Getting started with the SheevaPlug

My SheevaPlug finally arrived. Ordered the morning (EDT) of April 1st and arrived May 12th.

Photos of the unboxing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcn/sets/72157618065995784/

Getting Started

• Connect the provided mini-USB & network cable to SheevaPlug



• On desktop do this to load the right driver. sudo modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x9e88 product=0x9e8f



• Install and run gtkerm Set the default port to /dev/ttyUSB1 and 11850 8N1 for the connection. I saved it as the default configuration to make like easier later.



• Apply power and watch the boot via the console

Initial Configuration

Default root password is nosoup4u, changed to something else...

NB: ssh-server already installed

Set the hostname to LordShiva

Better apt caching

Add to local apt caching by adding /etc/apt/apt.conf. I already have apt-cacher setup on the 192.168.1.234 host.

Acquire::http { Proxy "http://[192.168.1.234]:3142"; };

Let apt work better

Because the /var/cache/apt/archives/partial is on a tmpfs, it gets removed on reboot. Create it manually (should add this to the rc.local)

mkdir -p /var/cache/apt/archives/partial

Update the pre-installed Ubuntu

apt-get update

Fix clock

The time was initially set to Sun Jun 23 10:26:13 UTC 1963

Install ntp...

root@LordShiva:~# apt-get install ntpdate
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libx11-data libxcb1 libxau6 libxdmcp6 libxcb-xlib0 libx11-6
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
libcap2
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libcap2
The following packages will be upgraded:
ntpdate
1 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 102 not upgraded.
Need to get 75.4kB of archives.
After this operation, 69.6kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?


I've not fixed the nameserver yet, so point ntpdate to the ip address of ntp.ubuntu.com (91.189.94.4)


root@LordShiva:~# ntpdate 91.189.94.4
13 May 02:30:20 ntpdate[1362]: step time server 91.189.94.4 offset 1448118269.109798 sec


Something strange with /etc/resolv.conf

This is what it has, but there is no DNS server running on the SheevaPlug.

domain mv.com
search mv.com
nameserver 127.0.0.1

Fix it manually to point to my local ISP.

domain mv.com
search mv.com mv.com
nameserver 199.125.85.1
nameserver 199.125.85.2

Upgrade:

root@LordShiva:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
libx11-6 libxcb1 python python-minimal tasksel ubuntu-minimal
The following packages will be upgraded:
adduser apt apt-utils base-files base-passwd bash bsdutils busybox-initramfs
console-setup cpio cryptsetup debconf debconf-i18n debianutils dhcp3-client
dhcp3-common dmsetup e2fslibs e2fsprogs eject file gcc-4.3-base ifupdown
initramfs-tools initscripts kbd klogd language-pack-en language-pack-en-base
libblkid1 libc6 libcomerr2 libcups2 libcurl3-gnutls libdevmapper1.02.1
libgcc1 libgnutls26 libgpm2 libkrb53 libldap-2.4-2 libmagic1 libncurses5
libncursesw5 libnewt0.52 libpam-modules libpam-runtime libpam0g libreadline5
libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules libselinux1 libsepol1 libsqlite3-0 libss2
libssl0.9.8 libstdc++6 libuuid1 libvolume-id1 libwbclient0 libx11-data
locales login logrotate lsb-base lsb-release module-init-tools mount nano
ncurses-base ncurses-bin netbase openssh-client openssh-server openssl
passwd procps python2.5 python2.5-minimal readline-common samba samba-common
sudo sysklogd sysv-rc sysvinit-utils tasksel-data tzdata ucf udev util-linux
uuid-runtime vim-common vim-tiny whiptail xkb-data zlib1g
96 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 6 not upgraded.
Need to get 40.3MB of archives.
After this operation, 3351kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?


NB: /etc/dhcp/dhcp.conf was changed, installed package version
NB: /etc/samba/smb.conf was changed, installed package version

ARG! I CAN"T LOG IN

The new root password doesn't work!

''Fortunately'' it is a known problem. See
http://openplug.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=110.0

To fix:

Use serial line and catch (press any key) on boot.

Marvell> printenv bootargs
bootargs=console=ttyS0,115200 mtdparts=nand_mtd:0x400000@0x100000(uImage),0x1fb00000@0x500000(rootfs) rw root=/dev/mtdblock1 rw ip=10.4.50.4:10.4.50.5:10.4.50.5:255.255.255.0:DB88FXX81:eth0:none
Marvell> setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200 mtdparts=nand_mtd:0x400000@0x100000(uImage),0x1fb00000@0x500000(rootfs) rw root=/dev/mtdblock1 rw ip=10.4.50.4:10.4.50.5:10.4.50.5:255.255.255.0:DB88FXX81:eth0:none init=/bin/bash
Marvell> boot

Then fix by doing:

passwd -d root
passwd root

until you see 'passwd: password updated successfully'