Phil McKerracher wrote:
> Hi, I'm back - some of you with long memories may recall that I tried
> to get started with astlinux two years ago and gave up. (I couldn't
> get the configuration to "stick" and had problems writing to my CF
> card and ran out of time.)
>
> Now I've lost the use of my ISDN PBX (due to termination of the ISDN
> service), my net4801 is gathering dust, I've bought a new CF card and
> astlinux 0.6.2 has been released, so it's time to have another try.
>
> My first problem was copying the image to the CF card. I couldn't get
> physdiskwrite to work at all (using Vista Home Premium), even in
> "administrator" mode, using the "-u" option etc. I get "write error"
> after 65536 bytes and there's nothing on the card, although the name
> has changed to RUNNIX. After that I couldn't do anything with the card
> in Windows until I used the CLEAN command "diskpart" and reformatted
> the card. Is it supposed to be formatted before physdiskwrite is used,
> or not? I couldn't find any documentation about this. If so, what
> format should I use? Simple FAT?
Try right-clicking on physdiskwrite.exe and setting the compatibility
mode to XP+SP3 (or just plain XP).
physdiskwrite writes the entire image, including the partition table in
the first 63 sectors (track 0, cylinder 0)... so formatting isn't
necessary. Indeed, whatever formatting you do will be clobbered by
physdiskwrite.exe.
What you do want to do is to run fdisk after the physdiskwrite, and
create 1 or more partitions for the remaining disk space.
Set the format type of hex 83 (Linux) on the 2nd partition.
When you do "mount", it will tell you which drive (/dev/sdg or whatever)
is mounted as /media/FOOBAR... that's the drive you want.
Or plug in the CF, wait 20 seconds, and do "dmesg | tail" as
super-user. The last drive discovered will be your CF.
Depending on whether your CF slot is on USB 1.1 or USB 2.0, copying
128MB can take from 2 minutes to 16 minutes.
>
> I gave up on that and installed Ubuntu ("wubi"-style) and tried using
> the DD command. I had trouble working out which of the many /dev/sdx
> devices it was (very nerve-wracking - I once trashed my hard disk
> trying to install linux). The card is mounted as /media/[card name]
> but DD wouldn't accept that. Unplugging the card didn't make any of
> the /dev/sdx devices disappear as I expected. I tried guessing /sdb
> and DD appeared to complete (suspiciously quickly) but nothing had
> happened. I googled around and found that you need to login as root,
> tried that but Ubuntu wouldn't let me. Googled again and found you
> need to use sudo, tried that and it just seemed to hang (no disc
> activity, nothing). Eventually I found that it will complete if you
> leave it alone for 15 mins and the contents of the card look
> reasonable. Yay!
>
> Put the card in the 4801, dug out an old serial cable, discovered
> Vista doesn't come with Hyperterm and had to download teraterm, fired
> it up and got a promising-looking boot sequence that ends with
Yeah, it blows that there's no hyperterm. Hyperterm rocked. Get
"putty" instead from download.com.
>
> Loading runnix....................
> Loading runnix.img....................
> Ready.
>
> Now what do I do? The instructions say "log in as root" but there's no
> response to my keypresses.
Turn off flow-control (no xon/xoff, no rts/cts).
>
> I tried rebooting and entering Ctrl-P to enter the Monitor mode and
> that all works. And the red error light goes off (just the green power
> light remains on) when I let it continue to boot.
>
> I tried plugging in a flash stick but nothing happened. I also tried
> browsing to it but it doesn't seem to have acquired an IP address.
>
> I've spent all day on this and haven't even got to first base. Again. :-(
>
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