So now you're an expert with wordpress

A new project - just what the blog needs to get back on track. It's been a while. I welcome back my fictional readers.

If you need to build a brochure site for your business (and let's be honest, if you don't already have one - you and me BOTH have put it off too long) - Wordpress may be for you.

I assume two things.
1) You have basically zero experience with PHP and mySQL
2) You're tired of waiting on an extra hundred hours of spare free time to come along

Technically I also assume you have a hosting company that you pay to store things on the web for you - which you currently only access via FTP. If they are fairly decent - you probably also have tons of other functionality provided on your account at no extra charge that you aren't taking advantage of. Because... we'll I do.

My businesses use CrystalTech (where's the free month?) which is a very powerful WIMP.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have something useful to say about the whole procedure of getting a WordPress site up and running, that I can post. Hopefully, someone will get some benefit from it. According to my stats - gain root and Verizon Nokia 770 have been a real "hit."

If you guys are worried about my Nokia, it's ok, she's doing fine. They're even starting to go back up on eBay. To-do list updated. For a few weeks I was sporting a laptop (which I ended up having to deploy) so the Nokia wasn't getting much attention. I need to do that Nokia 770 Memory upgrade.

Hacking the Verizon "red" UI on the KRZR turned out to be a chore. I just wanted to make it green... The ringer even stopped working after a weekend at ACL. It's cool - it just needed to be cleaned & re-seated.

Unlimited Wireless Internet Anywhere - Nokia 770 & Verizon EVDO DUN - $15/mo

Big NEWS.
This weekend - I got a new phone.
A white Verizon K1m:
First I had to add unlimited Mobile Web to my account for $15 extra a month, and then I had to enable DUN (tutorial) - but it was totally worth it:

(Update: 938352 was THE thread for this hack, do a search for the thread number in hofo EVERYONE referenced it, but for some reason it's gone now. Try this one)


Granted that test was performed standing still in the middle of an empty parking lot. But I'm getting 200 kbps pretty consistant, with bursts in the 300's and dips to the mid-100's. More than enough to listen to web radio or check my email - if not at the same time.

Wireless Internet Anywhere - it's like I'm in the future... or Japan.

Lot's of updating on the to-do list - plus I want to make a few posts about some of my mods to the KRZR and my experiences with the Verizon red UI. More to come soon!

Is there a microphone on the Nokia 770?

I always kinda wondered since I picked one up. And having installed an audio recorder, I can now say with out a doubt - that the Nokia 770 does indeed have a built in mic.

You can record your own voice notes by installing maemo-reocrder.

To-do list - updated.

mame emulator on nokia 770

mame emulator on nokia 770
Originally uploaded by clay.gerrard@sbcglobal.net

xmaeme is really impressive - but not that playable. There seems to be a hardware limitation that prevents the emulator engine from recognizing more than one button press at a time. And with all the hardware keys to the left of the display, people are generally forced to rotate the device 90deg, so the buttons are on the bottom. This way you can put both hands on the keys and still see. The image on the display can be rotated clockwise to compensate and make the game appear right side up - however I found some roms would not load with this option enabled.

From the xMaeme loader gui - when I checked "rotate clockwise" - many games would fail to load with the error message - "unable to load ROM"

Perhaps a role playing type game on the Nintendo emulator will be more fun.

Nevertheless, here's the project homepage: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/xmame/

Adding users and Shadow Password

So the Nokia 770 does have the "adduser" script. I tried:

adduser clayg

Everything looked like a normal debian adduser script, full name, room number etc. But it didn't work quite right.

When I tried to log-in with my new user from putty it booted me right back out. So I tried switching users from the console.

su clayg

It told me stright away /bin/bash doesn't exist. Hince the whole "busybox" thing every time I log-in. I'm not running the bourne-again shell!

I headed to /etc/passwd to investigate and guess what - the password file on the Nokia 770 is NOT SHADOWED.

To create the /etc/shadow file and remove the encrypted passwords from the world readable file /etc/passwd issue the command:

pwconv

This command will create the file /etc/shadow (which is only readable by root) and use that to store all the user's encrypted passwords.

Now, if you look at the last line in /etc/passwd you should see something like this:

clayg:x:1000:1000:Clay Gerrard,,,:/home/clayg:/bin/bash

It's the last bit that's causing problems. The last field is the shell to invoke when the user logs in, and if you check under /bin - bash really isn't there...

I referenced the entries for root and user as an example, and changed the last field from /bin/bash to /bin/sh

I guess I could have just installed bash...

Weather Applet & Video Converter

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/omweather/

If you planning on watching video's on your Nokia 770 you're going to want this little java application to convert your standard mpg's and avi's to Nokia 770 compatible resolution and framerate:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=26

SSH on Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

So my apartment complex has free wifi out by the pool. Pretty nice. Got the password from the lady at the front desk and logged right in.

Now that I can becomeroot, I'm able to start doing some REAL work on this thing. Like install a SSH Client & Server. I've never heard of the project before, but I ended up installing the dropbear.

First you should add the maemo-hackers repository to your application manager:

1. Open the Application Manager
   
2. Click on the Application Manager Titlebar
3. Select Tools->Application Catalogue
4. Click NEW to add the maemo-hackers.org repository

The catalogue entry for the maemo-hackers.org repository should have the following settings:

Web Address: http://maemo-hackers.org/apt
Distribution: mistral
Components: main

Leave "Enabled" checked. After you hit ok a few times it should prompt to refresh list of packages. Do this and when you look at "all packages" you'll see quite a few more than you had before. Go ahead and choose to install dropbear-client.

Well isn't that fun - now you can use ssh to log-in to your favorite linux box... but the real trick is getting that ssh server running isn't it? Well, that's a little harder because you have to have root privileges to install the dropbear-server - but we HAVE root privilege


INSTALL SSH SERVER ON NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET OS 2006

Close out of the application manager. Start up xterm. Gain root access.

enter the following command in xterm to install the dropbear-server

apt-get install dropbear-server

NOTE: you must have the maemo-hackers.org repository already added into your application catalog

Now run ifconfig to check your ip, open putty or some other ssh client on another machine somewhere - and dig the log-in:



I also found this cool themeing app, it's java so you can run it just about anywhere. You can reskin your Nokia by editing just one jpg and using the java app to compile the .deb - then if you don't like it, you just uninstall it!

to-do list: updated

BTW, the default root password is rootme, and that ssh server is always on. You may want to change that root password like - right away...