My goal is to have a ‘standard’ flavour of Linux (in my case – Fedora) running on the APC, and one of the major pre-requisites was to have the system boot from the micro-SD card, instead of the internal ‘flash memory’.. Looking at all the U-Boot parameters, I had expected this to be a real pain, but … Continue reading →
Starting to ‘explore’ the system, and it looks very different from the typical Linux system I have been used to since 1997.. The base directory structure is different, with many ‘additions’.. This is probably standard for Android, but not what I am accustomed to! I decided to format a (micro) SD card, and insert it, as this … Continue reading →
The APC(s) have finally arrived, after payment of ransom and ‘fees’ to the appropriate revenue authorities, and shipping organisations.. As expected, this is a typical Android 2.3 system, with a Linux heart, but many proprietary drivers and scripts, and reduced Linux command functionality.. I connected a USB/UART serial converter, and – so far – have a root … Continue reading →
In preparation for the (final!) arrival of the APC, I have been setting up a suitable serial console connection, via USB to a UART, and have tested it on the Raspberry Pi.. After remembering (from years ago..) that you have to connect TX to RX – and vice-versa – the serial console worked without a problem, but … Continue reading →
As my APCs are being held to ransom, until I get an invoice for UK customs duty and taxes (by post!!) and am then able to pay it (online?).. I decided to add another flavour of cross-compiler to the ones I already have installed. This one comes from the self-contained OpenELEC environment which is used to create … Continue reading →
Harking back to the good old HP9000 workstation, and HP-UX, during my time at HP.. The ‘Common Desktop Environment’ (CDE) has now been open sourced, with (apparently) good old Motif to follow soon.. It may have been ugly by modern standards, but still better looking by far than Windows 3.0… Some of this became part of the … Continue reading →
As the complete source code for the APC is still unavailable, and it seems that the ‘standard’ Android OS on the device does not include some sort of console, the only way to get control (at least of the boot process) would appear to be by using the UART port on the board, and a pinout / … Continue reading →
If you are seeing a lot of these: BUG: Bad rss-counter state mm:ffff8801c4be7b80 idx:2 val:1 -repeated ad nauseam, then there is a fix coming! https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/6/9/47 I have applied the patch, and (so far..) it appears to have fixed the ‘problem’..
Continue reading →I have just pre-ordered one* of the new VIA ‘APC’ $49 Android bare-bones computers: http://apc.io/product/ * The shipping charges (from Taiwan) were almost as much as the device costs, so I have ordered two, and will see if I can hack one and install Linux on it (of course..) Should be shipping sometime in July, but I … Continue reading →
So, the problem can be summarised as follows: Login using ‘graphical boot’ (runlevel 5) and KDM – everything works correctly. Login using ‘multi-user boot’ (runlevel 3) and then use # startx to run KDE – USB disk mounts fail with “… Not Authorized” I use a non-graphical login (runlevel 3) and then run # startx, as this … Continue reading →