See this page for installing Debian Etch on your Agestar NCB3AST without serial port.
For demo, see my NCB3AST serving information about itself .
Chiang Mai, Thailand, Friday 20 June 2008
This page is for experienced users who wish to install Debian Etch on his Agestar NCB3AST. You might brick your NAS, you might lose your data, I will not be responsible for anything that might happen to your NAS, yourself, your cat, or anything else.
From http://www.lliures.org/2008/05/02/ft3563-bt-hacking/ this following devices have the same hardware:
The instructions for installing Debian MIGHT work for those devices, but it is not guaranteed.
You will need:
First, you need to be able to compile the kernel by yourself:
patch -p1 < the_patch_file .configmake menuconfig, make some adjustment, and exit the menumake to compile the kernelarch/arm/boot/zImageSetup your serial port, I am using kermit, you can use your favorite program to connect to the serial port, the parameter is 38400N1. Here is my ~/.kermrc file (I am using USB to serial).
set line /dev/ttyUSB0 set speed 38400 set carrier-watch off set handshake none set flow-control none robust set file type bin set file name lit set rec pack 1000 set send pack 1000 set window 5
Now hold the reset button, and turn on the agestar. This will bring you to STR9100> prompt. Put the zImage at your TFTP server, and then type this:
tftpboot 0x1000000 zImage
You may need to set the ARM boot environment (type help) or adjust your TFTP server IP address. If all went well, type:
go 0x1000000
That was only for testing that you can boot the kernel successfully.
Format it as you like it, have a partition for swap. I think you should use EXT3 for the root partition. Remember the partition number. If you use internal harddisk you will use /dev/sdaX as partition id, if you use external harddisk connected to USB, you will use /dev/sdbX.
These instructions are based from http://wiki.dns323.info/howto:install_debian. Do these steps from your PC Debian Machine:
i2:~# apt-get install cdebootstrap Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done cdebootstrap is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. (Note - I already had this installed) i2:~# mkdir agestar i2:~# cd agestar i2:~/agestar# cdebootstrap -aarm etch etch ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian P: Retrieving Release.gpg P: Retrieving Release P: Parsing Release P: Retrieving Release . . . P: Extracting util-linux E: Couldn't install system due to errors!''
The error at the end is normal. Now make some normal devices.
i2:~/agestar# cd etch/dev i2:~/agestar/etch/dev# /sbin/MAKEDEV generic-arm i2:~/agestar/etch/dev# /sbin/MAKEDEV md
These following for the flash driver. You really do not want to overwrite mtdblock0 since on agestar, that is the armboot, so we make it read-only. As long as you have a serial port and armboot, you can recover the device.
i2:~/agestar/etch/dev# mknod mtdblock0 b 31 0 i2:~/agestar/etch/dev# mknod mtdblock1 b 31 1 i2:~/agestar/etch/dev# mknod mtdblock2 b 31 2 i2:~/agestar/etch/dev# chmod 660 mtdblock* i2:~/agestar/etch/dev# chmod 440 mtdblock0
Now, copy everything to your disk that you are going to put at the Agestar, put all files on ~/agestar/etch/ to the root partition. Use USB cable to copy the files, much easier and faster.
Compile the kernel, make sure you use this parameter for the boot options:
console=ttyS0,38400 root=/dev/sda2 rootdelay=10 init=/bin/sh
Adjust /dev/sda2 to your partition. Don't for get the init=/bin/sh. If you use USB cable to transfer the files to the agestar, Unplug the cable from your machine. Boot the device using the new kernel. Now you should reach command prompt. Do these steps on the Agestar:
sh-3.1# cd /var/cache/bootstrap sh-3.1# export PATH sh-3.1# mount -t proc proc /proc warning: can't open /etc/fstab: No such file or directory sh-3.1# dpkg --force-all -i libc6*deb Selecting previously deselected package libc6. (Reading database ... 0 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking libc6 (from libc6_2.3.6.ds1-13etch2_arm.deb) ... dpkg: libc6: dependency problems, but configuring anyway as you request: libc6 depends on tzdata; however: Package tzdata is not installed. Setting up libc6 (2.3.6.ds1-13etch2) ... sh-3.1# dpkg --force-all -i dpkg*deb Selecting previously deselected package dpkg. dpkg: regarding dpkg_1.13.25_arm.deb containing dpkg, pre-dependency problem: dpkg pre-depends on coreutils (>= 5.93-1) dpkg: warning - ignoring pre-dependency problem ! (Reading database ... 306 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking dpkg (from dpkg_1.13.25_arm.deb) ... dpkg: dpkg: dependency problems, but configuring anyway as you request: dpkg depends on coreutils (>= 5.93-1); however: Package coreutils is not installed. Setting up dpkg (1.13.25) ... sh-3.1# dpkg --force-all -i libc6*deb (Reading database ... 532 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace libc6 2.3.6.ds1-13etch2 (using libc6_2.3.6.ds1-13etch2_arm.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libc6 ... dpkg: libc6: dependency problems, but configuring anyway as you request: libc6 depends on tzdata; however: Package tzdata is not installed. Setting up libc6 (2.3.6.ds1-13etch2) ... sh-3.1# dpkg -iGREB .
The above will ask questions and generate a lot of output (and it will take quite a long time). Continue re-running the last command (dpkg -iGREB .) until you don't get any errors. It will tell you at the end of the run if there were errors. It took 4 times for me to get this to be 100% clean. It gave an error at the end about /var/mail already existing. Do 'rm /var/mail' after the 3rd time to get it to run clean.
# vi /etc/inittabFind the line that says:
#T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100and turn it into:
T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 38400 vt100
Comment all other getty lines (saves memory).
Now set up fstab:
# vi /etc/fstab
For example this is what i use (first partition is swap, and the next parition is for the root partition):
# [file system] [mount point] [type] [options] [dump] [pass] /dev/sda1 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
Do sync and restart Debian. Compile your kernel again, this time removing init=/bin/sh, so the parameter is:
console=ttyS0,38400 root=/dev/sda2 rootdelay=10
If everything went well, you can install anything you like. I suggest you install NTP to adjust the time.
If all went well, now we can write the kernel to the flash.
Transfer arch/arm/boot/zImage to your agestar. Write to flash by using:
dd if=zImage of=/dev/mtdblock1
It will take some time to finish, just pray it will work. Test by rebooting agestar.
And finally: Good Luck.