Openwrt to/and Debian

Hi,
I have a nice self build opwnwrt firmware on my Dockstar, but openwrt is kinda limitated and I would like to give Debian a shot. But I am not really sure how to proceed now.

My Setup:
mtd0 = original bootloader
mtd1 = u-boot from opwnwrt
mtd2 = openwrt uImage
mtd3 = openwrt root
mtd4 = empty space
- serial connection available
- no backup of pogoplug so blparm doesnt work


Best would be to be able to keep the openwrt and boot debian from usb-stick if its connected. It seems like it is possible from what i read in other threads just that they use the original pogoplug fw.

Questions:
Possible at all?
Which u-boot should do the job?
What settings to use?

Have your tried installing Debian already?

I am running openwrt and want to install debian on a stick now too.

don't you thing the normal installation will work from within openwrt?
http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/

I am pretty sure the script wont work on openwrt since it was ment for the pogoplug enviroment.
Havent tried anything yet.
Maybe I will do so the next days ...

There actually is a problem when trying to run the debian install script on openWRT: "ar" is missing. "ar" is needed to unpack the "debootstrap.deb" (line 320 of the script).

My solution: Download the file on another linux machine (url see script), unpack it using "ar", copy the contents to a ftp server and download the files on the dockstar in the created "debootstrap"-directory. Any other way used to get the files onto the dockstar will presumably work ;)

Getting "ar" onto the dockstar seems to be complicated as it isn't available in any of the packages of openWRT...

sabuty Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My solution: Download the file on another linux
> machine (url see script), unpack it using "ar",
> copy the contents to a ftp server and download the
> files on the dockstar in the created
> "debootstrap"-directory. Any other way used to get
> the files onto the dockstar will presumably work

Sadly, this isn't sufficient. "ar" is needed later on in the script as well. So the question stays the same, where to get "ar" for openWRT/dockstar?

sabuty Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sadly, this isn't sufficient. "ar" is needed later
> on in the script as well. So the question stays
> the same, where to get "ar" for openWRT/dockstar?

Quoting myself again, but perhaps my way of suffering is interesting for someone else ;)

Next try: Based on an idea from the openWRT-Forums, I downloaded
http://www.uclibc.org/downloads/binaries/0.9.30/mini-native-armv5l.tar.bz2
on another linux machine and only put the "ar" from mini-native-armv5l.tar.bz2/usr/bin on the dockstar.

This seems to work so far :)

sabuty Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This seems to work so far :)

Mh. It doesn't work. The "ar" from uclibc only outputs the filename and "Success" regardless of what it should have done. It's useless...


I will now try to restore the original Firmware and install Debian from the platform the script was intended to run from.

Rather than reflash the old Pogoplug environment, it may be even easier to just install the Rescue System.

-- Jeff