Great New Z2 Userland from RootNexus
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.
March 25th, 2010 - 14:13
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!
March 25th, 2010 - 14:57
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?
March 25th, 2010 - 14:58
Hey Anon,
“sudo mkdir /media/windows”
“sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda3 /media/windows”
March 25th, 2010 - 15:01
Sorry, the last Anonymous is me, rsalazar335.
March 25th, 2010 - 15:04
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.
March 25th, 2010 - 17:04
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.
March 26th, 2010 - 14:43
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.
March 26th, 2010 - 19:16
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?
March 26th, 2010 - 22:19
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
March 26th, 2010 - 22:21
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!
March 28th, 2010 - 15:40
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/
March 28th, 2010 - 16:56
Hey mycroftxxx thanks for the update!
March 28th, 2010 - 17:29
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?
March 28th, 2010 - 17:52
Hey mentengo, could be a permissions issue on the files? do the md5 sums match up? May want to check that. Good luck!
March 28th, 2010 - 23:21
I have the older Aliosa image, so how would I go about installing the newer RootNexus Rootfs?
March 29th, 2010 - 09:06
Hey Anon,
Just DD it to a card and boot, should be good to go
March 30th, 2010 - 15:06
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!
March 30th, 2010 - 15:08
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!
March 30th, 2010 - 15:31
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!
March 30th, 2010 - 16:10
Hey no problem zvika, those old agi interpreter games are very fun. Enjoy
April 5th, 2010 - 08:34
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.
April 5th, 2010 - 09:09
Hey Frankie,
Great stuff! Thanks for the link. I’m sure the business travelers among us will find this very useful. Thanks!
April 7th, 2010 - 08:57
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?
April 7th, 2010 - 15:25
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!
April 12th, 2010 - 23:16
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?
April 13th, 2010 - 08:59
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!
April 26th, 2010 - 09:33
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.
April 26th, 2010 - 15:18
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!
April 26th, 2010 - 18:39
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.
April 27th, 2010 - 11:02
Hey rkdavis,
Thanks for the info! Hopefully rsalazar can base his new script off the IZ2S one
May 1st, 2010 - 22:20
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?
May 2nd, 2010 - 19:48
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!
May 7th, 2010 - 22:56
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.
May 14th, 2010 - 12:18
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 !!!!
May 14th, 2010 - 14:15
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.
May 14th, 2010 - 14:34
Thanks Hunter, I will give Kingston a try.
May 21st, 2010 - 17:28
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.
May 28th, 2010 - 06:19
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!
May 28th, 2010 - 07:57
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
May 28th, 2010 - 08:01
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
May 28th, 2010 - 08:11
Cheers mate that’s awesome, I’ll check it out tonight.
May 28th, 2010 - 08:16
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.
May 28th, 2010 - 21:18
I installed it, but the pointer isn’t working. How does that work?
Thanks
May 28th, 2010 - 21:33
Smiley face key
July 1st, 2010 - 23:01
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
July 1st, 2010 - 23:16
Just went through the older comments and found the answers. Thanks all
July 2nd, 2010 - 08:26
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
July 2nd, 2010 - 20:47
@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)
July 3rd, 2010 - 09:29
@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.