Re: [Linux-7110-psion] Several questions in no particular order

[Thomas T. <tho...@in...>]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2001 19:14:07 +0100
Stephen Patterson <s.p...@fr...> wrote:

> There was some discussion a while back about building french
> keymaps. I just found out last night that we'll also need to build
> english keymaps as many of the non-alphanumeric characters are mapped
> to keys different from those which they are printed on. e.g. / is
> mapped to [function]-4 but / is printed on the same key as the comma,
> just to the right of the spacebar. Is anyone working on this?
> 

Well, it's still in my plans. It's just that I'm not moving very fast...
I'm still stuck trying to build my kernel.
Actually, last night I managed to *compile* it, but it failed to link:(((

I got the following message:

arm-linux-ld -m armelf_linux -T /home/thomas/projets/Psion/Dev/kernel/linux/arch/arm/vmlinux-armv.lds -e stext -Ttext 0xc0038000 arch/arm/kernel/head-armv.o arch/arm/kernel/init_task.o init/main.o init/version.o \
--start-group \
arch/arm/kernel/kernel.o arch/arm/mm/mm.o kernel/kernel.o mm/mm.o fs/fs.o ipc/ipc.o \
fs/filesystems.a \
net/network.a \
drivers/block/block.a drivers/char/char.a drivers/misc/misc.a drivers/net/net.a drivers/video/video.a drivers/pcmcia/pcmcia.a arch/arm/special/special.a arch/arm/nwfpe/math-emu.a \
arch/arm/lib/lib.a /home/thomas/projets/Psion/Dev/kernel/linux/lib/lib.a `arm-linux-gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/home/thomas/projets/Psion/Dev/kernel/linux/include -fno-strict-aliasing -ffixed-r10	 -mshort-load-bytes -march=armv3 --print-libgcc-file-name` \
	--end-group \
	-o vmlinux
drivers/video/video.a(fbdev.o): In function `fbcon_vga_bmove':
fbdev.o(.text+0x6d54): undefined reference to `readw'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6d68): undefined reference to `writew'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6d9c): undefined reference to `readw'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6dac): undefined reference to `writew'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6e2c): undefined reference to `readw'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6e40): undefined reference to `writew'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6e7c): undefined reference to `readw'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6e8c): undefined reference to `writew'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6f20): undefined reference to `readw'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6f34): undefined reference to `writew'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6f6c): undefined reference to `readw'
fbdev.o(.text+0x6f7c): undefined reference to `writew'
drivers/video/video.a(fbdev.o): In function `fbcon_vga_clear':
fbdev.o(.text+0x7014): undefined reference to `writew'
fbdev.o(.text+0x706c): undefined reference to `writew'
drivers/video/video.a(fbdev.o): In function `fbcon_vga_putc':
fbdev.o(.text+0x70d8): undefined reference to `writew'
fbdev.o(.text+0x7148): undefined reference to `writew'
drivers/video/video.a(fbdev.o)(.text+0x71b4): more undefined references to `writew' follow
drivers/video/video.a(fbdev.o): In function `fbcon_vga_revc':
fbdev.o(.text+0x727c): undefined reference to `readw'
fbdev.o(.text+0x72b0): undefined reference to `writew'
make: *** [vmlinux] Erreur 1

I guess I'm pretty close to my goal now ;)
Does anybody have a clue?

Also, Stephen, you might have noticed that there are British and American keymaps, which are slightly different.
Both are available as compile-time kernel options. Maybe you just had the wrong one selected?
However, I agree that having to compile a new kernel to change keymaps is a bit of a pain.
(At least considering the amount of trouble I have compiling mine. But maybe I'm just doing stupid things...)

> Is it possible to run an ftp client on the psion under linux,
> connecting via the serial cable to another linux machine? How would
> one do this?

Well, once you have an FTP client running on the Psion, you should be able to just use it
 through a slip connection. There have been some discussions about running slip.
I haven't done it myself, though.

> I assume that the root filesystem is contained in the initrd.gz. Is
> there any mountable space in which I can create my own files on the
> psion when running linux?
> 
> I'm currently running linux off the psion's internal ramdisk. Is
> this a good idea? Is there any advantage to running linux off a cfdisk
> 

Well, once you have a CF card, you can put your root filesystem on it,
and it's persistent, so changes you make to the filesystem shoud not be lost at each reboot.
You can also boot Linux with the root on an initrd, and mount a secondary partition from the cfdisk.
However, the psion's RAM will be used up by you initrd.
If you're lucky enough to own a laptop, you can just use a PCMCIA CF adapter ($15) .
It lets you mount you Linux's root filesystem off the CF card from your PC, and add files to it directly.

As a second option, you can mount the initrd from the PC's hard drive as if it was a device, and add files to it.
Then you can download it back to the Psion using Epoch and the serial line...

Have fun,
-- 
Thomas Tempé

Never count on other people's brakes...