yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Gen8 General] divx118:
katleastudio:

Hi, I noticed you use an image burner to extract the rootfs from the installed debian.img.

This can be done much easier, with a loop mount. However because there are multiple partitions (swap partition) in the image you have to specify the offset of the partition you want to mount.

Here is a nice tutorial on how to obtain the offset http://www.andremiller.net/content/mounting-hard-disk-image-including-partitions-using-linux

In the images I made it was the first partition that was needed and my offset was 1048576B, so the total command for mounting the img will be:

sudo mount -o loop,offset=1048576B ./debian.img ./debian

Maurice :cool:
[Gen8 General] LeoNg628:
Hi,

Archos running Linux is awesome!!

but can I make my Archos to dual boot with Android and Linux?

Thx~
[Gen8 General] eagleofdeath13:
@LeoNg628 : Of cours you can, you just have to chose Android or Developper Edition on the recovery ^^
[Gen8 General] katleastudio:
Hi and thx for this solution. I should have thought earlier ! I will complete this tutorial as soon as possible !

I have to translate some tutorial in english too, like "creating a beta 2".

You have to install Angstrom first! See http://www.debian-archos.com/wiki/doku.php?id=en:install for more information :)
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
English

Thanks for all your hard work.

I installed your beta 2 on my archos 70 but no matter how many times I follow your language changing instructions it never works. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks
[Gen8 General] LeoNg628:
Hi eagleofdeath13,

But my Archos already root with chulri's rw root and I've remove the Android from SDE (for skip choose developer edition every boot).

So, is it still can dual boot for me?

Thx!
[Gen8 General] saprano614:
ok so i would have to reinstall the sde to get the rootfs.img back? i dont understand. i installed the sde rooted with chulri's rw . i dont see the rootfs.img anywhere. what do i need to do?
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
First you install the SDE, then you go into the recovery menu at boot and choose update firmware. Connect your Archos to your computer and at the root of the drive that mounts will be the rootfs.img file. Replace it with the debian one ad ur good 2 go.
[Gen8 General] mouthoff33:
I was able to figure out how to disable the french language. I did it by editing the file locale.gen in /etc. To change the language follow these instructions.

Open new terminal and run (without quotes)

"sudo gedit /etc/locale.gen"

this will open locale.gen in gedit. You'll notice all the locales listed have a "#" symbol to the left meaning theyre commented and will not be offered in locales.

You will need to place the "#" next to fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8 to take this locale out of the locale options. If you would like US english you will also need to place the "#" next to en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8. Then scroll down to en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and delete the space and "#" next to it.

Now press fichier and then enregister. This will save the locale.gen file.

Now run in terminal (without quotes)

"sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales"

Follow the instructions you did before from the debian-archos site, and you should have english now the default language on your device!

P.S. not all language changes, such as under applications, tabs are still in french and I am still working on changing that, but for the most part everything is in english.
[Gen8 General] aguynamedben:
A28 only has 3.42GB of capacity, rootfs.img is 4.06GB

@katleastudio and crew,

This is amazing, I'm really excited to see Debian on the gen8 Archos devices.

I downloaded the Beta 2 rootfs.img, and it is 4.06GB. I'm developing for the A28 because it is so cheap ($99 USD), which when mounted only reports a capacity of 3.42GB. I can't try out the image because it is too large to fit on the boot disk of the A28.

Is there a way to reduce the size of the image so that it can be installed on the A28? Or, is there a way to use an SD card or some kind of external storage and have the A28 find the rootfs.img on that disk? Thanks for your help!

-Ben Standefer
[Gen8 General] aguynamedben:
RE: A28 only has 3.42GB of capacity, rootfs.img is 4.06GB

I was able to resize the image to be smaller using this methodology: <redacted> (forum software wont let me post link, Google "Resize your 'debian.img' at will.")

Now, the A28 boots to a blank black screen with a single underscore/prompt looking thing (not flashing) in the top left corner. I don't have a keyboard hooked up, but maybe I need to hit Enter or type something. I'll get a keyboard tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

-Ben Standefer
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
Graphics Acceleration.

What would it take to get full graphics acceleration? Is it even possible seeing as their is no drive for it?
[Gen8 General] leijae:
Ok, so I had Wifi working at school earlier(WPA) but when I get home to my wifi(WEP) it's not connecting. It just keeps saying connecting.... and the bar goes back and forth and..... it never ends. any suggestions?
[Gen8 General] lieckedeeler:
hi everyone,

i would like to know.... since i have urukdroid 0.7 installed... is it possible to test the debian image and switch back to urukdroid without loosing all my data...?

--lieckedeeler--
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
Unfortunately no, right now it is only possible to boot into 3 things, ANdroid, the recovery menu (both of which we do not have read and write access too) and the SDE which we can modify. Maybe soon someone will come out with a bootloader that loads whe you bott to SDE ad lets you choose which os you want to boot.
[Gen8 General] TjaXanK:
well, you can try it out and then go back to uruk, but you can't have both at the same time... if you want to try it out and then go back to uruk without losing anything just flash the developer edition again, replace the roofs.img and try it out, then when u want to go back to uruk just flash uruk kernel and inframs and your back to uruk :)
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
Any new about when beta 3 will be released? I'm really looking forward to these releases!
[Gen8 General] TjaXanK:
If anyone is finding the OS slow, you should try installing LXDE, improves the performance by miles! And it changes the device language to english... Sound patch works perfect and no problems with wi-fi, beta 2 is pretty good, only thing I feel is missing is graphics drivers
[Gen8 General] leijae:
Ok I got the wifi working now.
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
Graphic Acceleration

Would it be possible to compile the driver from the Archos's Froyo source code and get Graphics acceleration working. That would be awesome because then shells could be installed on top of your debian project like gnome 3.
[Gen8 General] nielsslot:
Short answer: no.

Long answer: no, but you might be able to get it working in a different way.

The graphics drivers consist of two parts, a part in the kernel (which is open source) and a part in user space (which is not open source). Both parts are required to get acceleration working. You can't do anything with just the kernel or user space parts.

The user space part is specific to the window (or graphics) system used on a platform. So for Android you have an Android user space part and for 'normal' Linux you'll have a Linux user space part.

This means that, while we can use the kernel part from the Archos source, we can't use the Android user space part.

However the graphics processor in the Archos Gen8 devices, the TI SGX, is used in many other devices. Because of this, TI has a driver downloadable on it's website. I already managed to get this one working in Angstrom and I can see no reason why it wouldn't work on Debian.

While this would allow you to play some games, I'm not sure it will give you Gnome Shell (the fancy new desktop in Gnome 3). This is because embedded devices only support OpenGL ES, the embedded variant of OpenGL and I'm not sure if Gnome Shell supports this version of OpenGL.
[Gen8 General] riplay:
HI!

I'm having a problem! I followed your tutorial (wiki) from your site and did everything.

Installed SDE

Renamed old SDE

Added new beta 2 "roofs.img" (1.33 gb version)

Booted the develpers eddition but it stays on that screen for ever!

I also tried to extract the roofs_beta 2.rar and then you get a 4 gb+ file and same problem.

I extracted it with winrar can that be the problem or should i use power iso?
[Gen8 General] honighamster:
I have questions:

I use UrukDroid right now and music,internet and android games worl great.

What would be better in that Debian img?

And how do games like minecraft work on Debian?

I am not familiary with Linux...
[Gen8 General] riplay:
It will make your device look more like a computer instead of a phone

And i don't think minecaft will work on this device since the graphics are much lower then on a computer

Too bad i can't test it out but i'm use to ubuntu on my computer
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
could you give me a link to this driver?
[Gen8 General] TjaXanK:
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/ARM/OMAP/Graphics
[Gen8 General] bubb18:
Ive noticed that English doesn't work, i followed the directions on the wiki, but only a few things are English now. does anyone know how to get it fully working?
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
ATM even if you follow the instructions to change the language to English, some ui elements will remain in French and there is no way to change that.
[Gen8 General] nielsslot:
You can find it on h t t p ://software-dl.ti.com/dsps/dsps_public_sw/sdo_sb/targetcontent/gfxsdk/latest/index_FDS.html

(Spaces added due to the wonderful policy of XDA)
[Gen8 General] TjaXanK:
All you need to do to get it in English 100% is, once you have followed the guide, logout and login again, choosing english as the default locale, and there you go!
[Gen8 General] TjaXanK:
oh and if you havent noticed they have added the graphics drivers to the wiki, quite simple to install them
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
Which Wiki?
[Gen8 General] shrewdlove:
IS this project still being actively developed or has it been abandoned?
[Gen8 General] eagleofdeath13:
Not abandoned, just a little bit silent, more new on it's own forum : http://www.debian-archos.com/forum
[Gen8 General] divx118:
To get the user to access the internet, we have to add a few groups to debian and make the user a member of it. This is because of CONFIG_ANDROID_PARANOID_NETWORK see the following bug report for angstrom gen7 http://dev.openaos.org/ticket/59

So we do the following for adding the groups:

sudo addgroup --gid 3001 bt
sudo addgroup --gid 3002 bt-net
sudo addgroup --gid 3003 inet
sudo addgroup --gid 3004 net_raw

And now adding the user to the groups supposing your user is "debian":

sudo adduser debian bt
sudo adduser debian bt-net
sudo adduser debian inet
sudo adduser debian net_raw

This is a much better solution then what now was proposed and that is giving sudo rights with no password. http://www.debian-archos.com/wiki/doku.php?id=dev_beta_2

Thanks goes to dm8tbr from openaos to point the old bugreport.

Maurice :cool:
[Gen8 General] CalcProgrammer1:
I've been playing around with some Debian images on my Archos 43 tablet. I followed the OpenAOS guide for LXDE but then switched to the Beta 2 GNOME image posted at debian-archos. I have successfully switched it to English and got touchscreen calibration to work. The WiFi sees all the networks around me (in Wicd) but will not connect to my (unprotected) WiFi N (Linksys WRT160N DDWRT). I will try editing the users and groups to see if the WiFi works. The USB networking at OpenAOS works perfectly to get SSH access from my laptop running Ubuntu 11.04.
[Gen8 General] msticninja:
I've got the display turned around the right way, got the UI into English, and enabled sound and wifi. But I simply cannot get the touchscreen working. Any TS input sends the pointer to the top left corner of the device. Using a mouse with the on-screen keyboard is really painful, so how did you get the TS calibration to work?
[Gen8 General] speedyg0nz:
Did anyone manage to run Debian on their Archos 28? Amazon has dropped its price further to $70 and I thought it might be a good chance to use it for some hobbyist projects that I've been thinking of. In particular, would be grateful if someone could let me know whether wifi and USB host works. Thanks!
[Gen8 General] ischari0t:
would it be possible to install and start mythfrontend?

that would be the best of all usages!
[Gen8 General] MnF:
Myth

Yes its possible to install myth onto the img's from debian-archos.org.

I have them installed, however wheezy has 24.1 front end, and my backend is a gentoo 23.x so the mythfrontend fires up but wont speak the correct protocol for my backend yet. So it starts, cant negotiate a protocol for my current backend, then quits. I did try letting it upgrade the backend, but it upgraded the database so none of my existing front ends could connect (old proto) but then failed because the backend was the wrong version too which mandated some hasty restore of the backend database back to a sql backup before my wife's soaps started for the evening. So I need to upgrade the whole setup to 0.24 myth as wheezy doesnt have a 0.23 mythfrontend for armel that I can install that I can see anyway.

Im emerging in a new ebuild to get me 24.x series onto my gentoo boxes (there 6 of them to upgrade, and I have to do it while not incurring the wrath of my tv addicted wife and kids as we have no off the air recieving kit apart from the quad dvb card in the myth server) then Ill be trying it for real.

I did find mplayer is just throwing a segmentation fault from the command line, so even if myth works, it calls mplayer as a backend and right now thats not working for me. I installed gxine and a few other players but framerate on a myth recording is terrible, its like a stop frame anim, update every 20 seconds. I think its because there is no acceleration in the display driver yet.

For mplayer, I ran it under strace and nothing is obvious, but I have to fix some other more pressing things before I can really look at it.

Ill post in the debian archos forum about any improvements, I tend to only come on xda for stuff about my defy :)

Anyone know how to invert the touchscreen to match the display? Ive got it the right way up now, but cant see yet how to flip the touchscreen (which is what led me to this thread).
[Gen8 General] MnF:
Actually fixed, I posted the solution on the debian archos forum :)

I'd post the link but I'm one of those dirty newbies still who cant be trusted not to advertize viagra :-)
[Gen8 General] fzelle:
Use spaces in the link
[Gen8 General] MnF:
Its probably easier to repaste my post there here than mess round trying to defeat the url pattern matching. Or make lots of useless posts to get past the 8 limit. The fix if its not obvious from the above, is for the touchscreen inversion, not mplayer crapping out.

For the screen orientation, I tried inverted as a keyword first because thats the option honoured with other similar screen issues, but if you tail the Xorg.0 log while it starts (ssh running a tail -f on the log is easiest for me) , out pops the gem :-

[ 19575.309] (**) FBDEV(0): Option "Rotate" "inverted"

[ 19575.309] (**) FBDEV(0): "inverted" is not a valid value for Option "Rotate"

[ 19575.309] (II) FBDEV(0): valid options are "CW", "CCW" and "UD"

If you specify Option "rotate" "UD" inside the DEVICE declaration of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, it comes out the right way up but the touchscreen is still "wrong".

If you run calibre which comes with debian-archos's image, it runs the xinput_calibrator script xinput.sh which barfs out because it can't apparently cope with the valves from the inverted touch screen (did for me anyway).

So taking a look at it,

which xinput.sh

/usr/local/bin/xinput.sh

# more /usr/local/bin/xinput.sh

xinput_calibrator --output-type xinput| grep "xinput set" > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/98set_xinput

However, some digging round with evdev...

xinput list-props "UNITEC USB Touch (Win7)"

And... there is a Evdev Axes swap option for xinput...

xinput set-int-prop "UNITEC USB Touch (Win7)" "Evdev Axes Swap" 8 0

xinput set-int-prop "UNITEC USB Touch (Win7)" "Evdev Axis INversion" 8 1 1

Now run a list (checking the syntax!)

xinput list-props "UNITEC USB Touch (Win7)"

And from that :-

Evdev Axis Inversion (240): 1, 1

Evdev Axis Calibration (241): 0, 19967, 0, 11263

Evdev Axes Swap (242): 0

xinput.sh still barfs out... however... my touchscreen is now correct. So I guess I still havent calibrated it, but Ive fixed the axis problem manually.

So now I could run xinput.sh and put those values manually in xorg. Works for me :)

Screen right way up, touchscreen working again.
[Gen8 General] MnF:
Small update, it can connect and try to play a mythtv upnp stream without a core dump. The frame rate is very very very terrible (its so slow, I didn't even realize it was a stream at first), but it can actually do it. So if I can get the SGA Video acceleration to work and find out why its so bad in general, maybe its going to work as a mythfrontend.

There's no nfs in the debian archos kernel which is also a pain for my usage. I think I want to try and get a newer kernel source tree, try and migrate the archos stuff from the archos git repository and try and build a nfs module, a tool chain with cross compiler on my main desktop, the Ti SGX accelerated omap fb drivers etc..
[Gen8 General] MnF:
Well that was a waste of a week, apart from the learning. The last few posts on debian archos were mine, it seems kind of quiet over there.

I thoroughly recommend anyone thinking about installing the debian-archos img and hacking it about, to instead go to openaos.org and use their more updated one that already has the omapfb in it and lxe desktop etc. My mythfrontend is now up to about 12fps on a dvb-s stream source. Still not enough, but the right direction...

Now building a qemu toolchain...
[Gen8 General] scholbert:
Hi MnF!

First of all, i'd like to say these are nice experiments... but i'll stick to Android because the UI is simply better for a touchscreen device.

Anyway, maybe i am able to help little bit on these issues.

Which kernel do you use for your debian?

If you build your own and mix it with the binary modules distributed by Archos, there are some limits.

You might try my standalone toolchain for Archos devices:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1328027

The toolchain should be nice to build a kernel close the original.

So using some of the prebuilt binaries should be fine.

Might be pretty useful if you don't like to fiddle around with the Archos buildroot system. Please keep in mind, that it had been build for 32Bit linux host systems.

Why building a qemu toolchain?

Do you have some details about the Debian system.

Just to point it out, the SDE and the the Android userland tools for gen8 are based on uClibc.

So take care of the cross environment you use for Debian... a toolchain linked against libc might be required.

Please excuse me, if i didn't get it right, but i just had a short look at your posts.

Regards,

scholbert
[Gen8 General] R_AL_Sim:
Currently playing with the archos 101

Hi I've been playing with the 101 G8 the past few days and now built two images using qemu my goal is to get a compile of chromium browser on there.

following the tutorials from openAOS have been pretty straight forward so far i ran into a few troubles with getting the debian installer to detect the drives in qemu,

but now have a booting image.

orriginally I went with the french image that started the thread off but that was a little slugish

could you share your images for me to compare.

thanks
[Gen8 General] MnF:
One last question, has anyone actually made it boot a new kernel? I tried putting the zImages images in /boot over the top of the originals, but its ignored them. Of course I cant check the grub.conf or the like to see which it calls, but I extracted the initrd and saw the rootfs is on another partition, and that /dev/mmcblk0p2 contained the archos banner and some binaries, so tonight Im dd'ing them off for a closer look. Still just fumbling around...
[Gen8 General] MnF:
One of the helpful openaos people pointed me at this :-

http://dev.openaos.org/wiki/SettingUpMultiRootGen8

Which explains all re the kernel. And the reasoning behind why all the debian installs are 2.6.29-omap kernels. Because there is currently no working kexec in the menu, you have only one zImage installed at any one time. If you put a newer zImage in, android won't work properly and you loose dual boot functionality.

I want to see if the framerate is achievable with a newer kernel with the omap fixes in, so i'll be doing it anyway. and I can always put a 2.6.29 zimage back on to return android functionality in future.
[Gen8 General] floyd_cansil:
hello to all and thanks for working in debian-gen8:)

i have archos 70 IT 250 Gb and install SDE and root and ... .I download debian-gnome and install in device.(menu.lst - zimage - initramfs -...)

I have poblems with debian-gnome .1- i have no sound in it.when i click in volume control it say :"the volume control did not find any element and/or device ...".2-my right click not work .3- and old wifi error:mad:. i have one lxde image and in it I have ok wifi but in gnome it not work . 4- usb host not work . again thanks for good forum . thanks ...:o

_________________________________________________________________

after one day i Find LXDE detalis making rootfs.img and from that ,i can insmod android sound modules and copy etc\asound.conf and etc\startup.sh in my image and now hal device manager can detect sound and volume control is ok but not thing can play and no sound .any help!thanks
[Gen8 General] floyd_cansil:
AAAAAAAny Help dudu ?????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:)
[Gen8 General] bubuk5:
ROFL Another noob question .. :)

Hi there,

So I read almost all topics there, and I got to know that wifi and sound is working.

This is great and I'm thinking about using Debian as main OS na A101.

One thing I dont understand is graffic acceleration.

Is this build (Debian (Gnome) Beta 2) able to play movies smooth ?

I know you are bored from similar questions like mine, but everyone starts from scratch.

Thanks ! ( I know about my amateur english hehe :D )

Greetings from Czech :)
[Gen8 General] floyd_cansil:
with again hello :rolleyes:

My Device (A70H)70 internet tablet with 250 Gb with beta2 gnome Debian os Can`t play Anything (Sound error) And wifi Not Work Properly.

I post about one month ago my problem but nothing happened !!!!!!!!!!:confused:
[Gen8 General] kelvinbrotherston:
how long should it take to boot past the Boot in Progress screen ???

I have replaced the rootfs.img file with the new one and its been sat for what feels like a life time am i missing something ???????
[Gen8 General] alex@debi:
Normally, less than a minute. Looks like you have something broken...
[Gen8 General] kelvinbrotherston:
another dumb question ...

how do i make it english ??
[Gen8 General] alex@debi:
You've to set correct locales... Have a look here: http://www.archos-generation.com/wiki/doku.php?id=en:language , maybe it'll work out.
[Gen8 General] rejoc:
Hello,

It has been a long time since the last reply... It seems that the OP web site has disapeared ( debian-archos.com ).

Any way to get the information ?
[Gen8 General] Mavasilisk:
I've tried it before and I can say its terrible. The main problem was the softkeyboard else it was ok.
[Gen8 General] Tony314:
Hi,

I know it's make a while since the last update on the topic, but does anyone know how to downloads the files ? All the links are too old now, and debian-archos dosent exit anymore :/

Thanks,

Tony