Location:Ingolstadt, Germany... somewhere near Munich
Posted 23 February 2011 - 02:06 AM
HotFix 5 RC2 is finished. We've come a long way, and hopefully, most evil bugs have been squashed. This will be the last one before the final - and maybe it already will be the final one.
It's still not in PND-form, so flashing this puts your Pandora back to the state you got it. Be sure to backup anything you put on the internal storage if you need it. I'll work on making a PND-HF5-Installer for the final release.
Here are the changes that happened from Beta RC1 to RC2:
* Bugfix: libpnd - inotify was catching all modifications instead of closed-writable files. Thanks to Demitar for the catch!
* Various bugfixes and enhancements to the category / subcategory system of MiniMenu
* DaveC donated some nice folder graphics for the subcats in MiniMenu
* op_power.sh: Fixed a bug which crashed the script when going to low-power mode while connected to WLAN network
* Kernel: Set higher functional clock constraint. This allows hardware scaler to work with higher resolutions, allowing 720p video playback, for example.
* Various other small fixes!
In case you haven't checked them (or forgot about it) - here is the list of changes that happened from HF4
Spoiler
Fixes:
* LCD-Settings: Fixed the bug where the user could delete the default gamma setting
* Mass Storage Settings: Fixed a bug where it didn't remount the card under certain conditions
* First Run Wizard + Date / Time-Setting: Fixed timezone-selection.
* WiFi: New driver and firmware version with a lot of fixes (Yuri Ershov, notaz and Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli)
* xf86-video-omapfb: Handle cycle/forcer events better
* Automount: Unmount from Thunar / XFCE4 is now possible
* Low-Power-Mode: Speed now set to 125 MHz (works more stable and doesn't use more power)
* Lid Closing: Disabled LCD Blanking, since that has issues with some programs
* Brightness-Buttons: Changed values so that the screen doesn't flicker anymore
* pnd_run: Lots of fixes and cleanups (sebt3)
* pnd_run: Fixed running of directories with PXMLs inside (Paul Brook)
* pnd_run.sh: Remove empty AUFS-Directories after unmounting (thanks to sebt3)
* U-Boot: Add WiFi reset on boot (fixes occassional power eating from WiFi Chip even if it was switched off)
* Fixed broken OPP after the unit crashed (patch by urjaman)
* Included latest SGX PowerVR drivers (thanks to notaz)
* MiniMenu: A lot of bugfixes and optimizations.
* omap3-sgx-modules: backport spinlock fix from omap3630 (thanks to notaz)
* mount.sh: Small optimization (changed rm to rmdir)
* MiniMenu: Now using only 3-4% CPU when idling
* Kernel: Various fixed, especially the errors when copying from one SD Card to the other one should be fixed (thanks to urjaman and notaz).
New Features:
* LCD-Settings: Added Video-FIR-Selector (current and default one)
* Applications: Removed Pidgin, Gnumeric, AbiWord, Clawsmail (use the PNDs for sebt3!)
* Applications: Added GCalcTool (Calculator)
* Tools: Added xdotool
* CPU-Speed: Now configurable using /etc/pandora/conf/cpu.conf or using the new CPU-Settings-Editor
* Pandora-State: Can now set a default CPU Speed during startup
* XFCE4: Enabled Icons in Startmenu, added Pandora-Splashscreen
* pnd_run: Script now popups a message if mount fails (sebt3)
* U-Boot: Pandora Menu: Always add serial option (for sure)
* Libraries: Added libsamplerate
* MiniMenu: Added new config options (i.e. do not quit on app run, remove detail panel, etc.)
* MiniMenu: Added Subcategories in the Grid (for quicker browsing).
* MiniMenu: Included OVR-Editor (so you can rename, move or change other settings of PNDs)
* MiniMenu: Added Directory Browser
* OS: Added Version number to Splashscreen
Easy: Download the zipped image and extract the full contents onto the root of your SD Card. Put the SD Card into slot 1 (the left one), switch on the Pandora while holding the R-Shoulder button and select "boot from SD1:1"
The flashing process should start. After it's finished, reboot the unit. The first boot will take a while (up to 10 minutes). Patiently wait and you'll be greeted with the First Boot Wizard.
Additionally, we are currently organizing the Firmware development so that it's much easier to participate for everyone who wants to help and submit patches. There's a mailing list, IRC, the boards, etc.
This may not be very helpful as feedback (as I don't have my Pandy yet) but I just wanted to thank you, and all of the other devs, for continuing to improve the Pandora's OS.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting really slow transfer speeds trying to get this release. It says it's going to take 6 hours to complete. I guess I'll have to wait until the morning to give it a try
I hate to ask, but will it finally be automated that when I sink my bluetooth headphones I can set it to automatically output my audio via them whenever synced?
That minor bit aside, I really look forward to this update. So very many changes.
Edited by Korlithiel, 24 February 2011 - 04:17 AM.
I've been playing with RC2 for about 12 hours or so. I'm still running in to random PND mounting issues, requiring a reboot to resolve. Here's an example error output.
sudo /usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh -m -p /media/PANDORA_SD1/pandora/menu/ComputerEmulators//ViceX64.pnd -e x64.gpe -b vicex64.pickle
not mounted on loop yet, doing so
LoopMountedon:
losetup: could not find any free loop device
usedminor 1
freeminor 2
mknod: `/dev/loop2': File exists
losetup: /dev/loop2: device is busy
Filetype is Squashfs
Mounting PND (mount -t squashfs) :
/dev/loop2 on /mnt/pnd/vicex64.pickle type squashfs (ro)
Filesystem is vfat
Mounting the Union FS using /media/PANDORA_SD1/pandora/appdata/vicex64.pickle as Write directory:
mount -t aufs -o exec,noplink,dirs=/media/PANDORA_SD1/pandora/appdata/vicex64.pickle=rw+nolwh:/mnt/pnd/vicex64.pickle=rr none /mnt/utmp/vicex64.pickle
none on /mnt/utmp/vicex64.pickle type aufs (rw,si=6e80ec77,noplink)
none on /mnt/utmp/vicex64.pickle type aufs (rw,si=6e80ec77,noplink)
[------------------------------]{ App start }[---------------------------------]
/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh: line 77: ./x64.gpe: No such file or directory
[-------------------------------]{ App end }[----------------------------------]
Usage:
losetup loop_device give info
losetup -a | --all list all used
losetup -d | --detach <loopdev> [<loopdev> ...] delete
losetup -f | --find find unused
losetup -c | --set-capacity <loopdev> resize
losetup -j | --associated <file> [-o <num>] list all associated with <file>
losetup [ options ] {-f|--find|loopdev} <file> setup
Options:
-e | --encryption <type> enable data encryption with specified <name/num>
-h | --help this help
-o | --offset <num> start at offset <num> into file
--sizelimit <num> loop limited to only <num> bytes of the file
-p | --pass-fd <num> read passphrase from file descriptor <num>
-r | --read-only setup read-only loop device
--show print device name (with -f <file>)
-v | --verbose verbose mode
rm: missing operand
Try `rm --help' for more information.
cleanup done
If people want to try out the 720P video playback, you can try using the beta that me and EvilDragon worked on called PanPlayer, which is an optimized mplayer which will be able to play divx 720P content without breaking a sweat, probably a lot of them using the default cpu speed of 600 mhz. Has a nice picklelauncher frontend within in, including a feature that was added after I mentioned it to pickle, which is filtering by entering in a string, so you can type in who and it'll display only files with the word who within it. It can also play back a lot of SD resolution h264 files, though it depends how they were encoded, some work great at 600mhz, but others you have to overclock a bit to get them to work smoothly. Would like feedback on what kinds of videos play, how well, etc... Also in the post is just a standalone mplayer with binary that you can launch from the command line, if you wish to do it that way as well. The link it is located at is:
Interests:PHP, Web Development, Programming, Mecha
Posted 02 March 2011 - 05:12 AM
Is it just me? Or am I only able to open up like 5 PNDs total and then I run out of loop devices? (Add more please?), this includes toggling wifi, Chromium, DeadBeef, some other system utility, and Pidgin(which crashes like every 10 minutes...(Why?))
EDIT: Looks like goldenegg reports the same. This is a very urgent thing that needs to be fixed.
I also find how ridiculous it is in how to shut down the device, I have to do sudo shutdown -r now, or sudo restart.
Please change "Log out" on the panda menu to something more along the lines of "Power options", as the 2 out of 3 buttons are actually for power, as opposed to the 1 being for logging out.
Also... Why is the toggle WiFi a pnd? That's another loop resource that should not need to be taken up just for what can be accomplished with an sh script and or a binary.
It seems that more memory has to be used just for this toggle, why have all this overhead?
Is it just me? Or am I only able to open up like 5 PNDs total and then I run out of loop devices? (Add more please?), this includes toggling wifi, Chromium, DeadBeef, some other system utility, and Pidgin(which crashes like every 10 minutes...(Why?)) EDIT: Looks like goldenegg reports the same. This is a very urgent thing that needs to be fixed.
Interests:PHP, Web Development, Programming, Mecha
Posted 02 March 2011 - 02:33 PM
In my own tests, and linux knowledge, I looked at the /tmp/pndrun_'s and the general consensus is: it runs out of memory.
Here's an example
I mount deadbeef: Ram was at 172, goes down to 148, so I'm like "okay", that's a little bit understandable.
I mount chromium: Ram was at 140(after loading songs), goes down to 20. I'm like: "this shouldn't take that much, on my desktop, chrome takes 35.5MB of RAM on start, this should use even less"
So I exit chromium, it jumps up to about 40 MB free, so "Where is all this other 100MB going?"
There seems to be a TON of memory overhead on just mounting the pnds.
I'm currently using swap(512MB) on an SD card, and things are going a lot more happy than before, however, this SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY. (Especially if only using 3 basic programs like chat, music and browsing..)
ED turned a bunch of short scripts into pnds, so that they show up for both mmenu and xfce; mmenu uses only pnd's as source of input (for now), not .desktops (that are generated from pnd.) (and yesm there are good reasons for this, its not arbitrary; consider, that mmenu can run entirely without anything else on the system, and .dedsktop files are missing some info; one of these day I'll make a .desktop alternative app pool source for mmenu so folks can togglr between, but its not there yet.)
A lo gets retrned to the pool when closed; you can onyl have so many pnds open at the same time, but just running one pnd in a row 30 times shoudl be no problem, unless that pnd is somehow hanging around and the loop is unable to be returned...
jeff
I know for instance than it in general works; I ran a single pnd about 30 times in a row just the other day, monitoring memory consumption (and all mem was returned to system on exit of it, btw.)
Well then, Houston, we have a problem: Memory is not being returned to the system after a few basic things, like wifi toggling, and so on. I just ran a few PND's, and oila: OOM.
In my own tests, and linux knowledge, I looked at the /tmp/pndrun_'s and the general consensus is: it runs out of memory. Here's an example I mount deadbeef: Ram was at 172, goes down to 148, so I'm like "okay", that's a little bit understandable. I mount chromium: Ram was at 140(after loading songs), goes down to 20. I'm like: "this shouldn't take that much, on my desktop, chrome takes 35.5MB of RAM on start, this should use even less" So I exit chromium, it jumps up to about 40 MB free, so "Where is all this other 100MB going?"
There seems to be a TON of memory overhead on just mounting the pnds.
I'm currently using swap(512MB) on an SD card, and things are going a lot more happy than before, however, this SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY. (Especially if only using 3 basic programs like chat, music and browsing..)
Do you know how linux memory work ? I'm not using swap here, and I dont plan too. I'm pretty sure your swap is unused, or worst (because firefox and chromium tune their memory usage based on total memory) it is used to put some binary into swap while having a large cache of unused stuff.
It is normal to have no memory left displayed using top. If your OS dont use all your memory (at least for file-caching) then it's a stupid and bad OS (/me look at winxp...). Linux cache every file read operation into a memory space named "Cached" (see it's value in top). The linux kernel will kick out the last recently used buffer-cache to allocate new memory to programs. Currently I do have 140M of cache used on my pandora (most probably mp3 files, I do have zim, audacious, a console, gedit open). I see that as free memory (just being smartly used) with more than half of my memory basically free, I'm far from seeing a point of usinga swap...
