Getting SheevaPlug Onto The Network

by Mike Levin SEO & Datamaster, 08/27/2010

But is deboostrap there?

Oops, no. Okay, then we have to expand our plans. I didn’t want to touch the default system drive at all, but without debootstrap, probably the best thing to do right now is to connect the network cable and restart the networking service. First, let’s do an ifconfig “before”:

Funny thing is that at my desk, I only have one network port and I’m using it on my main PC, which is a laptop. Thankfully, I also have WiFi, so I am fine with unplugging the network cable from my laptop, and plugging it into the SheevaPlug. My PC laptop stays on the network through WiFi. So just plug in the network cable. If you’re doing this at home, connect the network cable between the SheevaPlug and the back of your home WiFi router. Since we’re doing this after system startup, we have to tell the system to broadcast an IP request over UDP to the network, and listen for a DHCP server to hopefully respond. So type:

dhclient

Now we have an IP. There’s no reason to run ifconfig again for an “after” because the dhclient command actually shows us the IP that got assigned. As you can see, it begins with 10, meaning it’s a private network IP, but I’m still on the Internet, because any outbound request is routed through a gateway, out on a public IP, and then back to my machine on the private number. I’m tempted to just apt-get install debootstrap, but since I’m want the latest software, it’s best to follow standard practice and update the repositories first, by typing:

apt-get update

Oops! I get a message:

E: Archive directory /var/cache/apt/archives/partial is missing.

No biggie. That’s just a missing directory used in the apt-get process, so simply type:

mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives/partial

…and now the apt-get update will work, so go ahead and type:

apt-get update

Things will start scrolling across your screen. This is good. It means everything is working. What’s happening here is that all of Debian’s built-in knowledge of what software is available in what versions and with what dependencies is being updated. Contrary to intuition, this is not actually updating the any programs or system files. This is merely updating a software catalog–i.e. the Debian repository. This is one of the huge advantages of Debian. Every popular software that has been tested and proven stable on Debian is included in this repository, reducing installs into single-line statements.

And so now, we can get debootstrap. Type:

apt-get install debootstrap

Answer Y, and that’s it. We can now debootstrap from this the built-in system.