Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 Instruction Manual page 119

my Zaurus SL-C3000 and SL-C3100
qtopia-memoryapplet_1.0.4_arm.ipk is a modified version of the memory applet for the C3x00
series that can create a swapfile on /hdd3 and larger swapfile size up to 512MB.
Building your own Packages
You can also build your own packages (ipk files) if you have written some useful scripts or written
some applications that you want to distribute and let others install easily with the standard package
manager.
I have build a package ipktools [ipktools_0.3.5_arm.ipk] which has a set of tools for manipulating
ipk files:
newipk - creates a package template structure for you to add files to for packaging
makeipk - package up a directory that contains files in an ipk structure into an ipk file
unpackipk - extracts the contents of an ipk file into a directory structure for repackaging
deb2ipk - converts a deb file into an ipk file format
zipipk - zip up an ipk file and remove ipk file afterwards
compatipk - attempts to make an ipk packaged for another distro to be more compatible with
the Sharp system in terms of filesystem structure
xipk - installs ipk to alternate location other than main memory
xipk-link - links files and directory installed to alternate locations (used by xipk)
xipk-build - used to build cramfs/squashfs images (installs the package to the image without
registering it into the package repository)
ipkg-link - links files and directory installed by ipkg
ipkg-make-index - generates the Packages file needed for a feed
pkgsize - reports the installed size of the files making up the package
ar - extract the .deb/.ipk packages
mkcramfs - create cramfs image
mksquashfs - create squashfs image
There currently are two ipk file formats. One uses the tar and gz format wheras the other uses a
different format that is similar or the same as the format used for deb files. The Zaurus with default
Sharp ROM uses the tar and gz format, which basically is a gzipped tarball (.tgz or .tar.gz) with a
control structure and renamed to .ipk. If you extract this ipk file, you will find 3 files inside it - a
text file called debian-binaries which just contains the string 2.0, and two .tar.gz files called control
and data. The control.tar.gz file contains a text file called control which has informaton about the
package such as the Maintainer's name, dependencies, version, description, etc. There may also be
some optional shell scripts for doing some pre and post configuration tasks during install and
uninstall. Finally, the file data.tar.gz contains all the files and directory structure of the files for their
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http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myzaurus/
16/09/2007 12:23