18 August 2008

xterm on the Elonex ONE

Three of the members of our Google Group have pooled their ideas and come up with a way to get the "xterm" terminal console onto the ONE's menu.

This is probably going to be a very useful thing to do, as I can imagine that lots of other Elonex ONE tips are going to start: "open up xterm and type the following commands..."

Anyway this is what you have to do to get xterm on your menu:

Pop up the virtual keyboard with alt-tab and hover over the xkbd logo.

Hold down the left button and select 'manual' and miraculously xterm will appear, running as "root".

type: cd /home/user
type: vi .icewm/menu

..then you're in the menu file. Find a suitable location for your menu entry, and type a line that says:

prog "xterm" xterm /bin/sh -c "xterm"

Make sure it lines up like the other lines, then save and close the file. (If '-c' doesn't work, try '-x' instead.)

Now hit the "One" button and see your new menu option.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

As a Linux newbie and with my One+ due any minute now, I've been browsing the net for info on Linux and the machine, which has only served to confuse me. Is there anyway you could explain in a non-techie way what xterm means/is and what it will do if I put it on my system, and also if I should?
Thanks in advance.

Editor said...

If you are used to Windows, xterm is the equivalent of a "command" window - somewhere you can type in instructions to the operating system. It will therefore be useful if you want to change the programs on your Elonex ONE, such as installing new software or modifying configurations that don't have menu items to control them...

Anonymous said...

Wow i have just got my one+ and been trying to get get root all weekend, this is the BEST find :-) big thanks

Anonymous said...

You're welcome :-)

In other news, Elonex report that a restore image can be found on www.elonex.com/support.

You can get the ONE to ask for the image on a usb stick by holding down the ONE key as you turn it on.

Now if only the page would work and actually had the file...

Sigh.

-Kamen Otoko

Roger B said...

Any ideas how to access command line on a OneT plus?

Roger

Roger B said...

I found the answer at:

http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/software/Xterm.htm

Roger

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that tip - Just one problem. What is the key sequence to save and close the file !

Thanks

Editor said...

This discussion carried over into the email group where Fred gave the following help:

The vi editor is great (once you've worked out how to use it :~D), vi
has two modes command mode and editing mode. In command mode you move
around a file or tell vi to do various things like searching. To start
edit you either type i (for insert at the same point as the cursor) or
type a (append to insert text after the cursor).

To save a file exiting editing mode by pressing the esc key, and then
type :w or ZZ - ZZ is save and exit. To exit without making any changes
type :q! which means quit without saving changes - :q with quit and save
changes.

There are lots of tutorials available on the internet including:

http://bsdwiki.reedmedia.net/wiki/Be_familiar_with_the_vi__40__1__41_...

HTH

Fred

Gian-Luigi Valle said...

Make live easy for yourself
type into xterm the following:
leafpad /home/user/.icewm/menu -c
do all your editing and then press ctrl+s to save :-)