Re: Improvements in the browser

[Thomas Leavitt]

Question. Since this is open source, why can't the community decide it 
likes the "Advanced" features, and add them itself, even if Nokia 
doesn't think it is a good idea?

Thomas

Aniello Del Sorbo wrote:
> Ehehe pretty cool, but now let's go out of the Off-Topic and let's switch
> back in topic.
>
> The mistery about the "Advanced" option menu seems that has been clarified,
> right ?
> Thus we can close the case.
>
> :)
>
> --
> Anidel.
>
> Il 10-10-2007 11:48, "Thomas Leavitt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ha scritto:
>
>   
>> I'm a systems admin. I work with these things for a living (why I insist
>> on screwing around with them on my off time, I'm not sure)... much of
>> what I do is what I call "voodoo system administration"... I try this, I
>> try that, I faintly recall that doing this cured a vaguely similar
>> problem several years ago, or that I heard tell someone fixed something
>> like that by doing this... I jump up and down in front of the machine
>> and chant and eventually something fixes the problem. Often I'm not
>> exactly sure what.
>>
>> My favorite joke goes something like this...
>>
>> An electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a computer technician
>> were in a car that wouldn't start.
>>
>> The electrical engineer says, "Let's get out, look under the hood, and
>> see if the battery's properly connected or there are any loose wires."
>>
>> The mechanical engineer says, "Let's get out, look under the hood, and
>> see anything's broken or come loose."
>>
>> The computer engineer says, "Let's all get out of the car, slam the
>> doors, and get back in again." :)
>>
>> Of course, on a Unix system, there's a lot less voodoo than Windows. :)
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>>
>> Marius Vollmer wrote:
>> 
>>> "ext Aniello Del Sorbo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>>
>>>   
>>>   
>>>> Well you know.. They (CS teachers) teach us that computers are
>>>> deterministic automata.  In theory...  In practice.. They (the
>>>> computers) proved us many times they are not. ;-)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> No, it's just us humans who get confused and then attribute our own
>>> irrationality to the machine. :-)
>>>   
>
>   

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Re: Improvements in the browser

[Thomas Leavitt]

I'm a systems admin. I work with these things for a living (why I insist 
on screwing around with them on my off time, I'm not sure)... much of 
what I do is what I call "voodoo system administration"... I try this, I 
try that, I faintly recall that doing this cured a vaguely similar 
problem several years ago, or that I heard tell someone fixed something 
like that by doing this... I jump up and down in front of the machine 
and chant and eventually something fixes the problem. Often I'm not 
exactly sure what.

My favorite joke goes something like this...

An electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a computer technician 
were in a car that wouldn't start.

The electrical engineer says, "Let's get out, look under the hood, and 
see if the battery's properly connected or there are any loose wires."

The mechanical engineer says, "Let's get out, look under the hood, and 
see anything's broken or come loose."

The computer engineer says, "Let's all get out of the car, slam the 
doors, and get back in again." :)

Of course, on a Unix system, there's a lot less voodoo than Windows. :)

Thomas


Marius Vollmer wrote:
> "ext Aniello Del Sorbo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>   
>> Well you know.. They (CS teachers) teach us that computers are
>> deterministic automata.  In theory...  In practice.. They (the
>> computers) proved us many times they are not. ;-)
>> 
>
> No, it's just us humans who get confused and then attribute our own
> irrationality to the machine. :-)
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Re: 4.2007.38-2 available

[Thomas Leavitt]

What I'm not understanding here is that the tablet is a debian Linux 
system, in it's essence... what's the issue with just making the updated 
packages available, for the power users and tweakers willing to go 
through the work of a manual update? It doesn't do anything to prevent 
the folks whose time to restore is under 30 minutes from flashing the 
thing, and it isn't clear to me what, exactly, prevents this from being 
possible.

Thomas

Gary Baribault wrote:
> Hey Mike,
>
>   I think most people who are minimalists would not get involved in a
> Linux device, they would have gone for the IPhone. Sure there will be
> some of them who purchase a 400$+ device for minimal functionality, but,
> and I may be mistaken, the red wine is getting to me here, most of us
> have purchased this N800 for the power features, I have a Debian based
> device with BT and WiFi and 2 SD slots!!! YEAH
>
> As I said, the wine could be getting to me here in Montreal, but THAT'S
> why I bought this toy, and that translates to 90 minutes plus if I have
> to reconfigure it at each flash!!  And I repeat, Nokia, I'm not
> bitching, thatks for the great toy, it's already making my life much
> better, but please re-arange your priorities to give us this feature
> before others.
>
>
> Gary Baribault
> Courriel: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> GPG Key: 0x4346F013
> GPG Fingerprint: BCE8 2E6B EB39 9B23 6904 1DF4 C4E6 2CF7 4346 F013
>
>
>
> Mike Klein wrote:
>   
>> These #s mean nothing without taking into account target user as you
>> mention.
>>
>> Do Nothing: This person buys device, installs a few apps and nothing
>> else. (TARGET AUDIENCE)
>> Minimal: These users install bunches of apps, certificates, pgp keys
>> (SECONDARY)
>> Maxmimum: Power Users/Devt who fully tweak device, custom drivers, conf
>> edits, perhaps beyond restore-ability
>>
>> So for primary audience...what is prob' 30min. reinstall time isn't too bad.
>>
>>
>> mike
>>
>> Gary Baribault wrote:
>> 
>>> Yep, that's exactly what I mean, some people have put down 430$ (in
>>> Canada) for a nice toy, and they can flash and restore in 20 minutes,
>>> but most people (I think, and I may be wrong) have put down 430$ for a
>>> fully customised device .. I'm not looking to be skewing information, if
>>> i'm wrong, then I'm wrong, no prob, then Nokia is right!
>>>
>>>
>>> Gary Baribault
>>> Courriel: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> GPG Key: 0x4346F013
>>> GPG Fingerprint: BCE8 2E6B EB39 9B23 6904 1DF4 C4E6 2CF7 4346 F013
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>>   
>>>   
> I'm sure that some of the N800 owners can backup/flash/restore in 20
> minutes, but I would really be curious how many people take over 90
> minutes.
>   
>   
   If you limit your curiosity to those over 90 minutes, you'll 
 purposefully skew the results, which really isn't appropriate. 

   I'm a 20 minute flash and restore kind of guy, back in August when I 
 got the unit back from warranty service due to it's brick like 
 behavior.  Most of that time was spent watching TV while the unit and 
 laptop did their work.

   However, it's possible that it's easy and short for me because I've 
 kept things relatively simple on my N800 with a couple games, Gizmo 
 Project, Quiver photo viewer and Claws mail being just about the only 
 additions.  I've configured about 20 RSS feeds and 4 weather stations.   
 I've tested a fair amount of other stuff from Maemo, but then when I 
 find it of limited value or unfunctional, I remove it to keep the 
 clutter down.   It seems to speed boot up keeping things simple.  I 
 gather it may also help the restore process...

I guess the fine print is I've only recently started messing around 
 getting Claws Mail up to full speed with filters and stuff, so it might 
 be possible that I might have to spend some time fussing with restoring 
 some Claws settings there from a restore, but then again, perhaps not.  
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Re: 4.2007.38-2 available

[Thomas Leavitt]

Would take me at least that long... took that long when I had to 
re-flash my N770 after a system crash, just a few days after I bought 
the thing. Now? Much longer, I'm sure. Probably several hours, 
continuous, and then several days of fiddling and oh I forgot that, etc.

Thomas

Dr. Nicholas Shaw wrote:
> I'm 3-4 hours.
>
> Nick. 
>
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Behalf Of Gary Baribault
> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 3:44 PM
> To: Jac Kersing
> Cc: maemo-users@maemo.org
> Subject: Re: 4.2007.38-2 available
>
> I'm sure that some of the N800 owners can backup/flash/restore in 20
> minutes, but I would really be curious how many people take over 90
> minutes. I'm near there and have only had the toy for about 20 days. By
> the time I'm finished customizing the application load, configurations,
> ssh keys, and assorted other things, I will be well over that 90
> minutes, and I'm sure many other owners are even more customized!
>
> Anyone care to host a survey of all applications that we load and how
> much time it takes to reflash/customize/restore? (Not to mention re-test
> the restore!)
>
>
> Gary Baribault
> Courriel: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> GPG Key: 0x4346F013
> GPG Fingerprint: BCE8 2E6B EB39 9B23 6904 1DF4 C4E6 2CF7 4346 F013
>
>
>
> Jac Kersing wrote:
>   
>> On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Michael Wiktowy wrote:
>>
>> 
>>> Reality is that they are much closer to the resource constrains of a 
>>> cell phone and I don't know of a single cell phone that doesn't just 
>>> wipe everything that isn't on the SIM or external memory card on a 
>>> firmware update ...
>>>   
>> Sorry, not true. All (recent) S60 devices are firmware upgradable, backup 
>> before, flash new firmware, restore and all applications are available.
>> (Somehow they forget to save/restore the bluetooth pairing information, 
>> but everything works just fine)
>>
>> 
>>> All that being said, I am not sure how many apps you have but reloading 
>>> my IT after a firmware update has never taken me 2-4 hours.
>>>   
>> Having to reinstall is a pain. Enabling blue pill mode for some packages. 
>> Resetting the root password after install of sshd. It is not cool to have 
>> to do every OS upgrade.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jac
>>
>> ---
>>   Jac KersingTechnical Consultant   The-Box Development
>>   [EMAIL PROTECTED] CISSP   RHCEhttp://www.the-box.com
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>> 
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Backing up an image...

[Thomas Leavitt]

So, like, when my box locked up (for no particular reason I could tell) 
and I had to wipe and re-install, three days after I got the thing, it 
wasn't that big a deal... just a few wasted hours... but now, I've got a 
substantial investment in it... how do I back this thing up, so I can 
re-flash it to where it is now, in case something breaks in the future 
and "bricks" it?

Thomas
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Re: Questions #3: root

[Thomas Leavitt]

I changed the root user password to something reasonable.

I noticed that the "user" account is "locked" (!) in /etc/passwd... 
should I actually change that?

How can I get a decent shell on this thing, without freaking out 
"busybox" or doing something wierd like installing a package that 
renames bash to bash-m...

After looking at the various cross-dependencies, it would appear that 
doing anything serious requires dumping busybox and replacing it, but 
synaptic, etc. insist that everything that makes the box functional is 
dependent ont the busybox package... so, what do people do in this case?

Thomas

James Sparenberg wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 September 2007 12:39:52 Thomas Leavitt wrote:
>   
>> What's the cleanest way to get this?
>>
>> Thomas
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>
> For me and my way of thinking.  Install Xterm... Install openssh (as apposed 
> to dropbear) from garage.  open Xterm and  do ssh [EMAIL PROTECTED]  use 
> rootme 
> as the password.  Add this line to /etc/sudoers  
>
> user  ALL=(ALL)  NOPASSWD: ALL
>
> Now give bother the user named user and root real passwords. Once you do this 
> user, user can sudo su  to root whenever you need it to.   I also recommend 
> removing the ability of root to ssh directly after you have confirmed that 
> you can sudo.
>
> James
>
>
>   

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Re: Questions #3: root

[Thomas Leavitt]

Very cool - I'm in as root! Now this is a *real* Linux box!

... although, from another perspective, I find it incredibly uncool that 
I've been walking around with a machine with a widely known default root 
password, not knowing that I'd enabled remote access to it when I 
installed the "ssh" package. I was under the impression that you had to 
go through some bizarre and risky gyration to obtain root access to the 
machine... not simply ssh to localhost! Eek?!?

Now, another geeky question. "user" is a lame login name. I'm going to 
assume that it is incredibly unwise to rename "user" to something 
reasonable, like "thomas" :) ... is it possible to create a new user and 
login using that account instead? I see (via redpill mode) that 
"adduser" is one of the packages installed.

I also noticed that "/etc/shells" has a long list of shells. It seems 
just slightly strange to me that, on a device this resource constrained, 
they'd "waste" even that many "bytes" by not truncating this file... 
makes me wonder what other potential "optimizations" haven't been done.

I also wonder how the synaptic install package managed to add a line 
referencing itself to /etc/sudoers... if the app installer permits 
modifications of this sort to be made to /etc/sudoers, doesn't that 
suggest someone could simply write an app that added the line below, or 
write a malicious app that gave itself root privileges?

What's the default password for "user"? Will changing it affect 
anything, since obviously the system auto-starts?

Thomas

James Sparenberg wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 September 2007 12:39:52 Thomas Leavitt wrote:
>   
>> What's the cleanest way to get this?
>>
>> Thomas
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>
> For me and my way of thinking.  Install Xterm... Install openssh (as apposed 
> to dropbear) from garage.  open Xterm and  do ssh [EMAIL PROTECTED]  use 
> rootme 
> as the password.  Add this line to /etc/sudoers  
>
> user  ALL=(ALL)  NOPASSWD: ALL
>
> Now give bother the user named user and root real passwords. Once you do this 
> user, user can sudo su  to root whenever you need it to.   I also recommend 
> removing the ability of root to ssh directly after you have confirmed that 
> you can sudo.
>
> James
>
>
>   

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Re: Updates in red-pill mode

[Thomas Leavitt]

I put my device in "red-pill" mode a while back... a short time later, I 
noticed a number of "upgrades" and went ahead and installed them, 
without making the connection (until afterwards)... this did produce a 
"broken" package warning, revealed not by the Application Manager, but 
by the Synaptic application, this was for one of the main system library 
updates. I fixed the dependency error by installing "ssh", which the 
Application Manager insists has a lot of requirements and conflicts with 
"busybox", but which Synaptic says is perfectly fine to install on it's 
own. The device functioned just fine while it was in this "broken" 
state, and just fine afterwards, so I doubt that doing updates in 
"red-pill" mode, alone, is enough to brick the device... I suspect there 
must be something else involved.

Note: I'm a Unix/Linux geek from way back, and am using Ubuntu and apt 
in my day job, so I'm comfortable messing around with this stuff and 
fixing things if they break slightly. I haven't noticed any substantive 
difference in the performance or stability of my 770 one way or 
another... Opera still crashes fairly consistently (which is about the 
only problem I've seen).

I will note, however, and I'm not entirely sure why, that with no 
applications running (other than the notice bar stuff at the top), my 
system consumes 60 megs of memory... I just got a new 2 gb MMC card, so 
I've enabled 64 mb of virtual memory (I had 24 before, on the 64 meg 
card, and I regularly ran it to 90% of total memory used). It doesn't 
seem reasonable to me that the OS would consume all available memory and 
leave nothing for applications, but I don't know if I've "customized" 
the thing enough that the memory usage profile is anomalous.

Thomas


Paul Dundas wrote:
> I didn't think there was a warning about "red pill" mode on the Wiki, so
> I added one to the red pill page:
> http://maemo.org/community/wiki/applicationmanagerredpillmode/
>
> That might flush out an official comment (or not).
>
> regards,
> Paul
>
>
> Ryan Pavlik wrote:
>   
>> Updating in red pill mode is just asking to brick your device.  I've 
>> heard of it happening almost every time.  Use red pill mode as a 
>> temporary workaround for a single package, not as a way of life, no 
>> matter how much of a power user you are.  The device just doesn't 
>> support it.
>>
>> Ryan
>>
>> Jonathan Greene wrote:
>> 
>>> I can't answer that as I have nothing to do with software releases... 
>>> thats a Nokia / Maemo team question.  I think you just need to tread 
>>> lightly with Red Pill mode knowing it's an official unofficial (or 
>>> perhaps unsupported) method of doing things.
>>>
>>> On 9/11/07, *Pedro Rodrigues de Almeida* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello Jonathan,
>>>
>>> Why then should there be patches to some of the OS 2006 files? Do
>>> you mean that these patches could simply be experimental even
>>> though they have a version later than the ones installed in the 770?
>>>
>>> Does anybody at Nokia releases patches to essential OS 2006 system
>>> files which can be updated under red-pill mode?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Pedro
>>> - Original message -
>>> From: Jonathan Greene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> >
>>> To: Pedro Rodrigues de Almeida <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> >
>>> Cc: Maemo users mailto:maemo-users@maemo.org>>
>>> Sent: Tue, 11 Sep 2007, 22:27:15 CEST
>>> Subject: Re: Updates in red-pill mode
>>> "Welcome to the Matrix"
>>>
>>> I don't think Red Pill mode is advised for general use or system
>>> updates.
>>> It's really more of a backdoor.  I've used it to get Python to
>>> install in
>>> the past as it seems to get past the missing library error though
>>> I'm not
>>> sure that's so much of a good thing either.
>>>
>>> On 9/11/07, Pedro Rodrigues de Almeida <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Hello,
>>> >
>>> > I have realized that in red-pill mode a series of system patches are
>>> > available for installing, e.g., patches fr browser controls,
>>> opera etc.
>>> >
>>> > I have installed some of these patches - not all - and my 770
>>> became more
>>> > unstable ad even crashed to the point of aving to remove the
>>> battery to be
>>> > able to reboot it.
>>> >
>>> > Opera also got a new look as new, orange scroll bars replaced the old
>>> > ones.
>>> >
>>> > Is it recommended to install the updates in red-pill mode or is this
>>> > unwise?
>>> >
>>> > Thanks,
>>> >
>>> > Pedro
>>> >
>>>   
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Questions #3: root

[Thomas Leavitt]

What's the cleanest way to get this?

Thomas
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Questions #2: Nuking built-ins

[Thomas Leavitt]

1. Can I nuke Opera and replace it? What are the implications? What's up 
with the latest builds of the alt. browser not being N770 compatible?

2. Can I nuke the built-in email and replace it with Claws? I prefer the 
latter (it deals with large IMAP stores better, for one thing), and my / 
filesystem is pretty full already...


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Questions from a Tech Saavy Newbie: Alt App Install / Homedir Location

[Thomas Leavitt]

1. Can I/how do I install apps to the MMC instead of the / filesystem? 
My file system is almost completely full already.

2. Can I move my homedir to the MMC?


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