Mobile Pro 880 Successes with 4.0

[jscottkasten]

I've been using the MP880 with NetBSD 4.0 for about a year now as a home brew netbook.

If anyone is interested, I have approximately 200 binary packages built from PKGSRC 2007Q4.  This includes languages such as perl, python, ruby, etc.  Editors such as nano and vim-gtk2.  Web browsing with javascript enabled elinks, and dillo.  And some multimedia stuff such as mplayer.

With the right encoding parameters, one can have an MP4 video playing in the corner of the screen while typing an email in an xterm.

The developers have truly done some wonderful work on the 880 support as it is a very functional and reliable little beast.

Cheers,

-S-

[jscottkasten]

I would be more than happy to share these packages, however, I do not have a place to post them, and it is a lot of stuff.

We're talking about 250MB for each of the 4.0 and 2.1 builds.  If there is a place to put this stuff, someone please shoot me an off list email and I'll be glad to upload and post the public URL.

Cheers,

-S-


--- On Tue, 2/17/09, dereck <dereckhaskins@...> wrote:

>
> Hi - do you have these posted anywhere?  I'd be
> interested in your binary packages.
>
> thanks,
>
> Dereck
>

[Ben Hodgens]

Funny you should mention this today, as I just made a tarball of the pkgsrc
'packages' dir I made on/for my MobilePro 780 (essentially the same machine as
the 880) available yesterday:

http://benjamin.hodgens.net/files/packages-netbsd-4.0mipsel.2008.10.tgz

There aren't nearly as many packages available as you built, but as the file
name suggests, they're from 2008/10's 'current' pkgsrc. Here's a partial list:

epic4-2.2nb1
jed 0.99
mutt 1.4.2.3nb2
ncurses 5.6nb2
ncursesw 5.6nb2
lua 5.1.4
luafilesystem 1.4.1
antiword 0.37nb1
flwm 1.02
ion 20040729nb6
matchbox-wm 1.1
x11-links 0.39
matchbox-panel 0.9.2nb3
matchbox-themes-extra 0.3nb1
matchbox-wm 1.1
matchbox-desktop 0.9.1nb3

In my limited experience, this device simply doesn't have enough RAM to function
   with NetBSD 4.0, even with very minimalist non-console tools (X, ion, 3
xterms). There might be some pruning of the running processes, but even with
pretty much everything "off" it's still bumping up against the ceiling of the
32Mb. Though I did determine that ion is a wonderful window manager for a small
touchscreen such as the 780 has!

Regards,
Ben

jscottkasten@... wrote:

> I've been using the MP880 with NetBSD 4.0 for about a year now as a home brew netbook.
>
> If anyone is interested, I have approximately 200 binary packages built from PKGSRC 2007Q4.  This includes languages such as perl, python, ruby, etc.  Editors such as nano and vim-gtk2.  Web browsing with javascript enabled elinks, and dillo.  And some multimedia stuff such as mplayer.
>
> With the right encoding parameters, one can have an MP4 video playing in the corner of the screen while typing an email in an xterm.
>
> The developers have truly done some wonderful work on the 880 support as it is a very functional and reliable little beast.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -S-
>
>

--

Benjamin Hodgens
ben@...
Home: 605-343-8835
Cell: 605-201-0972

[jscottkasten]

Awesome...more toys...  :-)

Glad to see someone is working with the latest pkgsrc.  I'm kind of waiting for 5.0 to come out and make a clean sweep of things.

My own choice of window manager is WindowMaker.  I typically have about 3 or 4 xterms open, and about 5 doc apps going (clock, weather, audio mixer, etc).  I do have swap enabled on the CF.  There's lots of little things that add up to make a big difference in performance such as turning off atime on the mount, softdeps, and so forth.

I do see some significant lag when starting some apps, but when things settle down, it generally runs ok.

I'm curious how you do your builds.  I've had good luck using GXEMUL on some beastly desktop to brute force "native" builds for everything.

Regards,

-S-


--- On Tue, 2/17/09, Ben Hodgens <ben@...> wrote:

> Funny you should mention this today, as I just made a
> tarball of the pkgsrc 'packages' dir I made on/for
> my MobilePro 780 (essentially the same machine as the 880)
> available yesterday:
>
> http://benjamin.hodgens.net/files/packages-netbsd-4.0mipsel.2008.10.tgz
>
> There aren't nearly as many packages available as you
> built, but as the file name suggests, they're from
> 2008/10's 'current' pkgsrc. Here's a partial
> list:
>
> epic4-2.2nb1
> jed 0.99
> mutt 1.4.2.3nb2
> ncurses 5.6nb2
> ncursesw 5.6nb2
> lua 5.1.4
> luafilesystem 1.4.1
> antiword 0.37nb1
> flwm 1.02
> ion 20040729nb6
> matchbox-wm 1.1
> x11-links 0.39
> matchbox-panel 0.9.2nb3
> matchbox-themes-extra 0.3nb1
> matchbox-wm 1.1
> matchbox-desktop 0.9.1nb3
>
> In my limited experience, this device simply doesn't
> have enough RAM to function   with NetBSD 4.0, even with
> very minimalist non-console tools (X, ion, 3 xterms). There
> might be some pruning of the running processes, but even
> with pretty much everything "off" it's still
> bumping up against the ceiling of the 32Mb. Though I did
> determine that ion is a wonderful window manager for a small
> touchscreen such as the 780 has!
>
> Regards,
> Ben
>

[Andy Ruhl]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 12:53 PM,  <jscottkasten@...> wrote:
> I'm curious how you do your builds.  I've had good luck using GXEMUL on some beastly desktop to brute force "native" builds for everything.

I've been running 5.0_BETA and RCs on my Cobalt Qube for quite a
while, building software off of the current pkgsrc along the way. I
have quite a few of them as well. It's also mipsel.

I have 5.0 something on my Mobilepro 880 but I still have the nasty X
problem where it becomes unresponsive, and ctrl-alt-backspace dumps me
back to the console, which has a screwed up keyboard mapping so the
thing becomes unusable. Maybe I should build a newer version of X.

I don't build software on the Mobilepro, it's way too slow. I either
cross build on a desktop or just build stuff natively on my Cobalt and
use it on the Mobilepro.

Andy

[jscottkasten]

--- On Tue, 2/17/09, Andy Ruhl <acruhl@...> wrote:

> I have 5.0 something on my Mobilepro 880 but I still have
> the nasty X
> problem where it becomes unresponsive, and
> ctrl-alt-backspace dumps me
> back to the console, which has a screwed up keyboard
> mapping so the
> thing becomes unusable. Maybe I should build a newer
> version of X.

I too have seen this, but only in conjunction with certain apps.  I see this with xv for example.  If I ever right click to get the menu panel, everything is dead after the panel displays.  It also does that when I give xv a list of images and try to hot key to the next image in the list.  I've just leaned to use xv to display one image and exit without doing anything else.

-S-

[jscottkasten]

--- On Tue, 2/17/09, Andy Ruhl <acruhl@...> wrote:

> I don't build software on the Mobilepro, it's way
> too slow. I either
> cross build on a desktop or just build stuff natively on my
> Cobalt and
> use it on the Mobilepro.

I've read the pkgsrc hints at doing builds with a cross compiler.  Although most GNU configure tests will work with a cross compiler, there's still several that simply require running a native binary.  An example would be the byte alignment test in perl5 or libnet10.

Have you run into many issues using a cross compiler for pkgsrc builds?  I was strongly leaning toward that direction when I finally get around to doing my 5.0 userland as it would GREATLY speed things up.

-S-

[Ben Hodgens]

jscottkasten@... wrote:
> Awesome...more toys...  :-)
>
> Glad to see someone is working with the latest pkgsrc.  I'm kind of waiting for 5.0 to come out and make a clean sweep of things.

I seem to recall hearing that 5.0 is out; though I may be mistaken. :P

http://www.netbsd.org/changes/changes-5.0.html

> My own choice of window manager is WindowMaker.  I typically have about 3 or 4 xterms open, and about 5 doc apps going (clock, weather, audio mixer, etc).  I do have swap enabled on the CF.  There's lots of little things that add up to make a big difference in performance such as turning off atime on the mount, softdeps, and so forth.

I never delved too much into that, but I might pull it out again and see if I
can improve performance, just for the heck of it. I was largely deterred from
trying to dig too much deeper by the fact that 32Mb would always still result in
swapping on CF, and I didn't have a proper wireless card to make the machine
useful for my purpose - just an old 2Mbit Wavelan (no WEP) which will only work
when the APs I have are set to only allow connections at that speed.

> I do see some significant lag when starting some apps, but when things settle down, it generally runs ok.
>
> I'm curious how you do your builds.  I've had good luck using GXEMUL on some beastly desktop to brute force "native" builds for everything.

I tried that approach, actually. I ran into some very odd behavior where awk was
returning incorrect values during the pkgsrc build process (no error from awk
directly, just evaluating incorrectly resulting in the make to bust). I spent
probably a week trying to track that problem down and eventually gave up. I
tried it with both pmax (per the suggestion of the gxemul develper - great guy,
very helpful!) and the hpcmips ports (briefly). How'd you go about gxemul -
which port, etc.?

I ended up building natively on the MobilePro 780. I used an NFS mounted root
and swap on my file server. It took a while, but I was in no rush - and I didn't
have to worry about problems cropping up. :P

This MP 780 is a great device; I'm very tempted to get one of the StrongARM MP
900s - host and client USB, twice the RAM, and a faster processor, would make
the device very useful, I think. Throw in  wifi and ethernet cards and you've
got a nice little pentesting/travel admin machine.

- Ben

[Andy Ruhl]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 2:15 PM,  <jscottkasten@...> wrote:
> I've read the pkgsrc hints at doing builds with a cross compiler.  Although most GNU configure tests will work with a cross compiler, there's still several that simply require running a native binary.  An example would be the byte alignment test in perl5 or libnet10.
>
> Have you run into many issues using a cross compiler for pkgsrc builds?  I was strongly leaning toward that direction when I finally get around to doing my 5.0 userland as it would GREATLY speed things up.

I actually only cross build the kernel and userland. I started to
setup pkgsrc to do it, but it seems non trivial and my Cobalt isn't
really slow enough to make me want to pursue cross building pkgsrc. It
builds stuff quick enough and it's totally compatible with the
Mobilepro.

I have been building my own kernels and userland for the mobilepro for
a long time now. It's pretty quick and saves me from having to wait to
download stuff while I'm doing an upgrade. You can just stick an
install kernel on the CF card, point it to another machine on your
network or even a local directory for the .tgz files, and away you go.

Andy

[jscottkasten]

On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Ben Hodgens wrote:
>
> I seem to recall hearing that 5.0 is out; though I may be mistaken.
> :P

Time to fire up the ftp client then!

> I never delved too much into that, but I might pull it out again
> and see if I can improve performance, just for the heck of it. I
> was largely deterred from trying to dig too much deeper by the fact
> that 32Mb would always still result in swapping on CF, and I didn't
> have a proper wireless card to make the machine useful for my
> purpose - just an old 2Mbit Wavelan (no WEP) which will only work
> when the APs I have are set to only allow connections at that
> speed.

Choice of CF card makes a big difference too.  Some have horrible
performance.

> I tried that approach, actually. I ran into some very odd behavior
> where awk was returning incorrect values during the pkgsrc build
> process (no error from awk directly, just evaluating incorrectly
> resulting in the make to bust). I spent probably a week trying to
> track that problem down and eventually gave up. I tried it with
> both pmax (per the suggestion of the gxemul develper - great guy,
> very helpful!) and the hpcmips ports (briefly). How'd you go about
> gxemul - which port, etc.?

Can't say that I've seen the awk problem.  The two things that I have run
into are that unaligned accesses in the simulation hose the emulator, and
I have sometimes run into some sort of timer/counter issue where the
kernel clock stops.  There are a handful of packages that explicitly test
unaligned accesses and I have to go hack that test out before building
those things.  The NetBSD kernel is apparently well known to have some
defects in timer handling that occasionally cause odd problems like
having the system clock count backward.  I think emulation brings some of
those to the forefront.  This of course can cause make to implode.

I have been using the hpcmips port with the generic kernel for my GXEMUL
sessions.  I did recently consider switching to PMAX or perfhaps the
Cobalt port for that though as GXEMUL supports a virtual NIC device for
those targets.  That could make getting the build sources into the
emulator much easier.

> I ended up building natively on the MobilePro 780. I used an NFS
> mounted root and swap on my file server. It took a while, but I was
> in no rush - and I didn't have to worry about problems cropping up.
> :P

I did something like that way back in the Agenda VR3 days before I finally
had a good cross build system working.

> This MP 780 is a great device; I'm very tempted to get one of the
> StrongARM MP 900s - host and client USB, twice the RAM, and a
> faster processor, would make the device very useful, I think. Throw
> in  wifi and ethernet cards and you've got a nice little
> pentesting/travel admin machine.

I really like the 880 for similar reasons.  USB, PCMCIA and spare CF port,
etc.  Not to mention that decent sized touch screens are addictive over
mice or other pointers.  Recently, I was away from home for over a month,
living out of hotels and flying around on airplanes.  I took the 880 as my
only computer.  It served all my needs faithfully.

-S-

[jscottkasten]

--- On Tue, 2/17/09, Ben Hodgens <ben@...> wrote:

> > Choice of CF card makes a big difference too.  Some
> have horrible performance.
>
> This is a decently fast card. I don't have any
> benchmarks available for it, but I picked it specifically
> for its speed reviews. (Don't have it available at the
> moment to check, but I digress.) At any rate, CF is going to
> be slower than RAM any day. It wasn't so slow that it
> was unusable (better than heavy desktop swapping, TBH),
> it's just that it was constant and slightly noticeable -
> just enough to be an irritation.

Yes, vim-gtk2 thrashes a little more than I would like, and that's purely a memory and bloat issue.

> If you do give pmax a try, I would be very interested in
> hearing whether or not you run into the same (or similar)
> build oddities I did. (I was 100% fresh to NetBSD and pkgsrc
> at the time of my attempt, and had to grab the assistance of
> several someones in #netbsd on Freenode, if I recall
> correctly.)

If I do trod down that path, I'll certainly keep you posted.  Right now, I am really curious to explore cross build for pkgsrc with some direction towards seeing if a bulk build could actually be made to work.

I did run into one single C++ file that wasn't done after an entire week under GXEMUL.  I don't think it crashed or anything, but was actually taking that long to do.  I've seen a few C++ files that took an entire day to do, but eventually passed using the emulator.

> > I did something like that way back in the Agenda VR3
> days before I finally had a good cross build system working.
>
> Ouch! Didn't the VR3 have something like 8M RAM and a
> 60MHz MIPS processor?

YES!  It was 66MHz actually.  You can still get those things from Softfield in Canada, and the production units they sell actually have 16MB of RAM instead of the 8 that was in the developer units.
 

> There are a number of (Strong)ARM (PXA) based systems out
> there from 2000-2004 period which are very appealing, still:
> decent keyboards, good battery life/low power, minimalist
> hardware/solid-state, and a portable/small profile. The
> PSION Teklogix Netbook Pro is an additional example.
> Unfortunately, unlike the Jornadas which received so much
> attention, most of these devices have... tenuous *BSD or
> Linux support. In the case of the MP900 and netbook Pro,
> I've been unable to determine whether there actually is
> sufficient hardware support to pick one up off Ebay. :-/

I actually do have an old Zaurus 5500 that I play with sometimes.  You hit it right on the head... The state of development and support is a real issue for so many of the ARM devices.  Most of those running Linux are stuck back at an ancient 2.4 kernel, although I have seen some recent attempts and moderate success at bringing 2.6 to the 5500.  Many have no *BSD support at all.

> Hopefully we'll see these devices remade in a new
> generation. (No, those klunky, hot x86 Eees don't
> qualify - though the Vaio P comes closer.)

Agreed.  :)

Actually, in the vein, have you, or anyone else here looked at the Skytone ALPHA-400?  It's based on an interesting Chinese MIPS SOC CPU.  It's 366MHz, 128MB RAM, and various sizes of on board flash from 1 - 4 GB.  They include an SD slot and lots of USB ports.  You have a choice of Linux 2.4 or WinCE apparently.  Whats also interesting is that this MIPS processor has SIMD extensions and they have what appears to be a proprietary full screen video player app for it that takes advantage of the HW accelerators.

Plug Skytone ALPHA-400 into wikipedia and follow the links at the bottom.  I've seen them on eBay for about $130 or so.

Cheers,

-S-