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[admdvs]

thanks thanks and thanks again.. I haven't played with linux/unix since my days about 6 years ago using SunOS boxes.  its funny.. before i got my XO box if someone put a gun to my head and asked me how to save a file in VI i couldn't tell them, but when I got it and i opened vi to edit a file, before i knew it i had typed :wq and it all just came flowing back to me.

[thoml]

Hello moocapiean and all,

   The XO is the only Linux machine that I have so I am trying to do the Ubuntu disk image  from a USB stick to a SD card from the terminal activity in Sugar.  I am root by 'su -'.  But when I get to:

mount | grep /dev/sda | awk '{ print $1 }'

it shows my empty SD (volume label OLPC) card as

/dev/sde1

when I next:

umount /dev/sde1

it says:

unmount: /media/OLPC: device is busy
unmount: /media/OLPC: device is busy

   So what am I doing wrong?  Does Sugar still have a hold of the card?  I have tried unmounting it from the journal and then trying the 'umount' command again but with the same result.

   Do I need to stop or kill Sugar and do this from the Ctrl+Alt+F1 login?  If so how would I then best kill Sugar?  Should I 'boot' directly from the developer interupt into something different so Sugar does not start at all?  If so which choice?

   Thanks in advance for what may be an overly simple question.   

[electropriest]

i have installed from the XO - there are a few workarounds you will have to keep in mind.

first, find what the XO is calling your card. /dev/sde may very well be a USB drive you have inserted. (for me, the sd is /dev/mmcblk0, or /dev/mmcblk0p1 with the first partition. you can find out exactly what happens with your hardware by putting the SD card in, then typing

nano /var/log/messages

in the terminal, and scrolling down to the bottom of that file - it should tell you what your card is mounted as, as any issues with it. (crtl-x to exit). if sugar is mounting it, it will say "mounted on behalf of..."

another thing to keep in mind is that your XO will keep automounting the card. it's annoying - if you don't move quickly, sugar will remount. between almost every step, i would either need to alt-tab over to the journal and unmount, or umount /dev/mmcblk0p1 in the terminal. (the alternative, which is to turn automount off, you don't want to do - then things won't show up for you in sugar).

[electropriest]

re-read your message. somehow i didn't see that you were transferring via USB! the /dev/sde is almost certainly your usb drive. i have a feeling you're looking for a /dev/mmc device...

[Convex]

re-read your message. somehow i didn't see that you were transferring via USB! the /dev/sde is almost certainly your usb drive. i have a feeling you're looking for a /dev/mmc device...

thanks for your posts. i think that was almost certainly my problem as well.

[electropriest]

let me know how it goes. as always, linux takes a bit of improvising. i had 3 SD cards that the XO would not mont (as is described in other posts) - no fault of the XO, they are always picked up under the system log. changing the amount of cylinders and reformatting has allowed all my SD cards, no matter the brand, to function.

this was similar to replacing the microdrive in my palm lifedrive with a CF card - many posts claimed that only particular cards were compatible, but by changing the card's geometry i was able to use a much cheaper (and allegedly incompatible) card.

this is what the XO is about - community support. rather than gripe about having a machine unfit for commercial consumption, let's talk and help to develop the machine and software! that's one definite strength to g1g1.

[wiseguy]

let me know how it goes. as always, linux takes a bit of improvising. i had 3 SD cards that the XO would not mont (as is described in other posts) - no fault of the XO, they are always picked up under the system log. changing the amount of cylinders and reformatting has allowed all my SD cards, no matter the brand, to function.

this was similar to replacing the microdrive in my palm lifedrive with a CF card - many posts claimed that only particular cards were compatible, but by changing the card's geometry i was able to use a much cheaper (and allegedly incompatible) card.

this is what the XO is about - community support. rather than gripe about having a machine unfit for commercial consumption, let's talk and help to develop the machine and software! that's one definite strength to g1g1.

I've got an issue with this type of thing, my card (4GB HCSD) will mount, but will not boot after using either method to create the installation. Please advise what you would suggest _

[Datalore]

I was trying to install this through the XO, but in the terminal i can't get the tune2fs command to work. "bash: tune2fs: command not found"... Am I doing something wrong?

[electropriest]

indeed. i fortgot... the olpc shell requires a few more adjustments. first, to run the system commands like fdisk and those you mention, first "cd /sbin". that's where they are located. second, to run an excecutable in the shell, you must precede it with "./"

thus

cd /sbin
./tune2fs .....

that should get you up and running. then again, i might need to rewrite this whole thing for XO-based formatting, as it requires modifications galore, and i am likely missing something (btw i followed the compressed image - but it should all work out the same).

[electropriest]

wiseguy - give me some more detail. did you do the ops completely on your XO? one wrong command can mess up the whole process. did you format on another machine? what message do you get at boot time, and what graphics are displayed? on normal boot, you should see three drives/booting media on the screen. when you hold down the checkmark button immediately after boot, then release when you are prompted, one of the icons dissapears. you are left with the usb key or sd as booting options, as the internal flash dissapears.

if you've tried everything else, i'd take a look at the drive geometry. a few of my cards had strange cylinder numbers...don't know why, but it was likely due to either a palm or digicam format. anyhow, using fdisk (that is, ./fdisk) to change the cylinder numbers back to 1024 brought them back to life, and allowed booting. (that's under the advanced menu in fdisk)

[Datalore]

Gahh... I ran into more problems:
 "/sbin/tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while tying to topen /dev/sdb1
  Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock"
This might have something to do with my taking out and re-inserting the drive that is supposed to have ubuntu installed on it after i thought that this computer didn't have tune2fs...
(My drives are /dev/sda1 with the .raw file, and /dev/sdb1 where i'm trying to install ubuntu)

[electropriest]

you got it. this is why we unmount drvies (even in windows).

you have start agin, new a format should fix the superblock. you could check and repair it, but it's not worth it. start again!

[Datalore]

Alright; I started again but I get stuck at the same error, this time doing the setup without any interruptions... was i supposed to unmount both of the usb drives or just the one i install Ubuntu on? I've only been unmounting one of them.

[electropriest]

arrgh. what happens when you fdisk the drive? does it identify a bad superblock, and suggest fsck?

[Datalore]

for some reason when I fdisk it, it doesn't react differently... it might be that the disk is already partitioned in some strange way that causes this (It's a SanDisk usb drive that somehow emulates a 10MB cd drive on my windows computer which keeps putting a file back on what windows shows as the real usb drive, no matter how many times i delete it...)