Re: Busbox missing fdisk and fsck: How to add?
On 23/05/2018 11:57, Paul Wise wrote: On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 4:55 PM, Gilles wrote: It looks like the easiest solution to the problem would be cross-compiling fsck on a i386 Linux host, and copying the binary onto the the appliance. It is getting better but usually compiling natively is much easier. I only have shallow experience with cross-compiling, though: Is this newbie-doable or am I in for days of head-scratching ? If the source package is cross-compilable, then it isn't much different from compiling natively. https://wiki.debian.org/CrossCompiling IIRC Helmut (one of the few people working on it) says only about 10% of Debian is cross-compilable though. If anyone wants to help improve that, please introduce yourself on the debian-cross mailing list. https://lists.debian.org/debian-cross/ Thanks for the infos. I'll try this if I need to cross-compile an app one day.
Re: Busbox missing fdisk and fsck: How to add?
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 4:55 PM, Gilles wrote: > It looks like the easiest solution to the problem would be cross-compiling > fsck on a i386 Linux host, and copying the binary onto the the appliance. It is getting better but usually compiling natively is much easier. > I only have shallow experience with cross-compiling, though: Is this > newbie-doable or am I in for days of head-scratching ? If the source package is cross-compilable, then it isn't much different from compiling natively. https://wiki.debian.org/CrossCompiling IIRC Helmut (one of the few people working on it) says only about 10% of Debian is cross-compilable though. If anyone wants to help improve that, please introduce yourself on the debian-cross mailing list. https://lists.debian.org/debian-cross/ -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Re: Busbox missing fdisk and fsck: How to add?
On 23/05/2018 11:09, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Please excuse a comment from a lurker, but I'd suggest that it would be worth having at least fdisk -l capability enabled by default since one of the first things one wants to do when in any sort of development or recovery situation is to work out what media is attached and whether it's partitioned or a single fiefsystem. I agree. It's too bad the image I found had Busybox compiled without fdisk and fsck.
Re: Busbox missing fdisk and fsck: How to add?
On 23/05/18 02:15, Paul Wise wrote: I don't know how big the busybox fdisk/fsck support is, but it might be worth reporting a bug on busybox asking for them to be enabled. Alternatively, a bug report asking for a busybox-static-full package containing support for every busybox applet might be a good idea. Please excuse a comment from a lurker, but I'd suggest that it would be worth having at least fdisk -l capability enabled by default since one of the first things one wants to do when in any sort of development or recovery situation is to work out what media is attached and whether it's partitioned or a single fiefsystem. -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]
Re: Busbox missing fdisk and fsck: How to add?
Edit: Elsewhere, someone mentioned a much easier solution : Just unplug the USB keydrive from the ARM appliance, and perform the fsck onto a PC running Linux. Why didn't I think of this (face-palm) ? Thank you. === Thanks very much for the infos. It looks like the easiest solution to the problem would be cross-compiling fsck on a i386 Linux host, and copying the binary onto the the appliance. I only have shallow experience with cross-compiling, though: Is this newbie-doable or am I in for days of head-scratching ? On 23/05/2018 04:01, Paul Wise wrote: On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 8:42 PM, Gilles wrote: On an ARM appliance, as a way to run fsck on a USB keydrive that holds /boot and /, I was thinking of running a small Linux image from RAM after downloading it through TFTP. Another option would be to use debirf to build an initramfs-based live system that looks like your normal system (minus logs/data/config), runs entirely from RAM and contains fsck and any other tools needed for rescuing the system. I'm not sure if it can do cross-arch builds but failing that you could build it on the ARM system you have. http://cmrg.fifthhorseman.net/wiki/debirf Problem is, the Busybox it contains is missing fdisk and fsck: It should be feasible to download the source package, tweak the build config, rebuild the binary packages, extract the relevant binaries and include them in your small Linux image. apt build-dep busybox apt source busybox cd busybox-*/ $EDITOR dpkg-buildpackage cd .. dpkg-deb -x busybox-static*.deb busybox-static cp busybox-static/bin/busybox /srv/tftp/ Is there a way to download a compatible fsck binary from somewhere? You would have to either build it or get someone else to do that for you. You could use the one from the normal fsck packages instead of busybox. I don't know how big the busybox fdisk/fsck support is, but it might be worth reporting a bug on busybox asking for them to be enabled. Alternatively, a bug report asking for a busybox-static-full package containing support for every busybox applet might be a good idea.
Re: Busbox missing fdisk and fsck: How to add?
Thanks very much for the infos. It looks like the easiest solution to the problem would be cross-compiling fsck on a i386 Linux host, and copying the binary onto the the appliance. I only have shallow experience with cross-compiling, though: Is this newbie-doable or am I in for days of head-scratching ? On 23/05/2018 04:01, Paul Wise wrote: On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 8:42 PM, Gilles wrote: On an ARM appliance, as a way to run fsck on a USB keydrive that holds /boot and /, I was thinking of running a small Linux image from RAM after downloading it through TFTP. Another option would be to use debirf to build an initramfs-based live system that looks like your normal system (minus logs/data/config), runs entirely from RAM and contains fsck and any other tools needed for rescuing the system. I'm not sure if it can do cross-arch builds but failing that you could build it on the ARM system you have. http://cmrg.fifthhorseman.net/wiki/debirf Problem is, the Busybox it contains is missing fdisk and fsck: It should be feasible to download the source package, tweak the build config, rebuild the binary packages, extract the relevant binaries and include them in your small Linux image. apt build-dep busybox apt source busybox cd busybox-*/ $EDITOR dpkg-buildpackage cd .. dpkg-deb -x busybox-static*.deb busybox-static cp busybox-static/bin/busybox /srv/tftp/ Is there a way to download a compatible fsck binary from somewhere? You would have to either build it or get someone else to do that for you. You could use the one from the normal fsck packages instead of busybox. I don't know how big the busybox fdisk/fsck support is, but it might be worth reporting a bug on busybox asking for them to be enabled. Alternatively, a bug report asking for a busybox-static-full package containing support for every busybox applet might be a good idea.
