Debian Install Help Please

[Madar]

Hi, could someone please post an example of an fstab for a debian install? I'm not real sure what it should look like (I know it will have to be custom based on my partition layout) I'm just uncertain on the basic layout I need... Thanks!

Madar

[Madar]

Hello all,

I am very keen on setting up Debian on the WL-HDD however I am running into some snags following the tutorial. I am sure this can be done but the tutorial has left me in the dark on a several issues. If anyone can help me that would be great!!! Then we can try to add some more info to the wiki to make it easier for everyone (yeah )

Question #1

What should the fstab look like (I asked this before and a lot of people have viewed my post but no answers so far)? Is this fstab for the device root or does it go in my debian's /etc/fstab file? I’m pretty sure it goes in the debian /etc/fstab file but it doesn’t say on for sure on the wiki…

Question #2

I put the debian file tree where? In my current configuration I have set up 4 partitions (3 are ext3 1 is swp). Partition number one is for root, the second one is for swap (256mb) and two others I was hoping to use as HTTP and FTP separately.

I put my debian-distro on the first partition at /tmp/harddisk/distributions/debian. I tried mounting this onto /tmp on the actual root system and ended up with /tmp/tmp/harddisk/distributions/debian so I moved some stuff around and got it to look like this /tmp/harddisk/distributions/debian but quickly ran into other problems…

Question #3

exim4-config (actually all exim4 debs) is not installing properly and I think this is the reason that several other debs are not installing correctly either (telnet, wget, etc). I tried letting it slide; just running base-config but that fails out… I was trying this all using 1.9.2.7-4 so I thought maybe that was my problem. I started over with 1.9.2.7-1 last night but I’m having difficulty even getting as far as I was before now.

Questions #4

The wiki says “ssh to your Asus device”. I don’t see how I could do that as out of the box I don’t seem to have an sshd running on the device? I have been using telnet and seems to work okay but it makes me think I’m missing out on some step here.

I probably have other questions but nothing is coming to mind right now, I’m at work and it’s all a bit gray in my mind from here.

I know I’m a noob with all of this but I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out. I am pretty good at following directions but I find the current wiki instructions to be lacking in many ways.

Thanks in advance to everyone!!!

Madar

[Styno]

Questions #4

The wiki says “ssh to your Asus device”. I don’t see how I could do that as out of the box I don’t seem to have an sshd running on the device? I have been using telnet and seems to work okay but it makes me think I’m missing out on some step here.

SSH does not work right out the box indeed. When you've installed a custom firmware from Oleg, telnet should be running. You can use Putty to telnet to your box and setup SSH (dropbear) if you want to telnet to your box from WAN. There's a WIKI page on dropbear available.

[Madar]

Thanks Styno!

Well that is a start I will try this tonight when I get home. So do you think it's really necessary that I use ssh to set up debian? I'm still pretty confused about where the drives are supposed to be mounted. I've been plugging my drive in to my desktop (via usb) and mounting the first partition. Then I just copied the debian file structure onto the drive unmounted and reinstalled the drive to the WL-HDD. Then I used telnet to get onto the drive set up my (probably wonky) fstab, sources.list, and resolv.conf.

Hmm okay time to go home, I will experiment with it tonight...

Thanks again!

Madar

[hugo]

Well, I would'nt advise you to use SSH when you install debian on Wl-HDD. When you try an apt-get, the process hang under low memory using dropbear, when it works using telnet.
Also, try to reduce the memory consuption by stoppingunnecessary process, and set up a swap file to get some extended memory.

You can setup debian using the instruction on any partition, as long as it got enough space. 5Gb is enought IMHO.

You have to get the debian install files on your partition, in any folder, and then do a chroot to your folder. It should give you a shell.

You might have to do the final command more than 3 times (dpkg -iGREB /var/cache/apt/archive/), to end up the package install process.

After that, I found I still had brocken package. You can set up a apt repository with testing source (ie:
deb http://debian.ens-cachan.fr/ftp/debian/ testing main
deb-src http://debian.ens-cachan.fr/ftp/debian/ testing main

in you /etc/apt/sources.list (use a closer mirror for you)

then do apt-get update
then apt-get upgrade

you should get your distib running. Be gentle in the beggining with dependency, dont try to install something bug before installing dependency by yourlself, it can ease the process.

for the fstab, it is not readen properly anyway. You will have to do

mount -t proc none /proc
and also mount devfs devfs /dev

and laso mount you hd. mount -a doesn't work for me until I do this.

for info, here is my fstab, but i'm sure it's wrong:

proc            /proc           proc    remount         0       0
ramfs           /tmp            ramfs   defaults        0       0
usbfs           /proc/bus/usb   usbfs   defaults        0       0
dev             /dev            devfs   defaults        0       0
/dev/hda1       /mnt/hd         ext3    defaults        1       1
/dev/hda2       /mnt/hd2        ext3    defaults        1       2

Hope this help. I can even run windowsmaker using vnc on the wl-hdd, and compile program natively

[Styno]

So do you think it's really necessary that I use ssh to set up debian?

No, SSH is absolutely NOT nessesary when you only plan to access the router through telnet from a local LAN.

SSH is advisable (not nessesary) when telnetting to the router from WAN.

[Madar]

Thanks to everyone, I haven't had a chance to try this all out yet but I will a.s.a.p. It's always good to find an active community that is willing to help. I reckon this is the coolest thing I've owned since Lego...

Cheers,

Madar

[Madar]

Thanks for all your help so far, I think I'm getting closer but I've run into another snag (DOH!)

I too have packages that can't be configured so I need to apt-get update, problem is networking is not working for me. "route" offers me the following:

[root@firefly /]$ route
/proc/net/route: No such file or directory
INET (IPv4) not configured in this system.
[root@firefly /]$

ipconfig is not installed yet so no luck on that end.

My resolve.conf looks like this:

search
192.168.1.254

here is what is mounted:
[root@firefly /]$ mount

none on /proc type proc (rw)
ramfs on /tmp type ramfs (rw)
dev on /dev type devfs (rw)

Here is a list of the packages I can't configure without updating:
base-files
console-data
passwd
adduser
exim4-daemon-light
debconf
dhcp3-client
exim4
tcpd
console-tools
netbase
dhcp3-common
tasksel
cron
at
logrotate
man-db
base-config
ppp
libssl0.9.7
ifupdown
pppoeconf
pppconfig
bsdmainutils
telnet
wget


So basically I'm sunk and I'm not sure what I should do next.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out on this

[hugo]

ipconfig or ifconfig? It seems to me it is on the basic packages.

Basicaly, you have to be able to ping google.com to go on. Check your resolv.conf, and ifconfig. What is the result? Use static ip adressing.

Also, you MUST type

mount -t proc none /proc

after you have done the chroot to get use of ifconfig and route command.

[Madar]

Proc is mounted as per previous post and no I can't ping out (cuz the networks not working right ) so I can't stat debs of the net...

Anyway here is what is mounted:
[root@firefly /]$ mount

none on /proc type proc (rw)
ramfs on /tmp type ramfs (rw)
dev on /dev type devfs (rw)

My resolve.conf looks like this:

search
192.168.1.254

(192.168.1.254 is my router)

Your correct it is ifconfig just a typo on my part (i've been using Microsoft Windows at work a lot lately )

ipconfig yields the following:

[root@firefly /]$ ifconfig
Warning: cannot open /proc/net/dev (No such file or directory). Limited output.
[root@firefly /]$

route yields the following:

[root@firefly /]$ route
/proc/net/route: No such file or directory
INET (IPv4) not configured in this system.
[root@firefly /]$

when I try setting a default gateway I get this:

[root@firefly /]$ route add default gw 192.168.1.254
SIOCADDRT: File exists
[root@firefly /]$

I'm not exactly sure what SIOCADDRT is all about but it sounds like older kernel stuff which got me thinking about how I'm using "Sid" packages and the original tutorial mentioned "Sarge". I'm thinking to build a "Sarge" system and trying that. Does anyone know if this sounds like my problem? I'm thinking maybe... Doh!

[hugo]

did you actually type the command? What is the result when you type the

ps

command? Does it complain about proc?

[Madar]

Hey now we're getting somewhere, it wasn't mounted... Okay ifconfig is working now how silly of me, we're not really booting so fstab isn't really read and "mount" just tells me what the fstab says... Doh! See I'm trying

Okay so I've never seen a br0 before and at first I thought it would be the wireless nic but it's actually the same mac on everything here, hmm. Here is what ifconfig yields:

br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:2F:C4:3E2
inet addr:192.168.1.220 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::211:2fff:fec4:3edf/10 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1538 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1256 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:90650 (88.5 KiB) TX bytes:281626 (275.0 KiB)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:2F:C4:3E2
inet addr:192.168.1.220 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::211:2fff:fec4:3edf/10 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:288 (288.0 b)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0x2000

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:2F:C4:3E2
inet6 addr: fe80::211:2fff:fec4:3edf/10 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1538 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1260 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:118334 (115.5 KiB) TX bytes:281914 (275.3 KiB)
Interrupt:4 Base address:0x8000

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:2F:C4:3E2
inet6 addr: fe80::211:2fff:fec4:3edf/10 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:32 errors:768 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:7081 (6.9 KiB)
Interrupt:6

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:738 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:738 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:62172 (60.7 KiB) TX bytes:62172 (60.7 KiB)

[root@firefly /]$

At first I only had an ip on br0, I tried putting br0 down and telnet went dead on me and I couldn't get back up until I rebooted. Next I tried putting eth0 up with an ip. (everything is statically set up with my router for 192.168.1.220 and my mac) no luck they both are up with the same ip like in the ifconfig listed above... So then I put eth0 up and took br0 down; dead telnet again and I have to reboot.

here is the output from route if that helps at all:

[root@firefly /]$ route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
default 192.168.1.254 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 br0

Any thoughts?

[hugo]

what are you trying to do? just setup the br0 interface and you will be fine.
don't forget to setup GATEWAY and try to ping your dns adress. when ok, just add them to resolv.conf and try ping google.com
then you can setup sources.list
I personnally dont have to setup ip, as it use the standard web interface setup (like yours it seems)

[Madar]

Okay so many problems have been solved (Thank you everyone!!! ) Networking is now up and running my resolv.conf was incorrect. I had it resolving to my router but I had to resolve it to my ISP's DNS server (drrr). Okay so I have networking up (I can ping out) and I can update my .debs from the online repositories no problem. Unfortunately I still have packages that cannot resolve themselves. The exact same ones as before I updated the packages from the web.

Here is a list:

base-files
console-data
passwd
adduser
exim4-daemon-light
debconf
dhcp3-client
exim4
tcpd
console-tools
netbase
dhcp3-common
tasksel
cron
at
logrotate
man-db
base-config
ppp
libssl0.9.7
ifupdown
pppoeconf
pppconfig
bsdmainutils
telnet
wget

So I said okay "okay" maybe it's because I'm using "Sid" (unstable) instead of "Sarge"(testing) so I changed my sources.list to the testing repositories and did apt-get update and got the testing debs. Unfortunately the exact same packages won't install in testing. On a lark I tried the "Woody"(stable) sources as well but still no go...

I have also tried installing the packages one by one individually but no luck there either. It seems like the key package that is stopping all the others is 'base-files' but no mater what I try I can't seem to get it to install. Any ideas? I don't see why I'm the only person having this problem it makes me think I'm either really dumb or I'm the only person out there besides Hugo and Styno that are interested in doing this... Hopefully these discussion posts will help to sort out others in the future... Thanks again for sticking with me and helping me out

[hugo]

what is the output if you do a last

dpkg -iGREB /var/cache/apt/archive/

?

After an apt-get update, you have to do an apt-get upgrade

Stick on testing right now, there will be time to setup a double source with unstable later on.