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[moocapiean]

I think moocapiean dragged me out of the rabbit hole I have been going down the last couple of days

Glad I could help .

I found this on Wikipedia:

"Before SDHC was standardized, various manufacturers "extended" the SD control block fields for their 2 GB and 4 GB cards in different ways. Those cards are incompatible with many SD and some SDHC devices, as they conform to neither standard"
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card

That's good to know!  I remember looking at that wikipedia entry before, trying to figure out why people were having SD card problems.  I don't know why I didn't see that before.

[Shmigget]

I'm running an 8 GB class 6 SDHC card, and after fighting with it last night I just booted into Xbuntu for the first time. 

moocapiean, you rock.  I really appreciate your creating these instructions and answering questions.

When I boot I get initial warnings about the filesystem being ext2/3 but the partition type being 0xb instead of 83, but fdisk tells me it is set to Linux.

Also, until this last run, many of my previous boots failed with an "Unrecognized program format" error (In fact, I'm afraid to reboot as I might not make it back here again.  ).  I found a thread mentioning the first line of olpc.fth needing whitespace after the comment, but mine has a space following so that's not the issue. 

Are these two issues just SDHC troubles?  I'm really hoping not, but if so I'd like to know.  Maybe I'll ditch this card and get one that hasn't given other people trouble.

Btw, did anybody get a definitive answer on why the flash cards sometimes get erased?  Do you need to unmount them before rebooting?

Thanks again to moocapiean and everybody else for making the XO a "grownup" environment

[moocapiean]

My guess is that they're SDHC problems since I think I've only ever seen SD card users having them, but I always worry about just using SD cards as an excuse for "I don't feel like thinking about your problem".

As for why flash cards sometimes erase themselves, I'm not sure. It never happened to me, but I don't boot off of my USB drive very often.  When you're finished following my instructions and reboot, Linux should finish writing everything to your drive before it reboots, so that isn't the cause.  And when you reboot while using XUbuntu, it should again write everything to the drive before it reboots (or shuts down), so I don't think that's the problem either.  Of course, there could be something wrong that's preventing Linux from doing that, but, again, I think it's just the "extended", non-standard, SD cards.

If you do end up getting a new drive, you could probably buy a USB drive and use the SD card as swap space.  Swap space is basically extended RAM and it might be immune to the SDHC problems you and others have been having.

[moocapiean]

Success!  I ended up going with the same kernel version that I had installed on my XO: 2.6.22-20071231.2.olpc.83e0631da83a269.  It either comes with firmware Q2D07 or build 656, I'm not sure which.  You shouldn't need to update anything on your XO to install the latest kernel though.

Anyway, on to the important stuff: how do you get and install the kernel?  Well, vblackaby has been kind enough to offer webspace for them! Thanks!

The following instructions assume you're running the Ubuntu installation on your XO.  If you aren't, you'll have to change the locations a bit.  For example, if you're doing this on your XO running Sugar, then the Ubuntu drive is probably mounted to /media/OLPCRoot, so, for example, when I say to cd /boot, you should do cd /media/OLPCRoot/boot instead.

Let's first install the kernel and its libraries.  After that's done, I'll cover how to install the kernel source code.  You'll only need to install the kernel source code if you need to compile a kernel module/driver.

First, open a terminal and download the two files:
wget http://www.blackabydataservices.com/OLPC/boot.tar.bz2
wget http://www.blackabydataservices.com/OLPC/lib.tar.bz2

The boot.tar.bz2 file is 40 MB and the lib.tar.bz2 file is 35 MB.

Once they're downloaded, you can untar them into their correct locations:
sudo tar -jxf boot.tar.bz2 -C /boot
sudo tar -jxf lib.tar.bz2 -C /lib/modules

You can now delete those files you downloaded, but to be nice to vblackaby, please don't delete them until you're sure you don't need to download them again.  So maybe delete them after a few days of using your new kernel.

Installing the library files is finished, but there's some final work to be done for the boot files.  If you want to boot from them (and you do, especially if you want to create your own modules), you'll have to update some links:
cd /boot
sudo rm vmlinuz olpcrd.img
sudo ln -s olpcrd-2.6.22.img olpcrd.img
sudo ln -s vmlinuz-2.6.22 vmlinuz

That's it!  Those links (olpcrd.img and vmlinuz) were pointing to the files olpcrd-2.6.22-20071121.7.olpc.af3dd731d18bc39.img and vmlinuz-2.6.22-20071121.7.olpc.af3dd731d18bc39, which I had copied over from my XO.  You can delete them if you want, but I'd recommend doing that after you've been using your new kernel for a few days to make sure there are no problems.

There is one problem that I encountered with the new kernel...the mouse sensitivity changed drastically!  Now, instead of being overly sensitive, it's actually normal!  For those of you who changed your mouse settings, you'll need to unchange them (I just commented out (by putting a # at the front of the line) the xset m line in the .xfce4_startup file in my home directory: /home/olpc/.xfce4_startup).


Now that that's over with, let's move on to installing the source code.  You don't need to do this unless you want to compile your own modules.  You'll only need to compile your own modules if you need to support hardware that the OLPC kernel doesn't support.

First, move back into your home directory:
cd
And now, download the file.  The source code is 256 MB big, compressed!  Again, you don't need to install this unless you have to.  If you have another Linux computer, you might want to use that to store the source code and do the compilation, then just move the files over to your USB drive or SD card.  Anyway, here's how you can download it onto your XO:
wget http://www.blackabydataservices.com/OLPC/2.6.22.tar.bz2

Now, you can untar it and put it into the kernel source code directory:
sudo mkdir /usr/src
sudo tar -jxf 2.6.22.tar.bz2 -C /usr/src

The source code is 833 MB uncompressed!  It actually contains a precompiled kernel, the object files, and the source code, so when you compile your kernel module, you shouldn't end up using much more space than that.

And that's it!  If you need to compile your own module, you can now follow the instructions from whatever howto you're following.  The source code should be in the /usr/src/olpc-2.6.22 directory.

Once you're done, you can delete that directory by running sudo rm -r /usr/src/olpc-2.6.22.  You might want to save the config file before you delete the sources in case you ever end up needing to make any other changes to your kernel.  The config file is hiding in the top-most directory of the source code, so for the source code you just unpacked, the file's at:
/usr/src/olpc-2.6.22/.config

There's a "." before the "config".  You can copy the config file to another location (such as your home directory):
cp /usr/src/olpc-2.6.22/.config /home/olpc/kernel-config

Then, if you ever need to recompile the kernel, you can load that config file.

You can also delete the source code you downloaded, but it might be best to save it for awhile in case you need to make any other changes.

Enjoy!

[quixote]

The mouse becomes normal??!!  Wow.  Can't wait to try this.  Moocapiean, you are the absolute best!

[quixote]

And a big thanks! to vblackaby too!

[moocapiean]

It was actually frightening when I first used the new kernel.  I had to move my USB mouse about a foot to get it to move a few pixels on the screen.  I thought, "Oh great, more mouse problems!"  Then I went into the Xfce settings for the mouse and saw that the acceleration and threshold were as low as possible.  That's when I realized it wasn't a driver problem, but the settings I set awhile ago.  It's amazing just how slow we had to make the mouse so it would actually be usable!

[Shmigget]

Sorry to post this here but I couldn't find anything else on it.  Is anybody else finding keybindings screwy in Ubuntu's terminal?  Like arrow keys writing letters?  And erase moving the cursor backwards without erasing anything?  Do I need to change $TERM or something?

[Shmigget]

Sorry, I just realized that I'm not getting the weirdness with the keys in the terminal but in vi.  I thought I had a stuck key, but I don't think that's the issue.

[Shmigget]

Nevermind.  Can you tell I'm new to Ubuntu?  Thank goodness for alias.

[anna]

I just installed the new kernel and I have to say it works great so far.  Of course it's only been a couple of minutes.

When I tried to untar the lib file I got a corruption error, but then redownloaded the file and that worked.  Also, I did remember to comment out the mouse line in the xfce startup file before I rebooted.

Got a real mouse now!  W00t!

I was hoping the new kernel would magically solve my mplayer fullscreen problem, but no joy yet. http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2488.0

In the new kernel, is there a module or driver or something for xv support I can install?

Thank you, moocapiean, for all your work on this.

[JoeMac]

I'm booting off of a cast-off 1G USB flashdrive Thanks moocapiean!  This is my first post from xo/xfce/firefox.   When I downloaded the compressed file, I somehow wound up with completely normal trackpad operation and a perfectly functional battery meter.  I'm not sure how, but thanks anyway.   I noticed that the internal nand flash drive doesn't show up in the file manager. How do I mount the internal drive while booted into xubuntu?

[moocapiean]

I was hoping the new kernel would magically solve my mplayer fullscreen problem, but no joy yet. http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2488.0

In the new kernel, is there a module or driver or something for xv support I can install?

I've been following your problem over in that thread.  I haven't posted yet because all I have to say so far is "I'm not sure, hopefully someone else can offer some help".  However, I didn't think of a module being a solution to your problem!  My guess is xv is already compiled as a module, but maybe it isn't.  I'd be willing to check the config menu to see if there's anything that can help.  I'll try to do that later this week and post my results by this weekend. Feel free to PM me if you don't hear from me by Saturday!

When I downloaded the compressed file, I somehow wound up with completely normal trackpad operation and a perfectly functional battery meter.  I'm not sure how, but thanks anyway.   I noticed that the internal nand flash drive doesn't show up in the file manager. How do I mount the internal drive while booted into xubuntu?

Your battery monitor works perfectly now?  Mine still doesn't...

I think I set up the XO to automatically mount the internal drive, but maybe I did that after I made the Ubuntu installation files.  Try checking to see if the directory /media/xo exists and if there's anything inside it.  If there is, that's where the internal drive is mounted.  If it isn't, check this thread for how to do it: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1528.0
That's where I went to figure it out.

[vblackaby]

I managed to compile the headers.  i am still using the kernel that came with the new downloads.  My sym-links are wrong inside the /usr/modules for build and source.  They have always been wrong in my build.

I am on a different machine, as I am compiling the kernel, but the sym-link pointed to /usr/src/olpcbuild.586 and i don't have a "586"  so i relinked it to /usr/src/olpcbuild.  "olpc build" being that string of numbers designating the build.

[ashtond33]

Do i have to use 2.6.22.bz2, or can I download the reg. linux kernel from kernel.org?