Gentoo on ARCHOS PMA400?

nonhuman · Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2005 6:57 pm Post subject: Gentoo on ARCHOS PMA400?

The ARCHOS PMA400 is a multi-media PDA basically. It's linux based and run on an ARM of some sort. Does anyone know if anyone's managed or even tried to put Gentoo on it?
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tom61 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 07 Jan 2005 Posts: 111

Should be fairly easy to move Gentoo for Sharp Zaurus to the PMA, as they have very simular software layouts.

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

http://forum.pxos.org/viewforum.php?f=20&sid=7704c0bdcadcdecf586298b7a6f763c6
these people has the folowing approach:
the device originaly boots on a file that contain a cramfs image,the kernel and other stuff
so they want to replace the cramfs image but...the cramfs has a rather strange layout:there is a crc for each file and at the same time it can be mounted on a desktop computer
so they can read and extract the data from this cramfs but...they can't create one yet

i've tryed chroot with:
-gentoo arm 2004.?
-gentoo arm v4l 2005.1
=>works very well from an external hd connected trough the usb
=>but...can't mount loop due to the minimalist qtopia os (mount uttility do not support -o loop but can mount /dev/loop/0
so i tryed to doubble chroot
-too slow
-too complicated (still searching a linus that fit into 18 mB)

hardware:omap1510:
arm925t@74.34 bogomips=>at least 30MHz
30 GB hdd but at low internal speed (about 500-1000kB/s)
usb
wifi
irda
etc...

kernel 2.4.19-rmk7-omap1

by the way the hardware/softwarebis different from zarus in:
-the hardware=>some applications needs to be ported because of it's different hardware
-the filesystem implementation of qtopia(more read-only than zarus)=>some application that want to write on some read-only part need aldo to be modified
-but some applications works natively

you could also have a "linux-bios" approach (nobody has done it yet)
-mount the flash disc
-remplace the actual boot loader
=>boots qtopia and gentoo
for qtopia:
-go on the archos site and download the kernel sources,configure and compile it
-mount the cramfs and copy the files into a loop with the modules you wanted to add inside
=>boot it

by the way i was always wondering how grub can boot on a loop?
what is the command for?

Redhatter · Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:31 am Post subject:

Grub, booting on an ARM? Grub is x86 only last time I checked.

As for mounting a loopback device, you can associate a file with a loopback device using losetup -- this is what mount -o does for you.

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919