Dobrica Pavlinušić's random unstructured stuff
Eee PC: Revision 13
Here are my notes about setup of various stuff on Eee PC to make it work better for me.
{toc: } ^ Startup Edit `/usr/bin/startsimple.sh` and insert something along following lines before exec icewm .pre sudo rm /tmp/nologin xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources setxkbmap hr us xterm & exec icewm .pre ^ Compressed root filesystem I don't really care much about Xandos on my Eee PC. However, I really do like idea about having read-only system filesystem (especially if your startup scripts are breakable as easy as ones on eee are). So, to improve this idea, I started to think how to compress read-only partition so I can at least save space. As a first experiment, I copied whole flash from eee (about 3.6Gb used) and compressed it using `gzip -1` (lowest possible compression level). I was quite amazed to see that resulting archive was only 1.3Gb. So, I was up to something (and additional 2Gb of free space on 4Gb eee is also nice :-) ^^ Links Here is collection of references about this issue: {fetchrss: http://del.icio.us/rss/dpavlin/debian+usb full} ^ Disk images ^^ Backup image from Eee using external USB disk .pre dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/A/Partition1/flash4Gb.img .pre Path in `of` may be different depending on partition on your disk. ^^ Backup flash image from Eee PC using network Transfer somehow whole disk image to other computer. Good way might be to use netcat with something like this: * on Eee .pre sudo nc -l -p 8888 < /dev/sda .pre * on other computer .pre nc name.of.eee.pc 8888 > hda .pre You might want to insert compression if your network connection is slower than flash read speed (which is according to `hdparm -tT /dev/hda` around 21MB/sec). Alternative is to take `P701L.gz` from DVD which came with machine, but it has only one partition which is factory default one. ^^ Backup just part of image You can also copy just parts of flash filesystem if you want (this copies just disk after partition 2): * on eee .pre dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 skip=4819500 | gzip | nc -w 3 other.computer 88882995524+0 records in 2995524+0 records out 1533708288 bytes (1.5 GB) copied, 279.348 seconds, 5.5 MB/s .pre * on other computer .pre nc -l -p 8888 | gzip -cd | > /rest/tmp/hda2-4 .pre * now, ectract beginning of disk and first partition from P701L .pre dd if=P701L of=hda1 bs=512 count=4819500 .pre * and merge partition together to create full disk image .pre cat hda1 hda2-4 > hda .pre ^ Emulation How to create virtual Eee PC? ^^ Example flash image .pre # fdisk -l hda Disk /backup/eee/hda: 3 GB, 3997486080 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 486 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /backup/eee/hda1 1 300 2409718 83 Linux /backup/eee/hda2 301 484 1469947 83 Linux /backup/eee/hda3 485 485 0 c FAT32 LBA /backup/eee/hda4 486 486 0 ef EFI FAT .pre ^^ Mount file-system We need first file system (factory defaults) to get access to kernel and initrd image .pre # fdisk -u -l hda Disk /backup/eee/hda: 3 GB, 3997486080 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 486 cylinders, total 7807590 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /backup/eee/hda1 63 4803435 2409718 83 Linux /backup/eee/hda2 4819563 7759395 1469947 83 Linux /backup/eee/hda3 7775523 7775460 0 c FAT32 LBA /backup/eee/hda4 7791588 7791525 0 ef EFI FAT # mkdir 1 # mount hda 1 -o loop,offset=`expr 63 \* 512` .pre ^^ Start emulation .pre qemu -m 512 -hda hda -kernel boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21.4-eeepc -initrd boot/initramfs-eeepc.img -append "rw root=/dev/sda1" .pre ^ Links {fetchrss: http://del.icio.us/rss/dpavlin/eeepc full} |