Re: Some help needed to install Lenny on the Intel SS4000-E nas
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 08:50:41PM +0200, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> * JF Straeten <jfstraeten@scarlet.be> [2009-07-27 02:25]:
> > I'm new to this list, lurking for some time now, because I'm also
> > totaly new to the ARM plateform.
> >
> > I'm trying to install Lenny on the Intel SS4000-E nas, thanks to the
> > writings of a lot of people (especially Ard Van Bremen, Tobias Frost
> > and Martin Michlmayr - many, many thanks to you, by the way, you've
> > helped me a lot, even without knowing it !).
>
> Wouter Verhelst (CCed) has just finished porting the debian-installer
> to this device, so he should be able to help.
Indeed.
To be able to run Linux on this NAS device, you need a kernel 2.6.28 or
later; in Debian, that currently means unstable (testing still has the
same kernel as stable for now). This also means that (for now) you can
only install from the very unreliable daily images (they may sometimes
work, they may sometimes not work, they may sometimes leave a smoking
hole). Since this is where development happens, bugs unrelated to the
SS-4000E may crop up at any time in the dailies.
Note that you'd be the first person to test after I wrote this support,
so there may still be bugs in the SS4000-E support. One area where this
may especially be true is in the generation of the firmware image; the
rest has been quite well tested and should be reasonably bug-free.
If you feel uncomfortable in testing something like that, then it may be
better to wait until the first alpha release of the installer (which I
hear is upcoming); in any case, however, getting some feedback on how my
patches work out would be *very* welcome.
Having said all that,
Unfortunately, due to some strangeness of the original firmware on this
device, it is not possible to install Debian without a serial console.
Luckily you don't have to solder anything; there's a normal serial
connector on the mainboard already. All you need is a ribbon cable and a
serial nullmodem -- and, of course, a computer with a serial port. If
you don't have such things, this should not cost more than approximately
€15 (or whatever that is in your local currency). If you don't have a
computer with a serial port, you can use a USB-to-serial convertor.
I updated the installation manual to explain how it is supposed to work;
you can view the relevant section of the manual at
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.armel/ch05s01.html#boot-firmware-ss4000e
If you want to give it a shot, the daily armel d-i images can be found
at <http://people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/armel/images/>. Please try the
images under the 'daily' link first; if they don't work, try one of the
dated directories, which contain older images.
--
The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters
works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is
trying to fool the system.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html
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