Update on Newbie install questions

Recently I posted some questions. This is a summary of the
answers to the questions, as well as some additional
observations that may be helpful to other people.

Many thanks to Jim Conner, who responded within an hour of my
initial post and then replied promptly to follow-up email. All
errors below are my responsibility. Credit for the good stuff
goes to him.

1. X won't boot. The module 2.4.3-rmk2-np1 didn't load,
 so module h3600_ts wasn't available and X would not start.

 Fix: (first, fix PPP as described below)
      apt-get install 2.4.3-rmk2-np1 (specifying
      "kernel-modules" didn't work).

2. Incoming PPP won't connect. Turns out the current
 distro has proper permissions on pppd. The problem was that
 the modules that enable ppp were not in the kernel. They
 were in the familiar distribution.

 Fix: there is certainly a more elegant way to load modules on
      boot up, but I couldn't figure it out from
      /etc/modules.conf. So, I noted that the default
      multi-user boot level specified in /etc/inittab was 2,
      and did the following:

      A. Copy the modules from familiar to intimate
      #mount /boot
      #cd /boot/lib/modules/2.4.3-rmk2-np1/kernel/drivers/net
      #for file in slhc.o bsd_comp.o ppp_*.o; do
        cp -p $file /lib/modules/; done
      #umount /boot

      B. Set up to load modules at boot time. I list the
          the link step before the file creation step for
          clarity.
      #ln -s /etc/init.d/pppd /etc/rc2.d/S99pppd
      #cat >> /etc/init.d/pppd
         #!/bin/sh
         #
         # /etc/init.d/pppd: start PPPD daemon
         #

         case "$1" in
           start)
               echo -n "Loading modules needed for pppd"
               insmod /lib/modules/slhc.o
               insmod /lib/modules/ppp_generic.o
               insmod /lib/modules/ppp_async.o
               insmod /lib/modules/ppp_deflate.o
               insmod /lib/modules/bsd_comp.o
               echo "."
             ;;
         ^D

       I don't know whether bsd_comp.o is needed, but it
       seems related and doesn't seem to hurt.

3. Incoming ssh won't connect. The problem is that ssh2
    requires that the host be recognized by reverse dns.

    Fix: add an entry to the /etc/hosts file on the iPAQ, or
         set up DNS on your host system.

4. After installing intimate, familiar would not boot. I
    found that it would not get to a login prompt and instead
    complained that too many jobs were being spawned. I set
    the bootldr boot parameters to default, to bypass
    intimate, but that didn't help. I tried to reload the
    familiar kernel using sx but the bootloader would not
    accept any data (maybe kernel is write-protected
    somehow?). Then, I downloaded the script that intimate
    uses to set boot parameters, set linuxargs
      set linuxargs "noinitrd root=/dev/mtdblock3 init=/linuxrc.intimate console=ttySA0 devfs=mount"
      params save
    and booted intimate. I then was able to fix ppp and ssh.
    For unexplained reasons, familiar then booted fine. Of
    note, the last line in /boot/etc/inittab is
      T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L tts/0 115200 vt100
    Under familiar, the serial line is ttySA0, not tts/0.

Other observations:

4. apm, which estimates battery charge, is in the familiar but
    not the intimate base distributions.

    Fix: #mount /boot
         #cp -p /boot/usr/bin/apm /usr/bin
         #umount /boot

5. QPE, the Troll Technologies palm-top environment based on
    QT, offers some advantages over the default X distribution
    such as readability, availability of a bunch of PIM tools,
    and a framework for compiling one's own programs in the
    widely-used (read: KDE) QT environment.

    The question is, will it run under intimate. The answer:
    Sure 'nuff (that's Texan for yes)!

    I have posted a description of how to do it at
    <a
    href="http://www.cardiothink.com/QPE-on-iPAQ-intimate-distribution.html">here</a>.

    Please send questions or corrections for this document to
    widman-qpe@cardiothink.com.
Received on Wed Jul 4 08:46:51 2001