Maemo and Fedora

I refuse to have my Xorg run at 16-bit depth, so, here’s a better way of running Maemo, rather than the prescribed Xnest method. Install vncviewer and vnc-server, then:

  1. Xvnc -geometry 800x480 -dpi 72 -ac :2 -depth 16 -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd & – this creates an Xvnc server with size 800×480 (to fit Maemo), with a DPI of 72 (you may want 96, but it seems rather large). This creates it on display :2 with a 16-bit depth, and the password file to be read is in ~/.vnc/passwd.
  2. Create a VNC password, by using vncpasswd
  3. Then, type vncviewer :2, enter the password, and you’ll have a window appear. Now in scratchbox, just type af-sb-init.sh start. Make sure you already ran export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:2 in scratchbox as well.

On Fedora Core 4, remember, you want to echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/vdso as well, to ensure scratchbox will even start. The tutorial is incorrect in terms of telling you where to get maemopad – grab it from http://repository.maemo.org/stable/1.0/applications/maemopad/.

maemo on fedora
Maemo on FC-4; changing the input method

Interesting reading is the interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi from Nokia. Debian’s packaging format was the only thing chosen, as the kernels come from upstream kernel.org. Last little Maemo tip is that if you don’t want to use the keyboard, better switch input methods to the X input method, and this will allow you to actually type text in (rather than tapping on the online keyboard).

6 Comments

  1. Swapan says:

    I have a question about using VNC the other way round. While searching in google I find lots of places which mention how to use VNC to display what is shown on the SDK environment.
    Is there a vncviewer for ARM running in the maemo environment ? I tried compiling one and it showed dependencies on X11 header files. Was wondering if somebody has provided the sources available at handhelds.org
    -swapan

  2. byte says:

    Not that I’ve used. Currently, seeing that we don’t have a n770 lying around, how could this be used?

  3. Corentin BARON says:

    How did you install scratchbox, and by the way which version of scratchbox did you install ? A full How-to would be a marvelous thing.

    I tried almost everything from 0.9.8 to 1.0.2, and still didn’t manage to have things working properly. scratchbox 1.0.2 starts but cannot find the homedir of the user I made for it (we’re behind an authentication server, so I had to create a local-only user). Otherwise, Hildon seems unable to connect to the :2 X server.

    Thanks for your help.

  4. Madhusudhan says:

    I have a question. After installing scratchbox i was unable to extract a maemo rootstrap it would say mknod.. : operation not permitted. Why is this happening? Can you please help me?

    Thanks a lot!

  5. chelly says:

    Hello,
    I had a problem with an operation not permitted while installing scratchbox,!! Had you a solution for that!!
    thanks,

  6. byte says:

    Not that I've used. Currently, seeing that we don't have a n770 lying around, how could this be used?


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