leaving uboot alone, just installing new debian on new usb drive

Hi,

my flash drive died, rather than taking the riisk of running the script again (which presumably flashes uboot again) .. is it possible to just download a suitable debian image and put this on an appropriately partitioned flash drive or can i edit jeffs script to skip putting uboot on and just dload/install debian to new flash drive

thx

ian

Ian -

I'm really a noobie; but I think there are separate sh scripts for uboot and debian. I'm just guessing but I think you should just be able to run the debian install script.

I'll await a definitive answer from Jeff or one of the 'pros'... 'cuz I want to install debian on a separate usb stick (in case my flash drive dies too).

- Ray



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 12:15PM by sandbasser.

Unfortunately, Jeff's script to populate Debian on a USB stick also automatically (re-)installs the uBoot. It shouldn't hurt to install it again, but if you'd rather not do so, after you download the "dockstar.debian-squeeze.sh" script, but before you execute it, edit it and comment out the line with "--noprompt" in it, so that it looks like this:

Quote

echo "Installing Bootloader"
# /tmp/install_uboot_mtd0.sh --noprompt

sandbasser, you can of course use Jeff's script to create another USB stick with the base Debian load on it, but in your case, it would probably be better to backup your existing stick to another stick. You can do this a number of ways. First you should create the volume TOC (label) on the new stick, just like you did for the original before you ran the dockstar.debian-squeeze.sh command initially. You can then use Unix commands, like

Quote

cd $OLD_STICK_MOUNT_POINT && find . | cpio -pdm $NEW_STICK_MOUNT_POINT

to copy the contents of the existing stick to the new stick. You can either shut down your Dockstar, move the stick to a desktop machine and populate your new stick from there (probably the easiest), or you can do it on the Dockstar itself. In the latter case, you'll waste a little space on the new stick, unless you manually clean it up, since the mounted directory contents will be copied over as well. In any event, the base Debian load is rather rudimentary, so I'd use this approach to creating a 2nd stick, after configuring the OS the way you want to, rather than starting from scratch again.

restamp -

Thanks for the 'proper' answer to hyena's query.

And, thanks for the advice on making a new stick. Haven't decided what to do yet. Looking into 'clonezilla' or similar tools.

By the way, I figured out why I thought there were 'separate' scripts for uboot and debian...I clicked on the 'bootloader' linky in the first sentence of the document and was puzzled so I ran the uboot stuff documented therein - when done ran the dibian stuff - in the process doing the uboot install twice. Don't suppose it hurt really anything (other than wasting a little time) since everything I've tried seems to work; and, as I said, I'm a noobie.

Anyway, thanks again.

- Ray



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 09:42PM by sandbasser.

My preferred way of backing up is dd executed from my Ubuntu desktop.

To backup:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=dockstar.squeeze.img bs=128M

To restore:

dd if=dockstar.squeeze.img of=/dev/sdc bs=128M

sdc should be modified to match the device Ubuntu maps the usb drive with dockstar squeeze to. This preserves the 1st partition ext2/2nd partition swap partitioning scheme that Jeff's installer used. You could also just backup sdx1 only. But be careful with the if and of operands of the dd command though. You don't want to swap them around and do an unintentional restore instead of a backup!

restamp, thanks .. thats gr8 :-)

restamp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> after you download the
> "dockstar.debian-squeeze.sh" script, but before
> you execute it, edit it and comment out the line
> with "--noprompt" in it, so that it looks like
> this:
> echo "Installing Bootloader"
> # /tmp/install_uboot_mtd0.sh --noprompt

Please help a beginner - if I follow Jeffs tutorial the process starts - and I don't have the possibility to edit the script - or??

Thanks

sbp -

Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, I believe you would just edit the 'install_uboot_mtd0.sh' script before you execute it. You could use vi or nano or whatever editor you like.

- Ray

If you already have the latest mtd0 uboot, Jeff's script will detect and not touch it as I remember.