Hello, I've recently been looking into using Emdebian on the Ben NanoNote, which is typically supported by an OpenWrt-based kernel and distribution, and I've reached the point where I can persuade the system to boot Emdebian directly from an SD card.
However, to get to this point, I have to rely on the existing OpenWrt distribution to boot the device, log in, and then enter the Emdebian system root using chroot in order to run "dpkg --configure -a". Once this has been done, the device will boot into the Emdebian system. This configuration step appears to be the necessary measure to permit the init mechanism and various related activities to function. I suppose that not all packages need to be configured, but some configuration seems to make the difference between a functioning and non-functioning system. The general advice about package configuration... http://wiki.debian.org/EmDebian/CrossDebootstrap ...seems to be mainly divided between booting into a device and running dpkg (or performing a second-stage debootstrap if that is the tool of choice) or using qemu. Obviously, in my situation, I can't boot into Emdebian without having first performed the configuration step, so this supposedly leaves me with the fairly undesirable option of using qemu. I did wonder, however, whether there are any known techniques for configuring just enough of a system on the build host so that the init mechanism can complete its work on the target system and then allow the proper configuration to occur. Previously, I had hoped that multiarch installations might alleviate the problem of package configuration really wanting to run native programs, but I imagine that readers of this list would be aware of more elegant solutions to this problem. Alternatively, I wondered whether there might be any way of deploying a "first boot" script to perform configuration on the target system. I see a script apparently suggested for this kind of thing... http://wiki.debian.org/Multistrap#Debconf_and_pre-seeding ...but I'm not sure whether the author of that suggestion intended such scripts to be deployed in such a fashion. I would certainly appreciate any advice on this topic. Emdebian promises to make a lot of things easier when developing for embedded devices like the NanoNote - just the availability of numerous packages for different architectures is a real time-saver - and I'd like to be able to offer some concrete documentation to help people start using it without there being too many complications involved. Paul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
