Debian image for USB drive

I recently installed debian on a dockstar and a 4GB USB flash drive, using shyd's method (http://dev.shyd.de/2011/01/seagate-dockstar-debian-squeeze/) and loved it... The usb drive I had debian installed on stopped functioning, and I didn't have a backup setup yet.

Does anyone have a post-install image I could download and put on another flash drive to get it up and running again? The dockstar is nothing but a paperweight on my desk right as of now. I appreciate any other suggestions.

im in the same boat. using an old version of uboot and now my drive is dead. cannot seem to make a build using my pc and a usb stick. Someone has to have a basic deb build that they can clone for us.

There's a tar image of Jeff's original Lenny system here:
http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/lenny/base.tar.bz2

I think you should be able to decompress and untar it to an ext2 formatted USB stick (you only need about 512M), and boot it if you have the U-boot installed.

kraqh3d

thanks for the link but i have tried extracting it many times and it seems to have errors. :(

Yeah you know I just noticed that. I downloaded and uncompressed it, and ran a tar tf on it without a problem. I just untarred it. While I got some errors, I think its still ok. Give it a try anyway. It's not going to make anything worse, that's for sure. If it boots, you can do a dist-upgrade to squeeze.

For this purpose, why not simply use Jeff's old scripts that installs Lenny. I never had any problem with it.

http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/install_lenny.htm

Well that script is meant to be run directly from the Pogo device. To run it on another system just to build the stick requires a little tweaking to the script. I wasn't sure of the users linux comfort level so I didnt even want to bring that up. But yeah it'll work. That script basically just downloads and decompresses that tar to a stick and then overwrites the kernel. But I dont think overwriting the kernel is necessary. It should still boot, and whats the difference if the user is going to dist-upgrade afterward to bring it up to squeeze.

You can do either way. I don't think there will any differences. I just thought using the scripts will be a little bit simple..

twinclouds Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For this purpose, why not simply use Jeff's old
> scripts that installs Lenny. I never had any
> problem with it.
>
> http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/install_lenny.htm


Yeah, tried that. Removed some portions of the script that were pogo-only. It always gets stuck at the deb bootstrap portion. I have pretty much given up running anything beyond the stock pogo software. I got my hands on a serial cable but so far, i have no idea how to revert the uboot back to the original. :(

Wait a sec.... You shouldn't have to revert your uboot to boot into the original Pogo environment UNLESS you installed the rescue system or you mucked around with the bootcmds in uboot. Did you do either of those? If not, the original Pogo environment should load when the uboot cannot find anything to boot on usb.

kraqh3d Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wait a sec.... You shouldn't have to revert your
> uboot to boot into the original Pogo environment
> UNLESS you installed the rescue system or you
> mucked around with the bootcmds in uboot. Did you
> do either of those? If not, the original Pogo
> environment should load when the uboot cannot find
> anything to boot on usb.

I think he as quote what I said previously. What I said was that if you need to reflash to the original stock firmware, you will need to first put back original uboot. Unless things have changed lately, Jeff's uboot did not work for me for reflashing back to stock firmware.
Of course, if you want to boot to USB, you will install Jeff's uboot during the installation process.

I used the older uboot method described at http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/

Beyond installing the modified uboot listed above, I didn't tinker with anything else.

uboot does attempt to load the original uboot-original-mtd0.kwb from jffs but doesn't do anything beyond that. From what i have read, this has happened to a few other folks who have run the uboot installer (as opposed to using ubit) on goflex net units.

I have tried numerous times to get a working linux install but it seems the unit either does not like my usb stick or refused to load much. I also tried the rescue files that can be loaded from usb, they also do not load past the uInitrd.

Here is the serial output
http://pastebin.com/rAnvmMzX

and printenv
http://pastebin.com/bKiSWx5Y

Sorry I wasn't paying attention. I didn't realize the thread sort of changed topics. I don't have a GoFlex but I've read here that it has issues loading the original firmware. I think someone said it needed to be loaded to a different memory location than 0x800000. And it looks like U-bit might overwrite the original pogo portion of the mtd but I haven't looked into it.


**edit **

I have a dockstar. It definitely will boot into Pogo if I don't have a bootable usb stick. But I was curious and tried to manually build a Lenny install using the steps directly the old installer. Everything looked good, it's booting, but I don't see my dockstar on the network. I tried it with the default kernel and the sheeva one which the script uses. I haven't put much more time into why its not loading completely.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2011 06:57PM by kraqh3d.

Sorry, I was talking about Dockstar. I have no ideal how Goflex Net behaves.

kraqh3d Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sorry I wasn't paying attention. I didn't realize
> the thread sort of changed topics. I don't have a
> GoFlex but I've read here that it has issues
> loading the original firmware. I think someone
> said it needed to be loaded to a different memory
> location than 0x800000. And it looks like U-bit
> might overwrite the original pogo portion of the
> mtd but I haven't looked into it.
>
>
> **edit **
>
> I have a dockstar. It definitely will boot into
> Pogo if I don't have a bootable usb stick. But I
> was curious and tried to manually build a Lenny
> install using the steps directly the old
> installer. Everything looked good, it's booting,
> but I don't see my dockstar on the network. I
> tried it with the default kernel and the sheeva
> one which the script uses. I haven't put much more
> time into why its not loading completely.

I apologize for dragging this thread somewhat off topic. I do have a thread in the uboot section asking for specific uboot help but unfortunately nobody has responded in that thread.

I found a thread where someone changed the address for the rescue files. I made the appropriate changes but it still doesn't fully load.

this is the only output i get from the unit when i halt the boot process and attempt to manually load the original params from nand.

Marvell>> fsload uboot-original-mtd0.kwb
### JFFS2 loading 'uboot-original-mtd0.kwb' to 0x800000
### JFFS2 load complete: 524288 bytes loaded to 0x800000
Marvell>>


twinclouds Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sorry, I was talking about Dockstar. I have no
> ideal how Goflex Net behaves.


no worries. i appreciate all of the help you have given me. :)

On the GoFlex Net, the original Pogoplug OS doesn't boot once you update the uBoot. Best option is to load Jeff's recovery system and change the memory address as I mentioned in the other post.

varkey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> On the GoFlex Net, the original Pogoplug OS
> doesn't boot once you update the uBoot. Best
> option is to load Jeff's recovery system and
> change the memory address as I mentioned in the
> other post.


varkey,

I found your post earlier yesterday. Since i cannot get any linux distro to boot from usb nor the recovery, i ran the param without the "fw_" and saved it using the saveenv command. it seemed as if it worked but the uboot-original-mtd0.kwb still attempts to load from address 0x800000

Hello everyone,

Having installed uboot, successfully run the Archlinux distribution on my Seagate goflex home, and then crash the system, I try now to use debian.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, I've used the base tar ball provided by jeff at : http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/lenny/base.tar.bz2 on a properly portioned use key (ext2 flagged as bootable and named rootfs, plus some swap space), but now the goflex behaves strangely.

In fact it seems to start booting (same access sequence to the usb key than with archlinux), but it ends up with the goflex led off, and not any network activity.

I'm clearly a noob, and I can't manage to find any logs on the debian boot procedure (while I've switch on the debian bootlog).

I'm consequently searching for any hints to know what goes wrong within the boot procedure,

Thanks for your help !

/F



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2011 07:47AM by Fki.

You shouldn't get LED support with that base Lenny installation as it based off the generic Sheeva plug. And the same thing happens to me with a Dockstar. I've watched the uboot start up with netconsole. It successfully finds the kernel and loads it, but then it doesn't get an IP address, so I can't get back into it. I have a CA-42 cable sitting next to me to turn into a serial cable so I can debug it further. I'll also give my test stick a fixed IP address. I'll let you know what I find, but it won't be for a few days, I may not get around to it until the weekend.

Thanks for the info. about leds.
I'll continue to search around, and If I find anything on my side I'll let you know as well !


/F

Update... Yesterday I got serial access setup, and the kernel just doesn't boot. It may be because I'm using generic Sheeva one which the lenny install script loads on top of the default one. I'm going to try the default lenny one tonight and see what happens. I'm also going to attempt to debootstrap an ARM build from my Linux PC but may be not until the weekend.

i wonder if someone has a binary image of a working usb stick that he/she could post. would be much appreciated. i mean a binary to dd onto the stick directly

i have a dockstar with jeff's ubootloader and a rescue system in nand that will boot fine but force a password change over ssh every time i want to login. cannot save password after request because its read only. damn