PalmSDK on Gentoo Linux

I dislike my phone and my carrier. Once my current contract is up I would love to switch carriers and get a new phone. One option is a WebOS device, the Palm Pre or Pixi. Since I don't want to buy anything without trying, I thought it would be fun to try out the emulator that is provided in the PalmSDK (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux). Here is how I installed the sdk on Gentoo:

First add the sunrise overlay:

layman -a sunrise

Unmask the sdk and novacom and emerge:

echo "=dev-embedded/PalmSDK-1.4.1.427 ~amd64" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

echo "=dev-embedded/palm-novacom-1.0.55 ~amd64" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

emerge PalmSDK palm-novacom

Add your virtualbox modules to load at startup and load them now:

echo "# Load VirtualBox Modules" >> /etc/conf.d/modules

echo modules="vboxdrv vboxnetflt vboxnetadp" >> /etc/conf.d/modules

modprobe vboxdrv

modprobe vboxnetflt

modprobe vboxnetadp

Add the novacom to run as a service and start it:

rc-update add novacom default

/etc/init.d/novacom start

Add your user to vboxusers group:

usermod -G vboxusers -a username

Now you can run the emulator (not as root):

plam-emulator

If all went well you should get prompted to select which device you want to use.

If you got a "missing version string error" instead, it most likely means your virtualbox modules are not loaded (see modprobe code above to load them).

To access the console you can use:

novaterm

Enjoy using WebOS!