Qole's Notes: Building an Easy Mer / Ubuntu Chroot for the NIT

Mer Midori running in OS2008 Diablo via chroot

Why Mer?

I've been wanting to set up an Ubuntu chroot in the style of Easy Debian. I've decided to use the Mer 0.8 rootfs because:

• Mer is based on Ubuntu Jaunty, which is my current distro of choice, mainly because it has the newest Open Java6 JDK.
• The Mer developers have clearly been working to slim down the big Ubuntu footprint; consequently, the image is much smaller than a comparable Jaunty image.
  
• The Hildon Input Method works automatically with GTK apps; this means the stylus keyboard pops up when I tap an input field in a GTK app.
• Midori, a great little GTK WebKit-based browser, comes bundled. Not only that, but they've managed to get some Hildonization done by the developer!

Qole's Notes

Here are my notes for customizing the Mer 0.8 rootfs to run in my chroot.

I have the rootfs set up in a partition on my SD card, and I'm using my Easy Debian package to do the actual chroot.

I'm posting these so I can set things up quickly in the future. Hopefully someone else finds something of value here too.

Configuring the Chroot

Some basic configuration needs to be done, right off the bat. First, from the Maemo prompt:

sudo closechroot
touch /home/user/.synchroot

Then, as root inside the chroot:

mkdir -p /home/user
chown user:users /home/user

This will copy some Maemo config files into the chroot and make a home directory for "user".

Default Ubuntu Shell

The shell defaults to "dash" as opposed to "bash". As explained here, this was a decision by the Ubuntu team to improve boot speed. Boot speed is not relevant in a chroot, so I repoint /bin/sh to bash instead of dash. Inside the chroot:

rm /bin/sh
ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

I don't like this solution very much; it will make the system much slower booting (if you wish to boot to it). I'm going to see about leaving dash symlinked and purposely calling bash when a chroot terminal is requested.

Setting Locale:

Changing locales in Ubuntu is ugly, even "broken," as described here. This is what I do (from within the chroot) to get en_GB (my Maemo locale) set up in the chroot. From within the chroot:

cat /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED | grep en_GB
vim /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local
dpkg-reconfigure locales

Hardware Key Hacks / GTK Stylus Setup

Now it's time to get the pieces needed for my fullscreen and on-screen keyboard hacks. From within the chroot:

apt-get update
apt-get install matchbox-keyboard wmctrl xbindkeys libgtkstylus

I use xbindkeys, wmctrl, and Matchbox-Keyboard to do "fake hildonization;" by running xbindkeys, I can map the hardware key combination "-" and "fullscreen" to make any app fullscreen, and "-" and "menu" to toggle the Matchbox keyboard.

Boy, Ubuntu's version of Matchbox keyboard is ugly. What's with the shaded keys?

The libgtkstylus on the end there lets the user use tap-and-hold for right-click within GTK apps.

Adobe Flashplayer

Now I install Stskeep's Adobe flashplayer hack, to allow Flash to work in Midori and other browsers. In maemo root terminal (with chroot mounted):

cd /root
wget http://qole.org/files/deblet-flashplayer.tar.gz
tar xzvf deblet-flashplayer.tar.gz
cd flashplayer
leafpad flashplayer.sh
(change the CHROOT value to point to the directory where your chroot is mounted & save)
./flashplayer.sh

That should configure most Ubuntu browsers to use the maemo Adobe flash plugin.

OpenJDK (Java 6)

apt-get install icedtea6-plugin (This wants to pull in all sorts of unnecessary language fonts; I had to add all the ttf pkgs to the install line, followed by "-" for each, eg ttf-baekmuk- ttf-bengali-fonts- ttf-kannada-fonts- etc...)
sudo debian update-java-alternatives -s java-6-openjdk
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/arm/IcedTeaPlugin.so /ubuntu/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/libjavaplugin.so

Test the install here:

http://java.sun.com/applets/jdk/1.4/index.html

There currently doesn't seem to be a way to get OpenJava6 to run in Midori. I installed Mozilla Prism to to test Java. It seems to be the lightest-weight Java-capable browser available for the tablet. From within the chroot:

apt-get install prism

Prism running a simple demo Java applet

DBus

Getting maemo / chroot dbus processes to talk is proving to be a challenge...
Maemo doesn't seem to keep the machine id in /var/lib/dbus/machine-id, which is where most dbus-aware apps expect it to be. So far, I've found the following seems to work. In a maemo root terminal (after starting the chroot in /ubuntu) [1]:

dbus-uuidgen --ensure
mount -o bind /var/lib/dbus /ubuntu/var/lib/dbus

This seems to make DBus work; the Mer osso-xterm from maemo will respect the existence of maemo's osso-xterm. The only way to start Mer's osso-xterm is to close maemo's version first.

I've got to make this more permanent. I have to do the mount -o bind command every time I start the chroot (after closechroot or reboot).

Other Problems

The stylus keyboard doesn't work in Midori's web pages, only in the address bar. This is true for any GTK browser. The widgets within the web page are not GTK widgets, so no Hildon Input Method activation. Java doesn't work in Midori, and Prism is a very stripped-down browser, with a very bare interface. Sadly, even installing xulrunner Gnome support doesn't help with making it more stylus friendly. Is there nothing like MicroB out there?

Theme problems: There's got to be a way to get the chroot and maemo sharing theme information and icon info, too. This is certainly a difficult problem. Perhaps the simplest solution is to install the same theme into both maemo and mer.

Dash-vs-Bash: I've gotta figure out a way around this...

Extra apps

Leafpad is my favorite lightweight text editor. It works great in this chroot, because it is completely GTK, so the stylus keyboard and tap-and-hold right-click work fine.

Gnome ALSA mixer is a nice addition. It is not included in the tarball below, but it is easy to install, and it doesn't pull in a huge number of dependencies.

Future: I want to experiment with Fennec Alpha 2 (+24.3 MB) and Abiword 2.6.6 (+53 MB), and see how they work in this environment. I also would like to try the E17 desktop.

Downloadable rootfs tarball

Here's a tarball of the mer 0.8 chrootfs with all of the above already completed (158 MB).

Updates
25-Feb-09: Here's what I've discovered so far:

• Fennec doesn't do Flash (even though it sees the plugin, it doesn't actually show the Flash) and it is somewhat unstable. I can't select text; if I drag, it just drags the page. If I double click, it zooms.
  
• Abiword works, and it uses Hildon Input Method. It seems to have problems loading files, however, often opening an empty "Untitled" file instead of the chosen document. It also is a bit wobbly; it crashed once on me.
• I can make the stylus keyboard pop up in most Mer apps (where it doesn't pop up by itself) by pressing the centre d-pad key.

01-Mar-09: Getting themes to work:

I've found a two-step way to get the theme to work in the chroot.

• Edit /home/user/.gtkrc-2.0 and comment out any theme-related lines. Add the following line:

include "/usr/share/themes/liberty/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"

• Start the sapwood theme server inside the chroot (as user, not root). I have no idea why it doesn't share the running sapwood server in Maemo; probably Nokia's version is proprietary somehow.

/usr/lib/sapwood/sapwood-server &

If you want to maintain a consistent theme throughout, then you need to install the same theme in OS2008 and the chroot. So far, this seems to be limited to the Titan theme, since the Liberty theme isn't available for OS2008 and Titan is the only third-party OS2008 themes in the Mer repository at the moment.

I will post updates as I discover more.

The Economic Crisis as Corruption Scandal

I've been thinking a lot about the American sub-prime mortgage crisis and the following economic crisis that has people all over the world losing their jobs and their homes.

I've decided that the whole thing is actually a disguised corruption scandal.

The problem started when a bunch of con artists discovered the "sub-prime mortgage" scam. You get someone with bad credit into a bad mortgage by selling them the expectation that in a rising housing market, they'll be able to sell the house and make a profit before the mortgage's wicked, crushing interest rates kick in and squash them like a bug.

These scammers are always around, and they're always looking to lure people into giving them money through greed. Sometimes the scams are illegal, but, like those ubiquitous "Money Mart" loan sharking companies, this scam was legal.

But, really, those guys weren't the real bad guys. They couldn't have destroyed the global economy no matter how many sub-prime mortgages they sold. They were making money off of gullible idiots, sure, but not a lot of money. Not in the grand scheme of things. No, the bad guys were working on Wall Street, getting really rich by repackaging turds as gold bullion, and then slipping these turds into the investment stream so quietly that nobody noticed. And then, when people started noticing that their supposedly low-risk investments were actually piles of smelly turds, it was too late. The whole thing came crashing down. With almost a third of the global investments turning out to be turds, the economy just ground to a halt.

The "credit crunch" that followed came partly from the fact that nobody trusted anybody anymore. How could you be sure that you're getting gold when the last time you were handed "gold" it turned into turds? This kind of complete lack of trust is common in poor "developing nations" where corruption is rife, but it really wasn't a part of the Western system until suddenly we all discovered that our system had been rotting out from the inside for years and years.

Just like the corruption you hear about in poor countries, this corruption thrived mainly because the people who could have blown the whistle and stopped the corruption were getting rich by keeping quiet.

Why so much corruption in poor countries but not rich countries? Rich countries, like the USA, normally don't have to worry much about corruption, because turning corrupt doesn't pay enough in comparison to staying honest. You might get more money, but you're also much more likely to get caught, and in a mostly non-corrupt system, getting caught means severe consequences. In poorer countries, turning corrupt pays much, much better than staying honest, and since the whole system has often corrupted (due to no intervention over a long period of time), there are few, if any consequences, even if you do get caught.

Well, the situation on Wall Street during the late 90s and the beginning of the 21st century was an absolutely perfect environment for corruption. Corrupt behaviour payed much, much better than honest behaviour, and since what they were doing was technically not illegal, they didn't have to worry about any personal negative consequences of their behavior. Of course, we've all seen that there were terrible, terrible negative consequences to their behaviour, but they're doing fine.

And the problem is that nobody's been arrested, nobody's going to jail, nobody's even being fined. A couple of financial institutions collapsed, sure, but most of them are being bailed out with American tax dollars.

Well, actually, no, they're being bailed out with imaginary money, money that the American government doesn't actually have, which means they're just printing more money to give to the people who brought the whole system crashing down in the first place.

See why I call it a corruption scandal?

As long as nobody's guilty of anything, the global economy is going to continue to suffer. You don't go to the cops when you think the cops are corrupt. And you aren't going to start investing again when you think the banks are corrupt. Without trust, an economy can't function. And we don't have any trust right now.