Installing Gentoo on an iPAQ

audiodef · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:20 pm Post subject: Installing Gentoo on an iPAQ

I've been playing around for a few days now with trying to get Linux of any flavor onto my iPAQ HP2200. The most success I've had thus far has been with Angstrom, but it's just the GPE window manager in loopback mode, and it's out of date (making it a nightmare to try to download ipk files onto an SD card manually). Plus, it's not clear how to get an internet connection on the device using the USB cradle to upgrade the system.

handhelds.org is dead, dead, dead, and I haven't found anything else.

So... can I get Gentoo onto this thing? If so, how?
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chithanh · Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:48 am Post subject:

If you can run any Linux, then Gentoo will work too. However the H2200 has only 64 MB RAM if I am not mistaken, so don't expect any wonders. Your best bet for network connectivity is probably bluetooth.

Best come to #gentoo-embedded IRC on freenode. At least one developer has an iPAQ and might be able to assist you.

audiodef · Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:12 pm Post subject:

Cool! No, not expecting wonders, but it'd be cool to get some basic stuff done (a todo list, a notepad, and such).

I'll drop by the channel.
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lks · n00b Joined: 11 May 2012 Posts: 2 Location: Berlin

There is no linux kernel for h2200, only outdated 2.6.21 handhelds.org kernel.
Gentoo won't work with it.
I have such a device and I would be

if anyone could write a driver.
Old kernel source with h2200 files is on http://code.google.com/p/loox7xxport/source/checkout?repo=loox2-6-22 .

edit: Gentoo works with hh20 kernel but there ar no devices (except tty console tty1 stdout stdin stderr).
I can't see my boot device and I can't mount the swap. I have used the angstrom kernel package. There are no sources of that kernel.

lks · n00b Joined: 11 May 2012 Posts: 2 Location: Berlin

Now I know, what the problem is: kernel 2.21 requires udev <= 141.
I was downloading a pre-compiled kernel and modules from http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/2011.03/ipk/glibc/armv5te/machine/h2200/.
There you'll also get udev. It's against gentoos ideology but you will not be able to compile that.
lks

i92guboj · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 1:43 pm Post subject:

Impossible is nothing, but I doubt Gentoo is the right tool in this case. You should rather be looking at some minimal distro with uclibc support. Probably lfs or something...

If you want to play with Gentoo on this device you will probably need a lot of manual work to bypass the portage stuff, and be able to downgrade all the time, which defies the whole purpose of portage.

i92guboj · Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 1:45 pm Post subject:

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo on Alternative Architectures.

Moved here, since this seems to have an ARM cpu. If you can find someone around here that knows the way around this kind of hardware, it's probably in this subforum. But Gentoo on ARM doesn't seem to be very active these days. Or maybe it's just I am not involved :lol: