Install on Remarkable

Introduction

The Remarkable is an eInk based tablet with a Wacom digitizer running a Yocto Project derived flavor of Linux. It utilizes an Omaha Protocol based update system to provide over the air updates delivered using a Django based Omaha Server.

The CPU of the Remarkable is Freescale i.MX6 SoloLite presenting to the Linux kernel as follows:

$ uname -a
Linux remarkable 4.9.84-zero-gravitas #1 Thu Dec 5 18:14:12 UTC 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

To comply with the GNU Public License v3 (GPLv3) and Lesser GNU Public License v3 (LGPLv3), the developers present the device as an ethernet device over USB using the USB-Gadget interface. Owners of these devices can go to the "About" screen (under "Settings") and at the very end of the GPLv3 statement they will find the current network addresses of the device as well as the root password. From there users may SSH into the device.

Deploying Entware

As this is not a multi-user device it does not need all of the normal steps implemented in the "generic" installation. As such, the "alternative" install script should be used for inspiration if diverging from this guide.

1. Create a folder to hold the Entware content on the /home partition.

for folder in bin etc lib/opkg tmp var/lock
do
  mkdir -p ~/.entware/$folder
done

2. Create a symbolic link in the root partition from /opt -> ~/.entware

ln -s ${HOME}/.entware /opt

3. Run install commands (pulled from the install script)

echo "Info: Opkg package manager deployment..."
DLOADER="ld-linux.so.3"
URL=http://bin.entware.net/armv7sf-k3.2/installer
wget $URL/opkg -O /opt/bin/opkg
chmod 755 /opt/bin/opkg
wget $URL/opkg.conf -O /opt/etc/opkg.conf
wget $URL/ld-2.27.so -O /opt/lib/ld-2.27.so
wget $URL/libc-2.27.so -O /opt/lib/libc-2.27.so
wget $URL/libgcc_s.so.1 -O /opt/lib/libgcc_s.so.1
wget $URL/libpthread-2.27.so -O /opt/lib/libpthread-2.27.so
cd /opt/lib
chmod 755 ld-2.27.so
ln -s ld-2.27.so $DLOADER
ln -s libc-2.27.so libc.so.6
ln -s libpthread-2.27.so libpthread.so.0

echo "Info: Basic packages installation..."
/opt/bin/opkg update
/opt/bin/opkg install entware-opt

# now copy default files - it is an alternative installation
cp -f /opt/etc/passwd.1 /opt/etc/passwd
cp -f /opt/etc/group.1 /opt/etc/group
cp -f /opt/etc/shells.1 /opt/etc/shells

if [ ! -h /opt ]
then
    ln -sf /etc/localtime /opt/etc/localtime
fi

4. Add the new binary path to ~/.bashrc & check to see if

cat <<EOF>>~/.bashrc
export PATH=${PATH}:~/.entware/lib

if [ ! -h /opt ]
then
    ln -s ${HOME}/.entware /opt
fi

EOF

5. Test the installation

opkg install jq

jq .  /usr/share/remarkable/templates/templates.json