23Sep/09165
New Video – From Stock Z2 to Fully Flashed with Audio, Fluxbox, Mouse, Aliosa27′s Latest Userland
Here is a video Mark and I made of the complete flashing and installation process, and a tour of the new userland features.
For those following along at home, the required setup artifacts are below. You will need
- Your zipit z2
- A linux computer with an internet connection (to download the packages below) and gparted installed
- A microSD card
Do you have everything ready? Let's get to it!
- Head over to http://sourceforge.net/projects/openzipit and downloaded the autoflasher
- Download Aliosa27's new kernel image and userland here
- Grab the latest mouse emu from here
- Using Gparted, Format your microSD to a fat16 partition (I did 300 megs but you really need much less than 100
- Extract the autoflasher to the fat16 partition
- (as root)Extract the kernel + userland image somewhere on your pc
- From the extracted files, copy out the ./boot/zImage-2.6.29 to the root of your microSD as kernel.bin
- Boot the Z2 and allow it to flash and reboot to the new Linux logo
- This will also make a copy of your original kernel and wifi firmware, copy them off the microSD somewhere safe
- Using Gparted, Format the microSD into 2 new partitions, ext2 (the majority of the card) and swap (the remaining 256 megs)
- Rename and copy the wifi firmware back to the Z2 as described here
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January 21st, 2010 - 18:55
Okay I’ve been doing some more looking around and everyone keeps mentioning a disk image or an .img file.
What i did was download the kernel + userland image you linked. Then I extracted it using “7z e zipit2-audio+x+mouse.gz” on my linux box with 7zip. Now in alll the directions I see it seems now I should have image file of some kind. Instead I have another tar archive. If I extract that I get a linux filesystem; /boot /proc /var /etc. All of that. So I extracted that onto my sd card and nothing happens when I try to boot it.
January 21st, 2010 - 18:58
Hi John,
I would recommend you download either the 1g or 2g image from the sourceforge page. That’s the new debian userland and it’s pretty good. Also another user here is going to post a new userland to the SF page soon, so that’s another to try. For the file that you have I would make sure that when you extracted the file you did so as root, onto an sd card that’s been cleared of space, is formatted to ext2 or 3. Hopefully that’ll do it. Good luck!
January 28th, 2010 - 16:32
Did it flash properly?
I get a Wannabe Penguin in the left corner but no cursor or anything else on the screen. 2 green lights are on.
That’s it.
February 21st, 2010 - 00:15
Hi
I’m having issues with windows seeing the sd card after i have flashed the image using physgui. The computer says the card needs to be formatted and ex2fsd seems sees the card but no partitions. I’ve tried two sd cards so i must be doing something wrong can anyone help
February 21st, 2010 - 07:48
Hey untuned,
After writing the image using psydiskwrite, you should be good to go. I’m kind of suprised ext2fsd doesn’t like it, but I know windows has trouble sometimes with sd cards with multiple partitions. Have you tried the card in the zipit? It’s quite possible you are doing nothing wrong.
February 21st, 2010 - 07:48
Hey Tinner,
Yeah if you see the penguin the flash worked, and it’s probably just searching for the userland on the sd card.
May 5th, 2010 - 19:05
Hunter,
The z2 ran an update when I booted it before I had a chance to follow the steps above, and now it’s just booting up normally when I try to flash it. Did I screw something up here, or am I maybe just doing something wrong?
Thanks,
Chris
May 6th, 2010 - 07:44
sounds like you have the SAOD (Stock App of Death), if it’s always booting into the stock app then after logging onto the im systems 9and the zipit server) goto tools and set defaults. that should clear it if there is nothing wrong with your SD card.
May 6th, 2010 - 09:06
Hey RKdavis, I love the term SAOD.
Chris, RK is right on the money. You should still be able to boot from your SD if its supported and correctly formatted, you may just need to tools->set defaults for a soft reset. Good luck!
May 6th, 2010 - 13:15
Thanks I got that working. One more thing now when I startx the mouse/keyboard don’t seem to be working. anything I can check for that. I’m a little confused as to the z2mouseemu steps above.
Thanks,
Chris.
May 6th, 2010 - 13:59
Hey Chris,
Try hitting the smiley face key after your xwindows loads up. If the z2 mouse emu is running, it should switch it from keys to mouse mode. You can also use ps (ps -ef | grep mouse) to search for the running process. Glad you got it flashed ok! Good luck!
May 6th, 2010 - 15:33
Hunter,
Thanks for your help and sorry to be a pain. Still not working. After I startx none of my keys do anything not even the power button. Was I supposed to do something with the z2mouseemu, or is it now contain in the 1gb or 2gb userland file. The link above is broken. My keys do however work before I startx, well except for the power button.
Thanks again,
Chris.
May 6th, 2010 - 16:26
Hey Chris,
Since posting this article, I think a lot of folks have moved on to my posts about newer debian-based z2 distribution images like rootnexus’ or irongeek’s. These newer userlands will most likely be more user friendly for issues like this. In your case, you should be able to extract the mouse emulator from one of these distributions, or find it on aliosa27′s project page, or the sourceforge page somewhere.
Good luck!
May 7th, 2010 - 06:43
Chris,
try the options key. but Hunter’s suggestion is the better one as I think the version you currently have is a much older version of z2mouseemu. the latest version is here http://aliosa27.net/projects/zipit2/mark2/z2mouseemu and I think is the one that uses the options key.
May 7th, 2010 - 08:23
Hey Chris,
Saw your post on the yahoo group. Agree with rkdavis/dole, I’d get a new userland for the apt-get’itude