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One very convenient thing with the eee is that a lot of people have the same computer. Since there are so many people out there with exactly the same hardware, we don't really need complicated installers to detect hardware, just to install. If a system is installed for one eee, you just need to make an exact copy of it's drive and copy that directly on to another eee, and it should just work. In this way, you can change your operating system in just a few minutes.
As an example of this, I've just made a fresh Arch Linux installation on a 2Gb sd card. It has kde, compiz-fusion, openoffice, firefox and some other useful applications, like working madwifi drivers.
I have made a disk image file of it and compressed it to 600Mb. I don't have anywhere to host the file, so any ideas of how to make it available would be nice.
Remember: This is my first try at this. There are a few quirks I'm sure, but it works fine here. If people try this out, we might be able to develop this into a very elegant way of trying out different Linux versions for different uses on the eee.
WARNING:
The installation process is extremely quick and simple, but requires just a little bit of command line understanding, and it is possible to destroy your system and a lot of data if you do something completely wrong.
Here's how to install it on a sd-disk or any external drive:
1. Download the image file, preferably to an external harddrive or to another computer than your eee.
2. Uncompress it:
$ bunzip2 archeeemage-20071218.img.bz2
3. Insert the sd-disk or usb stick you want to install it on. It must be at least 2Gb.
ANOTHER WARNING: THE SECTION BELOW IS IMPORTANT TO GET RIGHT!
4. Find out what the device file for the drive is. The sd-disk is usually /dev/sdb, but you must check this thoroughly, you might destroy a lot of data if you get this wrong! I usually make sure by looking at the /dev directory before inserting the card, and then checking what device files turn up when I insert it. This is the only "critical" thing in this process.
5. As superuser, write the Arch image on to the disk:
# cat eee_arch-20071218.img.bz2 > /dev/sdx
where the x in sdx is the letter of the disk device you fount in 4.
Remember: This is the place you can destroy your data. Don't write to a device unless you know for sure that it's the correct device and that there is no data you want to keep on it. Everything on the device, all partitions, files boot sectors, everything will be destroyed.
6. Wait a few minutes. It takes a while, and nothing happens. After a while the command finishes and you have an installed Arch Linux.
If your sd-disk is larger than 2Gb:
7. Resize the partition:
# cfdisk /dev/sdx
Delete the 2Gb primary partition, then create a new which uses all the space on the card. Write and quit.
8. Resize the file system. Resizing the partition doesn't resize the file system on it. First take the disk out and insert it again, wait a few seconds. Then:
# resize2fs /dev/sdx1
Now you restart the machine. Press escape when the asus screen comes up, and select to boot from the drive you installed Arch on.
If something goes wrong, please post here, and I'm sure we'll sort it out. But if you have erased the disk with the only copy of your family photo album, there is nothing I can do about it, I'm sorry. Just don't do that!
And of course. Nothing of this will make sense before I find a place to put the file 
Edit:
I've now uploaded the image as a torrent to linuxtracker.org
I'll keep seeding it at least for a few days
Edit2:
I am very glad to say that now there is two mirrors for the Archeee images. One is hosted by SublimePrte and the other by Komododave. Thanks a lot to both of you!
At this moment there is two different images, one full, with most things you'll need installed, and one minimal, with only X Windows and fluxbox installed apart from the base. Both are made to be installed on a 2Gb sd-card.
Here are the links:
http://archeeemage.coderseffigy.com/
http://www.3eportal.com/filoktetes/
Enjoy
Last edited by filoktetes (2007-12-29 10:40:22 pm)
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Kibobo wrote:
cat eee_arch-20071218.img.bz2 > /dev/sdx ?
try bzcat
Yes, I forgot about that command. Although I'd recommend decompressing before starting to overwrite your disk...
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I would like to try this... Have you found anywhere to host the file?
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I'll give it a go...but I'm going to have to trash KDE and put fluxbox on it instead.
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JazzplayerL9 wrote:
I'll give it a go...but I'm going to have to trash KDE and put fluxbox on it instead.
That's very easy
Just:
# pacman -Rs kde
# pacman -Syu
# pacman -S fluxbox
But of course, then you'll see that a lot of other installed packages depend on kdelibs etc. Then you just choose if you want to uninstall the other packages or leave the dependencies installed...
And you should edit the /etc/inittab, so it doesn't try to start kdm in the startup.
I might create a really small image with Arch and only a working xorg.conf and maybe fluxbox or xfce4 (but xfce4 depends on a lot of gnome packages...)
And no, I haven't found a place to upload it to yet 
There must be some places that host such files for free, I just don't know about them. I have searched and some places offer online disk space with a free 14 days trial... But there must be something better.
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I haven't used them, but these guys look interesting for free file hosting ...
http://fileho.com/
Anyone have feedback on this site?
Edit: I do want to keep the full KDE... I have been trying (unsuccessfully to date) to do this ... I have a working Puppy persistant image, but have been unable to get networking going and a non-persistant Kubuntu with KDE4 RC2 (basically live CD on SD... pretty much useless at this state... expected KDE4 to be further along by now). I'm camping on this thread, please keep us updated!
If anyone else has suggestions for hosting, let us know... I should have some projects to share soon and I've seen other members looking for hosting...
Last edited by bullwood42 (2007-12-18 11:26:38 am)
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http://fileho.com/ looks like just what we need I'll be uploading soon...
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you might also just make a torrent and upload it to linuxtracker.org
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nokry56 wrote:
you might also just make a torrent and upload it to linuxtracker.org
A very good idea. I'll do that. The fileho seems to be ****. Keeps demanding internet explorer to download and after uploading, the file is gone...
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Now if only someone would do this with Ubuntu i would love it... but i think it would take more than a 2gig SD for full install
this would make it so easy to get a pre configured fresh install on a SD.
Last edited by starbrocks (2007-12-21 9:04:33 am)
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starbrocks wrote:
Now if only someone would do this with Ubuntu i would love it... but i think it would take more that a 2gig SD for full install
this would make it so easy to get a pre configured fresh install on a SD.
Yes, I'm guessing this will become one of the preferred ways of installing custom operating systems on the eee. And once you have a sd you can boot, you can just copy in onto the internal card as well if you want to. You will just have to change one line in the startup script....although this can probably be fixed too.
I'll upload the image to a torrent soon, I just have to get my old laptop up and running first. I keep my eee with me all the time, no use having it home just to seed...
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I've now started to seed the image at linuxtracker.org. It's called archeeemage-20071218
Remember it's the first version, and can absolutely be improved. But it would be nice if someone tries it and gives me some feedback
Last edited by filoktetes (2007-12-20 6:43:20 pm)
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I'm downloading it...I'll help seed. In the meantime, how well is KDE running on the Eee? I'm more likely to kill it off and go with Fluxbox if it even hints at being a little slow.
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It's not much slower than my dualcore laptop, and I haven't even been near using all the memory (still 512mb) ...
The most important speed bottleneck is that the sd and sdhc cards I've tried are much slower than the internal ssd.
Last edited by filoktetes (2007-12-21 5:56:50 am)
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got the image...I'm seeding now, so downloads may be a little faster.
EDIT: the image looks/works pretty well. KDE is a little slow like I thought it'd be...but then again I'm used to fluxbox. I'll keep it on for a little bit and test it out pretty hard.
By the way, for anyone wanting to use this image...maybe I missed it, but the login/pw are:
Login: eeeuser Password: pass
Last edited by JazzplayerL9 (2007-12-24 5:31:41 pm)
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JazzplayerL9 wrote:
By the way, for anyone wanting to use this image...maybe I missed it, but the login/pw are:
Code:
Login: eeeuser Password: pass
Yes, sorry, I should have mentioned that... Good that your excellent code breaking solved it Guess what the root password is... You should maybe change it, it's not very robust.
By the way, I've noticed a few things that I have forgotten. The driver for the wired network card. I don't use that, so I've forgotten about it. And I have changed the /etc/pacman.conf to use a repo from my external hard drive. It'll work ok, but give error messages...
I'm working on a new version with these things fixed, in addition to using the 2.6.23 (or 2.6.24) kernel and other small fixes..
And I'm also making a minimal Arch install version with a working xorg.conf and fluxbox, but not much more installed.
I have needed my other laptop for some other things the last day, so I haven't been seeding, but I'm setting it up again in a moment
Last edited by filoktetes (2007-12-24 6:19:47 pm)
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Looks an interesting project, thanks for all your hard work, look forward to the fluxbox version with a fix on the wired ethernet - I'll try it out then.
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Sounds like an excellent idea. You could probably quite easily also make a bootable CD/USB image that would prompt you to restore the image and then do it all for you, something similar to the Asus restore DVD.
If you like, I'd be happy to host it over at www.3eportal.com
Just send me an email to admin@3eportal.com if you like.
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@filoktetes,
I spent a little while testing out your Arch build. I noticed the exact problems you mentioned...other than that it seems to be working just fine. I found out that the default keyboard layout is not US English, haha. The one problem you haven't mentioned is one that I came across during boot. When my SD card is booted with Arch on it, it says that it hasn't properly unmounted the SD card on a previous shutdown and then tries to fsck...it fails and then reboots...and then I get into Arch boot.
Other than that, very nice work. Perhaps in the spirit of true Arch Linux, you might try to just include the Eee PC mods in a base install of Arch that just brings you to the ever-familiar text-only console. I think a lot of people could have fun with just that. Then again...a detail of how you configured Arch would be just as useful and about 1% the download size. Basically...just list included packages, config files (only the changed ones), and links to sources used with details on compile/install. Or...submit packages to the AUR for the L2, wifi, etc...gah so many things that could be done. I'll be happy to do any wiki documentation if you want...I'll help on a minimalist build too!
Exciting stuff...thanks for all your effort.
Last edited by JazzplayerL9 (2007-12-25 11:19:53 am)
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JazzplayerL9: Thanks for the testing. Yes, I also noticed the keyboard. I normally use norwegian layout, of course, so I'm used to just having to remember where the letters are...
I've struggled with the uncleanly mounted error, and haven't found a solution. The arch shutdown script remounts / read-only, then shuts off, and there are no error messages. It should work, but doesn't. I'll remember to mount and unmount the partition before transferring the image to a file, but that won't take away the problem for later reboots...
And yes, I would be happy if you could host the images. I think having one minimal with ony fluxbox, and one configured kde version is nice.
I've been thinking about making some contribution to the wiki, too, like how to install Arch Linux, but the most important parts, which could be used for almost any distro is: How to compile a kernel for the eee, and how to configure the xorg.conf file.
I've got all the hardware on the eee working now, I think, the camere, power, sound, network cards etc. The minimal archeee has just finished compressing, but it has the same size compressed as the kde version. I realize I have to zero out the free space on it before compressing. So expect this to happen in a couple of hours
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sounds good...although I believe it was SublimePorte that had hosting opportunities...I just wanted to help with whatever you needed otherwise. Can't wait for the minimalist version.
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JazzplayerL9 wrote:
...although I believe it was SublimePorte that had hosting opportunities...
Sorry, I was reading a bit too fast, I think, didn't notice those lines between posts...Uhm...
SublimePorte: So I'll probably send you a mail
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filoktetes, please, please... instead of just zeroing out the image, reduce the size of the filesystem. It's too big to fit on the 2g sd card I have handy.
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nyu2: Are you copying it to /dev/sdx or to /dev/sdx1
It could be that different card suppliers define 2Gb differently.
Now I've just destroyed the file system of the mini version, so I'll make a new one. It'll probably take a couple of hours more before I finish it...
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