First

Before we are going into depth, first check if the (external) hard disk is able to go in spindown. Disable all services which has disk access periodically, for example:

$ /etc/init.d/asterisk stop
$ /etc/init.d/rsyslog stop
$ /etc/init.d/apache2 stop
$ /etc/init.d/mysql stop
$ …

This article is about installing Debian on a flash disk, like SD card, flash disk, Solid State Disk etc. The goal is to have the data on a hard disk. This will increase the lifetime of the flash disk.

Assumption of this article is that Debian is already installed on a flash disk in the root …

After installing Debian on SD card, it was booting successfully with the ‘run bootcmd’. But when I switched off the power and plugged in again, I was getting the following error messages:

Error! cmd : 8, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err …

Add handy aliases

Add the following at the end of bash.bashrc:

$ vi /etc/bash.bashrc
...
alias ll='ls -l'
alias pg='ps -ef|grep'
alias vi='vim'

The last alias “vi” is to use vim instead of vi. vim is the more luxury editor ;-).

To install vim, enter the following command:

$ apt-get …

The next step in this SheevaPlug guide is installing Debian on the SheevaPlug. Default on the SheevaPlug, Ubuntu 9.04 is provided. Ubuntu 9.04 will not be supported for a very long time any more and a Ubuntu 9.10 or higher is not available. That is why I want to install Debian on the Kingston 4GB …

The architectural setup

The following list I want to connect to my eSATA SheevaPlug:

• Flashdisk 4 GB SDHC class 4 (for the Debian root filesystem)
• Eexternal USB or eSATA hard-disk 2GB or 4GB (for datastorage and variable data)
• Network cable (supplied in kit)
• miniUSB cable for serial access to the …