I am having some trouble getting IceWM on my Jornada. If this is a duplicate post, I apologize, I posted this and wasn't sure I clicked on the right link to actually post it.

I am trying to install IceWM using the methods described here:

http://freeshells.ch/~wicked74/j720/icewm720/

I am trying to install using Puppy Linux, the live cd version. I seem to get through the entire process without any trouble, running into what seemed like a small snag at the time when I tried to extract the ext2 portion of the image to my cf card. I did it with the package manager, using the gui, and it said "wrapper exited with an error", but nothing else. I finish the process, pop the cf card into my Jornada, make sure params says 32 mb, and it comes up with this error during the scrolling portion:

Kernel Panic! VFS: Unable to mount rootfs on 3:03

and another line saying it cannot find hda2.

WHen I looked at the card in MUT (the Media Utility Tool, nay the very reason I use puppy) the card is seen as sda1, sda2 and so on. I did make a swap partition, could that be what is causing the issue?

I am running WIn CE 3.0 on my Jornada, I have a 1 GB card with 64MB dedicated to FAT, which is number 04 in cfdisk, 900 mb as ext2, or number 83 in cfdisk, and a 32 mb swap, which is number 82. I followed the instructions to the letter, and made sure I extracted from within the directories on the card, where applicable. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

On another note, should I use another distro if I want to use a C++ and python program on this machine? How awesome is it that you can get Linux on these things! I know it's probably business as usual for all of you, but if I am successful in gettin Linux on my Jornada, I am seriously thinking of divorcing my wife and joining in a most unholy union with this little computer! I mean...uh... I like it!

I have a dual boot Jornada 720 with the JLime Mongo and the icewm images on different partitions. I have a 1 gig cf card, 32 mb fat, 350 mb mongo, and 630 mb icewm. I used the tarball with the icewm to load my fat partition, I am using the 2.4.35 kernel and initrd, and this is the farthest I have ever gotten, because it does not look like an error. it gets to where it says "Freeing up init 72k memory" and then goed to the next line and just displays a blinking cursor.

hitting the on/ off button and turning it back on works, and it suspends pc, pcmcia and stuff, and resumes upon turning it back on, so it does not appear to be locked up. I cannot type anything, however, and I have let it sit for upwards of 15 minutes with no changes. Any ideas? I tried reading the lines as they come up, but the only thing that looks like it might be awry is when it says "Could not mount old fs" or something, but it goes right past this. It does this on both partitions.

I used puppy linux to load, and I always get an error when extracting the fat16 portion within my fat partition, which is of type 4. I do not have a swap, and the other two partitions are of type 83, or ex2. I did the mkfsdod and mke2fs and ran e2fsck on the drives, and it is coming up clean. That is the extent of my Linux knowledge. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I used the icewm 79 mb tarball on the freeshells.com or .org site... I will supply link upon request, though it is in my other thread. Let me know if you need any more information.

If you mean "ownership" warnings then it's OK because that filesystem can't deal with that, else please be exact and detailed describing error output.

A halt at "Freeing up init" could mean anything since the kernel is still in its bootup stage and I don't know what the next check is it should perform, without exact error messages it'll be hard to find out and people usually don't compile a kernel for debug output anyway. Does this happen with Mongo too? Or any other distro's from the How to install Linux in a Jornada 710/720/728 HOWTO? If the http://freeshells.ch/~wicked74/j720/icewm720/FAQ.html or Jlime forum FAQs (or handheld.org?) don't list answers and you are sure you read and followed the installation instructions to the letter (which wickeds FAQ seems to hint at often) then I'd e-mail him about your problems.

No when I try to extract the fat16 portion of the freeshells.ch tarball, I get the message "The wrapper exited with an error". It still extracts, and the ext2 partitions extracts fine, it's just that one, and it is when I put it on the card and try to extract fat16.tar... I went and tried to only extract initrd and it came up with the "Wrapper exited with an error" again, so I am going to look for another copy of that initrd file, maybe that's the problem, though if if has worked well on everyone else's machine I am not sure why it has decided to stop working on mine. It does it on both the mongo distro and the icewm distro, so I am pretty confident the issue is with the fat16 partition, and I may be using the wrong one from within cfdisk... I noticed there are other choices for fat16, I simply chose number 4 fat16 < 32, if this is wrong (I saw another guide that says to use 06) then I will change that. Can I use cfdisk and only blow away one partition? Do I have to start from scratch every time? Also is there somewhere I can just get the initrd 2.4.35 that I need, to make sure the issue is not something silly I am doing?

I have merged your two threads together

Since its just a plain tarball you'll have to find out what handles or extracts it, I mean "wrapper" doesn't sound quite like 'tar'. If you can extract it from the commandline manually using 'tar' you know whatever is on your Live CD is the culprit. Not that that will fix your boot problems...


Could try that, yes.


You could simply change the type. In 'fdisk', "p" to list partitions, "t" to change, select the one and type "6". Unless your partitioning scheme is wrong I don't see a point in starting afresh. After all the kernel boots, it just stops somewhere.


I would strongly suggest either e-mailing wicked or joining the Jlime or handheld forum. They specialise in devices like yours and probably have seen *all* problems with those.

I am not sure how to email wicked, I do not see an email address in the icewm page...I will join jlime, thanks for your help, I will try those out tomorrow morning.

The README says wicked74 at freeshells.ch.

I dunno what I did, but it worked! Yay I have working decomputation device!