Re: Installing Perl on the Sharp Zaurus PDA

On August 24th (yesterday, at time of this post) Perl 5.8.0 became available for the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 / SL-5600 series PDA's. I am working on downloading and installing it. Once I've got the installation to my liking, I'll edit my original post in this thread.

Anyone interested in trying the latest version for the Sharp Zaurus, you can download it here: Perl_5.8.0_arm.ipk.

There is a good discussion on the development and hosting of this latest port on the Zaurus Development Forum, here: Notes on Perl 5.8.0.

UPDATE: So far I've been unable to get the existing Perl_5.8.0_arm.ipk file to install. There seem to be several issues; a number of tar files with bad headers, and probably most importantly, the ~/tmp directory (in Internal Memory) fills up before the 34mb install is shifted off to SD. I'm working on getting in touch with the person who ported it to see if I can bring the issues to his attention. Hopefully it won't be long before we've got a *full* albiet *big* implementation of Perl on the Zaurus. Until then, use Perl 5.6.1 as described in my root node for this thread.

Good luck, and let me know any comments you have so that I can get them into a subsequent edit of this thread's root document.

Dave

"If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein

Comment on Re: Installing Perl on the Sharp Zaurus PDA

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Re: Re: Installing Perl on the Sharp Zaurus PDA by davido (Cardinal) on Aug 26, 2003 at 16:35 UTC
The author of the port has spoken by posting the instructions for installation at The Zaurus Software Index where he says: This is a build of Perl 5.8.0 for thr Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. At ~34Mb it takes a lot of space and is best installed onto either an SD (mnt/card)or CF card (mnt/cf). I use it installed into an NFS filesystem, mounted as /mnt/pkgs. With the way "ipkg" works, you'll also need another ~34Mb at install time for temp's. It's best installed manually as (for example) #ipkg -d /mnt/card install Perl_5.8.0_arm.ipk and SD->SD took about 3 hours! It creates a ./pkgs directory (if necessary) to install itself into - a technique familiar to users of the UNIX "graft" facility. However, I can add that the `ipkg -d /mnt/card install....` or its equivilant for Sharp ROM 3.10, `ipkg -d /usr/mnt.rom/card install .....` doesn't work, because the temporary files fill up 100% of internal storage before the package is installed to SD. A workaround must exist, and I'm currently looking for a way to move the ipkg temp files to CF during the install. The other point that the author of the port made in a separate discussion thread at Zaurus Developers Forum was that the SD card needed to use the ext-2 filesystem. Instructions for converting from FAT to ext2 are available by searching the abovementioned website. When I get the whole thing to install properly I'll edit the original root node of this thread with new instructions and post a followup to alert people. Dave "If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Installing Perl on the Sharp Zaurus PDA by allolex (Curate) on Aug 26, 2003 at 12:44 UTC
I'll check this out and see how it runs under OZ. Maybe we won't have the same problems. `Watch this space` Update 2003-09-01 23:33:45 CEST: I considered deleting that bit above, but I really don't have much to report. I tried the installation, but `ipkg` is flaking on me, so no-go so far. I think I may go ahead and re-flash my SL-5500 and try to install Perl as the first package. -- Allolex	[reply]


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