Debian bootable image with versioned glibc
Debian-ARM for the NetWinder
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Bootable Image (with versioned glibc) - February 20, 1999
Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com>
I've prepared a bootable image of the Debian base system that can be
installed onto a partition on a NetWinder, so it can be booted
directly into Debian. The packages use glibc 2.1, compiled to use
versioned symbols.
This image can also be used as a chroot environment - without
affecting the software that HCC/Corel supplies. The binaries are now
compiled without StrongARM optimizations - so they theoretically
should work on any ARM-based machine that has an ELF Linux kernel
available and uses the ARMv3 or better instruction set.
The image is minimally configured - containing just enough installed
packages to make it easy to download the official ARM packages from Debian
and some additional non-official/local packages from my HTTP/FTP server.
*** WARNING ***
DO NOT use this image as your only means of booting your NetWinder.
It is strongly suggested that you keep the HCC/Corel Red Hat image on
a separate partition - or after installing the Debian successfully to
one partition, install it to another partition. You want to preserve
your options for booting. You could also set up a network boot
environment via DHCP in case you get into trouble. See Stany's
NetWinder Rescue HOWTO on netwinder.org.
The Debian port is still a work-in-progress, watch for falling objects.
In particular - realize that these are new packages that use a glibc 2.1
that was built with versioned symbols enabled. The binaries and libraries
supplied with this image are completely binary incompatible with the
older Debian ARM packages, and with the current HCC/Corel RPMs (which
still use the unversioned glibc). It should be binary compatible with
the future ARM distribution from Red Hat, and with the "Titan" RPM
distribution.
Known Bugs:
* The "therm" program hasn't been ported yet. So there isn't a
way of controlling the fan.
* the 'ps' command has weird output
* the X packages don't work right
* Many packages are lacking documentation, because I didn't have
nsgmls or tetex working when I built them.
* The framebuffer driver seems to have some redrawing problems
with this particular kernel. Hitting ^l will redraw the screen
for you.
* nsgmls seems to be broken.
(There's probably plenty more bugs. All the packages supplied on
the current image are "unofficial", and will soon be replaced by
properly built packages that will be uploaded to the main
Debian distribution)
Here's what you do (as root) in order to install it:
1) Download the image from:
ftp://ftp.jimpick.com/pub/debian/arm/image/
The filename should be something like: debian-image_990220.tar.gz
It's approximately a 9MB download. It is also available as a
bzip2'd tar archive.
2) Upgrade your flash to San Mehat's latest NeTTROM. Get it at his
developer's page on the restricted access portion of netwinder.org:
http://www.netwinder.org/devel/notes/sanm.html
Read the instructions very carefully (unfortunately, they are buried
in the web page - there isn't a separate doc). If you mess up when
burning your flash, it would be inconvenient. I recommend printing
off this page before you try to redo your flash.
Install the upgrade, and ensure that you can reboot normally.
2) Pick a partition where you want to install it. Hopefully, you have a
free partition available. There isn't currently a good way to
repartition your system - eventually, it should be possible to boot from
flash and repartition from there - but you'll have to wait for that.
3) Go to the base of that partition, and untar the file, ie:
# tar xzvf debian-image_990220.tar.gz
This will untar the files directly into the current directory - so
make sure you are in the directory where you want it!
4) You'll want to edit etc/fstab to make sure the base partition listed
is the same as the one you actually installed it onto.
5) Reboot the system, and interrupt the booting sequence to get the
NettROM prompts. If you installed the image to /dev/hda4, you would
set the NettROM up like so (assuming you had defaults for all the
other variables):
setenv kernconfig fs
setenv kerndev /dev/hda4
setenv kernfile /Image
setenv rootconfig disk
setenv rootdev /dev/hda4
save-all (or just "boot" if you want to try it out for one time only)
6) Hopefully it boots, and you will be inside Debian!
7) You'll want to do several things:
a) reset the root password
b) configure your hostname (in /etc/hostname)
c) set your timezone "tzconfig"
d) setup your networking (in /etc/init.d/network)
8) You will want to edit /etc/resolv.conf to point to your nameservers
and to use your domain name. Or you can just leave it pointing at
mine.
9) Install additional packages. You do this using the "dselect" program.
Dselect has been configured to use the "apt" access method. It
will look for package files via http from the collection of unofficial
packages on ftp.jimpick.com. When we build some official packages
using versioning, you will want to edit /etc/apt/sources.list
so that apt-get and dselect will pull the packages from your
favourite Debian mirror site.
10) You should have a functional Debian environment set up now! You might
want to go on and add some users (using "adduser"), and do some
additional configuration.
You might want to join the debian-arm mailing list, by sending a
message contain the word "subscribe" in the body to
debian-arm-request@lists.debian.org .
Also, feel free to check our website, which is at:
http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/
If you have any questions, please direct them to the mailing list. If
you have a correction/clarification for this set of instructions, please
send me a note - <jim@jimpick.com> .
Cheers,
- Jim
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