2100 netwinder reinstall

Ralph Siemsen ralphs at netwinder.org
Sun Dec 12 11:21:19 EST 2004


dave bury wrote:
> Hi all I need to reinstall the OS on my 2100 netwinder.
> I am new to Linux and would like a walk through for installing the OS 
> from scratch.
> I have another pc with Linux on and a 2.5-3.5 inch hard drive adapter so 
> I can connect the netwinder hard drive to this system and I have the CD 
> that came with the netwinder when new with the rescue image on (I 
> think)or can I get a more up-to-date version of the net??

Ah, bit of confusion about the rescue image.   This referrs to the small 
(a couple of MB) "reserved" area at the end of the hard drive, 
containing a  very minimal environment.  The idea is that this can be 
used to reload the rest of the hard drive, without having to resort to 
taking the drive out and putting it in another PC.

The CDROM you have contains a full disk image of what was originally 
shipped on the drive.  It can be reinstalled via the rescue image. 
Instructions for how to use this can be found in section 8.5 of the FAQ 
at http://www.netwinder.org/faq.html and in greater detail in the 
Rescue-HOWTO at http://www.netwinder.org/howto/Rescue-HOWTO.html

If you want to try the "direct" method using your PC, that is also 
possible.  It is covered in chapter 4 of the Disk-Upgrade howto at
http://www.netwinder.org/howto/Disk-Update-HOWTO.html

The big question of "what to put on" is more difficult to answer.  The 
image on the CDROM you got with the netwinder is probably close to 5 
years old.  There are doubless many security vulnerabilities in those 
rather dated packeges.  There are no newer "OfficeServer" images since 
Rebel went bankrupt... and the web GUI for administration was their 
proprietary product.

There are a few choices of "plain linux" distributions... available from 
netwinder.org is the "NW9" image, which is a based on Redhat9.  That 
image can be found on our ftp mirror sites under pub/netwinder/images 
directory. Another choice is the Debian linux 
(http://www.nl.debian.org/ports/arm/).

Cheers
-Ralph



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