N800 config file

Whilst I’m no linux expert, nor am I a developer, I do work in Information Technology, specialising in client devices, so when I got my N800 I was keen to work out how it all fit together. In Windows, its mostly in the registry… on my new N800, it seems to be conf file scattered all over the device. I’ve done a bit of googling and couldn’t find much information on these files, so this is why I started this blog!

I should note to do any changes to these files could make your N800 unbootable, so use at your own risk! Also you’ll need a variety of tools – root access, xterm and a good text editor (I use leafpad, but if you love vi then go for it). Post a comment if you aren’t sure how to get these and I’ll post something that explains it.

So here we go!

In /etc/osso-af-init you’ll find all sorts of configuration files that, when I was googling, I couldn’t find any info on. This post will focus on startup-greeting.sh

After the standard commented fields, you’ll see some interesting stuff.

run_greeting ()
{
export DISPLAY=:0.0

OUR_LOGO=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_nokia_hands.jpg
OUR_SOUND=/usr/share/sounds/ui-wake_up_tune.wav
CUSTOM_LOGO=/usr/share/custom/custom.png
CUSTOM_SOUND=/usr/share/custom/custom.wav

/usr/bin/osso_startup_greeting
BACKGROUND_PID=$(pidof osso_startup_greeting)

if test -f $OUR_LOGO; then
/usr/bin/osso_startup_greeting $OUR_LOGO
OUR_LOGO_PID=$(pidof osso_startup_greeting | sed “s/$BACKGROUND_PID//”)
/usr/bin/play-sound $OUR_SOUND
kill -9 $OUR_LOGO_PID
fi

if test -f $CUSTOM_LOGO; then
/usr/bin/osso_startup_greeting $CUSTOM_LOGO
/usr/bin/play-sound $CUSTOM_SOUND
fi

# Terminate all osso_startup_greeting processes with extreme prejudice
kill -9 $(pidof osso_startup_greeting)
}

if test “$1″ = “start”; then
run_greeting &
sleep 3
elif test “$1″ = “fg”; then
run_greeting
fi

I was interested in changing the logo and sound on startup, I’ve seen some other methods of just modifying the graphics files and sound files, but I wanted to know what drove the device to load those files. Well here it is:

OUR_LOGO=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_nokia_hands.jpg
OUR_SOUND=/usr/share/sounds/ui-wake_up_tune.wav

Browsing to the /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon directory brings up lots of graphic files, to test I changes this to

OUR_LOGO=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_nokia_770.jpg

And rebooted the machine. Whala! The changed graphic file came up.

I tested removing the following line:

/usr/bin/play-sound $OUR_SOUND

Stops the sound from playing (which is what I was ultimately going for, I hate that sound.)

Hope this helps someone, or inspires someone to look at some other config files and play around. Be careful to take backups of files changed and also be wary that you may render your new shiny internet table unusable!