Debian Install Help Please

[iiivx]

Maybe this is the problem. I odn't know if it will work with stable
tell us what you get.

I posted a howto in howto talk, after moderation it will show up I guess. I cracked a debian installation using the 'testing' tree with additional cool packages into 77 megabyte.

[Madar]

That's great news iiivx!!! I finally got back to this and built it all again from new packages (from my existing system) and it all came out the same. I look forward to seeing your howto.

Madar

[Madar]

I've been super busy but I have some free time coming up (I hope) so I'm getting back to this finally.

So iiivx did you end up compiling debconf yourself? I think setting up a crosscompiler may be more work (and time) than I'm willing to go through. I have the wl-hdd with an actual hard drive so size isn't much of a concern to me...

Madar

[atomilein]

hey guys,

i am trying to get debian on my extern usb-hdd connected to my asus wl 500g. i read the wiki and after hours i have now an debian tree, that i got to my asus (debootstrap was not installed on my debian before ).

but now i can not get around with

"create etc/fstab hosts resolv.conf apt/sources.list"

in the wiki. i read some threads in the forums and found out, that it can be difficult to set up fstab. but the prob is, that i do not even know what the wiki mean with "create etc/fstab hosts resolv.conf apt/sources.list".

how create and where i get the input for the files?

sorry but i am just starting with linux and stuff. the wiki is not compatible to people like me.

i hope u can advice me because it was a lot of work to get so far. now i really want this debian get running!

thanx

[Madar]

I just wanted to post an update on my trials with Debian on the WL_HDD.
So I finally got some time in on this last weekend, and I’m happy to say things are going pretty well. I downloaded iiivx’s image and set it up on a partition on my hard drive and when I rebooted the device SHAZAM I had a functional Debian box. Admittedly, I haven’t played around with it much yet but so far so good Thanks you iiivx for all of your hard work. I’m curious how you overcame the problem packages (debconf for one). Did you end up setting up a cross compiler? If you did, all I can say is wow (I would have never sorted that out on my own)!!! Anyway, if anything exciting comes up I’ll be sure to post and let you all know.

Thanks to everyone for your help

Madar

[atomilein]

is there no one who is wants to help me? i really searched the forum for the solution, but no success...

[macsat]

Hi

I am hoping to be ready with a howto within long.

I havent tried debian yet - but as soon as I have it running I will write a howto.

It is all a question of finding the time.....

[Madar]

have you read through the thread on this topic? A lot has already been said on the subject http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=...ghlight=debian I was able to get it up and running by using the image iiivx put together. His Debian on a USB drive tutorial has some pretty decent info and should get you up and running on the WL-500 in no time http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=...ghlight=debian

Good Luck,

Madar

[tophinus]

Hi,

Sorry in advance for my language, i'm French. And sorry too in advance for my long post

I bought the asus wl-500g deluxe four months ago and found the Great Work of Oleg.

As I'm not a newbie with Linux, I decide to install a debian mipsel system in order to boot on it and the base system works !!! I do say I boot on it, not only chroot on it. The features I have managed to work is the ssh server and the wired connection, and the hdparm too, it gives me :

#hdparm -tT /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc

/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc:
Timing cached reads: 112 MB in 2.00 seconds = 56.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 16 MB in 3.27 seconds = 4.89 MB/sec

I haven't get tested nfs or samba server but I think this is not a great problem.

My first problem comes from the wireless connection. I had to recompile Oleg's firmware (1.9.2.7-4) to modify "Oleg's/linuxrc" in order to boot on my "debian_usbdisk/linuxrc". So my /linuxrc load the "et", "wl" and "robo" modules because only the "et" module can be loaded in debian system. The "wl" and "robo" modules cause a segmentation fault in debian
I also tried to modify kernel to link wl on ap, sta or apsta but nothing works, I have always a segmentation fault. Here is my first question :
I have an error when I set the wl link to dongle, is there a way to link it correctly ?

So, I load modules in my /linuxrc before launching pivot_root and /sbin/init. But now, when I try to set wireless connection, I have these errors :

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.
Error for wireless request "Set Bit Rate" (8B20) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.
Error for wireless request "Set Nickname" (8B1C) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.
Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.

Then, after search on the web, I found that theses errors can be due to the lack of wireless firmware in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/. So here is my second question :
Is there a way to extract firmware code from the original asus' or oleg's hotplug in order to put it correctly ? because I think the firmware code must be present somewhere.

Now, i have questions about the kernel :
What does it occur when a bad kernel is uploaded ? Is there a way to restore the routeur correctly ? And how the web interface upload firmware work ? which instructions does it use ?
I think this because my CPU is a BCM5365 and this processor is not selected by default into the kernel, i have to do a "make menuconfig" in src/gateway.

And what does occur if I recompile the kernel with my debian mipsel system without the uclibc ? In fact, what is the uclibc ? (Sorry but i'm not a great developper, i'm an administrator)

And to finish, the way to install a debian system on the router is a bit difficult and as it not fully worked, I think it's not recommended for now to make an how-to, I will do it when it will be successfully installed.

Tophinus

[atomilein]

Yes I read both topics. But ur post was to special for me. But if got it running, could u post how to

"create etc/fstab hosts resolv.conf apt/sources.list"

an the the input for these files..

The second topic with 128 mb Stick I tried first and the only result was, that my usb-stick was first not recognized (maybe not compatible) and then I tried the same with my usb-hdd and it crashed .

I really want this debian running on my extern usb-hdd

[atomilein]

debian works now on my usb-stick my stick was totally damaged and full of dead partitions. now i cleaned up and got my debian on the stick.

but...how can i transfer the whole stuff on my extern usb-hdd?

greeeeeeetz

[Madar]

Howdy congrats on getting your USB stick up and running. As far as creating resolve.conf and fstab I'm not sure what you mean by "how to create" do you mean how to open a file and write to it or do you mean how to decide what it should say? you can write the files using "vi" a simple text editor. The version that you get by default is pretty stripped down but it works okay you have to use insert and delete keys to enter text. If your up and running I would 'apt-get install vim' as that will give you more text editing usability. As far as what to put in the files; the fstab really doesn't seem to matter much as because I don't believe it ever gets read in the first place (maybe someone out there can explain that better). Your resolv.conf should have something like 'nameserver: your.DNS.ip.address'. I hope that helps a little...

[Madar]

Regarding putting the files onto your HD: I have one of those little 2.5" usb HD enclosures so I just plugged the drive in there and mounted it from my computer. Then I moved the files over onto the drive unmounted and put the drive back into the WL-HDD enclosure. You have everything you need on the usb key so just plug it into a computer copy the entire file tree off the usbkey to your computer's HD. Now you can just mount your harddrive (the one your going to use with your Asus device) and move the file tree over to the HD... I'm not sure that was all that clear (typing fast) I hope it was... Good luck!

Madar

[atomilein]

thanx for help. i read ur thread after getting it work. i got it like this:

i created a debian like in the wiki

i tike etc/fstab hosts resolv.conf apt/sources.list from the "debian on 128mb..."-howto

[with "create etc/fstab hosts resolv.conf apt/sources.list" I meant what to put in the files. touch, vi and so on I know ]

and here I proudly present my solution to get torrent run on wl500g with extern usb:

> then I installed screen (apt-get)
> after that I installed bittornado (apt-get)
> and finally midnight commander (apt-get)
> to make things easier I created debian.sh like that:

killall stupid-ftpd

killall waveservermain
rmmod audio
rmmod soundcore

killall p910nd
killall lpd
killall infosvr
rmmod printer
rmmod parport
rmmod parport_splink

chroot /opt/distributions/debian/debian-distro/ /bin/bash

where /opt/.... is my mounted usb-hdd

-----------------------------------------------

I can´t complain about speed. Everything runs normal.

But...i am still looking forward to free more memory . Any ideas. Here is my "top":

PID USER STATUS RSS PPID %CPU %MEM COMMAND
181 admin R 3816 180 61.8 27.2 btdownloadcurse
205 admin R 412 202 8.1 2.9 top
182 admin S 3816 181 0.0 27.2 btdownloadcurse
202 admin S 404 41 0.0 2.8 sh
179 admin S 280 1 0.0 2.0 screen
101 admin S 232 1 0.0 1.6 nmbd
138 admin S 228 1 0.0 1.6 upnp
46 admin S 220 1 0.0 1.5 httpd
91 admin S 208 1 0.0 1.4 watchdog
88 admin S 208 1 0.0 1.4 pppd
113 admin S 140 1 0.0 1.0 dropbear
1 admin S 136 0 0.0 0.9 init
54 nobody S 104 1 0.0 0.7 dnsmasq
53 admin S 104 1 0.0 0.7 syslogd
41 admin S 104 1 0.0 0.7 telnetd
79 admin S 92 1 0.0 0.6 rcamdmain
52 admin S 88 1 0.0 0.6 klogd
92 admin S 88 91 0.0 0.6 ntp
99 admin S 28 1 0.0 0.2 smbd
180 admin S 8 179 0.0 0.0 sh

so far so good

[steffen01]

I have installed Debian on my WL-HDD. Now I have an Virtual Server on my WL-HDD, because it won't boot with the hdd. Apt, a few additional installed services are working quite fine. But the damned thing will not boot from hd.

But it still boots from the flash.
I tried to force to boot from hda, I set boot-dev to /dev/ide/.... ., but this wont work (I don't get even a ping).

As far as I understand Olegs comment, his firmware (I'll use the latest named wl-hdd) tries to boot the kernel from flash anywhere, and then tries to boot from hd (unfortunately there is only an howto for the WL500 on his site).
Do I need to install an bootloader? Or do I need an working kernel-image on the hd?
Or is there an simple nvram Variable which I simply overlooked?