Latest revision as of 06:05, 13 October 2011

Getting Started

Introduction

This page helps you getting started with MeeGo 1.2/1.3 Community Edition for N900. Note: For N950/N9 there is a separate page. Installing Community Edition (CE) on your N900 will nullify your warranty, and is meant for developer use only. Here we introduce the simplest and most recommended way of installing Community Edition on your phone, if you are looking for a different approach then look at the bottom of the page for alternative approaches. The recommended installation method will install MeeGo 1.2 Community Edition as a dual boot with your Maemo 5 fremantle operating system.

WARNING: Remember that installing Community Edition (CE) on your N900 will nullify your warranty, and is meant for developer use only.

Install

Follow these steps to install MeeGo 1.3 Community Edition to your N900.

Prequisities

• N900 with Fremantle PR 1.3
• Linux (for windows & mac, look alternative approaches)
• MicroSD (4Gb or bigger)
• Community Edition Image
• U-Boot (on your phone)

WARNING: You have to use PR 1.3 version of Fremantle and nothing else

Uboot installation

Uboot is required for booting to Community Edition, or alternatively to your original operating system.

1. Enable the maemo.org extras-devel repository, see http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras-devel in your N900.
2. Install the 'uboot-pr13' package from 'System' section, of your N900 software center.
3. Verify it's installed by restarting your N900. A penguin should show up at startup and U-boot will be mentioned, let it time out and boot into Maemo.

If this installation didn't work for you, try the manual installation of U-Boot.

Download image

• Download latest release, see Release list., or
• Latest daily (unstable), or
• Build your own image.

Install MeeGo image

When inserting the microSD memory card in the card reader, you need to find out what the proper device for the card is. You can also plug the N900 into your computer's USB slot using the package provided cable. Make sure the external microSD card is unmounted, as with most modern linux distributions today it will get auto-mounted if the has a valid filesystem (FAT32 or ExtX). To unmount, you can try this example:

sudo umount /dev/sdX

And use the mount command to determine if/ where it is mounted:

sudo mount (for an example how the microSD would look go MountOutput here.

Finding out the device node can also be done with for example fdisk:

sudo fdisk -l

An example output (NOTE: The /dev/sdX is used as an example on your PC this might be also called /dev/mmcblk0, /dev/sdd or something else)

$ sudo fdisk -l
...
Disk /dev/sdX: 3965 MB, 3965714432 bytes
194 heads, 30 sectors/track, 1330 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 5820 * 512 = 2979840 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001ab40

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdX1               1         588     1708984   83  Linux

NOTE: The .raw image contains the partition table as well. So the image needs to be written to /dev/sdX not /dev/sdX1.

After you are 100% sure that the /dev/sdX is the microSD memory card you just inserted in the card reader, you can use for example dd to put the image to the card:

$ sudo dd bs=4096 if=<raw_image> of=/dev/sdX

If you are low on disk space, you can use

$ bzcat <raw_image>.bz2 | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sdX

to decompress the compressed raw image on the fly without having to unpack it on you computer first. And if you have pv(1) installed, you can add it in between to display the progress (the Summer release image size is ~ 3.6GB):

$ bzcat <raw_image>.bz2 | pv | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sdX

The dd does not show any progress until the file is written to the device, so be patient.

dd will output:

328356+0 records in
328356+0 records out
1344946176 bytes (1.3 GB) copied, 105.625 s, 12.7 MB/s

After this, you can insert the card in the N900, put the back cover on and start using MeeGo Community Edition on your N900.
(Putting the back cover on is actually a requirement as else the device won't boot off the µSD card!)

Emulate image

You can use MeeGo Community Edition on your computer by emulating it with your chroot. However when using chroot no UI is available, only terminal. Good thing is that all changes you make there will be available for you on your phone.

Install chroot

apt-get install mic2

Insert your MicroSD card with MeeGo CE in it, and run chroot as a root, having the meego root folder as a parameter.

mic-chroot /media/XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Now you should have a MeeGo CE running in one of your terminals. The MeeGo CE filesystem is also accessible from your linux filesystem, under /media/xxxxxxxxx .

Alternative install

If the recommended way didn't help you, here is a list of alternative installation methods.

Troubleshooting

If you encountered problems with your install, try one of the following.

• Try out one of the alternative and more comprehensive guides at list above.
• Create a question on the FAQ section below.
• Ask a question on our mailing list, or in irc channel.

FAQ