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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, based on Open Embedded, for ARM EABI. The main goal of Mamona is to offer completely open source and easily hackable platform alternative for Maemo. You can run Mamona at Nokia Internet Tablets and also other experimental hardware, like Beagleboard.

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 hack and 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.

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 go to The Platform Developer section.

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) to see all features we support now and in case you want to try it, just take a look at Running Mamona and also at Application Developer section.

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.

Why I need proprietary software to get my device fully working with Mamona?

Basically because Maemo has many closed pieces that you need at least if you want your device running without rebooting and charging your battery. There are a couple of important softwares that if you want to fully use your device, you're going to need it, like sound support and wireless connection. There are plans at the Maemo community to make almost every component as free software, you can see it's progress at the Maemo Wiki.

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