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FAQ

Running Mamona
1. Why the first boot is taking soo long?
2. Can't see any logs, how to tell syslog to generates /var/log/message?
General Topics

Running Mamona

Why the first boot is taking soo long?

The first boot is too slow due to RSA and DSA key generators used by ssh server. During this boot you will see just the Nokia logo. Don't panic. Believe it, your Mamona is booting.

Can't see any logs, how to tell syslog to generates /var/log/message?

By default syslog is not writing the logs to any file, but just using it's buffer. If you want to have access to the log, just change DESTINATION="buffer" to DESTINATION="file" at /etc/syslog.conf and restart syslog (root@mamona:~# /etc/init.d/syslog restart).

But remember, /var/log is a tmpfs, what means that you'll only get the logs from your current boot.

General Topics

What is Mamona?

Mamona is an embedded Linux distribution for ARM EABI. The main goal of Mamona Project is to offer a completely open source alternative/experimental SDK package and flash image generation process for the Maemo Platform using only free and open source components.

Our motivation to start Mamona project was:

Maemo is open, which is an improvement over e.g. Symbian. But the development process is not so open, for several reasons
Some people might prefer a non-Scratchbox development environment (e.g. in automated tests).
Specifically, sometimes a fully-emulated ARM environment would be better.
It is not easy to update core components in Maemo SDK, like the toolchain or glibc, since they are external to the SDK (provided by Scratchbox 1)

Where does the name Mamona come from?

In Brazilian Portuguese Mamona means the castor oil plant, the source of oil and biodiesel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_bean

It is also a pun with other projects' names (Maemo and Canola).

What is ARM EABI?

EABI is the "Embedded" ABI by ARM ltd.

Why doesn't Mamona support armv6?

Unfortunately qemu only supports armv4 and armv5, but not armv6 and armv7. Actually Paul Brook from CodeSourcery has already implemented the version 6 and version 7 support for qemu but he cannot release it due to ARM ltd restrictions.

We really hope that ARM ltd realize that developers need this armv6 specification open to enable developers to code for ARM based devices like the N800.

What is OpenEmbedded?

OpenEmbedded is a great build system. It has a lot of package descriptions (bb files) and tasks descriptions (bbclass files). Bitbake takes these package descriptions and executes the tasks previous configured in the distribution configuration file (Mamona file in our case). Mamona uses tasks that cross compile the packages and generate the debian packages (.deb) and sources (.dsc).

What is Bitbake?

Bitbake is a flexible task executor where it is possible to code tasks using python and/or shell script and code packages definitions just setting a few variables like LICENSE, SRC_URI, PACKAGE_ARCH and others.

What is the relation between OpenEmbedded and Mamona? It is a fork?

Developers love to code, not spend their precious time packing. For that reason Mamona chose to use OpenEmbedded as its build system to generate all Debian packages and Debian source packages. Mamona is not a fork, but a distribution made with OpenEmbedded help.

Are you going to push all enhancements to OpenEmbedded back upstream?

Ofcourse. We intend to contribute as much as possible to OpenEmbedded. Actually we are already contributing to OpenEmbedded finding and fixing some bugs and developing the full deb package support, including Debian source (.dsc) generation needed to create Debian repositories.

How to build a deb package for Mamona?

All OpenEmbedded contributor is also and indirectly a Mamona contributor. So if you want to contribute with a package to Mamona consider to contribute directly to OpenEmbedded. But if you want to contribute directly to Mamona, please read Building deb Packages for Mamona.

What is the relation between Poky Linux and Mamona?

Poky Linux is an embedded linux distribution like Mamona. As they are using and developing OpenEmbedded and Bitbake we have an indirect contributing relationship. But the idea and motivation are different.

Poky is different to Mamona in that targets a different set of devices while the main goal of Mamona is to offer a completely open source alternative/experimental SDK package and flash image generation process for the Maemo Platform.

Why not just use the standard dist and scratchbox?

Scratchbox environment is great, but it could be optional. Sometimes a fully emulated environment, where everything run under qemu-arm, would be desirable and a plain insulated chroot would be just fine.

Most of the reasoning for Mamona came from the Python for Maemo project:

Compilation on a partially-emulated ARM environment brought some funny problems, since the fresh-compiled interpreter is run during its own building process
Some module-loading optimization tests involved updating the library loading system, which was difficult under Scratchbox

When will Mamona be useful for me?

Depends on what you need for now. At the moment we still don't have all features you probably need as a Maemo user, but we're working on that.

Please see the Release Notes for the releases (0.2-Beta) to see all features we support now and in case you want to try it, just take a look at RunningMamona and also with Mamona SDK.

Will it allow for easily making derivative/custom distributions?

Yes, like any other Linux distribution. In our case it is easier due to OpenEmbedded Flexibility. You can get the Mamona configuration files under OpenEmbedded repository and change it derivating or customizing it.

Any chance for the official N800 distribution to be based on Mamona?

We really don't believe so. Nokia already has a good and stable distribution for N800. But Mamona will be a good and complete Open Source alternative.

Are there any obvious limitations of Mamona, running on the N800 in comparison with the official software. Something that cannot be remedied?

Nokia closed source applications that are really necessary to a full use of the device are our biggest limitation to have everything free, but we will try to use/code free softwares alternatives.

Is this ARM specific? Can/will Mamona run on cell phones?

For now we are focused on ARM platform and Nokia Internet Tablet devices.

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