Buffalo NAS-Central Forums

Is there any chance, that ProjectMipselDebinst will get an update (or something equivalent) soon in the new Wiki? It started quite promising, and I'd really like to help implementing/testing that solution.

I know marge is still working on his installation script. He's taking his time which hopefully will pay off into something amazing. I really like the idea of having a dual boot system. It should help those people who are cautious about losing their stock LinkStation OS.

At the same time I'm working on a new Debian package which will install through the firmware updater (this is FreeLink). I'm still working through the filesystem and updater process to find out what can and can't be modified for the firmware updater to function properly. If that works out I hope to incorporate some of marge's code into the FreeLink firmware. Of course this is still some time down the road so we'll see what happens from now until then.

At the same time I'm working on a new Debian package which will install through the firmware updater (this is FreeLink).

Ah - I think I misunderstood that. I always thought it was the same thing. Basically I don't care too much about the way to get there, but in the end I'd like to have full NFS and AFP (with filesizes > 2GB). If that is working, I might have a look at all thoses other goodies.

I decided to make an alpha of the script available at http://www.geishuettner.de/docs/Linkstation/.
Please bear in mind that it's ALPHA but it worked fine for me. I'm now running a full debian sarge install from hda3 and it works like a charm.

Please read the docs that come with the script (the Hacking howto pdf) and be conscious of the risk you expose yourself to.
Report the bugs you find, perhaps it's best to use the bugtracking facilities of this website (frontalot: can we set this up ?)

This is a quick release as I have not had the time to invest more time into this script and I decided to make it public for those of you willing and eager to try.
Later I will write down a small release plan.

On last thing I ask all of you: don't yet incorporate this script into an y of your own works. I want it to reach a certain point of quality and stability and I think wartstew and others will have to invest some time to make it also work on ppc. My aim is to have a version working on ppc and mipsel as well.

Marge, of course I will respect your request and wait until you are comfortable with the code. The PITS bug tracker is open at http://buffalo.nas-central.org/PITS/PITS (or via the Bug Tracker link on the front page). Users can enter:

Author (who is submitting the bug. yes, this is a bit confusing. sorry.)
Summary
Category
Priority
Package
Version
Description

All you need to do is give the script a unique name and version number. People can manually enter this in the Bug Tracker.

Ok, so I would say we call name it package="debil" and version (at present) = "0.1"

Sounds great. I'll rename and pin this topic.

Great, I just downloaded it and took a quick look.

I'll start collecting the ppc versions of the binaries you have listed in the mipsel section. I'll then look through the script to see what else needs to be added to make it work for PPC Linkstations as well, perhaps I'll even stumble accross a bug or two.

I probably won't do anything for about about 17 hours from now however, so PPC people, please be patient.

OK, I tried to be brave and run the script on my LinkStation. Unfortunetely, there's a mistake in line 191, when you're copying the kernel modules. I think it should be

runCommand "cp -dpRv $BuffRoot/lib/modules $cwd/$DebianDir/lib/"

as I ended up with a non-working Debian Installation. After the first shock I decided to go to bed, and now I hooked up the disk in a PC booted with a knoppix CD (thank god for that).

When I looked into '/var/log/syslog' I found

Jul 17 14:09:14 BUFFALO modprobe: modprobe: Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.4.20_mipsel_linkstation/modules.dep (No such file or directory)

It couldn't open that file, because the actual layout was something like '/lib/modules/modules/2.4.20_mipsel_linkstation/...' - I removed that second nested 'modules' folder and the LinkStation was accessible via Telnet.

That's good so far, but I still get a lot of errors in the 'syslog', saying things like

Jul 17 17:39:40 linkstation mc_ctld[360]: Timer is released. (because timer file isn't able to be read)
Jul 17 17:41:00 linkstation last message repeated 2 times


and then whenever I log in via Telnet

Jul 17 17:42:09 linkstation utelnetd: connection from: 192.168.1.111
Jul 17 17:42:20 linkstation mc_ctld[360]: Timer is released. (because timer file isn't able to be read)
Jul 17 17:42:46 linkstation init: Id "6" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jul 17 17:42:49 linkstation init: Id "5" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jul 17 17:42:49 linkstation init: Id "3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jul 17 17:42:49 linkstation init: Id "4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jul 17 17:42:49 linkstation init: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jul 17 17:42:49 linkstation init: Id "2" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jul 17 17:43:00 linkstation mc_ctld[360]: Timer is released. (because timer file isn't able to be read)


What does that mean? Does it go away when I configure my Debian installation (e.g. using SSH and login)?

ultravelours: can you report your findings through the bug tracker? It makes it a lot easier for marge to keep track of things

wartstew: let me know if there is anything I can help you with.

It couldn't open that file, because the actual layout was something like '/lib/modules/modules/2.4.20_mipsel_linkstation/...' - I removed that second nested 'modules' folder and the LinkStation was accessible via Telnet.


I already entered that one into PITS but thought it was less critical as my Linkstation booted fine. Now we see I was wrong.

perhaps I'll even stumble accross a bug or two.

I bet you will

The script is not very well-structured yet. We will have to work on this to separate mipsel from ppc specific parts. I already added a basic detection of which system the script is running on so it should be possible to do IF PPC THEN / IF MIPSEL THEN ...

can you report your findings through the bug tracker? It makes it a lot easier for marge to keep track of things

Yeah, completely forgot about that. I tried that with my second problem, but it's nat that easy as I don't really know what's the cause for that - I don't even know, what 'mc_ctld' does.

Yeah, completely forgot about that. I tried that with my second problem, but it's nat that easy as I don't really know what's the cause for that - I don't even know, what 'mc_ctld' does.

Hi, I think I solved the problem (perhaps both):
http://buffalo.nas-central.org/PITS/00003
I removed your entry because we were both writing at the same time.

http://buffalo.nas-central.org/PITS/00004 17 17:42:49 linkstation init: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes [/i]

see http://buffalo.nas-central.org/PITS/00004, I made some changes to the inittab and now I no longer receive this error.
I think I will have to add some sed-statements to debil.sh (I then will use them to setup webmin)