Installing Gentoo Beta 1 on the Kuro Box
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3. Kuro Box EM Mode

3. a. Getting into EM mode

If you are using a new box with a fresh hard drive, then it will boot in EM mode. However, if your box was already set up with the official firmware, then you must reboot it in EM mode. Telnet in, and try the following:

Get a working Kuro Box into EM mode
root@my-kurobox:/# echo -n "NGNG" > /dev/fl3
root@my-kurobox:/# reboot
Notes: You only need to execute these commands if your hard disk already has a Linux install on it.

Now it will reboot into EM mode.

3. b. Logging into the EM mode Linux

Once your box is in EM mode, telnet in:

Telnet into your Kuro Box
Kuroutoshikou KURO-BOX/HG (IESHIGE) Linux/ppc 2.4.17_mvl21
KURO-BOX-EM login: root
Password:
BusyBox? v0.60.5 (2003.07.30-12:03+0000) Built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
#
Notes: Just in case you wonder, password is "kuro" for the first generation boxes, and "kuroadmin" for Kurobox/HG.

Now that we are logged in, we need to start working.

3. c. Upload and install some Linux programs to the EM mode flash RAM via FTP

We will install the EM_mode_binaries.tar.gz utilities in the available space of the EM mode ramdisk. First, check that there is enough room:

Check the contents of the flash RAM
# df
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/ram0 9677 5115 4562 53% /
Notes: The last amount on the 2nd line should show 53% free.

That's ~4.5MB free, plenty for our needs.

Open your FTP client and log into the box with username as "root" (without the quotes) and the same password as before.

Back to your telnet client, untar this binaries at the root of the ramdisk:

Extract the binaries into the /bin directory
# cd /
# tar xvzf /tmp/EM_mode_binaries.tar.gz
bin/ bin/sfdisk bin/fdisk bin/bzip2 bin/date bin/chroot
Notes: Here we extracted 5 new programs and they were copied to the /bin directory of the EM mode Linux.

With our new programs installed into the temporary flash RAM, we are ready to continue. Remember that these programs are stored in RAM only, so whenever the Kuro reboots, they will be erased.

3. d. Setting the system clock's date and time

If you are using a brand new box, there are chances that it's system time is completely wrong. Let's check and fix that:

Check the clock's time
# date
Tue Oct 12 10:53:11 JST 2004
Notes: The command will show the time based on the time zone in Japan.

If your box has the wrong time, then you must fix it:

Check the clock's time
# date 12191504
Sun Dec 19 15:04:00 JST 2004
Notes: The format for the command is MMDDHHMMYYYY

Now that the time is correct, we are ready to move on to the next step: partitioning the hard disk.