[WEBTOP] GenTop2-20120509 (Beta) - Next Generation Gentoo Webtop Replacement

[CaelanT]

On a steep learning curve right now, so bear with me.........

When I 'emerge --sync' I get 'rsync: write failed' errors with 'no space left on device (28)' errors across the board.

If I # df then /mnt/gentoo shows 100% in use.

Point me in the right direction please?

<edit> Also, the clock in the upper right is displaying the wrong time. How is this changed?

<edit 2> Just noticed my external SDCard is full. Portage is on my FAT32 partition instead of the Ext3 partition I created.

 

[Alaq]

The learning curve here is really steep...

How do we use the files that we extracted into /mnt/gentoo?

Kinda need help with emerge. I tried to install openoffice:

emerge openoffice-bin

But then it gives me:

The following keyword changes are necessary to proceed:
#required by openoffice-bin (argument)
=app-office/openoffice-bin-3.3.0 **

So can anyone guide us through the steps to compile and install some programs please?

Edit1: Since the programs must be compiled on the phone that means once it is compiled others should be able to get a copy of the compiled file and install it... So if we can get enough people to start compiling "necessary" programs, and uploading them to a server to use... Should be a lot easier that way...

 

[Lokifish Marz]

I haven't played with it yet but it looks sweet. I do have a couple questions though.

1. What is sitting in the data/osh location?
2. Will Factory Reset and ROM installs that require wipe require the you reinstall GenTop2?
3. Will a full restore undo GenTop? (I know the answer but others may not)

I'll look a porting/duplicating for the Photon for those that are interested.

 

[CaelanT]

I haven't played with it yet but it looks sweet. I do have a couple questions though.

1. What is sitting in the data/osh location?
2. Will Factory Reset and ROM installs that require wipe require the you reinstall GenTop2?
3. Will a full restore undo GenTop? (I know the answer but others may not)

I'll look a porting/duplicating for the Photon for those that are interested.

Full restore from nandroid for me before GenTop was 15-20 mins. After GenTop is 55 mins.

Sent from my MB860 using xda premium

 

[Lokifish Marz]

Full restore from nandroid for me before GenTop was 15-20 mins. After GenTop is 55 mins.

Sent from my MB860 using xda premium

That's what I figured. With Ubuntop on the Photon it's faster to set things up how you want then dd image, build a custom ROM and flash it than it is to run a full restore.

 

[crnkoj]

Hmm, the few concerns you guys have,
caelanT you just have to mount the partitions properly, it might be even that your /data/ partition is full
Alaq you should write "app-office/openoffice-bin **" into the file /etc/portage/package.keywords aswell as write "app-office/openoffice-bin" into /etc/portage/package.unmask
actually the -bin packages are already precompiled so you are just installing them, for the others a crosscompile binhost or distcc would be the best idea - emerging stuff constantly on the phone will lead to sdcard and possibly emmc deterioration (like with any other flash media thats being very often overwritten)
about the resolution issues, i have them aswell, something in /etc/X11/xorg.conf has to be edited so taht it allows for bigger resolutions (for some reason its stuck at virtual 1366x768 for me, even after commenting out that line and rebooting the phone... - maybe we could use the "original webtop xorg.conf")

 

[Lokifish Marz]

emerging stuff constantly on the phone will lead to sdcard and possibly emmc deterioration (like with any other flash media thats being very often overwritten)

There's already somewhat of an issue with webtop in this regard as almost all users changes and caches are written to /data when in webtop. I'd much rather have internal storage fail than /data but you are correct this could lead to issues. RAMdisk with a savestate write on exit would reduce writes but at the cost of available RAM.

 

[crnkoj]

There's already somewhat of an issue with webtop in this regard as almost all users changes and caches are written to /data when in webtop. I'd much rather have internal storage fail than /data but you are correct this could lead to issues. RAMdisk with a savestate write on exit would reduce writes but at the cost of available RAM.

you do realise /data and internal sdcard are the same flash chip? besides you could always remount the things to an ext3/4 partition on the external sdcard, which you can replace for approx 1$ per GB, most of the things would not really matter that much fi they are on the external sdcard, one should only have executables/system files on the internal for speed improvements and than just emerge -uND world every month or 3 months, unlike on a normal pc/hdd where at least i sometimes do it everyday.

 

[x86demon]

The learning curve here is really steep...

How do we use the files that we extracted into /mnt/gentoo?

Kinda need help with emerge. I tried to install openoffice:

emerge openoffice-bin

But then it gives me:

The following keyword changes are necessary to proceed:
#required by openoffice-bin (argument)
=app-office/openoffice-bin-3.3.0 **

So can anyone guide us through the steps to compile and install some programs please?

Edit1: Since the programs must be compiled on the phone that means once it is compiled others should be able to get a copy of the compiled file and install it... So if we can get enough people to start compiling "necessary" programs, and uploading them to a server to use... Should be a lot easier that way...

Bin may be compiled for another processor type (x86 I think) be careful

It would be really nice to have WebTop running with android 4 or other custom kernels. Is it possible?

 

[crnkoj]

btw, might wanna read this http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=1
and this http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3

 

[Lokifish Marz]

you do realise /data and internal sdcard are the same flash chip? besides you could always remount the things to an ext3/4 partition on the external sdcard, which you can replace for approx 1$ per GB, most of the things would not really matter that much fi they are on the external sdcard, one should only have executables/system files on the internal for speed improvements and than just emerge -uND world every month or 3 months, unlike on a normal pc/hdd where at least i sometimes do it everyday.

Um.. just a little bit (attempts to repartition of internal storage, Ubuntop and the like).

Moving things to the SDCard would eliminate part of the issues but introduces others. SDCards have a lower number of read/write cycles then the internal chip according to their manufacturers. Saves the phone but still doesn't eliminate the issue which is the accessing of solid state storage.

Approaching it from the same aspect as running WinXP on solid state storage (my carpc is set up this way) greatly reduces the chance of failure. With running in a compressed ramdisk only the savestate and authorized changes are written to storage. After you get what you want installed the only writes is the savestate. Now if we combine the two approaches and have the only savestate stored on the SDCard then this may impact the initial load time but reduce the number of blocks affected by GenTop. Replace the SDCard and start up GenTop and all your committed changes (apps/tweaks) are still there.

 

[crnkoj]

Hmm, repartitioning the internal sd might break your pds partition. Uhm, a ramdisk would need more than 1GB ram, and for the whole system to work, I think. Regarding the sdcards, they are so cheap you can just buy few than make one and put a backup on a second, and I still prefer burning replaceable cards over the internal flash. The only major issue I see is that of speed... Ah, tradeoffs =/ anyhow back on topic, did anyone get 1080p to work with it?

 

[Gendol]

Okay, thanks for all the feedback. I decided to put together a quick upgrade, as some of the issues you guys brought up really are relevant and easily fixed.

I made Flash work, updated Xorg.conf and put back some of the Android-launcher links. Nothing big. Therefore I packed a tarball containing only the changed files for you guys. And also a new big tarball.

I also hacked into the virtual touchpad thingy and found out to my surprise that it's not an Android app. It's not part of PortalApp, it's called evbridge and is a program in /usr/local/bin/.
It's startable, but throws an error similar to "Cannot allocate display overlay". Whatever that means. No quick fixes here.

@crnkoj
Thanks, I've put the links into the first post.

@openoffice discussion
I also highly discourage trying to emerge something as complex and HUGE as openoffice. That takes almost an hour on my desktop computer. Well, okay, emerging the system also takes hours.

@discussion on sdcard wear
that's also a reason why I put the /var/tmp/portage build space on an external sdcard.
Actually maybe I would be a nice idea to use an USB device

Greetings,
Gendol

 

[Vazay]

@Gendol

I've been using it for a few days and here is my points to improve

1) Comment MAKEOPTS="-j2" inside make.conf
It slows down the build process but its much more stable without it, got some random reboots with this option.

2) If it's possible make chromium as default browser, I just ran out of space when tried to emerge it

3) aiw to Xfce session start and remove shortcuts from the menu
If you open second or third copy of aiw you just can't close it.

4) mount /usr or the whole system to /dev/block/mmcblk1p2, it's really anoying when you run out of space

X) post your donation link

Don't get wrong, I very appreciate your work, but I want to see it perfect

 

[crnkoj]

@Gendol, thanks for looking into the xorg.conf thing, i simply havent had more than 5 minutes at a time to look into it... will test it out soon. ye i agree with you on the sdcard, for the system the emmc is needed due to speed reasons, but for /var/tmp the external sdcard is the way to go for mobility, but at home one could use an usb hdd for /var/tmp and for swap (that way even chromium could get compiled), if the kernel (im using faux 1ghz) supports swap, otherwise might need to pull his latest kernel sources and config swap support into it, than compile and test
Well for openoffice, if its the -bin version, its done within a few minutes, the question however reimains if its arm compiled or not (probably its not), one way to get openoffice is just to get the package from ubuntu (thats arm softfloat without neon compiled) or crosscompile it.
Talking about which i have a crosscompiling chain set up on my gentoo pc, which makes it rather fast, but for now i dont know exactly how to use it for anything but kernels (well i know some part, but i need to config all the things properly xmerge-crossdev, the "out" directory and so on) and i was looking into the make.conf you have, you are using an armv7-a-unknown-gnueabi compiler with softfloat than in the CFLAGS (have to learn how to set t hsoe CFLAGS while crosscompiling), the other way would be i could use my pandaboard (which is running gentoo aswell) and with distcc compile stuff on it and the atrix ( got hardfloat with neon on the panda though, so this might be an issue... and i guess crosscompiling on the pc woudl go faster), than we set up a binhost or such.

@Vazay
1) You get errors because your cpu overheats, do you use an OC kernel? When i was compiling stuff on gentoo with the atrix, i even had "-j3" ("-jX" means how many jobs to be started when compiling, i always use cores+1) and it never gave out errors, otherwise you might be out of luck
2) try with an external hdd over usb, with a swap partiton on it, and swapon on it, than try to emerge chromium, it might work (as above, assuming that swap is supported in the kernel), than it woudl be possible, but the thing is midori is very leightweight and works way better on "embedded" devices
4) two isssues might arise: 1. if the sdcard gets initialized later than the gentop system, the gentop system will not boot up properly. 2. it will be way slower

Edit: just remembered that maybe sabayon would have precompiled arm packages (have to check though)
http://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?title=Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_BeagleBone_(and_ARMv7a)
http://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?title=Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_PandaBoard
similar armv7a boards, just with neon support (dont have time to read through it now, but if anyone is interested). It seems sabayon is using hardfloat and not softfloat, so using their packages is impossible for now

 

[Gendol]

@crnkoj
Yes, I guess I'll have to set up a portage overlay (which is currently in /root/gentoo-x86) and a binary package repository. That one wouldn't have to meddle with upgrade tarballs and people could choose which application they want installed without compiling the huge ones.

However, the real problem is the that /osh would run out of space and most people dont want to deal with moving files off /osh.

Swap is not included in faux's default kernel. And I'm afraid compiling a kernel is currently beyond me. You could help with that.

Another thing I tried earlier on is hardfloat. I did a full hardfloat compile, and also a speed test using cryptography functions. I found not advantage to using hardfloat: when compiled with the current CFLAGS the binaries were approximately the same size and also showed the same speed test results.

Hardfloat however came at the disadvantage that the motorola binaries in /usr/local couldnt be run. So hardfloat is out of the question for now.

@Vazay
Most questions are answered.
1) I never got random reboots during compiling.
2) Maybe. Once we get it working.
3) I thought it wouldnt start twice? Weird.
4) Nope.
X) No need.

Gendol.

 

[Vazay]

@crnkoj , @Gendol

1) Ok, maybe the reboots are from OC kernel

3) aiw does start twice

4) what about to start minimal system at osh and then start chrooted system from sdcard

Another mad idea - "atrix tested" portage tree with binary repository

 

[CaelanT]

Would Clemsyns kernels have what you want?

> http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1354502

Based on Faux kernel, but I do not know all that he changed.

 

[crnkoj]

Gendol i agree with you totally about those. Ye android is softfloat so we cant mix it with hardfloat and as it seems sabayon has a hardfloat system base aswell, so we cannot use their packages.
About the kernel, ill try to pull faux's sources for the 1ghz kernel (any oc will overheat for sure), edit the config so that swap is in it and recompile it, thats "shouldnt" be such a hassle, im just not sure ill be able to do it within the next 3 days.
CaelanT i cant check it now, but if you are running it can you zcat /proc/config.gz > config, and than grep it for "CONFIG_SWAP" or just attach the file to here?

 

[CaelanT]

Why is the Motorola webtop screensaver running behind the desktop?