Debian

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 $ /etc/init.d/samba stop $ /etc/init.d/cron stop $ /etc/init.d/ntp stop $ /etc/init.d/rsync stop And all other daemons which are suspicious… –MARK– in /var/log/messages In /var/log/messages every 30 minutes a —- MARK —- row will be written.

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 “/”-directory. In the article Installing Debian on the Sheevaplug there is also a separate “/boot” ext2 partition, because U-Boot is unable to read from ext3 partitions.

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

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 install vim Network settings I want to have a fixed IP address, instead of DHCP. Open the interfaces file and put the following settings in that file.

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 SDHC card. Please read first the article Building the system with the esata sheevaplug, if you did not do that already.

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 SheevaPlug (supplied in kit) power cord (supplied in kit) Explanation of this setup Flashdisk SDHC 4GB At Amazon.