[GregorRichards]

I've "ported" Debian to the IREX DR, by creating a Debian chroot but using the DR's original kernel and userland.

For those who just want to run it, here's what you need:

• dima_tr's VNC port: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...18&postcount=6 . Install it as usual. Make sure Programs/_vnc/vncviewer exists on the card.
• The Debian scripts, which are attached to this message. Extract to the SD card as well.
• A Debian image. A 1G image is available at http://www.mediafire.com/?zoy6f560r26oi8h . Un-gzip it, and give it the filename Programs/_debian/loop . It must have precisely this name. If you want a bigger image or want to make your own, read on.

Programs/debian.desktop will start up Debian. You can exit the VNC session by pressing the menu button, and reconnect by running debian.desktop again (it won't lose your current session). The intelligent refresh works beautifully, so it's actually quite usable, if a bit slow sometimes

For those wishing to create a larger Debian image:

Spoiler:

• Make a blank image file (e.g. dd if=/dev/zero of=loop bs=1M count=2048)
• Format it with ext3 (NOT ext2 or ext4) (e.g. /sbin/mkfs.ext3 loop)
• Loopback mount it (e.g. mount -o loop loop mnt)
• Fetch the following archive: http://www.mediafire.com/?363pzo5ok5hfbel
• Extract it to the mounted filesystem (e.g. tar zxf -C mnt debian-squeeze-irex-dr-2011-08-09.tar.gz )
• Unmount (e.g. umount mnt)
• Put your new filesystem in Programs/_debian/loop .

For those wishing to create a custom Debian image:

Spoiler:

This image was created with debootstrap. I'm not going to teach you to use debootstrap, but it's quite easy. After debootstrapping the filesystem, I did the following:

• Installed these packages: wamerican jwm menu xvkbd rxvt tightvncserver synaptic
• Made these changes to /etc/jwm/jwmrc:
  • <FocusModel> to click
  • <MoveMode> to outline
  • <ResizeMode> to outline
  • <Background> to type="solid", content "white"
  • Added a new tray: <Tray x="0" y="-32" height="200"><Swallow>xvkbd</Swallow></Tray>
• Set the VNC server's password to (oh-so-secure) "vncvnc" (running vncserver will prompt for this)
• Connected to VNC to configure xvkbd to disable automatic click (menu->Properties->Automatic Clicking=off)

For the curious, I used VNC instead of connecting to X11 directly to take advantage of the ported viewer having screen-refresh intelligence. Laziness hooray!

For those wishing to port to the DR1000:

Spoiler:

The only changes I expect are:

• You will have to recompile the ext3, jbd and mbcache kernel modules for the DR1000's kernel.
• You will need to change the "debian" script to start the server at 1024x1280 instead of 768x1024.

I've included the ext3 module and prerequisites. They were built from sources at http://developer.irexnet.com/iOn/Sou...24-irex.tar.gz . All Debian sources available from http://packages.debian.org/ .

A "screenshot" (I thought a photo would be a bit more honest ):

Changelog

Spoiler:

• 2011-08-09-3: Mount /tmp to Debian's tmp, to avoid thrashing the SD card.
• 2011-08-09-2: Made jwmrc a bit more sticky by making the wrapper script rewrite it as necessary.
• 2011-08-09: Initial release.

My original message here:

Spoiler:

At this point this is just an FYI: I discovered the VNC viewer for the DR, and in particular the fact that it does the screen refreshes automatically. That gave me all the momentum I needed to get a Debian chroot installed to my DR (without it, I'd need significant hackery to make it perform the screen refreshes, and I never managed to get that hackery working the last time I tried). As of this moment, I have Debian running on my DR800. It's all part of my master plan to run Debian on everything.

Mind you, it doesn't make much sense to run Debian on a tablet with electronic paper display ... but ... well, uhh ... I have to run it everywhere :P

Anyway, expect me to post the requisite scripts, screenshots and such here. So far it's working shockingly well