Unslinging help

[macollin]

Hello – I am hoping someone can help me, as this process has been driving me nuts for the last couple of days. I have been able to flash my NSLU to unslung 6.8. I am trying to use a 256MB memory stick as the second drive. When I went through the process of formatting through the web interface, the format of the drive (shown in the interface) went from FAT to “Not Formatted”. When I plugged the stick into an XP machine, it stated that the drive format was RAW, so I used disk manager to delete the partition and put a FAT partition back into the stick.

So, I am back to the drawing board. Does anyone know what I might be doing wrong? It seems that I am so close to unslinging, but yet so far away…

I found this article http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/NotFormattedFix, but it did not work for me.

I also found this article http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/UseAMemoryStickAsMainDrive, but I don’t have a linux machine, and I am unable to do this on my slug because I think it is already full from 6.8. To compound the problem, I am also a big time linux newbie.

Thanks in advance for any help.
Matt

[rpedde]

@macollin wrote:

I also found this article http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/UseAMemoryStickAsMainDrive, but I don’t have a linux machine

I haven’t tried to do this, so I can’t offer point-by-point solutions, but I can offer that the standard response to “I don’t have a linux machine” is knoppix — it’s a cd-bootable linux distribution that you can use on any machine to get linux tools etc. I’m sure it would work for partitioning your flash device.

http://www.knoppix.org

— Ron

[macollin]

Thanks Ron. I actually decided to cut bait on the memory stick idea and opted for reformatting the hard drive.

I have successfully unslung and run /opt/etc/init.d/S60mt-daapd. Now a couple additional problems:

-I can’t copy any mp3 files in my new directory /share/hdd/data/public/mp3/ using explorer – it says that access is deined…my guess is that in order to get into the admin folder I used the NSLU2 username and password, but at this point I probably need to somehow login using the root username and password. Not sure how though.

-I don’t see mt-daap running in iTunes or access it through the config address.

Thanks again for your help and advice.

[rpedde]

@macollin wrote:

Thanks Ron. I actually decided to cut bait on the memory stick idea and opted for reformatting the hard drive.

I have successfully unslung and run /opt/etc/init.d/S60mt-daapd. Now a couple additional problems:

-I can’t copy any mp3 files in my new directory /share/hdd/data/public/mp3/ using explorer – it says that access is deined…my guess is that in order to get into the admin folder I used the NSLU2 username and password, but at this point I probably need to somehow login using the root username and password. Not sure how though.

-I don’t see mt-daap running in iTunes or access it through the config address.

Thanks again for your help and advice.

if you set a password for root, you’ll have to ssh in using something like putty, I believe. Otherwise, you can telnet into the machine.

Once you are telnetted in, you should be able to do something like:

chmod 777 /share/hdd/data/public/mp3

and that will set that folder to be world readable and writable. That should get you running. You might want to play with permissions later to tighten them down, if you need to in your environment.

— Ron

[fizze]

I also use a 256MB memory stick. The problem with these is, that you cant use the NSLU to create the partitions.
Instead you have to manually partition the stick.

If you dont have any working linux, any ubuntu live, knoppix or whatever will do. 🙂

having the HDD in ext3 surely is the best option. Of course it renders the HD useless for other windows PCs. There are working ext2 drivers for win32 though.

[Sherlock]

@macollin wrote:

I am trying to use a 256MB memory stick as the second drive. When I went through the process of formatting through the web interface, the format of the drive (shown in the interface) went from FAT to “Not Formatted”. When I plugged the stick into an XP machine, it stated that the drive format was RAW, so I used disk manager to delete the partition and put a FAT partition back into the stick. To compound the problem, I am also a big time linux newbie. Matt

From one Linux newbie to another. I unslung my second NSLU2 to a 1GB memory stick in Disk 2 as I wanted to use it as a web server and for now don’t want to have a hard drive online 24/7. While the overall documentation for the unslung process is very good, the information on unslinging to a memory stick is not. I searched for days trying to understand the process. For me, when I got to the step of “hot plug the flash drive” in, the flash drive was formatted FAT and it would not format as EXT3. I found the answer that worked for me in a message on the Yahoo board. After hot plugging the flash drive in, I had to telnet in and run:

FDISK /DEV/SDA

I was then able to format the flash stick as EXT3 and finish the unslinging process.

I am so happy with my web server that I may just ‘upgrade’ the flash stick to a 2GB or 4GB unit when I fill up the 1GB stick. By the way, thumbnails for images are the main culprit in wasting lots of flash disk space.

[Sherlock]

@fizze wrote:

I also use a 256MB memory stick. The problem with these is, that you cant use the NSLU to create the partitions.
Instead you have to manually partition the stick.

I believe from what I learned in searching on how to unsling to a memory stick that you only have to do that if the stick is smaller than 256MB. I can’t say for sure, however, since I used a 1GB stick.

[Charly86]

Well, I spent lot of time on my nslu2 and formating also.

I can say now I’m not bad in unslinging process.

The pb is that the fdisk tools provided is linksys specific and dont’ let you do custom partition

The first thing is to do a unslung on stick formated with web interface. just to have ipkg functionning. after that the tip is to get a real fdisk tool. So what I’v done :
ipkg install busybox-base (base do not create links, just have the executable)

after that copy on the internal flash of the slug but do not overwrite the original (Version 0.6)
current version of busybox is 1.3 so I do
cp /opt/bin/busybox /bin/busybox1.3

So like this in any case you boot your slung (even with no disk attached) you can do a real fdisk (if you have a disk sure) doing :
busybox1.3 fdisk -l /dev/sda
list all partition table. But you can create partition as you wish and size you want.

After that, boot with no disk. after boot, plug your stick and partition it like you want.
After, to format stick drive that can be seen by slug you really need to format it with web interface. but it will not work because web interface invokes linksys specific fdisk. So the tip is to fake the linksys fdisk
go here to section faking the slug
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/UseAMemoryStickAsMainDrive

So with that you can use real fdisk to partition as you want and resling

here what I have on my slug /sbin

# cd /sbin
# ls -al fd*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10 May 8 2004 fdisk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 64064 Jan 1 1970 fdisk.old
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10 May 8 2004 fdisk.sh
# cat fdisk
#!/bin/sh
# /bin/busybox1.3 fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 3253 MB, 3253469184 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 395 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 327 2626596 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 328 360 265072+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 361 395 281137+ 82 Linux swap

[fizze]

@Sherlock wrote:

@fizze wrote:

I also use a 256MB memory stick. The problem with these is, that you cant use the NSLU to create the partitions.
Instead you have to manually partition the stick.

I believe from what I learned in searching on how to unsling to a memory stick that you only have to do that if the stick is smaller than 256MB. I can’t say for sure, however, since I used a 1GB stick.

Yep. This just happens for devices smaller than 512MB, since the way the Linksys firmware eats up lots of space for the /conf partition which is actually wasted.

So just create 1 small ext2 partition, and one large ext3 partition. one also needs a small swap partition, which should really be dactivated and the .ext3flash file touched.

I have unslung to a 256MB stick on port2, and a 250G NTFS harddisk on port1. I use a 512MB swap file on there. NTFS performance isnt really snappy, but its ok. I too think unslung 6.8 beta is kinda slow and unstable, but NTFS support was a must for me.

[Charly86]

Hi Fizze,

Ok you’ve got like same config as mine
256 Mb flash on disk 2 and 300Gb NTFS on disk 1.
disk 1 has also 256Mb swap partition.

Every time I boot mt-daapd or browse my share my slugs freeze.

Got 5000 MP3 and 100 static playlist. I was asking if it was not my flash that cause pb, so replaced my flask usb with 3Gb old HDD, fresh unsling, ipkg openssh and mt-daapt latest nighties and got same pb (freeze on first scan) even when I removed songs.db

Do you have this kind of pb ? (I also done that on a 2nd slug with same pb)

thanks telling me if all is okay on your side. Do you think 256Mb of swap not enought ? What do you have on your slug ?

Edit : Got my slug freezed check it out
doing top everythings seems Ok just after do ipkg install joe
and slug freeze, need to unplug power, can’t ssh nor WEb interface on it anymore !!!!! but respond to ping
# top
top – 22:29:43 up 2:50, 1 user, load average: 8.00, 7.43, 6.62
Tasks: 48 total, 1 running, 44 sleeping, 0 stopped, 3 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.6% user, 0.7% system, 0.0% nice, 97.7% idle
Mem: 30524k total, 30140k used, 384k free, 1732k buffers
Swap: 281128k total, 10416k used, 270712k free, 7076k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
508 root 16 0 956 956 760 R 2.0 3.1 0:00.18 top
1 root 8 0 180 128 128 S 0.0 0.4 0:08.12 init
2 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 keventd
3 root 19 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.70 ksoftirqd_CPU0
4 root 9 0 0 0 0 D 0.0 0.0 0:02.06 kswapd
5 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bdflush
6 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kupdated
7 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mtdblockd
8 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.13 khubd
9 root 14 10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 jffs2_gcd_mtd4
10 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.87 usb-storage-0
11 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
18 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 sd-mc-thread
19 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:03.00 usb-storage-1
20 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
29 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.28 kjournald
52 root 9 0 0 0 0 D 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ixp425_csr
53 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ixp425 ixp0
56 root 9 0 208 128 128 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.01 sh
57 root 9 0 292 240 240 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.18 syslogd
58 root 9 0 240 164 164 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.11 klogd
150 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 kjournald
283 root 9 0 680 552 540 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.01 thttpd
307 root 9 0 1660 496 456 D 0.0 1.6 0:00.09 smbd
309 root 9 0 1688 776 776 S 0.0 2.5 0:00.40 nmbd
# ipkg install joe

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