Although I’ve been spending my time on other hacking projects besides the Z2 lately, that does not mean there’s nothing exciting happening in the Z2 community. Our friend SoundGuy has finished putting together his Z2 root image, and it is slick! After working out some of the kinks with help from our comments (they are practically forums now…) threads, SoundGuy posted up a link to his newest “For the Average User” userland image. Terrific work! He’s really got a good eye for usability. More info after the break.
You can find more info on his page here, and downloads on his page here.
For those of you who know me, you know I don’t accept donations and usually tell potential benefactors to send the money to Haiti or another developer who might need the money. Looks like RootNexus has got a paypal donate page up, and he’s done some great work, so consider donating to support him and his work.
can anyone make a video of this new software upgrade?thanks
Hopefully I can get some helpful feedback.
I have some more ease of use functions that I’m adding.
mike: I would be happy to attempt to make a video.
Hunter: I was just configuring an older computer, and I set up a way to play youtube videos. The Z2 should be able to handle this as well. With the youtube-dl script. (this should be in the apt repository)
Just pipe out the URL to the video to mplayer. It plays in 320×240 by default.
If someone has the expertise to write a bash script to search videos @ youtube.com and play them that would be a pretty cool addition.
(example of playing Papa Roach – Forever)
mplayer `youtube-dl -g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bISJ2zi1zQ`
nice work
Hey Soundguy,
Very cool! I’ll have to get one of my Z2′s back and try that out
Excellent work!
Posted 2 Videos Low Quality Recorded with a cell phone. But you get the basic Idea of how it works. And whats included:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uriqayPnAI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWSANPBQt8I
Playing youtube on the ZipitZ2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1r1mT4HGyo
nice, favorited
Nice work. I just tried it out on my zipit. It works great.
More comments later
The new userland is great! Here’s a few tweaks and comments I have:
Installed Ayttm Instant Messenger which is lightweight and gui based. Flows with the userland better than the command line based finch/pidgin
Use the matchbox-remote program (comes with the matchbox package) to quit X. Cleaner than killing matchbox.
Allow non super users to shutdown the system (I used method 2 from here).
When using the netconfig script and WEP, you need to put “s:” (without quotes) in front of a string passphrase or it won’t work. Might be helpful to warn for this in the script.
Is there a hotkey to change the active window? If not, this would be helpful instead of mousing up to the titlebar. Maybe remap the “Zipit” button to load the apps window, map “Prev” to change active window, and map “Next” to Tab. I haven’t had much luck modifying the keymaps myself. Any ideas?
The links browser works well but I’m a fan of Dillo. I think it makes sites look better than links. Anyone have it compiled with ssl support?
Google has a python api for youtube which would probably work well with the youtube-dl program. I’m not familiar with python coding, but someone out there may be. There’s also a php api that could work with php command line. Not sure how well the php-cli would run on the zipit. I might give it a shot.
Keep up the good work!
The new Userland is great! Here’s a few tweaks and comments I have:
Installed Ayttm Instant Messenger which is lightweight and gui based. Flows with the userland better than the command line based finch/pidgin
Use the matchbox-remote program (comes with the matchbox package) to quit X. Cleaner than killing matchbox.
Allow non super users to shutdown the system (I used method 2 from here).
When using the netconfig script and WEP, you need to put “s:” (without quotes) in front of a string passphrase or it won’t work. Might be helpful to warn for this in the script.
Is there a hotkey to change the active window? If not, this would be helpful instead of mousing up to the titlebar. Maybe remap the “Zipit” button to load the apps window, map “Prev” to change active window, and map “Next” to Tab. I haven’t had much luck modifying the keymaps myself. Any ideas?
The links browser works well but I’m a fan of Dillo. I think it makes sites look better than links. Anyone have it compiled with ssl support?
Google has a python api for youtube which would probably work well with the youtube-dl program. I’m not familiar with python coding, but someone out there may be. There’s also a php api that could work with php command line. Not sure how well the php-cli would run on the zipit. I might give it a shot.
Keep up the good work soundguy!
This gives me the best overall fps when playing youtube videos:
mplayer -zoom -ao oss -framedrop -vfm ffmpeg `youtube-dl -m -g $URL`
# Also recently I was made aware of these controls for the display brightness
# If anyone doesnt know
# from Mcavity @ irc.freenod.net #zipit
# This is a waste of power — Mcavity
echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/pwm-backlight.1/brightness
# Set this at a reasonable level — Mcavity
echo 500 > /sys/class/backlight/pwm-backlight.0/brightness
very cool keep up the good work a .img file for windows users would be nice
thanks works great
grayfox386: the 1gb image is compatible with a windows program used to write the image.
Some time in the future there will be a bootable linux iso designed specifically for installing the software onto a flash device.
What is that program?
Nice timing! I was just researching how to take my Debian system and create an .img to share, as I have done a lot of tweaking to make mine a useable system… and this looks even better!
thanks for the info i have been playing with this image and it works very well aside from the lack of a battery meter wrote card from windows had no problems
Nice image, thanks
fonts a little bit too small
chess game is exciting
any short-cut keys? the normal fluxbox keys didn’t work
Rox filer is a great choice
The new userland is great! Here’s a few tweaks and comments I have:
Installed Ayttm Instant Messenger which is lightweight and gui based. Flows with the userland better than the command line based finch/pidgin (http://ayttm.sourceforge.net).
Use the matchbox-remote program that comes with the matchbox package to quit X. Cleaner than killing matchbox. (http://matchbox-project.org/documentation/manual/wm.html#wmapps)
Allow non super users to shutdown the system. I used method 2 from http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_allow_non-super_users_to_shutdown_computer_in_Linux.
When using the netconfig script and WEP, you need to put “s:” (without quotes) in front of a string passphrase or it won’t work. Might be helpful to warn for this in the script.
Is there a hotkey to change the active window? If not, this would be helpful instead of mousing up to the titlebar. Maybe remap the “Zipit” button to load the apps window, map “Prev” to change active window, and map “Next” to Tab. I haven’t had much luck modifying the keymaps myself. Any ideas?
The links browser works well but I’m a fan of Dillo. I think it makes sites look better. Anyone have it compiled with ssl support?
Google has a python api (http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/1.0/developers_guide_python.html#RetrievingVideos)for youtube which would probably work well with the youtube-dl program. I’m not familiar with python coding, but someone out there may be. There’s also a php api that could work with php command line. Not sure how well the php-cli would run on the zipit. I might give it a shot.
Keep up the good work!
mozzwald: thank you for your input.
i did not know iwconfig could take passphrases. i always assumed it could only take the key. thats good information i will have to test it out and add that information.
as for dillo, i have tried it on my desktop and compiled with ssl, the problem i encounter is i like the full functionality of ssl and of setting it up as a mobile browser. dillo always seems to try to download the web page when i set it up as a mobile browser, which sort of defeats the purpose. imo.
dillo just doesnt seem as complete. this is why i went for links2. ill include it by default if someone can get these problems worked out. the goal is to make the system as easy to use as possible and dillo’s compatability level is below-par.
ayttm is a good idea, ill use that instead of finch.
im working on the hot key issue, the keyboard on the z2 has a funky map which is causing problems with the swap window feature. i have yet to finda a good mapping.
right now i have ctrl+esc bound to task manager with rox-filer and ctrl+tab bound to volume control.
now the problem with remapping the zipit key is the whole keymap needs to be modified. so this is something i will need to have some trial and error with.
recently, i was able to bind ctrl+d to show desktop in ~/.matchbox/kbdconfig
youtube: what would be cool is a way to have links somehow put a call to an external program when clicking a youtube video url to pop open mplayer.
right now you can use this script in rxvt which sort of simplifies the process..
I have not yet had a chance to review that link you posted for google code as i have just seen it. it would be nice to be able to have a way to search youtube on an external program since integration with links might be a little difficult and perhaps unwise in the event that another better browser is configured as default.
just copy the url and paste it into the script.
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f4311d393
again thanks for yoru input if you figure out exactly how to get the hotkeys working correctly let me know.
ive got a long list of notes and changes, and the next release will have snes emulation and possibly genesis emulation depending on the functionality of the emulator. i have run into one problem on the snes emulator when sound is enabled its just sluggish enough to not be fun. runs great without sound though.
eprv: im having some issues with the keymap and shortcut keys
currently
ctrl+esc = task manager
ctrl+ZIPIT = volume
you can add or modify shortcut keys either in rox-filer menus on the desktop or
~/.matchbox/kbdconfig <– read matchbox documentation. again im having problems binding because of the z2s keymap. So some more trial and error is in order.
you can change the fonts in
~/.gtkrc … and ~/.Xdefaults
also some of the applications that run in terminals have custom launchers in either ~/.apps ~/.bin which configure the terminal font sizes based on the screen sized i assumed would work best with the appliciation.
First off, sorry about the comment blitz. The spam filter caught me.
@soundguy:
I understand the issues with Dillo. If someone has the capability to get it working as good as links2, then it would be awesome.
The keyboard map is weird and I had some issues trying to get it to work with openbox. I will try to experiment some more with matchbox and see what I can do.
I installed php-cli but havn’t had a chance to test it yet. Maybe we could create a mime-type type that runs the youtube-dl script. So any link that is “.zyt” (or whatever) opens with youtube-dl. Then either a web based portal or script on the Zipit itself searches and creates the link.
mozzwald:
I contacted the mailing list over a month ago about some issues with dillo. I never got a reply so I dropped dillo out of my idea book. I dont mean to bash anyone but they developers dont appear to be interested in fixing the issues because they are arising from the use of broken html and not following rfc guidelines. (got that from their faq/documentation and lack of response)
Definately let me know what you come up with on matchbox. Right now im working on adding some icons and cleaning up some of the scripts, and adding a couple of useful lightweight programs.
And im really intrigued about this youtube idea. I wont have time to play with it in the next few days, but anything that you come up with would be very useful especially for older computers that simply cannot run flash, not just the Z2.
Hunter: A lot of changes coming in the next few days…first release will be in the form of a .tgz
Its not out yet, probably this weekend.
Update list: (so far)
1. Debian Sid
2. Cold boot to console 20 seconds
3. Cold boot to X-Windows 30-32 seconds
4. Shutdown 5 seconds
5. Added dgen (seems sort of broken on most games)
6. Alpine email client.
7. Working on a control panel..
8. Default settings go into power save mode
9. Proper shutdown menu
10. Basic youtube player.
11. Hopefully get some hotkeys
12 Ayttm is coming in the default install…
13. Reduced application startup times
14. Reduced overhead…
15. Increased multi-tasking ability
16. Auto-Connect option HomeNet network on startup…via control panel
17. Extremely fast apt-get install and dpkg -i
18. Rivals the speed of OE
19. Basic sound working in ScummVM
20. CTRL+D = desktop CTRL+:) = TASKMGR CTRL+ZIPIT=VOLUME
21. god knows what else….
Update:
Battery meter on the desktop
Video showing bootup time, Battery meter, and shutdown time:
20 seconds to console, 30 seconds to X-Windows
(i know its 32, I have a sleep 2 at the console for the option of dropping to a terminal)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO4ELbH0A0g
Hey Soundguy,
That’s awesome! It’s really apparent how much hard work you’re putting into this and I think the community is really getting behind your release! Keep up the good work
I found a good way to play youtube videos directly from Links2 and did a write up with instructions at my site. http://www.mozzwald.com/node/29
mozzwald:
Added your youtube stuff to the new userland. scheduled release for this weekend sometime.
Thats very cool excellent addition …..
@mozzwald:
Alsaplayer is a little slow, are there any other faster MP3 players for Xorg that would fit decently on the screen with a playlist? I cant seem to find anything more worthy.
@previous-comment
Switched to playmp3list mpg123 front-end
Easy to use and fast…
I tried installing LXMusic (http://wiki.lxde.org/en/LXMusic) but it broke Rox Filer. Apparently there’s some issue with libgtk2 and Rox that was supposedly fixed in a previous version but it’s appearing on the zipit. Not sure what else out there would work and has a good gui.
xfmedia lxmusic and aqualung. i just gave up and used playmp3list. at least its fast.
@hunter,mozzwald
I finished writing a test script which im going to include in the next userland.
Its a power-management daemon. It includes support for telling if the lid is open and closed.
Thanks to mozzwald
Script is at:
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f2842e866
http://zipit.rootnexus.org/
Uploaded a NEW rootfs using Debian SID.
Also has scripted power management and a working display suspend on lid close.
Small correction that might help the Linux noobs out there (like myself): It appears physdisk CAN write the .img out to cards over 1GB.
I was able to put it on a 4GB card using the physdisk gui. After re-assembling the .img in Linux, I was having difficulty getting it written to the card. I moved it over to Windows and ran physdisk per Hunter’s instructions for Aliosa27′s userland. There is a popup (in english oddly enough) asking if you want to remove the 2GB limit. I gave it a try and it seemed to write fine.
I noticed it only partitions the card for the 1GB size the img is designed for (makes sense), so I went back to Linux and used gparted to resize the partitions to make use of the unallocated space.
So far no problems as far as I can tell. Note that this was for the previous release, not the one posted up today.
Quake1 Shareware for ZipitZ2
use ./runquake script
http://rapidshare.com/files/344211388/quake-z2.tgz.html
MD5: 8C563D13D4D317A8C38737C0EC80EEEA
Quake1 Shareware for ZipitZ2
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9dj6wzCs1E
File:
use ./runquake script
http://rapidshare.com/files/344211388/quake-z2.tgz.html
MD5: 8C563D13D4D317A8C38737C0EC80EEEA
This is great. I’m finally going to order a zipit. There goes the paycheck
Can someone write up a really easy guide to getting a stock zipit z2 up and running with rootnexus’s distro? I really love where this is going guys 
@avgjoe there are a couple around, the easiest way (from what i hear) is to follow the linux directions and use http://wubi-installer.org/ to get a copy of linux going at no risk to your current windows system
@hunter
Here is the proper function for activating controls via the lid switch (without c coding)
This uses some more advanced methods reading the hex output of the event device. Test it out if you still have your Z2. It also adds no overhead because you dont have to run a constant loop to check a file for changes. When it changes it sets the variable and then restarts and waits for another change.
Very cool
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f55fc11fa
@hunter
Update to the lid switch script… Now can control the power button.
If you want to test it it also prints information to the terminal about what its doing.
The new URL is here:
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f7a460a11
Hey Soundguy,
Freaking awesome man! Talk about the power of community, you’ve really got a good thing going here. A former student is mailing me back one of my Z2s, so I’ll hopefully be trying this out shortly. I’m in the middle of another project mixing X10 power modules with children’s action figures (long story lol), gonna try having the close-lid event trigger a “lights-out” for the house. Should be fun
Thanks for the hard work!
@hunter…….
Yeh its all fun for me…. finding out how many things i can do with shell scripting haha.
There are a number of issues i found in the RC0 release. A big problem was the power-management script. And I also left an old script running called battstat which is slowing it down as well. Big mistake! It really hurt performance.
So anyone whos reading this edit your .xinitrc and remove the battstat script if you are having performance problems, you can also remove the power management startup from your /etc/z2.local . Ill post on here when I have new version of the script ready.
As soon as I removed them and integrated this new lid switch script it speed things up a lot . the #zipit on irc.freenode.net has provided a lot of help. If it wasnt for them I would have never known about the interface event1.
It was challenging to figure out how to read it without knowing how to program C. rkdavis is trying to access it with gpio and mmap. But until he does this will work.
Ive done almost a total rewrite of so it provides a very efficient (well as can be) way of managing the devices power.
Im also slowly working on an OE build in the background. I want to move away from debian. The good news is if I do that, you can still get debian packages and extract the binarys.
But hey thats why its an RC0 not a release… Not even an RC1
$ ar x package.deb ; tar xvzf data.tar.gz. Takes a little more work but it lowers overhead and disk space usage… Which is a little hard to come by.
Hey Soundguy,
Awesome work. Any reason in particular you’re thinking of moving back to OE (speed?, cross compiling on a quad-core somewhere, ?) . #zipit is full of some great people, glad to hear it’s still active. Don’t troll IRC much myself but that’s the place I’d land. Let me know if you run into any issues starting out with C, I recall my first C class back in the 90s threw me for a loop (rimshot please lol). If you really like programming C in Linux, I’d be happy to put in a good word for you with my current company. Can’t wait to try out RC1. Keep up the good work
@Hunter:
OE looks like more of a challenge for me. Ive already conquered debian. I really dont have any idea how OE works. I have bitbaked a couple things, but havent got too much into it. A challenge is always fun. So thats why its my background project. I dont know If I will stick with it. Someone mentioned using portage also. So I might look into that.
I didnt think I could access the /dev/input/event1 correctly. (try to cat it) and open and close the display. That was a challenge. Again … and fun.
I havent even started with C yet. It will definitely be a long and painful project. Its nice to hear I have your support with it though
Bash scripting only goes so far.
Im keep your offer in mind. Im really not qualified at this point though
.
You might like this Battery life on Z2:
5 hours 35 min and 47 seconds
System shutting down….NOW!
that’s a long time
no to shabby
and it was in use screen light most of the time
And the power-management script…
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f6ddc6303
it will be changed again shortly. but this shows the integration of the previous script, it also executes a command when the power button is pressed…
dose anyone know if any of the test points on the board go to the USB? I’ve added a usb port to the side of mine, and cant solder well enough to get the data pins to the dock connector
@soundguy
Have you thought about trying Ångström?
@Nonya-Biz talk to the users on #zipit irc.freenode.net…. rkdavis may have some info
@avgjoe ive seen it, it was also a consideration
its up in the air right now…..
@hunter: im working on the next release RC1
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/3637/screenshotjm.png
It has 15mb of ram free and idles at about 2% cpu like this.
uploaded a new update to show the upcoming features….
this is a a pre-rc1 release……. it fixes bugs from the previous rootfs.
Sweet! That’s a hell of a release schedule you’re keeping up SoundGuy, great stuff!
I’ve been watching this page for the updates, and while I am reasonably experienced with linux, I’m at a loss as to how to get the newer releases on to my SD card. Is there any help that anyone can offer?
@HUNTER.
/dev/input/event1 has also checks to see if you inserted headphones. This could be useful in muting and unmuting the sound. Especially since i heard it saves battery if you do so.
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f1b9741d3
Had to make an update to this script. The checking wasnt strict enough. if you inserted headphones your display would shut off due to that event being picked up incorrectly.
This bug exists in the last pre-release in the power-management.sh script. Ill post a replacement as soon as its done.
@Eric:
Quick and dirty:
You will have to fill in some blanks, if you have any questions ill answer them.
As root do the following:
(assuming you are in ubuntu do a sudo bash)
Partition SDCARD
#1=ext3
#2=swap
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdcardparttion#1
mkswap /dev/sdcard/partion#2
tune2fs -c 0 /dev/sdcardpartition#1
Mount SDCARD
mount /dev/sdcardpartition1 /directory/to/mount/to
tar xvjf rootnexus-rootfs.tar.bz2 /directory/sdcard/is/mounted/to
umount /directory/sdcard/is/mounted/to
boot z2
Updated power-management.sh to fix the headphone insertion bug.
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f6d4dcf64
@POWER-MANAGEMENT SCRIPT UPDATE AGAIN!
Ok same goes for the previous post… use this one instead
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f2228b932
Ordered my z2 today. Can’t wait to see what I can do with it
@ soundguy
Ah, okay. I was assuming that I was dealing with a compressed filesystem image. I suppose the usefulness of that really is for the windows users mostly.
I’ve done development for ARM based systems before, so I figured I take a whack at porting some of my stuff over, and while I’m at it putting lighttpd on it just for fun.
hey soundguy, the XScale PXA270 that is in this device also has a USB host mode, you think theres any chance of getting any support in for that? I have a bluetooth board that I could throw in the case.
How does one link an app icon onto the desktop of it.
crap hack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhOK6CJOk4E
@Eric
The real gurus, and hardware hacker say it may be possible through the port on the back. otherwise someone mentioned having remove the chip from the board to properly trace the points for it.
So who knows, i would say yes. the pxa can also take more ram and a larger screen…. although from what i understand its not easy to accomplish
@xbin
edit the rox-filer pb_Desktop in ~/.config/rox*/
gngb.rc has a numeric keymapping, but I do not know how those numbers relate to the actual keys. Can anyone point me in the right direction? For example, “select” points to key 8, but I do not know what key 8 is. Is there somewhere where I can find a full list of keys?
@Chingaburro
the keys that are mapped are (i believe) X Z and start and backspace
you can get the keys by pressing F11 ?? or F9?? and then put them into the config….
if you cant press the F* keys on the Z2 do it on a desktop and the same key codes will work.
nobody has done anything with the usb port on the zipit. so if you want it to work you may have to do it yourself.
Minor update to the power-management script. There was an error with an O and a 0 which prevented the power button from working
update to power-management.sh again:
http://zipit.pastebin.com/f25e87a82
@Nonya-Biz
I certainly plan to at the very least try
the usb client pins are on the side with the keyboard. there are 2 capacitors connected to smt ferrite cores, those are the +&-.
If only we could get a nice shiny front end on this like Maemo
Anyone have pictures of the USB pinout/motherboard? Please?
Okay Soundguy, I’m gonna have to scrap your userland image.
Not that it isn’t good. I just have issues with using something developed by someone of your less than tolerant nature. You MIGHT want to rethink your ESSID, or at the very least, change what is set by default.
@ Soundguy
Where are the scripts for the wireless configuration utility located at? Mine will associate with the access points I have configured in wpasupplicant.conf but it seems to hang right there, it never invokes the dhclient and I have to do it from the command line. I have a script I wrote that works , but I’d like to edit the one linked on the desktop so I don’t have to go into a shell. Thanks. The userland looks great.
Don’t get quiet on me now. My z2 will be here in a few days O_O
JimSP mine also does that i just go in and choose 9 again the it will bring it up and get an ip.
soundguy The latest was missing some of the numbers in network config tool all it had was the ) i think it was 2 7 or 3
@xbin
Thanks I’ll give that a try. I’ve got a simple script that does it, but if you don’t run it as root, it won’t work. I’d like to see how it is written in the network configurator either way. I’m far from linux proficient and I’m sure I’d learn something.
@xbin
the numbers are there and they work, it’s just that the screen wraps in a rather inconvenient way
I’m totally downloading this right now for experimentation. It looks extremely promising. Not to mention the matchbox window manager resizes windows for the small display much better than openbox and fluxbox.
My only gripe before i use it is why the key combination for switching windows is ctrl-z instead of alt-tab? Some of the key combinations that were made for the new root user image are great like for a task manager. But changing something natural like alt-tab over to ctrl-z seems unnecessary. Now i’m going to have trouble using ctrl-z for undo in the text editor. It just doesn’t make sense for why switch window has been switched from alt-tab to ctrl-z.
Got first Zipit, would like to try on Root Nexus userland on during first install. What would be different or would I have follow the steps to get Aliosa27 on first then upgrade?
@shamil its very difficult to find keys that do not interfere with the z2′s wack keymap.
if you find a good key-mapping that does not interfere with other software please post it.
~/.matchbox/kbdconfig holds the shortcut keymaps….
@Hilbrecht you just need the 2.6.29 kernel, also i dont have any modules compiled for 2.6.30 with uboot. Since its not a relatively safe and well documented task to use 2.6.30 i wont include official support for it until it becomes that way.
Also there will be a number of changes in the next release and a number of usability fixes. I know of a couple problems with headphones, and some general usability issues….
Just so everyone is aware, what is posted is a test release. Im configuring it for everyday usability for someone who is not familiar with linux.
So if anyone notices a problem please let me know…
Ill get a new release canidate up as soon as I can.
Thx sound guy, that helped a lot.
One thing i failed to realize but i thought was very cool was the fact that i’m stuck in userland on this thing instead of perpetually running as root. On the old debian images for the z2 creating a user profile usually did funky things like not make the mouse work and so on.
You made a great userland and it’s also a great layer of security, but what’s the root password? I’m unenamored with ayttm because of the lack of myspace and facebook protocols i can’t add to it. So, i was going to go with finch. Of course i need access to apt.
Some suggestions i will offer though: map the matchbox program menu to a keyboard command (it bugs me that i have to use the clunky mouse to get to the menu and access it; the keyboard for accessing the menu is a must). And possibly look into aliosa27′s “keymap-final” found here http://aliosa27.net/projects/zipit2/mark2/keymap-final
Keymap-final all around works better because of a couple of fixes it has reduces confusion of the keyboard. Such as holding down alt for doing a colon instead of holding down shift for doing a colon (the colon symbol is in orange just like the alt button that means i should use the alt button for a colon). Same thing goes for the symbols that also got switched over to the alt button as it should be because of keyboard color coding. Mainly it does just that, reduces confusion, other than that, it’s really about the same as the keymap included in your userland.
To my understanding, going off of Hunterdavis Zipit Flash Tutorial, once you flash the zipit to get it to boot off the sd card (steps 1-8). Afterward should be able to point Phsydiskwrite to write any Zipit image to put on the sd card. Sound about right?
@shamil
root password : debian
Thx jimsp. Something else just occured; whats the user profile password? Posting this from my z2.
Thx jimsp. Something else just occured; whats the user profile password? Posting this from my z2. Links2 is better than dillo.
@soundguy – can you put up the instructions that were on the rc0 page somewhere? Thanks!
Is there a reason that the device won’t boot from the SD card? I have a 4 gig card formatted with fat32 with the autoflasher and kernel.bin at root. The device sees the card and says “loading database” or some such, but then proceeds to the set up screen. Is there something else about the card that I need to do? Is the capacity too large? I’ve seen some places that say fat16 instead of fat32, and others that say fat32 is fine. I think one of Hunter’s videos shows him using a card straight out of the package, no formatting at all.
Thanks for any help. This looks like a really great little device and Soundguy’s userland image looks sweet.
@shamil
I don’t remember where I saw the root password at, but you can always switch to root and change the password with:
passwd user
soundguy – audio is not working in the new rc1-pre2
dmesg:
asoc: platform pcm constructor failed
asoc: can’t create pcm WM8750
wm8750: failed to create pcms
failed to initialise WM8750
WM8750 I2C Codec: probe of 0-001b failed with error -12
I just want to thank you for what you are creating for this little device!
Sorry, guess a reboot was needed to fix the sound issue
Hello again!
I looked away from the zipit scene for like five minutes (ohkay, more like several months..) and what a surprise!
A whole shiney debian distro!
Do you know of any-place hosting the original drivers?
I lost my SD card and thusly everything on it.
Now that X and apt-get are working this little tiny thing just got much, much more exciting.
to believe I let mine sit in a drawer for so long.
Uploaded 1gb Image, rootfs.tbz2 and Instructions
http://zipit.rootnexus.org/files/Z2-USERLAND/RC1-PRE2/
@Bob
I dont know exactly whats going on. I suppose the device can be picky with some sdcards?
Make sure you are following the directions to the letter.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/openzipit/index.php?title=AutoFlasher_Software
Also I know there are newer kernels such as 2.6.30. This userland uses 2.6.29.
@FrankieJ
Drivers? WiFi Firmware? If thats what you are talking about they are included in the rootfs. Although its a gray area to include them this is a non profit project and they can only be used with a Z2.
How can the screen brightness and keyboard backlight be controlled? When the Z2 comes back from turning off the LCD and keyboard lights , the LCD is not as bright and the keyboard is not lit?
How is dropbear disabled from the startup?
@hard_where
/etc/power-management.sh
There was a lot of experimentation with this. And a lot of problems…
…. In the last release I changed it to be controlled from lid.sh in /etc
I got the flashing figured out. For whatever reason it needed to go through the initial Zipit set up, as though I was going to set it up as the manufacturer sent it. I got it flashed and running with Aliosa27′s image, but somewhere along the line I pooched the SD card. Now my Linux machine won’t see it and my Windows machine is just confused by it. I’m getting another one and will try it again.
@Bob
Hi bob, try re-creating the ms-dos partition table. A bad write can erase that..
If fdisk wont fix it use the command line tool called parted.
It worked for me when i accidentally managed to mess up my sdcards partition table.
@Bob
I had same problem. My Zipit had been gathering dust for a few months before I pulled it back out. When I went to but new userland on it linux kept complaining about bad superblock. I repartitioned from command line and then makefs and have had no problems after that.
@Bob
Make sure that the sd card was set to be bootable. That got me one time and just boggled my mind until i figured it out.
@soundguy
Plz add ext4 support in the kernel if it isn’t there already. It appears not to be when i reformatted my sd card to ext4, put rootnexus on there, modified fstab for ext4, and wont boot. It’s 2.6.29, but maybe you compiled the kernel yourself without ext4 i’m assuming.
Ext4 with “noatime” and “nodiratime” disables journaling along with other reads and writes that don’t need to happen, and is basically about as good as optimizing ext4 for ssd’s go. Similar to the “noatime” option for ext3, except that ext4 would yield even better performance than that of ext2/3.
In the mean time. I disabled the rox desktop to free up memory since basically the desktop icons are already in the matchbox panel. I also disabled the matchbox clock since the zipit can’t keep time.
@shamil
I did not compile the kernel. Im using the kernel thats distributed from the openzipit sf site.
Ill look into it, I know that you could build it as a loadable module right now on the userland if you like.
But I have heard that ext4 is slower on certain sdcards, specifically in reference to cynanogenmod for htc’s dream phone, aka tmobile g1. when used as the apps2sd.
The reason I used ext3 is because I got filesystem corruption on ext2 if the system crashed or ran out of power. Ext3 seemed to stop this. I also had thought of using parts of the FS as jffs2. But that would make those parts of the filesystem read only.
Definitely something to think about.
Thanks for the suggestions, thats good information.
@WORLD:
Well the latest release looks pretty good, there are 2 problems that I know of in the current release.
The wifi quick scan doesnt show.
Rox-Filer is using too much memory now that I put on lxpanel.
(you can disable rox-filer in ~/.xinitrc)
Rox is still used as the file browser from the lxpanel menu. Just not as the desktop in future releases. (you will still be able to enable it if you want)
The next release will for sure have the quick scan fixed in the wifi scripts, you can use it still if you put a read nothing in the script so it pauses the output until enter is pressed.
Currently im working on minor usability issues, and correcting some fonts.
Any feedback or feature requests let me know.
Thanks!
Thanks for the updates!
What is the difference w/ the 1gb image?
Suggestion: in my system, I bound the Home button to the Fluxbox main menu, and the center d-pad button to Enter, so that I can activate the menu and choose items sans mouse-mode. Very handy for me, and I can see it would work well on your set up too. Haven’t figured out how to call lxpanel’s menu just yet though.
@hard_where:
I posted the 1gb image so windows users can easily test it. No difference between 1gb and rootfs.
Im working towrads a good final usable release with a reduced disk space usage footprint.. At that time ill release a few difference size images for ease of installation.
@Negative3Kelvin
I would like to bind a button to lxpanel, I did a quick search a few nights ago when I had a moment and I could not figure out how to do it. I know its got to be possible without compiling from source. If you do find out tell me. HEH
Thanks for your suggestion.
@soundguy or anyone who knows,
Does this image or any other method include a way to have the keypresses repeat at a useful rate for emulated gaming?
Pressing the arrow key over and over is not a fun way to play a side scroller.
This looks cool as heck and as soon as I can find some time my z2 will be getting a new rootfs.
You can map a key to run `lxpanelctl menu` which will popup the lxpanel menu. Also, `lxpanelctl run` will open a run dialog.
bit of a noob question here. I’ve downloaded rc-pre2-dd parts 1 through 5. I have 7zip installed, but how do I extract them all to get the image file. I realize that this may not be the most apropriate forum for this question, and I apologize for that, but any help would be greatly appreciated.
ok i combined them and it gave me a .dd file. where’s the .img file?
rename .dd to .img and then write
@grayfox386
I’m pretty sure I tried that but I’ll give it another go. thanks for the reply.
Can some one tell me how to add stuff to the desktop? I love it, but I want more desktop clickables.
how do you dissable the auto shutdown? mine only stays on for 180 seconds unless i have it pluged in, even at 100%
Hello,
Any progress towards the next release? Looking forward to it!
I’m drooling over the zipit… Where’s the best place to buy one? The closest Target store didn’t have them… I’ll probably check out Big Lots. I’d like to get one for less than the $50 on Amazon, but I’ll buy it if I can’t find anything better.
@Nonya-Biz and Soundguy
I have the same problem with the auto shutdown in 180 even at full charge. I think it happends now because the backlight is MAX by default, whe in the previous release it was set to 500 (screen) and 0 (keyboard). Soundguy: where can we change the defaults for backlight?
The WIFI connection script: Option 5, does not show the short list of available WIFI as in previous releases.
Thank you very much for your great work.
Wonderful work!
I am kind of newbie… Then, I am having some trouble getting things working.
I need some help.
After flashing my Zipit, I extracted Z2-RC1-PRE2.TAR.BZ2 to a 1gb card (previously partitioned 750mb-ext3/256mb-swap). I booted from the SD and within 1-2 minutes it showed desktop. It hangs from there. Mouse is not working (it did briefly the first time I booted) and I do not know how to use hot keys (ctrl???). I had to unplugged the BATT in order to turn it off (shame on me…).
Could be a problem the way I extracted rootfs directly to the SD card (with File Roller from GUI Ubuntu). I have doubts about this since I didn’t use the image at all, and soundguy instructs to copy with the -RvPp flags in order to preserve file permissions.
Could be the need of some script I am missing?
I hope I have given an accurate description of my situation and my impressions.
I will appreciate any suggestion…
Best regards.
Once again: soundguy, thanks!
Does anyone knows how to switch between weapons in Quake1 on the zipit? the number keys do not work.
Anyoen have thoughts on the upcoming release of MeeGo? http://meego.com/devices/handheld
Anyone have thoughts on the upcoming release of MeeGo? http://meego.com/devices/handheld
I think that both your problems is that you need to press option.
The option button changes mouse and num keys. When the mouse is in use, the top keys are function keys. Press the option key when you start up to use the mouse, and press it again to get the numbers back and use the arrow buttons.
So Vincenzo, I think, less I am missing something, you need to press option. I hope that it is something that simple. Cause if not, I am sorry.
As for rsalazar, the mouse and arrows can control Quake, but with the mouse, there are no numbers, just functions. So press the options button and use the arrows instead.
Sorry for the double post.
Does anybody know a good arm mp3 player? The built in one doesn’t have shuffle, ect.
Thanks Stephen Bell!
Mouse working as expected.
Some new issues came up…
1)when I plug it to the AC adapter it starts to boot.
(i have to wait untill it starts and turn it off even then no led lights indicates me if it is charging or not)
Is anyone obtaining the same behaviour? Should LEDs still be working factory way to indicate charging-in-process?
2) After booting the taskbar dissappeared, and never came back.
How do I have it again?
Excelent community.
Very supportive,
Thanks
So far
Sorry to post again…
1) About the AC adpator issue I’ve been making some tests with the following results:
With Z2 turned off, if plugged, it turns on and start booting by itself just because it was plugged. No batt led light.
After booting process finishes, if unplugged and plugged again, the batt led goes steady green.
If I proceed to shut it down by pressing the “on button” and clicking shutdown, it turns off correctly in 15 secs but the green led light goes off, apparently not charging at all.
2) I copied again the rootfs to the sd card to try to recreate the missing-taskbar issue: no luck so far. There must be something I did when I was exploring the system the first time.
Five very simple questions/comments now:
3) Where can I find an explanation of the Z2 keyboard? (I mean, the use of smiley, Prev/Next, Z key, Home, as Options works for mouse pad).
4) When asked to do so I press [. . . ] + c to start in console. It writes on the screen ^c but nothing happens. It proceeds booting to gui.
5) Probably because of the way I copied the rootfs to the sd card (I did it as root) I don’t have user permissions to write in /home/user, hence I can not modify, for example, .bashrc. How should I extract rootfs from Z2-RC1-PRE2.TAR.BZ2 to the sd in order to preserve permissions?
6) I am ashamed of this one: system always boots from the sd card, right? I mean: there is no installation to the zipit itself. Correct?
7) Startup to gui: 4 min. 42 secs. Shutdown: 15 secs.
(any ideas why, compared to what i have read in this almost-forum, it takes my zipit three times to boot and shutdown?)
Thanks!
I am almost as new to this as you, just had mine a week now, but I hope this helps some.
1. As for the battery led, I have to unplug and plug.
2. The taskbar thing, well, I have had that happen a few times. I have to re DD it, nothing else I can find to fix it. I hope someone can help with this too.
As a side note, for me, this has only happened if I just unplug the power/reset instead of shuting it down.
3. I haven’t been able to find anything about the keyboard myself, but I have figgered about the function keys, the … is ctrl, or maybe alt, not sure. The key between the alt and space is a shift. The smily face is Ctrl Q, I belive, always shuts things down for me. Um, when in mouse mode the center button is left click, and the stop button is right click. When in keyboard mode, the middle button is end and the home button is home. That is all I figgered out so far.
4. Eh, I think that is just to put it into verbose mode.
5. Sorry can’t help there.
6. Yeah, there is just not enough space to boot much from anything but the SD. Least, far as I know. The only thing that is on it really is the kernel I belive.
7. Again, sorry, never counted. But I don’t think my takes near that long.
Hi all. I’ve been digging this setup, but I think I hosed something during the last update/upgrade. At one point, it asked about keyboard setup. I rather stupidly went with the default 105 key keyboard. I wasn’t sure what alternative to use. Now it appears that some of the keys don’t respond to keypress. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Probably an obvious issue…
if zipit can’t keep time, there is no way to use apps like “when” or “task”, right?
Is it possible somehow to work with time?
Among my main interests is to replace my pda with zipit.
As far as I can see, I am not going to get away with it…
Regards.
Soundguy, are you still around? When’s the next release?
@Vincenzo – Maybe take a look at syncing time with ntp.
I’ve been playing with NTPD, and hwclock, but don’t see how to make the RTC keep consistent and accurate time. When the zipit goes into sleep mode, the titme is wrong until the next time NTP syncs. plus there is no timezone file in /etc (easy enough to create). Anyone have a clue?
Yeah, sorry, I don’t care much about time. While I would like it right, I don’t worry about it. So never looked to far into it.
As for the keyboard, no idea.
One of my big bugs, however, was the crappy mp3 player. Ok, I shouldn’t say crappy. It plays well, with low CPU. However, I have found a better one. Still text based, cause GUI’s kill the CPU, but it has shuffle, libary, playlist support, and my fav, random play. Called CMUS. I would recommended it as a great replacement for the music player. Soundguy, you should check it out. Maybe use it in your next userland.
Thanks. I used this userland as the basis for my Side-Track project
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/zipit-z2-hacking-userland-side-track
It’s meant to be a pen-testing platform.
Very cool distro irongeek, I’ll have to check that out this weekend
I’m still having problems with this install. I renamed the .dd file to a .img file so I could use physdiskwrite like Grayfox said. The file is now called 1gb.rc1-pre2.img and is 982MB. Physdiskwrite is not working so I switched to win32image writer and it tells me I havn’t enough space on the sd card. The Card was formatted with Fat(default) 16kb (is that FAT16?) and has 968MB free. I gave up on windows last night and gave it a try on YDL. I am a complete noob at linux. Still stuggling to learn. Anyway I managed to wipe my linux box trying to partition the sd card! No biggie. It was a fairly new install and I am currently reinstalling it. Anyway any help would be awesome!
Hey fracaspunk1,
Depending on what filesystem type and blocksize you use to partition the card, different cards will have different amount of free space reported. Partitioning it ext2 with a high blocksize may solve your issue, but it’s also possible that your card doesn’t physically have enough space (968 vs 980). It’s also possible that there were some bad sectors on the card when you formatted with windows. If that were the case, dosfsck may have marked some sectors as ‘bad’, and a smaller size would be reported… I am thinking this is unlikely.
If you’re concerned about wiping your box again when you go to partition the SD card, here’s a quick runthrough:
1. boot your linux box without the sd card plugged in
2. type ‘dmesg’ into a terminal
3. plug in the sd card
4. type ‘dmesg’ into a terminal again
5. The second dmesg will tell you what device the sd card is loaded as (probably /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1)
6. The device reported is what you’ll format. You could also start gparted directly with this as a parameter, so it’ll only show this drive. “sudo gparted /dev/sdb1″ should do it.
Good Luck!
Hmm well after all the work my z2 isn’t holding a charge without being plugged in. Why can’t it charge if the power is off and it’s plugged in?
Yeah, that is the wave of the future unfortunately. Most modern devices need to be on to charged too. That was a Q over at the Pandora forums about that, and they said it has too turn on too in order to charge, but they are going to make a minikernal just for charging down the road. I doubt a zipit can do that, so to charge we are going to just have to leave it plugged in.
Hi Hunter,
Thank you for your help and comments in the past, and the information on your site. It’s all been very helpful.
I now have a z2 based on rootnexus’s work using icewm. Have vnc working and can connect to open, wep or wpa access points. In fact everything is running well except video. What settings do you use to encode video for the z2 and what mplayer options do you use?
Also has anyone used the z2 to compile? If so what needs to be installed?
(Apologies for the slightyly off topic post, this place is a mine of info and minds)
Kindest regards
James
Hey James,
No problem. For the video settings, I had used the mplayer settings from my “Hulu on the Z2″ post and that worked for most video streams. I know that a few users had tweaked their settings a bit to lower bitrate, lower bitrate audio too. Those are probably floating around in the comments.
For compilation, you’ll just need whatever libraries you’d normally install to compile on any debian system. So for c/c++ you’d need g++, libc-dev, gdb, etc etc. Good luck!
I have had a problem with writing the 2GB disk image to the microSD. The 1.85 GB available on the 2GB cards does not appear to be enough for the image. I have screwed up 2 micro cards. I have a 4 GB card that I want to try now. Can I dd the image straight to the card, or do I have to partition the card to have a 2 GB partition? If I do have to partition the card, should I just use fdisk to create a 2GB primary partition and install the image to that partition?
Thanks,
Dan
Hey Dan,
You should be able to dd the image straight to the card. Once you’re sure that the image works, you can use gparted etc to resize the partition to fill the disk. Good Luck!
Hay James, does icewm do good on the Zipit? Any special setting needed? I am not really a linux n00b, but dang near, so any good info on it?
Hey Stephen,
I’ve used Icewm on the z2 off and on, and there are some things you can do to tweak the experience. I like to have the cpu and memory monitors on the taskbar, but also have the taskbar auto-hide. At 320×240, it’s not bad.
Hunter,
The dd of the 2GB image to my 4GB card appeared successful (no errors). The problem is that I can’t view/access/mount the card to move files to it. I am using Ubuntu. Disk Utility says that the device is “Unrecognized”, so automount is failing. I have tried to manually mount the device and it also complains about wrong filesystem. Should I try another image or am I overlooking something?
Thank you very much for your help!
Dan
Hey Dan,
Hrm… Did you write the card as root? Did you dd it to the /dev/sdx device? What was the command you used? You should be able to see it in ubuntu which concerns me… but I’d give it a try on the Z2 just in case. For mounting what was the command? Also what does your partition table look like for the card? Does parted/gparted see all the partitions? These would be good things to check, figure out what’s gone awry. Good Luck
Hunter,
The command that I used for dd was:
sudo dd if=debianZ2-diskimage-2G.img of=/dev/sdb1
It came back saying that 2GB were successfully written. For mounting, I used:
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/external
and/or
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/external -o uid=1000,gid=100,utf8,dmask=027,fmask=137
but both gave me:
“mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try
dmesg | tail or so”
parted for the device gave the following:
Model: Generic USB SD Reader (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 3959MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 4194kB 3959MB 3955MB primary
I put the card in the Z2 and the OpenZipit splash screen can up with the Penguin, but it just hung…no login. So the image might not have been successfully copied over. Should I redo the dd?
Again, thank you very much!
Dan
I have recently purchased my Z2 and have a few question.
Right now have it running off of a 1gb chip. It runs fairly well and I am very happy with it and its a lot of fun to show off. I do have a few problems when trying to use the IM application and if i try to play a youtube video. My Zipit will hang and freeze and i may never be able to do a proper shutdown and have to pull the battery out. I don’t like doing this and was wondering if there was some force shutdown i can do?
I have ordered an 8gb Class 6 MicroSD and was wondering if I would be able to expand the swap and if I was able to would it make much of a difference with performance?
Is there an easy way to switch between windows/tasks?
I noticed that if i was to close my zipit and reopen it that the backlights on the keyboard will not turn back on. This is not a big problem as sometimes I dont want the keyboard on. I was just wondering if there was a way to change the brightness of both the screen and the keyboard.
This is a very neat protect and a fun device to play with.
MattyG
playing youtube videos can take quite awhile. its slow give it a few min and see if it starts.
there is a pin hole in the side of the zipit you can use as a reset button.
There are some hotkeys as follows :
[Options] = enable mouse via d-pad
ctrl+f=fullscreen
ctrl+z=prev window
ctrl+l=close
The keyboard back-light should actually default to off on the keyboard as its a real drain on the battery. There is a power management file you can edit if you want to have the light on but by default it should be off.
ctrl+d=desktop
@MattyG:
Does pressing the power button bring up the shutdown menu? This should work on the newest Rootnexus image.
You can increase the size of the swap partition using some Linux tools. On Ubuntu, try Gparted,
Try CTRL-N to switch between windows.
To change the brightness on the screen and keyboard, you can modify (as root) /etc/power-management.sh and set the values to what you prefer. I am currently working on a post about a command line script to change the brightness. Check out my site at http://www.mozzwald.com
Hey Stephen,
icewm works really well for me, I did need to turn off the desktop icons as per rootnexus’ instructions, and now it works really well. I use dillo as a webbrowser for normal use and midori for special needs (coz its slow). Just apt-get install icewm and then change the settings in /home/user/.xinitrc (probably change matchbox or fluxbox to icewm)
kindest regards
James
Cool, I will check it out on my backup card.
O, and Dan I have 3 SD card readers. One buitin into my Eeepc, and 2 usb ones. The eeepc one always show unpartitioned space, and the USB ones work. Don’t know why.
Hey Dan,
Sorry for my lateness getting to your post. It looks to me like you’re using the wrong filesystem descriptor to mount. After ‘dd’ing the card to the disk, you should mount it as an ext3 partition, not vfat. That would explain the “wrong fs type” messages you’re getting. Hopefully it should work for you. Good Luck!
I have yet another problem. I like Cmus as a media player. There is one problem, it needs to be root to access the sound driver for some reason. Log in as user, says error, root, all good. I have it added to my menu, and tried using sudo cmus, but that doesn’t work. I have to su root and then cmus to use it. Is there any way around this?
If not, how would I change it to boot to root instead of user?
Hunter,
Thanks for getting back to me on this issue. I’m feeling a little lame about having so many issues. It’s never easy! I re-dd’d the sd card and tried to mount the device as an ext3 file system…same problem:
derolph@ubuntu:~/Desktop/zipit$ sudo dd if=debianZ2-diskimage-2G.img of=/dev/sdb1
3970048+0 records in
3970048+0 records out
2032664576 bytes (2.0 GB) copied, 1924.19 s, 1.1 MB/s
derolph@ubuntu:~/Desktop/zipit$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /media/external
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try
dmesg | tail or so
Should I try mounting the device in another distribution other than Ubuntu? Is there something else that you think I can try? This is perplexing.
Thanks,
Dan
Hey Dan,
I think I see your problem. Your command should be:
sudo umount /dev/sdbsudo dd if=debian.img of=/dev/sdbBy adding the 1 to the end of sdb, you were overwriting only the first partition of the card. I think this may be your issue. Hope this helps, good luck!
Hunter,
That was the trick! After doing a dd, writing the image, mounting the device, and writing the gsp* files to the filesystem, I booted the zipit and logged in. After logging in, I did a startx and the “water drop” splash page came up. Couldn’t really do much from here, the mouse was frozen (I moved the z2mouse-option to /bin). I’ll play with it a little and see if I can get the mouse to work. Without X running, everything looks good!
Thank you very much for all you help!
Dan
Hey Dan,
Glad to hear it. Did you hit the smiley face button to change the mouse emu into mouse mode? That may be it for that. Glad to hear things are going well!!
Looks great! Has anyone figured a way to set the mac address to something other than 00:50:43:02:FE:01? I am trying to use the Zipit on a school network and it seems someone has already registered the default mac.
After trying physdiskgui over and over to no avail I found a great little program to get the img on the sd card called ALL Image. 14 day trial. Google it. Works great.
Vern: Use these commands in the terminal: “ifconfig eth0 down hw ether 00:00:00:00:00:01″, then: “ifconfig eth0 up” replacing eth0 with your wifi card’s name and 00:00:00:00:00:01 with your desired MAC address.
I just bough a Zipit to hack on. Does the zipit have any kind of graphics chip? How powerful is it? I’m not expecting much…
hunternet93:
No graphics chip, but powerful processor for its class.
Hi there!
I was thinking about including a script to set time/date at startup.
At which point of the boot process the script must be invoked?
(boot sequence)
Obviously it must be done as root…
Regards.
I got my zipit today! It has the latest userland running smoothly right now. Links2 leaves some things to be desired though. I installed Dillo, and its better. If there was a option to spoof the user agent as a mobile browser so google etc would show the mobile varients of their pages. Also, does anyone here know of any good online games that can run on the zipit? I know quake would work, but it would be hard to play. Maybe a liero-like game of some type?
Hey Vincenzo,
I think you can just add it to rc.local..
Hunternet93,
Online games on the Z2… I know gnuchess works well. You could probably get freecraft or similar running pretty nicely too. I’d be interested to know if you get liero/wormux/etc working, fun games. Good luck! As for spoofing the user agent in dillo, can you not set it in .dillorc? Otherwise you’ll probably have to recompile, but luckily dillo is only 3 files I believe.
I just tried wormux and it didn’t work… I had to kill -9 it. I’ll be testing other games. I haven’t checked .dillorc, but there is some options in the prefs to change user agent. Maybe I can add some, I’ll have a look. Back on the subject of games: I’m about to try Atomic Tanks, it is a very simple game so it might work.
I did some playing around with dillo but it ended up not being usefull although it did make website look a little better then links2. The problems that I had with it was that 1) gmail did not work. witch it what I wanted it for and 2) you have to use the mouse. I wanted it to be more like Links2 in the fact that I could get around pretty quickly.
here are some things that I changed in the dillorc file:
geometry=320×240
user_agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17″
start_page=”file:/home/user/.links2/start-page/search.html”
Give that a try if you find how to get gmail to work and if you find any other good settings let me know.
If I could find a valid user agent string for mobile browsers I think it would work. Something along the lines of IE Mobile. On my old ipaq gmail had a good mobile interface. Crimson Fields looks like a good game for the zipit as it has been ported to other mobile devices, but it has errors on startup. I’ll work with it and see if I can fix it. I think the programs included in this userland should be changed to even lighter ones. GPE’s programs should work, I’ll mess with that too.
Hey MattyG thanks for the info!
Hey hunternet93 I agree CF should work ok on the Zipit with some tweaking. I’m interested to hear how this goes, good lucK!
Crimson Fields runs well when running with the options –width 320 –height 240. The title screen isn’t scaled so only a corner of it is showed, just click to bring up the menu. I had a problem where the /usr/share/games/crimson/locale/en.dat file was corrupted, so I just copied it from my laptop’s working installation. Its fun to play, but would be better if there was a real networked version not just play-by-email.
Hey hunternet93,
Thanks for the update! I’ll have to check that out. Sounds like the same situation I was running into with egoboo and scummvm initially. Probably requires a recompile with new sdl options for title screen render. Glad it’s going though, good luck!!
Have you considered trying Angstrom on this device? It is more mobile-oriented than Debian, and might run faster. I sent a message on the Angstrom mailinglist asking questions about cross-compiling for the zipit. The desktop environment choices are GPE or OPIE, either of which would be great on the zipit. The only problem I can see is the lack of a touchscreen. The mouse emu should work, but much of the programs are optimized for a touchscreen. It might be possible to add one through the serial port.
Hey hunternet93, check my previous posts and releases on angstrom
I don’t see them, sorry. Could you give me a link or title? Guess I should’ve searched before a posted
I see it now… Sorry for not search first.
Hey hunternet93, no problem. I think the angstrom builds can be very fast, but for me having access to apt-get and apt-src are more important than a slight speed reduction. Let me know if you end up rolling a distro so I can link to it. Good lucK!
I _think_ ipkg is compatible with .deb files, and apt might be installable. I’m no expert though. By the way, I got Dillo to work pretty well with the user agent string: “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 320×240)” Gmail.com still doesn’t work though… It gives me “ERROR: redirect loop for …[long url string]” I think its related to cookies. Do you use x2x to control your zipit? Its handy when you’re typing a lot near another computer.
Hey hn93, I’ve used synergy which is similar, but usually end up either ssh’ing in or just doing typing with the tiny keys
The saddest thin is that after me and other people made donations there were no more updates…
It sounds so bad
Any news about an img to download, I’m a newby with linux, my knowledge is limited to write an img to a miniSD card. Anyone could send the img to daddoo(at)orange.fr woud be welcome !
Hey Anonymous #1. This is one of the many reasons why I never accept donations… makes you stick to a schedule. Still, SoundGuy put in a lot of good (unpaid) work, so even donations made after a product release still directly benefit the recipient and the quality of his (future) code. So I wouldn’t worry too much about that, karma and all that. If he doesn’t update soon somebody will take up where he left off, etc. The beauty of open source
Hey Anon#2, you should be able to directly download the newest rootnexus or debian release from links here on the site. The debian images on SF should also be in IMG format too, so that’s convenient
Good luck!
Got it running on a 8GB SD,
Youtube videos are not loading in my zipit, they used to a couple of weeks ago, so I reinstall the image RC1-PRE2 to be sure it is not me, and still youtube videos are not loading. It starts the downloading, evan shows the mesagge window, and after a couple of minutes goes back to the links2 youtube webpage. Please confirm that this is not just me.
Hey rsalazar335,
I’m a few thousand miles from my Z2 right now, but it sounds like youtube has either changed the frame layout of their page, or is trying to send the html5 video version to your browser. I imagine the youtube script will need to be updated. Good luck!
Thank you (I was anomymous 2) I finally did it my with another image, this image I wanted isn’t avaible on the publisher website, he said some files were not copyright free and removed the whole file, what a pity !
Flashed my flash and got Side-Track (www.irongeek.com) running great. Was going to try soundguy’s/rootnexus userland, but I can’t find the .img file to download. I was able to great all the files. Don’t know if I’m having a brain fart or what? A quick link or where a quick answer would be nice. Thanks.
ok community. help me out. i’ve scoured the site, also rootnexus instructions, and before i toast another sdcard, i want to make sure i have this right;
download z2 userland bz2
b2unzip z2file.bz2 z2file.dd
sudo umount sdcard
sudo gparted ext3 and swap on sdcard
mkfs on the sdcard
dd the img to the sdcard
?
profit
using ubuntu netbook remix, 2gb microsd. does this appear to be the correct sequence for the 247MB file?
if not, what am i missing/screwing up/forgetting?
any help would be awesome, i can’t wait to lay the hack down on my zipit.
mixy
@rsalazar335
what class is your SD card? I found that the zipit’s preformance is the best with a class 6 sd card. If you do not have one you can get them for about $20 for an 8GB one on ebay. Its worth it. This fixed the problem I was having with youtube not running properly and also improved every other program.
rsalazar335:
There is an update for the youtube script. More info is available at my site http://www.mozzwald.com
Is there any way to get the original root nexus builds, it looks like some of it has been removed from his page and am having a hard time figuring out if the files exist for a 2g standard rootnexus build. I see the sidetrack build but was hoping to branch a different way from the root nexus build then pen test appreciate any info you can provide.
Hey Mixy,
You shouldn’t need to gparted the card if you’re going to DD the image to it. The image contains the partition table, so just dd to the /dev/sdx (not /dev/sdx1) and you should be good. Good lucK!
Hey Mozzwald,
Thanks for the update! I’m sure folks appreciate all your hard work. It definitely shows!
Hey Anthony,
I see his newest build is still up on the site. Not sure about the old ones, I didn’t keep a cached copy. Hopefully they’re still floating around
Good lucK!
Hunter:
Thanks for the reply. So, i can dd the image to a 2gb card?
b2unzip imgfile.bz2 ==> imgfile.dd
dd imgfile.bz2 /dev/sdx
wow. if that’s it, i was complicating things quite a bit. will try after work.
thanks again for the quick response.
mixy
Mixy: I used the Z2-RC1-PRE2.TAR.BZ2 file. Download it, format the SD card with a 256 MB swap partition at the end of the card, and fill up the rest with an ext3 partition. Then mount the SD card, and expand the contents of the tar.bz2 file to the root of the card, as superuser. Then unmount, put it in the zipit, and enjoy!
The downside to the .img files is that they only allow you to use 1 GB of the card (correct me if I’m wrong).
I think you can expand the 1gb partition after you dd it to the SD card. So if you dd the 1gb image to a 4gb card, eject and remount the card, then gparted should be able to expand it to whatever size. I could be wrong tho.
The old rootnexus images had some copyright issues I believe so that’s why he removed them. If I get some spare time, maybe I’ll go thru those images and remove the questionable material (provided I still have them).
Hey Mixy, Yeah that sounds about right. Good luck!
Hey hunternet93, thanks for the info. I completely spaced adding a swap partition.
Hey mozzwald, yeah I’ve had success expanding using parted, just gotta make sure you don’t change the partition identifier or you’ll need to update your grub configuration to point to it.
Thanks guys!
i think i toasted another card….
getting the same error msg as dan at the top of this page, bad superblock error, verbatim.
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try
dmesg | tail or so
this was after a sudo umount /dev/sdc and then sudo dd if=/imgfile.dd of=/dev/sdc
this card no longer shows up when i plug it in, and will not mount. is it toast? can i reformat in a windows box? i’m buying -another- card tonight to try this out, but it would be super sweet if i could rescue my other little guys. thanks for the help, you guys are awesome!
Hey Mixy,
None of your cards should be toast after writing, just maybe the partition table
. Dan’s issue was that his mount command referenced the wrong filesystem type, and was resolved. What was your mount command? Did it boot ok on the zipit? We’re gonna get this thing running , for sure. One thing to try is dd’ing the card as root, rather than as sudo. Don’t thing that this would be an issue, but you never know!
Thnx for your gracious support.
I would like to know if there is a way to restore the unit with the factory zipit firmware and applications ?
Hey Dadoo,
Sure. When you originally flashed the unit, the script should have backed up your original z2 firmware. I’ve not tried re-flashing it myself, but you should be able to dd it to the correct mntblock partition and restore the original firmware. Hope that helps somewhat, good luck!
I mounted with sudo mount /dev/sdc with no luck.
tried the card in the zipit, nada.
so i have two cards that i need to repair the partition table on now. anyone feel like holding my hand through that one? let me know.
Hey mixy,
Try “sudo mount -t /dev/sdc1 /media/disk” (as long as /media/disk folder exists). What you’re actually trying to do is mount the first partition up to see if it’s a valid ext3 partition. If so, sounds like the Z2 is having trouble reading your media. If not, could be an issue with the ‘dd’ command used. Hope that helps!
Hey MattyG,
yes, I have a 4GB card class 6, youtube was working fine on that card until a couple fo weeks ago.
Hey mozzwald,
Big thanks for updating your youtube script and for the instructions today. I will try it tonight.
Another idea could be: instead expanding the original 1Gb or 2Gb image to use all the card space, I created a fat32 partition there, which I can use in a regular PC or Mac for transfering files to the zipit. Now the little missing detail is how to mount this new FAT32 partition on the zipit?
Hey Anon,
“sudo mkdir /media/windows”
“sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda3 /media/windows”
Sorry, the last Anonymous is me, rsalazar335.
Thank you, I tried with the backed files but openzipit loads, the cursor flashes several times then the unit freezes :/
mixy : format the card in a windows computer they will return to normal, you can also write img from windows with USB clone.
Mixy: I use GParted for formatting, its a lot more intuitive that parted. On a debian-based system just run apt-get install gparted to get it (it might already be installed). Select the correct device in the top-right drop-down menu, and then go to Device > Create Partition Table. Use the default ms-dos setting. This will erase everything on the card btw. If the card doesn’t even show up, its probably toast.
Hey mozzwald,
Youtube works great again. Thanks.
Hey Hunter,
I managed to auto-mount my new FAT32 partition. Some instructions:
open a terminal
su root (enter your root password, original is debian)
mkdir /media/windows
echo “/dev/mmcblk0p3 /media/windows/ vfat rw,noauto,user 0 0″ >> /etc/fstab
exit
nano .xinitrc (add “/bin/mount /media/windows” after the first line)
ln -s /media/windows /home/user/media
reboot
So, you will have your FAT32 partition as a directory “~/media” mounted automatically and ready for read/write to it.
I have this working but no sound or wifi. The files firmware files appear to be in the libertas directory so I’m not sure what the issue is. Any help?
Hey rsalazar335,
That’s a good tip, thanks! You should think about adding it to the sourceforge page/forum so it’s preserved and replicated
Hey Mentengo,
Check your dmesg log and see if they are being loaded at boot. Also, check the filesize and see if they are real or stub files. Nor sure what’s going on but that should get you started in the right direction etc. Good luck!
Hey, the download link in this post is no longer valid. It leads to a page explaining the removal of an old image file. The current download link is http://zipit.rootnexus.org/files/Z2-USERLAND/RC1-PRE2/
Hey mycroftxxx thanks for the update!
Hello again, I’m using the current rootnexus buildn shed alious27′s kernel into my zipit. However I have no sound or wifi even with the gspi files in the libertaus dir. dmesg gives me “libertaus: PREP_CMD COMMAND 0X00A3 FAILED: 2: I have a eth0 when using iwconfig but no way to use it? Is bitbaking necessary?
Hey mentengo, could be a permissions issue on the files? do the md5 sums match up? May want to check that. Good luck!
I have the older Aliosa image, so how would I go about installing the newer RootNexus Rootfs?
Hey Anon,
Just DD it to a card and boot, should be good to go
How’s your experience running dosbox on this image?
It seems to run kind of slow… or is it just me? maybe i’m expecting too much? I’d love to be able to play those sierra quests in the comfort of…everywhere!
Hey Zvika,
I’d run them in scummvm if you can, much faster and completely native support. Dosbox is emulating x86 function calls, so there’ll be quite a bit of overhead. That said many of them should run ok at 286 speed. good lucK!
Yeah, I figured emulating an x86 processor will be too much for the poor little thing. Anyway, I never realized scummvm supports anything else other than LucanArt. cooool! just tested with Space quest 1!
10x a million!
Hey no problem zvika, those old agi interpreter games are very fun. Enjoy
If anyone is wants it, i’ve posted a teensy 2k perl script at http://www.4shared.com/file/257539348/75c0effa/dossierlist.html written for the z2.
It quickly creates text-based business-card-like files for contact information management.
So far it asks for names, dob, address, cell number, alt number, etc and dumps the answers into a formated txt file.
The txt files are stored in the parent directory, I view them from the terminal with cat since it’s quickest.
It depends on no modules and I’ve tested it on side-track and the rootnexus userland.
Hey Frankie,
Great stuff! Thanks for the link. I’m sure the business travelers among us will find this very useful. Thanks!
HI! I’m have tested Roonexus and Sidetrack images but i have same problems as Mentengo
“Hello again, I’m using the current rootnexus buildn shed alious27’s kernel into my zipit. However I have no sound or wifi even with the gspi files in the libertaus dir. dmesg gives me “libertaus: PREP_CMD COMMAND 0X00A3 FAILED: 2: I have a eth0 when using iwconfig but no way to use it? Is bitbaking necessary?”
I have tried to dd and win32diskimager images. Linux loads but no sound, wifi on eth0 and swap is not mounted. I have also tried few different kernels. What to do?
Hey Guerilla,
For the sound, open up alsamixer and head to the far right mixer (z2 speaker or something like that, about 20 mixers in). Make sure it’s up to a decent level, and not muted.
For the wifi, not sure what’s going on. Could be a permissions issue. Are these the full gspi files? I’d check the md5 to be sure. Also, I’d check that you renamed them correctly when you installed them. A few people have run into that situation.
For the swap, you can just add a swapfile and do swapon for that file, if you haven’t made a swap partition that is.
You shouldn’t need to bitbake anything. I’d also double-check that the eth0 isn’t working with something like ‘iwconfig list scanning’ etc. Good luck!
Hi, Im a total linux noob. I downloaded the new userland, but from UNE 10.04, the extraction keeps failing. Then I manually tried the bzip command on the file, and then it said “bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(‘”. Am I supposed to literally dd the .bzip’d image to the card?
Hey DeMudkip,
If the extraction fails, sounds like you have a bad copy of the image (or there’s not enough space left on your drive to extract it). Once you’ve got it extracted down to a .img file, that’s when you’ll DD it straight to the SD card /dev/sdb or whatever. Good luck!
Hi guys,
two things still pending to have an almost perfect machine for me:
- Java: is there any Java installation possible on this machine? I found two posible candidates: JamVM and CacaoVM, do you have any suggestions on this?
- Headphones connector does not switch off the internal speakers. So, it is not easy to listen privately. Any suggestion how to fix this?
cheers.
Hey rsalazar335,
I had java installed on my old image way back, built with bitbake from JamVM source I believe. If you’re using anything based on Debian I think you should be able to pull from the repo. I built it alongside gcj,classpath-common, etc.
Is there a message generated in the system log when you plug in the headphones? Does your lspci output change? You may be able to script something up easily if so. I would also check your alsa config file for options, or maybe the driver source for the Z2 audio and see if it’s supported, etc. Perhaps it’s as easy as setting a flag. Good Luck!
Not sure if it’ll work in debian (it should do but don’t want to be held to something that melts a zipit
) but in IZ2S/IZ2S(enhanced) we use a script to mute the speakers and raise the volume on the headphones and vice-versa. ok it’s not automatic but it does in a pinch.
Hey rkdavis,
Thanks for the info! Hopefully rsalazar can base his new script off the IZ2S one
So I am FINALLY trying out this new userland image, except the link on the post is broken. I went to the site and downloaded it from there, but whenever I perform DD to restore to a drive, it results in an unknown partition table. Anyone else having issues with the userland image?
Hey cmbeid,
See my previous checklist posts for things to try when an image isn’t working, about 30 posts up
. Was the SD card unmounted when you ran DD? Does it boot in the Z2? Hope this helps, good luck!
I figured out what the problem was right after I posted that. The partition wasn’t setup correctly and I was writing a 1 gig image to a 3 gig partition. After I got my partitions setup right, everything went fine.
Sorry if this has been posted before, but does the “brand” of SD card make a difference? I have three 2gig SanDisk MicroSD cards and the ZipIt doesn’t read any of them. AND does anybody know if there will be an update to the Z2-userland RC1-Pre2 file? I am ready to ZAP my Zipit !!!!
Hey Ragehack,
I’ve had Sandisk work in the past, but even for the same vendor the chips inside may vary greatly. It’s pure luck of the draw. I haven’t heard anything about a new release myself, but I”m not usually privy to that schedule
Hope you can find some SD cards that work in the Z2. I’ve had luck with the Kingston ones they have on sale at Big Lots.
Thanks Hunter, I will give Kingston a try.
Has anyone had problems connecting to hidden wireless networks. The only one I’ve been able to connect to is my home wireless network which right now is completely open, and not hidden.
Thanks,
Chris.
Hey,
I’m having the same issue as Guerilla and Mentengo – no sound and no wifi.
I’m using the rootnexus image. The swap does seem to be loading though – df seems to show it.
/dev/snd shows just mixer and alsamixer won’t load at all.
I’ve got a couple of questions if anyone feels like answering them:
I read (i think on the IRC logs) that someone loaded swap and sound just suddenly worked – what would be the command to load swap in case it isnt working? I tried mount to /swap but I guess it doesn’t mount there?
Secondly, for everyone else whos had this problem, did anyone manage to solve this? Like I said, it’s a default rootnexus install, but I’ve copied in the drivers to lib/firmware/libertas.
Thirdly, the gsp….whatever marvell drivers – are they just for the wireless chip, or for the sound too?
Thanks for anyone who can help.
Awesome site, by the way!
to use swap you use the command swapon
so if your swap partition is the 3rd partition on the sdcard you’d type
swapon /dev/mmcblk0p3
the gspi8686.bin and gspi8686_hlp.bin files are just the wifi firmware. wrt audio check that all the modules are loaded and that the devices are created in /dev
Cheers mate that’s awesome, I’ll check it out tonight.
lowest.common.denominator: you might find it worthwhile to pop into the irc channel #zipit if you haven’t already done so as you’ll find the marjority of people in there are using rootnexus/sidetrack or ubuntu on their zipits and will probably be able to help solve your problems.
I installed it, but the pointer isn’t working. How does that work?
Thanks
Smiley face key
Hii All,
I have just got my zipit a week ago and currently using this userland.
I have two small issues but I need to know if it’s only me
1. The battery charging LED no longer lights up. The battery actually charges but the charging status at the top is always on “D” and changing without ever reaching 100%.
2. It does not remember time. I can use ‘date’ to set and retrieve the date correctly. However, the GUI doesn’t time does not change. And whenever I restart, time goes back to 1 JAN 2000 00:00.
Is it only me having these issues? Any advice for workarounds?
Thanks for your help
Joe
Just went through the older comments and found the answers. Thanks all
Hey Joe,
Glad to hear you’ve got it worked out! Looks like it only took you 15 minutes too. I am now glad I installed search unleashed on here (better comments searching). Hope your Z2 is doing well
@Vincenzo
i have the same problem with charging my zipit
as soon as i plug it in it boots, kinda annoying and the led doesn’t work indicate anything and sometimes doesn’t work at all
i would like to know if there is any way for it to not boot when plugging in to charge, and for the battery light to work like it did when charging pre-hacked (amber when charging, green when charged)
@Kevin
No there isn’t because the GPIO that the ac is on is also one of the wakeup GPIOs for the processor however I have made a workaround for IZ2S/IZ2Se/EZ2S. I wrote a small little utility that at the beginning if the booting script tests whether the lid is open or closed and if closed powers off the zipit — it still boots a little bit but it powers off again as soon as possible. You can find it here http://russelldavis.org/2010/04/debian-binaries-of-my-lid-acpower-and-powerbtn-utilities/
With regard to the charging light I also have a couple of utilities in IZ2S/IZ2Se/EZ2S to handle that as well but they haven’t been compiled for debian based rootfs yet.
i couldn never get this to work i always have a problem with the split files is their anyway to download a single image?
Hunter: I think you need to get the Akismet plugin installed
Rk,
Good call. SpamKarma is culling about 1000 spams a day but is still letting far too many through.
Installed and running, hopefully this will take care of some of the more outrageous comment spam.
a 1000 a day? ye gods and little fishes. i though i had it tough with a total of 200 in 5 months
(although as soon as i see an attempt to hack the comment system i ban that class d (?) range )
Hi Hunter -
I successfully got sidetrack on my zipit and enjoying it, but would like to know where can I get the newuserland image from Rootnexus???I do see the links, but it seems to explain that it can only be done in linux or is this only for a full computer install???
Hey Jesse,
If you haven’t already grabbed it, go ahead and snag the rootnexus userland image. You should be able to unrar it from windows with winrar, and DD it to disk as the previous image. Good lucK!
Hi Hunter-
Been using Sidetrack and very happy with that image,but as you mentioned above the userland image from rootnexus,which tool do you recommend that I can use to do a dd into my micro SD card which is about 2 Gigs formated to a fat32???
Just to let you know I went directly to this link —–>http://zipit.rootnexus.org/files/Z2-USERLAND/RC1-PRE2/1gb-image/
downloaded all 5 rar files, created a folder and extracted all using 7zip until I was left with a “1gb.rc1-pre2.dd” file from here I need to know which next tool to use to send to my SD card?? hope I’m doing this right.
Hey Jesse,
Happy holidays, you’re almost there. If you’re using linux, you can DD with DD, otherwise check out psydiskwrite or dd for windows
Hi Hunter-
Thank you I will try linux to see if I will can image to my sd card, I have some forensics tools that might do the trick with dd under windows,but I would have to find these software tools,anyway Hunter have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Cheers!!!!
Hey Jesse,
You too! Hope your new year is full of great times with the Z2
Thank you finally got the image on one of my microsd cards and booting up fine into the OS, some cool games on the the new “Z2userland”, only one thing not working and that is the youtube video player once selecting the videos it would not play them, if you know of a way to get some video’s working please provide me some helpful tips thank you hunter!!!
The way I got the “Z2userland” image working, first formating my microsd using gparted to a fat32 after that used the tool you recommended psydiskwrite,then I had a BIG SMILE hahahaha!!!=)
Hey Jesse,
Glad to hear it. There are a couple of good youtube scripts floating around and I recall mozzwald made a really good one that should work. Good luck!
Hi Hunter-
I would like to apologize for before the posted link early this morning that you removed “My Bad”.
Anyways Hunter I have a question, it’s to do with my wireless key at the office as I’m entering my encrypted key to connect to the wireless AP I have come to a halt at theTerminal:wpa_passphrase “name of essid” (xxxxx”!X”) the two special characters are not allowing me to connect to my access point its arguing that it cannot be found the command, and its pointing to these two special characters “!x” what should I do change the Wi-Fi key??Are there any other alternatives??? Thank you Hunter!!!
Hey Jesse,
My spam filter picked it up, no worries. If you are passing the special characters on the command line, have you tried passing them in with escape characters (like \ or ! X etc). This may help. Good luck!
Hi Hunter-
I have tried to find which combo would give me the “back slash” and I cant find it, I press on “CTRL” + “up arrow” and “x” and nothing,I have even clicked on the smily face with Alt +up arrow only a small back tick .When I install rootnexus was I suppose to download any additonal key mapping software??? thanks!!!
Hi Jesse,
You can modify the keymap yourself, any of the z2 ones floating around will work on any distro or just set the mapping for ‘backslash’ yourself with xkeys and loading the keymap file. I do believe there should be a way to enter it, though it escapes my memory the exact combination. Good luck!
for try pressing alt+shift+x
http://russelldavis.org/2010/10/21/keymap-map-for-iz2siz2senhanced/
it might not be but it can’t hurt to try
Hi rkdavis -
I did some extensive googling “Y Nada” in english “Nothing” but thank you I have been to that site, I’m going to try something different it might work I will let you know, I love taking risks if not you will never learn!!
I’m a little confused with the image, it is in 5 pieces, non of the tutorials mention this, how to I put them together or write them to a 2gb card, thanks in advanced.
Hey Joshua,
Sometimes the userlands are packagesd as multi-part rars, or multi-part .zip , .dd etc for the convenience of people on unreliable connections, multi-part downloaders, etc. Depending on the extension you can use unrar, unzip, dd, tar, etc to extract the image. Good luck!
thanks. i got it to boot but the cpu maxes out on startup so it locksup. any ideas
Thanks for the help, I wrote it to the card and it boots but on startup the cpu graph maxes out and nothing works (I’m assuming it locked up) and ideas?
Hey Joshua,
Yeah, sounds like something is pegging your CPU. If you can get to a TOP window you can see what is taking up all the cycles. I’d wager there’s a script in a loop somewhere (maybe CPU bar?) which doesn’t sleep between cycles, and is using 100% cpu. Maybe. good luck!
Can someone help me? I’m trying to get the Rootnexus userland installed, but can’t seem to get it.
I’ve used the autoflashers script with Aliosa’s zimage renamed to kernal.bin (I think I went wrong there) Now I have the OpenZipit screen.
Now I dded the image from rootnexus and the card is unreadable by my (Ubuntu) computer. So, I stuck the card in the Zipit and can’t get past the openzipit screen
Hey Jesse,
You’re almost there. It sounds like the flash went fine (you’ve got the OZ logo, so that’s good). Did you remember to DD the image to the root partition of the card as root? Was the card mounted? It sounds like your issue is with the userland image on the card. Get that on there properly, and you should be good to go. Good lucK!
How do you write the image to the disk within windows?
It’s psydiskwrite or DD for windows, best of luck!