\"A Precautionary Tale\"
.................. or
\"Things That I Discovered While Bricking & Un-bricking My C860\"
Children, this man is an stone idiot. Do NOT try this at home.
Well, you see, there were (and still are) a number of programs that would (will) not run on my C860 because they or their depends need a newer version of libc.so.6 than the one in /lib. Found libc.so.6 symlinked to libc-2.2.2.so, so the fix looked pretty simple.
Downloaded a v2.3.2 libc set, which should satisfy the most picky of the bunch of whiners. Went to replace the files.
Discovered that /lib is read only. Okaaaaay.
su
mount / -o rw,remount
Groovy.
rm libc.so.6
ln -s libc-2.3.2.so libc.so.6
Great so far. Then
mount / -o ro,remount
which failed due to a missing file required by the new libc.so.6 file. Okaaaay. Find the required file on the CF & copy it over. No big problem, right?
Except, as I gradually began to discover, libc.so.6 seemed to be an absolute requirement for just about everything except for the few (VERY few) built in shell commands.
The GUI desktops were still acessable but nothing would run. The really important command line utils (ls, su, cp & so on) all failed. Realization begain to dawn that this would not be QUITE so simple a recovery as initially expected. Big problem. Right.
\"Do NOT panic\"!
Had Qkonsole open. Konsole would not launch. Suspected that if I closed Qkonsole there would not be another shot at the command line so tried as many options there as I could think of over a number of hours. All with no joy. Was able to copy /home/zaurus/Documents over to CF with the Files tab but nothing else.
Finally had to admitt that there wasn\'t anything else that I could think of to try from the command line. Exited the shell & was proven right when it wouldn\'t launch again. Reboot from the main menu, knowing it would certainly fail. Hung at the first screen, right side moving bar.
Pulled the battery for a couple minutes then tried booting with \"D+B\" to get a command prompt. Dead black screen. Crud. Back out with the battery, wait, wait, wait then try \"D+M\" to check the Maint Menu. Same dead black screen. Crud exponential. Started to feel a bit sick.
NOW *nothing* produced anything except that dead black screen.
Thank the powers that ZUG was back up & on line. Some searching turned up a similar problem in the thread \"Unable to get to the service menu !\"
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...iewtopic&t=4039where Stubear suggested that wittyman
\"Remove the batter and ac adapter, wait a minute or so, hold down the D+M keys while plugging in the acadapter.. The charging light should flash on then off, keep holdiong D+M the screen will flash white and change to the Service menu. You can now release D+M and put the battery back in and close the battery lock tab.
Works everytime for me on the C760 \"
And (THANKS, Stu!) it worked on my C860, too. PLUS, as also mentioned by Stu to nihon on externe.net\'s forum in:
http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1103\"Another option that is slightly easier than installing the battery while holding down the <D>+<M> keys is to plug the ac adapter in - serves the same purpose then you can insert the battery and lock the case.
I find it much easier than trying to juggle the battery.\"
A LOT easier! Especially after about the 12th time!
Still, what I *really* needed was that elusive \"D+B\" boot. Which just did NOT seem to work. Arggggh.
A thread started by Mac on externe.net\'s forum:
http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic....=790&highlight=pointed out how intermittant the \"D+B\" boot success rate seemed to be.
On a vague hunch, I pulled out my SD & CF cards and tried the boot. BINGO! Don\'t know if it was the cards or the odds, but this time the log in appeared. Root worked without a password.
Stubear, again, in the thread \"Booting into non-GUI runlevel\":
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...iewtopic&t=1579\"Note the D+B option actually boots another flash chip - not your normal / and /home so none of your installed programs will be available unless they are on CF or SD. To get to them you will need to mount /dev/mtdblock2 (root) and /dev/mtdblock3 (/home).\"
However,
mount /dev/mtdblock2
failed due to no entry in /etc/fstab; but
mkdir z-temp
mount /dev/mtdblock2 /z-temp
worked just fine (THANKS AGAIN, Stu!). SO all that was left was
cd /z-temp/lib
rm libc.so.6
ln -s libc-2.2.2.so libc.so.6
ls -l .............................................. #to be VERY certain it was DONE!
Then, finally, power down, replace the battery & hit the on button (and hold my breath).
Voila! One un-bricked C860 (whew!).
And THAT, ladies & gentlemen, is another reason why ZUG & the like are worth their weight in gold (metaphysically speaking).
One happy camper
Bob W
Miami FL
