UPK update for OSD1 available

[bmc]

Please see: http://osd.oddren.com/ for instructions and the download.

Was designed/tested on an OSD 1.0 (16MB flash, w/ CF slot).

As this is an unofficial dev upk update, this should only be used by
folks who are comfortable recovering their OSD should anything go
awry.

Comments welcome.

[bmc]

Since some interested parties are without access to their OSD hardware
at the moment, a slideshow of update, OSDng setup, and package menus
can be found at:

http://osd.oddren.com/files/pix/

[Ya-Nvr-No]

Sweet job Brian. Upgrading firmware, adding memory and swap space was
very straight forward. Now to do some reading and see what all can be
done. Seeing I can't dedicate a USB drive looks like a bigger CF card
is in store. Can I just copy the everything from one CF card to a
larger one? If so what is the largest card that can be used?

Starting to look like torrents could be in the future for the OSD?
In the mean time:
How can I use wget on the OSD to download http files to a media
folder?

[Ya-Nvr-No]

Looks like this will work for me
after login and password
Go to a folder you want the files in:
(example: cd /media/USB) = the
root of the mounted external usb drive
wget -r -x http: // www . whatever . com
This creates the folders and copies all

[bmc]

For wget:

Yep, it's got the full featured wget. Try "wget --help | less" or
google for lots of help.

Others might want to skip the "-r -x" you mentioned, that'll
recursively get everything, most people probably just want to do
something like:

$ telnet osd
login: root
password: pablod
$ cd /media/USB
$ wget www.somewhere.com/foo/bar/mediafile.mp3

Only use "-r" if you really want to recursively everything at that
site directory and below.

[bmc]

>Starting to look like torrents could be in the future for the OSD?

I doubt it'll ever need torrents. Once you're in OSDng, you can
update without ever doing the full DL again.

For example, I just added a freshly built version of dropbear (a ssh
client and server) - similar to what greyback provided a while ago
(but now built multi-executable style similar to busybox, and with
OSDng-style menus and /etc/init.d scripts). So you can install it and
start it and generate host keys and make it automatically start, all
from the menus - no manual anything needed.

And no need to download the full rootfs when you request this; it'll
just download a very small package and apply/overlay it into the OSDng
storage area.

>Now to do some reading and see what all can be done.

Lots can be done. Most of the pain in getting things to work on the
OSDng previously were due to the bulk of the filesystem being read-
only. It now looks like a vanilla linux system, with everything
modifiable, so most programs and packages will run on it without
modification.

This dramatically lowers the bar for others to tinker and produce
useful packages to share with the community.

And it's compatible with the thousands of packages that are already
part of debian. For examples on getting yourself going with playing
with those packages, see: http://osd.oddren.com/osd_debian_etch

>Can I just copy the everything from one CF card to a larger one? If so what is the largest card that can be used?

Added these Qs to the FAQ at http://osd.oddren.com:

Can I “move” OSDng from one card to another?

Yes. Just copy the “OSDng” folder to your new CF or USB storage, and
it'll boot from that. You can move from CF→USB, USB→CF, FAT32→ext2,
ext2→FAT, etc. It doesn't care.

How big can the storage be?

The media can be as large as you want (I've got a 8GB USB working
fine). The OSDng storage will max out at 2GB under Windows/FAT
formats. Theoretically ext2 could house OSDng storage up to 2TB, but
I'd conservatively say 2GB would be a safe max there too until someone
checks to make sure there are no large-file problems in the OSD's
kernel loopback or ext2 code.

[Ya-Nvr-No]

Again Sweet Job!!
I hope everyone that bought the OSD reads this and gets involved
again. Opens up the possibilities again. So many got frustrated with
the limitations that they moved on, or jumped ship.

Can Arizona be removed from the CF card, or if OSDnd is on a USB
drive, can I remove the CF card?
Why am I having issues booting with a USB drive attached (I have to
wait for the logo before I attach it)
Does not want to see it attached if I wait till its up and running.
Would be nice to have a USB hub attached with multiple drives,
keyboard and mouse.
Can Smb.conf be edited and saved for boot up load?

[Fernando Cassia]

2009/6/15 bmc <bmcarne...@oddren.com>

>Starting to look like torrents could be in the future for the OSD?

I doubt it'll ever need torrents.  Once you're in OSDng, you can
update without ever doing the full DL again.

Two questions:

1. Can I point OSDng to the same CF card that is currently hosting Arizona files?
2. How much space does OSDng take for a bare install?, I mean, minimum size. I only have a 256MB CF card plugged permanently, and I'd rather NOT use USB for OSDng and I "hot plug" (insert and remove) different thumb drives with the  OSD unit powered on. I don't want for the OSD to crash when looking for OSDng files and not finding them anymore
3. I saw mentions of the USB socket and  CF, but not the SD reader slot, why? I mean, technically, why can't the OSDng files be on a sd card in the internal reader ?

FC
 

[Ya-Nvr-No]

I am using the original 128mb card with no issues, thats why I asked
about being able to copy everything to a larger CF card. Did not want
to start over installing Arizona on a new card, seeing I did not plan
on using it anyways.

The torrents I was referring to were downloads of audio and video
files.
thought a sharing of files would be a great use of the network.

The current updates on bmc site works great. Somebody ought to hire
this guy. He's done more in one month, than ... Thats for another
thread.

I would just love samba working, and a way to stop recording without
the remote. Video starting is just one command "vrecorder" why not a
"vstop"?

I did find my issue with the USB drive it was trying to boot from it
(boot sector) and just took forever to get by.

[bmc]

FC,

Of your "two questions" :)

Two of the three are already answered at the FAQ: http://osd.oddren.com/#faq

Your third question just got added to the FAQ:

>How small can an OSDng installation be on my external card?
You need about 22mb.
20mb for the read-only (cramfs) portion of the root file system.
1mb as a minimal read-write overlay (ext2/mini_fo)
1mb to emulate the "settings" area (/mnt/OSD aka /dev/mtd5)

[Fernando Cassia]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Ya-Nvr-No<yan...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> The torrents I was referring to were downloads of audio and video
> files.
> thought a sharing of files would be a great use of the network.

What you want is a NAS appliance, a hard disk with a RJ45 Ethernet
plug whcih is seen as a shared samba folder.
These are as cheap as chips nowadays.

See here:
http://bit.ly/1tbwdlan

FC

[bmc]

> Can Arizona be removed from the CF card, or if OSDnd is on a USB
drive, can I remove the CF card?

Yes, you could remove Arizona (/media/CF_card/.osd-extended and /media/
CF_card/data) if you wanted. But if you're copying OSDng to a larger
card anyway, there's no need. You don't need the arizona stuff on the
new card, just OSDng.

> Would be nice to have a USB hub attached with multiple drives,
keyboard and mouse.

That needs a new kernel driver for usb...

> Can Smb.conf be edited and saved for boot up load?

> I would just love samba working...

Don't know - I've got NAS so I've only used the OSD as a client. Give
it a shot and let us know.

> The torrents I was referring to were downloads of audio and video files.

Great idea. A good first step would be to get a good, very
lightweight torrent client running on the OSD.

> Video starting is just one command "vrecorder" why not a "vstop"

You'll want to read the Qt event handling stuff in vrecorder and look
at a way to send it a signal from a "vstop" program to trigger
stopping. You could just "kill" it, but might lose some closing/
finalizing stuff.

> if OSDnd is on a USB drive, can I remove the CF card?

You should be able to, but the hotplug panic scripts will get you,
since it thinks you're still subject to the arizona restrictions.

power users can edit /etc/hotplug/cf_hotplug to get rid of this.

I'll make sure that fix goes out in the next update.

> The current updates on bmc site works great. Somebody ought to hire
> this guy. He's done more in one month, than ... Thats for another
> thread.

Thanks for the kind words. Happy hacking on the OSD.

[Fernando Cassia]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 3:51 PM, bmc<bmcarne...@oddren.com> wrote:

>> The current updates on bmc site works great. Somebody ought to hire
>> this guy. He's done more in one month, than ... Thats for another
>> thread.
>
> Thanks for the kind words. Happy hacking on the OSD.

Ditto that. Failing that, I'm sure Neuros has one extra OSD v2 devkit
unit they can part with.

Just imagine this guy (hey, what's your name??) putting his expertise
at work with the OSD v2...

And don't forget to build a statue in my honor for getting that USB
code open sauced. <VBG>

FC

[bmc]

Ya-Nvr-No,

I added a few more scripts and menu options to help people migrate
OSDng between cards: Choose "packages->upgrade packages" to get the
following added to your system:

With the below, you could easily:

1) Boot from CF OSDng as you are now.
2) clone OSDng onto a USB drive
3) (optionally) disable OSDng on the CF media
4) boot OSDng from USB (slow, but this is temporary)
5) clone onto a larger CF card, then boot from that.

You can also experiment with cleanly formatting media, and/or using
the explicit mount option if you're finding that coldplug/hotplug of
your USB drive is still troublesome.

(Of course, power users with a CF reader on their desktop can just
copy things around directly, but the above should work for everyone.)

Have fun.

---
From http://osd.oddren.com/changelog

Release 2.54

* Disable Arizona-era panic on CF-card removal since we can be
running entirely on USB
* Menu options to:
* format media
* safely eject media
* mount media (hotplug sometimes doesn't trigger for USB FAT32,
even under Arizona - maybe a race condition)
* clone OSDng onto another media
* Enable/Disable OSDng on any given media
* Improved ipkg menus

[bmc]

>Ditto that.

Thanks.

>Failing that, I'm sure Neuros has one extra OSD v2 devkit unit they can part with.

I think Neuros LLC is pretty occupied with making the "Link" a
success. I haven't much from them since making the OSDng firmware
public.

I don't know how much activity is going on with the OSD v2
development. I think I heard they were still working on kernel-level
stuff with the chipmaker - it might be a while before it's viable.

It'd be nice to see an updated OSD-like device make it to market -
with a faster processor, more memory, and VGA/DVI/HDMI output and an
open embedded linux environment, it could compete with the
popcornhour, roku, and others which are playback only and closed
source/closed hardware.