Frank's Debian Image

Does anyone have (Frank?) some rudimentary documentation for Frank's Debian image (debian-image.990822.tar.gz) for the empeg?

I'm thinking I'll just break down and install it, but I'm curious what I'll get out of it, and what drawbacks there are. Will I get the same functionality that I do now, but with easier ways of adding new software, like telnet, ftp, ssh, etc?

Do I just drop it on the Empeg and uncompress/untar it and reboot? is there anything special I need to have? What happens when I go to install 2.0? do I reinstall this image to get everything back, or by doing that do I lose 2.0?

Thanks for any input...

g


RioCar (40Gig) Blue/Red/Green
'01 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro

What happens when I go to install 2.0?

I don't know anything about the Debian image, but I do know what happens when you install 2.0.

When you install any of empeg's software upgrades, they completely wipe and replace the software partition. So you lose pretty much everything when you upgrade.

Anything that's put on the music partition (for instance, if you put it in drive0/var) will survive an upgrade. However, you'll still need to re-apply any changes you made to the software partition.

___________
Tony Fabris

I tried untarring it on the empeg and evidently there wasn't enough space ... it freaked out and started yelling about no memory, segmentation faults, etc.

after that .. i untarred on drive0 ... then started moving directories to their intended location. things were going well until I tried to copy the /lib folder ... then it reaaallly started freaking out ... each time this freakout happens i have to install a new kernel image....

what's the series of operations you guys go through for this debian image?

g

RioCar (40Gig) Blue/Red/Green
'01 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro

untarring under /drive0 or /drive1 is essential. Instead of copying things over, you should use symbolic links. Symbolic links are features of most unix filesystems and act like windows shortcuts, but at filesystem-level. To create a symlink :

ln -s [dest file/directory] [new file/directory]

so for /lib :

mv /lib /lib.org

ln -s /drive0/lib /lib

Speaking of symlinks; I read an article some time ago about new revolutionary technology from microsoft. It had a story about something similar to hard links, but the difference was that if one of the linked files was changed, a copy is made. Why would anyone want that? Save diskspace?

BTW: the debian image isn't mine. I downloaded it from somewhere ( can't remember where ) and started hosting it...

Frank van Gestel

Now we're getting somewhere ... but what do I do about folders where there are empeg specific files, like /bin /etc/ and others ...

should I copy all files existing in the [whatever] empeg folder to the new [whatever] debian folder, then make my symlinks? Or should I only copy files that aren't in the debian release?

Thanks for your help !

g

RioCar (40Gig) Blue/Red/Green
'01 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro

One note about moving /lib ... once you do it everything breaks, even before you can symlink it ... everything you time gives you a file not found, even if you give a full path name.

I'm wondering (once I reinstall the kernel) if I can cp -a /lib /lib.orig ... then ln -sf /drive0/debian/lib /lib ....?

g

RioCar (40Gig) Blue/Red/Green
'01 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro

The way I understood it, was that if more than a single file existed on a server that were identical, it would replace the copies of the file with a symlink to the original. Then, if you made a change to one of the files, it would remove the link and have the changes saved as the file. For instance, if you have files A, B, and C in different directories, but are all exactly the same, it would replace two of those files with a symlink to the third. If B and C were symlinks to A, and A was changed, the symlink from B or C would point to the other, which would revert to a full copy of the original file, and A would be the changed file.

The end result is that you save space when there are identical files on a server. As much as this was touted, I have never seen it. Go figure. I think I'll just stick with Slack .

Yes, that's a stupid thing to do, when I think about it. It's a stupid thing I even suggested it. All binaries use /lib/ld-linux.so.
I have got a chrooted environment running for a long time now, but I can remember faintly setting up an environment you are trying to set up.
I think I linked all files in /drive0/lib to /lib. so use ln -s /drive0/root/lib/libresolv.so /lib for every file
Maybe you could use : ln -s /drive0/root/lib/* /lib, but I'm too afraid to give this advice. It could mess things up again...

Frank van Gestel

I linked libs one by one, as a particular program complained about it. Later on I figured out I could simply add my distro lib directories to /etc/ld.so.conf and run ldconfig (not found on bare empeg) to update /etc/ld.so.cache (or put appropriate LD_LIBRARY_PATH into environment).

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Do you actually boot using everything in the distribution? I can get all the libraries and such worked out ... but when I go to boot off the distribution image/kernel, it starts coming up then complains about a read only file system and locking up on "stat /usr/sbin/inetd"

I guess my question is do you guys pick and choose what you're going to be using from that distribution, or have you been successful using it wholesale?

g

RioCar (40Gig) Blue/Red/Green
'01 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro

I guess my question is do you guys pick and choose what you're going to be using from that distribution, or have you been successful using it wholesale?

The former (at least in my case). The 'problem' (actually, an excellent feature) with empeg is that it boots from flash which, if I understand it correctly, contains not only the kernel, but image of the memory in as late a stage of boot process as they could get away with. The result is very fast, but also, shall we say, unconventional boot sequence, that makes it impossible to simply run unchanged Debian distro on it. However, once init process gets control (and you replace it with something of your own), you can do whatever you want, within relatively narrow confines of empeg's physical memory and swap.


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

No, the flash just has a kernel in it. It boots quickly because the kernel is doing most of its initialisation while the drives are spinning up, so when it's ready to look for drives they're already ready.

Hugo