Constantly reflashing OZ 3.3.5. How to ease pain?

[mjh]

I bought a used 5500 last week.  I\'ve quickly decided that I was not satisified with the Sharp ROM, so I\'ve moved to OpenZaurus 3.3.5.  But I\'ve been having some troubles.  The question that I have is this: is there some way to make reflashing easier in OZ?  I make backups and when I try to restore one after a reflash, it restores settings and data, but it doesn\'t restore the installed applications.  I have to reinstall them.  So I was wondering if there was an easier way to install the applications so that they can easily recover after a reflash.  Alternatively, is there a way to do a backup that will allow for a restore of the applications, too?

If you\'re curious about why I\'m reflashing so much, I am too.  I\'d appreciate any help with this if you can offer it.  The problem I\'m having is that I\'m using my Z and eventually something will happen where I want to restart opie.  And I\'ll want to restart opie because I can\'t get something to work that I think should work.  For example, this last time I would press & hold the On/Off button, but the Z wouldn\'t turn off.  Instead the \"button\" app would pop up.  I figured maybe opie was confused and needed a restart.  Other examples of problems: lots of base applications crashing with SEGV.

So eventually, I feel like I need to either reboot or restart opie.  What seems to happen is that trying to restart opie or reboot causes it to start up with a black \"OpenZaurus\" screen and a \"(none) login:\" prompt.  If I try to login to that prompt (as either root or user), I get a message back that says (something like) \"could not log you in.  Could not find /bin/sh.\"   Then it brings me back to the \"(none) login:\" prompt.  At that point I have to reflash.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Edit: undid previous edits

[lardman]

Install all of your apps to a storage card (which will probably have to be ext2 unless you have a lot of patience (to make manual symlinks)).

Then before flashing run \'ipkg-link umount /mnt/card\' (for example), and umount the card (it\'s ext2 afterall).

After you\'ve flashed over and restored whatever settings you wanted, stick the card back in and run \'ipkg-link mount /mnt/card\' and all of the apps which you had there will be relinked and available (you may need to restart opie actually, I can\'t remember).

Si

[lardman]

Not sure about your problems though. Sounds like a corrupted ROM image perhaps? My 5500 never caused me troubles (like not being able to find /bin/sh) with 3.3.5.


Si

[mjh]

Not sure about your problems though. Sounds like a corrupted ROM image perhaps? My 5500 never caused me troubles (like not being able to find /bin/sh) with 3.3.5.

Yeah, I wonder if it\'s because I\'m installing bash.  I\'m going to experiment and not install bash to see if this fixes my problems.

[mjh]

Install all of your apps to a storage card (which will probably have to be ext2 unless you have a lot of patience (to make manual symlinks)).

Then before flashing run \'ipkg-link umount /mnt/card\' (for example), and umount the card (it\'s ext2 afterall).

Thanks.  I forgot to mention that I do store all of my apps to a 128MB SD card which is ext2.  Of course one problem is that I can\'t run ipkg-link when I get into the state that I\'m in.  I can\'t even login.

After you\'ve flashed over and restored whatever settings you wanted, stick the card back in and run \'ipkg-link mount /mnt/card\' and all of the apps which you had there will be relinked and available (you may need to restart opie actually, I can\'t remember).

Will this work when I remount the card if I haven\'t done the corresponding \'ipkg-link\' when I umounted it?

Oh, and thanks!

[lardman]

Yes it will still work, it\'s just that if you don\'t \'ipkg-link umount\', the card often won\'t umount cleanly which leads to corruption problems. All of the info which is needed to relink the files is on the card so assuming the card\'s in good shape you\'ll be fine.


Si

[mjh]

I wonder if it\'s because I\'m installing bash.  I\'m going to experiment and not install bash to see if this fixes my problems.

Not installing bash seems to have fixed the problem.  I can now reboot and restart opie w/out any trouble.  Time will tell of course.  Maybe I just haven\'t bumped into the problem that I was experiencing.

I suepect the problem is related to this?