Keystroke guide to a factory reinstall
by Alan BellSome people have been asking about the exact factory configuration of the webbook, so here it is, keystroke by keystroke guide to building a webbook.
Insert the Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.04.1 Alternate CD into a USB CDROM drive
return (to select English)
F4, down cursor, return (to select OEM mode)
return (to select English)
up, return to select United Kingdom
right, return to not detect the keyboard
return, return to select UK keyboard
down to select eth1 the wired network card
return to cancel the search
return to continue
down return to not configure the network at this time
change the host name to webbook (not sure this was always done for every batch - some probably have ubuntu as the hostname)
select guided-use entire disk
return to do the partitioning
left return to write the partion to disk
oem return, oem return to set the password of the oem user
make a cup of coffee.
return, to finish the installation
return to select UTC
return to reboot
remove CDrom
let the system boot up.
Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to a console
oem, oem to log in
wget http://webbookblog.com/buildscript.sh
chmod +x buildscript.sh
sudo ./buildscript.sh
oem (the password for the oem user)
y to download a load of updates
y to install the ppa stuff without verification
agree to the SUN Java license
now it goes through another bunch of updates
oem-config-prepare
halt
Now it should restart with the first user wizard. The only difference is that Virtual Box is not installed, this is because there seems to be a problem right now with the version of the VirtualBox kernel module so it won’t install without errors. After doing the above procedure I ran <code>apt-get clean</code> to save some space used partimage to take a compressed image of the drive, this just about fits on a 1GB USB wristvault which should end up being the recovery media which you will be able to get from Elonex. We could do recovery media for different operating systems too, so you plug in the USB key and boot from it to reimage the drive as OpenSuse/Fedora/Debian/Gentoo etc. Would you be interested in that?
This sounds fantastic Alan! Thanks for the info. I actually wrote a small article on my website regarding this: http://www.philwc.com/index.php?section=Webbook&article=Reinstalling+Ubuntu
Hi.
I think that I’m a happy chappy! (Partially) using the above procedure, my webbokk is more or less back to it’s original state… I think! What I did was :
1/. Reinstalled Ubuntu in safe graphic mode (the oem install didn’t work)
2/. Followed your steps :
let the system boot up.
Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to a console
oem, oem to log in
wget http://webbookblog.com/buildscript.sh
chmod +x buildscript.sh
sudo ./buildscript.sh
oem (the password for the oem user)
y to download a load of updates
y to install the ppa stuff without verification
agree to the SUN Java license
now it goes through another bunch of updates
oem-config-prepare
halt
** Some observations :
a) Due to the time for the install to complete the screen went blank a couple of times. Do not panick! Just press a non-destructive key e.g [CTRL]
b) The oem-config was not available. loaded it with “sudo apt-get install oem-config”.
c) Just change user/password to that entered on the initial install.
WIFII worked straight away… once I figured out how to connect!
Sound is fine.
Will now play with the software which looks promising. Maybe I will feel confident enough to remove windows from my desktop in a couple of months… the only application which I thing I need is to sync with my phone. Is there another organiser type program you would reccomend. the one supplied appears to be a bit flaky with regards to window sizes and it is already driving me med. Will send some pics of the WAFC website (http://www.wafc.net) live update in a couple of weeks… my previous post refers…
Hi All
For anybody wanting to do this, who doesn’t have a USB CD-ROM, you can install using a USB memory stick, again 1 1GB stick will do the job.
Unfortunately, you can’t just copy the contents of the alternat CD to the USB drive, mainly because the kernel on the ‘alternate’ iso doesn’t include support vfat/ext filesystems.
1. Format the USB drive as VFAT, which it probably already is
2. Form the Alternate CD-Rom copy the contents of the ‘isolinux’ directory, to the root folder of the USB disk, eg /media/usbdisk/
3. Rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg
4. Create a directory on the usb drive called ‘install’
5. Download the initrd.gz and vmlinuz files from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/ into the newly created ‘install’ directory
6. Copy the ubuntu 8.04 Alternate CD iso you wish to install into the root folder of the usb disk. ***** NOTE ***** Copy the iso, NOT the contents of the iso
Now when booting from USB it will automatically find and mount the iso for install. The ‘hd-media’ install kernel contains all the necessary kernel modules for accessing different hardware/filesystem types and so on.
As an aside. The same process can be carried out for 8.10 Intrepid, except you need to download initrd.gz and vmlinuz from :
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/
Cheers, I hope some find this addtional info useful.
I do have 1 request, can we have a buildscript.sh for Intrepid? or will the current 1 work for intrepid, I don’t know as I haven’t had the need to try it, yet !!
Hi,
Is there anything that needs doing to make the webbook ’see’ a replacement larger hard disk? I have a 320G Toshiba one which I was going to partition to multiboot with XP (I know, but if I use XP in virtualbox it’s too tempting to do something else interesting while it’s working, and I’ve successfully hung the webbook a couple of times doing that!). The Webbook setup doesn’t seem to see the disk, and starting an XP-SP2 install doesn’t see it either.
Thanks for any suggestions
I don’t think anyone has had success with anything over 160GB.
Drat!
looks like that one’ll be in a caddy then. Is there any info around about the 160GB adaption? any disks that have been tested etc?
BTW if you’re answering work-related blog comments at 10pm you’re working too hard!
Cheers,
Jim Deakin
a caddy should work fine, I am using a 500GB USB disk with no issue. There was some discussion on the size limit at the end of this thread http://webbookblog.com/thanks-for-the-memory/
Hello
I have been reading your excellent blog and I have managed to install Linux on both the second partition on my hard drive and on various external USB cards. I have a few issues with the screen resolution.
I bought mine from Ebay with Windows XP so I don’t have the original Linux Ubuntu CD. Do yu know where I could get one or download one from please?
The Elonex website just tells you to phone support for Linux.Not very helpful that. I can get round most of the problems but I think the Elonex CD would help
Regards
Ask for a “wristvault”, seeing as how there isn’t a cd drive!
I know Alan has made a lovely Intrepid one, which I’m sure Sue will tell you works wonderfully…
Just pop it in the side, reboot, and watch all of your data erase itself in front of your eyes. One cup of tea later, and you have a pretty ubuntu desktop!
hi got a webbook xp ive put Ubuntu 8.10 try to do the wget bit at the top of this page and i get E: couldnt find package elonex-config
the install has failde .Exit code 100
any ideas please
mike robertson
mike@ubuntu:~$ wget http://webbookblog.com/buildscript.sh
–2008-12-10 22:38:26– http://webbookblog.com/buildscript.sh
Resolving webbookblog.com… 84.12.94.124
Connecting to webbookblog.com|84.12.94.124|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 3741 (3.7K) [text/x-sh]
Saving to: `buildscript.sh.3′
100%[======================================>] 3,741 –.-K/s in 0.09s
2008-12-10 22:38:27 (42.2 KB/s) - `buildscript.sh.3′ saved [3741/3741]
mike@ubuntu:~$ chmod +x buildscript.sh
mike@ubuntu:~$ sudo ./buildscript.sh
[sudo] password for mike:
This program will update the Webbook’s software to contain
the Elonex branding, 3G dialler and other additional software
packages. You will need to enter your password for this update to
to be successful. Please type “yes” to continue or “no” to
cancel this operation.
yes
Thank you. Your Webbook will now be updated.
# deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/wellington-team/ubuntu hardy main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/wellington-team/ubuntu hardy main is already in /etc/apt/sources.list, moving on…
Updating the Software Repository’s Database …
lsof: WARNING: can’t stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/mike/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
Reading package lists… Done
Database updated successfully.
Installing new packages …
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Couldn’t find package elonex-config
The install has failed. Exit Code: 100
looks like something went wrong, you could try running the script again, or post a comment describing the problem at webbookblog.com
mike@ubuntu:~$
I have just re-installed Ubuntu 8.10 on a new 250G Hitachi (PC World brown box) using the advise and replies in this thread.
Many thanks all.
I used the “Safe Graphics” method.
On the way - because the OEM method did not work I suspected my USB DVD device may have been faulty so tried successfully to install Debian but had some problems with the display due to incompetence. Similarly with SUSE.
I think I will stick with this far a while now.
I have Ubuntu 8.10 on a desktop as well btw.
James
Hi
I put some note down on installing OpenOffice3, and they’ve gone??
Cheers
not gone, just waiting moderation because it included a link. Should be there now. Tell you what, now you have registered I will upgrade you and you can repost the instructions as a main topic.
ok, you are now an author , which I think means you can post blog items and publish them yourself. Let me know if you get stuck.
Hi Alan
Ok, thanks for that, I’ll have a go at creating it as a main topic.
I might try and add a couple of screenshots as well, so it may be a little later today.
Cheers
Hi Alan
Not being overly familiar with wordpress, I can’t seem to find an option to create new blog entries/articles
Cheers
Tony
Hi Alan
Ignore that last post, sussed it out. Well, hopefully it’s not too bad for my first article.
Cheers
looks great, well done!