How to install a linux image on to a DT

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quotaholic
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How to install a linux image on to a DT

Post by quotaholic »

Many images are linked here that one can install on a DT. The method to install is less then conventional for those who do not work within computer circles. I admit to squirming when I first read about this tool but we need to use "dd" to manipulate images available here. The img format is not one that will be transferable to other extensions.

There are a few things we will need to make this successful.

a usb hub
two bootable thumbdrives
usb keyboard
20 minutes

Fist step is to make our dt boot to a live linux thumbdrive. One with a live distro on it that is capable of reading the older DT hardware correctly. I personally like Slax6.1.1. Head over to their site and follow instructions for downloading version 6.1.1 and making it bootable on a usb drive.

Now get your hub in line, keyboard attached, and boot yout DT to slax

At the gui press escape for the text environment.

Insert at this point your thumbdrive with linux image of choice in to usb hub

boot with

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slax vga=771
At prompt:

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root
for login
and

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toor
for pass

Now the fun

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fdisk -l
will show you the different volumes attached to your hub. One for the DT and two thumb drives.

Mount the volume that holds the linux image you wish to install if not mounted already. You will know it is mounted if the contents show up in /mnt folder. If you need to mount it issue:

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mount /path/to/drive /mnt
I used to open a partitioning utility to see the actual path to the thumb drive. Many operating systems make drives available through the /media folder. This is actually a symbolic link and is not something we can use. I use both fdisk -L and one other tool to see what was the last drive I plugged in.

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dmesg | tail
is great for showing you the tail end of a hardware bus message. If your in doubt pull the thumbdrive your not sure about, issue the dmesg | tail command. Then put the drive back in and after a few moments issue the dmesg | tail command again to see its actual path. You may have to pull this

Now take the time to format your dt's hard drive eliminating all partitions on it a midst some back end computer message but it should be there. Either that or a read error. In that case pull it and reinsert.

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cfdisk
will start the partitioner. Delete all. Make one primary bootable type 83 partition in reiserfs. Write and answer yes. Quit when finished. Watch output of partitioner and reboot if it tells you to. Although a pain it is not hard to get back to this point.

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dd if=/mnt/webdt-image.img of=/dev/hda
This command assumes you to have mounted the volume holding the image to /mnt and that /dev/hda is the path to the internal flash. On a DT 360 this is /dev/sda and the cf slot is /dev/sdb. On a 366 this is /dev/hda and the cf slot is /dev/hdc.
If this command fails then please check the drive containing image is mounted or that the path is adjusted accordingly.

The transfer takes about 15 minutes. The DT366 is usb1.1 so the terminal may show the finish of the command and there is still information being transfered. Look at any lights you may have on your thumb drive to see actual completion. When light stops blinking in about 15 minutes you are done.

Reboot and you should have a new operating system. The dd tools simply copies the whole file system to a single raw image. Either a dd or an img. Although iso is possible it would be confusing here as it would include no installer.

It goes without saying please check your md5 sums before installing and please partition your drive as well.   
Last edited by quotaholic on Fri Jul 17, 2009 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
faithful
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Joined: Thu May 13, 2010 6:45 pm

Re: How to install a linux image on to a DT

Post by faithful »

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

John
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