BeeKey Atari on a key and now BeePi

[JoeAtari]

I think now that the problems I thought were related to shutdown or some kind of corruption are actually related to enabling networking. The system hangs whenever I have networking enabled. I had both ethernet and wifi working, but only for a short period of time before things started hanging on boot or when I would try to use the terminal. I tried a second SD card and a fresh install, but the same problems returned. If I set the system back to ethernet, and unplug from the network nothing hangs up.

[Faucon2001]

Hi Joe,

Yes, you must use shutdown app to shutdown properly BeePi otherwise you may corrupt the Linux host system. You can access it with a right click on a desktop or by opening Taskbar menu and choose “shutdown”. Switching off mechanically will corrupt your install after a while and make it unusable.

Regarding network, have you applied the update patch provided a few messages above? It corrects many issues.
Interface file is created by the setup application and should be editable with qed . It’s a simple copy of one of the two templates interfaces.eth or interface.wifi. So if your interfaces file is corrupted (which sounds strange by the way), you can rebuilt it by copying interface.eth or interface.wifi to interface. Copy it with KK Comander and edit it with qed.

Finally, there is a bug which makes the system hangs sometime when BeePi cold boots. If it happens, after Aranym started (white screen at boot or Aranym stuck ), just do a ctrl+alt+del to restart Aranym (or alt+F12 to access Aranym setup menu and click shutdown ). I still have to work on it. This issue seems to have disappeared with the latest version of emutos and aranym, but I have to do some more tests.

[JoeAtari]

I found the shutdown. Thanks!

I did apply the update.

The only way I could get networking to function was by doing this:

- delete /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
- edit /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules and remove eth*|wlan*| from
# device name whitelist
KERNEL!= ...

But once I have networking functioning, the system keeps hanging. The mouse cursor will sometimes be able to move, but it jumps and I cannot click on anything. When I reboot it hangs at the green desktop without any icons most of the time.

I have tested and tested. It seems like trying the wifi is what really messes things up. Once I get everything set back for ethernet I don't seem to have the problems, but I need to test it more to make sure. I have pretty much given up on the wifi for now.

Thanks for your help!

[JoeAtari]

Okay, I kept at it and now things are working just fine! I'm not sure what I did that was different. I know that I started clean, applied the update and then did this:
- delete /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
- edit /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules and remove eth*|wlan*| from
# device name whitelist
KERNEL!= ...

I configured ethernet after that, cold booted (system still hung a few times) until I could bring up the linux terminal and type these commands:
ifconfig eth0 up
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.50/24
route add default gw 192.168.0.1
(these values are for my router setup)

I cold booted again and networking was functioning, and I didn't experience problems. I decided to be brave and try the system setup and change to wifi. This time wifi worked and I still didn't experience problems!

I have to say that the way this is configured is amazing! I am learning about tools and ideas for setting up an Atari system that I have never known about, and I have been doing this for a very long time. Again, just amazing!

Now, since I am running this on a pi-top laptop, I would love to see a tool to show the battery life. I would also like to be able to easily switch to another wifi network. I started doing a little research about how to do this on the linux side. It looks like there may be some scripts to run from bash that would provide these functions.

One last thing - I think that the PHWeather location saves when I input it on my Falcon, but the location is not saving with beePi.

Thanks!

[wongck]

One last thing - I think that the PHWeather location saves when I input it on my Falcon, but the location is not saving with beePi.

Suggest that you do an exit and reopen it again, rather than forcing it to save when you shutdown Aranym. My guess is the disk may not be flushed during shutdown or something like that.

[JoeAtari]

Regarding the pi-top laptop, I now believe there is a hardware incompatibility. The system keeps hanging when booting.

[stormy]

Regarding the pi-top laptop, I now believe there is a hardware incompatibility. The system keeps hanging when booting.

But the pitop is just a screen, track pad and keyboard. How could that be incompatible?

[Faucon2001]

The hanging at power on boot is a bug that I have described in the documentation.
It has nothing to do with your Pi Top. It’s annoying, but for now the only solution is to press ctrl+alt+del just after Emutos boots, or Alt+F12 and choose shutdown to restart Aranym. Subsequent reboots don’t hang until you switch off your Pi.
I have read on Aranym group that the latest version of emutos and Aranym solves this issue but I haven’t had time to test it so far.

[JoeAtari]

I think this may be something different than what is explained in the documentation. I can get to the desktop, but it often freezes before any icons display. If I get to the full desktop, it will often freeze so that the cursor will move, but I cannot click the mouse or use the keyboard. If I boot enough times (usually at least five times) everything will start working, including the networking. Thanks so much for your help!

[JoeAtari]

I don't really understand what the difference would be, but I tried using "Etch" with a PC to create the SD Card rather than "Pi Filler" on my Mac. Now I no longer get the problem with the system freezing at the desktop. More testing is in order, but I am encouraged. I'll use it for a few days to see if it keeps going.

I had a different problem this time, where the system would work very slowly with wifi configured. Changing from wifi to ethernet and back seems to have solved that problem.

[Faucon2001]

To create the SD card I use the shell under osX or Linux : sudo dd bs=1m if=<your image file>.img of=/dev/<disk# from diskutil>
Though these utilities are recommended in the how to, I don’t know if they modify the boot sequence. If it works, perfect, but keep in mind that could be a cause of your issues. In order to be exactly in the same conditions as my setup, try to install it with the dd method, apply the patch and reboot.

What version of Raspberry Pi3 do you use? I am working on a standard Pi3 first version. In the Pi3 B+ they changed the WiFi chipset. It may be a cause of your WiFi issue. Installing the right driver should help.
A beginning of answer : https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... rry-pi-3-b

[JoeAtari]

Great to know! I have a Raspberry Pi3 model B. The B+ does not work with the pi-top OS at this point. Since I re-flashed the card with Edge and worked around whatever issue was causing it to run slowly, it has been working perfectly. I have leaned a lot about Linux by working with this, and BeePi is also teaching me a lot as I check it out. So many tools and great setup ideas that I want to try on my Falcon. Thanks so much! I'm also working on running aranym on the pi-top OS. I have it running with afros, but there will be many hoops to jump through before I would have anything even close to BeePi!

Tools that would be great for BeePi in the future: The ability to scan for wifi networks and switch at different locations. Support for the pi-top speakers, or especially the pi-top pulse speaker.

This is interesting information, but I am afraid it is too technical for me at this point: http://www.leinninger.com/2016/10/14/ho ... erry-pi-3/

Thanks!

[TheNameOfTheGame]

I'm not too knowledgeable about ARAnym, but I'm trying to learn.

Right now I'm setting up BeeBox using BeeKey. I noticed there is a new ARAnyM released this year.

Is there a way to update an existing BeeBox to the new ARAnyM or would it require an install from scratch?

[Faucon2001]

Yes it can be updated, but it’s not an easy task as each new version of Aranym can bring some incompatibility, and in the case of BeeKey you need to know how to build a system image.
I will update it, it’s not a question of “if” but more a question of “when” as I don’t have access right now to my development setup.

[matt]

Is it possible to run this in a VMware Fusion?

I tried and got so far, but my linux knowledge is not enough to fix/continue.

[Faucon2001]

I have never been able to run beekey in a VM. It doesn’t mean that it can’t, but I have never dug it.

[matt]

I'll buy a new USB key and try again.

I failed with one USB key (which is now dead so likely that was the problem) and various SD cards and adapters (error on Linux startup).

[matt]

Hmm. The version of Mac-Linux-USB-Loader I am using does not have the options in step 8 & 9 of the guide?

8. Click and activate “This ISO lacks an EFI-enabled kernel”
9. Click and deactivate “This ISO has code older than Ubuntu 14.10”

[matt]

I built an older (3.3) version of Mac-Linux-USB-Loader, it has those options so now I'm booting OK!

Here it is for other Mac users.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/sdgnyy4f ... 3.zip/file

[matt]

Is there an alternate way to get to Aranym Setup? Alt+F12 is not working for me. Will keep trying.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

right click on the desktop, then setup and then hardware setup. The system will reboot and the configuration setup will run again so you can fix the keyboard.

Did you do Alt+F12 or Alt-GR+F12? Has to be Alt GR+F12 instead of Alt+F12...I did that mistake also in the past.

[matt]

Neither Alt+F12 works to do anything?

Choosing keyboard fro the setup did not change anything.

I have had to create my own keyboard.tbl using KeyEdit as it was the only way I could get punctuation to type correctly.

Timezone change that I made does not survive a boot which makes me think persistence is not working?

Any ideas?

[stormy]

So this is likely to do with Mac custom key mapping. Alt might not be the same mapping as a windows keyboard. If you want less hassle perhaps use a windows keyboard. Not sure about the persistence issue, perhaps try writing and saving a document to test.

[matt]

Saving a file to H:\Documents did not survive the reboot.

Thinking about the first boot, it was very quick - too quick for the initial persistence file sync/copy to happen.
So I am wondering whether the steps for Mac Install listed in BeeKey Manual are correct?

Given that a Mac ISO is provided, I'd be surprised if it didn't work with stadndard Mac hardware. Maybe somebody else has run it on Mac in the past?

Happy to troubleshoot this and try things until it works.

PS: I don't have more than my main keyboard, so buying another one would be... a different sort of hassle.

[ThorstenOtto]

Is there an alternate way to get to Aranym Setup? Alt+F12 is not working for me. Will keep trying.

You can run aranym with the -G option, that should open the setup before booting the ROM. And since a commit done Jun 26, you can also use the middle mouse button to enter setup.