[pkg-fso-maint] d-i installation on embedded devices

[Luca Capello]

Hi there!

NB, my first mail was already quite long and Per's reply rendered it
bigger, thus just assume that I will agree on everything I did not
comment on ;-)

On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:53:41 +0100, Per Andersson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Luca Capello <luca at pca.it> wrote:
>>> 2009/3/25 Joachim Breitner <nomeata at debian.org>:
>>>>> Maybe some other thread discusses this already,
>>>>> but why don't you use d-i for installation?
>>>>
>>>> Simplicity. We wanted to get started as fast as possible. But given the
>>>> ever increasing complexity of install.sh, this should be the goal, yet.
>>>>
>>>>> Could porting d-i to GTA02 (and GTA01 but I don't
>>>>> have one of those) be worth doing as a GSoC project?
>>
>> For anyone working on/for the pkg-fso, thanks to Arne Anka [1] I can
>> borrow/offer a GTA01 (if needed the full development kit, i.e. with a
>> debug board as well).  Since I was in contact with people interested to
>> sell their GTA01, I can also find more than one device, if needed.  This
>> is *only* for Debian-related work, in any field (e.g. X11, ALSA, GPS,
>> etc.) and not only for d-i.
>
> Cool, a d-i knowledgable person (willing to mentor)
> could borrow a handset then.

Yes, that would be great in any case :-)

>> In any case, I think that the MTD project should still have an higher
>> priority, because:
>>
>> - its use is wider (e.g. for NAS devices)
>>
>> - it involves more people (not only the pkg-fso crew), thus it is
>>  probably easier to have advices
>
> I agree with both points, just an idea I had (as a
> backup proposal) if mentoring becomes a problem
> with the MTD project.

Martin Michlmayr already blogged about it:

  http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/nslu2-killer

Because of that, I had the impression that the last bit missing was a
student, am I wrong, Martin?

> And I would really like to work on d-i for Openmoko
> phones as well of course.

Good, we are not alone in the dark :-)

>> I think we clearly need to have a plan, divided into two phases:
>>
>> 1) installation into the microSD
>>
>>   a. booting d-i on the FR, which is an easy task given that we must
>>      use the pkg-fso kernel package [2].
>>
>>   b. starting the graphical installer with a virtual keyboard, since
>>      there is no physical keyboard, thus the textual installer cannot
>>      be used.
>
> And/or accept SSH connections to the installer. As is
> done for NAS devices.

I think I was misunderstood: I think installation from SSH quite easy to
achieve, since we already know quite well how to boot Debian on the FR.

What I was talking about is a *real* installation on the FR with nothing
more than the FR and a WiFi connection (which is faster than any USB
one).

>>   c. installing everything on the microSD, which means that d-i should
>>      not use the microSD at all, thus it should probably be run from a
>>      ramdisk.
>
> It should be possible to write d-i kernel and ramdisk
> to MTD flash and boot from that, not touching
> the microSD.

While this is a possibility, however it means that you need to touch the
existing distribution installed the flash memory, thus if the Debian
installation will fail at any point, the phone is no more usable.

>> 2) installation into the MTD
[...]
>>   b. disk space.
>>
>>      The FR (GTA02) has 256MB of flash memory, while the 1973 (GTA01)
>>      only 64MB [5].  In both case, there is no way we can fit a normal
>>      Debian system on it, especially considering that we should target
>>      the FreeSmartphone.Org initiative [6], which ATM relies on Python.
>
> Are there any indications on how much flash memory
> the GTA03 will have?

Sorry, but the only things I know are available on the Openmoko wiki:

  http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA03

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca
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