Reflashing and Setting Up My Nokia 770

This page contains instructions for myself, but they may be useful for others as well.

These instructions are for flashing OS2006.2 (SU-18_2006SE_2.2006.39-14_PR_F5_MR0_ARM.bin). Earlier OSes did not support one-click .install files.

See also: reflashing OS2007 on a Nokia N800.

Backing up stuff before reflashing

1. Use the Backup/Restore tool in the Control Panel to create a backup
2. Run my backup-to-mmc shell script in an xterm (warning: it is very strongly tailored to the set of files I keep in my home directory)
3. You'll also want to put restore.sh in the 'backups' directory in your MMC card
4. Write down the list of useful applications that you'll want to reinstall. Probably openssh, osso-xterm, fbreader, maemo mapper, load plugin, panel clock, pwsafe, mc, vim, ntpdate. Maybe x11vnc, vncviewer.

Reflashing

1. Make sure you have flasher-2.0 for Linux
2. Make sure you have the OS image
3. Make sure the battery is fully charged
4. Disconnect the charger
5. Power off the device
6. sudo ./flasher-2.0 -f -F SU-18_*.bin -R (replace SU-18_*.bin with the filename of the OS image)
7. Connect the USB cable and power on the device

Restoring stuff after reflashing

Also known as the tricky part

1. Use the Backup/Restore tool in the Control Panel to restore the backup
2. Open http://mg.pov.lt/770/reflash.html in the browser
3. Enable the red-pill mode in the application installer.

4. Use this single-click install file to install openssh
5. Disable the red-pill mode in the application installer.

6. ssh root@mg-nokia (replace mg-nokia with the IP of your device)
7. Enter the root password (rootme)
8. EDITOR=vi visudo (if you don't know how to use vi, this page is too technical for you!)
9. Add the following two lines:

   user ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
   root ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

10. sudo -u user sh /media/mmc1/backups/restore.sh
11. Log out from the ssh session
12. Verify that you can now log into your 770 with the SSH public key: ssh user@mg-nokia (replace mg-nokia with the IP of your device)
13. Verify that you can now use sudo: sudo -s
14. Lock down the root account: passwd -l root
15. Exit from the root shell and log out from the ssh session
16. Add some repositories. You can skip this step, as one-click install files for the applications will add the repositories they need.
    • Maemo extras.
    • repository.maemo.org. Careful with this one, it is primarily intended to be used with the SDK, so packages in it may not work on the device. Also, if you blindly do an apt-get upgrade, you may end up with a device that does not boot.
17. Reinstall applications. These one-click install files are useful (some of these work on the Nokia N800 too, but not all):
    • XTerm (maemo-hackers version)
    • FBReader (my version)
    • Load applet (my version)
    • Clock applet [OS2006 only; use statusbar-clock for OS2007]
    • Password Safe (crappy UI, but essential functionality to me)
    • Maemo mapper
    • VNC Viewer (OS2007)
    • VNC Server [OS2006 only]
    • XChat [OS2006 only]
    • Glurp (mpd client) (somewhat crappy UI) [OS2006 only]
    Command-line apps:
    • rsync (terminal app) [OS2006 only]
    • links (terminal app) [OS2006 only]
    • wget (terminal app)
    • unzip (terminal app) [OS2006 only]
    • less (terminal app) [OS2006 only]
    • ntpdate (terminal app) [OS2006 only]
    • screen (terminal app)
    Command-line apps installable only in red-pill mode:
    • mc (terminal app) [OS2006 only]
    Other:
    • Python 2.5 [OS2006 only]
    • mplayer (OS2007)
    Wishlist:
    • vim (TODO: make sure there's a package that suits me somewhere in the world; in the meantime untar vim7-for-mistral.tar.gz in /home/user and sudo apt-get install libxt6
    • vmstat
    After installing everything I still have 34 megs free (89.3 megs used total).
18. If you want to enable "reboot" and "soft poweroff" in the power menu, sudoedit /etc/systemui/systemui.xml
19. Reboot to start the applets you've installed.