi-Fi (NetworkManager)
    - Bluetooth (tested, HID k/b visible from gnome3)

    Useful features (now mostly in the right places):
    - Multi-Threaded Memory Compression (zram) and Swap (already present on all TouchPads)
    - Proper fstab mounts: sdcard, read-only boot and read-only webOS root
    - udev kernel patch, fixes the "failed to recieve ctrl connection: Function not implemented" error.
    - Many more kernel modules, examples: CIFS/SMB, NFS v3/v4, LED triggers, and more.
    - Tiny kernel and initramfs, both compresssed with LZMA instead of gzip (3.3MB down from 5.4MB)
    - Zenity powered GUI enabled brightness changer (Applications->System Tools->Set Brightness)
    - Zenity powered GUI enabled screen rotator (Applications->System Tools->Touchscreen Rotation)
    - PulseAudio bypassed and replaced with ALSA dmix/dsnoop for gstreamer (fixes crashing Rhythmbox/Totem)
    - Spiffy console font, t.fnt.gz (set at boot)
    - All legacy init scripts that are Touchpad related have been ported to Upstart.
    - No sudo password prompt. This is needed for the zenity scripts to function properly!
    - Command line battery information script: /usr/bin/battery
    - Brightness changer (setbrightness) will still work from cmdline, just use the brightness # as an argument
    - Freedreno (still no ExA)
    - Symbolic links from user directory to SDcard save wasted space for music, pictures, downloads and videos/movies
    - Far smaller than before (516 MB down from 836MB)

    logins
    login: ubuntu
    password: ubuntu

    login: root
    password: root

    download links (You'll need all four!)
    Kernel [3.3 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?4y2adpjdvrhl2lh
    Part 1 [200 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?190elok4akdw482
    Part 2 [200 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?hhiyp0w8jef5p5w
    Part 3: [104.62 MiB]: http://www.mediafire.com/?4u49m34xmftlx9h

    install instructions
    (You'll need at least MoBoot to be installed already.)
    1. If you don't already have Ubuntu on your TP, run the "4GBPartition.sh" but not the other scripts. Either way, BACK UP.
    2. Install my new, modified kernel in /boot. (The modules and Freedreno driver are already included in the tgz.)
    3. Download the TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz.1, 2 and 3 files from MediaFire to the root of the SD card/internal storage of the TP.
    4. Run the following commands in novaterm:

    Code:
    mount -o remount,rw /boot
    cd /media/internal
    cp uImage.Ubuntu /boot
    cat TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz.* > TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz
    mkdir -p ubuntu-root
    mkfs.ext3 /dev/store/ubuntu-root
    mount /dev/store/ubuntu-root ubuntu-root
    cd ubuntu-root
    tar -xvpzf ../TouchPadBuntuRootfs1210v2.tar.gz
    cd ..
    umount /dev/store/ubuntu-root
    sync
    mount -o remount,ro /boot
    reboot
    5. Select Ubuntu in the moboot menu to boot Ubuntu 12.10 final!!
    6
    After a 3/4-month hiatus (who's counting anyway?), I have returned to XDA :D
    I'm reading through to thread ATM to get up to speed on the excellent work Calc has been doing on the project (thanks for picking up the slack when I disappeared :cool:), but after my exams are finished and the term is over (2-3 wks), I'll be hopping back into development.
    6
    Thread Cleaned of useless arguments and off topic replies. Stay on topic.
    5
    And that statement makes me look forward to this port even more. Ya need to post a donate link, mate. I'll be looking for it.

    Sent from my HTC Vision using xda premium

    I'm not accepting donations until I can show working code, which should be in about 1 week.