Netgear Stora

Anyone on this forum already worked with a Netgear Stora?

I need some help installing debian on the stora nand.

Debian is not an option for nand installation: 128MB are not enough to install debian.. try emdebian !!!

Do you want MORE information ?

pazos Wrote:
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> Debian is not an option for nand installation: 128MB are not enough to install debian..

Maybe not a "vanilla" installation, but with a little work (like putting /var/lib/apt and /var/cache/apt on a USB drive instead of NAND), you can install a basic Debian squeeze system in about 70MB.

Some tutorial on installing emdebian on nand for this device...

On openstora forum i cannot find much info... the forum seems to be a bit dead...

Any ideas how to finish this tutorial?

http://www.openstora.com/wiki/index.php?title=Emdebian_Alternative_firmware

AFAIK you can follow jeff's guide http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,72 to get a working emdebian on USB disk...

I was wrong with nand size of Netgar Stora! It seems to be 256MB, that means that you can install both emdebian or debian (or armedslack or...)

Anyways, you need to know some of the basics of install *ANY* distribution in your stora nand: http://www.openstora.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_install_your_custom_firmware

pazos Wrote:
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> AFAIK you can follow jeff's guide
> http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,72 to get a
> working emdebian on USB disk...
>
> I was wrong with nand size of Netgar Stora! It
> seems to be 256MB, that means that you can install
> both emdebian or debian (or armedslack or...)
>
> Anyways, you need to know some of the basics of
> install *ANY* distribution in your stora nand:
> http://www.openstora.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_
> to_install_your_custom_firmware

Which distribution do you recommend? Right now i have a debian running from sda1 that i have inside the stora...

The idea is to install everything on the nand... Can debain run exclusively from nand or do i need to move some stuff to a external usb?

I already read lots of tutorial and stuff but the truth is that a windows admin and i'm a bit lost on linux world.

Emdebian is binary compatible with debian, but its packages doesn't have any related documentation, manual or info.

You must choose emdebian if you like debian and want to add more software than the "debian default installation" (ecc said that if fits in 70MB without apt cache, of course it fits in 256 with cache files, but for every package you added you were installed non-critical data to your system)

If you want a device that can run just a few things (like: router+webserver+ftpserver+samba+nfs+sshd) you can try debian too, cause the space is enough.

I have installed emdebian in a pink-pogo (128MB of nand) and install A-LOT-OF software from debian-squeeze repository and I got 32 ubifs free MB in my nand. In fact install a bare-minimun distro and add the needed software is one of the best ways to control everything installed on your machine.

But, watch out!

1. You need to get a way to check that your installation works before trying to install it in the nand

I think that the uboot shiped with the stora is not able to boot from usb, but you can try booting a custom kernel from tftp. Of course you'll need to hook up a serial-to-usb cable.

2. You'll need a WORKING kernel: I think that you can look at openstora for information about getting/setting the kernel for your device!

3. [just if you want]
Ask somebody about a recent bootloader for your device (a.k.a uboot). It seems that somebody could install a new bootloader, but is better to get a working binary of the bootloader (better with instructions :) that trying to compile yourself

This third step is not mandatory, but with a modern uboot like the mentioned above you're gonna be able to boot from usb, to clean-up your "uboot-enviroment", and to improve your system boots.

but, REMEMBER: no serial = no funny ! Is better do *NOT* touch an embedded-system nand without a way to talk with the bootloader to recover your Operating System boot

I have a serial to usb cable... i used to install debian on sda1...
I use the stora as download station... only have system, ssh, pyload, minidlna installed, no need for much space... ;)

I think there is a working kernel on this openstora post...

On this LINK i found how to make the rootfs...

Now i need to find how to flash everything to the stora...

*/ First Note: I'm speak spanish, not english
Sorry about that :) */

You have two options:

- First option: copy your system on nand-disk; the easier way, but you need to check first if your current "image" fits on nand (about 260-270MB). First of all it would be an good idea delete all apt-get cache with "apt-get clean", after this check your distribution size with df -h | grep sda1.

- Second option: create a new rootfs. There are a lot of good works in this forum about install emdebian.


In both option I would suggest take a middle-step before chaging anything in the nand.

I would suggest you to boot your current linux kernel with a cmdline that lets you able for boot from USB. Then you can test your distro and setting it up. When you check that is working on USB you can saffetly copy to the nand.


# UBOOT ENVIROMENT:

When you enter in the uboot's prompt you have two interesting options: printenv & saveenv, I don't know so much about netgear default enviroment, but I'm sure that if you wrote "printenv mtdparts" you'll get a list of your nand partitions (with its size); something like:

mtdparts=mtdparts=orion_nand:1M(uboot),2M(kernel),-(rootfs)

First partition is *NOT* touched, or at least not erased.
Second partition must have space enough for your kernel. I would suggest to compile a new kernel that fits your needs ONLY. It can decrease the size of the kernel under 2MB.
Third partition is our target partition, it's gooing to have all the rest of the nand area.

At this time its gonna be an good idea to post the output of printenv ( better from debian with fw_printenv, for copy & paste ), cause we need to know exactly what uboot do when you boot your device. We need to know what args are passed to the kernel cause we want to change this args.

Three easy steps needed:

- 1. Download and install ubifs tools & uboot env and mtd-utils. You need these utils to re-partitioning you nand.
- 2. Tune uboot parameters to try some interesting things
- 3. when you can boot from USB and check that the minimum boot-network-sshd works then re-format your nand and make an ubifs rootfstype to copy the contents on your USB.

ONE is mandatory, do it NOW
TWO: We need the printenv (or fw_printenv) output
THREE: We are going to follow these steps but changing parameters for you own configuration


I'll waiting for you!

*/ First Note: I'm Portuguese and i'm leaving in spain, Sevilla... No problem with english, portuguese or spanish... :) */

On this forum with cannot send private message to each other... My email is "vd [at ]vdias.com"

I will start making my rootfs...

Just finished to make my rootfs (Following this tutorial)

The command "fw_printenv" just give me a error:

"Cannot parse config file: No such file or directory"

This is probably the due to a missing configuration file for the uboot-utils - they need to know the layout and location for your mtdx 's

=====================================================

• davy's Github Repo's rescue-dg

You need a file called /etc/fw_env.config that point to uboot enviroment. Please google it before questions.

See you soon

cat /proc/mtd
dev: size erasesize name
mtd0: 00100000 00020000 "u-boot"
mtd1: 00400000 00020000 "uImage"
mtd2: 0fb00000 00020000 "root"

With this values how do i configure my fw_env.config file?