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Technology news and Jobs 
The Linux distillery Restoring and updating the ASUS Eee Linux PC
The Linux distillery Restoring and updating the ASUS Eee Linux PC | Restoring and updating the ASUS Eee Linux PC |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Wednesday, 19 December 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Once the files are copied over, checking the USB stick in Windows shows that the GRUB boot loader has been installed, a 0 byte file indicating the build version (2007.10.07_04.33) and a gzip’d archive containing the disk image. This is called P701L.gz and is 873Mb compressed; inside is a single file called asus_2007.10.07_04.33.img which is 2,467,594,240 bytes uncompressed. This correlates exactly with the approximately 2.5Gb disk space consumed already on the 4Gb solid-state drive when you first boot the Eee.In the BIOS, arrow over to the Boot tab. Ignore the “Boot order” section that you might expect to use; you actually need to go into “Hard Disk Drives.” Set the first drive to be your USB drive, not the device labelled “HDD:SM-SILICONMOTI”, i.e. the Silicon Motion solid state hard drive. Press F10 to save your changes and restart the system. This time your Eee screen proudly displays “Uncompressing Linux...” followed soon by “OK, booting the kernel.” If you do not see this, be sure to check you set the hard disk drive order, and failing that try re-running the ToolHelper utility. Subsequent messages announce the computer is probing devices, declaring Waiting 15 sec for USB subsystem... Trying disk sdb... Trying disk sdc... Found EEEPC-701 image on Flash Voyager [/dev/sdc]... Ready to image ASUS Eee PC 701 using build 2007.10.07_04.33. Enter “yes” to continue, anything else to reboot. Typing yes kicks off the installation, the USB stick’s activity light pumping like a disco. Installing from USB image (Estimated time required 5 minutes). Expect to write 75305 records of 32k... After a sizeable pause, more text flashes onscreen: 75305+0 records in 75305+0 records out Done... Creating user partition... Done... Formatting user partition... mke2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) mkfs.vfat 2.11 (12 Mar 2005) Ready... Press ENTER to reboot Press the enter key to reboot, and remove the USB stick (or else you’ll simply repeat the above process.) You can re-use the USB stick for any purpose, although you’ll need to use ToolHelper again to reformat it. Or, if you can spare it, I’d recommend leaving the USB stick with your Eee box and manuals and disc so you can restore it at any future time. This allows you to run free with your imagination, trying alternate operating systems – some people have replaced Xandros with Ubuntu for example – and know confidently you will always be able to go back if ever you either have to or want to. You might also want to re-enter the BIOS to revert the hard drive boot order back to the original configuration just for tidiness. While in there, I also think it’s worth altering the startup display to show the POST checks, giving you a more traditional computer startup experience. Nevertheless, booting from the hard drive causes the first run wizard to take place, just as the manual promises. CONTINUED |
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