Readme

February 2, 2011

To use it: Extract the easypc1 file onto an SD-card. According to the manufacturer documentation SD-HC (anything bigger than 2GB) might work or not. So preferably use a smaller, non-HC card. Make 2 partitions on a USB-stick. One with ext3 and the second as a swap at the moment my easypc says 3.8GB is in use on the ext3 filesystem swap might be 100MB, but I have raised it myself to 2GB to avoid problems with emerging you might make ext2 or even ext4 for your root filesystem. change /etc/fstab, then Have a look at /etc/fstab anyways to make sure everything is right Extract (BEING ROOT!) easypc2.tar.bz2 into the first partition of the USB stick

This is release 1 with Midori (webkit-gtk) browser, Claws email and Pidgin messenger

My name is Wendy, in daily life I'm a PHP/JavaScript programmer. I have a small, humble business with the name Freya Webtechniek which is Dutch for, wel, you can guess that one.

My hope is that once in the future I will be working as a programmer for embedded systems and mechanical system controls. That's why I'm interested in making (Gentoo) Linux run on an ARM/SoC system

The scripts start-wifi.sh and stop-wifi.sh are used to switch the WiFi-adapter on and off. The adapter is seen as an USB-device, thus the script simulate plugging in and out the USB-WiFI adapter.

I removed all helper software like wpa_supplicant and networkmanager because they didn't work and the driver seems to have a memory allocation problem when these helpers are running or somewhere around.

Set your WiFi settings in /wifi-connect.sh

The used kernel is from: ​http://gitorious.org/linux-on-via-vt8500 The kernel is very experimental and not (yet) part of the mainstream Linux kernel. Several parts of your netbook won't work, yet. Most notably there's no ethernet, no SD-card, no batterystatus and no sound.

passwords:

root: easypc12

easyuser: easy12

Feedback is very welcome

Hope you enjoy, and please add anything you think is helpful to the Trac project.

info@… elve@…

Release3

This is the first release which I build entirely on the PC. A few things have changed.

It's unpacked rootfile system is about 1,4GB. I think the swap should be at least 500Mb to be save.

This version includes a kernel which should support the Velocity/Rhine? ethernetcard, and SD-card, but I haven't made them work myself. The scriptcmd-file is set to use the 7" 800x480 screen, if you have a different resolution copy the right scriptcmd file to 'scriptcmd'

Check the /etc/fstab file whether the root filesystem is set to ext2/ext3 according to how you have formatted the USB-stick.

You should set your wifi settings in /etc/Wireless/RT2870STA/RT2870STA.dat The following settings are important (example is for WPA2):

CountryCode=NL
SSID=Freya Webtechniek
AuthMode=WPA2PSK
EncrypType=AES
WPAPSK=Password

Once association works you probably want to run:

/etc/init.d/net.ra0 start

and then

/etc/init.d/ntp-client start

To start X use:

/etc/init.d/xdm start

Starting X using startx is not configured

In case the desktop seems not to recognize any graphics and icons do (as root):

gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders --update-cache

to run sudo you have to give your own password, not root's

Release 4

This release doesn't include Midori or Blueman anymore, because I both considered to big for this hardware. Instead I have included Surf (Webkit-gtk based) and als Ayttm for IM. Besides I made it less dependant on GTK3, only GTK2 which makes it a bit faster. Unfortunately there's not much activitiy on the VT8500-kernel project, so the kernel version is still 3.0.0, but newer than used in Release3.

I haven't been able myself to make the ethernet, sound and SD-card work.