Getting Started

Revision as of 15:04, 16 July 2012

This page will to get you started with a custom Mer 'product' using one of the more popular hacker-friendly pieces of hardware.

Introduction

First some terminology; Mer is a core OS for vendors who want to make products. So

a product; is a mix of Mer Core, a HW adaptation and a UX

a UX; is the graphical user interface or the "User Experience"

a HW Adaptation; is the tailored kernel, modules, GLES drivers etc built for a specific device

Get started

Prerequisites:

a MeeGo Community OBS account
Install the Mer Platform SDK
Familiarity with 'osc' (See http://wiki.meego.com/Getting_started_with_OBS)
One of the following devices

* N900
* ExoPC
* ...

Summary

We will:

Build a minimal image using pre-prepared packages
Boot the device
See the UX
Connect using ssh
Copy the supplied UX package
Modify the .ks
Rebuild the image
Boot the device
See the modified UX

Create sample image for your device

These steps will download everything needed for the image into a format suitable for installing on the device.

N900

mkdir n900
cd n900
curl -O  https://raw.github.com/lbt/mer-minimal/master/n900/minimal-n900.ks

The N900 can run USB and wifi networking. Setting up USB0 via the .ks is not yet complete.

For wifi edit the .ks and set the SSID name and passphrase; if you have a local dyndns then setting the HOSTNAME works.

I do this and use the modified .ks in the mic command.

 sed -e's/<WPA2 passphrase>/MyWPAPhrase/;s/<SSID NAME>/MySSID/;s/localhost.localdomain/MYHOST/;' minimal-n900.ks > minimal-n900.ks-phrased

sudo mic create raw minimal-n900.ks --record-pkgs=name --pkgmgr=yum --arch=armv7hl --compress-disk-image=bz2 -o .

If you want to explore the rootfs before flashing (or for debugging purposes):

sudo mic create fs minimal-n900.ks --record-pkgs=name --pkgmgr=yum --arch=armv7hl -o root

To install the image to the device first see the Nemo N900 installation instructions and then the image writing instructions.

ExoPC

mkdir exopc
cd exopc
curl -O  https://raw.github.com/lbt/mer-minimal/master/exopc/minimal-exopc.ks

The exopc runs wifi networking.

For wifi edit the .ks and set the SSID name and passphrase; if you have a local dyndns then setting the HOSTNAME works.

I do this and use the modified .ks in the mic command.

 sed -e's/<WPA2 passphrase>/MyWPAPhrase/;s/<SSID NAME>/MySSID/;s/localhost.localdomain/MYHOST/;' minimal-exopc.ks > minimal-exopc.ks-phrased

sudo mic create raw minimal-exopc.ks=phrased --record-pkgs=name --pkgmgr=yum --arch=i686 -o .

To install the image to the device see the x86 installation instructions. Once installed you should be able to boot from the USB stick and ssh in.

Once installed the installer-shell command should copy from the liveusb to the hard-disk.

Networking

N900/N950 + USB

ExoPC + Wifi

RasPi + Ethernet

VM + virtual interface

Next steps

Use your own UX code + repos

osc copypac home:lbt:Mer:UX mer-not-a-ux home:$USER

Change the code and rebuild the package

Change the .ks to point to your repo

Creating ks from .yaml

sudo zypper in mer-kickstarter-configs

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 * One of the following devices
   * N900
+ * ExoPC
   * ...