Daft Question Re "USB Storage as Rootfs"

Matt Ogborne · 3 Mar 2016, 21:07

Howdy,

This is a daft question I know, but I'm hoping someone can enlighten me to why I'm unable to do this.

Following the tutorial here https://wiki.onion.io/Tutorials/Using-USB-Storage-as-Rootfs the USB drive needs to be formatted as ext4.

However do that, with wrt you would normally install "e2fsprogs", however I'm unable to do that:

root@Omega-1XXX:~# opkg install e2fsprogs
Unknown package 'e2fsprogs'.
Collected errors:
opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package e2fsprogs.

So why no disk utilities and why are the blocked? Can anyone suggest an alternative?

Matt

Kit Bishop · 3 Mar 2016, 21:42

@Matt-Ogborne May be a daft answer ( ), but did you do a opkg update before doing opkg install e2fsprogs?

Doing so works for me.

Note opkg update is required for the Omega to have a list of available packages and you will get the error you posted when you do **opkg install ** if it is not done. I am in the habit of always doing opkg update before an opkg install

Matt Ogborne · 3 Mar 2016, 21:48

@Kit-Bishop said:

@Matt-Ogborne May be a daft answer ( ), but did you do a opkg update before doing opkg install e2fsprogs?

Doing so works for me.

Howdy Kit,

Err I didn't!

Is that a required step?

I've just formatted the drive using the Raspberry Pi 3 that arrived this morning using this app:

sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

And she's literally just mounted OK. Happy & days!

Matt

Matt Ogborne · 3 Mar 2016, 21:53

@Kit-Bishop that worked.

I wish I knew about that about 2 hours ago

Matt

Kit Bishop · 3 Mar 2016, 22:03

@Matt-Ogborne Yes, opkg update is required first. Not sure how I first found out, probably from a question i asked on this community.

opkg can provide quite a lot of useful information and facilities. Try the command opkg on its own without any parameters to get a summary of its commands and options.
Good luck with the rootfs stuff. I use it all the time with a 32GByte USB thumb drive. I also use the USB to provide swap space for the Omega which gives it more virtual memory. I need all this to run Java code under the jamvm Java Virtual Machine - which works well.

Matt Ogborne · 3 Mar 2016, 22:42

@Kit-Bishop just spotted that the tutorials are on GitHub and added some notes about this (also fixed the typo's while I was at it too

Matt

PS. Appreciate the insight!

Kit Bishop · 3 Mar 2016, 22:53

@Matt-Ogborne All good. Also, all the tutorials that Omega people have produced can be found on the Onion Wiki at https://wiki.onion.io/Home

Matt Ogborne · 3 Mar 2016, 23:30

@Kit-Bishop said:

@Matt-Ogborne All good. Also, all the tutorials that Omega people have produced can be found on the Onion Wiki at https://wiki.onion.io/Home

Yep, I've spotted those & just added my own as well

Not sure if this link will work as I'm not that used to using git-hub https://github.com/moggiex/wiki/blob/c0cdeb157885021f0669aacf6179ddcc35159634/Tutorials/PHP-GPIO-Example.md

Matt

Kit Bishop · 4 Mar 2016, 00:16

@Matt-Ogborne Great Yes, the link to your git hub works - looks good.

frederic raducki · 14 Jan 2017, 14:25

hello

im less fortunate than you guys :

As my screenshot shows : i do opkg update, it seems to work... but then e2fsprogs is still an unknown package (it worked for the 2 other packages kmod-usb-storage-extras and kmod-fs-ext4)

anyone could help me ? this thing is starting to drive me crazy.
after having the problem with the signature file now i stumble upon THIS problem while following the tutorial (im on a Omega2+)

thanks

Kit Bishop · 14 Jan 2017, 22:43

@frederic-raducki Two things you could try:

Run:
```
opkg list
```

to see if there is a package with a similar name is known about. It maybe named differently

Edit /etc/opkg/distfeeds.conf and un-comment the commented repositories then run:
```
opkg update
opkg list
```
again
Some of the packages may be in repositories that are not enabled by default

Jeremy Fee · 15 Jan 2017, 01:01

I had the same issue, on Omega2, found this recent post that helped with block-mount:

https://community.onion.io/topic/1234/is-block-mount-gone-where-is-block/3

In the file /etc/opkg/distfeeds.conf , uncomment (delete the #) these lines:

src/gz reboot_core http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ramips/mt7688/packages
src/gz reboot_base http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mipsel_24kc/base

reboot_core contains block-mount
reboot_base contains e2fsprogs

Then run opkg update and try installing.

frederic raducki · 15 Jan 2017, 09:33

@Jeremy-Fee said in Daft Question Re "USB Storage as Rootfs":

I had the same issue, on Omega2, found this recent post that helped with block-mount:

https://community.onion.io/topic/1234/is-block-mount-gone-where-is-block/3

In the file /etc/opkg/distfeeds.conf , uncomment (delete the #) these lines:
src/gz reboot_core http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ramips/mt7688/packages
src/gz reboot_base http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mipsel_24kc/base
reboot_core contains block-mount
reboot_base contains e2fsprogs

Then run opkg update and try installing.

thanks a lot it solved the problem.
in the past i uncommented other stuff in this file but not the ones you mention.
Why the hell for the sake of new users this opkg update does not covers every source of packages that might be usefull when embarking on the journey with Omega.