Debian on Pogoplug Pro?

[WarheadsSE]

Most likely, my kernel (or at least it's sources).

Basic gist: install alarm (and our kernel), then replace with debian armel (armv5te compatible) rootfs, and place alarm /lib/firmware & /lib/modules/2.6.31_SMP_820/

[major]

Hi,

yes of course I used the kernel from WarheadSE (thanks for your pretty good work!)
You have to do it like WarheadSE wrote in the last post,
BUT the driver for eth0 is compiled as modul.
so u must extract the firmware, because it's gziped and load somewhere in a startscript (located in /etc/rcS.d)
this: /sbin/modprobe gmac >/dev/null 2>&1

Then u will have a working network.
the next step would be to add the script for the mac-adress.....


major

[WarheadsSE]

The firmware is in the image, and should be in either /lib/firmware or /lib/modules/2.6.31_SMP_820 or whatever, as for loading it, It is handled in ALARM by the rc.conf loading that module. It was too large to force into the kernel and safely leave the original kernels intact.

[bodhi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('major', 'H')i,

yes of course I used the kernel from WarheadSE (thanks for your pretty good work!)
You have to do it like WarheadSE wrote in the last post,
BUT the driver for eth0 is compiled as modul.
so u must extract the firmware, because it's gziped and load somewhere in a startscript (located in /etc/rcS.d)
this: /sbin/modprobe gmac >/dev/null 2>&1

Then u will have a working network.
the next step would be to add the script for the mac-adress.....


major

[WarheadsSE]

I went back and read that and the links attached in... reminded me the number of beers I am owed from across the internet

[bodhi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WarheadsSE', 'I') went back and read that and the links attached in... reminded me the number of beers I am owed from across the internet

[fujcru]

I can attest that you can install Debian on a PogoPlug Pro. I'm a newbie, so this may not be the easiest way to go about it. However, I was able to get Debian installed and running from an external hard drive attached to the PogoPlug Pro. It required two external hard drives and a flash drive.

I installed archlinux onto one of the external hard drives. This step basically just sets things up so that the PogoPlug Pro bypasses the default software.

Following some instructions I found online, I extracted/restored the SqueezePlug Image for Dockstar and GoFlex Net onto the flash drive. With archlinux running, you can plug in the flash drive and fix it so it is bootable.
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=85285&page=62

Now you can have the PogoPlug Pro boot off of the flash drive and running Debian. However, it is my understanding that it is not ideal to run the operating system off a flash drive because of the limited number of writes/rewrites and the Debian Image also has a swap partition and these aren't great to run off of flash drives also because of the constant writes/rewrites.

The good news is that the SqueezePlug Server has an option to install to a connected USB external hard drive. So I connected the other external hard drive and started the process. It creates three partitions on the external drive: 10 GB for OS, 512 MB for Swap, and the rest for data. This newly created SqueezePlug Server is supposed to be bootable; however, it was not. My guess is that it was because it was expecting to be running with u-boot but u-boot is not anywhere on my PogoPlug Pro. I tried repeating the steps used before to modify the SqueezePlug image on the flash drive on this external drive but it did not work because there were files missing.

So I simply rebooted into archlinux and connected both the working bootable flash drive and the non-working non-bootable newly created SqueezePlug Server. I simply copied all of the files from the working flash drive onto the non-working external drive. Then when I shut the PogoPlug Pro down and rebooted with only the external USB HD SqueezePlug connected, it booted just fine.

The SqueezePlug Server provides a GUI which makes it easy for newbies like me to get software installed. I've installed Samba and the latest Logitech Media Server v7.7. I even installed webmin but have uninstalled it since I don't really foresee needing it and the PogoPlug Pro appears to be somewhat short on resources compared to the non-pro version.

Everything has been running well. No problems so far. I believe the SqueezePlug Server runs Debian Squeeze if that makes a difference to anyone.

Just thought I'd share my new experience. I hope that description is easy enough to follow.

[fujcru]

Sorry to double post, but I was asked to explain in more detail how I managed to get Debian running on my PogoPlug Pro. As alluded to in previous posts, you basically do it by installing archlinux on the Pogoplug Pro first and then connecting drive with Debian on it instead of the drive where you have archlinux installed. There is a little tweaking of the Debian drive that is necessary in order to get it to boot properly.

In my case, I also wanted to end up running Debian off of an external hard drive instead of a flash drive so there were a few additional steps necessary.

Assuming you have a factory default PogoPlug Pro. Install archlinux on the PogoPlug Pro following the instructions on this website. The exact webpage with the instructions is here: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/pogoplug-provideov3.

We are going to be using Debian Squeeze. Refer to information on these websites: wiki http://squeezeplug.eu/wiki/index.php/Main_Page and http://squeezeplug.de/. Using a program called USB Image Tool, you extract a Debian Squeeze image onto a flash drive. Unfortunately, this tool cannot extract the image onto an external hard drive. So you have to use a flash drive. The detailed instructions are here: http://squeezeplug.eu/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#Prepare_the_SD-Card_.2F_USB-Stick. You will be using the SqueezePlug image for Dockstar found here: http://www.squeezeplug.eu/?download=10.

Once you have prepared the flash drive with the SqueezePlug/Debian image, you can connect it to the PogoPlug which should already be running archlinux. Archlinux should automount the Squeezeplug at /dev/sdb1/. Follow the instructions in post #619 on this forum: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=85285&page=62. Please read that entire post as the instructions are posted in a few segments. You will definitely need to do what is labelled as "Update 1" (setting your mac address) and may or may not need to do "Update 2" depending on whether or not you want to use wireless. I personally disabled wireless since I've read that the PogoPlug Pro has less resources to work compared to its counterparts so I figured it would be a good idea to disable wireless. It appears that "Update 3" is no longer necessary as it has already integrated into the process. If you followed all of the steps properly, you should be able to shut down the PogoPlug Pro and reboot with only the SqueezePlug/Debian flash drive connected. It should boot right into Debian. You can stop there if you wish. I, however, wanted to install Debian on an external hard drive rather than on a flash drive.

Plug the external hard drive you plan to use to run SqueezePlug/Debian into the PogoPlug Pro. SSH into the PogoPlug Pro. Type 'setup' to start the SqueezePlug Server GUI. It first asks what type of device it is running on. You will choose the first option which is Dockstar. I can't remember if it kicks you back to the command prompt or takes you back to the GUI. If you are in the command prompt, type 'setup' again to restart the GUI. Go to the "Misc Miscellaneous" menu option. From the Miscellaneous Menu, go to the "SP_to_HD Install SP-Server to an USB-HD." This will start the process of installing SqueezePlug/Debian onto the attached external USB hard drive. Unfortunately, this newly prepared drive will not actually be bootable.

So shut down the PogoPlug Pro and reconnect the drive where archlinux is installed. Reboot the PogoPlug Pro. SSH into the PogoPlug Pro. Connect the SqueezePlug/Debian flash drive and the newly prepared non-bootable SqueezePlug/Debian external USB hard drive. If you connected them in this order, the flash drive should be /dev/sdb1 and the external hard drive will be /dev/sdc1. I ran the following command to copy the files from the flash drive onto the external drive.

mkdir /a
mkdir /b
mount /dev/sdb1 /a
mount /dev/sdc1 /b
cp -R /a/* /b
cd /
sync
umount /a
umount /b
rmdir a
rmdir b

Then I shutdown the PogoPlug Pro and rebooted it with only the SqueezePlug/Debian external USB hard drive connected and it booted properly from the external hard drive. You can then setup whatever servers you like in Debian. The SqueezePlug Server GUI can help you set up some of the more popular options or you can set them up manually yourself. Have fun with your new Debian PogoPlug Pro!

[varkey]

If anyone is looking for a debian rootfs for the Pogo Pro, you can get it from here -- http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,6336,6371#msg-6371

[toolbox123]

I am trying to download the SqueezePlug image for Dockstar from http://www.squeezeplug.eu/?download=10 but the link seems to be down. Is there another location where I can get the image?
Thanks.