65 replies to this topic

[Esn]

Therefore you should see everything that you'd normally get on your NAND, but you should _ALSO_ see what you've put in the overlay.

Ah, thanks. Now I finally understand what it should look like.

But you've said that you can't find the file you created on the overlay :\ so I don't know what it's up to as all the logs you've put up say that everything is working as it should be.

just to make quadruple-sure, I rebooted again and followed all the steps once more.

From typing mount in the Angstrom terminal, I get this:

Spoiler

esn-openpandora:~$ mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
ubi0:rootfs on / type ubifs (rw,bulk_read)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
tmpfs on /mnt/.splash type tmpfs (rw,size=40k)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
/dev/mmcblk1p1 on /media/PANDORABOOT type vfat (rw,dirsync,noatime,fmask=0000,dmask=0000,allow_utime=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1)
/dev/mmcblk1p3 on /media/PANDORAROOT type ext3 (rw,dirsync,noatime,errors=continue,data=ordered)
/dev/mmcblk0p1 on /media/mmcblk0p1 type vfat (rw,dirsync,noatime,fmask=0000,dmask=0000,allow_utime=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
tmpfs on /var/volatile type tmpfs (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,mode=777)
tmpfs on /media/ram type tmpfs (rw)
ubi1:boot on /boot type ubifs (rw)
/dev/loop0 on /mnt/utmp/extendutils type iso9660 (ro)
none on /mnt/utmp/extendutils type aufs (rw,si=60731f37,noplink)
/dev/loop1 on /var/volatile/tmp/1gb.overlay type ext2 (rw,errors=continue)
aufs on /home type aufs (rw,si=607f6137)
/dev/loop2 on /mnt/utmp/DebianDevExtend type iso9660 (ro)
none on /mnt/utmp/DebianDevExtend type aufs (rw,si=606fa377,noplink)
/dev/loop3 on /var/volatile/tmp/debextend type ext2 (rw,errors=continue)
proc on /var/volatile/tmp/debextend/proc type proc (rw)
aufs on /var/volatile/tmp/debextend/home/esn type aufs (rw,si=607f6137)
/dev/loop4 on /mnt/utmp/xfe type squashfs (ro)
none on /mnt/utmp/xfe type aufs (rw,si=604d9277,noplink)
esn-openpandora:~$ 

Here are two screenshots from Xfe, one of the /tmp/1gb.overlay folder, one of the /tmp/debextend/home/esn folder. Note the absence of any "uqm" files from the latter, along with any other files that are present in the first location...
http://i.imgur.com/9Vv0s.png
http://i.imgur.com/5Ib18.png

Seems like the "mount" command tells one story, and reality tells another.

You say that this does work for you, though? If there's no other difference, maybe it's down to something in my SD card after all, I'll try out another one... or maybe it somehow left something on the NAND from the very first time I ran the Debian Extend...

Edited by Esn, 28 June 2011 - 02:30 PM.

[Stuckie]

Do the files exist in the Angstrom /home?

/home/esn should be the _exact same_ on both Angstrom and Debian... so use them for comparison shots rather than directly inside the overlay as it won't match up.
And again, the log states that it has bound up correctly.

Seeing as you seem to be booting from an SD card, try creating a folder, or a file, or something from within the Debian Extend and ensuring it comes out in both Angstrom's /home/esn and the /tmp/1gb.overlay folder.

--edit--
Bit of an arse this, isn't it? heh
I'm hoping that at the end of it all, it's something amazingly silly that's been missed out!

Edited by Stuckie, 28 June 2011 - 02:32 PM.

[Esn]

Do the files exist in the Angstrom /home?

Yes, they do. Angstrom /home and /tmp/1gb.overlay are mostly identical, except for a few extra hidden files in the 1gb.overlay folder

/home/esn should be the _exact same_ on both Angstrom and Debian... so use them for comparison shots rather than directly inside the overlay as it won't match up.
And again, the log states that it has bound up correctly.

Yes, they seem to be identical.
Angstrom /home and /tmp/1gb.overlay are almost identical.
Angstrom /home/esn and Debian /home/esn seem to be identical.

But how can I access the files in the 1gb overlay from the Debian terminal?

Therefore you should see everything that you'd normally get on your NAND, but you should _ALSO_ see what you've put in the overlay.

And this is what is not happening. Debian's /home/esn folder mirrors Angstrom's /home/esn folder, but it contains no content from /tmp/1gb.overlay (which is mirrored in Angstrom's /home folder).

Out of curiosity, what would happen if the NAND's /home/esn folder and the 1gb overlay contained a file or directory with an identical name? Since they're both supposed to show up in the same directory in Debian, might there be some kind of conflict?

Seeing as you seem to be booting from an SD card, try creating a folder, or a file, or something from within the Debian Extend and ensuring it comes out in both Angstrom's /home/esn and the /tmp/1gb.overlay folder.

I'm not booting from SD card. I do have an SD card that has a Debian OS in it, but it's in the right slot; I would be booting from it only if it were in the left slot.

Anyway, I created a folder called "test" in Debian's /home/esn folder. It also showed up in Angstrom's /home/esn folder, but not in /tmp/1gb.overlay.

--edit--
Bit of an arse this, isn't it? heh
I'm hoping that at the end of it all, it's something amazingly silly that's been missed out!

Yep, me too. I'm not giving up yet, though...

Edited by Esn, 28 June 2011 - 03:13 PM.

[Stuckie]

Oh... you're going to laugh at this least I hope you will!

Right.
Angstrom.
/tmp/1gb.overlay is bound to /home.
If you place stuff in /tmp/1gb.overlay, it'll appear in /home.
So, /tmp/1gb.overlay/MyTestFile will show up in /home/MyTestFile.

Debian.
/home/esn is mount to Angstrom's /home/esn
/home isn't overloaded at all... it remains in Debian's space.
Therefore, /tmp/1gb.overlay/MyTestFile doesn't get through.
However, if it was /tmp/1gb.overlay/esn/MyTestFile it would!

So, put your files into your home folder - as in your user's home, /home/esn.
Not literally your home folder as in /home.

Linux terminology being slightly confusing

[Esn]

Hahah, brilliant! Thanks so much!

I can't be mad at something so ridiculous.

[Esn]

Ok, I added a step-by-step guide to the Extend Utils wiki:
http://pandorawiki.o...p-by-step_guide
It might be in the wrong section, I'm not quite sure.

Most of it is taken from your guide on page 2, but I edited the language a little and made a few things clearer (I hope).

I also added the following section to the end:

How it all links together
You can open a file manager (for example Thunar, or Xfe) and verify that everything is as it should be. Here's how it should look:

1. The contents of "/home" and "/tmp/1gb.overlay" should be almost identical

2. The contents of the following three directories should be identical:
/home/username
/tmp/debextend/home/username
/tmp/1gb.overlay/username

Edited by Esn, 28 June 2011 - 04:42 PM.

[Stuckie]

Yep, that seems fine
I did fix one thing - which was the check was putting the test file on /tmp/1gb.overlay rather than /tmp/1gb.overlay/USERNAME which as we now know, is where it should be

Hopefully others find use in all our pain today, in checking all this works!

Edited by Stuckie, 28 June 2011 - 04:57 PM.

[theeggman]

Well, I walked through Esn's guide and was able to get this going with no large hickups.

One outstanding issue/question - Shouldn't the Extend Utilities pnd/script provide a facility to umount your overlay, swaps.. etc?

[Stuckie]

That depends very greatly on what you're binding and where.

If you bind a home overlay, you can't unmount it.
If you bind an overlay over the entirety of root, you can't unmount it.
Generally anywhere that's out the way, you can unmount - swap included though why you'd want to unmount swap, especially if it's being used, I don't know!

Reason being that the filesystem is constantly changing. When you run a command, the bash_history gets updated, and therefore the filesystem is active, and AUFS won't let you unmount it. That's why there's no unmount stuff.

Instead, when I get the GUI up and running, I'll be sticking a red warning in the system tray that you've got an overlay active and therefore should be careful not to remove the SD card it's running on.
So for any large scale overlay stuff, you'll need to reboot to clear it, I'm afraid.

[Esn]

I edited the Wiki tutorial to add a reminder that the new sudo password for Debian is "pandora". An important thing to mention!

I've installed a few packages, and each time though they installed okay, I've gotten some message or two like this:

Can not write log, openpty() failed (/dev/pts not mounted?)

Is that fine?

Also how come in Debian the command is "sudo apt-get install xxx", while in Angstrom it's "sudo opkg install xxx"? Or can the latter be used in Debian as well?

Edit: well, that was quick. Some programs are asking me for pygtk-2.0, so I think I need the python-gtk2-dev package which needs over 154mb. It looks like I already will need to move over the contents to a bigger 1gb file.

Edited by Esn, 29 June 2011 - 03:12 AM.

[Stuckie]

I edited the Wiki tutorial to add a reminder that the new sudo password for Debian is "pandora". An important thing to mention!

I've installed a few packages, and each time though they installed okay, I've gotten some message or two like this:

Can not write log, openpty() failed (/dev/pts not mounted?)

Is that fine?

Also how come in Debian the command is "sudo apt-get install xxx", while in Angstrom it's "sudo install xxx"? Or can the latter be used in Debian as well?

Edit: well, that was quick. Some programs are asking me for pygtk-2.0, so I think I need the python-gtk2-dev package which needs over 154mb. It looks like I already will need to move over the contents to a bigger 1gb file.

Yea the /dev/pts thing is just complaining about getting to a log file.. I didn't mount /dev in to the system. I might do that for the next release.
I was toying with the idea of doing it originally as a 1gig extend, but I only have 2gig cards mostly, so testing things like that is a bit of a bugger!

Also, Debian's package manager is aptitude, and apt-get is generally a helper program. So I'm afraid that's the only syntax you have.
I might wire up the X11 bits and pieces, and then you can use Synaptic as a GUI interface, but then that's starting to get close to a full OS Extend again; which I didn't want.. I just wanted something nice and relatively small to get started with, and then let others move to bigger extends depending on their requirements.

If you have any issues with moving to another extend, let me know and I'll throw together a quick guide
Actually, I might add that functionality to Extend Utils itself as it's fairly straight forward, though when I attempted it on the Pandora last time it.. kinda.. wasn't happy

[edgex004]

Thanks for all your work on this, Stuckie. This seems to be exactly what I need to compile groove, as the Debian repos seem to have all the dependancies I need.

The problem I am having is that I can't seem to expand the size of the dev extend. Here's what I've been doing:

1. Download 1GB empty extend and dev extend.
2. Using extend utils, create new premount with 1 read/write extend (the empty extend)
3. Use extend utils to run the premount.
4. Use dev utils to mount dev extend.
5. navigate to tmp, open a terminal, and enter:

cp -a debianextend/* 1GB.extend/

after that a bunch of "permision denied" and "no such file exists" type errors come up and the system crashes. I've tried running with sudo, -f, and such but that only gets rid of the permissions errrors.

Any suggestions?

[Esn]

I'm also not sure how to copy to a bigger extend, though my process was a bit different from edgex004's:

Spoiler

1. Run Extend Utils
2. Select "New Extend/Overlay/Swap"
3. Select "New Extend File"
4. Select 1GB, name it "1gbdebian", save to /media/mySDcard/pandora/appdata/DebianDevExtend
5. From Thunar, right-click on that folder, select "Open Terminal Here", type in dir to make sure I'm in the right place, then the cp command (-a debian.lennydev.20110626.extend/* 1gbdebian.extend/).
I get the following:

esn-openpandora:/media/mmcblk0p1/pandora/appdata/DebianDevExtend$ dir
1gbdebian.extend  debian.lennydev.20110626.extend
esn-openpandora:/media/mmcblk0p1/pandora/appdata/DebianDevExtend$ cp -a debian.lennydev.20110626.extend/* 1gbdebian.extend/
cp: accessing `1gbdebian.extend/': Not a directory

Well, at least my system doesn't crash. I would welcome some instructions, though.

EDIT: Ah, right, nevermind, I guess edgex004's is the right one. But with "sudo" before "cp". I thought somehow one could copy what's inside the extends even if they're not mounted.

Edited by Esn, 29 June 2011 - 08:37 AM.

[Stuckie]

Argh, I forgot to mention that you really should be sudo to copy the files across, as your user won't "own" the vast majority of the files.

[Esn]

Argh, I forgot to mention that you really should be sudo to copy the files across, as your user won't "own" the vast majority of the files.

Ok, I tried it with sudo and I got the same result as edgex004. Tons of error messages followed by a system crash.

Steps from the beginning:

1. Run Extend Utils
2. Select "New Extend/Overlay/Swap"
3. Select "New Extend File"
4. Select 1GB, name it "1gbdebian", save to /media/mySDcard/pandora/appdata/extendutils
5. Select "New-Premount"
6. Select "New Extend Mount Script"
7. Select "Dev Extend"
8. Select 0 Read-Only Extends
9. Select 1 Read-Write Extends
10. Select 0 Read-Write Overlays
11. name it "1gbdebian", save to /media/mySDcard/pandora/appdata/extendutils
12. Select "Mount Existing Premount"
13. Select 1gbdebian.premount
14. Enter in sudo password.
15. Run Debian Dev Extend
16. Choose debian.lennydev.20110626.extend
17. Open Thunar, navigate to the /tmp folder, right-click, open Terminal
18. Type "dir" (or "ls") to list directories, verify that both extends are in there. They are.
19. Type "sudo cp -a debian.lennydev.20110626.extend/* 1gbdebian.extend/"
20. Get error messages and system crash.

Edited by Esn, 29 June 2011 - 08:46 AM.