FTP Installation directly to F: (working! my experiences)

[Fat Elvis]

specs: Xbox v1.0 with 120GB WD HD and Xenium Chip OSv1.1+supplied gentoox bios

My Problems:

• "F" installation fails. (no idea why)
  Not enough space for "E" install.
  Can't do a native install.

I've been reading a lot of posts on that needs to be done to get Gentoox working on the F drive. In my case, for some reason installing to F always failed at the point of "testing" after formatting and mounting - but I wasn't about to give up - and I didn't have enough space to do the install to "E" and I couldn't format "F" to do a native install.

Anyway, it's working now and there wasn't much to it...

First off, I FTP'd the following files to "E":

• gentooxx.xbe
  linuxboot.cfg
  vmlinuz
  swap

Then I FTP'd the following files to "F":

• rootfs
  swap (yes, swap again)

Then, after looking at the source for f-drive, I did the following on *another* working linux box:

I put initrd.gz from the DISTRO directory onto my existing linux box, gunzipped it and mounted it via loopback. Then I went into the mounted directory and used sed to change all instances of "part50" into "part55" in the linuxrc file, replacing the existing one with the changed one. Then I unmounted the initrd image, gzipped it and FTP'd the initrd.gz image to the "E" drive on the xbox.

I booted linux (via bios or XBE) and it came up without a hitch. I ran thru the "firstboot" script and everything was fine - and then I fixed /etc/fstab to mount the swap on F instead of E, rebooted and removed the "swap" file from E once the system came back up.

Basically, take a look at the f-drive shell script and manually do the main points:

http://gentoox.shallax.com/b0x/f-drive.b0x

(Sorry if the process is vague - but if you can understand the source of the f-drive.b0x file then it's pretty much all in there - it's just a matter of applying the general ideas.)

[nobspangle]

you could also do all this using the stardust CD then you don't need a second linux box.

Stick the rootfs and swap on F and everything else on E, boot stardust and ctrl+c out of the installer.

gunzip and mount initrd and patch the linuxrc

mount rootfs and edit fstab

then boot gentoox from the hard drive

you may want to chroot over to the rootfs to do the patching so you have nano available.

[Fat Elvis]

That exact thought occured to me, for sure... I just happened to have another box available.

[Lpop]

Hi,

I have also not enough space on E:
so I want to install also on F:
but i don't understand this .

I have only one Xbox. so i need the stardust.iso ?
But what means:
???
gunzip and mount initrd and patch the linuxrc
mount rootfs and edit fstab
???

Ps: i don't want to install gentooxx native. i want to keep my games on f: I don'T want to loose the games ;-=


Regard lpop.

[ShALLaX]

I'm actually mighty impressed that someone has had the initiative to figure this out for themselves *thumbs up*

[fixedsys]

I had to reply to this thread. What I could not beleave is how I was mislead time and time again. Anyway, I will give this a try but will be a few days from now as I am out of free time to work on this. At least now I can save the magic update time as long as I can replicate what Fat Elivs did. Having close to zero coding experience it will be interesting to see if I can pull this off.

*** Edit 1-6-2006
I had a working G: drive install by Shallax educating me on how to kill the stardust install and reprogram it to install at a certain sector on my g: drive then fire up the install and let it do native F: (which was my G: I had created with xbox partitioner) All was well but my mod chip's bios did not recognize my custom G: and thought all of the rest of the drive was F:. It worked find until I put one too many movie on F: and it overwrote my install. Now that I stopped using gentoox for game server I can go with the virutaul filesystem load but I want rootfs and swap on F:\


I have been doing what nobspangle had advised. I am teaching my self as I go. I so far got linuxrc edited and back into initrd.gz.

Now I wish to mount and edit fstab in rootfs. I figured out how to mount and unmount initrd but stuck on how to mount roofs. (I am currently using putty to remote into the current bash supplied by CTRL-C at the "do you want to initilize your drive" ) I hope to figure it out soon b4 I fall asleep.

[fixedsys]

Well I cannot say that was easy but I figured it out.
I followed the process nobspangle pointed out.
(I did not need to use chroot - and still do not know what nano was)

I was able to make the edits and Gentoox Pro 2.0a is running - just loaded successfully and waiting for a login!

If you know the commands it is easy.
http://www.google.com is what I used to figure things out.
I still do not fully understand the mount command but I got it to work on mounting the initrd and rootfs.

This solution is probably best for me. I found in the installation manual you can use command " magic newfs" to create new file systems 100-4000mb. This will work for me and now I dont have to worry about over written partitions I had to hack.

The two commands I used to mount initrd and rootfs :

mount -t ext2 -o loop /mnt/e/initrd /mnt/initrd
mount -t auto -o loop /mnt/f/rootfs /mnt/rootfs

I then used "vi" to edit initrd and rootfs.

Just launched magic and am updating Xserver and xwindows.
All is working great thus far.

[ShALLaX]

This is pretty pointless now considering Resctoox provides a script that does it all for you. Just boot it then run "f-drive".

[fixedsys]

Pointless? Nah - I did not know how to do any of that and taught myself how. So I was able to learn. That was the point.

Also I would have to had to ftp upload all to E:\ then use resctoox.
Before that, I would have had to free 800mb on E:.
With seeing what had to be edited to get it to work using resctoox is pointless. Aside from searching forums and "new to linux" tutorials, all that had to be done was change a "0" to a 5 and a letter "e" to "f". Thats all. The it took to learnhow to make it work is not wasted time imo.

Having virtual file systems on f: is so much better now for my situation.
My mob chip likes to reclaim all of the remander of the drive as F:.
Mod chip, if youing F: and G: option, does not allow for custom partitions.
How you showed me to break the startdust install, change the sector it would start the native install in, then restart it was brilliant and I thank you for it. Unfortunatly once I filled F:\, with stuff beyound the last 30GB I allocated, my gentoox install was destroyed. Until they can have a better bios that can have a smaller G:\ parttion I will stick with your virtual FileSystem method.

I am just slighty embarrased by my self. I remember how I would get angry when information was not giving to me right away. I now understand what you were doing was forcing us to learn; which was a good thing. Secondly it finnally dawned on me why this F: drive install could not me made default; legality. This is because you can load Gentoox on a stock xbox and not violate any law what so ever and possibly keep the warrenty intact (key word "possible" if you can resoftmod back to original bios)

I was in "instant gratification mode" when I first found gentoox. I wish my mind set was what it is now compared to what it was. Thank you for all the help. And of course, thank you for your continued work on GentooX.