Seagate GoFlex Home NAS - Installing a package manager (again)

This is a redo of the previous post, with which a had a few annoying problems.

First, the symbolic links in /opt/lib on NTFS were broken on next boot (converted into plain files) generating the "file too short" errors when running ipkg command - a fix I guess would be to duplicate the .so libraries to replace the symlinks.

Then later I ran into a very odd issue with Subversion, where the repository created on NTFS would be seen as corrupted. Creating a repository temporarily in /tmp would verify ok, moving it to NTFS would have the error again.

bash-3.2# cd /home/system/GoFlex\ Home\ Personal/tmp/
bash-3.2# svnadmin create test
bash-3.2# svnadmin verify test
svnadmin: E160004: Corrupt node-revision '0.0.r0/17'
svnadmin: E160004: Missing cpath field in node-rev '0.0.r0/17'

Although I don't feel too comfortable with the complexity of the new setup, we will follow the good work done on OpenStora Forums (here), where pippone is suggesting to use a Linux partition image on the HDD and mount it as a loop device. So here we go...

* * *

Create Linux partition image

We will create a 1GB image (to hold /opt and the SVN files later on) - this will be visible through \\goflex_home\GoFlex Home Personal (system account), although when mounted it will be in use so you won't be able to delete it by accident. If you want to hide it, start the filename with a dot (.).

bash-3.2# cd /home/system/GoFlex\ Home\ Personal/

bash-3.2# dd if=/dev/zero of=ext3_linux_partition.img bs=4k count=256000
256000+0 records in 256000+0 records out 1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 15.6834 seconds, 66.9 MB/s

bash-3.2# losetup /dev/loop0 "`pwd`/ext3_linux_partition.img"
bash-3.2# losetup -a
/dev/loop0: [0800]:15206 (/home/system/GoFlex Home Personal/ext3_linux_partition.img)

bash-3.2# mkfs.ext3 /dev/loop0
mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
[...]

bash-3.2# mkdir /home/0loop0
bash-3.2# mount /dev/loop0 /home/0loop0/

bash-3.2# df -h /home/0loop0
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0            985M   18M  917M   2% /home/0loop0

bash-3.2# ls -la /home/0loop0
total 20
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root  4096 May 18 18:37 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root  1024 May 18 17:39 ..
drwx------  2 root root 16384 May 18 17:35 lost+found

What we did so far was to create the partition image, setup it up as a loop device and mount it into /home/0loop0. This is not permanent, the mount will be lost with the next boot.

Persisting the changes

To make this permanent, the same thread is suggesting to change the /etc/init.d/eo-bootfinish script. But on a second look, the start and stop sections allow for additional external scripts, and that's where we're going to create them. I've named the script with a digit prefix so we can control the order in which they are running - later on we are going to add a command to start svnserve and we want to make sure the partition is mount first.

bash-3.2# cd /etc/oe-initscripts/oe-bootfinish/start.d/

bash-3.2# cat > 0_loop0 << EOL
losetup /dev/loop0 "/home/system/GoFlex Home Personal/ext3_linux_partition.img"
mount /dev/loop0 /home/0loop0/
EOL

bash-3.2# cat 0_loop0
losetup /dev/loop0 "/home/system/GoFlex Home Personal/ext3_linux_partition.img"
mount /dev/loop0 /home/0loop0/

bash-3.2# chmod a+x 0_loop0

Issue a reboot and check it once back on:

bash-3.2# df -h /home/0loop0
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0            985M   18M  917M   2% /home/0loop0

While here, we will also prepare a shutdown script to un-mount and disconnect the loop device.

bash-3.2# cd /etc/oe-initscripts/oe-bootfinish/stop.d/

bash-3.2# cat > 9_loop0 <<EOL
umount /home/0loop0
losetup -d /dev/loop0
EOL

bash-3.2# cat 9_loop0
umount /home/0loop0
losetup -d /dev/loop0

bash-3.2# chmod a+x 9_loop0

Try running it directly to see if it does the job (/home/0loop0 is now the original directory on NAND, the mount is gone, notice Filesystem value):

bash-3.2# /etc/oe-initscripts/oe-bootfinish/stop.d/9_loop0

bash-3.2# df -h /home/0loop0
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
ubi0:rootfs           212M  161M   51M  77% /

Relocate /opt to external partition image

bash-3.2# df -h /opt
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
ubi0:rootfs           212M  161M   51M  77% /

bash-3.2# mv /opt/ /home/0loop0/

bash-3.2# ln -sv /home/0loop0/opt/ /opt
create symbolic link `/opt' to `/home/0loop0/opt/'

bash-3.2# df -h /opt
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0            985M   18M  917M   2% /home/0loop0

Installing the package manager (finally...)

bash-3.2# cd /opt

bash-3.2# wget http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/stable/ipkg-opt_0.99.163-10_arm.ipk
[...]
18:41:31 (80.4 KB/s) - `ipkg-opt_0.99.163-10_arm.ipk' saved [74474/74474]

bash-3.2# tar xvf ipkg-opt_0.99.163-10_arm.ipk
./debian-binary
./data.tar.gz
./control.tar.gz

bash-3.2# tar xvf data.tar.gz
./
./opt/
[...]

bash-3.2# rm control.tar.gz data.tar.gz debian-binary ipkg-opt_0.99.163-10_arm.ipk

bash-3.2# mv opt/* .
bash-3.2# rmdir opt

bash-3.2# ls /opt
bin  etc  lib  share

bash-3.2# /opt/bin/ipkg -version
ipkg version 0.99.163

bash-3.2# echo src cs08q1armel http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/stable >> /opt/etc/ipkg.conf

bash-3.2# /opt/bin/ipkg update
Downloading http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/stable/Packages
Updated list of available packages in /opt/lib/ipkg/lists/cs08q1armel
Successfully terminated.