Hello,

so I have reactivated for my Smartbook. It is still running
xubuntu 10.10 with some updates applied. I started looking
around on powerdeveloper.org for an alternate OS, but am
slightly confused. It should be something than can run a
C-compiler, so that rules out Android.
I would be grateful for any recommendations. More specifically:

• Is NetBSD an option? I have seen on this forums
  that someone has managed to boot an evbarm port.
• I would prefer a more recent version of Ubuntu or Debian
  than the current one. Is Debian an option?
  It is strongly advised against upgrading your Ubuntu
  distribution. Is there any date, when an update to
  a more recent Ubuntu will be possible?

Many thanks in advance & best Regards,

Alexander

If you prefer Debian, markos has several images up of Debian unstable. the images have a few kinks in them but there should be a repository going up soon with all of the genesi specific packages needed for it.

If you want to give it a shot and try it out on an SD card check out this thread http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/vi ... php?t=2196

Just keep in mind that those Debian images aren't as polished as the maverick image was and are community supported, not official genesi releases.

I tried to follow these instructions: I dd-ed the image to an SD-card and tried to boot from it. My Smartbook stills boots into the default Maverick environment, Do I need to change 'boot.scr' if I use a smartbook rather than a smarttop?

Best Regards,


Alexander

the image should work on the smart top and smartbook.

what was the exact command line you typed to write the image to the sd card?

The command line was:
The SD card in question was a 4GB one.

Best Regards,

Alexander

I just tried downloading the image and installing it just like you did and it boots up fine (although rather slowly) into a login screen.

the md5sum of the file should be 84c778e032542a1a9fafd76e3f2b5a1a

You could try using Markos's install script instead to get the same results, it uses debootstrap to build an image directly on the SD card. it's also mentioned in the thread I linked you to.

First of all thank you for your help so far.

The image appears to be intact:
I don't seem to be able to boot from an SD card at all.

Since my smartbook was purchased in mid-2010, could it be that one of the following needs to be done?

• the Uboot bootloader need to be updated.
• the debian wiki says I need to take out the keyboard and reverse the sense of the four dip switches found below. I'd rather not do this, unless necessary.

Best Regards,

Alexander

If it is the uboot image then there is an SD card that will update that for you. I think the october maverick image has the firmware update built into it, also there is a standalone image that just updates the uboot. You can read about about it at: http://blog.efikamx.info/2010/12/maveri ... ernel.html

I would just backup your personal files and try re-installing from the most recent maverick image from october and see if that will fix things.

the standalone image fro just updating the firmware should be on the linux support page as efikamx-updater.

Keep in mind that if you use the standalone updater your on disk system will not boot after the firmware update (as Matt talks about in the blog post) since the old stuff didn't use a boot.scr.

I hope that helps. no dip switch changes should be required.

Hi Alexander, have you tried different SD cards? Did you check the contents of the SD card after writing the image file to it? Did you remove and insert the SD card multiple times to ensure that it was seated properly?

Your device came with the latest version of UBoot that we provide. Changing the dip switches should not be necessary.

Have you tried to boot using any other SD card images that we provide on this website?

Hi,

this is a list of things I have checked so far:

• I checked the contents of both the boot and the root partitions. Both partitions were mountable (by hand) and they also showed up in the Thunar file manager.
• I checked with fdisk that the boot partition had the bootable flag set.
• I messed around with the contents of boot.script/boot.scr, but with no success.
• I have not tried a different SD card. I am going to do so after work.

Many thanks for your help. It is really appreciated.

Best Regards,

Alexander

I would second the suggestion of using a different SD card. While SD cards claim to be 2G, 4G, 8G, and so forth, they aren't always. I have some 4G cards here with ~3.2G of space available. Others 3.79G. I have a 16G card that has 18G of space. Worst case scenario, if you have an 8G card available, you can write the image to that, install it, and then wipe the card again to use it for data or whatnot.

_________________
Steev Klimaszewski, Genesi USA Inc.
Senior Software Engineer

there's a debian armhf distro available, but the installer does not work properly out of the box and there are still missing 3d drivers.

Which installer do you mean doesn't work properly? And the 3D drivers are on the way, I believe markos is in the process of testing them. We've done a server move recently, so unfortunately the repository is on hold until they have finished moving, but I believe that is the last step to making them generally available.

_________________
Steev Klimaszewski, Genesi USA Inc.
Senior Software Engineer

At the time I downloaded the latest image, the us mirror of the repositories weren't working when using the installer script, so i had to use another country and change the sources.lst file as well.

For conisistency with my main desktops I would like
to see the Linux Mint 12 (Cinnamon) Ubuntu variant
as Efika MX OS...
Carl Helmers, Pittsford NY carl@helmers.com, www.helmers.com

_________________
Longyearbyen48