Nokia N900 guide: Transferring files to and from the N900

On the N900...

1. Install SSH server
2. Configure password for user account
1. Go to X Terminal and become root
2. Enter the command: passwd user
3. Enter new password when prompted

On Windows...

1. Download and install Filezilla client
2. Run the Filezilla client
3. Go to File -> Site Manager
4. Create a new called "N900" with the following settings:
• Host: Your N900's IP address
• Server Type: SFTP - SSH File Transfer Protocol
• Login Type: Normal
• User: user
• Password: Your user account's password

Optionally, under the N900 site configuration, you can create a "Camera" bookmark which allows to sychronously view the DCIM directory on the N900 and the desired directory on your PC.

Now select the N900 site and hit Connect. You will see something similar to the following:

You can now transfer files between the N900 and your PC simply by dragging and dropping.

To go straight to the DCIM folder on the N900, you can select the bookmark that you have previously created.

As you can see, the local site (left) automatically changed the directory to the one that you configured before. And the remote site (right) jumped to the DCIM folder.

Nokia N900 guide: Setting a password for x11vnc

1. Open X Terminal (or SSH into the N900 and login as user) and type x11vnc -storepasswd
2. Enter password when prompted
3. Gain root
4. As root user, edit /usr/share/applications/hildon/x11vnc.desktop
5. Replace the line that says "Exec=/usr/bin/x11vnc" with "Exec=/usr/bin/x11vnc -usepw"

Other customizations for x11vnc on the N900 can be found here.

Nokia N900 guide: startup scripts

I haven't quite figured out how to execute certain scripts on startup until today. There is a rsync script under my /etc/init.d directory but I could not get it to start automatically. I tried update-rc.d but it doesn't do anything other than creating an S20rsync file under /etc/rc2.d.

It turns out N900 uses upstart instead. So all I have to do is to create a file called rsyncd under /etc/event.d with the following content:


start on stopped rcS

console output

respawn

script
exec /etc/init.d/rsync start
end script


Nokia N900 guide: nano text editor

Everytime I install a new Linux distro, the first thing that I look for is my beloved "nano" text editor. I know "vi" just enough to be able to insert, delete, save and exit but I just can't be productive without nano!

N900 of course comes with vi but it took me a while to get nano installed on it. At first I went to official nano site but couldn't find any binaries for ARM. I found one for Ubuntu but apparently that was incompatible with the Maemo5. Then I found this Maemo wiki page and immediately followed the instructions to add the fremantle/tools repository. To my disappointment, there was still no sign of nano in the App Manager even after numerous refreshes.

So I slided out the N900 keyboard, went to the terminal and fired away the following commands:

root

apt-get update

apt-get install nano

It asked me to install libncurses as well. Fine! Just gimme nano!

And now I can be productive again. Beautiful.