Booting into non-GUI runlevel

[bb]

I tried installing a couple of packages yesterday, and I had to uninstall them again, since they didn\'t comply with the libs on my system. It seems the uninstallation took some system files already used on the system with it. I am completely unable to get the device to run now.

I would like to boot the system to something else than init 5 to be able to explicitly issue the command to start qpe and see if that gives me any error messages, since I suspect that it is the start of the GUI that fails.

I have tried taking out the battery for a couple of minutes, putting it in place again, switching the battery switch back on, turn the device on and press the \'/\' key while booting (SL-5x00 users seem to do so when they wish to boot to something than init 5). That doesn\'t work for me.

How does one boot a SL-860 system to anything else than init 5? I have searched the forums without finding anything but the advice given to SL-5x00 owners.

[bb]

*Sigh* - It seems the real problem was a process writing to the SD card not doing its job properly. I removed all power sources once again, removed the SD card and then I was able to restart the device after putting the battery in place again.

When I mount the SD card, it gives me some trouble. In particular I am not allowed to remove certain directories on the card, and when I try, the card is all of a sudden mounted read-only!

I don\'t have a card reader, and I don\'t have much experience with vfat partitions. Is there anything I can do to repair the card from the Zaurus?

[raybert]

I believe that booting (possibly requiring the battery to be removed for a moment) while holding down D+G will boot you to a cmd prompt.  I\'ve done it once (and my instructions are from my possibly-flawed memory) and it appeared as though nothing was mounted yet except \'/\', I think.  It\'s the same as flashing except you use D+G instead of D+M.  I got this from the C860 startup guide prepared by www.trisoft.de.

~ray

[Anonymous]

Well, try pressing D+B instead D+G and it might work. Alternatively try using sash\'s superb installer, don\'t flash anything but choose to enter console access.

Good Luck,
Abed

[bb]

I don\'t have a card reader, and I don\'t have much experience with vfat partitions. Is there anything I can do to repair the card from the Zaurus?

Since I didn´t find anything useful for repairing, I ended up re-formatting the card:

# umount /mnt/card
# mkfs.vfat /dev/mmcda1

That helped.

[TonyOlsen]

Holding down the \"D\" and \"B\" keys at the same time booted me into a console... I see:

Code: [Select]

INIT: version 2.78 booting

modprobe: Can\'t locate module devinfo

INIT: Entering runlevel: 5



INIT: Sending precesses the TERM signal



Embedix 2.0 | Linux for Embedded Devices



zaurus login:

Um... I never created a username/password for my SL-C860 Zaurus device.  Is there a standard username/password?

[ThC]

just try user root with no password ... else user zaurus with no password if you dont want root priviledge (thinking of stratagus )

[TonyOlsen]

hm... I tried \"zaurus\" and that seems to have worked... but now I can\'t mount my CF card.  I did \"su\" then \"mount /mnt/cF\", but it says:

mount: Mounting /dev/hda1 on /mnt/cf failed: Device or resource busy

I need to access my CF from this console.  Can anyone help?

Thanks,

[TonyOlsen]

Oh... I guess that\'s because it was already mounted.   :oops:   he he he...

[Stubear]

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).

If you have ssh installed then you can just ssh into the Z while qtopia is endlessly and play around with the filesystem.

Stu

[TonyOlsen]

Cool!  So my Zaurus actually has 2 versions of Linux on it?  Sweet!

I guess that\'s how everyone is able to flash new ROMs, right?

[DrWowe]

Cool!  So my Zaurus actually has 2 versions of Linux on it?  Sweet!

Yup, other one is a non-flashable emergency boot.  Useful for getting out of trouble if you hose your flash, otherwise you\'d be bricked!

[TonyOlsen]

Wow!  Even my desktop doesn\'t have that!!  That\'s amazing!

If I incorrectly flash my motherboard, I\'m hosed!... but not the Zaurus!  Man, I love this machine!