Debian running on the plug

[Rabeeh Khoury]

Here we have it. Martin Michlmyer did it - porting Debian to the plug -

http://www.cyrius.com/journal

and then the press release -

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2356496718.html

[mteel]

It appears he only has intentions right now, am I missing something?

[Foxxz]

I've started on a rough description of how to get Debian on the plug at
http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Debian

You could generate a jffs2 image if you keep it small enough.


-Foxxz

[jdonth]

I've started on a rough description of how to get Debian on the plug at
http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Debian

You could generate a jffs2 image if you keep it small enough.


-Foxxz

Is this a concept or have you done this sucessfully?
~Joe Donth

[Foxxz]

I've started on a rough description of how to get Debian on the plug at
http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Debian

You could generate a jffs2 image if you keep it small enough.


-Foxxz

Is this a concept or have you done this sucessfully?
~Joe Donth

It does work! I built my own Debian system this way and have been running it off a USB drive for the most part. I did make a JFFS2 image that worked fine as well.


-Foxxz

[KaiBo]

Yupp, managed to put Lenny on my Plug using your instructions too. There were some little adaptations though (editing configuration-files using etc/... instead of /etc/... or mounting root as /dev/sda3 ext2 instead of /dev/sda1 ext3).

Thanks a lot!   

[KaiBo]

Just to add a little something. I had to create /dev/ttyS0 as well because of some annoying error-messages:

Code:

INIT: Id "T0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel
INIT: Id "T0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

That seemed to do the trick. So, maybe you want to add "mknod -m 666 /dev/ttyS0 c 4 64" to your list (dunno if changing the console-parameter in u-boot might do the same).

[gstratton]

That's very much for this. It's working for me too (The first time I booted it hanged, the second time died with fsck errors, and the third time it worked!)

I do have one issue, though. In Debian, the clock reported it being 27th Feb 2000, but returning to Ubuntu the date was correct again. That makes no sense to me.

[Raúl Porcel]

I do have one issue, though. In Debian, the clock reported it being 27th Feb 2000, but returning to Ubuntu the date was correct again. That makes no sense to me.

I guess thats because the RTC(Real Time Clock) driver is compiled as a module(just guessing?), and since the modules are in the rootfs, and you are booting from a different rootfs which doesn't have the modules, it isn't able to access the RTC.

[sethml]

It does work! I built my own Debian system this way and have been running it off a USB drive for the most part. I did make a JFFS2 image that worked fine as well.

Any chance you could put the JFFS2 image up for download by those of us too lazy to build our own?

[sethml]

I've tried installing Debian on my flash, following these directions, but copying the bootstrap image to a JFFS2 filesystem on /dev/mtdblock2 before running "debootstrap --second-stage".

It works (and only uses 115M of flash!), but when I boot into the resulting system, apt-get bails out in an odd way:

Code:

debian:~# apt-get update
Hit http://security.debian.org lenny/updates Release.gpg
Hit http://security.debian.org lenny/updates Release                           
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org lenny Release.gpg                                 
Ign http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/main Packages/DiffIndex           
Ign http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/contrib Packages/DiffIndex 
Ign http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/non-free Packages/DiffIndex
Hit http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/main Packages
Hit http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/contrib Packages
Hit http://security.debian.org lenny/updates/non-free Packages
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org lenny Release     
Hit http://volatile.debian.org lenny/volatile Release.gpg
Hit http://volatile.debian.org lenny/volatile Release
Ign http://ftp.us.debian.org lenny/main Packages/DiffIndex
Ign http://volatile.debian.org lenny/volatile/main Packages/DiffIndex
Ign http://ftp.us.debian.org lenny/contrib Packages/DiffIndex
Ign http://ftp.us.debian.org lenny/non-free Packages/DiffIndex
Ign http://volatile.debian.org lenny/volatile/contrib Packages/DiffIndex
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org lenny/main Packages
Ign http://volatile.debian.org lenny/volatile/non-free Packages/DiffIndex
76% [Connecting to ftp.us.debian.org (35.9.37.225)] http://ackages
Hit http://volatile.debian.org lenny/volatile/contrib Packages           
Hit http://volatile.debian.org lenny/volatile/non-free Packages         
Hit http://ftp.us.debian.org lenny/non-free Packages
Reading package lists... Error!                   
E: Couldn't make mmap of 25165824 bytes - mmap (22 Invalid argument)
W: Unable to munmap
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
debian:~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                502M  115M  388M  23% /
tmpfs                 252M     0  252M   0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs                 252M     0  252M   0% /dev/shm
debian:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Error!
E: Couldn't make mmap of 25165824 bytes - mmap (22 Invalid argument)
W: Unable to munmap
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
debian:~# apt-cache search ls
E: Couldn't make mmap of 25165824 bytes - mmap (22 Invalid argument)
W: Unable to munmap

[sethml]

Aha - it appears that the JFFS2 filesystem used on the NAND flash does not support mmap, so apt-get doesn't work.  Presumably this is why the ubuntu install that comes with the plug puts /var/cache/apt on tmpfs.  It's too bad apt-get doesn't say which files it's failing to mmap - bad error messages!  Anyway, probably sticking this in /etc/fstab will make debian off the flash work:

Code:

tmpfs   /var/cache/apt  tmpfs   defaults,noatime 

[Gothnet]

I've started on a rough description of how to get Debian on the plug at
http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Debian

You could generate a jffs2 image if you keep it small enough.


-Foxxz

I started doing this too (before my ubuntu install got b0rked) but I was using sid, as sid is the only one with the 2.6.30 kernel that supports the kirkwood architecture.

Quick question - Are you using debian lenny with the Ubuntu kernel that came on the system?

Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just doesn't feel quite "pure". Sid did complain about not being able to flash the kernel, hopefully Mr Michlmayr will have something soon.

[KaiBo]

As I messed up my almost final Debian-Installation today (*cry*) I was wondering if one could easily boot into one of the official Installation-CDs by just copying them to an USB-Stick and passing an appropriate boot-string via U-Boot. However, I could not find a RAM-Disk image in either of those images. Anyone tried something like that yet?

[Gothnet]

As I messed up my almost final Debian-Installation today (*cry*) I was wondering if one could easily boot into one of the official Installation-CDs by just copying them to an USB-Stick and passing an appropriate boot-string via U-Boot. However, I could not find a RAM-Disk image in either of those images. Anyone tried something like that yet?

Haven't tried that yet, but I did manage to get a kernel to boot via tftp, though it failed to set up the root filesystem over nfs. There are a few threads in other sections about setting up u-boot to do this. Check out the u-boot section in the forum.