GMenu2X Revisited (again)

Looks like some of the issues I had with gmenu2x on the zipit have been discovered.  On the zipit IRC channel, dronz pointed out that launching programs with the gmenu2x wrapper setting chewed up memory like it was candy.  Not so good on the zipit with it's stingy 32MB of RAM.  The crappy uclibc versions of the fork and exec functions strike again.  So I created a fix, and rolled a new package along with the updated icons from a while back and some termula2x tweaks.

But what an ugly fix it was...  It turned out the execlp() call in gmenu2x was leaving the huge gmenu2x parent process hanging around, merely suspended and hogging up all the memory, waiting for the child process to die before exiting itself.  You can see it right there in the htop window launched from bash, which was launched from gmenu2x. 

I tried all sorts of clever  trickery with fork and temporary script files, but nothing really worked well until I got frustrated and tried something really stupid.  Running "killall -9 gmenu2x" in the bash shell launched from gmenu2x  did away with the pesky bugger.  So I simply added that to the wrapper script and voila!  It seems to work.  I may fiddle with moving the killall earlier in the wrapper script to free up the memory before the child process, but for now I think it's ok.

You can find the updated package here:

gmenu2x-iz2s.zip 

I still need to fix the launcher code to set the terminal right so emacs stops complaining about /dev/tty and bash no longer whines about not having job control.  The nanonote patch for this doesn't seem to work for me.   But I applied it anyhow, just in case I ever build a z2lite version of gmenu2x.  What does seem to work is running "setsid cttyhack emacs" instead of just emacs in the gmenu2x wrapper settings.  Same for bash.  Oh well, when I finally settle on a permanent solution for this, I'll probably have to do another gmenu2x package update.

The Long Way Around the Top

I'm not exactly satisfied with the ebook contents page produced by zpub, so I thought maybe I could make zpub build the html using the same algorithm as the original script.  But that uses the bc utility to assemble it's javascript and xml contents, and bc isn't included with IZ2S, so I figured I'd build it and see if it helped. 

At around the same time, I somehow got to wandering around on the nanonote wiki where I happened upon a shiny picture of htop running on the nanonote.  Ooh, shiny... Had to have it!  So I compiled it and tweaked the screen and keys a bit to better fit the Z2.  I love the way it lets you scroll to the right to see the entire command line.  Way better than the usual run-of-the-mill top utility!

Also around the same time I got to thinking about how I still really wanted a C compiler for IZ2S.  What's wrong with me?  That's just stupid.  But sometimes the only way to get these crazy ideas out of my head is to just go ahead and do it.  So I did.  Well... Ok, it's not really a compiler per se, but the PicoC interpreter is probably a better fit for IZ2S anyhow.  Since I had some previous trouble with floating point math support on the zipit I built two versions: one without floating point support, and one with it.

Unfortunately, before I got to test it all that much, I stumbled upon an SDL patch for the links browser.  What?  How did I miss that before?  With this patch I should be able to make a version of links for IZ2S that works properly, with or without the mouse, and without requiring the messed up DirectFB libs.  If it works, I can finally toss out the broken IZ2S DirectFB libs and remake them correctly from scratch whenever I get back to working on fltk, xdialog, vnc, or any of my backburner projects that need a normal working version of DirectFB.

Anyhow, I tweaked the links-sdl patch a bit for the IZ2S screen size, and for the current version of links.  I also added link traversal via TAB and BackTAB, and horizontal scrolling with the <> keys to make it more workable with zipit keyboard and the fake "mouse".  Initial testing feels good.  Gotta get it finished soon so I can patch bc back into the zpub script and see if it helps before something else pops into my head...

See?  The "mouse" actually works.

Look in the Zipit Z2 Goodie Bag for links to all the stuff.

Back to the Books

A long time ago, possibly in a galaxy far far away, I bought a couple of old H. Beam Piper books and started reading them.  Then Return of the Jedi came to the theaters and ruined it for me.  The Little Fuzzy characters prominently showcased on all the book covers reminded me way too much of those insipid ewoks!  So I packed them all up, never to be seen again until recently when I stumbled upon them buried in the attic.  I was well over my ewok phobia by now; watching the even more insipid Jar-Jar character with the kids had cured me of that eons ago.  So, to make a long story short, I finally finished reading the books, and enjoyed them enough to start searching for more.

Well, I visited the local bookstore and they had nothing so I went shopping on the internet.  Apparently many of Piper's books have lapsed into the public domain and are available for free at Project Gutenberg.  WhoHoo!  Score!  So I nabbed a few of the zipped .txt files and started reading them on the zipit with greader2x.  Not bad, but they're also available in epub format, and some of those come with pictures!  I had to have it.

After a tiny bit of research I discovered that epub is really just a zipfile with some xml packaging around html formatted books and/or chapters.  Once unzipped it can be read in a browser.  I found the ebook-tools C library which I might use someday to add epub support to greader2x.  But meanwhile there's epub-read.sh, a simple shell script to unzip, parse, and browse the contents of an epub file. 

The epub-read.sh script uses frames and javascript to provide a the table of contents, so I simplified it a bit for the somewhat limited browsers available on the zipit.  And thus zpub was born.  It works ok in glinks, but the text is kinda small for me.

You can edit the script and replace the call (near the end) to the glinks browser with links for text only epub reading, or with netsurf for something that looks more modern.

 
zpub.zip

Thinking Small

Apparently the Zipit folks have obsoleted the original built-in app on the Zipit Z2.  This means the jffs on the internal 8MB flash contains about 5.5MB of useless applications and data.  Worse yet, it's supposedly possible to get the stock app stuck in some sort of infinite loop of update requests if it's never been connected to Zipit wireless for an initial firmware update.  Now I've never experienced this myself, but I also haven't booted a new Zipit into the stock app for quite a while now.  If you're really worried about it you should probably bypass IZ2S and run the latest FlashStock to replace the firmware with uboot and the spiffy rescue image.  Then you can run one of the many uboot userlands like z2lite.

However uboot is significantly slower to boot than the stock bootloader, and all of the uboot userlands seem to require reformatting your SD card to ext2, which may significantly shorten the lifespan of the SD.  So I got to thinking, maybe I should consider replacing the stock app on the internal jffs.  Now, what could I fit into 5.5MB?  A minimal Rockbox installation would be sweet.  I could also go for a minimal gmu install to turn the Zipit into a dedicated internet radio device requiring no SD card.  But both of these apps are just a wee bit bloated for the 5.5MB available on the internal flash.  So how do I make them fit? We could use an IZ2S version of UPX to cut the executables and libs down to about one third the size.  Then things just might fit.

The UPX source compiled without a hitch and seemed to work just fine on the IZ2S rockbox executable.  Supposedly the source version of UPX has somewhat lower performance than the pre-built UPX executables, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.  It's probably good enough for my purposes.  Now I just need to sacrifice the stock app on one of my Zipits and then see what fits.  Meanwhile, here's the UPX executable for IZ2S.

upx-iz2s.zip