Computer Tips

Installing LInux in BlueAngel

If you just want to install linux on your BlueAngel, the only website you have to visit is Handhelds.org. By following the instructions you will have an Embedded Linux ready in a SD card within half hour, including downloading kernel image and gpe image. Well except one strange problem that I encountered: if I try to partition the SD card into two primary partitions: one in fat16 and the other in ext3, BlueAngel can not find the SD card. Only after I partitioned it into one logical partition (fat16) and the other primary partition(ext3) did it work normally.

It's pretty exciting when the system boots up in Linux. I played around for a while and started wondering if I can build an application on it (that would be much more interesting than just putting a fixed system inside). The processor of BlueAngel is ARM CPU, so programs have to be compiled by arm compiler or ... so-called cross compiler on other systems, for example, x86-based linux.

The default GUI environment built for BlueAngel is GPE, so that's the start point that I look for a cross compiler. And with luck, I found it here. Just download gpe-sdk-20050210.tar.bz2, and extract it as root under the root directory, you will have the cross-compiler environment and all the gpe related libraries.

Now, you can write a program for gpe, compile it, use scp to copy it into BlueAngel and run. That's it. Isn't it simple? :)

posted by Daniel Kao @ 5:47 AM