Zubuntu Help

[whykickamoocow]

Hi

Im pretty new to the zaurus thing and i was wondering if anybody could help me out with trying to get zubuntu onto my zaurus, ive had ago at omegamoons way and i just cant seem to extract the files onto a sd/cf card, i dont mind if i mess up my zaurus a few times cos i find it all a learning curve. Can anybody help me or do they have a video u can follow. Thanks for any help i get.

Regards

whykick

[apink]

Hi

Im pretty new to the zaurus thing and i was wondering if anybody could help me out with trying to get zubuntu onto my zaurus, ive had ago at omegamoons way and i just cant seem to extract the files onto a sd/cf card, i dont mind if i mess up my zaurus a few times cos i find it all a learning curve. Can anybody help me or do they have a video u can follow. Thanks for any help i get.

Regards

whykick

(I am making a guess at your needs without knowing how much linux experience you have.)

Linux on your pc along with a card reader makes this easy.  (You can make a live disk to use if your pc is running windows.  Puppylinux works for me.)  

Once running linux, use gparted to create the partition(s) you want on the card.  Then copy the files to be extracted there.  To extract use the "tar" command i.e. "tar -xzvf filename.tar.gz"

[whykickamoocow]

thanks for that apink,yeah your right i am still learning, ive got that far but when i try to unpack them for some reason it doesnt let me.
 ive tried it on ubuntu and backtrack which are both installed on my hdd.

[jfv]

tar -xvzf /path/to/filename.tar.gz .

There is a space and a "dot" at the end and they are part of the command. The dot means here and will untar the file in the current directory, so make sure you are on the root directory of the card. /path/to/ is the full path to the directory where you saved the file. It's probably going to be something like /home/whykick/Desktop/ for example.

Post the error message you are getting, if any. Make sure the card is mounted also.

[Chero]

tar -xvzf /path/to/filename.tar.gz .

There is a space and a "dot" at the end and they are part of the command. The dot means here and will untar the file in the current directory, so make sure you are on the root directory of the card. /path/to/ is the full path to the directory where you saved the file. It's probably going to be something like /home/whykick/Desktop/ for example.

Post the error message you are getting, if any. Make sure the card is mounted also.

Make sure you are untarring as "root" or use "sudo tar -xvzf /path/to/filename.tar.gz ."

[whykickamoocow]

I know this will be easy for most of u, but how do i mount the card ?


Regards

whykick

[jfv]

In Ubuntu, the card should automount. Connect the card to the computer and issue the command "df". Hopefully the card will show up on the list. If it doesn't, issue the command "dmesg" and look towards the end of the output for something like, usb mass storage device and take notice if it is called sda, sdb, or whatever. I'll assume is sdb. Issue the following commands:

sudo mkdir /media/card
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/card

Now do a "df" again and see if /media/card shows up. If it does, you are all set. Otherwise, post any error messages and outputs of the commands (not the whole dmesg, please just the end) so people here can see what is going on. Read about these commands, they will be useful in the future.

[whykickamoocow]

After hours of trying different cards and card readers i got the card to work on ubuntu, but when i tried to put the files across it gave me the error message (permission denied). Not sur why because i ran it with sudo cmd. So i gave up on that a took it upon myself to take apart the zaurus and take out the microdrive. I formatted it in fat32 and installed the backtrack cd onto it, All went well and did a complete install onto my microdrive but when i put it all back together it still boots up my cacko. Is there some kind of boot loader to boot up backtrack from my microdrive.

Regards

Whykick

[same]

After hours of trying different cards and card readers i got the card to work on ubuntu, but when i tried to put the files across it gave me the error message (permission denied). Not sur why because i ran it with sudo cmd. So i gave up on that a took it upon myself to take apart the zaurus and take out the microdrive. I formatted it in fat32 and installed the backtrack cd onto it, All went well and did a complete install onto my microdrive but when i put it all back together it still boots up my cacko. Is there some kind of boot loader to boot up backtrack from my microdrive.

Regards

Whykick

1) the sd card where you'll put zubuntu must be ext2 or ext3 format, not fat32
2) you need to put the kexec boot loader as specified in http://www.omegamoon.com/blog/static.php?page=ZaurusUbuntu
see the "Installation of the multiboot kernel on the Zaurus is done in the usual way" section. well you should read all the document carefully as it's is newbie friendly, you'll save time at the end.
3) i don't understand, are you trying to run backtrack live cd on the zaurus? i would say it's not possible

[whykickamoocow]

Yeah, ive installed backtrack onto my zaurus 6gb microdrive, just need some help on tryiny to boot the thing up. The install went perfect just like you would on a laptop hdd, its just that it doesnt boot up from it, fat32 is the formatt of a stanard zaurus microdrive so all i did was to reformatt it in the same, i didnt mean i formatted in fat32 for th zubuntu install.

Thanks

Whykick

[Chero]

Yeah, ive installed backtrack onto my zaurus 6gb microdrive, just need some help on tryiny to boot the thing up. The install went perfect just like you would on a laptop hdd, its just that it doesnt boot up from it, fat32 is the formatt of a stanard zaurus microdrive so all i did was to reformatt it in the same, i didnt mean i formatted in fat32 for th zubuntu install.

Thanks

Whykick

It seems you're on the wrong track.
When you put the microdrive in a desktop or laptop, I'm sure you can install a live cd on it. But it will never run on the zaurus. You can only use this to run it on a desktop or laptop (X86).
The zaurus uses a different cpu (arm), it is a different system. A bad comparison, but look at it as a pocketpc or a psp or a nintendo ds or a phone. You can't run apps that are made for pocketpc, nintendo DS, psp, phone on a desktop or laptop and you can't run apps made for the desktop/laptop on the pocketpc or the nintendo DS. It just doesn't work.
The zaurus is a bit the same (but different). You can't run apps made for the desktop or laptop. However, there is a specific ubuntu port where they recompiled all the apps so they CAN run on the zaurus. But only when you use these recompiled apps (they are remade for "arm" or "armel" systems).

The zaurus microdrive had a large fat32 partition, but the standard system only uses this to put data on it. When you want an operating system or apps to run from it, you need to reformat it to ext2 or ext3.

To put a new system on the zaurus, you have to "flash" it. More on this can be found in the wiki. Things like live-CDs or installer disks won't work. They are made for X86 and don't exist for "arm" systems. Flashing usually works with 3 files : the script (fash instructions), the kernel (the heart of the system) and the base-system (basic apps to get started).

Once ubuntu runs, you can use it in the same way as on your laptop or desktop, only installation is a bit different.

So :
- To flash your zaurus with the multiboot kernel : check the wiki, I can't put it any clearer.
- To get ubuntu going : follow the instructions on the omegamoon blog, I can't put it any clearer.

Chero.

[whykickamoocow]

I would like to thank everbody for there help so far,I got my card mounted in ubuntu but the problem i am having at the moment is that i cant move anyfiles around ubuntu, im putting the command "sudo tar -xvzf /media/zubuntu/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz" and "sudo tar -xvzf /media/sdd1/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz". the files that i am trying to unpack are on my ubuntu desktop. I try to move the files to the root folder but its saying that i dont have permission to do so. This is the error message i am getting when i try to unpack it from my desktop.


root@qwerty-laptop:~# sudo tar -xvzf /media/zubuntu/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz
tar: /media/zubuntu/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
root@qwerty-laptop:~# sudo tar -xvzf /media/sdd1/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz
tar: /media/sdd1/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
root@qwerty-laptop:~# sudo tar -xvzf /media/sdd1/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz .
tar: /media/sdd1/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: .: Not found in archive
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
root@qwerty-laptop:~# sudo tar -xvzf /media/zubuntu/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz .
tar: /media/zubuntu/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: .: Not found in archive
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Can anybody help me or do they have the command list i need to be putting in.

Regards

Whykick

[jfv]

Hey! Read what I wrote up there.

cd /media/zubuntu/

sudo tar -xzvf /home/whykick/Desktop/spitz-root-addition.tar.gz .

and don't forget the dot. You are confusing source with destination.

[whykickamoocow]

That seems to have done the job, thanks for that jfv and to the rest of you in here. Just one thing im getting this message at the end when i unpack the zubuntu-desktop-rc1.tar.gz file.

./usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/libapt-inst1.1.mo
./usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/gnupg.mo
./usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/gtkspell.mo
./usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/grep.mo
./usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/gnumeric.mo

gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Is this normal?

Regards

Whykick

[whykickamoocow]

i seem to have zubuntu booting up to the point were it ask for the login which it says on omegemoon to put root and not to put a password, then it says to type startx ,but when i do it comes up with,,,,,,,,,   -bash: startx: command not found .Can anybody help??

Regards


whykick