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[electropriest]

some disks come with built in "security" software (note sarcasm) that runs when you pop the drive into a windows machine. yet, even if it was set up with a different partitioning scheme, when you first ran fdisk and deleted all partitions (you did, right,) you would have set up ext2 or 3 or even FAT32 for linux to read as the boot partition... and set up the boot sector accordingly. i am now wondering if the card has been in other use in the meantime. i ask because it reminds me of the work needed to replace my palm lifedrive's HD with a 4GB CF. palm had decided to offset the partitions by 16k or some rediculous amount, namely so that you needed palm software to mount the drive in windows/macos. it made things quiet annoying, because in formatting the device, all the partitions had to be offset by that amount, or the palm wouldn't boot.

long story to ask "where else has this disk been"? your windows story makes me wonder if your win machine is doing something to the disk when you switch it around. can you make this disk for xo use only? hmm...

[jmdeschamps]

Sorry folks, but I'm stuck with the olpc.fth thing...

I seemed to have managed about the whole usb key installation from the disk image BUT when I try to start from the key holding the check button, I get a message telling me it's booting from the nand image (or something close) which from what I can gather is not what I want... :-(

I just didn't get the part of what I'm suppose to do with th olpc.fth file... sorry (linux commands) still look like an alien language to me !

[Datalore]

Well.. I'm a complete linux n00b and i never deleted partitions... the OLPC is my only linux machine, and i even put it back in the windows machine to reformat it after my first try failed. The USB stick is really new, and hasn't gone through anything other than multiple re-formats (all to FAT, by the way). I could make it OLPC only, i just was using windows to format it...yeah...

[electropriest]

dataloare - the instructions posted for using fdisk, etc in linux are actually for formatting your disk. i haven't looked over the 'disk image' posting specifically, but i can't see it being much different than the 'compressed files' approach. basically, you have to get in there, delete your existing partitions, add a new one of 'ext3' or 'ext2' format (linux, not FAT or FAT32). then uncompress those files into your new linux partitioned (and bootable) drive.

if the 'disk image' method is just decompressing a disk image to your sd or usb card, i can't see it working by decompressing into a FAT partition. not that linux can't recognize it, but a disk image, if i am not mistaken, will assume a certain drive geometry, and this may be why it can't recognize your superblock. are you willing to use fdisk and format your disk from the XO? (it's fun, really). the less messing you do with the disk in windows, the easier this will be, and the easier this will all become for you.

hmdeschamps - your disk image will do nothing without that file. your machine will look for it upon boot for instructions! what is it you don't understand? the instructions posted are basically because a usb drive and an sd card will require different instructions. when your xo boots, it will look for olpc.fth. what you need to do is get into that directory, and copy either the usb file or the sd file, both of which have been made for you to the name "olpc.fth". that's what the instructions describe. without doing  that, your computer won't  boot from the disk.

all that being said, when are you holding down the check? push power (first,) then immediately hold down the checkmark. you don't have long to do this.. while the screen is still black. Not at the same time, not checkmark first. the computer will then tell you that you can release the game button. you should boot fine after that - the xo will look for olpc.fth and you're!

[Daverino]

Hi i get stuck after this step: tune2fs /dev/mmcblk0p1 -L OLPCRoot
I get this error message:
Bad Magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p1

Couldn't find a valid filesystem superblock.

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

[kidatari]

Hi i get stuck after this step: tune2fs /dev/mmcblk0p1 -L OLPCRoot
I get this error message:
Bad Magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p1

Couldn't find a valid filesystem superblock.

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Same here, and this time I did all the steps with my XO, as opposed to my Mac.

Arg!!

Edit: I get the following when I run fsck:

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt and you might try tunning e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
  e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

This is with a relatively new Sandisk Cruzer Mini 2GB with a fresh re-format to FAT on my Mac with 10.5.

[fart_flower]

Thanks for the how-to, but unfortunately I haven't had much success.  Everything went smoothly until reboot.  I held down the check, released when it said to, and then it displays "Card didn't power up after 1 second."  Eventually it does a normal boot into CornSyrupOS.

Any ideas as to what went wrong?

Update:  If I type "test-all" at the boot prompt, it says "Selftest Failed.  Return code = -8209408

The card itself works fine if mounted in SugarOS, it just won't boot.

[SharpSet]

Want to offer my heartfelt thanks to moocapiean for leading the way on installing xubuntu.  I've got it up and running off a 2 gig USB drive and am quite pleased with myself.

Am unsure if I introduced a typo myself, but for this set of directions it took me a few tries to realize that OLPCRoot was in fact OLPCBoot . . .

cp -ra /boot /media/OLPCRoot/
cp -ra /lib/modules /media/OLPCRoot/lib/
cp -ra /lib/firmware /media/OLPCRoot/lib/
cp -ra /security /media/OLPCRoot/
cd /media/OLPCRoot/etc
mv modprobe.d modprobe.old
cp -ra /etc/modprobe.d /media/OLPCRoot/modprobe.d
mv fstab fstab.old
cp -ar /etc/fstab /media/OLPCRoot/etc/fstab
cd X11
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.old
wget http://dev.laptop.org/~cscott/xorg.conf
cd /media/OLPCRoot/boot
mv olpc.fth olpc.fth.nand



Entirely possible I introduced this error on my XO (and welcome counselling if I should go back and reinstall) but once I figured this out all went well. 

About to go an install network manager and should be on web shortly.

Thanks again.

[linuxspice]

Datalore, Daverino, kidatari and others with "invalid filesystem superblock" or similar errors:

Reading your posts carefully, I'm wondering if perhaps you're introducing a small typo when following moocapiean's instructions (and please don't feel dumb or offended; this stuff is pretty confusing at first).

In particular, I'm wondering if, for the "dd" command, you might be entering "/dev/sda1" or "dev/sdb1" (for a USB drive), or "/dev/mmcblk0p1" (for an SD card), rather than the correct "/dev/sda" or "/dev/sdb" (USB drives) or "/dev/mmcblk0" (SD cards).  In Linux, the device names "/dev/sda", "/dev/sdb" and "/dev/mmcblk0" refer to entire drives, including the partition table and all partitions on the drive, whereas "/dev/sda1", "/dev/sdb1" and "/dev/mmcblk0p1" refer to only the first partition on each respective drive.  moocapiean's disk image is meant to replace the contents of the entire drive, including the partition table contents.  If you copied this image to a single partition only, the write would appear to work, but the contents would look like nonsense to the OLPC when you tried to boot from it later.

if you've never used your USB or SD drive under Linux before (other than in Sugar), one way you might verify that this is happening is by becoming root in Sugar's terminal (type "su") and entering the following command: "/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sda" (substituting "/dev/sdb" or "dev/mmcblk0" as appropriate).  This will show the partition table for the drive in question.  If you see one partition, and it's FAT16 or FAT32 or NTFS (or anything else other than ext3 or ext2), then you're probably simply overwriting the drive's original FAT or NTFS Windows partition with moocapiean's disk image, rather than replacing the USB drive's or SD card's entire contents.

Please post back and let us know if this is the case.  You might also try the compressed-files approach, which might work better for some people (that's the approach I used).

[atraw]

After reading trough all the comments a couple of reminders, what you need to succeed with booting Ubuntu on the XO:
 
1. Check if you are using the right filesystem and partition type:
The usb stick / sd card has to be formated with an ext2 or ext3 filesystem and the partition type has to be set to 83 (linux). Which is something you won't be able to do either in Windows or a Mac without additional tools like Partition Magic or Explore2fs.

So either create the ext filesystem on your XO, use an Linux Boot-CD to do it or help finding an appropriate Disk Image writing software for your OS: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1722.0

2. Check if you are have disabled security
If you see and 5 second countdown at startup und can access OpenFirmware pressing <Esc> Security is already disabled on you XO. If not please proceed to_ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activation_and_Developer_Keys

3. Check if you are using the correct olpc.fth file
Openfirmware and olpc.fth has its roots in Sparc & PowerPC based systems so it's pretty new to everbody, so Be sure that something like this is included in your olpc.fth:

If you want to boot from an usb-stick:

Code:

" ro root=/dev/sda1 rootdelay=1 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 fbcon=font:SUN12x22" to boot-file
" disk:\boot\vmlinuz" to boot-device
" disk:\boot\olpcrd.img" to ramdisk

If you want to boot from a sd-card:

Code:

" ro root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rootdelay=1 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 fbcon=font:SUN12x22" to boot-file
\   " sd:\boot\vmlinuz" to boot-device
\   " sd:\boot\olpcrd.img" to ramdisk

For more info about olpc.fth see: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1525.0.


If you take care about this tree steps you should at least get to the stage where you XO tries to boot Ubuntu and we can help you with any further errors.

[StewieGriffin]

Is there any other location to get this Ubuntu distribution from other than myotherdrive.com?  If you try to get it, it says the file is over its limit.

Can someone please upload it on Megaupload or Rapidshare?

Thanks in advance!

[bc]

Is there any other location to get this Ubuntu distribution from other than myotherdrive.com?  If you try to get it, it says the file is over its limit.

Can someone please upload it on Megaupload or Rapidshare?

Thanks in advance!

This topic discusses alternative locations: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1837.0

For the time being, your best bet is to download via bittorrent:
The files are:
Disk Image: http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4002328/OLPCRoot.tar.bz2
Compressed Files: http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4002289/OLPCFile.tar.bz2

[Frank Scott]

Stewie, bc gave you the best place to download this particular Ubuntu distribution, but I like to play around with other versions of Linux occasionally, and I've been pretty happy with this site for downloading various Linux distributions:

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/

[StewieGriffin]

Thanks!  I installed Xubuntu - it works really well.

A few notes for people still struggling with this...

I made my OLPC boot Xubuntu always if the USB drive is installed.  This is a lot easier than trying to dual boot.

I have 656 installed.  I didn't have to modify /etc/fstab at all.  Not sure if this is from 656 or not.

I had problems like other people did trying to insall to a SDHC card. It kept wiping out the install.  Maybe SDHC is not 100% supported yet?

Make sure your olpc.fth has the right settings for your typeof card or stick.

I assume you can use other distros, although I haven't tried them by using the right boot.  I want to try Puppy next...

[Booher6194]

hi I'm tring to put Ubuntu on the OLPC for a computer class and I have to image on a usb drive and I did everything that I needed to and typed su and when I try to go into the directory i type cd and then /dev/sda1 for the usb with nothing on it (cd /dev/sda1).  When it does that it says "no directories," I was just wondering if anyone had the same problem. If so can anyone help. Thanks