Subject: Re: Resend - Re: More questions about installing ARM Linux

From: [email-masked] (John Lagrue)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 00:22:46 +0100 (BST)

Russell King - ARM Linux Admin <[email-masked]> wrote:

> This is a known problem, and a fax has been sent to Baildon
> Electronics. However, since I don't have an ICS interface card, I
> can't debug it.  The obvious problems have been fixed to the docs that
> Baildon supplied, but it still doesn't work, and I don't know why.  I
> am waiting a reply.

OK. Many thanks for your help so far; I will wait to hear from you.

[snip] 

> It may be possible to use the ICS partitioning scheme - in other
> words, use ICS partition manager to setup a two new partitions at the
> end of the disk (and when the Linux kernel works with the ICS IDE card
> properly) reformat these partitions to be ext2 and swap.  I have no
> idea what ICS IDEFS will make of them though.

Hhhmmmm.

I have managed to get rather further now. If I supply the extra commands
"hda=noprobe hdb=noprobe" to the rpc kernel at boot time then it all boots
OK, accepts the boot floppy disc and then kicks off the RedHat
installation. Of course at this point it all grinds to a halt because the
Linux sources (the RPMs) are all in an X-files archive on the CDROM and I
have now no idea of what to do with them or how to get the installation to
read them.

Any further pointers would be very gratefully accepted :-)

JDL

-- 
John Lagrue

---

From: Phil Norman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 12:57:39 +0100 (BST)

> Any further pointers would be very gratefully accepted :-)

Here's what I did.

Firstly, you have a choice - you can keep the filenames as they are (ie 
use LongFileNames), or not.  It doesn't matter.  However, following these 
instructions you'll be copying large numbers of files into directories, 
and LongFileNames cannot cope with more than a certain number of these.  
I think possibly the limit is 32, but I've not checked.  If you're not 
using long filenames, 77 is, of course, the limit.

Anyway, copy batches of RPMs into directories on your ADFS hard drive 
(this is all in RiscOS so far).  You need to do this because, of course, 
linux can't read x-files archives.  If you're using longfilenames, you 
will then have to zip up the contents of each of these directories, since 
otherwise under linux the filenames will appear as '(C)JPT__01' or 
something similar.  If you're not using longfilenames, you will be able 
to just copy the rpm files across in one big go.  OK - you've created all 
the zip files - now get hold of some useful linux binaries (cp and unzip 
are very useful) and put them on a floppy.  Don't try just leaving them 
on your adfs disc, since linux will not allow you to execute anything off 
the adfs drive, and you won't be able to copy the binaries from the adfs 
drive to your linux drive because you won't be able to execute 'cp'.  Oh, 
and 'cat file > copy_destination' will probably not work - it didn't for me.

You will also need to obtain (well, you may not need these, but I got 
them just incase) the 'base' set and 'instimage' set off the ftp site.  
What I did was to ftp all the binaries, and create a zip file of each.  
YOu can then put these zip files on your adfs drive.

Now boot into linux, choose 'install off hard drive image', do that funky 
stuff with eh supplemental disc, and then when it gets to the opint where 
you have to choose what HD to install off, type 'ctrl-z'.  Now you can 
mount your ext2 drive, adfs drive and floppy.  Create the directories 
'RedHat' and 'RedHat/RPMS' on your ext2 hard drive.

Now cd into the RedHat directory and type:
/floppy/unzip /adfs/ARMLinux/base.zip
/floppy/unzip /adfs/ARMLinux/instim.zip

Substituting 'adfs' for the directory in which you've mounted your adfs 
partition and the rest of the path as where to find the zip files.

Then enter the 'RedHat/RPMS' directory and do a similar unzip thing on 
all the 'rpms-1.zip' etc files you have on your adfs partition.  If you 
haven't used longfilenames, just use /floppy/cp to copy all the rpm files 
from adfs to RedHat/RPMS.

Then, once you've finished putting everything on the hd, unmount the 
floppy, adfs partition and ext2 partition, and type 'exit' to get back to 
the main installer.  You can now tell it to install off your ext2 
partition onto your ext2 partition.  Note - it is important at this stage 
that you don't reformat that partition ;-)

You can probably mount your adfs partition and install off a RedHat tree
you've created in there, but do note that you will be limited to
installing 77 rpm files! 

And now for the important note.  This is the method I tried to use - as 
far as I can see there's nothing wrong with it.  However, I found that 
after I'd created the RedHat tree, the installer had read the tree 
without errors, but then it came up with the error 'could not create rpm 
database'.  Please let me know if you try thisd method, and it works.

Thanks, and I hope this is of some help,
Phil

-- 

=============================================
= Phil Norman  -  [email-masked] =
= http://newton.ex.ac.uk/general/ug/norman  =
=    Acorn fanatic and physics student      =
=============================================

---

From: James Craig <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 13:58:06 +0100 (BST)

w.r.t. Linux can't read X-files archives: Actually, it can, but the RH
installer can't.
Nicholas Clark (of unixlib fame) has written a little program called x-rec
which manages to decompress an X-Files archive quite nicely on Linux.
That's how I managed to get the stuff off the CDROM, even though none of
my archies have CD drives.
I think it's pretty much freeware, though you'll have to check with Nick.
Anyway, it works. :)
-- James Craig <[email-masked]>