Qtopia on Neo1973

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Qtopia is a complete mobile phone and PDA platform which can be built for many devices and is dual-licensed under the GPL and a proprietary license, but since version 3.4.0, everything needed to use Qtopia on the Neo1973 is licensed under the GPL.

Note: The dialer of the 4.3.0 flash image and the 4.3.0-snapshot images do not ask for a PIN on first boot. To make the dialer to ask for the PIN, you have to press the power button, select "Shutdown device" and restart it. Note: You may have to do the restart without USB connected for this to work.

If Qtopia did not ask for a PIN and your SIM card needs a PIN to be accessible, you cannot use your SIM to register to a GSM network.

Post-4.3.0 images may fix this issue, but as of 20 November 2007, the post-4.3.0 images seem to never ask for a PIN.

The image from qtopia-4.3.0-neo-flash.tgz (official 4.3.0 release for the Neo1973) has may hang on boot. IF that happens to you, you may have to resort to the qtopia-4.3-snapshot-10190723-neo-flash.tgz (official snapshot from 19 October 2007)

Contents

Flashing Qtopia images into Neo's NAND flash

Generic NAND flashing notice: Flash chunks to be flashed must be erased or cleared first (a write to a NAND flash can only set, but not clear bits), you either need to have a recent uboot (most GTA01v4 owner should have that already), or you have to erase or clean the NAND partition using nand erase.

The lasted official Qtopia flash images are found at: http://www.qtopia.net/modules/mydownloads/ (You have to scroll this page down a bit to find them)

The initial preview flash images can be downloaded by clicking the link "Qtopia on Neo Flash Image and kernel" on [1], but it has issues with the audio mixer setup, so especially on receiving calls, one side may not always hear the other.

Newer unofficial Qtopia images can be found in the ScaredyCat and Chooseopen repositories, but they may not ask for a pin at all.

Dual-booting between Qtopia and X

Both examples described here require you to reformat your MicroSD card to ext3, so this is the first step for both:

WARNING: The following step will reformat your MircoSD card with the ext3 filesystem. We need it because we need support for symbolic or/and static links, which other filesystems like FAT do not support directly. After reformatting, no data on the card will be accessible to you anymore, so create good backups of anything which you need before starting!


Then ssh to your neo and reformat your MicroSD card with:

umount /dev/mmcblk0p1
mkfs.ext3 /dev/mmcblk0p1
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1

Installing Qtopia into an openmoko rootfs

On [2], click "Developer root filesystem". Then extract opt/Qtopia and the qpe init script and copy both to the mmc card of your neo:

tar xzf ficgta01-qtopia-developer-rootfs.tgz opt/Qtopia etc/init.d/qpe
mv opt/Qtopia etc/init.d/qpe . && rm -r opt etc
tar czf Qtopia.tar.gz Qtopia qpe
scp Qtopia.tar.gz root@192.168.0.202:/media/card/

Log in to your Neo and unpack the archive and install it:

cd /media/card
tar xzf Qtopia.tar.gz
mkdir -p /opt
ln -s /media/card/Qtopia /opt/Qtopia
mv qpe /etc/init.d

Now kill the X server and gsmd and start Qtopia (this can take some time):

/etc/init.d/xserver-nodm stop
/etc/init.d/gsmd stop
/etc/init.d/qpe start

Now, in theory, it should be possible to could create a new entry in the uboot boot menu which adds a new boot argument to the kernel, say "qtopia=1" and you could could write a script which checks that boot parameter by checking if "$qtopia" is set to "1" or by checking /proc/cmdline and then boot Qtopia instead of X.

Installing Qtopia on the SD card

  • format your SD card with ext3 and mount it (see above)
  • unpack rootfs from qtopia-4.3.0-preview-neo-flash.tgz to SD card (see above)
  • copy the uImage-2.6.22.5-moko11-r2-fic-gta01.bin kernel to the boot/ on SD card and rename it to uImage
  • put a 'Boot from SD' menu item in uboot menu as explained here: Booting_from_SD#Step_3:_Add_uboot_boot_entry

Build your own

If you want to build qtopia for yourself you can download the technical preview or snapshots

Tips

Most things seem to work out of the box, however you may need to use the following command to get audio:

alsactl -f /etc/gsmhandset.state restore

Or put this command in /etc/init.d/qpe line 64

Do not switch themes. Only the default theme is usable. For example, once you switch themes, the lock feature continues to work, but only if you unlock using the smallest # keypad in the world.

Suspend support is very flaky. The neo often shuts off from a suspend state. It will not wake from suspend for an incoming call or text message (someone try setting an alarm and report results here). To turn suspend off (this will of course use the batteries very quickly), hit the down arrow next to the suspend setting in the power management until it says "Off".

When using the virtual keyboard, do a quick flick up or down over the keyboard to access numbers/symbols/capitals.

In summary, Qtopia on the Neo1973 is much closer to being ready than OpenMoko as of this writing. However, sound and suspend support prevent it from being at all useful as a cell phone (as a landline that doesn't ring but instead vibrates, it works ok).

The biggest issue for using Qtopia on the Neo1973 is currently PIN entry. On the Greenphone it's done thru the numberic keypad, but the Neo193 has none, so Qtopia has to use some other way of entering the PIN. The 3.4.0-preview flash image uses a tiny graphical keypad where you are able to enter the PIN, but none of the newer images have it and so it's not possible to access SIM cards which need a PIN.

The Qtopia forum area on the FIC GTA01 might be helpful, but it is preferred that you update this section with issues and fixes which you find.

Screenshots

Qtopia001.png
Qtopia002.png
Qtopia003.png
Qtopia004.png
Qtopia005.png
Qtopia006.png

Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW5q8SpY7t4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOG_mtSEMgs

For full size videos, 346 MiB:

http://linuxtracker.org/download.php?id=4613&name=qt_on_neo1973_videos.torrent
Personal tools

Qtopia is a complete mobile phone and PDA platform which can be built for many devices and is dual-licensed under the GPL and a proprietary license, but since version 3.4.0, everything needed to use Qtopia on the Neo1973 is licensed under the GPL.

Note: The dialer of the 4.3.0 flash image and the 4.3.0-snapshot images do not ask for a PIN on first boot. To make the dialer to ask for the PIN, you have to press the power button, select "Shutdown device" and restart it. Note: You may have to do the restart without USB connected for this to work.

If Qtopia did not ask for a PIN and your SIM card needs a PIN to be accessible, you cannot use your SIM to register to a GSM network.

Post-4.3.0 images may fix this issue, but as of 20 November 2007, the post-4.3.0 images seem to never ask for a PIN.

The image from qtopia-4.3.0-neo-flash.tgz (official 4.3.0 release for the Neo1973) has may hang on boot. IF that happens to you, you may have to resort to the qtopia-4.3-snapshot-10190723-neo-flash.tgz (official snapshot from 19 October 2007)

Flashing Qtopia images into Neo's NAND flash

Generic NAND flashing notice: Flash chunks to be flashed must be erased or cleared first (a write to a NAND flash can only set, but not clear bits), you either need to have a recent uboot (most GTA01v4 owner should have that already), or you have to erase or clean the NAND partition using nand erase.

The lasted official Qtopia flash images are found at: http://www.qtopia.net/modules/mydownloads/ (You have to scroll this page down a bit to find them)

The initial preview flash images can be downloaded by clicking the link "Qtopia on Neo Flash Image and kernel" on [1], but it has issues with the audio mixer setup, so especially on receiving calls, one side may not always hear the other.

Newer unofficial Qtopia images can be found in the ScaredyCat and Chooseopen repositories, but they may not ask for a pin at all.

Dual-booting between Qtopia and X

Both examples described here require you to reformat your MicroSD card to ext3, so this is the first step for both:

WARNING: The following step will reformat your MircoSD card with the ext3 filesystem. We need it because we need support for symbolic or/and static links, which other filesystems like FAT do not support directly. After reformatting, no data on the card will be accessible to you anymore, so create good backups of anything which you need before starting!


Then ssh to your neo and reformat your MicroSD card with:

umount /dev/mmcblk0p1
mkfs.ext3 /dev/mmcblk0p1
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1

Installing Qtopia into an openmoko rootfs

On [2], click "Developer root filesystem". Then extract opt/Qtopia and the qpe init script and copy both to the mmc card of your neo:

tar xzf ficgta01-qtopia-developer-rootfs.tgz opt/Qtopia etc/init.d/qpe
mv opt/Qtopia etc/init.d/qpe . && rm -r opt etc
tar czf Qtopia.tar.gz Qtopia qpe
scp Qtopia.tar.gz root@192.168.0.202:/media/card/

Log in to your Neo and unpack the archive and install it:

cd /media/card
tar xzf Qtopia.tar.gz
mkdir -p /opt
ln -s /media/card/Qtopia /opt/Qtopia
mv qpe /etc/init.d

Now kill the X server and gsmd and start Qtopia (this can take some time):

/etc/init.d/xserver-nodm stop
/etc/init.d/gsmd stop
/etc/init.d/qpe start

Now, in theory, it should be possible to could create a new entry in the uboot boot menu which adds a new boot argument to the kernel, say "qtopia=1" and you could could write a script which checks that boot parameter by checking if "$qtopia" is set to "1" or by checking /proc/cmdline and then boot Qtopia instead of X.

Installing Qtopia on the SD card

  • format your SD card with ext3 and mount it (see above)
  • unpack rootfs from qtopia-4.3.0-preview-neo-flash.tgz to SD card (see above)
  • copy the uImage-2.6.22.5-moko11-r2-fic-gta01.bin kernel to the boot/ on SD card and rename it to uImage
  • put a 'Boot from SD' menu item in uboot menu as explained here: Booting_from_SD#Step_3:_Add_uboot_boot_entry

Build your own

If you want to build qtopia for yourself you can download the technical preview or snapshots

Tips

Most things seem to work out of the box, however you may need to use the following command to get audio:

alsactl -f /etc/gsmhandset.state restore

Or put this command in /etc/init.d/qpe line 64

Do not switch themes. Only the default theme is usable. For example, once you switch themes, the lock feature continues to work, but only if you unlock using the smallest # keypad in the world.

Suspend support is very flaky. The neo often shuts off from a suspend state. It will not wake from suspend for an incoming call or text message (someone try setting an alarm and report results here). To turn suspend off (this will of course use the batteries very quickly), hit the down arrow next to the suspend setting in the power management until it says "Off".

When using the virtual keyboard, do a quick flick up or down over the keyboard to access numbers/symbols/capitals.

In summary, Qtopia on the Neo1973 is much closer to being ready than OpenMoko as of this writing. However, sound and suspend support prevent it from being at all useful as a cell phone (as a landline that doesn't ring but instead vibrates, it works ok).

The biggest issue for using Qtopia on the Neo1973 is currently PIN entry. On the Greenphone it's done thru the numberic keypad, but the Neo193 has none, so Qtopia has to use some other way of entering the PIN. The 3.4.0-preview flash image uses a tiny graphical keypad where you are able to enter the PIN, but none of the newer images have it and so it's not possible to access SIM cards which need a PIN.

The Qtopia forum area on the FIC GTA01 might be helpful, but it is preferred that you update this section with issues and fixes which you find.

Screenshots

Qtopia001.png
Qtopia002.png
Qtopia003.png
Qtopia004.png
Qtopia005.png
Qtopia006.png

Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW5q8SpY7t4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOG_mtSEMgs

For full size videos, 346 MiB:

http://linuxtracker.org/download.php?id=4613&name=qt_on_neo1973_videos.torrent