Running Zubuntu From Internal Memory

[ppyo]

@ppyo: So it is hereby confirmed that the Akita bootkernel shows a kernel image in NAND, am I correct?
@Jon_J: On my SL-C3100 the kernel image in NAND also shows up in the bootmenu. Since you report that in your case cacko (in NAND) isn't shown, I wonder if your using the latest kernel (MD5: 7bf1d0f9c119892cb4cfd4526a880f5e). Could you check that?

If someone could confirm this for C7x0 also, this would be great. I just want to make sure that the different kernels are now all working fine. I tend to lose track sometimes  

Cheers,
cortez

Hi all

Finally got some time to work on my Z again.
I can happily report that as of today I have Zubuntu and Cacko running in my C1000! Cacko is running from internal flash!
I had to do a completely fresh reinstall of Cacko:
First, flash Cacko 1.23 original
Then flash Katastrophos kernel with sd modules (>1GB)
Finally, flash Cortez' kernel.
Ta daaaa!!!  
*dances happily*

I might have to copy the whole thing to a 4GB sd card. 2GB is a little tight with 1 GB for Zubuntu, 450MB for Cacko (plus internal flash), and 420MB for a future distro (pdaXrom?). Or I might just turn the latter into a common /home partition.

On the Zubuntu side I am trying to deal with minor issues:
- lxlauncher is not stable, crashes frequently. Too bad, coz it is needed
- Firefox is sooooo slow, I am using Dillo
- all PDF viewers I've tried are slow, xpdf segfaults
- installed KA/Pi & KO/Pi, and they work fine but will not sound alarms
- some other stuff

Again many, many thanks to Cortez for such an uber-cool achievement!!!

Gotta change signature to add Zubuntu!!!  

[klaxon]

Great new !
I hope the same for my C860 but there are not Katastrophos kernel unfortunately.

[jfv]

What is the use of  the Katastrophos kernel if Cacko is running from internal flash? If all it adds is SD support, shouldn't Cacko boot without it?

[ppyo]

What is the use of  the Katastrophos kernel if Cacko is running from internal flash? If all it adds is SD support, shouldn't Cacko boot without it?

I use the Katastrophos kernel because it has a nicer sound driver, you don't HAVE to use it. What matters is that the kernel you're using has to have support for SD cards bigger than 1GB. 1GB is simply way too small if you want to have two or more distros available in your Z.
Cheers!

[mjiba]

@ppyo: So it is hereby confirmed that the Akita bootkernel shows a kernel image in NAND, am I correct?
@Jon_J: On my SL-C3100 the kernel image in NAND also shows up in the bootmenu. Since you report that in your case cacko (in NAND) isn't shown, I wonder if your using the latest kernel (MD5: 7bf1d0f9c119892cb4cfd4526a880f5e). Could you check that?

If someone could confirm this for C7x0 also, this would be great. I just want to make sure that the different kernels are now all working fine. I tend to lose track sometimes  

Cheers,
cortez

Hi all

Finally got some time to work on my Z again.
I can happily report that as of today I have Zubuntu and Cacko running in my C1000! Cacko is running from internal flash!
I had to do a completely fresh reinstall of Cacko:
First, flash Cacko 1.23 original
Then flash Katastrophos kernel with sd modules (>1GB)
Finally, flash Cortez' kernel.
Ta daaaa!!!  
*dances happily*

I might have to copy the whole thing to a 4GB sd card. 2GB is a little tight with 1 GB for Zubuntu, 450MB for Cacko (plus internal flash), and 420MB for a future distro (pdaXrom?). Or I might just turn the latter into a common /home partition.

On the Zubuntu side I am trying to deal with a few minor issues (lxlauncher is not stable, installed Ka/Pi, but will not sound alarms, etc...)
Again many, many thanks to Cortez for such an uber-cool achievement!!!

Gotta change signature to add Zubuntu!!!  

ppyo,  could you give a few more details as to how you were successful?  Which Katastrophos kernal did you use?  What Zimage is in your Cacko partition.  I just tried this on my C1000 and ended up with a kernal panic when trying to boot cacko.

[ppyo]

@ppyo: So it is hereby confirmed that the Akita bootkernel shows a kernel image in NAND, am I correct?
@Jon_J: On my SL-C3100 the kernel image in NAND also shows up in the bootmenu. Since you report that in your case cacko (in NAND) isn't shown, I wonder if your using the latest kernel (MD5: 7bf1d0f9c119892cb4cfd4526a880f5e). Could you check that?

If someone could confirm this for C7x0 also, this would be great. I just want to make sure that the different kernels are now all working fine. I tend to lose track sometimes  

Cheers,
cortez

Hi all

Finally got some time to work on my Z again.
I can happily report that as of today I have Zubuntu and Cacko running in my C1000! Cacko is running from internal flash!
I had to do a completely fresh reinstall of Cacko:
First, flash Cacko 1.23 original
Then flash Katastrophos kernel with sd modules (>1GB)
Finally, flash Cortez' kernel.
Ta daaaa!!!  
*dances happily*

I might have to copy the whole thing to a 4GB sd card. 2GB is a little tight with 1 GB for Zubuntu, 450MB for Cacko (plus internal flash), and 420MB for a future distro (pdaXrom?). Or I might just turn the latter into a common /home partition.

On the Zubuntu side I am trying to deal with a few minor issues (lxlauncher is not stable, installed Ka/Pi, but will not sound alarms, etc...)
Again many, many thanks to Cortez for such an uber-cool achievement!!!

Gotta change signature to add Zubuntu!!!  

ppyo,  could you give a few more details as to how you were successful?  Which Katastrophos kernal did you use?  What Zimage is in your Cacko partition.  I just tried this on my C1000 and ended up with a kernal panic when trying to boot cacko.

Ok, here we go, besides what I posted above:

Katastrophos kernel: http://katastrophos.net/zaurus/kernels/current
I used the one for Akita, of course. I like it because it has a nice sound driver. You may get good results with Tetsu's kernel too, but I have not tried Tetsu's. This is the zImage I used.

In your Cacko partition in the SD card you MUST have a boot directory containing the kernel file (ZImage), an Image.nfo text file (short distro description that will be used by the boot menu), and a kernel-cmdline text file.
My kernel-cmdline file looks like this:

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']console=ttyS0 root=/dev/mtdblock2 mtdparts=sharpsl-nand:7168k@0k(smf),32768k@7168k(root),-(home) jffs2_orphaned_inodes=delete EQUIPMENT=0 LOGOLANG=1 DEFYEAR=2006 LOGO=1 LAUNCH=q[/div]

After Cacko booted successfully for the first time I installed the modules that enable Cacko to work with SD cards greater than 1GB.
You must change fstab so Cacko will mount the correct SD partition as /mnt/card. Unchanged, it mounted the Zubuntu partition as it is the first one on my SD card.

I hope this covers all that you need. Good luck!

[mjiba]

@ppyo: So it is hereby confirmed that the Akita bootkernel shows a kernel image in NAND, am I correct?
@Jon_J: On my SL-C3100 the kernel image in NAND also shows up in the bootmenu. Since you report that in your case cacko (in NAND) isn't shown, I wonder if your using the latest kernel (MD5: 7bf1d0f9c119892cb4cfd4526a880f5e). Could you check that?

If someone could confirm this for C7x0 also, this would be great. I just want to make sure that the different kernels are now all working fine. I tend to lose track sometimes  

Cheers,
cortez

Hi all

Finally got some time to work on my Z again.
I can happily report that as of today I have Zubuntu and Cacko running in my C1000! Cacko is running from internal flash!
I had to do a completely fresh reinstall of Cacko:
First, flash Cacko 1.23 original
Then flash Katastrophos kernel with sd modules (>1GB)
Finally, flash Cortez' kernel.
Ta daaaa!!!  
*dances happily*

I might have to copy the whole thing to a 4GB sd card. 2GB is a little tight with 1 GB for Zubuntu, 450MB for Cacko (plus internal flash), and 420MB for a future distro (pdaXrom?). Or I might just turn the latter into a common /home partition.

On the Zubuntu side I am trying to deal with a few minor issues (lxlauncher is not stable, installed Ka/Pi, but will not sound alarms, etc...)
Again many, many thanks to Cortez for such an uber-cool achievement!!!

Gotta change signature to add Zubuntu!!!  

ppyo,  could you give a few more details as to how you were successful?  Which Katastrophos kernal did you use?  What Zimage is in your Cacko partition.  I just tried this on my C1000 and ended up with a kernal panic when trying to boot cacko.

Ok, here we go, besides what I posted above:

Katastrophos kernel: http://katastrophos.net/zaurus/kernels/current
I used the one for Akita, of course. I like it because it has a nice sound driver. You may get good results with Tetsu's kernel too, but I have not tried Tetsu's. This is the zImage I used.

In your Cacko partition in the SD card you MUST have a boot directory containing the kernel file (ZImage), an Image.nfo text file (short distro description that will be used by the boot menu), and a kernel-cmdline text file.
My kernel-cmdline file looks like this:

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']console=ttyS0 root=/dev/mtdblock2 mtdparts=sharpsl-nand:7168k@0k(smf),32768k@7168k(root),-(home) jffs2_orphaned_inodes=delete EQUIPMENT=0 LOGOLANG=1 DEFYEAR=2006 LOGO=1 LAUNCH=q[/div]

After Cacko booted successfully for the first time I installed the modules that enable Cacko to work with SD cards greater than 1GB.
You must change fstab so Cacko will mount the correct SD partition as /mnt/card. Unchanged, it mounted the Zubuntu partition as it is the first one on my SD card.

I hope this covers all that you need. Good luck!

Thanks for your reply- but I just can't get this to work. I've been at it all morning with no success.  Here's what I've got:

1) Fresh flash of Cacko 1.23 full
2) Flash Katastrophos kernal: sharprom-kernel-fastfpe-cachedfb (and I saved the zImage file for later use on SD)
3) boot Cacko first time and install module to mount >1 GB SD cards
4) fix fstab in Cacko to mount correct partition on SD
5) prepared SD card with 3 partitions: 1+GB ext2 for Zubuntu filesystem: 400 MB ext2 for Cacko: Linux Swap
6) created /boot directory in Cacko partition with zImage, image.nfo, and kernel-cmdline (your cmdline matched mine exactly when I checked on first Cacko boot)
7) Flash Zubuntu
boot Zubuntu- so far so good-and it looks great!
9) reboot and choose Cacko from list:  this is where it all goes wrong. Cacko starts to boot like normal, but then lots of errors and a kernel panic.  

And that's it.  I can't figure out where I am going wrong with this.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

As for now, I need a break.  Will try again later.

[jfv]

ppyo, you are the only one who reported successfully booting Cacko (or Sharp) using cortez's mutliboot kernel (internal flash or SD card) and it's not clear what's the magic. I was asking about the Katastrophe kernel to find out whether it was relevant for the successful boot.

[ppyo]

ppyo, you are the only one who reported successfully booting Cacko (or Sharp) using cortez's mutliboot kernel (internal flash or SD card) and it's not clear what's the magic. I was asking about the Katastrophe kernel to find out whether it was relevant for the successful boot.

I don't really know if the Katastrophos kernel is vital. I did not try with Cacko's original kernel, as  I was going to use it  as last resort...)
I don't know if it is relevant, but my SD card is a 2GB SD card (not SDHC), and all three partitions are ext2.
I did all the flashing from CF.
Hmpf... what else, what else?...
I can't think of anything else...
Sorry guys. But I'll try to answer all your questions to the best of my (very limited) ability.
Cheers!

[pelrun]

Are the errors related to missing files? The mtdparts option in kernel-cmdline must match the partition sizes in your internal flash.

[mjiba]

Are the errors related to missing files? The mtdparts option in kernel-cmdline must match the partition sizes in your internal flash.

Actually, the errors, as far as I can read them as they scroll down the page, are strings of numbers (forgive my ignorance here-I'm sure a more experienced user could ID what they are) and then they stop with a kernel panic.
I am using the mtdparts option from Cacko after a fresh flash (found in /proc/mtdparts i believe). Mine happen to be the same a those posted earlier in this forum.

[gsgmx]

ppyo, you are the only one who reported successfully booting Cacko (or Sharp) using cortez's mutliboot kernel (internal flash or SD card) and it's not clear what's the magic. I was asking about the Katastrophe kernel to find out whether it was relevant for the successful boot.

I don't really know if the Katastrophos kernel is vital. I did not try with Cacko's original kernel, as  I was going to use it  as last resort...)
I don't know if it is relevant, but my SD card is a 2GB SD card (not SDHC), and all three partitions are ext2.
I did all the flashing from CF.
Hmpf... what else, what else?...
I can't think of anything else...
Sorry guys. But I'll try to answer all your questions to the best of my (very limited) ability.
Cheers!

Hi ppyo,

your configuration is very near to my preferred setup i wish to have for my first trial of zubuntu.
I would like to have a save boot option if SD fails, so optimum is cacko totally bootable without SD.
Why - in the past SD card have failed in my zaurus - if they would again the Z would be useless until i have a new SD containing the needed partitions.
I don't understand why you still need a SD partition for cacko - you write you are booting cacko from internal flash?

Is the safe SD less boot still possible with your setup?

George

[ppyo]

ppyo, you are the only one who reported successfully booting Cacko (or Sharp) using cortez's mutliboot kernel (internal flash or SD card) and it's not clear what's the magic. I was asking about the Katastrophe kernel to find out whether it was relevant for the successful boot.

I don't really know if the Katastrophos kernel is vital. I did not try with Cacko's original kernel, as  I was going to use it  as last resort...)
I don't know if it is relevant, but my SD card is a 2GB SD card (not SDHC), and all three partitions are ext2.
I did all the flashing from CF.
Hmpf... what else, what else?...
I can't think of anything else...
Sorry guys. But I'll try to answer all your questions to the best of my (very limited) ability.
Cheers!

Hi ppyo,

your configuration is very near to my preferred setup i wish to have for my first trial of zubuntu.
I would like to have a save boot option if SD fails, so optimum is cacko totally bootable without SD.
Why - in the past SD card have failed in my zaurus - if they would again the Z would be useless until i have a new SD containing the needed partitions.
I don't understand why you still need a SD partition for cacko - you write you are booting cacko from internal flash?

Is the safe SD less boot still possible with your setup?

George

I am booting Cacko from SD because that's the only way to have multiboot (Zubuntu, Cacko, other?). I am booting the Cacko kernel from SD card but the filesystem is in internal flash. I also use the SD card for extra storage.
SD cards will eventually fail. I am backing mine up about once a week. The safe way would be to have a backup SD card.

[adf]

Are the errors related to missing files? The mtdparts option in kernel-cmdline must match the partition sizes in your internal flash.

tried using cat /proc/cmdline > kernel_cmdline

Got garbage, inode errors, and finally a spawning too fast error. Previously I'd been stuck on the cacko blue loading screen.
I'm trying the eviljazz fastfpe/framebuufer kernel, because cacko will be a z-pod (no sound in ubuntu, mplayer working) using quasar and kino2

Any suggestions?

other then the lack of sound, zubunty jaunty is running fine