« May 2013»
M T W T F S S
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31    

[blog...]

embedded/linux
20.03.2010
18:00

Install Linux ISO-Images onto USB Drive Using unetbootin

 

Some time ago I read an article about unetbootin. As I had very often the pain to install Linux on CF-card or USB-drive, I bookmarked it for the next adventure.

 

Yesterday, I had to use it the first time. It's already in debian-testing (version 408-1). Only some short notes about using it:

  • let root (and other users) popup programs on your desktop:
    xhost +
  • start as root:
    unetbootin
  • plug in your USB-drive
  • select a distribution/live system. I tested:
    - Xubuntu
    - Slax
  • download and install the iso-image with unetbootin
  • take the USB-drive to the computer you want to boot and HOPE, it will be able to boot from USB

 

Luckily my J8F9-Board _sometimes_ likes booting from USB. I didn't understand why it most of the time ignores the BIOS setting. But now it's running again with Xubuntu 9.10.

 

 

Alexander BiggaComments 0
Tags: linux, unetbootin, xubuntu, j8f9
Views: 526

back

embedded/linux
25.05.2009
19:36

Using xorg geode driver on Jetway J8F9

The Jetway J8F9 working in a box as public internet access in Weltcafe Dresden, Germany
The Jetway J8F9 working in a box at weltcafe-dresden.de in Dresden, Germany

After the Xubuntu upgrade to 8.10, I wanted to use the geode xorg driver to launch the xserver. But this didn't worked as in 8.04. Before spending too much time to find a working solution, I decided to upgrade to Xubuntu 9.04 using the xorg-1.6 server and xorg-geode-2.11.1 driver.

 

Again with 9.04 the fbdev driver worked fine but the geode driver startet with 800x600 instead of WXGA (1440x900). I tried a lot to force the driver to use another resolution. But no success. Then I added the Option "NoPanel" "true" and ... it worked! But like Martin-Eric wrote on the xorg-driver-geode mailinglist, it's prefered to not add any options to the xorg.conf. And indeed: in my BIOS there is a menu to choose CRT and/or Panel. After setting it to CRT, it works with the default xorg.conf! Great!

 

Being happy to use the geode driver another problem occurred: The active button of dialog boxes and some tabs in programs had black boxes as background. Not very useful with black text on it. There seems to be a bug but unfortunately nobody has time to fix it :-(

There are two workarounds:

 

  • add the Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy" to the Device section of your xorg.conf. This disables parts of the accelleration.
  • use a different theme in Gnome. MurrinaStormCloud (the default) is quite slow. Human doesn't work either. I use Xfce-b5 at the moment. But there remains still some strange effects but this is not so important
Alexander BiggaComments 1
Tags: linux, geode, xubuntu, j8f9
Views: 474

back

embedded/linux
22.05.2009
13:05

Updating Xubuntu on Jetway J8F9 Nano-ITX Board

For half a year, I have a Jetway Nano-ITX Board (J8F9) running with Xubuntu 8.04 on a CF-card. This Board is very slow with an AMD Geode but 100% silent and consumes only about 3 Watt. It's the perfect internet client for my cafe.

 

One problem was the right setting for the display (quite cheap monitor with 1440x900 pixels). Before updating to 8.10 I had to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manually and set:

 

 

Section "Device"
        Identifier    "Configured Video Device"
      #Option  "UseFBDev"  "true"
        Driver    "fbdev"
EndSection

 

 

Section "Screen"          
       Identifier   "Default Screen"          
       Monitor   "Configured Monitor"          
       Device  "Configured Video Device"          
       DefaultDepth  24          
       SubSection "Display"         
    # Virtual 1440 900          
       Modes  "1440x900" "1280x1024" "1024x768"          
      EndSubSection 
EndSection

 

 

The Xorg-Version is:

 

 

X.Org X Server 1.4.0.90

 

 

Release Date: 5 September 2007

 

 

X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0

 

 

Build Operating System: Linux Ubuntu (xorg-server 2:1.4.1~git20080131-1ubuntu9.

 

 

Current Operating System: Linux cafepc 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 22:5

 

 

Build Date: 13 June 2008  01:08:21AM

 

 

 

After 5 minutes download and about 6 hours (!) packages replacements, the system was ready to reboot. But... it ends up in a kernel panic! And before booting, the install-tool deinstalled the old kernel. Very stupid.

 

So I removed the CF-card and modified the boot/grub/menu.lst. Xubunto forgot to add the initrd-line below the kernel:

 

 

initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-14-generic

 

 

 

Alexander BiggaComments 0
Tags: linux, xubuntu, embedded, j8f9
Views: 846

back

[ 26.02.2013 ]