New Freerunner, factory image - "Registering..."

[Ken Restivo]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 07:26:26PM +0100, Stroller wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> So my Freerunner arrived this evening, I plugged it in and started  
> charging and it powered itself on. I _love_ that kernel messages are  
> displayed during boot-up, and the plastic of the Freerunner's case  
> has a really nice feel to it.
> 
> Anyway, once booted to the factory image I get continuously a  
> "Registering..." message in the top-left corner of the Home screen.  
> After 30 minutes or so this message persists.

Mine did that until I popped a SIM in. Then it registered and got onto the network easily.

> 
> Cell phone reception in my flat is always a little poor - I have to  
> walk to the window if I want an intelligible conversation - but all  
> other phones have connected to the phone network fine, SMS'd and rung  
> on incoming calls fine when located at my desk.
> 
> Could this indicate that my SIM is amongst those which the Freerunner  
> doesn't like?
> 
> It is a UK O2 SIM, at least a couple of years old, probably several  
> and perhaps 7 or 8. It has been used last in my Sony-Ericsson P990i  
> which is 3G, but I have no idea if that phone has been used at full  
> speed. I find that when I received this P990i, c 15 months ago, O2  
> sent me a new SIM which is marked as "3G", but I have never used it  
> as the phone "seemed to work fine" with the old one.
> 
> It is very nice that a terminal app is included on the default image,  
> but I cannot work out how to enter a forward-slash ("/"), so cannot  
> list /var/log and see if there's anything interesting in there. Would  
> I be best advised to set up USB networking and log in via SSH to see  

I ran into that immediately. The terminal is unusable without a slash key. That tells me that nobody is actually using that terminal app to do anything, but rather that it's only been used tethered by USB. 

But I looked and couldn't find a bug report on this. Is it possible that nobody has yet filed a bug report to add a slash key to the keyboard?

I'm thinking that "/" might go nicely at the end of the 1 key, where most of the punctuation is. I'd expect it to be a one-line patch adding a char to the end of an array somewhere; I'll dig around.


> what's going on? Having plugged it into the wall and started it  
> charging for the first time I am reluctant to unplug it until it is  
> fully charged, as per the instructions. So any suggestions of how to

Mine didn't come with instructions, so I just started using it and then plugged it in to charge it up. Now my battery shows 96% and never gets higher than that. It also gets down to 63% after sitting on idle for 6 hours. Is that normal battery drainage or did I botch the battery? Also, this looks like a standard cellphone battery (same one that's in my Nokia?). Will any cellphone battery that fits that port work in the FR, or does it need a special one?

> debug this from the phone's own console would be appreciated.
> 

I was looking forward to using it as a little handheld WiFi SSH terminal emulator. I'm sure it'll get there eventually.

-ken