Nokia Internet Tablet

I have ported several packages for the Nokia Internet Tablet Maemo environment. Most of the packages I have built are intended to make their way into the extras-devel and, eventually, extras repositories. The status of the packages I have built is shown below.

I also maintain three repositories: user, daily, experimental. Click on the repository name for more information on those.

Please note that the main packages (but not the additional libraries and other dependencies) include updated maintainer information with my email address. Please contact me initially with any problems with these packages before disturbing the Debian developer.

The main packages I have ported are:

Some miscellaneous packages are described here.

Tinc

tinc is a lightweight VPN which I use. The packages are based on the Debian unstable tinc package.

One additional feature is that tinc can be configured to bring tinc networks up and down as connections go up and down. If you want to use this feature you need to create files in /etc/tinc listing the networks which are associated with each connection. To associate tinc networks with a connection create a file with the name /etc/tinc/nets.WLAN.<connection-name> and put the network name(s) in the file. Whenever the connection called "<connection-name>" is connected, the corresponding networks will be started, and when it is disconnected they will be stopped. If the file does not exist, the scripts look for the file /etc/tinc/nets.WLAN-default instead.

This allows two common setups to be easily created:

See the comments in the /usr/sbin/tinc-maemo file for more information.

Alternatively, you can continue controlling tincd by hand. Start it by logging in to an Xterm and issuing:

sudo /usr/sbin/tincd -n <net-name>
Stop using:
sudo /usr/sbin/tincd -n <net-name> -k
Of course this requires the following line in /etc/sudoers:
user ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/tincd -n <net-name>, /usr/sbin/tincd -n <net-name> -k

One day I will look into a way of adding start tinc and stop tinc entries to the menu.

Installation

No .install files are available for tinc.

Status

This table show the status of the tinc packages in various repositories
DistributionExtrasExtras-develUserDailyExperimental
Mistral  Stable  
Gregale     
Bora     
Chinook     

Opensync

I have ported the Opensync software to the Maemo environment.

Currently I have got the framework, msynctool, and the file, gpe and syncml plugins to work (syncml over bluetooth to a Nokia 6230i). However, I regard this mainly as a proof of concept: this do not include a GUI for the Internet Tablet.

The packages designed to be installed by end users are:

See the Opensync site for information on how to use this. Note that in these pacakges, the default configuration for the GPE plugin is to use gpesyncd locally.

Using bluetooth synchronisation with a mobile phone requires enabling the bluetooth interface. To do this, you should enter the following command, as root, before performing the sync:

hciconfig hci0 up
You can then run msynctool --sync (which does not need to be run as root). The interface will return to "down" after the synchronisation.

I have created two shell scripts which I am using regularly and which may be of use to others:

  1. backup-phone: this script backs up and restores contacts, events, todos and notes on the phone using bluetooth. It is dependent on msynctool, libopensync-plugin-file and libopensync-plugin-syncml (but not GPE). Note that it defaults to using the the bluetooth address of the first device listed in gconf: if you only have one phone registered it should find it automatically. Tthe SyncML configuration is set for a Nokia phone (specifically, a 6230i): for other phones you may need to edit the script to change the configuration data. Invoke the script as backup-phone --help for information on options.
  2. sync-phone-gpe: this script synchronises contacts, events and todos on the phone with GPE. It is dependent on the backup-phone script and also on GPE, including gpesyncd and libopensync-plugin-gpe. Invoke the script as sync-phone-gpe --help for information on options. If there is any important data on the phone I suggest you take a backup using backup-phone before trying the synchronisation with GPE.

Installation

No .install files are available for opensync.

Status

This table show the status of the opensync packages in various repositories
DistributionExtrasExtras-develUserDailyExperimental
Mistral  Old  
Gregale     
Bora     
Chinook   YesYes

libopensync1

This package is the main opensync framework.

libsyncml

Notes: dependencies on libwbxml2-old changed to libwbxml2.

libwbxml2

Ported.

Dbus-scripts

I have created a utility package which allows other packages to deploy scripts which they wish to run when various actions occur on the system DBUS. Of course, it is always possible to create a custom program to interact on the dbus and take whatever actions are required, but this is a simple way to cause actions to be triggered when certain dbus messages occur.

To use this, the dbus-scripts package must be installed. Then it is necessary to create configuration files in the /etc/dbus-scripts.d directory. These files control which scripts will be invoked by the dbus-scripts daemon when certain dbus messages are seen.

All the files in /etc/dbus-scripts.d are read and parsed when the dbus-scripts daemon starts. To cause the files to be re-read use /etc/init.d/dbus-scripts reload, which will stop and restart the daemon.

Each line of a configuration file is either a comment or defines a script to be invoked based on certain argument filtering criteria. The fields are separated by whitespace. The first field is the filespec of the script to invoke. Subsequent fields are filters to be matched against the arguments of the message. The filters are matched in the same way as shell wildcards. If the filter matches, the script is invoked with all the arguments passed as arguments to the script.

Some examples are shown in the file /etc/dbus-scripts.d/dbus-scripts-example. The files used by the tinc package (see above) are available as /etc/dbus-scripts.d/tinc-maemo.dbus and /usr/sbin/tinc-maemo.

Note that this package is based on the dbus-s program from Matan Ziv-Av which was in turn based on the dbus-monitor program.

Installation

No .install files are planned for dbus-scripts as it is expected that it would normally be installed as a dependency of another package.

Status

This table show the status of the dbus-scripts packages in various repositories
DistributionExtrasExtras-develUserDailyExperimental
Mistral  Stable  
Gregale     
Bora     
Chinook StableStable  

GPE

GPE Release 2.8 is now available!

I maintain packages for the GPE components.

Installation

The following applications are available; please click on the application name to automatically install it to your device:

Installing the applications should automatically install the following additional packages:

Status

This table show the status of the GPE packages in various repositories
DistributionExtrasExtras-develUserDailyExperimental
Mistral  Stable 2.8  
Gregale  Stable 2.8SVN latest 
Bora Stable 2.8 SVN latest 
ChinookStable 2.8Stable 2.8 SVN latest 
DiabloStable 2.8Stable 2.8 SVN latest 

Cmake

I ported CMake as it is required to compile OpenSync.

In addition, I provide quilt (which is needed to build Cmake) for Gregale and Bora. Chinook already includes quilt.

Installation

No installation files are provided as this is installed in the scratchbox environment using apt-get.

Status

This table show the status of the cmake packages in various repositories
DistributionExtrasExtras-develUserDailyExperimental
Mistral     
Gregale Yes   
Bora Yes   
Chinook Yes   

Miscellaneous packages

On occasion I have ported several other packages. These are not maintained but they have been submitted as packages to Maemo Unofficial Debs and can be built from there.


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Graham Cobb