Difference between revisions of "Installing Ubuntu 10.04 on Gumstix Overo"

Revision as of 09:11, 28 September 2010

I have installed Ubuntu 10.04 on a gumstix overo using a collection of instructions found online. A summary of the instructions is below for convenience. This is my first attempt and there are a few issues that I am going to try to resolve.

I used an ubuntu 10.04 desktop machine as my working environment for these instructions.

1. Install rootstock: ‘sudo apt-get install rootstock qemu’

Rootstock is a utility used to make a rootFS for a port Qemu is required and for some reason was not installed at the same time

2. make rootfs using rootstock. This may take several hours

I used the following command but doing ‘man rootstock’ will give you a list of advanced commands I set my distribution with -d to lucid because I wanted ubuntu 10.04

the openssh-server will allow you to connect your gumstix to the internet and ssh in

‘sudo rootstock -f “Gumstix” -l “gumstix” -p “overo” -n “Gumstix Overo Ubuntu” -s lxde,gdm,openssh-server,x11vnc -t “America/Vancouver” –serial ttyS2 -d lucid –locale en_US.UTF-8′

Note 1: the user gumstix and password overo do not work because the user does not get created properly. More on how to deal with that later

Note 3: the lxde,gdm is good for a minimal install for use on a small device with limited power and storage space. Good for a headless system.

Link for more info on making a rootfs https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RootfsFromScratch

3. Get MLO and u-boot from this link http://www.sakoman.com/feeds/omap3/glibc/images/overo/201009091145/

4. Get your kernel u-image This kernel is based on the 2.6.34 kernel. Newer and older kernels should work but you will have to find modules for that kernel. (see step 8 ) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/211887/Ubuntu/uImage-2.6.34-r88-overo.bin

5. Format your microSD card as per usual http://www.gumstix.net/Documentation/view/Overo-Setup-and-Programming/Creating-a-bootable-microSD-card/109.html

6. put MLO, u-boot, u-image on microSD card boot partition

7. extract generated rootfs to second partition

8. Download and extract modules and copy them to second partition (where you extracted the rootfs) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/211887/Ubuntu/modules-2.6.34-r88-overo.tgz

9. On the second partition open the /etc/shadow file. ‘sudo gedit /path/to/second/partition/etc/shadow’ Delete the ‘*’ for the root entry. This will allow you to login as root and create a user.

Note: remember to put the ‘*’ back after you have created a user so someone can’t login as root and screw up your system

10. open the ‘/etc/network/interfaces’ file. ‘sudo gedit /path/to/second/partition/etc/network/interfaces’ add the following code to the bottom auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp

You can now unmount the microSD card, place it in the gumstix and boot to it.

Login using serial console using the gumstix instructions in the link below or you can plug an ethernet card in and ssh in http://www.gumstix.net/Documentation/view/Overo-Setup-and-Programming/Getting-started/109.html

11. login as root and then create a user for yourself and give yourself sudo sudo adduser youruser sudo adduser youruser sudo sudo apt-get install nano nano /etc/shadow

add the ‘*’ back in that we removed earlier log out as root

12. log in as your user open the /etc/apt/sources.list file

add the following lines if they are not present deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports lucid-updates main deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports lucid-security main then close the file

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

13. Have fun