Debian Squeeze on 'V' and 'X' Series (LS-WXL and others)

From NAS-Central Buffalo - The Linkstation Wiki

Revision as of 10:36, 1 May 2011

Credits

This is based on Debian Lenny on LS-CHLv2 and Open Stock Firmware LS-XHL and was published first here [1] by user benoqkuke.

What will you get?

You will not have to open your box (at least not unless you make a fatal mistake)!
You will have a Debian Squeeze userland and the stock Buffalo kernel of your already installed firmware.
So it is not a full replacement of Buffalos firmware, but mostly. ;-)
To have a "complete" Debian Squeeze installation one would need to replace the kernel also. But user benoqkuke hasn't managed to build his own kernel (newer than 2.6.31) yet. So stay tuned, if you want to have a more recent kernel also.

What you need beforehand

You have to be able to use the root account on the NAS.
You can use [2] CHL-v2/XHL 1.37 Mod 1 firmware to do that.

Debootstrap

You need to install debootstrap.
To be able to do this, you need to download the package.
Log on as user root on your box and and execute this:

  wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_1.0.30_all.deb
  dpkg -i debootstrap_1.0.30_all.deb

To install the new rootfs into a directory "debian-squeeze" execute this:

  mkdir debian-squeeze
  debootstrap --verbose --arch armel squeeze debian-squeeze http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian

You may want to select a mirror nearby yourself for faster downloads.

When you see I: Base system installed successfully. the roots FS is almost ready.

Personalize the deboostrap

You need to have some other stuff to be able to boot off the boostrap.

Copy the initrd to the chroot environment:

  cp /boot/initrd.buffalo debian-squeeze/tmp

Chroot on Debian Squeeze:

  LANG=C chroot debian-squeeze /bin/bash

First of all update the package database to have the correct GPG-keys:

 apt-get update

Copy kernel modules from the linkstations initrd to the /lib/module folder:

  cd /tmp
  dd if=initrd.buffalo of=initrd.gz ibs=64 skip=1
  gunzip initrd.gz
  mkdir INITRD
  mount -t ext2 -o loop initrd INITRD 
  cp -R INITRD/lib/modules/2.6.31.8-svn22059 /lib/modules/
  umount INITRD
  rmdir INITRD
  rm initrd*

Configure locale: Suggestion is to install at least the en_US.UTF-8 and your native language locale (e.g. it_IT.UTF-8, de_DE.UTF-8, etc).

  apt-get install locales
  dpkg-reconfigure locales

If apt-get complains that pts isn't accessible: ignore it or mount devpts (mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts).

Editing /etc/fstab (with vi or nano):

  # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
  #
  # file system    mount point   type    options                  dump pass
  /dev/sda2        /             xfs     defaults,noatime         0    1
  /dev/sda1        /boot         ext3    ro,nosuid,nodev          0    2
  /dev/sda5        none          swap    sw                       0    0
  /dev/sda6        /mnt/disk1    xfs     defaults,noatime         0    0
  proc             /proc         proc    defaults                 0    0
  devpts           /dev/pts      devpts  gid=4,mode=620 	   0    0
  tmpfs            /tmp          tmpfs   defaults                 0    0
  sysfs            /sys          sysfs   defaults                 0    0

Create disk1 in mnt:

  mkdir /mnt/disk1

Edit /etc/network/interfaces to match your LAN configuration.

If you use DHCP, simply request an IP on eth0 an eth1:

  # Used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8). See the interfaces(5) manpage or
  # /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples for more information.
  
  # We always want the loopback interface.
  auto lo
  iface lo inet loopback
  
  auto eth0
  iface eth0 inet dhcp
  
  auto eth1
  iface eth1 inet dhcp

If you have static IP: Make sure to use the correct interface name, otherwise your Linkstation may boot up but will not get an IP address. Check etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules for this.

  # Used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8). See the interfaces(5) manpage or
  # /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples for more information.
  
  # We always want the loopback interface.
  auto lo
  iface lo inet loopback
  
  auto eth0
  iface eth0 inet static
       address 192.168.1.6
       network 192.168.1.0
       netmask 255.255.255.0
       gateway 192.168.1.1

Set /etc/hostname

  echo > /etc/hostname MYNAS

Edit /etc/hosts to resolve your hostname

  127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain localhost
  127.0.0.1       MYNAS
  # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
  ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
  fe00::0 ip6-localnet
  ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
  ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
  ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
  ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

Install sshd:

  apt-get install --no-install-recommends openssh-server

Change root password:

  passwd root

Check that root login is enable in /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

  grep PermitRootLogin /etc/ssh/sshd_config 

should show a line "PermitRootLogin yes".

Clean up the package database (this reduces the size quite a lot)

  aptitude clean

Prepare rootfs:

  exit
  cd debian-squeeze
  tar --numeric-owner -p -czf ../hddrootfs.buffalo.updated *

Move hddrootfs.buffalo.updated to a folder that you can access from you computer.

Download empty initrd from [3] to your lsupdater folder.

Copy hddrootfs.buffalo.updated to your lsupdater folder.

Remove initrd.img and hddrootfs.img from your lsupdater folder. (If you use 1.37mod1 kernel you just need to replace them when you copy these file)

Add debug options to lsupdate: open LSUpdater.ini and check that Flags and specialflags are set like this:

  [Flags]
  VersionCheck = 0
  NoFormatting = 1
  
  [specialflags]
  debug = 1

Update your NAS, reboot.

Now you are on Debian Squeeze !

If you configured your nas before, some settings should be saved in a tgz file: /boot/conf_save.tgz

After install

Install blstools:

  apt-get install smartmontools
  wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/blstools/releases/blstools-0.2.0.tar.gz
  tar zxf blstools-0.2.0.tar.gz
  cd blstools-0.2.0
  sudo ./install.sh

Modify /etc/init.d/lsmonitor (the line where HDDTEMP is defined) to:

  # Retrieve HDD temp
       HDDTEMP=$(smartctl -d marvell /dev/sda --all -T permissive | awk '$1 == "194" {print $10}')

Turn on bootlogging:

  # nano /etc/default/bootlogd
       BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=yes

Install xfs tools:

  # apt-get install xfsprogs