next »

[moocapiean]

I'm beginning to think I'll never have an end to my troubles. I completed everything in the instructions, but upon attempting to boot I get this on the automatic startup screen:

Warning: Filesystem is ext2/3, but partition type is 0x6 (should be 0x83).
Boot device: /nandflash:\boot\olpc.fth Arguments:
<buffer@ff838c61>:0: Unrecognized program format

I'm not positive, but I'm assuming that I messed up the step where I'm supposed to set the partition hex to 83? (I have no clue what I'm talking about.) At any rate, I thought removing the USB stick and booting would get me back into Sugar so that i could fix my mistake, but I'm getting a very similar error message when the USB stick is unplugged (the last two lines are identical, the first line is absent.)

So tell me doc, is it broken?

It should still work if you forgot to set the partition type in fdisk (I forgot to do that for awhile when I was trying to get things worked out).  I'm not sure why you can't boot.  Did you try looking in the Multiboot olpc.fth + fstab files thread?  The OpenFirmware thing is new to me so I'm not really sure what else to suggest.

[moocapiean]

Hmm, I have tried booting ubuntu from and SD and can't seem to get it to work.

It just hangs at 'Loading ramdisk image from sd:\boot\olpcrd.img ..."

I tried going to the OK prompt and setting the boot-device, boot-file and ramdisk variables manually via setenv, but it still does not work.

I have confirmed that fstab has root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 set correctly as does the olpc.fth file and as I did at the OK prompt.

The CPU light flashes occasionally, so I think it is actually booting, but the console is just not working and I cannot see what it is doing.  The boot-file is set to:

ro root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rootdelay=1 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 fbcon=font:SUN12x22

So the console should work.

I am stumped and if anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them.

Hmm, that sounds like a familiar problem.  Did you remember to hold down the check button while the XO turned on?

[fart_flower]

I just tried this method after last night's unsuccessful attempt at the disk image method.

The same problem happened -- everything when smooth until reboot when it said "Can't start card after 1 second."  This is a brand new 4GB SanDisk, and its only touched my Fedora 8 desktop and XO Laptop.  Other than not being able to boot, the disk seems to work okey-dokey.

[moocapiean]

Boot device: /sd/disk:\boot\olpc.fth Arguments:
Boot devide: /nandflash:\boot-alt\vmlinuz Arguments: ro root=mtd0 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 fbcon=font:SUN12x22
<buffer@800000>:31:
Can't open boot device

i can boot sugar by either taking out the sd card, or press and holding the O game button.  i'm using the .fth and fstab's from
http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1525.0

Hmm, it's looking at the alternate boot location on the internal drive.  I think you have the wrong boot location selected.  Looking at the referenced thread, it looks like you're not supposed to hold down any buttons to boot into Ubuntu.  Are you holding any buttons down?  Did you also uncomment the lines in the file to allow your SD card to boot?

[fart_flower]

In case anyone cares, I tried shoving the SD card into this butt-ugly USB adapter it came packaged with.  Adjusted the oplc.fth file as necessary, and rebooted.

It did actually boot, but the process was interrupted by literally hundreds of duplicates of the following error message, often in blocks of fifty or more repeats, followed by a few moments of sanity, and then back to the error message.

Here's what it spewed out repeatedly:
hub_port_wait_reset: portstatus=503 portchange=10
hub_port_wait_reset: portstatus=503 portchange=10
USB_REQ_SET_CONFIGURATION!
devpath 3 ep1out 3strikes
usb_reset_device!

After logging in and typing startxfce, I get the following message:
X: /tmp/.X11-unix has suspicious mode (not 1777) or is not a directory, aborting.
giving up
xinit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.



All in all, sounds like fun!

[chibicthulhu]

I did use the olpc.fth code that was suggested in the instructions, however, I did not use the fstab code, as I did not see anything about that in the instructions. Would that be causing my problem? If that would be causing my problem, how would I go about fixing it? One more question: if I'm going to be stuck being unable to boot my laptop, how should I fix it? I know I could use the activated upgrade instructions on the wiki, but with a development key doesn't that make things a bit more complicated? Again, thanks for any help. (I realize that the wiki goes into some depth about this subject, but to be perfectly frank, most of it goes completely over my head, as do most of the tutorials on the wiki.)

Edit: Having done a little bit of reading, it seems that if I do an activated upgrade on my laptop and I had the security disabled on it, that once I get it back to a clutter-free and updated state I can simply re-install my developer's key and go from there. Can anyone confirm this? (The wiki is down so I'm just going of tidbits gleaned from these forums.) The main thing I'm concerned about is that I've heard horror stories about not having back up devkeys in certain situations and I figured doing an activated upgrade, which wipes changes the user made to the system, would be one of those situations where one would have to be careful. And me not being in possession of a back-up devkey scares me.

[linuxspice]

stillaway, moocapiean, etc:  I think I've finally figured out how to get Ubuntu/SD and Sugar dual-booting to work with firmware Q2D07 while avoiding the screen "freezing" problem (at least it works on my machine); please see my post (my first new topic!) at:

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1767.0

Sorry to have made this into a separate topic, but it seemed silly to cross-post it to both this thread as well as the companion "disk-image" version.

Many thanks to moocapiean and everyone else for all your hard work and advice on getting Ubuntu working on the XO!

[thepete]

Wow, so I guess all of my questions were so newbish that no one thinks they're worth answering.  Sheesh.

I think enough people on here are new to Linux that basic questions are expected.  I didn't reply until now because lately I haven't had the time to follow this thread.

Sorry about that--thanks for replying, though--I really do appreciate it.  I'll give your new instructions a try and see how it goes.  Again, definitely appreciate the attention!

[robh11]

I managed to get Xubuntu running smoothly on my XO.   Also using atraw's multiboot olpc.fth and fstab (uncommented for boot from SD).

On booting:
My Ubuntu is on a SD card and it will boot only when I press the checkmark game button.  However, if I leave the SD card inside, and press the O game button, XO will try to boot Sugar but run into a "Boot Failure... powering down in 10 seconds".  If I don't press any buttons while booting, XO doesn't boot anything and just freeze on the XO splash screen.
I can get into Sugar now only if I remove the SD card.

Questions: I thought with atraw's multiboot olpc.fth, not pressing any buttons while booting will default to boot Ubuntu? Any ideas on my Sugar boot failure?

In Ubuntu:
It is quite fast and the UI seems more responsive than Sugar in terms of speed.  Some observations:
1. WPA-PSK works in Ubuntu with my problematic Linksys WRT54G.  Even with Build 653, Sugar won't connect to my Linksys AP, also tried the manual shell script with no success http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WPA_Manual_Setting.
2. Microphone is automatically 'on' as indicated by lighted green LED above microphone hole (left of XO's screen).
3. No way to adjust date and time on Ubuntu - I think someone has the same issue... any solution?
4. I tried to install Opera Gutsy through downloading from Opera's website, then running a terminal command to install it - but it gave up saying lacking some dependencies.  Anyone has tips on how to install Opera on Ubuntu on XO?
5. How to access USB flash disk while in Xubuntu? I plugged in my USB flash disk but can't seem to access it through the GUI.  Even in terminal, I can't seem to see it mounted.  If it's not auto, what is the device name in Ubuntu's environment to mount USB flash disk? 

I hope this post is not excessively long with too many diverging questions.  I am just really excited with XO, Sugar and Ubuntu all together.  Am not an expert as you can tell - just have been a Linux newbie on and off for some years.  Any advice on the above greatly appreciated!

Re: your question 4.  I had the same challenge with the deb file that you can download from the opera site.  I solved it by getting gdebi with synaptic and using it to install the opera deb file.  hope that helps.

btw.  I now love this xo machine with xubuntu.  thx to moocapiean and all for your helpful ideas.

[quixote]

re weird error messages about SD cards:  I've had plenty of those too.  Rebooting usually fixes that, but sometimes I also have to reinsert the card, or read it in another linux machine.  All very unsettling and spontaneous.  And ymmv.  I'm convinced that there's something about the XO that doesn't play well with SD cards, but that's not based on much except frustration!

Re SD card not being unmounted after you've unmounted it:  I ran into the same thing.  I unmounted in the terminal, but it said device was busy.  When I got back into sugar and checked journal: it was still mounted!  When I unmounted there, then it finally stopped being "busy." 

[moocapiean]

Although I don't have an SD card, I have to agree, it definitely seems like there's something weird with XOs and SD cards.  I haven't counted, but it seems like there are a lot more SD problems than USB problems.

[fart_flower]

Just uninformed musing on my part, but do SD cards have faster read/write speeds than dedicated USB "thumb" drives?  I can't imagine there being much difference, as both are flash-based devices.  However, USB2.0 definitely does have speed limitations, and conversely perhaps SD cards simply read/write as fast as they can...?

Perhaps the XO wasn't designed to handle faster SD card read/write speeds, which might explain some of my problems.  Or maybe not.  I dunno, just guessing.

[gameguy43]

woo!!

thanks to linuxspice's new olpc.fth file, i can boot into ubuntu!!!!


one problem (i think this will be the last one).  when i boot, everything seems to be going according to plan, but then i get the following errors:

Code:

*INIT: version 2.86 booting
/ect/initi.d/rc: line 35: /etc/rcS.d/S06keyboard-setup: Permission denied
/ect/initi.d/rc: line 35: /etc/rcS.d/S08loopback: Permission denied
.
.(a bunch of similar errors)
.
*INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
/ect/initi.d/rc: line 35: /etc/rc2.d/S10sysklogd: Permission denied
/ect/initi.d/rc: line 35: /etc/rc2.d/S10xserver-xorg-input-wacom: Permission denied
.
.(a bunch of similar errors)
.

then i'm given:

Code:

Ubuntu 7.10 (none) tty1

(none) login:

and when i enter olpc or olpcolpc, and hit enter, it says

Code:

Unable to determine your tty name.

i assume that there is supposed to be something where the login says (none), and i assume that the Permission denied errors are the cause of the problem.  i'm guessing that the dev key isn't the problem.  maybe i did something wrong copying that /security directory?  anyone else run into a similar issue?

i think i'm getting close!  thanks to everyone on this forum for their help getting me and others up and running!

[fart_flower]

I just noticed something late last night during the verbose startup.  One line that zipped past said something to the effect of "SDHCI: invalid iomem size - you may experience problems".  Could this be a clue?

For the record, I was booting up *without* a card inserted.

[chibicthulhu]

I'm going to be trying this again later today, and I want to be sure of something before I get to doing it. In the olpc.fth that is provided in the link, do I use both of the files in that link, or just the oplc.fth? And if I'm going to be booting off a USB stick what exactly do I alter in the files? (I know that in the olpc.fth I need to uncomment the lines out that it tell me to uncomment out, but is that it?)