Johannes' Blog

With all the recent activity around the Z2, I thought it might be worth it to create an up to date Arch Linux image for the Z2. Although it is theoretically possible to update my old image, it is quite some pain to actually do so. So what I did is take an official system image for an ARMv5 plattform from the ArchLinuxARM website and modify it to work with the Z2.

Quite some time ago, I have written a blog entry about how to install Arch Linux on the Zipit Z2, but I did not provide an image back then. Now I have prepared a ready-to-use image of Arch Linux ARM for the Z2.



It is based on official up-to-date packages. Only for the kernel I had to build one compatible with the Z2.

notaz has updated the Pandora Linux kernel git repository. There is now a Linux 3.2 branch available, which I have used to create a new ArchLinux Pandora kernel package. Unfortunately the keyboard issue still has not been resolved in this kernel tree, which is why I again had to manually revert the changes that introduced the keyboard glitches. I don't know why this is still not fixed, but in the new kernel package the keyboard works just fine, of course.

I highly recommend to update to this new kernel, as it comes with several Pandora specific improvements, compared to the previous 2.6.37 kernel:

• More stable wifi connections
• Shutdown from within Linux (e.g. with 'halt') works now
• The second sd card slot works

To update to the new kernel, run the following command as root:

# pacman -Sy linux-pandora

Pacman will ask for a confirmation that you want to replace the kernel26-pandora package with the new linux-pandora package, which you should reply to positively by pressing 'Y'.

At this point you should restart your system. You can do that by executing 'reboot' as root.

Afterwards you might want to upgrade the rest of your Arch system:

# pacman -Syu

It is always a good idea to update the installed packages with pacman every now and then.

For those who might want to compile their own Pandora kernel, you can use my kernel configuration, if you like.

The Pandora console comes with two USB ports - an ordinary USB host port and a Mini-USB port which is USB-OTG compliant. Unfortunately, the USB host port is not fully USB compliant, because it does not support USB full speed and low speed devices. Most (if not all) USB HID devices like mice and keyboards are USB low speed devices and as such they do not work when connected to the USB host port without a USB 2.0 hub in between.



The Mini-USB port on the other hand supports USB low speed and full speed devices with a passive adaptor (Mini-USB-A plug to Standard USB-A socket). That means one can attach a USB mouse to the Pandora without a USB hub using the OTG port.

Here is a new Gmu release with some new (long awaited) features. The two most notable features are internet streaming audio support and the graphical spectrum analyzer. Just like with the 0.7.0 series I start the 0.8.0 series with a beta release, mostly because there were many changes to the code base.



Changes since the last release include:

• Internet streaming audio support on network-enabled devices (for web radio, currently mp3 only)
• Graphical spectrum analyzer
• Support for PLS playlist files
• Fixed time display bug for very long playtimes
• Window icon for platforms running Gmu in a windowed environment
• By default Gmu's file browser now advances to the next file when adding a file (optional)

Probably less interesing for the ordinary user:

• Configurable verbosity on stdout (with the -v flag)