• Registered: 2010-10-07
  • Posts: 16

Topic: Another nano editor port to the Chumby One

I tried the ports from the other threads, and I could not get them to work.  The Ironforge port does nothing, and the link for the other Chumby One port is broken.


So last night I went ahead and ported the latest version of the nano editor to the Chumby One.
Below is the step-by-step on how I did it.

You can download the binaries here:
http://imxcommunity.org/group/chumbyhac … editor-for



The Chumby One ( http://www.chumby.com/ ) uses a Freescale i.MX233 ARM9 processor: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/sit … e=IMX23_SW

Nano is a simple text editor: http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.2/nano.html

I chose the nano editor because it is very "windows" like.  And I wanted an editor that would be easy to use for people who are used to Windows ( they have not seen the linux light yet ).

The binaries are attached.  Simply unzip, or untar the files to a USB flash stick, and plug into the Chumby One. 
Open nano by type:  /mnt/usb/nano.sh

I created the script file, because nano uses ncurse, which requires a terminfo database.

When executing nano, if you get the following error: "Error opening terminal: xterm"
ncurses is telling you that it cannot find the terminfo database.  Export TERMINFO to point to the terminfo directory to fix the problem.

export TERMINFO=/mnt/usb/share/terminfo


How I did it - I included my notes from when I was doing the port in the zip/tar files.  I will provide highlites here:

Download ncurses: http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html
Download nano: http://www.nano-editor.org/download.php

I untared both files in my directory: nano_source
eric@eric-e6410:~/nano_source$ ls
include          share                   nano-2.2.5           ncurses-5.7
lib                 nano-2.2.5.tar.gz  ncurses-5.7.tar.gz


You need to install the Chumby One toolchain following the procedure here:
http://wiki.chumby.com/mediawiki/index. … _Toolchain


Then I configured/built ncurses using the following commands:
$ ./configure --build i686-pc-linux-gnu --host arm-linux --prefix /home/eric/nano_source/
$ make

Then I built nano:
eric@eric-e6410:~/nano_source/nano-2.2.5/src$ ./configure --build i686-pc-linux-gnu --host arm-linux --enable-tiny --disable-mouse --disable-multibuffer CFLAGS="-I/home/eric/nano_source/include -I/home/eric/nano_source/include/ncurses" LDFLAGS=-L/home/eric/nano_source/lib
eric@eric-e6410:~/nano_source/nano-2.2.5/src$ make


This is what my USB stick looks like:
chumby:/mnt/usb-AD9E-6F8B# ls
RobotSee                        nano                     userhook0
falconwing_toolchain.sh   share                     userhook1
logo.jpg                          start_chumby.sh
moving_eyes                  start_sshd.sh

  • Registered: 2012-02-07
  • Posts: 535

Re: Another nano editor port to the Chumby One

This is a fairly accurate outline of how I got nano on my Infocast 8.  I imagine it would work for the Chumby 8 too...


All of this was done as root, because I haven't gotten around to adding other users on my BB8.  YMMV if you try to follow these steps as a non-root user.  Hell, YMMV anyways, because I'm a Linux neophyte!

First, I used the gcc "easter egg" to install the proper toolchain.  Very easy and painless!  Just enter "gcc" at the shell and it will download and install the toolchain for you.  Thanks Chumby Industries! big_smile

Then, the actual installation process begins... replace version number references with whatever is currently available:
(ncurses @ http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/ )
(nano @ http://www.nano-editor.org/download.php )

If you would prefer to build using a USB drive, replace /mnt/storage/ with /mnt/usb/ ; once you make the symlink, the rest of my commands are device-agnostic.

cd ~
mkdir /mnt/storage/pkgs
ln -s /mnt/storage/pkgs pkgs
cd pkgs
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/ncurses-5.8.tar.gz
wget http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.2/nano-2.2.6.tar.gz

at this point, the "pkgs" folder (which is actually hiding on your storage partition or USB) should look something like so:

chumby-20-e4-d6:~ # ls pkgs
nano-2.2.6          ncurses-5.8
nano-2.2.6.tar.gz   ncurses-5.8.tar.gz

now to build ncurses...

cd ~/pkgs/ncurses-5.8
./configure --build i686-pc-linux-gnu --prefix /root/pkgs
make
make install

now you should have a folder full of stuff:

chumby-20-e4-d6:~ # ls pkgs
bin                 man                 ncurses-5.8
include             nano-2.2.6          ncurses-5.8.tar.gz
lib                 nano-2.2.6.tar.gz   share

proceed to build nano...

cd ~/pkgs/nano-2.2.6
./configure --build i686-pc-linux-gnu --enable-tiny --disable-nfs --disable-multibuffer \
  CFLAGS="-I/root/pkgs/include -I/root/pkgs/include/ncurses" LDFLAGS=-L/root/pkgs/lib
make
make install

now nano should be installed on the system, and typing "nano" from any path should open the editor!