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maemo 5 alpha Status

The maemo 5 alpha release is already much more than the pre-alpha2 release was. Now it is possible to get an understanding of what the Fremantle UI is roughly going to be like. Also the APIs needed for application development are included, so you can start creating your maemo 5 applications today.

This project now offers a similar environment that was available with the pre-alpha2 release. I thought I'd release the instructions already now, although there's much room for tweaking to make the image boot like a real device instead of an SDK environment.

The provided kernel is the maemo 5 alpha kernel 2.6.28 plus a sizeable patch that re-implements the OMAP display subsystem.

The boot-up is not entirely stable and often the first boot hangs after printing out Power Management for TI OMAP3. If that happens to you, it's just a matter of resetting the board and trying again. I don't like it, but I don't want to spend more time looking into it either.

You'll be able to login to the system via the serial console. After that the X-server and the Hildon desktop can be started manually as before.

Caveat

Because the image creation requires installing some closed binaries released with the SDK a full rootfilesystem cannot be offered. Instead here are instructions on how to create a rootfilesystem in the Scratchbox 1 environment.

Known Issues

  • You will need to change the BeagleBoard bootargs for the new kernel (see here).
  • Sound does not work (but can be made to work).
  • If Xorg is started from the upstart script, usb mouse will not work.
  • You can install applications using apt-get or dpkg directly. Although the application manager is there, it does not seem to entirely do its job just yet.

Installation instructions

To install the maemo 5 alpha on your BeagleBoard, follow these instructions. The files referred to in the following text can be found in http://maemo-beagle.garage.maemo.org/files/maemo5-alpha/.

Prerequisites

Follow the SDK install instructions from here http://maemo.org/development/sdks/maemo5_alpha_installation/

Accept the EULA and get access to the closed binary repository here: http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/eula/index.php

MMC partitions

Let's assume that you have created two partitions on the MMC you intend to use with the BeagleBoard. One partition for the uboot and another one for the rootfilesystem. Let's also assume those partitions are mounted to your host in directories /media/uboot and /media/rootfs respectively.

Steps
  1. Copy the kernel uImage to your MMC's bootpartition.
  2. Create a rootfilesystem tarball following the instructions in the next chapter and untar it to the rootfs partition and apply the filesystem patches.
  3. Install the rootfilesystem as instructed at the end of this document.
  4. Untar the kernel modules tarball to the rootfs partition.
  5. Boot up
  6. Press enter a couple of times to get the serial console
    Log in using root/rootme
  7. Manually start the X server and the Hildon desktop:
    -:~# Xorg -config /etc/xorg.conf-beagle &
-:~# af-sb-init.sh start
  8. Hack away!

Build instructions

Rootfilesystem

A rootfilesystem creation script is available in the project's files (make_rootfs.sh). This script can be used to create a rootfilesystem from given packages. It will automatically pull all the package dependencies to the configuration.

The script has to be run inside Scratchbox and it will modify the current target. It is recommended to create a new target just for this purpose:


# create a new target named 'maemo-beagle'
$ sb-conf st maemo-beagle -c cs2007q3-glibc2.5-arm7 \
  -d cputransp:perl:debian-etch:doctools:svn:git -t qemu-arm-cvs-m

# select the new target
$ sb-conf se maemo-beagle

# create a directory for building the rootfs
[sbox-maemo-beagle: ~/ ] > mkdir rootfs; cd rootfs

# download make_rootfs.sh, packages and sources.list files from
# http://maemo-beagle.garage.maemo.org/files/maemo5-alpha/ to this
# directory
Note: You will need to modify the sources.list file to include the closed binary repository. 
# run the rootfs script
[sbox-maemo-beagle: ~/rootfs ] > fakeroot ./make_rootfs.sh

If everything goes ok, you should have a tarball image-rootfs.tgz that contains the rootfilesystem for your BeagleBoard.

Kernel
The kernel can be built inside a scratchbox Fremantle ARM target. Use the provided config file for the initial configuration. Then build an uImage and the kernel modules.

You will need to add the mkimage binary from u-boot to the target's PATH, for example to the /usr/bin. An easy way to get the mkimage is to take the uboot-mkimage sources from the Ubuntu 8.10 repository and then compile it in the Scratchbox arm target or copy a ready binary from the maemo5-alpha files directory. 

[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > cp /tmp/mkimage /usr/bin
# get the kernel source from the sdk repository
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > mkdir build; cd build
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > apt-get source kernel
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > cd kernel-2.6.28
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > cat /tmp/kernel-2.6.28-beaglepatch.diff | patch -p2
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > cp /tmp/maemo-beagle-config .config
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > make oldconfig
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > make uImage

# the uImage will be built to the $PWD/arch/arm/boot/ directory
# copy it from there to your MMC's uboot partition

[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > make modules
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > make modules_install

# make a tarball of the modules
[sbox-FREMANTLE_ARMEL: ~] > fakeroot tar cfz kernel-modules.tgz /lib/modules

Packages

To build packages, just build them normally in the Fremantle arm target. You can add the maemo-beagle repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list to get the sources of the few extra packages that are needed.

The complete repository urls for maemo-beagle are: 

# maemo-beagle alpha
deb http://maemo-beagle.garage.maemo.org/repository/alpha ./
deb-src http://maemo-beagle.garage.maemo.org/repository/alpha ./

# the maemo 5 alpha repository
deb http://repository.maemo.org maemo5.0alpha/sdk free non-free
deb-src http://repository.maemo.org maemo5.0alpha/sdk free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org maemo5.0alpha/tools free non-free
deb-src http://repository.maemo.org maemo5.0alpha/tools free non-free

# the maemo 5 alpha closed binary repository (MODIFY THIS LINE)
deb http://repository.maemo.org/ maemo5.0alpha/<yourtagishere> nokia-binaries

Installing the rootfilesystem

Once you have created the rootfilesystem tarball, it is time to untar it to your MMC.

Note: It is important to untar the rootfilesystem with numeric owner info since otherwise tar will use the uid/gid of your host for certain system services like dbus. 

# cd /media/rootfs
# sudo tar -x --numeric-owner -f image-rootfs.tgz
# sudo tar xfz kernel-modules.tgz

To make the device bootable, a couple of patches are needed for the
init scripts. In your rootfs root directory do:

# cat /tmp/event-diff.patch  | sudo patch -p0
# cat /tmp/init-diff.patch   | sudo patch -p0

To make the mouse cursor visible, you should rename the transparent
cursor directory:

# sudo mv usr/share/icons/xcursor-transparent usr/share/icons/xcursor-transparent.bak

Hints and tips

  • Create a trivial local debian repository for your own packages and add it to the sources.list file to use it to fulfill the package dependencies.
  • If you have an USB-Ethernet adapter you can try to bring up the eth0 interface by running udhcpc.