Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Installing Debian "Wheezy" for Pogoplug/Dockstar

Just some notes on how to install Debian "Wheezy" on the Pogoplug/Dockstar:

If you google on how to install Debian on the Pogoplug/Dockstar/Seagate Goflex Home/NET, you will ultimately wind up to the url: http://projects.doozan.com/debian/

However, the script is designed for newer kernels, and may not work (the script will fail and  the logs will tell you that your "kernel is too old").

There are two ways of going about circumventing this problem:

1. Install Debian "Squeeze" and update to Wheezy:
    Find your devices's IP address and connect via SSH:
username: root password: (the password is 'stxadmin' on Seagate branded devices and 'ceadmin' on Pogoplug devices)
Partition your flash drive with fdisk:
fdisk /dev/sda # Configure partion 1 as Linux (I'd recommend making this at least 512Mb. The default bare-bones installation uses 280Mb.) # Configure partion 2 as Linux Swap (I used 256MB. Adjust according to your anticipated memory usage.) # Set partition 1 active
Download and run the Debian Squeeze installer:
cd /tmp wget http://projects.doozan.com/debian/dockstar.debian-squeeze.sh chmod +x dockstar.debian-squeeze.sh export PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin:/sbin ./dockstar.debian-squeeze.sh

Update to Wheezy:


apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade reboot
And Voila! You're running Debian Wheezy!


2. Install Arch Linux or some other Linux derivative, boot from that, login and:
Install Rescue system (this replaces the Pogoplug partition with a powerful rescue system.
cd /tmp wget http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/rescue/install_rescue.sh chmod +x install_rescue.sh ./install_rescue.sh
We also need to disable perl so the the debian-wheezy script does not bomb out. (after installing rescue)
mount -o remount,rw / chmod 666 /usr/bin/microperl rm /usr/sbin/debootstrap rm -rf /usr/share/debootstrap mount -o remount,ro /
then install Debian Wheezy as per original instructions.
cd /tmp wget http://projects.doozan.com/debian/kirkwood.debian-wheezy.sh chmod +x kirkwood.debian-wheezy.sh export PATH-$PATH:/usr/sbin:/sbin ./kirkwood.debian-wheezy.sh

This  way is only recommended when you are already running a Linux distro other than the firmware pogoplug distribution. In my case, I have my dockstar running on ArchLinux, but I wanted to try the new Debian Wheezy on it. At first try, it bombed out complaining of "kernel too old" from the log files. But when I   installed the Rescue Partition and installed wheezy again, it worked!