From: Pascal <downs.bo192_at_gadz.org>
Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 00:58:56 +0200

I wrote :
> > > I had to make a linux boot/root disk to get USB _and_ long
> > > filenames on my Win NT PC at work !
> >
> > Could you give a brief tutorial for creating that disk?
> > or put the diskimage somewhere?
>
> I cannot upload the diskimage, but I can mail it to someone

Thanks to Mike Holden, you can download the diskimage :
http://www.mikeholden.org/~rockbox/bootroot4p.img (~1.5Mo)

NOTE: It was designed for french keyboard (azerty) so get ready for
some exercise : a<->q, z<->w, m<->"," , "_"<->"8", "/"<->"!" or numpad
With Linux there's a workaround for it (see below).

It was tested with various PC and my AJB Recorder.
You'll need some basic knowledge of Linux to use it. As you'll login
as root, you can easily destroy all your data so be careful !!!

- "cp" (copy) always overwrites without confirmation !
- if your Archos is connected at boot time, data is in /mnt/archos/
  else mount it with "mount /mnt/archos"
  (on a SCSI system, I think you'll have to specify the device...)
- usually, you'll have C: in /mnt/win_c, mount other drives by hand :
  e.g. "mkdir /mnt/xxx ; mount -t vfat /dev/hda3 /mnt/xxx"
  "mount -t ntfs ..." for NTFS (read only)
- if you don't know your partitions, you can guess them with
  "fdisk /dev/hda" then press "p" and "q" (also try /dev/hdb,...)
- "umount /mnt/archos" before you "reboot"
- auto-completion of command line is working ('tab' key) : nice for
long files and directories names
- 4 virtual consoles (Alt + F1 to F4) to monitor copy's progress...
- 2 lines' tutorial for adventurous msdos users :
  "ls ..." and "ls -l ..." is "dir ..." ; "cd ..." is "cd ..."
  "cp ... ..." is "copy ... ..." ; "cp -R ... ..." is "xcopy ... ..."



*** Windows users
Create the floppy with rawrite or rawrite2
e.g. http://www.tux.org/pub/dos/rawrite/rawrite2.exe (~17ko)
1) rename the bootroot4p.img to a short name
 (rawrite seems to dislike long names...)
2) launch rawrite in a box and follow the instructions
3) boot with the floppy

Note: This file travels a lot ;o), and maybe you'll get a few bytes
of garbage at the end of the file (size > 1474560). Never mind :
rawrite will write until last track (79) and abort with "Controller
has failed" but the floppy is fine anyway.

If there is a need, I can make a US keyboard version (if my
'provider/uploader' is ok :).
But if you use it, then you most probably are a Linux user (see below)



*** Linux users : to get a nice US keyboard (else jump to 6)
1) retrieve the compressed root file system at offset 500k
  $ dd if=bootroot4p.img of=rootfile.gz skip=500 bs=1k
2) mount the root file system as a loop device (you may need to be
root)
  $ gunzip rootfile.gz
  $ mount -o loop -t ext2 rootfile /mnt/disk
3) edit the /mnt/disk/etc/rc.d/rc.S and comment out the loadkmap...
4) dismount the root file system (so changes are updated in the file)
  $ umount /mnt/disk
  $ gzip -9 rootfile
5) put the root file system back at its offset in the image disk
  $ dd if=rootfile.gz of=bootroot4p.img seek=500 bs=1k
(size of image disk must be < 1474560)
6) put the image disk on a floppy
  $ dd if=bootroot4p.img of=/dev/fd0 count=1440 bs=1k
7) boot with the floppy


Pascal.
Received on 2003-05-01