Linux My Book World II

So I bought myself a My Book World Edition II (MBWE) a while back and proceded to try and hack it so that it was infinitely more useful then then its original state. However in my excitement I may have borked it and now it sits dead as I haven't tried to unbork since my move back home from uni. Yes I know I should have listened to the warnings that it was for intermediate users only, but I figured how hard can it be, especially when they give you fairly detailed instructions.

My question to the great linux gods is could I compile a whole new linux operating system, in this case Debian as it seems to be the one recommended, and then just drop it onto one of the MBWE drives and have it work? I ask this as I'm not very comfortable with the CLI and seeing which files and folders I'm messing about with would make whole lot happier.

My idea for the re-building process would be to get a Live CD and run that on my PC with the MBWE drive attached internally. Could I then run a virtual machine copy of the MBWE to test my scripts and things before I finalise the lot and shove the HDD back in the MBWE?

 

This looks like it could be useful.

 

It might be useful but it also looks really scary and confusing. It looks especially scary as it mentions serial ports at several points. I would be voicing all these questions on the wikidot MBWE hack website but it seems kinda dead compared to here, also my current queries seem kinda generic to linux and old hardware atm.

 

Well thinks like the MBWE differ vastly to a regular PC, I highly doubt bootstrapping to the hard disk and putting it back in will work. And you will also have to mess around with cross-compilers which are a complete pain on any distro I have found other than Gentoo. I really think your best bet would be using that howto

 

gah, looks like I'll have to bite the bullet and learn how to work the CLI properly and some proper linux commands

 

If you find a command you don’t know you can run

Code:

man [command]

or

Code:

info [command]

 

hehe, looks like I lucked out and didnt brick my MBWE addition after all and after hard re-setting the admin password I have SSH access back. I still have no idea how to get clutch, transmission, ftp and samba running. Looks like its time learn...

EDIT: god damit! I swear I have a linux curse. So after getting access back I decide to redo all the work I had previously done just to make sure I've done it right.
1, make optware work, check
2, install nano, fail
I do this:

Code:

[root@MyBookWorld init.d]# /opt/bin/ipkg install nano
Package nano (2.1.2-1) installed in /opt/ is up to date.
Nothing to be done
Successfully terminated.

and all seems to be good until I try and comment out mionet:

Code:

[root@MyBookWorld init.d]# nano /etc/init.d/post_network_start.sh
-bash: nano: command not found

Now if nano is installed successfully how come the nano command wont work? And I would use the inbuilt editor vi but i have no god dam idea how it works.

EDIT 2:
Ok this is going to turn into a blog/log type thing as I bumble my way through this process and hope I dont kill anything. So I killed my ssh connection to find some basic linux commands and basic faq on how to work vi and after connecting back in it took me way too long to figure out why chmod and vi weren't working.... Stupid su POS and stupid me for not realising sooner. But so far, apart from nano bluntly refusing to work it seems to be going well.

 

You could try removing nano with ipkg then reinstalling it.

 

Thanks for the suggestion but it didn't work. What I have figured out is that if I type

Code:

# /opt/bin/nano /etc/init.d/post_network_start.sh

It works fine, does this mean that the nano command hasn't been accepted by the shell? And if so how do I fix it?

This is the page I used to install optware and you've already seen the command I used to install nano.

EDIT: I may have a more serious problem. Help suggests using man and info commands but doesn't list them in the commands section.

Code:

[root@MyBookWorld /]# help
GNU bash, version 3.1.17(1)-release (arm-unknown-linux-gnu)
These shell commands are defined internally.  Type `help' to see this list.
Type `help name' to find out more about the function `name'.
Use `info bash' to find out more about the shell in general.
Use `man -k' or `info' to find out more about commands not in this list.

A star (*) next to a name means that the command is disabled.

 JOB_SPEC [&]                       (( expression ))
 . filename [arguments]             :
 [ arg... ]                         [[ expression ]]
 alias [-p] [name[=value] ... ]     bind [-lpvsPVS] [-m keymap] [-f fi
 break [n]                          builtin [shell-builtin [arg ...]]
 caller [EXPR]                      case WORD in [PATTERN [| PATTERN].
 cd [-L|-P] [dir]                   command [-pVv] command [arg ...]
 compgen [-abcdefgjksuv] [-o option complete [-abcdefgjksuv] [-pr] [-o
 continue [n]                       declare [-afFirtx] [-p] [name[=val
 dirs [-clpv] [+N] [-N]             echo [-neE] [arg ...]
 enable [-pnds] [-a] [-f filename]  eval [arg ...]
 exec [-cl] [-a name] file [redirec exit [n]
 export [-nf] [name[=value] ...] or false
 fc [-e ename] [-nlr] [first] [last for NAME [in WORDS ... ;] do COMMA
 for (( exp1; exp2; exp3 )); do COM function NAME { COMMANDS ; } or NA
 getopts optstring name [arg]       hash [-lr] [-p pathname] [-dt] [na
 help [-s] [pattern ...]            history [-c] [-d offset] [n] or hi
 if COMMANDS; then COMMANDS; [ elif kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -si
 let arg [arg ...]                  local name[=value] ...
 logout                             popd [+N | -N] [-n]
 printf [-v var] format [arguments] pushd [dir | +N | -N] [-n]
 pwd [-LP]                          read [-ers] [-u fd] [-t timeout] [
 readonly [-af] [name[=value] ...]  return [n]
 select NAME [in WORDS ... ;] do CO set [--abefhkmnptuvxBCHP] [-o opti
 shift [n]                          shopt [-pqsu] [-o long-option] opt
 source filename [arguments]        test [expr]
 time [-p] PIPELINE                 times
 trap [-lp] [arg signal_spec ...]   true
 type [-afptP] name [name ...]      typeset [-afFirtx] [-p] name[=valu
 ulimit [-SHacdfilmnpqstuvx] [limit umask [-p] [-S] [mode]
 unalias [-a] name [name ...]       unset [-f] [-v] [name ...]
 until COMMANDS; do COMMANDS; done  variables - Some variable names an
 wait [n]                           while COMMANDS; do COMMANDS; done
 { COMMANDS ; }

But then again vi isnt there either and it works fine

 

Ah ha, I know what the problem is, the shell doesn’t look in /opt/bin for stuff to execute. Do this (don’t type the comments after the #):

Code:

echo $PATH   # this is where the shell looks for the binaries to execute. If /opt/bin isn’t in there do this:
PATH=/opt/bin:$PATH # this adds /opt/bin to your execute path at highest priority.
nano ~/.bash_profile # this will open up the file that is executed when you login

If there is already something in that file look for a PATH=blah section and add /opt/bin: after the =. If it is a new file or there isn’t already a definition of $PATH add PATH=/opt/bin:$PATH. It should all be working now.

info and man aren’t built in to the shell, they are external binaries. If you get a command not found error try installing man and texinfo packages. But be warned they will take up a lot of space on your device, I’m not sure whether you a booting from a HDD or some built-in media so it may not be relevant.

The help command only shows commands built-in to the shell. I have 2882 files in /*/bin, it couldn’t possibly tell me about all of those.

 

trust me you want to learn how to use vim properly, vimtutor (terminal command) is a good place to start

 

Or Emacs which I find to be more powerful and better to use.

 

in theory either will be a major improvment over any other text editor, idealy you would be an expert in both before deciding which you prefer.

 

I think I could argue ViM would be a step down

 

i think that road has been traveled down to many times, in both directions

wow emacs was a bigger download then my damm kernel was (and took 5 times as long to compile) and just fells unnatural (emacs built in tutor)

 

That would be because you built everything in, I am guessing you just did ./configure --prefix=/usr/local. And it’s obviously going to feel unnatural if you are used to ViM.

 

Look can we not start and Vi vs Emacs war in this thread, the main concern I had was that the shell wasnt recognising any new commands for programmes I installed. How ever what Fophillips suggested and my friend in Reading diagnosed and fixed for me via the powers of the interwebs. And to satisfy everyone I will probably keep on using Vi as this guide tells me all the basics I need to work Vi and seeing as I'm using this guide to teach me the basics of Linux I have no problem having another web page open whilst I play with the ssh CLI.

 

hmm sorry probably wasnt the place to start one of those disscussions

 

YEA!!! So after a rather unsuccessful weekend which was dominated by the girlfriend I had an incredibly productive lunch break. Unfortunately I hadn't forwarded my port 80 on my router so I was kinda working blind but whence I was home success, both transmission with its helper scripts and clutch we working. Now all I need is a more user friendly method of file management and I'll be happy.

EDIT: scratch that, both clutch and transmission have decided to die on me. Transmission is apparently failing to connect to the socket even though version 1.2+ doesn't use a socket and I'm running 1.22. And clutch is just failing. Apparently "Connection Failed
Could not connect to the server. You may need to reload the page to reconnect." Which is bizzar as the clutch page loads and thats hosted on the server. Maybe I should just give up on linux after I get this working.

If I ever get it working....

 

dont give up, its all a learning experience and we have all run into snags at some point.