Squeak on iPaq-Linux Update

Kevin Fisher kgf at golden.net
Mon Mar 26 13:32:38 UTC 2001


Hi Folks:

For those who are interested in running Squeak on handheld.org's iPaq-Linux
distro, I've got a quick update.

My previous 'howto' page hinged on the fact that iPaq-Linux was using
CRAMFS, a read-only compressed flash filesystem and a read-write RAMdisk.
This required some 'creative' placement of executables and images, as well
as being rather memory inefficient.

But no longer!  As of the release of Familar 0.03 the CRAMFS is gone,
and JFFS2 is in place...JFFS2 being a clever journalling flash filesystem
that is totally read-write.  This makes life much easier when trying
to squeeze more space out of the iPaq.  As soon as minnow comes alive
again I'll hopefully update my howto page..life is much easier with
JFFS2.  Basically you can treat the whole flash filesystem like a 
'normal' filesystem now...plus the RAMdisk filesystem is still there, too.

Also, Squeak has the dubious honour of being able to hard-crash Linux on
the iPaq...not sure what is happening there, but I managed to get half
a stack dump off the serial port before everything locked.  The only
thing I'm certain of is that it is the Squeak VM executable that is 
crashing the kernel...but I need to make it happen again so I can get 
a full crash dump off the console.  (The Squeak in qustion is the
Unix 3.0 beta 2 stuff, although I suspect 2.9a of doing the same
thing.)  






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