Any updates about RiscOS on the Raspberry Pi?

PackMan works and is really handy for installing new software in bulk, but complains about a conflict with the SharedUnixLib already installed in !System. A new user asked about how to install new software post-installation in one of the threads here.

I’m debugging a new version of PackMan now which will prompt to backup SharedUnixLib and replace it. Hopefully that will make it a little easier to get started with if you already have SharedUnixLib installed. (This is a general procedure that applies to any package).

Perhaps it might be worth integrating PackMan into the disc image with no actual managed packages, but set it up so that packages can be advertised after release to people who want to use that as a delivery system. That probably means a new repository containing vetted packages, since many of those on riscpkg.org and riscos.info are either not ARMv7 safe or just plain confusing – eg for SSH you want to use Nettle not NettleSSH these days.

I spoke to Graham who runs the RiscPkg site about this a while ago and he said he could host a new package index for ARMv7. Once this list in place, it would just require the package maintainers to add there ARMv7 safe packages to this list via the web interface.

Another one which comes to mind is double-click and hold to shift-open application directories: this would be handy for those demonstrating the system to an audience.

No need, it comes built in. Just open the Filer configure plug-in and turn on the corresponding option.

I’ll add this to the list – a change to !Boot.Choices.Boot.Desktop to add the lines:
|Start Acorn BootBoot 0,01 Boot IfThere Boot:^.Third Party.!SparkFS Then Filer_Boot Boot:^.Third Party.!SparkFS |End

That should work; though the comments are misleading as that segment’s not written by Acorn ;-)

Is there a reason why SparkFS is in Third Party in the standard image? I’d’ve thought Utilities (since it’s Filer_Booted by default) would be more sensible.

Theo:

ArcEm works. riscos.info SDL games like Tutris and Starfighter work.

The version of ArcEm on riscos.info, I assume? That looks like it’s a pretty old version, and so doesn’t have all the performance/graphics/sound improvements that I made last year (or was it earlier this year? I forget). Plus I suspect the X11 frontend is quite slow compared to the native RISC OS one. Unfortunately the native RISC OS frontend doesn’t support 32bpp screen modes, so until the Pi video driver is finished, or I find some time to do some more work on ArcEm, the X11 frontend is really the only choice available.

On the subject of games for the disc image: how about SDL Asylum? With any luck a few ex-Acorn users will remember it, and it’s certainly something a bit more Acorny than all the usual SDL game ports from Linux/Windows.

double-click and hold to shift-open application directories

No need, it comes built in. Just open the Filer configure plug-in and turn on the corresponding option.

Looks like I missed this! Thanks.

I just grabbed a copy of Chris’s distro – thanks, Chris, for integrating my disc format so quickly. One question, though – why are there so many files in the FAT partition? I’m sure I used to manage with just start.elf, config.txt and riscos.img, now there are several more, and two copies of the RISC OS image for some reason…

“On the list of attendees is “Dave Walker” – what’s the likelihood that it is the Acorn DW? :-)”
DW is easy to recognise: He’s about 6’6" !

and two copies of the RISC OS image for some reason…

Mea culpa. Noone noticed before. Anyway they are mostly harmless. (u-boot.bin and riscoszz.img are indeed superfluous and I didn’t realise they were still there until you mentioned it). You do need bootcode.bin, commandline.txt and loader.bin but I’m not sure about preenv.txt.

preenv.txt is a u-boot thing, so you don’t need it.

I see the latest image is 2Gb now. Any way of shrinking that? The only spare SDs I have are 256mb and kind of ideal really as don’t see a need to waste a 2Gb on this.

Is there a way I can shrink the image myself if it’s all just free space? (either under linux or Windows).

Oh, and great work by the way!

Is there a way I can shrink the image myself if it’s all just free space? (either under linux or Windows).

http://www.partitionwizard.com/ Home edition (windows based freeware)

work on a backup copy of the SD card of course

I see the latest image is 2Gb now. Any way of shrinking that?

No. 2Gbyte SD cards can be obtained for about £4.

Is there a way I can shrink the image myself

It would be about a week’s work to do this as partitioning software is not sufficient. The RISC OS partition contains a DOS image file that is mapped to the FAT partition manually. It would cost at least £500 to commission such work. Any other sizes that are produced are likely to be bigger (to give more storage space for RISC OS or to have other partitions for other operating systems).

Now that the 13 July 2012 distro is ‘stable’ and should not need to change whilst it remains ‘alpha’, I have produced an update here

Instructions follow (after this update the instructions will be on the Pi):

Click on the icon marked 'SD' and ':0' on the iconbar so that the 'SDFS::RISCOS.$' window is opened. Double click on the directory 'ThirdParty' so that the filer has seen the utility !SparkFS.

Now drag the file(s) from the window ‘..SDFS_Up’ to the window ‘SDFS::RISCOS.$.!Boot.Loader’. This updates you to the latest ROM image.
end of ROM update]

or see full size screen shot

The following things have been added or corrected:

Update 1
-——-
The clock will now be set from the network on every start up rather than being left at 1970 and left
for manual setting.

The utility ‘!SparkFS’ in $.Third Party will now be seen on boot so that double-clicking on an
archive (or ‘zip’) file will now cause it to open to show its contents in a directory window without you needing to open ‘ThirdParty’ first.

The utility !InterGIF has been added to $.Utilities.

The module Fat32FS has been added so that FAT-formatted USB pen drives greater than 2Gbytes can be handled correctly.

The source for Netsurf has been added in Public.Sources as this is a licence requirement. You may delete it if you do not require it.

The documentation seen on start up (the ‘welcome’ page) has been improved.

Sat 14th July 2012.

Chris did you get my email about packman?
if not phantasm_39@hotmail.com is my MSN messenger, which I have running on my Pi (posting from it now) you can email to the address, if I know to look.

Chris did you get my email about packman?

Yes. Work in progress.

I wondered why you advocated that people go tinkering inside their !Boot to do upgrades, rather than just supplying a !Boot directory to merge. To investigate, I tried copying a !Boot containing a Loader directory containing a new riscos/img over my existing one. Result: both Filer_Action and *Copy have an amusing bug where they copy the filetype and access permissions of the Loader directory (filetype FFD / user RW bits unused) over to the destination Loader image file without checking that one is a directory and the other a file. Oops. Was this the reason for your thinking? I note that the Boot Merge tool in !Configure works perfectly, though.

In other news, I think CMOS RAM emulation for the Pi is done now. Enjoy, everyone.

Ben, when I was looking at this yesterday I was a bit suprised to see that it wasn’t just a skeleton !Boot which you then use Configure to deal with everything.

If it works I wish I had had CMOS yesterday – would have made my desktop look even nicer when I was presenting RISC OS at the Cambridge Raspberry Jam.

Speaking of which the best reaction to RISC OS on a Raspberry Pi was actually Mr. Upton himself:

“This is f***ing amazing!”

There’s a guide to merging !Boot and !System directories on the NetSurf site:

http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/resinstall

It’s also supplied with NetSurf:

file:///<NetSurf$Dir>/Docs/documentation/resinstall_en

Chris H.

The problem with the bottom bit of the screen not being display seen to have been fixed if you add framebuffer_align=0×100000 to the config.txt which you have in the distro release.
Just putting the latest riscos image in the loader directory and reboot and you get a full screen with no scaling. Neat trick in mapping the dos partition to a image file under riscos.

Just to zoom back in time for a moment, did people manage to get VNC working on the Pi? The post I saw said that you need to set the colour depth to 32K colours for it to work, but I can’t see how you can do that as it’s fixed to 16M colours.

When I try connecting to it it takes a long time before finally giving up. If I try to connect to to an incorrect address if gives up right away.

Is there a display number you should connet to like 1.1.1.1:1?

No. 2Gbyte SD cards can be obtained for about £4.

Yeah, was just planning to spend as little as possible on the Pi as otherwise makes it kind of pointless being so cheap. It’s not that I can’t afford it, just it’s a principle thing :D. Though if the image will get bigger than 2Gb then I need something bigger obviously. How big could it grow to?

I’ve got a 2Gb just it’s in one of my cameras. Also a 16Gb I’m using for Debian. I’ll play with it on that. If we can end up dual booting RISC OS with other OS though that would be cool. Rest of my cards are old, 256, 128 etc, hence was thinking RISC OS shouldn’t need much space and ideal to re-use one of these. I like to re-use things. My main cards are all CF cards for my big camera.

The size of the image might change following discussions with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but 2 GB feels like a good size to me at the moment – it’s the smallest and cheapest size that’s easily available to buy new at the moment, and you can always use the same image on a card that’s actually bigger. It would be extra effort for someone like Chris to maintain images in a range of sizes, certainly at this early stage (maybe later an autobuilder might make it more practical). In any case, 2 GB is huge by RISC OS standards, and if you really need more space, you can always use a USB drive.

amusing bug [with Filer_Action and *Copy] where they copy the filetype and access permissions [from a directory to an image file]

I’ve squashed both those bugs now.

I wondered why you advocated that people go tinkering inside their !Boot to do upgrades

I knew that would work and hadn’t thought that you could copy a directory containing an ordinary directory ‘Loader’ containing a single file on top of a directory where the destination file/directory ‘Loader’ is an image file. Never thought that might work! Will experiment (once the next rom is built and I have checked it works).

Tim, it is possible to make a smaller disc image, but it’s quite painful at the moment. You need to:

1. Decide how many cylinders you’re going to give RISC OS (a cylinder is usually about 512K)
2. Put your SD card in a Windows/Linux box and with a partition tool like cfdisk, Partition Magic, GPartEd, delete all the existing partitions.
3. Create a FAT partition at least 32MB in size starting above the cylinder you chose above
4. Create a partition below this of an arbitrary type (this isn’t strictly necessary, but just so partitioning tools don’t get confused)
5. Into the FAT partition, copy all the files from the FAT partition of the RISC OS distro
6. Put your card in a RPi and check it boots
7. Put HForm on the FAT partition (or a USB stick) and format the SD card from RISC OS, telling it that the number of cylinders is the figure you picked above
8. Copy files from Chris’ distro
9. Check it still boots

There’s loads of chicken-and-egg stuff here (eg how do you copy files from Chris’ distro when you can’t read it without writing it to an SD card first). This can all be done with RPCemu and disk images, and only imaging the SD in the final step. But it’ll sufficiently painful that you probably just want to pay the money and use a bigger card (or borrow one, for the duration of setting it up, perhaps using a second card in a USB reader).

I also don’t know how this interacts with Ben’s !Boot.Loader hack…don’t know if that needs special magic to know where the FAT partition is.

don’t know if that needs special magic to know where the FAT partition is.

Oh Yes I think it does – the RISC OS partition has to extend over the top of the FAT partition so that it can write there. The two partitions overlap but the partition table is tweaked (as an overlap would be seen as a broken partition table) to make them look like they abut.