How do i do a native E installation?

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DarkManX4lf
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How do i do a native E installation?

Post by DarkManX4lf »

ok, as the topic says how do i do one? i read in another forum on this website (viewtopic.php?t=202&highlight=native+e) that it is possible but shallax didnt want to release how to do it because ppl would blame him for nuking their drive, but i dont care i'll take all the blame, so how do you do a native e installation?
nobspangle
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Post by nobspangle »

A native E drive installation means two things.
1) formatting your E partition to reiserfs or ext3
2) flashing your bios to crommwell

Once you have done this your box will only support linux.
It will be pretty much impossible to return the drive to it's original state without first taking a sector backup using a program like Acronis true image. Or a maybe a hex editor like winhex

If you are going to do this you might as well go the whole hog and format your entire drive.

The steps are
flash your bios
load up stardust
partition your drive with fdisk
format at least 1 reiserfs or ext3 partition and 1 swap partition
unrar the distro.rar
mount the rootfs
copy the contents of your rootfs into the native partition
reboot and enjoy
If you keep an open mind, will your brain fall out?
DarkManX4lf
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Post by DarkManX4lf »

aight that sounds good, what about updating the linux kernel? the the latest one, how do you do that?
nobspangle
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Post by nobspangle »

what do you mean by "the latest one"
if you mean the latest gentoox kernel which is 2.4.22 with openmosix support just run magic.
if you want kernel 2.4.24 (which is the latest 2.4 kernel) you need to download the source, get the xbox patches and compile
if you mean the latest kernel available (2.6.1) I don't think the patches are ready for xbox yet.
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DarkManX4lf
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Post by DarkManX4lf »

actually i think the patches are out (maybe) because on this post viewtopic.php?t=686&highlight=2+6
Trogdor said he did installthe new kernel i just dont know how to do it
nobspangle
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Post by nobspangle »

so you mean 2.6
If you read that post you'll see trogdor is using it on his PC not his xbox
there are patches in the cvs tree on sourceforge. So it may work.
If you keep an open mind, will your brain fall out?
PhoTwenny
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Post by PhoTwenny »

OK I tried the below:
nobspangle wrote: The steps are
flash your bios
load up stardust
partition your drive with fdisk
format at least 1 reiserfs or ext3 partition and 1 swap partition
unrar the distro.rar
mount the rootfs
copy the contents of your rootfs into the native partition
reboot and enjoy
but had no enjoyment after the reboot. The GentooX BIOS does not let me select my hard disk anymore. Its a new disk. I plugged it in, booted stardust, made a 30M /boot partition (ext2fs), a 256M swap, and a rest-of-the-20G reiserfs partition for root. then unrar, mount, copy the distro. but I am unable to select my hard drive from the BIOS.

What did I do wrong?

My thoughts...

- do I need the plain Cromwell BIOS, or will the GentooX modified one work?

- do I need the /boot partition to be fatx instead?

- do i need to partition the disk like the original xbox drive?

What is it that the Bios isn't finding?
nobspangle
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Post by nobspangle »

the boot files (kernel, initrd etc.) need to go on a paticular partition (I think it's hda1) I think the boot partition may have to be reiserfs.
Also you will have to edit a file inside the initrd to make it boot from the right partition.
Have a look at Shallax's magic f-drive script, that should give you some clues.
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ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

Its not safe to do a native E installation, instead youd have to format the WHOLE drive to linux, otherwise you risk normal Xbox applications overwriting linux information.
The original Xbox adaptation of Gentoo
PhoTwenny
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Post by PhoTwenny »

Shallax: I'm not trying to do a native E install.. the second post was describing a full disk install, which is what I'm attempting so I replied. Perhaps a new thread would have been better...

Right now /boot is hda1, ext2. I'll try changing it to reiserfs. Does the BIOS only read reiserfs and fatx?

The linux install is on hda3, reiserfs (hda2 is swap). I'm hoping I can leave it there, since the unrar of the distro takes forever. I made /boot a separate partition in case I had to change it around, which apparently I do :)

I'll check out the magic f-drive script and learn more about initrd.
ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

Right o, i stopped reading after the second line, hence my reply.
The original Xbox adaptation of Gentoo
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