Hack-A-N900/Development

ALWAYS CREATE A BACKUP BEFORE TINKERING WITH YOU N900

ON-Device - Getting Started

WARNING: Accoring to this post, installing packages from the SDK repository to your device might cripple the root fs and force you to reflash it. Anyway, the maemo scratchbox environment is awful and for small builds it is more convient to build directly on the device. Packages mentoned in this guide don't seem to cause serious problem.

Add extras, tools and sdk to /etc/apt/sources.list

#Extras
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ fremantle free non-free
deb-src http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ fremantle free

# TOOLS
deb http://repository.maemo.org/ fremantle/tools free
deb-src http://repository.maemo.org/ fremantle/tools free

# SDK
deb http://repository.maemo.org/ fremantle/sdk free
deb-src http://repository.maemo.org/ fremantle/sdk free

Install essential tools

apt-get install bash coreutils-gnu grep-gnu wget vim

Change shell in /etc/passwd to bash:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
user:!:29999:29999::/home/user:/bin/bash

NOTE: Maemo ignores shebangs for shells and always executes shell scripts in busybox. You need to pass the script explicitly to any other shell:

bash ./test.sh

WARNING: Don't try to relink /bin/sh to /bin/bash. You system won't boot and you will have to reflash the device.

NOTE: Gnu coreutils and gnu grep are prefixed with the letter 'g'. Therefore you need to call

/usr/bin/gls

to use gnu ls. For some third party scripts/builds to work properly you might need to create symlinks for the gnu tools to be used.

Example:

ln -s /usr/bin/ggrep /usr/bin/grep

You might also create bash aliases for gnu utils.

$HOME/.bashrc aliases example:

# alias to gnu ls instead of busybux
alias ls='gls --color=auto'

alias ll='ls -l'
alias la='ls -la'
alias md='mkdir'
alias rd='rmdir'

# aliases to gnu grep instead of busybux
alias grep='ggrep'
alias egrep='gegrep'
alias fgrep='gfgrep'

Install build tools

apt-get install bzip2 cpio cpp dpkg-dev g++ g++-4.2 gcc libc6-dev libstdc++6-4.2-dev \
libstdc++6-4.2-dbg patch perl perl-modules autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison gdb

On default setups it will fail because of apt-get saving temporary files on the root partition.

Just clean the apt cache (

apt-get clean

) and repeat the above command.

You might want to install kernel headers:

apt-get install linux-kernel-headers