Before I dive in (greetz)

Greetz everyone. I just got my Pink Pogoplug in the other day and it's an E02. I've mainly been windows for the last couple decades, and various Linux for 10 years but usually set up with help from friends and just use it, don't tinker much.
I know how noobs can sound disruptive and whatnot, but if you'll allow me, there's a few things on my mind that I haven't found answers to thus far. Drumroll...

1. Debian or Arch? My original goal was to have the PogoPlug right into my router and access a hard drive or two (with USB 2 adapter), sort of a poor man's NAS 320. Just to run torrents some nights and lightweight stuff that spares my power bill. Samba and a basic GUI. Maybe even OwnCloud or something like it. Maybe Wordpress. That's as far as I could ask, and that's a lot.

2. Because my DSL connection is noisy and there's nothing i can do about it, I'm scared to get updates using the Pogoplug and have a lot more confidence getting/prepping the items with Windows. For instance, I've already grabbed the 192MB ArchLinuxARM-kirkwood-latest.tar.gz (not saying that's the best one) and, using a partition app in Windows it's no trouble to make a USB with Swap, Ext 2 or 3, Active etc. the most important question I could ask is, how to modify install language so as to run what's already in the correct partitions?

3. Having seen the Raspberry Pi community, is there such thing as USB flash images for newbs for the E02? on the surface would that be cool. But i'm a newb. Everything looks like magic doesn't' it? :D

4. Is it hard to make it so hard drives spin down when not in use? Admittedly I don't see SATA ports on the E02, but I'd bought a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 adapter and might buy a couple more in the near future.

5. Is there such thing as a safe way to turn off a Pogoplug other than unplugging an AC cord?

Well the hour or two i spent here tonight is great, an eye opener. I see many PogoPlug pages on the web but not many where the links still work. I don't want to wear out my welcome here but now you know everything that's got me wondering. Thank you very much.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2015 01:27AM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

Joey,

These are installation links that you might want to read (but not attempt right away, I'd expect you will have questions):

1. Jeff's script to install u-boot and Debian (the Debian rootfs part has problem, because it is out of date)
http://projects.doozan.com/debian/

2. To create latest version of Debian rootfs:
http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,12096

3. To install newer u-boot:
http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,12381

To answer your other questions:

- Having seen the Raspberry Pi community, is there such thing as USB flash images for newbs for the E02? on the surface would that be cool. But i'm a newb. Everything looks like magic doesn't' it? :D

No, there is no image file available. See number 2 above for how to create rootfs.

- Is it hard to make it so hard drives spin down when not in use? Admittedly I don't see SATA ports on the E02, but I'd bought a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 adapter and might buy a couple more in the near future.

Easy but depending on your HDD model.

- Is there such thing as a safe way to turn off a Pogoplug other than unplugging an AC cord?

Yes, once you've running Debian, it is simple to do.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2015 12:16PM by bodhi.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer those questions bodhi. Twice with two different USB sticks I end up with this:

Quote

W: Failure trying to run: chroot /tmp/debian mount -t proc proc /proc
W: See /tmp/debian/debootstrap/debootstrap.log for details
debootstrap failed.
See /tmp/debian/debootstrap/debootstrap.log for more information.
Pogoplug:/tmp$

Hate to say it but I'm pretty much sure this is over my head. Both times i got it to seemingly install, the USB sticks were blinking. First USB stick was a Sandisk Glide, morbidly slow, then a faster 4-gig that really sped things up. Getting this far is the limits of my abilities.

So if i had succeeded, what would happen? A GUI appears or command line, or more SSH into it to get net console?

JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hate to say it but I'm pretty much sure this is
> over my head.

I am relatively new to the Debian on plug computers scene and I have to say that when I first starting trying to load Debian on a Pogoplug E02, it was extremely confusing about which guide to follow. I did lots of research and my perception back then was that the Doozan script was the most "official" but when it failed to load Debian I was left wondering what I did wrong. I have a feeling many people reach that conclusion, that is when the Doozan script fails to install Debian and and they can't figure out what went wrong then they figure it's too complicated to figure out or don't have the time to figure it out. Then they give up even though they probably didn't brick their device but don't know how to fix it or get it back to stock condition.

I realize that nobody here is under any obligation to update the Doozan script but as a newbie it would have been nice to have a script to follow that at least gave you a basic Debian install without much fuss. I am very much aware it's not my money paying for the forum server and file sharing that go into the process of putting something like that script out there. Plus I don't have to listen to all the whining from people who ignore the "this may brick your device" warning that I observed when I used the script. I am just saying it would be nice if the script was updated to 1) to load the latest u-boot and root-fs and 2) took into account the platform it was being installed on and customized the installation based on that.

Edit: I should have stated the obvious that it's not just the money that goes into this forum's effort but also all the voluntary time which is worth alot , alot more than the monetary cost of file sharing and web hosting. I am sure that effort goes unappreciated more often than not so please don't perceive my request above as not taking into account all the time it takes to make it happen. I was just trying to point out it would be nice if the script could be updated so that other's with less time to spare than I had could "take it off the shelf collecting dust" and re purpose their Plug's as a cheap NAS or use it as a music server / player like I did.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2015 07:17PM by LeggoMyEggo.

Joey,

Quote

W: Failure trying to run: chroot
> /tmp/debian mount -t proc proc /proc
> W: See /tmp/debian/debootstrap/debootstrap.log for
> details
> debootstrap failed.
> See /tmp/debian/debootstrap/debootstrap.log for
> more information.
> Pogoplug:/tmp$

When you've installed with Jeff's wheezy/squeeze script and got to this point, then:

- u-boot version 2011 was installed successfully.
- Debian rootfs part failed because of debootstrap problem.

If you had succeeded, nothing will happen that you can see. At that point, you would reboot the system and then the plug will show up in the network, and then you can SSH into it.

To recover from this:

- On another Linux box (if you don't have then use Linux Live CD to boot your Windows PC, or use Mac OSX terminal), download the rootfs version 3.16 from the kernel/rootfs thread:

Quote

Updated 02 Sept 2014:
Rootfs Debian-3.16.0-kirkwood-tld-2

Put it on a USB thumb drive per instruction, and take it to the pogoplug and boot with it. Once you can log in using SSH, then consider your installation successfully done. You can continue using this basic rootfs as a base (this is the equivalence of Arch rootfs you've mentioned above).

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

LeggoMyEggo,

> I am just saying it would be nice if the script
> was updated to 1) to load the latest u-boot and
> root-fs and 2) took into account the platform it
> was being installed on and customized the
> installation based on that.

Agreed. I just need to find time to write and test it, since Jeff has stopped the maintenance for the script.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

yeah that's over my head. So i tried the VinnyMac way and same exact error message. Oh well.I'll probably try ArchLinux method and if that don't work, just give it up.

Thanks once again for your time. It's s legitimate point that when we're dealing with low cost hardware there's little incentive to keep funding alive. I'd been a volunteer for 15 years on the Windows side for low and no income people, and all it took to put me out of "business" were two drunks who couldn't so much as log into an email account and put out the word what a ripoff artist I am LOL. I shouldn't LOL because it led to a heart attack a month later and now it's a year later. And tonight, running the Vinny script, my heart is freaking out a bit, so I'd better quit. Argh.

@Joey sent you a P.M.

Gravelrash Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @Joey sent you a P.M.

I'm shaking with happiness :) Uhm, have you received two replies? My sent box doesn't say if I'd made replies. I dont' mean to jump the gun, count my chickens and all that, but the thought occurred to me, would that be cool and maybe funny, to run torrents of Pogoplug images from pogoplugs LOL

i like the idea of running a pogo torrent from a pogo device...

SUCCESS! Probably. Arch Linux installed and it rebooted to alarm. So it's updating now, the "pacman" command. Assuming it works, this has been a great learning experience and some basic terminology is sinking in, the commands that extract and mount drives.

When Gravelrash said to copy-paste the lines of code from Arch Linux, I had no idea that right-clicking it was all it takes to paste it into puTTY.

Well there's still a lot that can fail (LOL) but I'm SO relived to see ti really works. Next steps will prolly be to image the USB stick and try for debian next time on another stick. this little unit practically begs to have custom sticks running, change weekly or daily for a while.

But i still haven't run anything so, maybe it's time to thank you all very very much. Gravelrash there's probably no need to knock yerself out to get a image up, but if you guys decide to release images that make it easier on newbs, I'll help seed.
-update- Oh oh, the update:

error: failed to commit transaction (unexpected error)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Not sure if that means anything or not, but if it reboots I'll say so and get off to bed. Okay it rebooted.
Aight, good night and thanks once again!



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2015 01:40AM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

I got one created last night - but diditn have the opportunity to upload it yet - and was hopiing you would volunteer to test it out...... its the 3.17. kernel and also contains the upto date files for the uboot.

will upload it over teh next day or so and if you want to have a play with it and feedback comments and criticisms that would be awesome.

Sure, today I took out the USB plug and it booted into Pogoplug, so I now see the bootstrapper prefers a USB device. Good and well.
I still haven't made my Alarm do any tricks, may have gotten samba and webmin but more likely not. When i take that USB stick back to Windows and run Partition Wizard, the only thing i can't get it to do it resize an Ext3 partition. As-is it doesn't have a swap. And to install Samba they want you to have another partition and I was too scared. But I might add another USB stick & format if it accepts that.

But i like the idea of a 4-Gig image, should RAR down fairly little and 4-Gig USB sticks are usually cheap. So yeah I'm looking forward to being your guinea pig :D Let me know if you've got Samba/torrents/webmin because i look forward to those a lot. But for now I've got Arch apparantly running, looking forward to Debian too, and haven't' bricked it yet :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2015 07:28PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

hi - you ABSOULTELY DO NOT NEED ANOTHER PARTITION FOR SAMBA

you can install the package using pacman and it will come precompiled and ready for you to modify to your requirement.

pacman -Sy samba

have a look here
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/samba

and here
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Samba/Tips_and_tricks

having said that while you are using archlinuxarm, you would do better looking on the archlinuxarm forums about there installation foibles.

Peace - Gravelrash