Debian Etch Recovery.img

[wicknix]

Alright, you asked for it, so here you go. 

http://www.filefactory.com/file/agf4974/n/Recovery_debian-etch_img

It's just a debootstrapped mipsel debian etch that i added the kernel modules and a repository or 2 too. It boots to console and you'll have to set everything up and install everything manually. If you know what you're doing have fun. If not..well.. you're on your own. 

Only annoying issue i found while playing with it is the fact that the console doesn't refresh/clear/scroll properly. You'll need to type 'clear' quite often until you actually have X11 up and running as everything displays fine then.

Cheers.

[Unhban]

Ta, Wicknix, been looking forward to having a go with this. It's downloading now! More later!

Unh.

[Whiskers]

<evil chuckle><rubs hands><WEG>

Downloading now; thanks!  I had a bit of a struggle getting past the CAPTCHA - once I'd worked out that the link posted is to a web page, not directly to the file.  I've never used  'File Factory' before.

[duttydea]

Cheers wicknix,

Guys please be kind!!! i wanna use the LLL to learn more about Linux

I have installed the Etch Recovery image. I know i need to install X11 but i have no idea how to get Ethernet working.

i know i need this to use apt-get!!

Can anyone help?

Thanks in Advance

[Unhban]

Me too! 

I think it might be something to do with  ifconfig eth0  but really I'm stabbing in the dark!

Guess this thread might become The Idiots Guide to Debian Etch and The Future!

Unh.

[rodonn]

Slighty off topic, but all this reminds me of the early days of Linux 
I'm getting quite nostalgic.

[wicknix]

Its been a few months since i played with it so i don't exactly remember how i got ethernet working. I'd start with running lsmod to see if the ethernet driver (dm9601) is loaded or not. If not insmod or modprobe it so its loaded. Then (again cant remember what etch uses) you'll need to start dhcpd. Look in /sbin and see what it uses. Could be udhcpc, or dhclient etc etc. Once you figure that out just run that command and your ethernet should connect. Example: dhclient eth0

My memory is rusty, but i hope that gets you going in the right direction.

Cheers.

[mewtwo]

Wicknix, I love you 
I'll try it tomorrow, for now I've mirrored it: http://benpico.spline.de/LittleLinuxLaptop/debian/Recovery_debian-etch.img
(Much faster than filefactory and no captchas)
You may check the md5 hash
How are these recovery images created btw?

[wicknix]

They are just root file systems compressed as .tar.bz2 and renamed to .img basically.

Cheers.

[mewtwo]

Hm, something is strange with this Debian.
dhclient gives me

socket: Adress family not supported - make sure
CONFIG_PACKET (Packet socket) and CONFIG_FILTER
(Socket Filtering) are enabled in your kernel
configuration!

insmod, modprobe and lsmod return
Kernel requires old insmod, but couldn't run insmod.modutils: No such file or directory

What's up there?

[wicknix]

Not sure. It's just a stock debootstrapped debian etch, nothing removed, nothing added (except kernel modules).

Dhclient looks to be looking for a package that isnt installed in the base. The package is modutils. You could download it and its deps if it has any and use dpkg to install them from sd/usb stick if need be.

Again its been months since i tried it. It does connect to ethernet (eth0) though. There's even a guy on the trendtac website thats running etch on his with icewm for a window manager. See here: http://trendtac.hyves.nl/album/28733383/Trendtac_Intertoys_Laptop/DhjVfPy0/photos/424839564/0/5E3e/ . DOH! seems he answered our problem. I was right, you need to downgrade modutils. After that you should be good to go.

Cheers.

[doobe]

That was me . I never did get system DBUS sorted , but etch runs reasonably considering the limited hardware.

[mewtwo]

I found I needed to remove the 2.6 kernel module-init-tools and use the 2.4 version (modutils).

Erm, stupid question: How to do so?

[LilYoda]

apt-get remove module-init-tools
apt-get install modutils

doing the above makes dhclient work, as well as sshd.  It seems several programs have problems with sockets unless the switch in module tools described above is done...

EDIT: to make it work, you also need to create the following file /etc/network/interfaces, and add the following in there

Code: [Select]

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth0
For those that are mad with the console not clearing, type dselect, then exit the program.  It sets the console to a clean mode ^^

What I can't figure out is why the permissions on the root directory get restored to 666 at every boot.  It causes issues like not being able to login with a secondary account.  If I "chmod 755 /", it gets restored to 666 at the following reboot.

Does anyone have a clue?  This has been bothering me for 2 days 

An extra question I have: does anyone know what xorg server I should use with this device?  Wanted to try out gdm ^^

[LilYoda]

OK I have few questions

 - what is the GPU on this thing?

 - where is the kernel?  If I want to build a kernel, I don't even know where to store it (I'm used to /vmlinuz)

 - what is that "rootfs" root filesystem?  I'm used to devices like /dev/sdX or /dev/hdX
It seems to be a yaffs filesystem, can someone confirm?

yaffs: dev is 7940 name is "1f:04"
yaffs: Attempting MTD mount on 31.4, "1f:04"
yaffs: auto selecting yaffs2
block 3802 is bad
block 6033 is bad
block 7235 is bad
root dev name=1f:04
VFS: Mounted root (yaffs filesystem).

 - dmesg shows that there are 5 partitions on the NAND, but I have no idea how to access them.  Anyone has a clue???  The kernel and bootload seem to be in there for exemple, and I was wondering if those partitions were "mountable"

NAND device: Manufacturer ID: 0xec, Chip ID: 0xd3 (Samsung NAND 1GiB 3,3V 8-bit)
NAND_ECC_NONE selected by board driver. This is not recommended !!
Creating 5 MTD partitions on "NAND 1GiB 3,3V 8-bit":
0x00000000-0x00100000 : "bootloader partition"
0x00100000-0x00400000 : "kernel partition"
0x00400000-0x00500000 : "mac partition"
0x00500000-0x00a00000 : "mini rootfs partition"
0x00a00000-0x40000000 : "yaffs2 rootfs partition"
No NAND device found!!!

 - what is the wifi module?  iwconfig says I have only eth0 and lo0.  I looked in /lib/module, but can't find one that adds eth1 when modprobe'd

 - what device is the SD reader supposed to be?  the kernel reports a mmca device and a mmca1 partition when I plug the card in, but I don't see it in /dev

JZ MMC/SD driver registered
...
Partition check:
 mmca:<7>hub.c: port 1, portstatus 100, change 0, 12 Mb/s
hub.c: port 2, portstatus 101, change 1, 12 Mb/s
hub.c: port 2 connection change
hub.c: port 2, portstatus 101, change 1, 12 Mb/s
 mmca1

 - is there a way from the computer to make a backup back to the SD card, or to a NFS drive (and then how could I create the file to put on the SD card again?)

Thanks to all for the work on this device.  It's a pain to make it work, but I think it can be a nice device once it's configured well...