Revision as of 09:07, 4 February 2012

Installing Nemo

These instructions should guide you through installing Nemo Mobile on your desired device. The first thing you should do is visit our repository and download the latest image for your platform.

The First Boot

The first boot of Nemo on your N900/N950 is likely to be quite slow, so be patient for it to load completely, once loaded, reboot the phone and Nemo should be far more responsive.

Root Password

By default, the root password for Nemo is "nemo" (it used to bel "me ego" in the older images). Password can also be found in the .ks file, in the same directory you downloaded the image from.

Nokia N900

IT IS RECOMMENDED YOU READ THIS THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU FLASH YOUR DEVICE

Installing Nemo Mobile on the N900 is relatively simple, in nearly all cases it is installed on the external MicroSD card, so that will be what this guide will be focusing on.

• What you will need:
  • A Nokia N900, updated to PR 1.3.
  • A MicroSD card with a capacity of at least 4GiB (more notes on this below)
  • U-Boot (installed on the phone[more on this below])
  • Either a Windows or Linux PC
  • And the image, for N900, the filename of the file you will want will look like:

 nemo-handset-armv7hl-n900-testing-X.XXXXXXXX.X.NEMO.XXXX-XX-XX.X-mmcblk0p.raw.bz2

• Nemo generally runs well off the MicroSD card, probably better than from the internal eMMC, depending on some of the following factors:
  • Speed/Class of the MicroSD card; a class 10 card should provide adequate performance, though note that the classes aren't a guarantee of performance.
  • Quality/brand of the card; some cards have issues with the N900 and offer slow performance due to I/O errors.
  • If reading reviews/benchmarks of cards before buying, look at the ones with the highest random read/write, not sequential.

Update with the current latest Nemo kernel (Jan 26 2012) there are issues with proper initialization of the SD card due to a potential kernel bug (race condition) together with the Pali version of u-boot. This has been confirmed on at least Samsung cards (8 GB class 6 and CLass 10 by Netweaver and Flocke000), also on others (unknown brand, by Pali and plipp). Bug report is entered. [1]

• U-boot is installed on the N900 through the Hildon Application Manager
  • Enable the extras-devel repository.
  • In the Hildon Application Manager, install the U-Boot package, found in "System" category. (The package is 'uboot-pr13' at the time of writing)
  • Verify the package has been installed correctly by rebooting your N900, at start-up there will be mention of U-Boot and possibly a penguin logo.
  • Once verified installed, disable the extras-devel repository to prevent applications being updated to development versions.

Linux

The process of installing the Nemo image to your MicroSD card is quite straight forward. Firstly, decompress the raw image file you have downloaded and put it somewhere easy to remember, if you do not have enough room to decompress the image, used the alternative last command. Insert the card into the card reader, your distribution will probably automatically mount it, so we must first find where it is mounted with:

 sudo mount

Note: Below /dev/sdX is used as an example and may vary, so use the mount point listed from the mount output Then, unmount it with:

 sudo umount /dev/sdX

Once you have confirmed which device it is, and unmounted it it is time to copy the image to the MicroSD card using dd:

 sudo dd bs=4096 if=file/directory_goes_here of=/dev/sdX

Note: "if=" is the input file and "of=" is the output file/location, since we are copying it to the MicroSD card, we put its location here, and since it contains a partition table, we don't specify which partition it is written to. EG: /dev/sdX, not /dev/sdX1

If you have insufficient space to decompress the image[or some other reason not to decompress it], use this command on the .bz2 file, rather than the .raw image file contained:

 bzcat directory/file_goes_here.bz2 | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sdX

DD will not show any output until the image has been completely written, so please be patient. (You can, however, press Ctrl+t or pipe trough 'pv' [2] to get information about the progress.) Example :

 dd bs=4096 if=file/directory_goes_here | pv -s 3816M | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sdX

Once it has been copied to the MicroSD card, you can remove it from your card reader and put it in your N900. Booting the N900 with the card present, the rear cover in place, the MicroSD card inserted and U-Boot correctly installed should result in Nemo Mobile booting.

Windows

The process of installing the Nemo image to your MicroSD card on windows is also quite straight forward.

• First, extract the .bz2 image, if you don't have any software to do so, you can use Bzip2 for Windows.
  • Download Bzip2 for Windows from here, choosing the first option, to download the setup without the sources.
  • Install Bzip2 for Windows
  • Open run by pressing 'Windows Key + R' and type cmd, press enter to open the command prompt.
  • Navigate to where bzip2.exe was installed and run the command 'bzip2.exe directory/file_goes_here.bz2 '
• The extracted image file will have the extension .raw, but the program we use to write the image doesn't associate with this extension, so right click the file and choose rename, and replace the .raw with .img
• Download the image writer from here, choosing the latest release of the binary [the first download link].
• Extract the contents of the .zip to a known directory.
• Run the .exe labled 'W32DiskImager.exe'
• Select the Nemo Image file
• Select the drive letter/mount point for the MicroSD card [please verify this is the correct device]
• Click 'Write' to begin writing the image to the MicroSD card.

Once it has been copied to the MicroSD card, you can remove it from your card reader and put it in your N900. Booting the N900 with the card present, the rear cover in place, the MicroSD card inserted and U-Boot correctly installed should result in Nemo Mobile booting.

Nokia N950

IT IS RECOMMENDED YOU READ THIS THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU FLASH YOUR DEVICE

• You will need:
  • Nokia Harmattan Flash Tool from here.
  • The MOSLO bootloader rootfs available here.
  • An N950 that can flash the MOSLO, 34 and 39 work.
  • Adequate knowledge/skills for what you are doing as THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE OFFERED WITHOUT WARRANTY.
  • A Linux OS
  • The Nemo image for the N950, the filename of the file you will want will look like:

 nemo-handset-armv7hl-n950-testing-X.XXXXXXXX.X.NEMO.XXXX-XX-XX.X.tar.bz2

Linux

• Before you begin, assure the device lock is disabled (Settings>Security>Device Lock>Autolock)
• Additionally, before installing the bootloader, boot into Harmattan at least once and wait for it to fully load (2-4 mins).
• Make sure your device is fully charged before beginning.
  • Power off your N950, disconnecting the USB/Charger cable.
  • Run the flasher, pointing it at your MOSLO image:

 sudo flasher -F moslo-rootfs-X.XXXX.XX-X_RM680-OEM1-XX_X.X.XX-XX.X.bin -f

• The flasher will now be ready to program your device, waiting for it to be connected.
  • Connect your N950, it should begin flashing, wait for ti to finish flashing. DO NOT DISCONNECT WHILE FLASHING
  • Do not disconnect. Read next steps.
  • After flashing MOSLO, boot the device by disconnecting, then immediately re-connecting the USB cable. You will see a warning, then the MOSLO welcome screen (green text). Wait for the text "Rootfs now exported via USB"
    • If your device doesn't proceed to the MOSLO screen after flashing MOSLO, let it proceed into Harmattan then power down the device, waiting a short time before reconnecting it to the USB.
  • Your OS may automount the drive, unmount it with [do not 'eject' it from the OS:

 sudo umount mount_point_here_eg_/dev/sdX

• • Then, reformat the device (not just one parition) with:

 sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX

• • You will see a warning about it being the entire device, not just one partition, check you have the correct device, then proceed, this is expected.
  • Now mount your newly formatted partition with the following:

 sudo mkdir -p /media/_choose_your_mountpoint_here_
 sudo mount /dev/sdX /media/_above_chosen_mountpoint_here_

• • Now extract your Nemo image to your N950 with:

 sudo tar --numeric-owner -xf directory/nemo-handset-armv7hl-n950-testing-X.XXXXXXXX.X.NEMO.XXXX-XX-XX.X.tar.bz2 -C /media/_above_chosen_mountpoint_here_

• • After extracting it, safely unmount/eject the partition before removing the USB cable:

 sudo umount /media/_above_chosen_mountpoint_here_

The device should automatically boot to Nemo after removing the USB cable, however, if it doesn't, hold the power button and turn it on. You will be shown a disclaimer, then briefly the MOSLO screen, after this, wait until the desktop appears.

FAQ

If you have installation problems, you can post them here. More help on IRC Chatroom @ irc.freenode.net ~ #mer and #nemomobile and on our Mailing lists.