Upgrade of Firefox

After apt-get dist-upgrade I got this "Could not initialize the browser's security component. The most likely cause is problems with files in your browser's profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full. It is recommended that you exit the browser and fix the problem. If you continue to use this browser session, you might see incorrect browser behavior when accessing security features."

I tried many possible solutions discovered in internet, but the only thing helped was removing of secmod.db file from my profile directory of firefox. I have no idea what this file is for, but it works. If you are having the same problem, backup your ~/.mozilla directory first before trying this or other solution which involves removing of files.

Auto-mount with halevt

halevt is good piece of software but by default it mounts disks in a way very inconvenient for me - that is mount points are like '/media/disk' '/media/disk-1/ '/media/disk-2' and so on. In order to help myself find disks more easily I've reconfigured halevt and created a script. Now I have /media/Cruzer-d4ba-1 and /media/Cruzer-a5e1-1 mountpoints for my two Sandisk USB sticks. And there are SD_Reader-a6a1-1, SD_Reader-a6a1-2, SD_Reader-a6a1-3 (three partitions) for the SD card I've inserted into a reader. A mountpoint name is composed by concatenating storage model name, short version of storage serial id and partition number. This is done by the following script (~/bin/halevt-mount-helper):

#!/bin/sh

STORAGE=`hal-get-property --udi "$1" --key block.storage_device`
PARTITION=`hal-get-property --udi "$1" --key volume.partition.number`
UUID=`hal-get-property --udi "$STORAGE" --key storage.serial | md5sum | head -c 4`
MODEL=`hal-get-property --udi "$STORAGE" --key storage.model | sed 's/ /_/g' | sed 's/^USB_//g'`

MPOINT="$MODEL-$UUID-$PARTITION"

halevt-mount -u "$1" -p "$MPOINT" -o sync -m 007

The script is used by configuring halevt with the following line instead of the default "halevt:insertion" line in halevt configuration file (/etc/halevt/halevt.xml or ~/.halevt/halevt.xml):

   <halevt:insertion exec="halevt-mount-helper $hal.udi$">

Pictures of Linux and Android on Fujitsu-Siemens Loox N560

Today the desteny of WM5 is only to be replaced with Linux


Haret.. all you need is to press Run


Android on Loox N560


Installation of debian on Loox N560


Installation of debian on Loox N560

Cross-Packaging On Debian

Debian/Emdebian already has tons of packages. But sometimes you have a need to package or repackage a piece of software yourself. The following may be helpful if a platform you build for is not the platform you build on.

Use the following command to build a package from a repository of apt:

emsource --arch armel -b memtester

If you need to install a package for target on your host:

dpkg-cross -a armel -i zlib1g-dev_1.2.3.3.dfsg-13em1_armel.deb

The command dpkg -l | grep zlib1g will show you:

ii  zlib1g-dev-armel-cross                1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-13em1

(dpkg-cross automatically converts package names and moves content under the /usr/arm-linux-gnueabi (for armel target))

You need to configure ~/.apt-cross/emsource to use emsource without privileges of root. The content of the file may look like:

workingdir: /home/akshaal/.apt-cross-working-dir

In a case you need to build a package from sources that have already been downloaded, use the following command:

dpkg-buildpackage -aarmel

Install emdebian on ARM device

Here is how I've successfully installed emdebian on my Fujitsu-Siemens Loox N560. I assume there is an already installed emdebian-tools package and cross-compilers. Next thing is to run the following commands:

cd /tmp;
mkdir grip/
sudo debootstrap --arch=arm --foreign lenny grip/ http://www.emdebian.org/grip/
cd grip/
sudo tar -czf /tmp/emdebian-grip-arm-debootstrap.tgz .

Then SD card is to be partitioned with fdisk. For example it could be:

cfdisk /dev/sdX
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdXy

where sdX - is a device for an SD card. And sdXy is a partition that is supposed to be used for linux on the SD card. Then mount the linux partition and untar the emdebian-grip-arm-debootstrap.tgz:

mount /dev/sdXy /mnt
cd /mnt
tar zxpvf /tmp/emdebian-grip-arm-debootstrap.tgz
ln -s bin/sh init
cd /tmp
umount /mnt

Now we can boot linux from the partition. When linux has booted and a command line appeared, run the following commands step by step:

cd /debootstrap
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
run ./debootstrap --second-stage
dpkg --configure -a
rm /init
cd /
ln -s sbin/init init

Now it is time to reboot linux again. This time a login prompt should work. Use root login and no password. Then configure basic settings:

echo 'nameserver 1.1.1.1' > /etc/resolv.conf
echo '127.0.0.1 localhost' > /etc/hosts
echo '172.16.0.2 myhost 172.16.0.2' >> /etc/hosts
echo 'myhost' > /etc/hostname

use actual nameserver IP instead of 1.1.1.1. Reboot PDA one more time. Then configure network:

ifconfig usb0 172.16.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
route add default gw 172.16.0.1

Make sure network is up and running. Then upgrade your installation:

echo 'deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip/ sid main' > /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install ...whateveryoulike...

And configure network properly.

cat > /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
allow-hotplug usb0
iface usb0 inet static
    address 172.16.0.2
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 127.16.0.0
    broadcast 172.16.0.255
    gateway 172.16.0.1
    dns-nameservers 1.1.1.1
    dns-search your.domain

Debian + Eclipse + Java + AMD64

This is for those who use debian on amd64 with java from package . If you have a problem running eclipse (exit code=13 or alike) just install sun's java and enjoy! There is a something wrong with the java package in debian (sun-java6-*). I've spent two days trying get it to work.