Re: thecus n2100 armel lenny upgrade, won't boot
I guess, that you'll need a serial console. Without, you can only guess, where it stuck, like did it access the disks and so... If it gets that far, you probably could check the logs, as it might logged something of interest. coldtobi On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 16:08 +0200, Joost Yervante Damad wrote: Hello, I upgraded my thecus n2100 this morning. The upgrade seemed to have worked fine: Setting up linux-image-2.6.25-2-iop32x (2.6.25-7) ... Hmm. The package shipped with a symbolic link /lib/modules/2.6.25-2-iop32x/source However, I can not read the target: No such file or directory Therefore, I am deleting /lib/modules/2.6.25-2-iop32x/source Running depmod. Finding valid ramdisk creators. Using mkinitramfs-kpkg to build the ramdisk. Not updating initrd symbolic links since we are being updated/reinstalled (2.6.25-6 was configured last, according to dpkg) Not updating image symbolic links since we are being updated/reinstalled (2.6.25-6 was configured last, according to dpkg) Running postinst hook script flash-kernel. Flashing kernel... done. Flashing initramfs... done. Setting up libvolume-id0 (0.125-5) ... Setting up udev (0.125-5) ... However, after a reboot it didn't come back. It seems to do some form of booting but it is not reachable via the network. I managed to enter redboot via telnet, but am a little at a loss how to boot the installed kernel manually, at least in a way that produces some useful output. Any ideas or do I need to add a serial port in order to debug the issue? Thanks, Joost Damad -- homepage: http://damad.be/joost photo/blog: http://damad.be/joost/blog signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
I have two WD MyBook World Edition II NAS drives (1 TB, 2-drive model) that I have hacked into (mostly starting SSH and NOT starting Mionet) by putting the drives into a Linux-i386 box, editing several files in /etc, and putting them back. Apparently, WD used to ship the WorldBook with GCC on it, but there is no GCC installed on either of these boxes, so it's a bear to install any new packages on them. What I would *really* like to do is to take two new, identical 80-160 GB SATA drives, partition them appropriately to run in mirrored mode (in effect, if the MyBook uses hardware RAID, make one HD and clone it; not sure what to do if it uses SW RAID), use an i386 PC running Etch to install a full ARM Etch distro onto these HDs, then put the HDs back into the MyBook. At least that way, it would be a Debian system with GCC and dpkg on it... Do any of you know of a way to use an i386 Etch workstation to install a binary ARM distribution onto an additional set of HDs? If I do this while Etch is running on the PC, will it mess up some or all of the critical config files such as grub.conf and fstab by putting the wrong device/partition IDs (e.g., sdc1 instead of sda1) everywhere, which are actually correct when installed in the PC, but would immediately become incorrect when transferred back to the MyBook? Also, WD does put the source code for everything on the MyBook WEII on their website ( http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=107sid=64lang=en ). Do any of you know if any of this is necessary, especially for custom hardware drivers, or will the stock Etch ARM kernel have all of the necessary modules for any hardware in the MyBook? Do any of you know if this box uses hardware or software RAID? Anyone done anything like this? Any thoughts/help/links would be greatly appreciated. -Dan Jonsen = Daniel E. Jonsen I.T. Systems Manager Implant Sciences Corporation 107 Audubon Road #5 Wakefield, MA 01880-1246 Phone: 781-246-0700 x 211 Fax: 781-246-1167 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.implantsciences.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
Jonsen, Dan wrote: Do any of you know of a way to use an i386 Etch workstation to install a binary ARM distribution onto an additional set of HDs? I don't know about etch, but I use sid/lenny and debootstrap to create armel images all the time. Use the --foreign parameter. The tricky part might be how to invoke the --second-stage. Maybe you could pass init=/debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage on the kernel command line, but it will probably be more complicated than that because you need to mount proc and export $PATH before debootstrap will complete. On all the targets I work with, I have a console of some type (usually serial) to control the device with. Also, WD does put the source code for everything on the MyBook WEII on their website Wow, I had no idea :) Is this thing a better option than an NSLU2, for those with the budget? Hmmm... b.g. -- Bill Gatliff [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
Dan: This is very intersting! I haven't done anything with any of those NASes yet. Do you know how the boot process works on them, and how to modify it? We would like to know how to replace WD's kernel in flash, for instance. Generally you can debootstrap --foreign from i386, but in order to run stage 2 you would need either a real arm environment or an emulator. (qemu) Depending on how far you've gotten to that box's internals, it might be possible to put the debootstrap into a subdirectory, stick the disk back into the MyBook and then run stage 2. Any description of how far you've gotten is much appreciated. BTW: Your email seems to contain no linebreaks, making it inconvenient to quote. Can you configure automatic linebreaks at 72 chars please? Thanks! Good luck -- Kevin Price http://www.kevin-price.de/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
RE: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
-Original Message- From: Bill Gatliff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 12:05 PM To: Jonsen, Dan Cc: debian-arm@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World? Jonsen, Dan wrote: Do any of you know of a way to use an i386 Etch workstation to install a binary ARM distribution onto an additional set of HDs? I don't know about etch, but I use sid/lenny and debootstrap to create armel images all the time. Use the --foreign parameter. The tricky part might be how to invoke the --second-stage. Maybe you could pass init=/debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage on the kernel command line, but it will probably be more complicated than that because you need to mount proc and export $PATH before debootstrap will complete. On all the targets I work with, I have a console of some type (usually serial) to control the device with. Thanks for that; since I'm an IT guy and haven't done any embedded work (gee, am I on the wrong platform here? ;-) ) , I'll have to dig into that one a bit more, but it does look quite promising. Also, WD does put the source code for everything on the MyBook WEII on their website Wow, I had no idea :) Is this thing a better option than an NSLU2, for those with the budget? Hmmm... Actually, I just got the MyBooks b/c I saw them on the shelf at Costco and needed quick, abundant storage for a backup job. Then I found out that these units SUCK as NAS boxes in a Windows environment (which isn't to say that they suck altogether, just as NAS boxes on a Windows network): (1) they don't use an NTFS filesystem, and therefore have no way of storing NTFS ACLs (unless Samba is more sophisticated than I think); (2) they use an EXT3 filesystem, which in itself is fine, but ext3 has different timestamp granularity than NTFS, so when I go to use Robocopy on Windows to put stuff onto the MyBook, I have to use the /FFT (fat file time) switch to loosen-up on the FT granularity; and most of all, (3) I read plenty of places that this device doesn't even come close to true gigabit throughput on the NIC - after some digging, I found that the weak link in the system is the clock rate of the ARM CPU, which can only get the transfer speed up to a few hundred Mbps. Not what I want to hear for a NAS device. Anyone ever tried overclocking a MyBook?!?... Then I started digging into the various hack your MyBook web sites and thought that it would be nice to put smaller HDs into the boxes and make a web server from one and an FTP server from the other; in any case, I think the ARM should be able to keep up with the maximum throughput that our Internet connection bandwidth will allow ;-) Anyway, I never heard of the NSLU2 until now; after looking at its Wikipedia entry, it seems that the NSLU2 would be infinitely better as a NAS box on a Windows network (NTFS, for one), if its CPU can pull 1 Gbps through the NIC, or at least the majority of it... Thabnks again. -Dan Jonsen b.g. -- Bill Gatliff [EMAIL PROTECTED] = Daniel E. Jonsen I.T. Systems Manager Implant Sciences Corporation 107 Audubon Road #5 Wakefield, MA 01880-1246 Phone: 781-246-0700 x 211 Fax: 781-246-1167 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.implantsciences.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
Jonsen, Dan schrieb: no way of storing NTFS ACLs (unless Samba is more sophisticated than I think); Yes, samba does understand ACLs, if the underlying filesystem does. I've done this once on a Gentoo box: The only thing that had to be changed there was a kernel option for ACL support in the filesystem, and a mount option. In your case, you might want to make sure the samba/unix user mapping is really the way you want it to be. 2: Ext3 can be mounted with the option acl and then it does understand ACLs if the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_EXT3_FS_POSIX_ACL enabled. I have not much clue about the time granularity but have heard that it will be even more precise in ext4. I thougt that ext3 was already much more precise that NT, but might be wrong there. 3: That applies to most NASs in that price range. I wouldn't overclock that MyBook if it's not well tested and within the hardware specifications. (such as the NSLU2) If you need a fast NAS, than you might want to read some of the reviews before buying. Sorry to disappoint you about the speed of the NSLU2: It doesn't do better than about 3 MBytes/s, even when it is de-underclocked from 133 to 266 MHz. cheers -- Kevin Price http://www.kevin-price.de/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
Thanks for that; since I'm an IT guy and haven't done any embedded work (gee, am I on the wrong platform here? ;-) ) Certainly not! Once you're over to Debian, it's all pretty much the same from an IT perspective regardless of the particulars of the platform. And, I think that the more I haven't done any embedded work-type guys we can get to come over to the light side, the better off we'll all be. Welcome aboard! this device doesn't even come close to true gigabit throughput on the NIC No opinions on your (1) or (2), since I'm not an IT guy. But as for (3), that's a known characteristic of any device like the MyBook, NSLU2, Thecus N*, etc. because the CPUs in such devices top out at 500 MIPS, and the boxes themselves don't do a lot of hardware-assisted packet manipulation or disk i/o. So the CPU is pretty busy doing such things itself, and quickly becomes a bottleneck. But the price is right, and the target audience of these devices probably never notices anyway--- all they seem to want is something with an RJ45 jack that creates an icon on their XP or Vista Desktop. I say more power to 'em, because what we get in return is cheap hardware that can be liberated from such mundane work for more useful purposes. :) If you really need 1GB throughput, you need something substantially more expensive than any device you've mentioned so far. Something with a lot of smart hardware between the ethernet jack and the disk--- and not just a faster CPU! b.g. -- Bill Gatliff [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
Kevin, -Original Message- From: Kevin Price [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 5:06 PM To: Jonsen, Dan Cc: debian-arm@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World? Hi, thanks for that description! We ought to document it publically, so that others can use this and hack any further. Jonsen, Dan schrieb: See my reply to Bill Gatliff's post about performance issues before you consider using this box as a NAS device... I see no reply to Bill's [EMAIL PROTECTED] from 15:29:44 -0500. Maybe you made a private reply rather than a group reply, just like the one you sent to me. I was talking about the performance issues I mentioned in the message at http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2008/08/msg00105.html , mostly the CPU itself acting as a bottleneck to NIC throughput. Now I understand from Bill that this is an issue with this type of low-cost device in general... disks as one using a software RAID package (I think it was mdadm, but I'm not sure). True: This box uses linux software RAID on md2, md3, and md4, so you should be able to mount them from any other linux platform after re-assemling them each with mdadm -A. (further options required) /etc lies on the / fs in /dev/root. This is probably also a linux RAID. (md1 perhaps) For further hacking it would be interesting to know what /etc/mdadm.conf says and what the kernel command line is. /etc/mdadm.conf contents (striping mode on share partition): == DEVICE partitions ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=65b1b98b:decc728b:491f46ad:3c042270 ARRAY /dev/md2 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=2495e6db:48618489:d25c3483:5b58781a ARRAY /dev/md3 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=8d59d685:7700be3c:04a497c3:c22647c9 ARRAY /dev/md4 level=linear num-devices=2 UUID=4f410dca:7a52c8cf:fa6c245a:79394f0a == I guess that either (1) this is a highly customized Linux distro from WD, or (2) the ARM architecture doesn't use GRUB, because I can't find a grub.conf file. Nothing for LILO, either. Even running 'find / -name *linu*' logged in as root returned no results. Definitely no Linux I've ever seen. I finally got the following from dmesg (WD firmware 02.00.18): 5Linux version 2.6.17.14 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (gcc version 4.1.1) #1 PREEMPT Fri Jan 18 10:40:25 GMT 2008 4CPU: ARM926EJ-Sid(wb) [41069265] revision 5 (ARMv5TEJ) 4Machine: Oxsemi NAS 4Ignoring unrecognised tag 0x 4Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback 7On node 0 totalpages: 8192 7 DMA zone: 8192 pages, LIFO batch:1 4CPU0: D VIVT write-back cache 4CPU0: I cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 4, 32 byte lines, 256 sets 4CPU0: D cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 4, 32 byte lines, 256 sets 4Built 1 zonelists 5Kernel command line: mem=32M console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/md1 netdev=0,0,0x0090A945,0x4D4A,eth0 4PID hash table entries: 256 (order: 8, 1024 bytes) 4Console: colour dummy device 80x30 6Using fractional divider baud 115200, clock 1 dlf 40 4Dentry cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) 4Inode-cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes) 6Memory: 32MB = 32MB total ... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
Hi, Jonsen, Dan schrieb: Now I understand from Bill that this is an issue with this type of low-cost device in general... Ah now I see. ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=65b1b98b:decc728b:491f46ad:3c042270 That's your / device ARRAY /dev/md2 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=2495e6db:48618489:d25c3483:5b58781a swap ARRAY /dev/md3 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=8d59d685:7700be3c:04a497c3:c22647c9 /var ARRAY /dev/md4 level=linear num-devices=2 UUID=4f410dca:7a52c8cf:fa6c245a:79394f0a /shares/internal I guess that either (1) this is a highly customized Linux distro from WD, So do I. or (2) the ARM architecture doesn't use GRUB, because I can't find a grub.conf file. Also true. GRUB version 1 (0.9x actually) is for i386/AMD64 only. Grub 2 is planned to be portable in future. Since they didn't even finish 1 by today, I wonder if they'll ever finish 2. Nothing for LILO, either. Also LILO is a i386/amd64 program. Bootloaders for ARM are apex, u-boot, or redboot. Even running 'find / -name *linu*' logged in as root returned no results. So the kernel most probably lies in flash rather than on the disk, which is what I would expect on that kind of device. Definitely no Linux I've ever seen. I finally got the following from dmesg (WD firmware 02.00.18): 5Kernel command line: mem=32M console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/md1 netdev=0,0,0x0090A945,0x4D4A,eth0 Here it says hat md1 is the root device, and fstab confirms that. Also it says that the first serial port is the console. There is probably an unwired serial port in that box somewhere. So if you want to debianize this box, you could either leave flash unchanged, and try if it runs if you replace the entire contents of md1 with a debootstrap, but leaving the original WD kernel in flash and modules (/lib/modules) on disk. This would be nearly impossible without serial port, because the first try willl probably fail, and you'll have no output. The other possible strategy would include messing with the contents of flash ROM, that now probably contains a bootloader and the WD kernel, that is making a debian kernel that will run on that box, and making it boot somehow. For this kind of hacking, not only a serial console should be there but also a JTAG interface. Messing with the bootloader is likely to brick your device if you don't know exactly what you're doing. For strategy 1, the way to get started is something like this: Create a subdirectory on the existing 1TB disks, and from the PC, create a debootstrap --stage1 in them. Then stick them into the MyBook, and run stage 2 of the debootstrap. Then partition your new 160GB disks the way you like, create the md devices with mdadm, format them with ext3, mount them. Then move your debootstrap into there from the 1TB disks. Afterwards, make a backup of what you've done so far, and of course a backup of the existing root and var filesystems. After that you would customize your debootstrap environment, for instance by copying /lib/modules, fstab, ... into it, making sure that the rest of debian will work with the existing kernel. Make sure that the UUIDs of your new partitions are in /etc/mdadm.conf. After that preparation comes the part with the serial console. Is there anything in the device that looks like a serial port? Maybe the chip has one that's just not wired. You can tell by the H/W specs. I wish I had one... how much did it cost? That said, I just found that someone has already done it: http://www.ismprofessional.net/pascucci/documenti/mybook/mybook-hacking-en.html So you won't necessarily need a serial console after all and won't need to go through all the steps I mentioned, just follow his instructions, and use the new disks where applicable. Don't forget to backup, and if it breaks, you get to keep the bits... cheers -- Kevin Price http://www.kevin-price.de/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: offline install of Etch to SATA HDDs for MyBook World?
Jonsen, Dan wrote: I guess that either (1) this is a highly customized Linux distro from WD, or (2) the ARM architecture doesn't use GRUB, because I can't find a grub.conf file. Probably both are true. b.g. -- Bill Gatliff [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
