Installing Debian Base, Without Needing A Network Connection!

[tux]

 I'm copying a post of ZDevil here. I think the topic deserves a thread of its own!  

ZDevil wrote:

 Actually installing Debian can be as easy as installing Cacko, pdaXrom (non-uboot versions) and Angstrom.

There is an alternative way to install it without using networking.

*** The "10-step-self-help guide to enjoying a popular penguin" ***

Just start from here: http://www.bigbridgezau.sakura.ne.jp/dev/debian/

#1 Download 4 things and copy them to the root of SD:
updater.sh
gnu-tar
zImage-2.6.17-cpufreq-fastfpe.bin OR zImage-2.6.20-cpufreq.bin (This is the kernel; rename it to zImange.bin)
hddrootfs.tar.gz (This is the base system and Etch; rename it to hdimage1.tgz)

#2 Reboot the Z while pressing [OK] to enter the flash menu

#3 Just flash as usual by choosing "4" and then "SD" and then "Y"

#4 If things go well (they should), then kernel will flash and the big tarball will decompress to /dev/hda1. This may take an hour.

#5 Installation will complete itself and reboot the machine. Debian is ready to go!

#6 You can then do the postinstallation steps as descibed in "After installation" in the titchy linux wiki: http://wiki.neilandtheresa.co.uk/Titchy_Linux/Installing

#7 To upgrade from Etch ("stable" but a bit dated) and Lenny ("testing" and the new stuff), change "etch" to "lenny" in /etc/apt/sources.list

#8 apt-get update

#9 apt-get dist-upgrade

#10 Wow!

Plus two desserts:

#11 If you fancy playing with over/underclocking, grab the dvfm binary (not the armel.zip) from the japanese link above.

#12 If you feel like trying different (Angstrom) kernels, three versions are available: 2.6.17-fastfpe-cpufreq, 2.6.20-cpufreq, 2.6.22-cpufreq.
Remember to use the same updater.sh from the download location of the kernel!
More discussion this way: https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=24815.
And be CAREFUL: do NOT flash the kernel with the big installation tarball, because your disk may get reformatted and wiped clean and overwritten with a clean install!

End of quote!

Be cautious and make lists of your network files and sources.list. I didn't and it has been a little inconvenient!   Well done ZDevil!

[tux]

 I'm in the process of doing a dist-upgrade to lenny. While I'm waiting fo this to happen, I thought I'd jot down some first impressions.

My system had been partitioned with separate partitions for /home, /tmp, /... Well you get the picture. It still is. So the partition scheme is not altered. The unpacking and copying that ZDevil said might take an hour appeared to take only about 15 minutes for me.  I don't know what to think about that.  

The X-windows system has gone. The keyboard is still working correctly. When I look for some of the files I had modified or created, they aren't there. So some clearing out is done. The wifi card, or any network device, needs configuring by editing the /etc/network/interfaces file. In my case, my wireless router is wepped, I prefer to use my CF lan card.

I edited the ftp.jp to ftp.uk in the sources.list and changed etch into lenny, apart from in the security line. Don't know if that was the best choice. The sources.list from this install has contrib and non-free in, I left that alone.

The root user starts out with password kuroadmin. I changed that to suit me. I added an ordinary user. I altered the hostname from kurobox? to titchy.

When this dist-upgrade finishes I'll start doing the 'usual' tweaks and installs.

Wish me luck.

      So I attempt to install titchy and it says there is no room. So I was right to worry when the unpacking took so little time. I got into the diagnostic menu and I'm clearing the hard disk. When it finishes I'll try again! I won't post until it works though!  

[tux]

  So it is 12:23 my time.I should be in bed!  

     So I attempt to install titchy and it says there is no room. So I was right to worry when the unpacking took so little time. I got into the diagnostic menu and I'm clearing the hard disk. When it finishes I'll try again! I won't post until it works though!  



I flashed cacko to use the shell to fdisk the hard disk. It fought back!

Finally, I have used the original Titchy installer and it formatted the drive. I aborted at that stage and the 'ZDevil' method is clunking away saying that it is extracting. Lord knows where this will end. If it takes its time then it will be 2 in the morning before I can tell what is happening with the hard disk!  

I may yet force myself into extracting the drive to fdisk it on another machine. If I do that I might as well get a SanDisk 16GB card and see what happens!  

I'll spend the time while I wait for this hitting spambots who are attacking the Wiki again.   So my insomnia is worthwhile to someone

[Meanie]

 So it is 12:23 my time.I should be in bed!  

     So I attempt to install titchy and it says there is no room. So I was right to worry when the unpacking took so little time. I got into the diagnostic menu and I'm clearing the hard disk. When it finishes I'll try again! I won't post until it works though!  



I flashed cacko to use the shell to fdisk the hard disk. It fought back!

Finally, I have used the original Titchy installer and it formatted the drive. I aborted at that stage and the 'ZDevil' method is clunking away saying that it is extracting. Lord knows where this will end. If it takes its time then it will be 2 in the morning before I can tell what is happening with the hard disk!  

I may yet force myself into extracting the drive to fdisk it on another machine. If I do that I might as well get a SanDisk 16GB card and see what happens!  

I'll spend the time while I wait for this hitting spambots who are attacking the Wiki again.   So my insomnia is worthwhile to someone

just a tip, you can use the pdaXii13 installer, just flash into its menu and then use the hdd options to manually format your microdrive. the installer includes an updated fdisk which works better than the original one that is in the emergency system...

[jpmatrix]

I was about to reply the same ! Use pdaxii13 flash files
by the way we are waiting for your next episode  for me i finaly won t re install mine as i now succeed to log with my own non root user. In fact it was ok after a reboot.

[tux]

I was about to reply the same ! Use pdaxii13 flash files
by the way we are waiting for your next episode  for me i finaly won t re install mine as i now succeed to log with my own non root user. In fact it was ok after a reboot.

 Bonjour J-P, Ca va?

  As you see I'm still cheerful! I went to bed last night at 5 a.m.  I'm back with a working X-windows system and in a position to to install working apps. But not using the ZDevil method.  

I gave in and went back to the original version. I am on lenny/testing.  

I had all sorts of problems, not too sure if lack of sleep caught up with me.   Thanks Meanie and JP, I just used the Cacko flasher for the repartition/format in the end. I must try the pdaxrom utility sometime. Only if it has advantages!  

I think you need one plain partition for the ZDevil method. Straight on top of my multi-partition set up I ran out of space according to the apt tool's messages. From a plain, single partition I ran into various problems with modules claiming to be missing etc. Should I not have used the 20 kernel, should I have used one of the 16s?

I need to look back through the threads and see what I missed.   Regardless of that possibility, I then ran into problems with getting a network interface into action. At one stage I got the CF lan card working, the easiest command-line choice. But it felt like I was banging my head on a brick wall!  

Any way, ZDevil's comment about 'enthusiastic novices' certainly seemed apt.  

I will have another go, when I've read through the threads again, after all I threatened to do a wiki page on this!  

Well with this 4 hours sleep and breakfast (soon) I should be able to cope with teaching Samba and Cha Cha Cha, don't you think?  
I'll be back!

Dancing went well! I'll keep off this method for a while and look carefully at what ZDevil said... and study my Linux Unwired book more thoroughly!!:D

[ZDevil]

I've flashed twice with the method I described and the process went through. I realized that I should've added writing a network interface profile and a note about the default root account "kuroroot". But apart from that I can't think of anything seriously flawed in the description on top of my head. Will look into it this weekend relaxingly enthusiastically.

[jpmatrix]

Bonjour J-P, Ca va?

  As you see I'm still cheerful! I went to bed last night at 5 a.m.  I'm back with a working X-windows system and in a position to to install working apps. But not using the ZDevil method.

bonjour tux ! moi j'ai bien dormi ! :-)

well that reminds me of my nights spent trying to install&configure debian on my desktop pc some years ago ;-) happily today Ubuntu made a good job in having a debian based distro installed "les doigts dans le nez" on my desktop

bon courage !

[tux]

 So here we go again!  

I took meanie's and JP's advice and used the pdax??? installer to set my hard drive to one large partition. I also used it to make sure the correct number of heads, 16, cylinders, 11905, and sectors, 63.

Then I just did what it says in the first post in this thread. Zdevil says the extraction might take an hour?  Tonight it took 12 minutes until reboot. It automatically loads the keymap, so you don't need to do the loadkeys bit. Unlike last night I did do the step which starts dpkg-deb.. This is from the TitchyLinux site. One thing to be aware of is that this disk image method already has the SD card mounted, but to /media. Different from the TitchyLinux site method.

Unlike the original method, the copying does not put messages on the screen. Again I have set the date and changed the root password from the default kuroadmin. I used df and the report gives 5% used on /dev/hda1. So I should have plenty of room.

As I keep complaining, I'm useless at command line network set up. In particular I haven't got to grips with setting wep keys in Wifi. So I'm going to use my CF lan card and try to set it up with DHCP.

Must not forget to do depmod.

More later, but not upto 5 a.m. tomorrow morning, once is enough!
 

[tux]

 So I now have my CF lan card working away and am about to do dist-upgrade.

This tarballed system emerges with a ssh-server running, so I'm doing all this terminal work the easy way using putty.

I'm going to list the TitchyLinux sites post install steps and say what I found different. The ones marked in bold were modified or omitted.

cd ..
mkdir media/card .. because the SD card is automatically mounted under /media
mount dev/mmcblk0p1 media/card .. see above
dpkg-deb -x media/card/zaurus-hardware-support.deb .. I did this and it took some time, but no messages on the screen. There are in the usual method.
loadkeys usr/share/keymaps/zaurus/spitz.kmap.gz .. If you look at kernel messages on reboot this command is issued and the keys work.
depmod .. I did this and there was a pause before the prompt returned.

There are differences at the next stage too.

In sources.list the neilandtheresa line is already present. The other repository lines have contrib and non-free.

The first line has jp in the line. I changed it to uk.

I haven't yet installed zaurus-hardware-support, I will do. apt-get reported that it was already installed! I am leaving installing the X-windows system until after the dist-upgrade.  Maybe I'll try ice-wm?

I have twiddled with the interfaces file. I hope this will make using the wireless card and the usb Lan dongle easier.

More later....  Now 11 pm I started this just before 9 pm.

[tux]

 Well I've come to the conclusion that there are two possible reasons for this second failure.   Perhaps I should have gone all the way through to installing titchy before I decided to dist-upgrade?)
The second reason is the possibility that I just don't understand the way debian is put together, to be able to make the correct choices?  


There were a fair number of questions about the scripts which I answered by keeping the old versions. I did notice some complaints during the process that some of the pcmcia directories could not be deleted/overwritten. The networking just went AWOL. It had been working fine.  

Well, here we go again.. 12 08 and reinstalling the TitchyLinux way!  

I'm not going to touch this method again until I've been through the settings and scripts and the modules that work with the original methods.

Much later...

[maximusz]

I'm copying a post of ZDevil here. I think the topic deserves a thread of its own!  

ZDevil wrote:

 Actually installing Debian can be as easy as installing Cacko, pdaXrom (non-uboot versions) and Angstrom.

There is an alternative way to install it without using networking.

*** The "10-step-self-help guide to enjoying a popular penguin" ***

Just start from here: http://www.bigbridgezau.sakura.ne.jp/dev/debian/

#1 Download 4 things and copy them to the root of SD:
updater.sh
gnu-tar
zImage-2.6.17-cpufreq-fastfpe.bin OR zImage-2.6.20-cpufreq.bin (This is the kernel; rename it to zImange.bin)
hddrootfs.tar.gz (This is the base system and Etch; rename it to hdimage1.tgz)

#2 Reboot the Z while pressing [OK] to enter the flash menu

#3 Just flash as usual by choosing "4" and then "SD" and then "Y"

#4 If things go well (they should), then kernel will flash and the big tarball will decompress to /dev/hda1. This may take an hour.

#5 Installation will complete itself and reboot the machine. Debian is ready to go!

#6 You can then do the postinstallation steps as descibed in "After installation" in the titchy linux wiki: http://wiki.neilandtheresa.co.uk/Titchy_Linux/Installing

#7 To upgrade from Etch ("stable" but a bit dated) and Lenny ("testing" and the new stuff), change "etch" to "lenny" in /etc/apt/sources.list

#8 apt-get update

#9 apt-get dist-upgrade

#10 Wow!

Plus two desserts:

#11 If you fancy playing with over/underclocking, grab the dvfm binary (not the armel.zip) from the japanese link above.

#12 If you feel like trying different (Angstrom) kernels, three versions are available: 2.6.17-fastfpe-cpufreq, 2.6.20-cpufreq, 2.6.22-cpufreq.
Remember to use the same updater.sh from the download location of the kernel!
More discussion this way: https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=24815.
And be CAREFUL: do NOT flash the kernel with the big installation tarball, because your disk may get reformatted and wiped clean and overwritten with a clean install!

End of quote!

Be cautious and make lists of your network files and sources.list. I didn't and it has been a little inconvenient!   Well done ZDevil!

Thanks for you help - I have been able to install debian to my 3100 - but I can not get my ambicom wifi working. I made it up to step 5 - is there a way to get a gui at this stage or do I need to get online? I thought the title "Installing Debian Without Using A Network Connection" would mean I would have a working GUI?    Am I mistaken?
THanks for your help.

[ZDevil]

Again, my misktake. You are right. Starting from Step 6 you need a network connection, because even if you have a downloaded copy of titchy's zaurus-hardware-zupport package, it makes no sense to do "apt-get update" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" without networking.
But the Ambicom card just works under 2.6.20 -- follow this:

1) Install zaurus-hardware-zupport.deb   (use a downloaded copy from you PC if necessary)

2) Manually write you settings in /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf . They should look something like this:

/etc/network/interfaces  (The Ambicom wifi card is typically assigned to eth0)

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
   address 192.168.0.111            ## Or any static IP address of your Z
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   network 192.168.0.0               ## Or your router's IP but change the last number to "0"
   broadcast 192.168.0.255
   gateway 192.168.0.1              ## Or your router's IP
   # wireless-* options are implemented by the wireless-tools package
   wireless-mode managed
   wireless-essid YouKnowYouAreNotThatStupid
   wireless-key1 ComeOnYourKnowIt
   # dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if installed
   dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1  ## Or your router's IP, plus any other nameservers addresses found on your router's interface if you like

/etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 192.168.0.1      ## Or your router's IP, plus any other nameservers addresses found on your router's interface if you like

3) /etc/init.d/network restart      ## Let the new network setting to take effect

[If the Ambicom card fails to connect to the network, do this:
3+) Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Add these two lines to the file:
blacklist hostap
blacklist hostap_cs
Save the file and reboot the Z. Your network interface should be up now.
(If not, just ask here)

4) Off you go ... Remember the login name is root and the root password is kuroadmin.  You can change the domain name and the root password anytime you want.

[ZDevil]

I have updated the instructions in https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?act=fi...&pid=168498

Note that the topic of this thread is misleading (it's my mistake in the beginning). It requires no network connection only up to step 5.

[tux]

I have updated the instructions in https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?act=fi...&pid=168498

Note that the topic of this thread is misleading (it's my mistake in the beginning). It requires no network connection only up to step 5.

 I've altered the topic title, is that any better?  

I've had a lot of struggles with this method. But it is teaching me a lot about the command line and configuration files.  Ubuntu on my boxes lets me be lazy!  

Thanks again ZDevil. I notice there is a certain amount of success putting this on the C1000. Even suggestions that it would go onto an 860! Lots happening...

I may even get brave and get myself a big CF card to replace the microdrive. I'll make sure to have plenty of sleep beforehand though.