How to Install Meego on Nokia N900

Key Features

Cellular voice calls (Dialer, People)

    * Make voice calls (input number directly, initiate from Contacts, initiate from Call history)

    * Receive calls

    * Default ringtone plays

    * Volume control works via System UI

    * SIM PIN entry support

SMS (SMS, People)

    * Send new SMS (input number, send from Contacts)

    * Receive SMS, and reply to sender

Browser use over WLAN (Browser, Settings)

    * Able to connect to WLAN AP (with security etc.)

    * Open a complex modern website

Camera (meegocamera)

    * Still image capture

    * Support for N900 keys (zoom, capture)

Common SW (Settings, xterm, lock)

Prequisities

N900 with Fremantle PR 1.3

Linux (for windows & mac, look alternative approaches)

MicroSD (4Gb or bigger)

Community Edition Image

U-Boot (on your phone) 

Warnings

• You have to use PR 1.3 version of Fremantle and nothing else

Install

Uboot installation

Uboot is required for booting to Community Edition, or alternatively to your original operating system

Enable the maemo.org extras-devel repository in your N900.

Install the 'uboot-pr13' package from 'System' section, of your N900 software centre

Install MeeGo image

When inserting the microSD memory card in the card reader, you need to find out what the proper device for the card is. You can also plug the N900 into your computer's USB slot using the package provided cable. Make sure the external microSD card is unmounted, as with most modern linux distributions today it will get auto-mounted if the has a valid filesystem (FAT32 or ExtX). To unmount, you can try this example:

sudo umount /dev/sdX

Finding out the device node can also be done with for example fdisk

sudo fdisk -l

An example output (NOTE: The /dev/sdX is used as an example on your PC this might be also called /dev/mmcblk0, /dev/sdd or something else)

$ sudo fdisk -l

...

Disk /dev/sdX: 3965 MB, 3965714432 bytes

194 heads, 30 sectors/track, 1330 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 5820 * 512 = 2979840 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x0001ab40

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sdX1               1         588     1708984   83  Linux

NOTE: The .raw image contains the partition table as well. So the image needs to be written to /dev/sdX not /dev/sdX1.

After you are 100% sure that the /dev/sdX is the microSD memory card you just inserted in the card reader, you can use for example dd to put the image to the card

$ sudo dd bs=4096 if=<raw_image> of=/dev/sdX

If you are low on disk space, you can use

$ bzcat <raw_image>.bz2 | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sdX

to decompress the compressed raw image on the fly without having to unpack it on you computer first. And if you have pv(1) installed, you can add it in between to display the progress (the Summer release image size is ~ 3.6GB)

$ bzcat <raw_image>.bz2 | pv | sudo dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sdX

The dd does not show any progress until the file is written to the device, so be patient.

dd will output:

328356+0 records in

328356+0 records out

1344946176 bytes (1.3 GB) copied, 105.625 s, 12.7 MB/s

After this, you can insert the card in the N900, put the back cover on and start using MeeGo Community Edition on your N900.

(Putting the back cover on is actually a requirement as else the device won't boot off the µSD card!)

Emulate image

You can use MeeGo Community Edition on your computer by emulating it with your chroot. However when using chroot no UI is available, only terminal. Good thing is that all changes you make there will be available for you on your phone.

Install chroot

apt-get install mic2

Insert your MicroSD card with MeeGo CE in it, and run chroot as a root, having the meego root folder as a parameter.

mic-chroot /media/XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Now you should have a MeeGo CE running in one of your terminals. The MeeGo CE filesystem is also accessible from your linux filesystem, under /media/xxxxxxxxx