Flash partitioning on the Zaurus
 

I'm installing the Linux Zaurus Cacko ROM on my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. It's a hacked Sharp ROM that let's you put the bootable RAM onto a SD card. My 512 MB Viking SD card is slow. I've partitioned it with fdisk into a 30 MB ext2 partition that's bootable for the Zaurus and the rest is vfat16 for storage. I'm waiting for another Sandisk SD 1 GB card that should be faster.

I want speed-if I use this second card and make 500 MB ext2 the boot partition, would it be faster than my setup where 30 MB boot?

i found the cacko rom to be quite slow in general. the best i found was the hentges rom. there are a lot of good reports on applications mounted as loop images, especialy for large apps, check some of the zaurus forums for details. the cacko rom is good, trouble is the internal ram seems to be faster than any sd card, so when the system is split up between the 2 it will be as fast as the card. the partition scheme you are using, as much space for the system as you need and the rest for storage, seems like the best. i always used the whole card for system and a cf card for storage but i didnt have a wifi card then :)

the hentges rom-that's new to me...I'll Google around for that.

EDIT:

Found it here: http://www.hentges.net/misc/openzaurus/index.shtml

Which version is best?

3.5.3 is the one i was using last and it was by far the best rom i had tried. altboot lets you have more than one image on the sd card, 512 is plenty to have images of 3.5.3 and 3.5.4 and try them both. there is also a gpe image if you want to try an xfree rom, they arnt very fast though. one other point, the packages for opie (hentges) are different to the cacko packages so you will need to find opie versions of your apps. there are compatibility librarys included in the hentges image to enable you to use a lot of applications made for the sharp rom but they dont work for everything.
good luck with it

ok, the hentges rom looks good and behaves well (other open zaurus roms wouldn't wake up from a suspend...hentges does). The default rom boots ok without an sd or cf card inserted. When inserted on boot it stops and I get a screen that's too big to fit on my screen saying that the card was found and wants to search for files on it. I'm not sure what this is about and nothing I do gets me past this screen. Is this a common issue with this rom? I'd like to boot the cardfs image on my 512 MB sd card so that I have all the applications in the screenshot. The hentges forums are down, hopefully somebody here can help me boot with cards inserted.

Here's the site I'm using: http://www.hentges.net/misc/openzaurus/

I'm trying to get the 3.5.3 english rom to boot with cardfs.

Sorry, forgot about that. was going to say, 'the answer is in the hentges forum', but it seems to be down. Have to go from memory (which is slow and has bad blocks), shut down, take out the SD card, boot up and de-select (bad block here) 'automatically mount new media' or something similar in the media mount controller. I think it should work OK now, but I used to re-install the image on the card for some reason.
Sorry for the vague reply, let me know if you are still having trouble and ill re-install on my sl5000 to do an fsck on my brain :)

Sorry, forgot about that. was going to say, 'the answer is in the hentges forum', but it seems to be down. Have to go from memory (which is slow and has bad blocks), shut down, take out the SD card, boot up and de-select (bad block here) 'automatically mount new media' or something similar in the media mount controller. I think it should work OK now, but I used to re-install the image on the card for some reason.
Sorry for the vague reply, let me know if you are still having trouble and ill re-install on my sl5000 to do an fsck on my brain :)

I re-installed and then immediately got to a console and logged in as root and then halt. Once powered down, I popped out all media cards and restarted. This time it booted into Opie. I then inserted my cards and a bunch of applications appeared on my screen. I'm finding that some don't work...like xmms which I wanted. Where are the ipk files for this hentges-oz rom?

Sounds like its found the applications but not found some of the libs. try either re-linking everything on the card (think its "ipkg link /media/card", then run ldconfig) or rebooting with the card in, it should boot OK this time. The ipk's in the opie feed work with this rom, when I get back later Ill check what is in my repository list and post it here.

you're right, it cannot find lib files. From a terminal I get this-

xmms: error while loading shared libraries: libglib-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory
mplayer: error while loading shared libraries: libmad.so.0: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory

For ipkg-link I get this:

Usage:

/usr/bin/ipkg-link add packagename (links "packagename" to root filesystem)
/usr/bin/ipkg-link remove packagename (unlinks "packagename" from root filesystem)
/usr/bin/ipkg-link list mountpoint (lists packages on "mountpoint",e.g., '/mnt/card')
/usr/bin/ipkg-link mount mountpoint (links all packages on "mountpoint",e.g., '/mnt/card')
/usr/bin/ipkg-link unmount mountpoint (unlinks packages on "mountpoint",e.g., '/mnt/card')

Just had a look, its my bad memory again :) . the command you need is "ipkg-link mount /media/card" to link up all the packages installed on the card to the running system. When that has finished run "ldconfig" to make the system aware of all the new files.
As for the feeds, they should already be configured. Open the package manager and click on 'actions > configure' and there should be a list of feeds with the url for them at the bottom of the screen. Just in case they are not there:
http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza....5.3/upgrades/
http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza...rg/3.5.3/feed/
good luck with it

those commands worked well-all the applications work! I added those repositories to my packages list but got errors on those and the other 5 when I started getting the list. I'm now trying to figure out the file that the Sharp ROM used to store my address book so I can save it and transfer it to a new ROM. Know where that is?

I should have explained a bit better. The feeds in the package manager are all down, you need to replace addresses for the sections (ie, base, libs, machine ect) with the addresses for the same folder in the hentges mirror. you can do this in the package manager but it it easier to edit /etc/ipkg.conf , the file the ipkg and therefore the package manager use for their settings.

Copy and paste this and name the file ipkg.conf

###start###

src upgrades http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza....5.3/upgrades/
src machine http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza...achine/collie/
src base http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza...5.3/feed/base/
src libs http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza...5.3/feed/libs/
src console http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza.../feed/console/
src devel http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza....3/feed/devel/
src net http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza....5.3/feed/net/
src opie http://mirror.hentges.net/www.openza...5.3/feed/opie/

dest root /
dest cf /media/cf/
dest sd /media/card/
dest ram /media/ram/

###end###

Rename the original file (the one in /etc) to ipkg.conf.old or something similar to keep a backup, then copy your new ipkg.conf into /etc . Then either run "ipkg update" from a shell or select update from the package manager.
If you find other feeds which work OK with the ROM, you can add them into ipkg.conf and any dependencies will be automatically installed (at least, that is the idea. doesn't always work though :) its the maintainers, not a fault with the system ). Be very carefull with packages from anywhere other than the feed intended for your ROM (either OZ or Sharp ROM's). most simple applications will either work or not work, but a lot of system files make a real mess of your system.
As for the converting the address book I'm not to sure. There are applications for converting all over google, some examples here:
http://www.elsix.org/index.php?w=browse&sc=18
I have not had much luck with apps from that site but a search for the names should find something. Any time I have needed to convert my address book I used the export function in the PIM application on my desktop. I'm using Kontact but most others should be able to export to cvs or xml.
Let me know how you get on with that ROM, or if the hentges forum comes back up post any thoughts there. I have heard very few compaints about it but developers are almost always interested in bug reports or suggestions.
Hope it fits your needs :)

thanks for all the info! My 1 GB SD card finally arrived. It's a Sandisk Ultra II and real fast...it's made for rapid fire cameras. I wanted to see if it was faster in that Cacko-Sharp ROM and found it is-almost as fast as internal RAM and the Hentges ROM. I bought a Bible application for the Sharp ROM that works in the Cacko-Sharp ROM too. Unfortunately, it won't read the backup file I made of the Sharp ROM that has my address book in it. It does run that Hancom Spreadsheet that the Sharp ROM provided. The Cacko-Sharp ROM does freeze up in Add/Remove Software at times...the only thing to do is power down abruptly using the back lever and then the SD gets all messed up.

Anyway, I have a couple options...the Cacko-Sharp ROM is similar in functionality to what I'm used to and all the software I use is compatible (a Bible and spreadsheet program)...though it freezes up at times and could get frustrating. The Hentges ROM seems stable, though I'm having trouble getting Opie software to install on it (for a Bible program I tried Opie Dagger with no luck).

I'm thinking the Hentges ROM isn't fully compatible with Opie software...is that correct?

I'm getting Zaurus ipks at this site that provides ipks for Sharp and Opie:

http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/

Other than searching for the names and details of packages I found that site to be a real pain in the neck :) . Ill try and post a few links later but the zaurus users group is one I remember to be OK. The opie/oz and sharp packages are very different, a different type of compression is used and differences with the kernels sometimes make it impossible to run one on the other.
If you want to try installing sharp apps on opie you have a 'sharp compatibility libs' utility in the tools menu. I don't remember exactly how to use it but the manual pages where quite detailed. There is no guarantee it will work for the applications you used on the sharp ROM but it is worth a try.
If you really do need to go back to the sharp ROM then cacko is (in my experience) the best one available. Install the aqpkg package manager as it seems to be a lot more reliable than the one installed by default. Better still, use the comand line to install with 'ipkg install' then either the full name and location of a package downloaded on your system (ie ipkg install /home/zaurus/somepackage-1.2.3.ipk) or over the net with just the package name (ie ipkg install somepackage). That way if installation fails you have a chance of killing the process instead or rebooting and a better chance of knowing why it failed. The help for ipkg is quite detailed, use 'ipkg -h' to read through it. Using -h with an app on the comand line will quite often give you detailed help on how to use the application.
Also -d (debug) or -v (verbose) usually gives you detailed information on what is happening when an app is running, it is usefull if an application is crashing or wont start. Check with the help files first though as every application is different and it can sometimes do completely different things.