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Putting Debian on top of plugbox linux

Posted by jason 
jason
Putting Debian on top of plugbox linux
March 19, 2011 08:56PM
Dear Experts,

I wanted to overlay my current plugbox linux installation according to this guide: http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/

However, I am a little nervous, since that guide is focused on updating stock firmware rather than migrating from one linux running off the USB flash drive to another. Is it okay to follow that guide verbatim in my case?

Sincerely,
Jason
jason
Re: Putting Debian on top of plugbox linux
March 20, 2011 04:02PM
Dear Friends,

I had some time and figured I would try to run through the install. It was a heck of a thing.

First, I tried to do the serial reflash and went through the entire process of getting the stuff off of my tftp. I must have some corrupted NAND on the dockstar, cuz I got UBIT errors after the flash/reboot. Strike a fresh install from a fresh image from the possibilities.

Secondly, I worried. The thing was booting into plugbox before I did the unsuccessful attempt above. The worry was generated when it was realised that tftp would not hold a connection to retry to download the stock firmware again.

Third, I found some forum post with Doozan's uboot-original-mtd0.kwb http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,3625,3625 and etc. Broke out my linux lenovo s10 to do the needed to a USB flash and follow along the forum post with the instructions. Similar UBIT error was my result, so recovery mode was not an option. The tftp was still broken and studying the ethereal logs did nto get anything conclusive, just an ICMP error from tftp computer to the dockstar. The good thing about following the guide was having uboot back. I was able to boot into plugbox linux!

Now I considered two branching paths forward. One was to somehow run linux in memory and follow the debian install guide. The second was to install to /dev/sdb. I chose the latter.

To do it:
1. Follow this http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/ with some exceptions
2. Namely, rather than running Doozan's script, I just entered almost all the commands in manually over a serial connection.Mostly replacing /dev/sda1 with /dev/sdb1 and replacing /dev/sda2 with /dev/sdb2 (WARNING: I did not do a global replace since some areas it made sense to point at /dev/sda1)
3. I did not install the mtd stuff, because uboot was already present

Thanks for your time all, and hope this helps someone in the future!

jason Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dear Experts,
>
> I wanted to overlay my current plugbox linux
> installation according to this guide:
> http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/
>
> However, I am a little nervous, since that guide
> is focused on updating stock firmware rather than
> migrating from one linux running off the USB flash
> drive to another. Is it okay to follow that guide
> verbatim in my case?
>
> Sincerely,
> Jason
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