The Nokia 770 was released to some fanfare in the Linux world. Unlike the Zaurus before it, or Pocket PC or Palm systems, the 770 does not offer personal information manager (PIM) functionality; indeed, it does not provide particularly easy access to the features that would be needed to make a PDA. Instead, it's pitched as an "Internet tablet," providing applications such as a Web browser and an e-mail client.
Nokia recently released an update to the 770's software that makes it a little more friendly to users who want to poke around on the device. In earlier releases, it was necessary to enter research and development (R&D) mode to obtain root access. Version 1.05 makes it possible to work around that more easily.
The Nokia 770 has two storage devices available, an internal flash device (formatted as JFFS2), and a plug-in card (formatted as a FAT filesystem). The 770's connectivity options are interesting. The device's default behavior when connected over USB is to serve as a mass storage device. The 770's internal storage is not exposed this way; instead, the plug-in card is made available to the upstream computer as a generic USB storage device to allow easy transfer of files. While the 770 is connected over USB this way, the card is unmounted from the 770, to prevent corruption. This is an elegant answer to the question of how to present access to the device's files.
For the most part, the device doesn't require a lot of manual configuration; it can connect to Bluetooth phones or Wi-Fi networks, either automatically or with minimal instruction. The progress that Linux-based systems have made in automatic network configuration is striking.
An overview of the installation
The 770's installation, as is often the case for such devices, is built around BusyBox. The startup scripts are fairly standard Debian scripts, complete with README files. The interesting part is the user interface and development tools, which are a noticeable improvement over the relatively primitive environment of the Zaurus. The developer support, provided through the maemo.org pages, is fairly comprehensive. (See Resources for a link.)
And this is where the 770 departs from the previous Linux-based devices I've looked at: the developer support seems more active, and more involved. The 770 doesn't do all that many things very well out of the box (with Web browsing being a pleasant exception). However, Nokia seems to be looking at the potential for community development as a major benefit of the machine. The developer tools are being pitched towards hobbyists, not just commercial developers. The utility used to load new ROM images and set special device flags (such as the R&D mode) is available for download.
This has resulted in a fair amount of interesting development. For instance, like most tablet or PDA devices, the 770 has a significant weakness in the area of text input: even if you like the keyboard or handwriting recognition, it still chews up screen real estate, which is not cheap to come by on a device with a four-inch screen. Now, hobbyists have made Bluetooth and USB keyboards work with the device; life is good. (See the sidebar for more information.)
In earlier releases of the 770, it was necessary to use the flasher utility to
put the device into R&D mode, then run the
gainroot script. The script itself, illustrated in
Listing 1, is kind of interesting.
Listing 1. The gainroot script
#!/bin/sh -e
trap exit SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin
MODE=`/usr/sbin/chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --get-rd-mode`
if [ x$MODE = xenabled ]
then
echo "Root shell enabled"
/bin/sh
else
echo "Enable RD mode if you want to break your device"
fi
|
The default sudoers file permits anyone to run this script via sudo; if your 770 is in R&D mode, you get a shell; otherwise, you get the humorous warning message.
In the more recent release, a slightly simpler option is available: you can ssh
in as root. This requires you to download a third-party dropbear package, but then
you just ssh in as root, with the password rootme. The widely documented
default password and permitted root login make that password fairly descriptive;
if you install the ssh server, change your root password. No, really. Do.
One obvious solution would be to set the user password, configure /etc/sudoers,
then run passwd -l root to disable root logins
entirely.
The point of this digression is to establish that, while some vendors are providing minimalist subsets of Linux, carefully crippled and protected, Nokia is barely stopping short of waving a compiler in your face. This device is, at the moment, not a mass-market consumer item for most people; it's a toybox. There's something really nice about finding a fairly full-featured Linux on a tiny little device.
The install on the 770 has never quite decided whether it's an embedded system or a full-fledged desktop Linux. Earlier releases provided a system image in which the installed files were not controlled by the package management system; in the release I looked at, the package manager comes with over 900 packages, some more optional than others, as shown in Listing 2.
Listing 2. The beginning of a very long list
# dpkg -l Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Description +++-==============-==============-============================================ ii adduser 3.51 Add and remove users and groups ii apt 0.6.42.3osso13 Advanced front-end for dpkg ii archtunjo 0.0.8-4 the D-BUS wrapper for games ii autoipd 0.9.6-1osso9 Autoipd from Howl ii base-files 3.1.osso2 Debian base system miscellaneous files ii base-passwd 3.5.7.osso1 Debian base system master password and group ii bluez-utils 2.25-cvs200605 Bluetooth tools and daemons |
This sets the stage for a more flexible install, in the event that you would want to make room to install additional files -- not that the system is likely to run out of room quickly. The bulky files that generally fill portable gizmos are likely to live on the removable card rather than in main storage, anyway.
Presumably, a bit of work could have stripped out a few programs or scripts that aren't doing much; for instance, the glibc.sh script that warns about glibc compatibility requirements on AMD64 systems is, unsurprisingly, totally unused. (It does actually have some marginal reference to ARM systems; they need kernel version 2.4 or later. The 2.6.16 kernel in the release I examined is probably fine.) Still, every system I've looked at has some stuff like this; in practice, it's probably not worth the hassle of trying to track it down to remove it.
The software development environment for the 770 is something new, although an end user of the 770 wouldn't see this, as the development tools are not actually loaded on the device but rather run on a workstation or PC. About three years ago, I wrote about cross-compilation for the Sharp Zaurus (see Resources for a link). The process was fairly involved. The 770 uses a new cross-compilation setup called Scratchbox, development of which was sponsored by Nokia. This is a substantial improvement, providing an environment in which target-system binaries are run (in emulation) during cross-development. The net result is that all the hassles and confusion of outsmarting poorly-written portability tests are gone; you get the performance of the host system (including, presumably, native execution of the compiler toolchain), and the behavior of the target.
These tools, while clearly still in development, appear to be stable and functional, and actively maintained. This may have lasting effects on the way tools are developed for a variety of other systems. Furthermore, a good cross-compilation environment, without some of the quirks of the more conventional sort, helps reduce the inconvenience of a machine that frankly hasn't got the memory or CPU to do large software builds.
The 770 shows some of the influences and lessons learned from the Zaurus. I noted above the lack of a physical keyboard, but this has attracted a lot of outside development effort. More subtle is the amount of available memory; while the 770 has more than some previous devices, it runs out fairly easily. Even a small amount of additional memory would help a lot. On the other hand, full screen video playback is quite the thing, and that it can be done at all is rather impressive.
The 770 doesn't have the expansion options that some PDA-type devices do, with both CompactFlash and Secure Digital card slots. Its single expansion slot uses a reduced form factor SD card, which admittedly fits quite nicely in a very crowded case. On the other hand, very few PDAs can be configured to work as USB host devices; if you're willing to put in the time and effort, the 770 can use USB hard drives.
Because it's the size of a handheld, the 770 gets compared to various palmtop devices. The 770 isn't a PDA. It's an Internet widget. The provided version of the Opera Web browser is exceptional for a handheld device. It doesn't have the PIM apps that users would expect from a PDA, but many devices that are designed as PDAs are used primarily for other applications, such as Web and e-mail access. In many cases, the 770 does an excellent job of replacing those, although better keyboard support -- for conventional IR keyboards, for instance -- would have been nice.
Nokia has put some effort and thought into making the 770 friendly to hobbyists and hackers, but the default install doesn't contain any kind of shell; this is a noticeable difference from, say, the Zaurus. The presented interface is more like a simplified Internet kiosk than a desktop workstation. Like the TiVo, the 770 doesn't require that you know or care that you're running Linux to make effective use of its basic features. Unlike the TiVo, it welcomes you to make use of Linux to add your own features.
Where are they going with this?
In researching this article, I read a lot of reviews of the 770, and my impression is that a lot of people are not quite sure what it is. For as much as everyone said they wanted a tablet-based Web browser, a lot of people are unsure what to do with it.
The 770 shines as a device for looking things up on the Web, given Wi-Fi or Bluetooth access. It also has great potential as a development target for custom applications; for instance, it would make an excellent wireless sniffer.
Despite any uncertainty as to the 770's intent, Nokia has been doing some significant research; they developed an entire, new cross-compilation architecture that is most visibly used with the 770. The developer-friendly environment seems to have brought a lot of casual hackers into the field, and the feedback and patches these developers generate will certainly improve the development environment. Even if it isn't all that successful directly, the 770 is contributing substantially to the world of embedded Linux development, and may make future Linux-based devices better and less expensive as a result.
Learn
- In "A cross-development
primer" (Linux Devices, October 2003), Peter discusses some of the
complications involved with cross-compiling for the Zaurus.
- Read "Zaurus
pioneers embedded Linux" (developerWorks, December 2005) for a look at Linux
on the Sharp Zaurus.
- "Nokia 770 Internet
Tablet" (Ars Technica, December 2005), Eric Bangeman's review of the 770 in its
initial release form, is generally positive but points out
some flaws, some of which were at least partially addressed in the 2006 software
update.
- The "Maemo 2.1
tutorial" is probably the best starting point for learning how to do
development for the Nokia 770.
- The blog post "USB power "injector" for USB host mode" shows how to add power to the Nokia
770's USB port. The author does not take any responsibility for damage to your
device, and neither do we.
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