licentious radio

Sunday, October 20, 2002
[12:04:27 PM]

Installing opie *again*.

The first exciting event is that ipkg install keeps stopping. Maybe their server is overloaded? Maybe that was the problem the last time I tried to install opie. All it takes to get beyond this -- apparently -- is persistence. Keep running ipkg install task-opie, and eventually it will get through.

There's an opie manual now.

The installation chapter tells you not to install x-windows. It doesn't say what to do if you already have x-windows installed. But it does tell you that ipaq 3100 and 3800 owners have to install qt-embedded-rotation. I've forgotten to do that once or twice.

The manual says opie will launch at the end of installation. It didn't for me. Perhaps because x-windows was already running, starting opie was a bit of a disaster. Then I rebooted, but the ipaq crashed. That's probably the kernel problem related to power and the compact flash sleeve.

Hmm. But the instructions didn't say 'task-opie-complete', which is what I've used before. Oops. Trying to install task-opie-complete gives me a Segmentation Fault error. That's not so good.

A few other packages give the same error, but many don't. Hooray! Minesweep installed ok. I'm holding my breath about Konqueror, which is really the only point to installing opie, for me.

Tried to install irda support.

First I got this problem:

ipkg install opie-irdaapplet ERROR: Cannot satisfy the following dependencies for opie-irdaapplet: openobex This could mean that your package list is out of date, (try "ipkg update"), or that the packages mentioned above do not yet exist. To proceed in spite of this problem, try again with the `-force-depends' option.

Using force-depends, I got this problem:

Installing opie-irdaapplet (0.9.1-20020923.1)
Configuring opie-irdaapplet.../opt/QtPalmtop/bin/qcop: error while loading shared libraries: libqpe.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
pkg_run_script: `/usr/lib/ipkg/info/opie-irdaapplet.postinst configure' failed.
ERROR: opie-irdaapplet.postinst returned 127

Darn. Well, in all the years I've had a Palm device, I've only ever used the infrared beaming three or four times. As long as Konqueror works, I'll be happy.

Joy! No segfault for install konqueror. Seems like the last time I tried to install konqueror it was off in some random feed somewhere. Now it's in the main feed at:

http://opie.handhelds.org/feed/ipaq/Packages

It's not only there, but it installs and works. I'm glad. My idea is to wave this ipaq in front of some folks tomorrow. I want to show both Konqueror and Dillo, as examples of the cutting edge of web usability.

Opie doesn't notice when you install or remove apps. Sigh. But you don't have to reboot:

/etc/init.d/opie stop
/etc/init.d/opie start

Next issue: switching between opie and x-windows. No problem, right? Just ipkg install wswap (from the familiar unstable feed).

To swap from OPIE to X, click the 'X' icon in 'Settings'
To swap from X to OPIE, click 'Utilities/Switch to OPIE'

It doesn't quite seem to work. I seem to be able to switch from opie to x, but when I try to switch back to opie from x, nothing happens on the screen. In my shell, I get the message:

swap to q: q already running!

I noticed the following error message:

swap from qt to x
sh: /etc/init.d/qpe: No such file or directory

It looks like I have an old version of wswap, that tries to use "qpe" not "opie". I couldn't figure out where I could edit, but I made /etc/init.d/qpe a soft link to opie, and that seemed to break everything.

So then I tried some batch files of my own.

#!/bin/sh
/etc/init.d/x stop
/etc/init.d/x start

#!/bin/sh
/etc/init.d/opie stop
/etc/init.d/opie start

That seems to work. X-windows seems to wipe everything out and start fresh, but opie seems to come back in the same state I left it.

The problem is that after I switch from opie to x and then back, the whole thing crashes when I turn the power off, and I have to reboot.

Sigh. Stay tuned, campers.