AaronL wrote:

te0006 wrote:

Would it be possible to just offer an ISO image for download once everything runs smoothly? Or is that excluded because of Asus' (or someone else's) copyright?

I don't think it would be appropriate to offer an ISO image for the reasons you suggested.

AaronL

May be we can offer a modified initramfs-eeepc.img for download and then the rest will be pretty straightforward.

te0006 wrote:

Or maybe, just maybe, Asus theirselves might come to like the idea of offering a version of 
Eee PC Xandros that can be easily booted from external flash memory.  After all, the company
invested substantially in this OS. Now there seem to be many Eee buyers who install
WinXP right after opening the package, and never come back to Xandros, because switching back
means erasing their preferred OS. Which is both a pity and technically unnecessary as we now know.

I think many of these people would like to use Xandros in a secondary role, e.g. for safe web
surfing, or if they later find they'd generally like to try out Linux a bit more. I for one would.

Wouldn't it be nice if Asus would enable these Eee customers to make this choice whenever
and as often as they want? And the technical work for the most part has already been done
by the smart people in this forum...

I think that's a big maybe--Xandros might have issues with it (perhaps there are some Xandros-proprietary  software packages included).  Plus, there are definitely some proprietary Asus packages.  I'm not sure what Asus is doing for codecs, but as it can play Windows Media files out of the box, they are probably paying for codecs, etc.  If Asus were to provide a way for the OS to be installed on a flash drive, then what's to stop someone from putting it on any computer, not just the Eee PC?  I think that's a potential legal issue for Asus.  If a customer moves the OS to flash, that's sort of out of Asus's control, but if they provide an easy way for customers to do it, that's another matter.

AaronL

So follow the same instructions to have XP on SSD and Xandros on SDHC?

EDIT 2008/9/15: These steps are now obselete unless you want to DIY. I  have developed a very easy solution to do this. See this thread: Boot Xandros from USB for Dummies.

If you just want to boot from /dev/sdb (built-in SD card slot), here is the steps consolidated:
[NB. For booting from USB flash drive, the device mapped may vary and you have to use the volume label method posted by tuxpocket in the other thread.

Steps:

1) Change user to "root" [NB. All commands listed here has to be run by "root"]

sudo bash

2) Copy from restore DVD the file P701L.gz and extract the image to your SD card in /dev/sdb  [NB. You will need to unmount it first]

umount /dev/sdb1
gunzip -c [Path to]/P701L.gz | dd of=/dev/sdb

This will extract the MBR and the SYSTEM partition (i.e. /dev/sdb1) of Eeepc Linux to /dev/sdb (and overwrite anything on the whole SD).

3) Fdisk to create partition /dev/sdb2 on remaining space of SD card:

cfdisk /dev/sdb 
New > Primary > Enter > Write > "yes" > Quit

4) Format new partition /dev/sdb2 to ext3 filesystem:

mke2fs -c /dev/sdb2     # format to ext2
tune2fs -j /dev/sdb2      # convert to ext3
e2label /dev/sdb2 USER     # set volume label to "USER"

5) Mount /dev/sdb1, create a temp dir in /boot, and unpack the initramfs image there:

mkdir /mnt/sdb1
mount -t ext2 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
cd /mnt/sdb1/boot
mkdir temp
cd temp
gunzip < ../initramfs-eeepc.img | cpio -i

6) Modify the file "init" to load USB modules at bootup:

kwrite init

Add the following lines to the beginning:

#!/bin/sh
mount -t proc proc /proc

#load USB modules - this won't work unless you have 
#copied them into the image
echo loading USB modules
insmod -f /modules/usbcore.ko
insmod -f /modules/ehci-hcd.ko
insmod -f /modules/uhci-hcd.ko
insmod -f /modules/libusual.ko
insmod -f /modules/usb-storage.ko

#need time to register things
sleep 6

[NB. Depending on the speed of your SD card, you may need a longer sleep time]
Also change any "sda1" and "sda2" to "sdb1" and "sdb2"

7) Copy the USB modules from the different folders in /lib/modules/2.6.21.4-eeepc/kernel/drivers/usb/ to /modules of the temp dir. If you are not familiar with Linux commands, better run a "Superuser File Manager":

sudo /usr/bin/XandrosFileManager -caption File\ Manager -maximized

8) Create device sdb1 and sdb2 in /dev of the temp dir:

cd /mnt/sdb1/boot/temp/dev
mknod -m 644 sdb1 b 8 17
mknod -m 660 sdb2 b 8 18
 mknod -m 644 sdc1 b 8 33
mknod -m 660 sdc2 b 8 34

9) Now pack the initramfs image:

cd /mnt/sdb1/boot/temp
find | cpio -H newc -o | gzip -9 > ../initramfs-usb-eeepc.img

10) Edit the file scanuser.sh:

kwrite /mnt/sdb1/sbin/scanuser.sh

Replace all "/dev/sda2" with "/dev/sdb2"

11) Do the same for formatuser.sh:

kwrite /mnt/sdb1/sbin/formatuser.sh

12) Edit the file /usr/sbin/services.sh (Optional):

kwrite /mnt/sdb1/usr/sbin/services.sh

As you can see, this script is loading the USB modules again which is of course a waste of time. So you can comment these lines:

#modprobe uhci-hcd
#modprobe ehci-hcd
#modprobe usb-storage

13) Edit grub boot menu to change root to /dev/sdb1

kwrite /mnt/sdb1/boot/grub/menu.lst

Replace all of the followings:

root (0x80,0) --> root (hd0,0)
root=/dev/sda1 --> root=/dev/sdb1
initramfs-eeepc.img --> initramfs-usb-eeepc.img

EDIT:
14) Run a filesystem check on the USB SYSTEM and USER partitions (Recommended but not absolutely necessary)

umount /dev/sdb1
fsck.ext2 /dev/sdb1
umount /dev/sdb2
fsck.ext3 /dev/sdb2

15) Reboot. Press [Esc] at startup and select "USB: USB2.0 Card Reader SD0" as first boot device.

Good luck! Hope I didn't miss anything nor make any typo.

Last edited by albkwan (2008-09-15 1:46:41 am)

This is my first post and doing it from Xandros on USB drive

I already installed XP on the SSD so I had to use eeeXubuntu Live USB stick to follow the instructions. Did some minor changes as I'm using a 4GB USB drive to execute Xandros.

mknod -m 644 sdc1 b 8 33
mknod -m 644 sdc2 b 8 34

I also had a very minor problem with

gunzip < ../initramfs-eeepc.img | cpio -i

somehow I had to do an additional step to rename the .img to .gz first.

Great job and this should go into the wiki for people who want to try Xandros after installing XP.

AaronL, all,

Thanks for the info.
With these instructions I managed to boot Xandros from my SDHC card. (a-data 8GB class 6 turbo).

Major changes wrt the recipe:
- I used my own 2GB kernel with the usb modules compiled in
- I removed unionfs in the past. I dd-ed /dev/sda1 to /dev/sdb2 which was a 4gb partition (/dev/sdb1 already contained XP)
- in the init file I had to do a sleep 6 before the mount. The startpost said 5 but that was not enough for me.
- the SD card reader is /dev/sdb so I had to make nodes for sdb1 etc (mknod -m 644 sdb1 b 8 17 )
- fiddled with grub to install a boot loader on /dev/sdb
- after pressing esc one can boot from the card reader.

If your ssd filesystem contains a bootable filesystem you can also add grub entries to boot from the SD card. The kernel and initramfs of course then need to be on /dev/sda1. That avoids having to press esc.

I'll make my initramfs images available later today. (http://eeepc.speedlinq.nl/)

Last edited by eFfeM (2007-12-30 7:24:43 am)

Thanks so much for the step by step guide, that's what I've been needing, I will try tonight and see what happens!

I really appreciate you guys taking the time to do this.

Chris

Ok, with the sdc edits as mentioned with the different mknod commands it works!

I wish there was a 'buy this man a beer' button on this site for times like this!

Thanks all!

Chris

Last edited by chrismoo (2007-12-30 10:05:28 pm)

gsgreg wrote:

Being reasonably at home on Windows I suddenly feel like a beginner again with all this command style of computing (no I can't use dos either!) an could really use some help. Trying to put the original software to the sd card but for the life of me I can't get past the first couple of steps. Could somebody please tell me where i am going wrong. I could not find get the file path right to my dvd rom so i copied the P701L.gz to the My Documents folder but still can't get the path right.
I thought it would be gunzip -c My Documents/P701L.gz | dd of=/dev/sdb but no good and nothing I try seems correct. Get message no such file or directory.
Thank You

You better copy it to "My Home", i.e. "~" or "/home/user".

If you want to do it at "My Documents", you have to do it like this to tell Linux there is a space in between:

gunzip -c ~/My\ Documents/P701L.gz | dd of=/dev/sdb

Ok now i have another problem. Did a test boot and thought all was good however i have now installed xp to the ssd and when I try to boot in Xandros of the sd card all goes well with usb modules etc then I get error message:
"The file system already has a journal, press enter to reboot."
The last message before this error is something like: tune2fs 1.40_wip (14-nov-2006)
Any ideas whats gone wrong?
Also i added another partition to the end of my sd card in ntfs format but my xp cannot read it. It shows up as active in disk manaegment but when I try to add a path to it D: I get the following: Partition or volume is not enabled. Restart computer to enable. (which o'course does not help)
Thank you

Last edited by gsgreg (2008-01-01 5:54:20 am)

tnr3euser wrote:

ｇｓｇｒｅｇ, i had the same issue, but when i changed the driver for the card reader to the hitachi microfilter, windows ignored the linux partitions and gave the sd card D:

Thanks for the heads upon the Hitachi driver, I will give that a try and see what happens.
Now if I can get some advise on the other problem I will be a happy linux newbie.

Am I wrong in thinking this basically means we can treat SD Cards almost exactly like Amiga floppy disks?  As self contained volumes?

Is it potentially possible to create a script that could format and install an SD card with a Xandros stub?

Last edited by TheTurnipKing (2008-01-01 11:33:10 am)

gsgreg wrote:

albkwan wrote:

gsgreg wrote:

Ok now i have another problem. Did a test boot and thought all was good however i have now installed xp to the ssd and when I try to boot in Xandros of the sd card all goes well with usb modules etc then I get error message:
"The file system already has a journal, press enter to reboot."
The last message before this error is something like: tune2fs 1.40_wip (14-nov-2006)
Any ideas whats gone wrong?

It seems like the system cannot mount the USER partition and try to run the script scanuser.sh to do filesystem check and tune the filesystem to ext3 journal (which already exist, so result in this error. This is no big deal!

May be you need to wait longer for probing usb devices.

Thanks for the reply albkwan.
I am guessing this means I cannot fix the problem without deleting windows xp and reinstalling the original Xandros to the ssd?

Try to change the sleep time in your "init" to say 8 sec. Xandros has no problem booting from USB without the SSD. Others have verified this.