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Old 01-26-2013, 11:54 AM   #31
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That's quite cool, ah-! I've been thinking about trying to get debian running on my Glo as well.

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The only thing that bugs me about this is that to refresh the display, I still need to use pickel to update the screen
Did you try the screen refresh binaries from my Tetris port? Tonyv also posted some code to refresh the eink display in this post.
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Old 01-26-2013, 12:32 PM   #32
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These binaries are fantastic, that's much faster. At some point it would be nice if it worked without them but for now it's fine.

I uploaded my debian image to http://andreas.heider.io/kobo_debian/debian.ext3, together with http://andreas.heider.io/kobo_debian/debian.sh you should get a working debian squeeze chroot.

I used xserver-xorg-video-imx and a few libraries from the Kindle images to get the screen working. Since all the code is open source you might also be able to compile it, but I don't have a cross compilation environment set up at the moment.

To get X with fluxbox and xterm running, copy everything to /mnt/onboard, login via telnet/ssh and start /mnt/onboard/debian.sh to get a chroot shell. Oh, and kill nickel first, of course. Start "Xorg -verbose 9" in one shell, then connect again and start "DISPLAY=:0 fluxbox" and maybe "DISPLAY=:0 xterm".
Then connect to another shell but don't chroot to debian, cd to /mnt/onboard/debian/fb_update and run ./eink_update_loop.sh

There's nothing really specific to the Touch, so maybe it just works on the Glo.

It's missing some way to click or input text, so maybe we can get tap to click working or repurpose the buttons as mouse buttons.

Edit: I just noticed, I mixed up squeeze and testing, it's testing with squeeze in /etc/apt/sources.list, if you want to tinker it's probably a good idea to replace it there with testing and do a apt-get dist-upgrade. I'll probably upload a fixed image later.

Edit2: Don't do the apt-get dist-upgrade, the kindle imx_drv.so isn't compatible with the newer Xorg in testing.
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Old 01-26-2013, 02:48 PM   #33
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Awesome, it works! It doesn't fill the whole screen on my Glo, but that can be fixed. Thanks for the little how-to, ah-!
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Old 01-27-2013, 04:34 AM   #34
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Originally Posted by KevinShort View Post
So what exactly have you managed to do so far?
Hi, sorry for the long absence
I've made some research. Since it became clear the thing was not so straightforward as I hoped, I went on to work on KPV as training
What I've found out so far:
- The Kobos use kernel code that manages the eink panel that is almost identical to the one used by amazon until firmware 5.0.x. Since 5.1.x amazon modified a struct in the ioctl that is used to update the panel, and compatibility is lost. We need either to intercept those calls and translate them to the amazon equivalent, or create a custom kernel that won't be compatible with kobo software.
- The kindles use for touch events a multitouch protocol, while kobos just send x,y coordinates and pressure. This is a shame since the hardware is well capable to track more than one finger at once. This probably is less of a problem since in kernel documentation it states "Since Multitouch events are ignored by applications that require single touch, this protocol can be implemented on top of existing drivers", more or less. So again custom kernel but we retain compatibility with current software.

I don't really know other approaches on replacing kernel code; I know that if it were a module it would be sufficient to unload it and load our custom one, but the code we need is internal to the kernel.

Finding out how to overcome those two aspects will be useful even for other things: as an example, in the same way we could modify the driver for the frontlight and drive it lower than the minimum.

Please anyone share your knowledge if you have information on the issue!
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Old 01-28-2013, 04:38 AM   #35
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It should be much more easy to implement the Kobo APIs in KPV. After all, it's just a bit of C glue code. No need to touch the kernel, I think.
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Old 01-28-2013, 05:45 AM   #36
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It should be much more easy to implement the Kobo APIs in KPV. After all, it's just a bit of C glue code. No need to touch the kernel, I think.
Hi Hawhill, nice to see you here! I've already done so, in fact
I was speaking about making the proprietary Kindle software to run on Kobo.
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Old 01-28-2013, 10:08 AM   #37
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Ah, I misunderstood you there. Well, nice project! That's what I love about Open Source software... Unexpected outcomes and profit for everyone.
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Old 01-28-2013, 01:11 PM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by giorgio130 View Post
- The Kobos use kernel code that manages the eink panel that is almost identical to the one used by amazon until firmware 5.0.x. Since 5.1.x amazon modified a struct in the ioctl that is used to update the panel, and compatibility is lost. We need either to intercept those calls and translate them to the amazon equivalent, or create a custom kernel that won't be compatible with kobo software.
Pre-5.1.0 E Ink framebuffer support was deliberately dropped from KPV. However, it's not hard to add it, you should just provide the way for KPV to detect Kobo's framebuffer (relevant code).

EDIT: OK, I see you already did it. Nice.

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Old 01-28-2013, 06:42 PM   #39
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Regarding the original goal of this thread, I'm having problems with getting devcap-daemon to run. That's the only error message left when I try to start framework.

I faked /proc/board_id and /dev/mmcblk0p3 with 00A (any idea which board_id/codename is closest to the Kobo touch?) and a few zeros respectively, but it now dies with:

Quote:
110816:045057 devcapd[742]: I devcap:StartingDevCap::Starting DevCap
110816:045057 devcapd[742]: E devcap:HashtableInsertError:reason=HashtableFull,k ey=screen.available,value=true:Could not copy into hashtable as hastable is full
110816:045057 devcapd[742]: E devcap:UpdateHashtableFailed:reason=hashtableInser tFailed, key=screen.available, value=true:could not update hash table
110816:045057 devcapd[742]: E devcap:ErrorInitializingDevCap:reason=initFailed:U nable to initialize devCap
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Old 01-29-2013, 03:55 AM   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ah- View Post
Regarding the original goal of this thread, I'm having problems with getting devcap-daemon to run. That's the only error message left when I try to start framework.

I faked /proc/board_id and /dev/mmcblk0p3 with 00A (any idea which board_id/codename is closest to the Kobo touch?) and a few zeros respectively, but it now dies with:
Nice to see you jumping in the wagon
I've added some scripts and the kernel module I use to fake board_id. I use a code that I found online, I don't think it is an issue to share it here but if we come up with something working it will have to be modified with something non-existing. A step I think is necessary to make the software run is to configure the framebuffer to 8bpp, that's what framebuffer_configure does, it is used also in my port of KPV.
BTW, where did you get that log? I'm just using strace at the moment since I can't get a proper log. Never had references to devcap but maybe I just didn't notice.
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Old 01-29-2013, 04:55 AM   #41
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Nice to see you jumping in the wagon
I've added some scripts and the kernel module I use to fake board_id. I use a code that I found online, I don't think it is an issue to share it here but if we come up with something working it will have to be modified with something non-existing. A step I think is necessary to make the software run is to configure the framebuffer to 8bpp, that's what framebuffer_configure does, it is used also in my port of KPV.
BTW, where did you get that log? I'm just using strace at the moment since I can't get a proper log. Never had references to devcap but maybe I just didn't notice.
You can start syslog-ng if you uncomment the line with 127.0.0.1 in the config file, then you get everything via tail -f /var/log/messages.

I think that possibly the framebuffer configuration is no problem, since X already runs and could do that for us. Also, instead of using a kernel module I just modified the paths in the binary as a quick hack, but I'd be interested in the kernel module as well. Or maybe a LD_PRELOAD library that redirects these specific paths would be a good idea, since that would mean that it works without having to build a kernel module or modifying the binaries.
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Old 01-29-2013, 08:20 AM   #42
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any idea which board_id/codename is closest to the Kobo touch?
If it's like Kindle Touch Wi-Fi then it will be whitney with board_id starting from 006. In some places it's also called whitney_wfo to distinct it from full whitney, i.e. Kindle Touch 3G. Also take a look at /etc/upstart/functions and at this thread.

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Old 01-29-2013, 03:21 PM   #43
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You can start syslog-ng if you uncomment the line with 127.0.0.1 in the config file, then you get everything via tail -f /var/log/messages.
You're right, devcap doesn't work here as well. I've currently modified the line referring to it in the framework in order to pass this. I still can't figure out what is the "config file" you're speaking about.
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Old 01-29-2013, 05:39 PM   #44
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You're right, devcap doesn't work here as well. I've currently modified the line referring to it in the framework in order to pass this. I still can't figure out what is the "config file" you're speaking about.
You need to start syslog-ng to get logging to work. Usually it doesn't start because:

Quote:
[root@(none) syslog-ng]# syslog-ng -F
io.c: bind_inet_socket() bind failed 127.0.0.1:514 Cannot assign requested address
Error initializing configuration, exiting.
Edit /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf, find the line referring to localhost and comment it out:
Quote:
#source net { udp(ip(127.0.0.1)); };
Then you can start syslog-ng -F and get all debug output through tail -f /var/log/messages.

Edit: And some process: The error I got was due to a old shm region still being around, removing it with ipcrm -M 0x00008fb5 helped. Now to solve some ioctl error.

Last edited by ah-; 01-30-2013 at 12:17 AM.
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Old 01-30-2013, 11:51 AM   #45
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Ok, with devcap-daemon working the framework seems to start.

The screen stays black, and strace says it waits for a futex, so I guess it requires some other service to start up properly. But I'll investigate that later.

Edit:
After a bit more poking around and especially executing /etc/upstart/firstboot and prereg.conf manually as well as unpacking more cramfs.img from /etc/loopbacktab and setting the framebuffer to 8bit thanks to your framebuffer_configure it now really starts , still with tons of errors but I get a white window and touching the screen results in messages in the log. I see exceptions about missing images, but I haven't found out yet which images are missing and why.

Starting the onscreen keyboard (/usr/bin/kb) leads to the same error and is a lot less complex, so probably investigating that is easier.

Edit 2:
So it seems that this is just what you hinted at in the first posts, the screen update is different. I'm still looking at it, but I suspect awesome (the window manager) to be somehow responsible for it. Starting it pretty much corrupts the display, but upon a closer look the onboard keyboard letters are there in between the corruption.

Edit 3:
And it somewhat works :)
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