Devices/ExoPC

Revision as of 03:44, 31 January 2011

Warning: both the handset and netbook images running on the ExoPC have some problems as of 1/30/2011. See below. Warning: as with any other device, if you incorrectly reflash the bootloader and/or kernel, you may brick your system.

Notes

Sometimes the unit won't boot when a USB mouse is plugged in. An external keyboard doesn't cause the same problems. A mouse can be attached as soon as the MeeGo splashscreen appears.

Installing the Handset image before the Netbook saves a bit of trouble if both are desired.

The version of parted that is invoked by the MeeGo installers will not resize an NTFS partition, so if you want to preserve Windows, use another partitioning tool before booting the MeeGo USB stick. systemrescuecd worked fine.

The installation described here shrank the Windows partition to the (recommended minimum) 20 GB, then created an extended (logical) partition in the remaining space with a 2 GB swap partition and two primary (Is this right?) partitions of equal size in the remaining space.

Windows may come up and say that the partition table has been corrupted and that it will repair it ;-). The result is that the boot flag is set for the Win System partition, which prevents the extlinux bootloader from starting. To fix the problem, boot once more from the handy systemrescuecd stick and clear the duplicate boot flag from the System partition. Presto: your MeeGo install is again accessible.

Installation

The ExoPC has an unlocked bootloader, so installation is relatively simple. First prepare a USB stick with the image of your choice. After holding the power button for 4 seconds to start the boot process, touch the "Setup" soft button in the upper-righthand corner of the screen and disable "Quiet Boot." Boot again and touch the "BBS" soft button to manually select your USB drive as the boot device.

The netbook image does not create a useful /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf file. One way of solving the problem is to install the handset image first, mount the handset image from the netbook image and just copy over the extlinux.conf file. Copy the entry for the handset image over to the end of the extlinux.conf file and change the details in order to create a file that works for all the images, then copy back to the handset image.

Don't forget to run "zypper update" from a terminal window as soon as your image is installed.

Warning: always unmount the USB filesystem before pulling the Flash drive out of the slot.

Handset-specific notes

Touchscreen works great in the as-installed image. WiFi does not. A symptom of the problem is that both the ath9k (correct) and ath3K (wrong) kernel modules are autoloaded at boot time. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and add "blacklist ath3k" and then reboot. [NOTE: I haven't had a chance to try this yet.]

Before WiFi is working the easiest ways to get files onto the handset images are either from a mounted USB stick filesystem or by mounting the MeeGo netbook filesystem read-only and copying. In order to accomplish the latter, type "fdisk -l" to list the existing partitions. Create the directory where the netbook filesystem will be mounted, e.g. "mkdir -p /netbook". Then, assuming your netbook partition is /dev/sdaX and the filesystem type is ext3, enter "mount -t ext3 -o ro /dev/sdaX /netbook". Then "ls /netbook" will display the files on the netbook partition.

Netbook-specific notes

WiFi works great with the as-installed netbook image.

As installed, the netbook image does not have a working touchscreen. The system responds to a screen touch by darkening slightly and moving the cursor to the upper-lefthand corner. The needed driver, hid_egalax, is not autoloaded. Manually loading the driver with "modprobe -i hid_egalax" makes the touchscreen fully functional about half the time. Other times the behavior seems to be unaffected by the driver load.

Acknowledgements

Hat-tip to Bill Pearson of Intel for recommending the ExoPC.