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[freelikegnu]

Nice instructions, moocapiean.
One reason I did not put up an image is that users will still have to go back and set things things like timezone, language, username, and could format the drive to whatever capacity (all of which is done with install).  Also, I don't think it's really ready for the average user to have Ubuntu on the XO until the kernel and xorg drivers are compiled and packaged for  Ubuntu and users can easily update them.  For instance if you try to update the kernel in Ubuntu with apt-get, its gonna be a little confused. 

Have Fun!

btw, Wayan Vota :
"If you are intrepid and can get Ubuntu to boot and run on the XO, I have the fame and glory of a OLPC News post all about your efforts waiting for you.  Better yet, you'll have serious geek street cred and a hot XO laptop to boot (pun intended)."  Thanks ;-)

[starji]

Thanks moocapiean for setting up that image. 

I was able to get a stage3 gentoo build booting from an SD card tonight after adapting the instructions from http://www.freelikegnu.org/?p=21&page=2.  I was also able to mount the SD card as root and completely bypass the olpc's builtin flash drive. 

One problem I noticed though is it seems to ignore me when I try to bring up the console when I hold the checkmark key every other boot.  Has anyone seen that issue?

[moocapiean]

Nice instructions, moocapiean.
One reason I did not put up an image is that users will still have to go back and set things things like timezone, language, username, and could format the drive to whatever capacity (all of which is done with install).  Also, I don't think it's really ready for the average user to have Ubuntu on the XO until the kernel and xorg drivers are compiled and packaged for  Ubuntu and users can easily update them.  For instance if you try to update the kernel in Ubuntu with apt-get, its gonna be a little confused. 

I think the user can change timezone and language after install, but I'll wait until someone asks how to figure it out.  I know it's possible to change the username (password, home directory, primary group) because I had to when I found out people were interested in getting my image.  With the compressed files install approach, the drive capacity isn't a concern either.

To save space, I uninstalled the Ubuntu-installed kernel packages, which also saves me from accidentally updating Ubuntu's kernel.  I didn't remove them from the files I uploaded in case someone wanted to use the image/files on a regular machine first.  Instructions on removing them (and probably other things) were going to come once I finished uploading the files.

You do have a good point though, that updating the kernel and drivers probably won't be easy.  But, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Thanks again for the instructions!

[moocapiean]

Thanks moocapiean for setting up that image. 

I was able to get a stage3 gentoo build booting from an SD card tonight after adapting the instructions from http://www.freelikegnu.org/?p=21&page=2.  I was also able to mount the SD card as root and completely bypass the olpc's builtin flash drive. 

One problem I noticed though is it seems to ignore me when I try to bring up the console when I hold the checkmark key every other boot.  Has anyone seen that issue?

Gentoo on the XO?  I think it's actually a better match for the XO than Ubuntu, but I could be biased (I've been a Gentoo user for four years).  Why'd you think to try it?

I was running into that problem when I was booting Ubuntu.  Are you sure you're holding it down soon enough?  That was my problem.

[starji]

Gentoo on the XO?  I think it's actually a better match for the XO than Ubuntu, but I could be biased (I've been a Gentoo user for four years).  Why'd you think to try it?

I was running into that problem when I was booting Ubuntu.  Are you sure you're holding it down soon enough?  That was my problem.

I had tried setting all this up before there were instructions, but didn't know about how to bring the console up so I just thought it wasn't working.  I used gentoo's stage3 as a base install since it had a basic system ready to go, and I understood its boot process better than a livecd's or ubuntu's (I also used Gentoo for a few years  )

I'm pretty sure I'm holding the button at the right time.  I start holding it during the countdown for the boot.  I'll keep trying, maybe I am screwing it up somehow.

[samphilomath]

Internet Archive do have a software section. Why do they made it so difficult to upload software in it?

Anyway, seem like Ubuntu took to much space on the RAM. We should try Puppy Linux.

[ashtond33]

In qemu, I cannot set the ip for the virtual machine. Am I missing something, the box is somewhat shaded out.

[quixote]

WOW!  Cool!  I can't wait to try this.  It's downloading as I tap away here.

Just one minor point:  The command to su to root:  don't we want a root login that uses root's environment & PATH settings, rather than "olpcuser"? 

So shouldn't that be "su -"?  (Without the quotes, of course.)

[moocapiean]

WOW!  Cool!  I can't wait to try this.  It's downloading as I tap away here.

Just one minor point:  The command to su to root:  don't we want a root login that uses root's environment & PATH settings, rather than "olpcuser"? 

So shouldn't that be "su -"?  (Without the quotes, of course.)

You might be right.  I made the instructions on my regular laptop (under Ubuntu) and didn't need to do su -, but if it turns out you need root's PATH, then I guess you'd need to do that.

In qemu, I cannot set the ip for the virtual machine. Am I missing something, the box is somewhat shaded out.

I couldn't set the IP either, I just set the MAC address and everything worked just fine.

[moocapiean]

Internet Archive do have a software section. Why do they made it so difficult to upload software in it?

Anyway, seem like Ubuntu took to much space on the RAM. We should try Puppy Linux.

Puppy Linux seems to use JWM, whereas I have Xfce running for Ubuntu.  Since JWM is also availabe for Ubuntu, someone could try installing it on Ubuntu to see how it performs.

[humptybump]

Hi moocapiean,

When using the compressed files method, what should the resulting root of the USB or SD look like ?

when I used "tar -jxf /home/olpc/OLPCFile.tar.bz2" to extract everything onto my SD, I ended up with a root directory of "/mnt/OLPCRoot". I'm not sure this was expected since the very next command is "mv /mnt/boot/olpc.fth.usb /mnt/boot/olpc.fth" but I get /mnt/OLPCRoot/boot".


BTW: I'm only a little bit more senior than a n00b and early on I was told to never mount anything to "/mnt" so I created a temporary directory "/mnt/working" so in the above, all references to "/mnt/..." were actually "/mnt/working/..."

[moocapiean]

Hi moocapiean,

When using the compressed files method, what should the resulting root of the USB or SD look like ?

when I used "tar -jxf /home/olpc/OLPCFile.tar.bz2" to extract everything onto my SD, I ended up with a root directory of "/mnt/OLPCRoot". I'm not sure this was expected since the very next command is "mv /mnt/boot/olpc.fth.usb /mnt/boot/olpc.fth" but I get /mnt/OLPCRoot/boot".


BTW: I'm only a little bit more senior than a n00b and early on I was told to never mount anything to "/mnt" so I created a temporary directory "/mnt/working" so in the above, all references to "/mnt/..." were actually "/mnt/working/..."

I was being lazy when I got around to making the instructions for mount and didn't want to go through the step of making a directory to mount.  But, I think that step can actually save me from uploading a fixed version of the file!

Basically, instead of calling your directory, /mnt/working, call it /mnt/OLPCRoot.  Now, when you moved into the /mnt/working directory to decompress the file, move into the /mnt directory and decompress.  Since your drive is mounted on /mnt/OLPCRoot and the tar file will want to extract to OLPCRoot, things should work out.  If I lost you with any of that, just follow these instructions (I'll update my instructions too):
mkdir /mnt/OLPCRoot
cd /mnt
tar -jxf /home/olpc/OLPCFile.tar.bz2

You can then move on to the next instruction.  Thanks for catching that!

[sracer]

These instructions are for installing Ubuntu using the compressed files approach.  If you want to install using the image, see my post above.

[ instructions snipped ]

And you're done!  If you want to log into your new Xubuntu installation, just reboot, hold down the right game button (it looks like a check mark) until it tells you to release it, then let it boot up.  The username is olpc and the password is olpcolpc.  To start Xfce, after you log in, run startxfce4.

Fantastic instructions!  I installed it on a 1GB SD card.    Except for a misstep of absentmindedly using the sda1 in your example (which was my WinXP testing partition for work... oops. LOL)  everything went smooth as butter.

I need to work on getting wifi connectivity working, but so far... wonderful.

These instructions need to be a separate thread and stickied... and updated as new info is made available. 

Having it on an SD card, I particularly appreciate being able to have a choice to boot Ubuntu (off the SD card) or Sugar (from the nandflash).

[humptybump]

Basically, instead of calling your directory, /mnt/working, call it /mnt/OLPCRoot.  Now, when you moved into the /mnt/working directory to decompress the file, move into the /mnt directory and decompress.  Since your drive is mounted on /mnt/OLPCRoot and the tar file will want to extract to OLPCRoot, things should work out.  If I lost you with any of that, just follow these instructions (I'll update my instructions too):
mkdir /mnt/OLPCRoot
cd /mnt
tar -jxf /home/olpc/OLPCFile.tar.bz2

now why didn't *I* think of that ! ... Thanks, I'm of to try that now :-)

[moocapiean]

snip
Fantastic instructions!  I installed it on a 1GB SD card.    Except for a misstep of absentmindedly using the sda1 in your example (which was my WinXP testing partition for work... oops. LOL)  everything went smooth as butter.

I need to work on getting wifi connectivity working, but so far... wonderful.

These instructions need to be a separate thread and stickied... and updated as new info is made available. 

Having it on an SD card, I particularly appreciate being able to have a choice to boot Ubuntu (off the SD card) or Sugar (from the nandflash).

Thanks .  I once made the same mistake and ended up formatting my NTFS partition as an ext3 partition.  Luckily I had just gotten the laptop and didn't have anything important on that partition, but I did want to save it in case I ever needed Windows for something.

I can put the instructions in a new thread (or should they be two threads?), but I don't have the power to sticky them.