Debian on modern kindles with pre-built qemu and debian image, scripts, desktop

[knc1]

Originally Posted by zaoqi

KT3 supports Debian 9!

Which is not even relevant if trying to build software that will run on the Kindles using their pre-installed libraries as shipped in their system images.

When you are talking about what will run on a Kindle, inside of a chrooted system (which does not refer to the pre-installed libraries), many things are possible.

Even the original KT will run IBM-360/370/390 code under OS-360 or VMS-360.
See: "Mainframe in a zipper case."

What it will run, in your word "supports", has zip to do with what can be built under it to run on the firmware that ships with the Kindle.

[zaoqi]

match-keyboard doesn't work on Debian 9.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by zaoqi

match-keyboard doesn't work on Debian 9.

So fix it.
Just reporting "does not work" with no additional information leaves the resolution in your own hands.

You really should take your problems to a site in your own language.
Come back when you have something finished to show.

[zaoqi]

start-x:
What's Xephyr?

[zaoqi]

Can I use xfce?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by zaoqi

start-x:
What's Xephyr?

Originally Posted by zaoqi

Can I use xfce?

That is like asking:
"What is Google?"

Try using whatever web search engine your country allows.
Or setup an encrypted VPN to another country and use what is available outside of your country.

This site is not an embedded computer systems school.
You would be much better off if you used any of the many ways available to learn about basic embedded computer systems.

[theol0403]

From what I know, Xephyr is a virtual X server that creates a virtual screen and than displays its content as a application.
The kindles, being linux, run on a X window manager. X decides what goes on top, the DPI (pixel density), and manages everything about the windows including dragging and resizing windows.

So you ask, why not just have all my linux graphic applications display to the kindle X server directly? You can't because the kindle X server needs a special syntax. For an application to show on the kindles you need to name the application something like L:D_N:application_ID:Chess
Look up "xorg" here for an explanation of this syntax.

So if you have an application named "Chess" it won't show without all this other labeling.

Now you have two options: Either change the source code and recompile everything with this title or use a realtime name changer such as fronter (look this up here too).

Or you can run something like Xephyr (there are others).

Xephyr is a program which you can name it what you want in the commandline. It outputs in a kindle X window at the top level, the kindle treats it as a application. Then it opens a second X desktop server on port 1 (kindle X server is port 0). Then you specify what screen you want debian to output to, and all your normally named debian programs you can apt-get run on the kindle screen through this server.

Hope this helps

[zaoqi]

Can I use xfce?
xfce doesn't work in ubuntu.

...
/usr/bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally without any error message

...
xfconfd
...
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS(..."/etc")
...xfce4-session ...
----------------------------------Quit

#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0
Xephyr :1 -title "L:A_N:application_ID:xephyr_O:R_PC:N" -screen 800x600 -cc 4 -dpi 167 -nocursor &
sleep 3
export DISPLAY=:1
/etc/init.d/dbus start &
/usr/bin/xfce4-session
/etc/init.d/dbus stop
sleep 3

[theol0403]

Originally Posted by zaoqi

Can I use xfce?
xfce doesn't work in ubuntu.

...
/usr/bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally without any error message

...
xfconfd
...
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS(..."/etc")
...xfce4-session ...
----------------------------------Quit

#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0
Xephyr :1 -title "L:A_N:application_ID:xephyr_O:R_PC:N" -screen 800x600 -cc 4 -dpi 167 -nocursor &
sleep 3
export DISPLAY=:1
/etc/init.d/dbus start &
/usr/bin/xfce4-session
/etc/init.d/dbus stop
sleep 3

Xfce will probably work. I have experimented with other desktop environments like lxde and it worked. This is debian not ubuntu.

Okay I installed xfce and it worked.

1. Set up debian from attached smalldebian.ext3, matchbox-dos.zip, installdebian.txt (sh)
2. apt-get install xfce4
3. enter :

   export DISPLAY=:0
   Xephyr :1 -title "L:D_N:application_ID:xephyr" -screen 1068x1448 -cc 4 -dpi 300 -nocursor &

4. in a new shell:

   export DISPLAY=:1

5. startxfce4

6. It worked!

[zaoqi]

Originally Posted by theol0403

Xfce will probably work. I have experimented with other desktop environments like lxde and it worked. This is debian not ubuntu.

Okay I installed xfce and it worked.

1. Set up debian from attached smalldebian.ext3, matchbox-dos.zip, installdebian.txt (sh)
2. apt-get install xfce4
3. enter :

   export DISPLAY=:0
   Xephyr :1 -title "L:D_N:application_ID:xephyr" -screen 1068x1448 -cc 4 -dpi 300 -nocursor &

4. in a new shell:

   export DISPLAY=:1

5. startxfce4

6. It worked!

install.x.sh

#!/bin/sh
root=/mnt/base-us/root
img=$root.ext3
mkdir -p $root
fsck.ext3 $img
mount -o loop $img $root || exit

cat > $root/root/inst.sh << 'EOF'
apt update
apt install -f -y
apt full-upgrade -y
apt install -y locales
sed -i '/zh_CN.UTF-8/s/^#//' /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen zh_CN.UTF-8
apt install xserver-xephyr xfce4 -y
EOF
cat >> $root/etc/apt/apt.conf << 'EOF'
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
APT::Install-Suggests "0";
APT::Sandbox::User root;
EOF
cat > $root/usr/local/bin/start-x-flip << 'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0
Xephyr :1 -title "L:A_N:application_ID:xephyr_O:R_PC:N" -screen 800x600 -cc 4 -dpi 167 -nocursor &
sleep 3
export DISPLAY=:1
startxfce4
EOF

chmod +x $root/root/inst.sh
umount $root

/mnt/us/chroot.sh root/inst.sh

mount -o loop $img $root || exit
rm $root/root/inst.sh
umount $root

Ubuntu17.04: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=289801

[zaoqi]

It worked.

apt install dbus

[tetris11]

Update 2021

* QEMU "-redir" option no longer works, fix:

qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-versatile -initrd initrd.img-3.2.0-4-versatile -hda debian_wheezy_armel_standard.qcow2 -append "root=/dev/sda1" -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22

* Apt doesn't point to the right sources, so edit "/etc/apt/sources.list":

# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main

#deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main
#deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian wheezy main
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian wheezy main

#deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian-security wheezy/updates main
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian-security wheezy/updates main

# wheezy-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
#deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy-updates main
#deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy-updates main

and then run "apt-get update". Many public keys have expired but that's fine.

[tetris11]

So I tried anything to get a working X11 on my K3GB device, but I cannot any way to either kill the existing X11 session (I think CVM spawns one that is inaccessible to the rest of the system...), or embed a Xephyr session within it.

So I write up my efforts and call it a day. Time to buy a Kindle Touch instead I think....

Anyways,

The Kindle K3GB v3.4.2 that I have runs a 2.6.26 kernel. You can run 3.4.2 debian installation given in the first post, but you will not be able to chroot into it, but you can use proot instead for this (attached).

Install instructions for 3.4.2 (not chrootable, prootable)

1. From https://people.debian.org/~aurel32/qemu/armel/, download the 3.4.2 initrd and vmlinuz, and use the *wheezy* qcow2

2. Do :

qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-versatile -initrd   initrd.img-3.2.0-4-versatile -hda debian_wheezy_armel_standard.qcow2 -append "root=/dev/sda1" -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22

3. In the qemu, change the "/etc/apt/sources.list" to point to archived sources. (You can ssh in to do this via "ssh -p 2222 root@localhost" or you can just type it in the qemu app).

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian wheezy main
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian wheezy main
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian-security wheezy/updates main
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian-security wheezy/updates main

4. Create a 1.3GB space, mount it in the qemu (as original instructions)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/debian.ext3 bs=1M count=1300
mkfs.ext3 /tmp/debian.ext3
tune2fs -i 0 -c 0 /tmp/debian.ext3
mkdir /mnt/debian/
mount -o loop -t ext3 /tmp/debian.ext3 /mnt/debian

5. Debootstrap the current base into the 1.3GB space

debootstrap --no-check-gpg --variant=minbase --arch=armel jessie /mnt/debian http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
umount /mnt/debian

6. Copy the "/tmp/debian.ext3" file out of the qemu and onto the kindle. From outside of qemu, run:

scp -P 2222 root@localhost:/tmp/debian.ext3  some/path/outside/qemu

Copy to kindle's "/mnt/base-us/"

7. Mount the image inside the kindle. Ssh into your kindle and do:

mkdir -p /mnt/debian
mount -o loop -t ext3 /mnt/base-us/debian.ext3 /mnt/debian

8. Now you can try chrooting into it, but it will fail with the KERNEL TOO OLD error. Instead, copy proot (attached) into the kindle's /usr/bin/ (you will need to "mntroot rw"), and then put this into a proot.sh script:

proot -k 3.4 -r /mnt/debian \
  -b /etc/host.conf \
  -b /etc/hosts \
  -b /etc/hosts.equiv \
  -b /etc/mtab \
  -b /etc/netgroup \
  -b /etc/networks \
  -b /etc/passwdxd \
  -b /etc/groupxd \
  -b /etc/nsswitch.conf \
  -b /etc/resolv.conf \
  -b /etc/localtime \
  -b /dev/ \
  -b /sys/ \
  -b /proc/ \
  -b /tmp/ \
  -0 \
  /bin/bash

this should give you a working system which fakes interaction with a 3.4 kernel. You can install matchbox, xorg, Xephyr and try to get things working. But you might find it easier to talk a horse into a glue factory. It's a working CLI system, but nothing graphical will even pretend to work.

What is proot exactly? It's a userland chroot I found from this github post. The author recommends getting artefacts from the proot builds, but unfortunately these only target x86_64 architectures in recent times, so I begged the author of the github post for the proot binary he used. The proot attached is NOT a tar.gz file, please just rename it to "proot". It is a black box binary, trust it as little as you can (I used it because I was desperate).


Install instructions for 2.6.32 kernel (chrootable)

Same as above except for a differences:

1. From https://people.debian.org/~aurel32/qemu/armel/, download the 2.6.32 initrd and vmlinuz, and use the *squeeze* qcow2.

(wheezy will not work with this kernel, so please use squeeze)

2. Do instead:

qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-versatile -initrd initrd.img-2.6.32-5-versatile -hda debian_squeeze_armel_standard.qcow2 -append "root=/dev/sda1" -nic user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22

3. For the debootstrap, do instead:

debootstrap --variant=minbase --arch armel squeeze /mnt/debian http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian

4. For the "/etc/apt/sources.list", put instead

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian squeeze main
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian squeeze main
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian-security squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/debian-security squeeze/updates main

5. Do the rest, the image, the copying, and you can chroot in. Remember to change "/etc/resolv.conf" to something sensible otherwise updates will fail.

You can try building xorg-server from source as given by this post (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=96048) but it will fail. xfce4 will fail. matchbox will fail. Xephyr will fail.

The X11 server is just inaccessible and it seems to be impossible to spawn a new one. It's a really good device otherwise. Those Brazillian Jungle dung beetles sure know how to make a device with a short shelf life. Bravo to their ever increasing profits.