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Created March 16, 2011 05:16
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bento-linux.md

In the words of Abrasive. I just ordered mashed up the answers to my questions also into it for clarity.

High probability that these tablets come with uboot as their bootloader.

There are two ways of doing this - tell uboot to boot linux from the SD-card or install linux on the flash.

The easiest route is to start by booting from SD, then move everything into flash. However your main problem would be the fact that the only input device on a tablet is a touch-screen and debian installer doesn't support touch-screens as of this writing.

Setup your SD-card to be bootable

The first and last sections on this page - http://bento-linux.org/wiki/debian will help you do it. The first and last sections echo the same thing but the last section has info on setting up wifi, which is important so that you can ssh into the tablet to do your stuff.

uboot looks for a 'script' folder on a FAT partition on the SD card. Specifically for a file called 'scriptcmd', which is a sequence of u-boot commands. The file is made using a tool called 'mkimage' (it basically puts a binary header on to a text file). You'll find some scriptcmd files, an mkimage binary and the source scripts in the bento-linux 'fatpart.tgz'

Please start by grabbing fatpart.tgz and looking at the scriptcmd files included. 'scriptcmd.install' being the relevant one.

TL;DR approach (if this doesn't work move on)

Find the kernel that your tablet uses and swap it into the installer (replacing uzImage.bin) - otherwise your screen may not work

(Back to normal routine)

Rebuilding a kernel is a separate topic to getting installed and running, you can replace later at your leisure. For now just use the androd kernel, if you got it at the previous step, or just go ahead using the uzImage.bin that came with fatpart. If you are running an android kernel, just run as root to avoid permission issues.

Start a scratch textfile if you haven't already. The flash is partitioned. The partitioning is hardcoded in the kernel. So you may find that different kernels can't read (or will trash) each other's flash partitions. There is no neat solution at this time.

Edit the install stuff to try and get wireless and sshd up on boot. To do this, You'll have to poke your fingers into the startup scripts. Set up a wpa_supplicant.conf and add wifi config commands to rc.local

[1] http://bento-linux.org/ download fatpart from the Debian section of the downloads

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