Revision as of 19:06, 1 September 2011

This page contains a HOWTO of how the ARMv7 port of Funtoo Linux on the HP TouchPad is being created. This document will help you to do cool things with your HP TouchPad and assist in the port effort if you are so inclined. This is a work in progress.

Initial Setup with Preware, F4, Xecutah

For those wanting to help, install Preware, the F4 kernel, and OpenSSH and Xecutah. Set up ssh access to your touchpad by using the xterm on TouchPad (launched via Xecutah) to copy a remote id_dsa.pub or id_rsa.pub public key file to the directory /var/home/root/.ssh/authorized_keys (ie. rename the file to authorized_keys. Use ifconfig in xterm to get your TouchPad's IP address, and you should now be able to "ssh" in.

Let's Get Gentoo Running First

I've decided to go ahead and attempt a native stage3 build on the HP TouchPad. Some tips:

1. Reboot the system and don't run many apps after rebooting to ensure enough memory is available.
2. We can add more swap to the system to provide additional virtual memory for compiling.
3. We can also use the existing ARMv7 Gentoo hardfloat stage3 as our initial chroot environment.
4. On top of this, the F4 kernel supports ATA over Ethernet which allows us to remote-mount a fast filesystem over WIFI.

Now, to create the chroot. Grab this file and store it on /mnt/internal, the built-in VFAT filesystem:

# cd /mnt/internal
# wget http://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/arm/autobuilds/current-stage3-armv7a_hardfp/stage3-armv7a_hardfp-20110830.tar.bz2

Now, create the chroot filesystem:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=gentoo.img bs=1024 count=12000000

This will create a 12GB loopback filesystem. Make it smaller if you only have a 16GB TouchPad. 5GB should be sufficient. Now, we'll set up the loopback:

# losetup /dev/loop1 /mnt/internal/gentoo.img
# install -d /mnt/gentoo
# mkfs.ext3 -N 300000 /dev/loop1
# mount /dev/loop1 /mnt/gentoo
# cd /mnt/gentoo
# tar xjpvf /mnt/internal/stage3-armv7a_hardfp-20010830.tar.bz2

OK, we now have the stage3 extracted. Here's how to set up things after every reboot so you can chroot into it:

# cd /mnt/gentoo
# mount --bind /proc proc
# mount --bind /sys sys
# mount --bind /dev dev

Then, you can chroot:

# chroot /mnt/gentoo
# env-update
# source /etc/profile

To use Gentoo, you'll first want to grab a Portage tree. This uses a lot of inodes, which is why we needed the -P 300000 option to mkfs.ext3, earlier:

# emerge --sync

The stage3 already has git installed, but you may want to emerge a few things, such as vim. Before you do, take advantage of both cores:

# echo 'MAKEOPTS="-j2"' >> /etc/make.conf

To improve performance, but something non-intensive on in exhibition mode to keep the screen from going to sleep (recommended: Govnah so you can monitor system utilization.) On the HP TouchPad, when the screen goes to sleep, the TouchPad itself will always try to go to sleep, and exhibition mode will prevent this from happening. Make sure your HP TouchPad is plugged into the charger:

# emerge vim