improvementIdeas

Wiki

Peter Schneider — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:48:51 +0000

This wiki is now deprecated please use the new wiki.

This wiki is a tool used by the Maemo community. The official Maemo documentation can be found under the Development section. See also http://www.internettablettalk.com/wiki/.

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Overview

Software updates

Flash the latest Nokia image with Linux
Flash the latest Nokia image with Mac OS X
Selection of third party applications for education
Application Repositories
Application Manager In Red Pill Mode
Flasher tool usage
Install OpenVPN
InstallSsh2006
InstallVPNC
OS2007on770 HackerEdition
os2007on770testedApps
OS2007 Tested Applications
Os2007HackerEditionArchives

User interface

Note that the Hildon Application Framework is in the process of becoming a purely upstream project, and the documentation is being moved to http://live.gnome.org/Hildon/. In case of doubts rely first on the information in the GNOME wiki.
How To Use Touchscreen Pressure Data

Multimedia

Communications

Hardware & peripherals

System services

Development

HowTo
Developer Tools
Boot the root filesystem from MMC
Sardine Getting Started is useful to follow the Hildon and maemo unstable development, links from Sardine home page
Performance Optimization
DSP programming
GeoClue
VistaMax
X11 Extension Tutorial
JavaLanguage
Maemo With Jhbuild
How To Use Valgrind Gdb In Scratchbox
Modifying Root Image
Game Development
Extras Repository Process Definition
PackageBuildingWithoutLinuxUsingPyPackager
Installing Maemo SDK 4
Using Debian armel unported apps with vncviewer

Misc

Let's put here other interesting pages.

Planet Maemo / International Feed Collection

Tell us your favorite feeds on maemo topics you would like to see on planet maemo in your favorite language! Especially if they are non-english! YOU CAN help to make planet maemo international!

Non-english Blog Recommendations

Maemo wiki

Ongoing work, future plans.

howto_keep_usr_apart

Mario Frasca — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:45:58 +0000

thoughts on partitioning your internal mmc card

editing policy: deprecated page on deprecated wiki.

please check the new site instead

I started from HowTo EASILY Boot From MMC card and the pages it points to... many thanks to writer and contributors! starting from the points in the paragraph 'Why would we want to boot from MMC?', I added an extra point and I am experimenting with a different approach...

I want to use the MMC card for static data and the internal memory for data which is modified often.
I want a LARGER /home partition.
I want to keep the /home partition between reflashes.

I work with Linux since many years and I'm used to having my system distributed over many more than only one file system. so I thought, why not doing the same on the N800?

after a few experiments, I decided to change a bit of the behaviour:

connecting via USB does not mount the partitions from the internal memory card.
the internal memory card will not hold any FAT partition.

here is what I did:

partition the internal memory card: remove the FAT partition and create two primary Linux (type 83) partitions. I have a 2G card and I reserved 750M for /usr and the rest to /home.

the easiest way is to prepare the card in a card reader attached to a Linux desktop.

for the Linux ext2 I forgot to apt-get install fs2eprogs so I did not find the mke2fs in the N800 and ended up putting the card in a card reader attached to my Linux desktop and format it there.

I loaded the two modules as described here and could mount the new partition (using temporary mount point /mnt/tmp). I copied my /usr from internal memory to the new partition (cp -a /usr /mnt/tmp) then I reflashed the machine (well, actually I was obliged to do so by some mistakes I made while working further... anyway...)

in the newly flashed machine I created a very simple script, /etc/init.d/mount_usr, which takes care of loading the two needed modules and mounting /usr at boot time.

~ $ cat /etc/init.d/mount_usr 
insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/mbcache.ko
insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/ext2.ko
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /usr/
mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /home/

I created the customary symbolic links:

~ $ ls -l /etc/rc?.d/???mount_usr | cut -b57-
/etc/rc2.d/S10mount_usr -> ../init.d/mount_usr
/etc/rc3.d/S10mount_usr -> ../init.d/mount_usr
/etc/rc4.d/S10mount_usr -> ../init.d/mount_usr
/etc/rc5.d/S10mount_usr -> ../init.d/mount_usr

and that was it actually... I reboot the system and started using.

here is how my machine looks like now:

~ $ df | grep ^/
/dev/mtdblock4            2048      2048         0 100% /mnt/initfs
/dev/mtdblock4          257536    189760     67776  74% /
/dev/mmcblk0p1          908816    291584    469472  31% /usr
/dev/mmcblk0p2         3046516    522056   2524460  17% /home

further tests...

first of all, thanks for your comments.

next: I've decided to repartition to:

keep /home also on its own 1G partition
reserve 2G vfat to mount as /media/mmc2

what I found next?

if you are going to try this yourself, you obviously must copy your old /home to the new location! you do this by starting the N800 without the MMC, insert it after startup, mount the new file system somewhere of your choice (say /mnt/temp) and then copy the files from /home:

mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/mmcblkop3 /mnt/home
cp -a /home/* /mnt/home

now edit the /etc/init.d/mount_usr script, adding the line

mount /dev/mmcblk0p3 /home

... in the same script, just before mounting the new home, I also added two (maybe a bit dangerous) lines meant to make some space in the internal memory. This is my complete script:

sancho:~# cat /etc/init.d/mount_usr 
insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/mbcache.ko
insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/ext2.ko
# rm -fr /home/*    # dangerous
# mkdir /home/user  # needed if you uncomment the above line
mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /usr/
mount /dev/mmcblk0p3 /home/

my machine at the moment:

/dev/mtdblock4            2048      2048         0 100% /mnt/initfs
/dev/mtdblock4          257536    100588    156948  39% /
/dev/mmcblk0p2         1032088    279032    700628  28% /usr
/dev/mmcblk0p3          844580     48888    752788   6% /home
/dev/mmcblk0p1         2093048    611500   1481548  29% /media/mmc2

which starts looking like a real system...

todo

excluding from mount

there's a problem with mounting or not mounting each of the file systems when the N800 is connected via USB to a "real" pc. you need to alter /usr/sbin/osso-mmc-umount.sh, it's a script which accepts a file system or mount point, u-mounts it and returns an exit code. I've altered it so:

...
grep "$MP " /proc/mounts | grep "^/media/" > /dev/null
if  $? = 0 ; then
  grep "$MP " /proc/mounts > /dev/null
  if  $? = 0 ; then
    umount $MP 2> /dev/null
    RC=$?
  else
    # it is not mounted
    RC=0
  fi
else
  RC=0
fi
...

and if I couple the N800 to a MacOSX machine, it behaves perfectly. if I connect it to a Linux machine, this will mount also my /usr and /home, which is not exactly what I want... I haven't got a videogame to test that, too.

concurrent access from XTerm

something strange... while I'm connected to a pc, the File Manager will not see the /media/mmc2 partition, regardless of its mounted/unmounted condition on the pc... but if I open an XTerm, I can see the /media/mmc2 partition, read its files... does it happen also on a "plain" N800?

effects on battery duration

I have the impression -but I did not make serious measurements- that with this configuration a battery charge lasts shorter. this would be consistent with the behaviour of my "old" Palm TX, which gives up reading from the SD card when battery charge is low.

MaemoGtk26Contributions

Niels Breet — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:17:08 +0000

Note: This page is now being maintained at http://live.gnome.org/Maemo/Gtk26Contributions

SettingUpNFS

Juha Kallioinen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:03:43 +0000

IT OS2008 / Diablo

This chapter shows an example of how to set up your N800/N810 as an NFS client.

These instructions are valid for IT OS2008 and Diablo, which was released in June 2008.

The prerequisites are:

you must be able to access the device as root.
repository.maemo.org diablo/tools is in your apt sources list.

The first requirement can be fulfilled in a number of ways (RD mode, becomeroot or openssh server). My favorite is the ssh approach, since then I can utilize my PC's keyboard for entering all the commands.

The second is achieved by adding repository.maemo.org / diablo/tools / free non-free to the Application manager catalogue or by editing /etc/apt/sources.list accordingly.

During this process we're going to need to install a few extra packages and load some kernel modules. Once we're done, your device will be ready to do NFS mounts.

The following packages will be needed; kernel-diablo-modules-extra, nfs-common and portmap.

kernel-diablo-modules-extra contains the necessary kernel modules
nfs-common contains other tools
portmap contains the protocol port number conversion server that is needed for NFS.

This is a log of how I performed the install:

$ ssh  -l root
root@'s password: 

BusyBox v1.6.1 (2008-05-22 10:32:35 EEST) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

Nokia-N810:~# apt-get install kernel-diablo-modules-extra
Nokia-N810:~# apt-get install nfs-common    

# Now it's time to load the kernel modules. The order is important:
Nokia-N810:/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/extra# insmod sunrpc.ko
Nokia-N810:/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/extra# insmod lockd.ko
Nokia-N810:/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/extra# insmod nfs.ko

# The device is ready, now just mount your NFS partition:
Nokia-N810:~# mkdir /mnt/mountpoint
Nokia-N810:~# mount -t nfs :/some/directory /mnt/mountpoint

That should do it! For the mount to work, your NFS host needs to be configured correctly and that's out of the scope of this wiki page. Just be wary of the user id mappings etc. if you want to use the mountpoint as a non-root user.

IT OS2008 / Chinook

This chapter shows an example of how to set up your N800/N810 as an NFS client.

These instructions are valid for IT OS2008 and Chinook, which was released in November 2007.

The prerequisites are:

you must be able to access the device as root.
repository.maemo.org is in your apt sources list.

The second is achieved by adding repository.maemo.org / chinook / free non-free to the Application manager catalogue or by editing /etc/apt/sources.list accordingly.

During this process we're going to need to install a few extra packages and load some kernel modules. Once we're done, your device will be ready to do NFS mounts.

The following packages will be needed; rx-34-kernel-modules-extra, nfs-common and portmap.

rx-34-kernel-modules-extra contains the necessary kernel modules
nfs-common contains other tools
portmap contains the protocol port number conversion server that is needed for NFS.

This is a log of how I performed the install:

$ ssh  -l root
root@'s password: 

BusyBox v1.6.1 (2007-09-27 18:08:59 EEST) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

Nokia-N810:~# apt-get install rx-34-kernel-modules-extra
Nokia-N810:~# apt-get install portmap
Nokia-N810:~# apt-get install nfs-common    

# Now it's time to load the kernel modules. The order is important:
Nokia-N810:/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/extra# insmod sunrpc.ko
Nokia-N810:/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/extra# insmod lockd.ko
Nokia-N810:/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/extra# insmod nfs.ko

# The device is ready, now just mount your NFS partition:
Nokia-N810:~# mkdir /mnt/mountpoint
Nokia-N810:~# mount -t nfs :/some/directory /mnt/mountpoint

IT OS2007

This chapter shows an example of how to set up your N800 as an NFS client.

These instructions are valid for the IT OS 2007 (version 4.2007.26-8), which was released in June 2007 for the N800 device.

The prerequisites are:

you must be able to access the device as root.
repository.maemo.org is in your apt sources list.

The second is achieved by adding repository.maemo.org / bora / free non-free to the Application manager catalogue or by editing /etc/apt/sources.list accordingly.

During this process we're going to need to install a few extra packages and load some kernel modules. Once we're done, your device will be ready to mount NFS partitions from another computer.

The following packages will be needed; portmap, rx-34-kernel-nfs-modules, nfs-common. However, nfs-common is currently broken and it needs to be installed by hand instead of apt-get or the application manager.

portmap contains the protocol port number conversion server that is needed for NFS.
rx-34-kernel-nfs-modules contains the necessary kernel modules
nfs-common contains other tools

This is a recording of how I installed the packages and kernel modules:

$ ssh  -l root
root@'s password: 

BusyBox v1.4.1 (2007-03-12 19:00:25 EET) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

Nokia-N800-26:~# apt-get install rx-34-kernel-nfs-modules
Nokia-N800-26:~# apt-get install portmap

# I'm installing wget just to get the nfs-common binary package to bypass
# the dependency problems with it
Nokia-N800-26:~# apt-get install wget

Nokia-N800-26:~# wget http://repository.maemo.org/pool/bora/free/binary/nfs-common_1.0.6-3.1sdk1_armel.deb
Nokia-N800-26:~# ls -l
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        60744 Jul  4 12:30 nfs-common_1.0.6-3.1sdk1_armel.deb

# Unpack the deb file to a temporary directory
Nokia-N800-26:~# dpkg -x nfs-common_1.0.6-3.1sdk1_armel.deb nfstmp

Nokia-N800-26:~# cd nfstmp
Nokia-N800-26:~/nfstmp# ls -l
drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root            0 Aug 31 13:39 etc
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            0 Aug 31 13:39 sbin
drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root            0 Aug 31 13:39 usr
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root            0 Aug 31 13:39 var

# Remove documentation to save some space on the device
Nokia-N800-26:~/nfstmp# rm -rf usr/share/man/ usr/share/doc/

# Copy the rest of the directories to root
Nokia-N800-26:~/nfstmp# cp -r etc sbin usr var /
Nokia-N800-26:~/nfstmp# cd /lib/modules/current/
Nokia-N800-26:/lib/modules/current# ls -l
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         5922 Dec  5  2006 exportfs.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        72921 Dec  5  2006 lockd.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       263290 Dec  5  2006 nfs.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       109606 Dec  5  2006 nfsd.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       153963 Dec  5  2006 sunrpc.ko

# Now it's time to load the kernel modules. The order is important:
Nokia-N800-26:/lib/modules/current# insmod sunrpc.ko
Nokia-N800-26:/lib/modules/current# insmod lockd.ko
Nokia-N800-26:/lib/modules/current# insmod nfs.ko

# The device is ready, now just mount your NFS partition:
Nokia-N800-26:~# mkdir /mnt/mountpoint
Nokia-N800-26:~# mount -t nfs :/some/directory /mnt/mountpoint

IT OS2006

For the 770 / maemo 2.x see HowToNFS 06.

WikiReorg

Dave Neary — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:39:13 +0000

The content of this wiki are being migrated to a Media Wiki

The pages in the sections "Pages to keep/edit", "Official documentation" and "Duplicated pages" will be migrated to the new wiki, according to the categorisation guidelines for the new wiki.

Pages from other sections will be left here, this wiki will be locked down, and they can be migrated to the new wiki and edited as and when necessary.

The pages to be migrated should all be added to the Category:MidgardWiki until they have been revised and brought up to a decent editorial standard.

Here is a list of all of the current pages in the wiki as of 2008-05-15.

All orphan pages will not be transferred to MediaWiki. Also, pages on PagesToDelete will be deleted.

Pages to keep/edit

These pages need to be moved to the new wiki, and perhaps edited.

"Unofficial" pages

wiki
HowTo Support2gbmmc
TabletUsersInTheSocialWeb
Security
DebianArmel on IT - Needs to be updated
PerformanceOptimization
ExtrasRepositoryProcessDefinition
mono
ServerBrowserAppDevelopment - Looks like something to keep

Official documentation

Pages that probably should be better in the Development section.

ApiChangesSciroccoBoraHerring
HildonDesktopMigration is about migration from IT OS 2006 to 2007. Does this go to GNOME as well? If staying, should be under Documentation.
ApplicationRepositories
ApplicationManagerRedPillMode
HOWTO UseTouchscreenPressureData
Nokia 770 Hardware Specification
Nokia 800 Hardware Specification
Nokia 810 Hardware Specification
howto_installing_maemo_sdk_4_beta

Pages already migrated to MediaWiki

MaemoTraining
SubversionRepository
ReportingRebootIssues - could be moved to a Bugzilla "reporting bugs" page, perhaps?
ProjectMailingLists
LinuxTag2008
HOWTO FlashLatestNokiaImagewithLinux
HOWTO FlashLatestNokiaImagewithMacOSX
SardineGettingStarted & HowTo GetStartedWithSardine - There is no documentation about Sardine under Development at the moment.
DeveloperTools
HowDoIBecomeRoot - to merge with HowDoIBecomeRoot2
WifiPSM
howtostreamvideo
HowToGetMediaContentOntoYourTablet
PlayingOggFiles
BluetoothDUN
HowTo BootRootFSFromMMC and ExtendedRootFilesystem - to merge with Howto_Easily_Boot_From_Mmc_Card
SettingUpNFS
HowToAccessWindowsCIFS
HowToUseValgrindGdbInScratchbox
PersistentBluetooth
UsbNetworking and USBnetworkingWinXP (merged)
BluetoothNetworkingAndConnectionManager
ModifyingRootImage
maemotrainingaddones is a redirect to maemotrainingaddons
FrequentlyAskedQuestions
RealVideoStreams
VideoEncoding - Needs a tiny bit of updating
FMRadioProgramming
BluetoothKeyboards
DSPProgramming
X11ExtensionTutorial
GameDevelopment
JavaLanguage
MyDocs
MaemoWithJhbuild
QuestionsForNokia
DocumentationWanted - could be useful
MaemoGarageStartUp
PackageBuildingWithoutLinuxUsingPyPackager

Pages from here down not to be migrated to MediaWiki

Really outdated pages

Pages that contain information that is mostly not valid nowadays. At least we should put this clear in the content page (quick solution). Of course the good solution is to update the page or get of rid completely if it's deprecated.

Can we get rid completely of the application catalog related pages? Now we have http://downloads.maemo.org for that.
- The applications catalog should be removed, in my opinion. They're rarely used and hard to maintain. http://downloads.maemo.org is much better and should be used.

tvogel: Currently, many entries on downloads.maemo.org are missing .install files and are lacking the download locations of the binary debs. Often they just link to the main application sites, not to the port's site, so currently the Wiki pages still contain more and crucial information.

ApplicationCatalog2007
ApplicationCatalog2007Wishlist
ApplicationCatalog2006
ApplicationCatalog2006Planned
ApplicationCatalog2006Wishlist
ApplicationCatalog2006Wip
ApplicationCatalog
ApplicationCatalogPlanned
ApplicationCatalogWip
ApplicationRepositoriesSourceList
Bluetooth PAN Proposal
DebianArmel on IT - There are better ways now
- Do we care about Opera?
- I don't, but some may. These pages could be merged in a sort of Opera "Tips 'n Tricks".
- DN: Suggest leaving these here and not caring about Opera myself.
ChangeUserAgentInOpera
EnableRefererInOpera
OptimiserOpera
FlashApplications - Flash on 770
ScrollInOperaWithThumb
- Maybe a Python index/"catch all" article?
PythonMaemo
UsefulPythonModules
- Possible to have a Scratchbox section for Porting/Packaging? (Doing so would get more people involved with getting apps out)
PortingFromX86ToARM
ScalabilityBrainStorming
ReleaseNaming
Known Issues - Maybe this could be a good collaboration with bugs.maemo.org?
RecentChanges - Maybe find out if request to have "RecentChanges" functionality accepted by midgard-project.org.
roadmap - not complete but I am leaving it up to higher to decide whether its worth while to keep/update or delete.
RdMode - Update?
MaemoGtk210Overview
OpenEmbedded
Nokia_770_installed_software
HowtoSynergy770
InstallOpenVPN
InstallVPNC
internettabletvideoconverter
MaemoRepositoryProposal - outdated by garage.maemo.org/downloads
N800DeveloperDeviceProgram
GoogleSoC2007
MaemoMapper - Should be moved to garage
HowToNFS 06
HowTo EASILY BecomeRoot
HowTo EnableThumbAndSoftFloat
geoclue
DummyIAP
Easy USB Host Hub setup
EnableMic
Flasher tool usage
ImprovementIdeasForOssoRssFeedReader - We have the bug tracker for this anyways
IthelogKotona - Moved to garage and old
LibraryCatalog
MaemoGtk210Changes - now maintained at (http://live.gnome.org/Maemo/Gtk210Changes)
maemogtk210changesstage1 - now maintained at (http://live.gnome.org/Maemo/Gtk210Changes)
MaemoGtk210Migration - now maintained at (http://live.gnome.org/Maemo/Gtk210Migration)
maemogtk26contributions - now maintained at (http://live.gnome.org/Maemo/Gtk26Contributions)
maemogtk26rationales - now maintained at (http://live.gnome.org/Maemo/Gtk26Rationales)
maemogtkbackports
maemogtkcontributions
maemogtkroadmap
maemoreleasesrepositoriesdistros
maemotrainingideas
PeopleWhoWantStuff
RoadmapWishlist - deprecated by "Maemo in 2010"
SpotYah
TeXing
UsefulLinks
WebAppsOnIT - Hasn't been updated in a while. Do we need something like this?
- WiFiLocalization just links to WiFiLocation which should be dropped. Looks like a dead project.
VNCviewer

Magic pages and semi magic pages

PagesToDelete add pages here to get someone to kill them
LocalSpellingWords theoretically influences some wiki spellchecker.
orphans find pages that should probably move to PagesToDelete

Probably irrelevant today

In some cases a page is currently irrelevant. If you find one of these let's list them here to figure out what to do with them.

AudioEncoding
BugsMaemoOrgReorg
CodeNames
CompilingVariousBuildDirs
DBusGuide
DebuggingBootSequence
DeveloperInfo - yet another developer portal page
FlashApplications
MaemoBofGuadec2006
MaemoUserInterfaceChecklist
Nokia 770 Installed Software
NonSoftwareRelatedRequests
operaweirdrememberlogin
OS2007on770 HackerEdition
os2007on770testedApps
OS2007TestedApplications
OS2007 Tested Applications
Os2007HackerEditionArchives
EnablingGstreamerSupport
ExternalBatteryPack
FlorianBoor
GustavoBarbieriDownloader
HowTo CreateSwap - OS2005/OS2006
HowTo DistUpgrade
HowTo HookEvents
HowTo InstallAptGet
improvementideasforossoemail
InputMethod - Do we need 770 stuff?
InstallSsh - OS2005
InstallSsh2006 - OS2006
KernelConfig
kernelrequirements
LithiumIonBatteryUsage
MultiMediaCard
PlanetMaemoFeedsINT
QuickPorting
RealPlaybackTips
The internet is worldwide
UserInterface - AN: I had a good laugh when I saw this page.
UserSections
VistaMax
Education
Car mounts

In other languages

Just an exercise to track pages in non-English that don't fall clearly in the previous categories (or we can't check because of lack of knowledge off the language).

French
Dutch
- SuperTux
Portuguese
Spanish
Hebrew
Russian
- RuMaemoDevelopmentPlatformRoadmap
- Ru FlashTheLatestNokiaImage
Italian
- Flashing del Nokia 770
- Flashing del Nokia n800
- Flashing del Nokia n810
- Eseguire file Ogg
- Realizzazione ed uso di un USB Host Hub
- Installazione di SSH server & client su un Nokia 770 (OS2006 edition)
- Connettere un modulo GPS bluetooth al Nokia 770
- Specifiche Hardware Nokia 770
- Specifiche Hardware Nokia n800
- Specifiche Hardware Nokia n810
- Editing del menu programmi
- Editing delle icone della barra menu laterale

Other observations

First impression: Much of the material on this wiki has the appearance of being dated and/or apply mostly to the n770 series device with just a sprinkling of n800 and even less n810.

Uncategorised

Maemo1.1Testing
Maemo1.2Testing
Maemo2.0Testing
Maemo2.1Testing
MaemoDevices
MaemoModules
MaemoWithJhbuild

xresponse

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:39:10 +0000

Description

Xresponse synthetizes X stylus events and outputs screen update sizes and their timestamps.

Xresponse can catch applications doing screen updates which are not done as a response to user input/request and updates of unnecessary parts of application UIs. These are detrimental to application performance and device use-time.

Xresponse can also be used to time the applications screen updates i.e. their response time.

The screen update areas are output in the "X geometry" format (WIDTH x HEIGHT + X + Y).

Packages

source: xresponse

binary: xresponse

Usage Examples

Monitoring screen updates

Xresponse can be used to monitor how large parts of the screen and how often an application is updating them. To run it in the screen update monitoring mode, use:

# xresponse -w 0 -i

Then just use the applications.

Timing application response / screen updates

Xresponse can synthetize stylus taps; just specify where they should happen with the -c option and how long Xresponse should wait for the screen updates before proceeding with the -w option:

# xresponse -w 5 -c 200x20

If you want to monitor only part of the screen, e.g. toolbar, you can give which area of the screen is monitored with the -m option:

# xresponse -m 800x80+0+400 -w 20 -c 650x430

(This is useful for example if an application like Browser can be updating the normal application area also without user interaction.)

To time application startup, open the Task Navigator application menu, synthetize a tap to the menu item starting the application and monitor the screen updates. With most applications the last screen update is the time when the application is fully initialized and ready for use.

Keypress simulation

Xresponse can also simulate pressing single keys and typing strings.

To simulate pressing the Tab key, entering the string 'Foobar' and pressing Enter with a pause of one second between the events:

# xresponse -w 1 -k Tab,100 -w 1 -t Foobar -w 1 -k Return,100

Notes

There are a few quirks with the order of the options. The -o or --logfile option has to be given as the first option for it to work.

Links

xresponse man page

diablo

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:17:37 +0000

The SDK tools documentation for maemo 4 Chinook is available from the diablo tools page:

http://maemo.org/development/tools/diablo.html

chinook

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:14:35 +0000

The SDK tools documentation for maemo 4 Chinook is available from the chinook tools page:

http://maemo.org/development/tools/chinook.html

sp-response-time

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:08:59 +0000

Description

sp-response-time monitors UI response times.

This application monitors keyboard and mouse/touchscreen events and calculates how long it takes when updates on the screen are done. This tool is designed for giving support on performance analysis when calculating UI response times against some performance requirements.

Packages

source: sp-response-time

binary: sp-response-time

Usage Examples

Running this in a Scratchbox target and opening up menus in the emulated device desktop results in output like this:

[sbox-i386: ~/] > ./sp-response-time -w 100

sp-response-time 0.0.8

Timestamp      : Info ([event(s), damage(s), update(ms), ]message) -------------
1213704219.115 : 1213704218.997, 1213704219.008, 11, "Event at 1213704218.997s. Update took 11ms."
1213704221.367 : 1213704221.190, 1213704221.200, 10, "Event at 1213704221.190s. Update took 10ms."
1213704223.718 : 1213704222.220, 1213704223.574, 1354, "Event at 1213704222.220s. Update took 1354ms."

Links

sp-response-time man page

valgrind

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:43:44 +0000

Description

Valgrind is an Open Source suite of tools for debugging and profiling Linux programs. It works only on x86 (and PPC).

Valgrind is a really powerful and easy to use tool that can save you a lot of debugging time.

Because Valgrind works by simulating the x86 processor and instrumenting the binaries on the fly, it can control the program execution completely. As a downsize it makes program execution 10-300 times slower than normally, depending on the used Valgrind tools (massif is the fastest, callgrind the slowest) and can take a huge amount of memory.

The tools available for Valgrind are:

Massif: run-time memory usage graph and hyperlinked allocation backtraces (allocation are sorted by time*size)
Memcheck: Detects memory access errors (writes to freed memory, reads from uninitialized memory) and memory leaks (process has lost a pointer to allocation). This reports less false positives than any other (Open Source) tool and can call gdb when the error happens
Cachegrind: Performance profiling which can be started and stopped at any moment and the results can be sorted according to instructions, cache hits etc.
Callgrind: Like Cachegrind, but stores also callgraph information (but can show only instruction counts). Works very well with the Kcachegrind UI.
Helgrind: Detects race conditions when (p)threaded programs access global data

Building Valgrind

Please note that in maemo environment we need to export G_SLICE="always-malloc" to avoid getting bogus leakage reports from Glib GSlice allocator (its TLS usage confuses Valgrind allocation tracking). If you build your own Valgrind version, you should use this setting when Valgrinding programs using Glib (e.g. all maemo UI apps).

Packages

source: valgrind

binary: valgrind

Usage Examples

See the maemo debugging guide for usage examples.

Links

valgrind man page

http://valgrind.org/

Valgrind tool-suite

Memcheck memory checker

Massif heap-profiler

Callgrind profiler

Helgrind data-race tracker

maemo debugging guide

doxygen

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:51:01 +0000

Description

Doxygen is a documentation system for C, C++, Java, Python and other languages.

Doxygen extracts comments from source code comments and it can generate online and offline documentation from them. Among the supported output formats are for example HTML, RTF and PDF.

Some of the maemo API documentation is published in Doxygen generated format.

Packages

source: doxygen (available in diablo/sdk repository)

binary: doxygen (available in diablo/sdk repository)

Usage Examples

Links

doxygen man page

http://www.doxygen.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxygen

maemo API documentation

Description

GTK-Doc is typically used to document the public C API of libraries. It has some special features that are useful in documenting signals and properties of GTK+ widgets and GObject classes. It can also be used to document application code.

Many of the maemo API documents have been generated with GTK-Doc.

Packages

source: gtk-doc-tools (available in diablo/sdk repository)

binary: gtk-doc-tools (available in diablo/sdk repository)

Usage Examples

Links

http://www.gtk.org/gtk-doc/

maemo API documentation

oprofile

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:18:41 +0000

Description

Oprofile is a low overhead system-wide profiler for linux. It can be used to find CPU usage bottlenecks in the whole system and within processes.

Packages

source: oprofile

binary: oprofile

Installing Oprofile

Configuring the device

In order to run oprofile on your device, the device's kernel needs to be oprofile-enabled. A pre-compiled kernel with oprofile support is provided in the kernel-diablo-oprofile package.

Getting a new kernel

The kernel package can be downloaded from the Diablo tools repository in scratchbox environment (in an ARM target) with the command

[sbox-arm: ~] > fakeroot apt-get install kernel-diablo-oprofile

This will install the kernel image to /usr/share/osso/kernels/

[sbox-arm: ~] > ls -l /usr/share/osso/kernels/
-rw-r--r--  1 user users 1543432 Apr 23 12:35 zImage-oprofile-diablo-200816

the numbers at the end of the filename resemble a date and will be different if the kernel has been updated since the writing of this document.

By copying the image to outside of the scratchbox chroot environment, you'll be able to easily access it when you're ready to flash the image.

[sbox-arm: ~] > cp /usr/share/osso/kernels/zImage-oprofile-diablo-200816 /tmp

Using the new kernel

There are two ways to use the kernel image. You can flash it to the device or you can just boot the device so that it uses this kernel until you reboot it again.

Option 1: Flashing the kernel

To flash your new kernel image, use the linux flasher utility (as root)
```
$ flasher -f --kernel /tmp/zImage-oprofile-diablo-200816 -R
```
Flashing just the kernel does not destroy your other data. After the flasher has finished, your device is ready for oprofile.
Option 2: Boot with the new kernel
```
$ flasher --load --boot --kernel /tmp/zImage-oprofile-diablo-200816
```
With the boot option the power cord has to be kept plugged in until you want to revert back to the previous kernel.

Restoring the normal kernel

After you are done with oprofile you can restore the normal kernel. How you do this depends on which one of the options above you used to load the oprofile kernel.

Option 1: You chose to flash the oprofile kernel

In this case the normal kernel needs to be re-flashed:
```
$ flasher -f --flash-only kernel -F <FIASCO image> -R


# The FIASCO image is the whole product image with a name like:
# RX-44_DIABLO_3.2008.17-8_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin
```
Note that just re-flashing the kernel part does not overwrite any of the other parts, so your data and settings will be intact.
Option 2: You chose to just boot with the new kernel

Restoring the old kernel is as easy as unplugging the power cable and power cycling the device.

Recognizing a suitable kernel

It's easy to see if your current kernel does not support oprofile by testing it with opcontrol:

Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol --status
modprobe: cannot parse modules.dep
modprobe: cannot parse modules.dep
Kernel doesn't support oprofile

Installing oprofile to the device

Providing that you have the Diablo tools repository in your APT sources.list, the easiest way to install oprofile is using apt.

Nokia-N810:~# apt-get install oprofile

This will also install binutils.

Installing debug symbols

In order to view any useful profiling information at functions level, you will have to install debugging symbols. Debugging symbols normally come with debugging (-dbg) packages. The easiest way to install all dbg packages required for a given binary is to use debug-dep-install script which comes with the maemo-debug-scripts package:

Nokia-N810:~# apt-get install maemo-debug-scripts
Nokia-N810:~# debug-dep-install /usr/bin/osso-xterm.launch

Usage

On the device, type:
```
Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol --init
Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol --no-vmlinux
Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol -e=CPU_CYCLES:100000
```
100000 indicates the number of CPU cycles between interrupts. Increasing this number lowers down the accuracy but decreases the CPU overhead. --no-vmlinux indicates we are not interested in the kernel or do not have an unstripped kernel image.
Start the usecase you are interested in and type:
```
Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol --start
```
When you've finished, type:
```
Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol --stop
```

Now you've collected the data.

Viewing profile reports

To see basic per-process picture, type opreport:

Nokia-N810:~# opreport
CPU: ARM11 PMU, speed 0 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CYCLES events (clock cycles counter) with a unit mask of 0x00 (No unit mask) count 100000
CPU_CYCLES:100000|
  samples|      %|
------------------
     1677 69.1546 no-vmlinux
      240  9.8969 libc-2.5.so
      230  9.4845 busybox
      215  8.8660 ld-2.5.so
       58  2.3918 oprofiled
    3  0.1237 ophelp
    2  0.0825 libcrypt-2.5.so

To see more detailed symbol analysis use opreport -l:

Nokia-N810:~# opreport -l|more
warning: /no-vmlinux could not be found.
BFD: /usr/lib/debug/lib/ld-2.5.so: warning: sh_link not set for section `.ARM.exidx'
BFD: /usr/lib/debug/lib/libc-2.5.so: warning: sh_link not set for section `.ARM.exidx'
CPU: ARM11 PMU, speed 0 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CYCLES events (clock cycles counter) with a unit mask of 0x00 (No unit mask) count 100000
samples  %        app name                 symbol name
1695     65.3179  no-vmlinux               (no symbols)
255       9.8266  busybox                  (no symbols)
222       8.5549  oprofiled                (no symbols)
43        1.6570  libc-2.5.so              strchr
37        1.4258  ld-2.5.so                check_match.0
32        1.2331  ld-2.5.so                do_lookup_x
17        0.6551  ld-2.5.so                _dl_relocate_object
17        0.6551  libc-2.5.so              _dl_addr
16        0.6166  ld-2.5.so                strcmp
14        0.5395  ld-2.5.so                _dl_lookup_symbol_x
13        0.5010  ld-2.5.so                __udivsi3
13        0.5010  ld-2.5.so                _dl_fixup
12        0.4624  libc-2.5.so              _int_malloc
10        0.3854  libc-2.5.so              strcmp
8         0.3083  ophelp                   (no symbols)
7         0.2697  libc-2.5.so              strpbrk
7         0.2697  libc-2.5.so              vfprintf

Profiling with callgraphs

Quite often a basic flat profile is useless. In such a cases a callgraph profile can be used. In order to profile code with callgraphs:

Add -fno-omit-frame-pointer to GCC options and recompile all the code (binaries, libraries) involved. You can do this without changing the package build rules by setting the appropriate scratchbox environment variable (documented in the Scratchbox installation /scratchbox/doc/variables.txt file) before re-building the packages:

[sbox-arm: ~] > export SBOX_BLOCK_COMPILER_ARGS="-fomit-frame-pointer"
[sbox-arm: ~] > export SBOX_EXTRA_COMPILER_ARGS="-fno-omit-frame-pointer"
[sbox-arm: ~] > cd package-1/
[sbox-arm: ~/package-1] > dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
[sbox-arm: ~/package-1] > cd ../package-2/
[sbox-arm: ~/package-2] > dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
...

Install re-built code and debug packages on the device

Init oprofile as usually, but add -c parameter:

Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol --init
Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol --no-vmlinux
Nokia-N810:~# opcontrol -e=CPU_CYCLES:100000 -c

Add -c to opreport:
```
Nokia-N810:~# opreport -l -c
```

Viewing reports from a PC

opreport -l, and especially opreport -c -l can take quite a long time (10 minutes) when fired up on N800/N810 devices. Therefore, it often makes sense to run opreport in scratchbox.

Configure scratchbox target in a way that its binaries and libraries 100% match the target's.
Collect profiling data as usual
Copy contents of /var/lib/oprofile from the device to the corresponding directory in scratchbox target.
in scratchbox, apt-get install maemo-debug-scripts (this may not be omitted)
install debug packages either with debug-dep-install or by hand

Note: the binaries and libraries in the scratchbox target must match what's in the device, otherwise you will get bogus results.

Oprofile with kcachegrind

kcachegrind is a useful GUI tool for viewing performance data interactively. It comes with many modern linux distros.

To use it:

Get the callgraph oprofile data (see above) and install the same packages also to scratchbox.
Copy the profile data to scratchbox session as described above.
install kcachegrind-converters package on HOST (debian, ubuntu)
in scratchbox: opreport -gdf | op2calltree (you might want to copy op2calltree script somewhere on target)
the resulting files can now be opened with kcachegrind on host, provided you set it to display ALL files (extensions are wrong)

Links

oprofile man page

xresponse-visualize

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:37:51 +0000

Description

xresponse-visualize is a set of scripts that can be used on the host/Scratchbox environment to visualize xresponse log files.

xresponse-convert: create a series of images from xresponse logs highlighting the area of the screen where changes were detected.
xresponse-visualize: animates images create with xresponse-convert

Packages

source: xresponse-visualize

binary: xresponse-visualize

Usage Examples

Notes

The recommended dependencies (imagemagick and python-pygame) for xresponse-visualize are not (yet) provided with the maemo SDK, but are expected to be found from the user's host system.

Links

xresponse-convert man page

xresponse-visualize man page

sp-memusage

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:36:22 +0000

Description

sp-memusage is a collection of memory usage monitoring tools and scripts.

mem-dirty-code-pages: prints out the dirty code pages allocated by the given processes
mem-monitor: prints out system memory usage at a given interval
mem-monitor-smaps: prints out the memory usage of a given process at a given interval
mem-smaps-private: prints out the private memory usage of a given process
run-with-mallinfo: run maemo applications under mallinfo
run-with-memusage: run maemo applications under memusage

Packages

source: sp-memusage

binary: sp-memusage, sp-memusage-dbg

Usage Examples

See respective man pages for usage examples and more info on each utility.

Links

mem-dirty-code-pages man page

mem-monitor man page

mem-monitor-smaps man page

mem-smaps-private man page

run-with-mallinfo man page

run-with-meminfo man page

improvementIdeas

Wiki

This wiki is now deprecated please use the new wiki.

Overview

Software updates

User interface

Multimedia

Communications

Hardware & peripherals

System services

Development

Misc

Planet Maemo / International Feed Collection

Maemo wiki

howto_keep_usr_apart

thoughts on partitioning your internal mmc card

editing policy: deprecated page on deprecated wiki.

further tests...

todo

excluding from mount

concurrent access from XTerm

effects on battery duration

MaemoGtk26Contributions

SettingUpNFS

IT OS2008 / Diablo

IT OS2008 / Chinook

IT OS2007

IT OS2006

WikiReorg

Pages to keep/edit

"Unofficial" pages

Official documentation

Pages already migrated to MediaWiki

Pages from here down not to be migrated to MediaWiki

Really outdated pages

Magic pages and semi magic pages

Probably irrelevant today

In other languages

Other observations

Uncategorised

xresponse

Description

Packages

Usage Examples

Monitoring screen updates

Timing application response / screen updates

Keypress simulation

Notes

Links

See Also

diablo

chinook

sp-response-time

Description

Packages

Usage Examples

Links

See Also

valgrind

Description

Building Valgrind

Packages

Usage Examples

Links

See Also

doxygen

Description

Packages

Usage Examples

Links

See Also

gtk-doc

Description

Packages

Usage Examples

Links

See Also

oprofile

Description

Packages